Eros and Psyche; their love knows no measure.
Through trials, love leads them to immortal Pleasure.
CHAPTER VI: THE LOVERS
EROS & PSYCHE
Through trials, love leads them to immortal Pleasure.
CHAPTER VI: THE LOVERS
EROS & PSYCHE
Eros & Psyche, Iona Miller
The story of Eros and Psyche has been passed down through the work of a Greek initiate in the Eleusinian (or Isis) Mysteries. In THE GOLDEN ASS OF APULEIUS, the tale of these divine lovers is inserted into the personal story of Apuleius. It is a tale of psychosexual transformation.
Eros and Psyche is a 12-part Mytheme:
1. Psyche--Wow, She's Gorgeous!
2. The Wrath of Venus
3. Eros Tumbles for Psyche
4. Eros Conceals Himself
5. Psyche Smells a Rat
6. Psyche Takes a Peek
7. Eros Abandons Psyche
8. Psyche Is Punished
9. Venus Imposes the Tasks
10. The Impossible Task
11. Eros Lends a Helping Hand
12. Psyche Joins the Immortals
The tale has great psychological value since it reveals the development of the initiate's relationship with his anima as a result of the initiatory process. Eros is a phallic god -- the erotic impulse -- who pricks and stings with his arrow of love. In the tale, Eros represents the reproductive passion which is transformed through its relationship with Psyche. The union of Eros with Psyche engenders bliss. Eros bonded with Psyche represents bonding of soul and mind. In the mytheme, Eros is cured from lust and cleaves to Psyche. Elements of this tale have come down in fairytales such as Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast.
In The Uses of Enchantment (1975), Freudian analyst Bruno Bettelheim interprets the "Cupid and Psyche" myth as a story about a the development of mature consciousness, the difficulty of joining wisdom and sexuality, and the problem of sexual anxiety. He also sees some aspects of Oedipal love involved in this story, especially Aphrodite’s possessive jealousy of her son, but overall, his interpretation is very optimistic about the psychological potential of human development as it is presented in the Eros and Psyche tale.
When Psyche breaks the taboo by using the lamp to see Eros in the darkness, Bettelheim understands this as an attempt to expand her consciousness before she is ready for it: The story warns that trying to reach for consciousness before one is mature enough for it or through short-cuts has far reaching consequences; consciousness cannot be gained in one fell swoop. In desiring mature consciousness, one puts one’s life on the line, as Psyche does when she tries to kill herself in desperation.
The incredible hardships Psyche has to endure suggest the difficulties we encounters when the highest psychic qualities (Psyche) are to be wedded to sexuality (Eros). Bettelheim emphasizes the dangers involved in developing consciousness. Psyche’s repeated decisions to kill herself in order to end her despair at the prospect of completing her seemingly impossible tasks symbolically express the depression which frequently accompanies psychological development.
For Bettelheim, a primary aspect of this development is the integration of sexuality with the highest aspirations of consciousness. He insists that nothing less than a spiritual rebirth is required to bring together these seemingly opposite aspects of the human being.
The troubled relationship between Eros and Psyche symbolizes the difficulty involved in this integrative process, and Psyche’s journey to the underworld dramatically portrays the powerful experience of rebirth which preceeds and helps to bring about this hard-won integration. . . .To begin with, the prediction that Psyche will be carried off by a horrible snake gives visual expression to the inexperienced girl’s formless sexual anxieties. The funeral procession which leads Psyche to her destiny suggests the death of maidenhood, a loss not easily accepted.
The readiness with which Psyche permits herself to be persuaded to kill Eros, with whom she cohabits, indicates the strong negative feelings which a young girl may harbor against him who has robbed her of her virginity. According to Bettelheim, the value of the animal-husband tales, including the Eros and Psyche story, is that they assure children that their fear of sex as something beastly is not unique to them and that sexual anxiety, which is often implanted by others, frequently turns out to be unfounded.
Stories about the animal-husband assure children that their fear of sex as something dangerous and beastly is by no means unique to them; many people have felt the same way. But as the story characters discovers that despite such anxiety their sexual partner is not an ugly creature but a lovely person, so will the child. On a preconscious level these tales convey to the child that much of his anxiety is implanted in him by what he has been told; and that matters may be quite different when one experiences them directly, from the way one sees them from the outside.
So when Psyche discovers that her lover is not the monster she feared but a magnificent god, this reassures people on a subconscious level that sex is not beastly but potentially beautiful. In this reasoning Bettelheim goes a step beyond [J.] Schroeder and [Jacques] Barachilon, who more or less use the Eros and Psyche myth to illustrate the dynamics of projection as a girl’s way of dealing with her sexual anxieties. Bettelheim stresses ore than these other two commentators the role of society in generating sexual anxiety in children and the positive unconscious role which the Eros and Psyche myth and other animal-husband tales have in offsetting such anxiety.
Erich Neumann sees Psyche as originally bound to Eros in a paradise of uroboric unconsciousness, and when she sees Eros in the light, this original unconscious tie is dissolved. For Neumann this change represents a shift from the principle of fascinating attraction and the fertility of the species to a genuine love principle of personal development and encounter. For Neumann the link between individuation and love as encounter is one of the central psychological insights of the myth: "With Psyche, then, there appears a new love principle, in which the encounter between feminine and masculine is revealed as the basis of individuation" (Amor and Psyche, p. 90).
Individuation is accomplished through a conscious encounter with the unconscious, which is symbolized by contrasexual symbols: the male achieves individuation by confronting his unconscious, personified as a feminine anima and the female meets her unconscious personified by male figures. This process is usually understood intrapsychically, but it is generally influenced by encounters with persons of the opposite sex in the external world. In this view, a loving encounter is often the occasion for an intensification of the individuation process.
From this traditional Jungian perspective Eros can be seen as either Psyche’s inner masculine side or as a figure who transcends (is outside of) her own mind—either as a person in the external world or as a god in a transcendent reality. In an accessible style and readable prose, Barbara Weir Huber explores the myth of Psyche, interweaving research from diverse disciplines such as current feminist and educational theories, mythology, literature, psychology, and cultural anthropology. She offers an original, critical reinterpretation of the myth, highlighting the way it overtly portrays female experience in a patriarchal context while covertly affirming all aspects of female life.
In Transforming Psyche Huber shows that the myth of Psyche and Eros can be interpreted to illuminate the experiences of twentieth-century women. In contrast to the portrayal of Psyche as indecisive and amorphous, Huber emphasizes those aspects of the tale that describe Psyche's connectedness - to her sisters, her own sexuality, her earth-bound experience and, ultimately, to the birthing of her child. Using the works of such writers as Emily Carr, Margaret Laurence, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf, Huber demonstrates that feminist theory and women's autobiography mirror the insights uncovered in her retelling of the Psyche story, a feminist response to Neumann's powerful classic, Amor and Psyche.
According to Jean Shinoda-Bolin, "In the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche, Psyche's story is about the growth of the soul that began with her decision to face the truth, and led her to being on her own, challenged to complete tasks that were initially beyond her ability to perform. In the myth, her unseen bridegroom would come to her in the dark of the night and be gone by morning. Metaphorically, she was in an unconscious relationship. Fearing that he could be a monster, Psyche followed her sister's advice, hid a lamp and a knife, and waited until he had fallen asleep. She needed the lamp to see him, and the knife to cut off his head if indeed her were a monster." "These two symbols, the lamp and the knife, are both necessary for a psyche--for a soul--to act decisively when we know the truth. The 'lamp' is a symbol of illumination, of consciousness, the means of seeing a situation clearly. The knife, like the sword, is a symbol of decisive action, of the capacity to cut through confusion. The lamp without the knife is not adequate; it is insight into the situation with the capacity to act upon this perception." "Myths and symbols are in the language of the soul. A myth helps us to take a situation to heart and know what we must do: if it is to see the truth and act upon it, then the image of Psyche with her sword provides a magic perspective. A symbolic object can then be a talisman that helps us to do what we need to do. Like passing a literal torch, these are rituals that empower us by infusing an act with a deeper meaning. To think and act this way is magical, metaphoric thinking that can call forth the qualities we need from within ourselves and may also tap into sources of help that lie beyond us." (Jean Shinoda-Bolin).
Psyche is a mortal incarnation of Eros' mother, Venus or Aphrodite. Since she is mortal, she represents that part of Eros' anima which is closer to consciousness. Venus becomes jealous of Psyche because mortals begin worshipping her beauty, preferring her to an abstract Olympian goddess. Psyche's appearance in an account of the Eleusinian Mysteries points to the identification between Psyche and Isis, and Aphrodite and Isis. One might think that the goddess, then, fights against herself. In a sense, she does.
She protests because of the narrowing of her potential into a finite mortal form. If Psyche is Venus in diminutive form, Eros actually takes part in a variation on the theme of sacred marriage with his mother/daughter/sister. This repeats the old Egyptian transformative formula of I.A.O. (Isis-Apophis-Osiris), concerning the mystery of rebirth. Psyche is a form of Kore, the eternal maiden, the mother goddess in rejuvenated, human form. Therefore, the Eros and Psyche tale is a variation of the Demeter-Kore myth (see CHAPTER VIII).
For the female initiate, this myth represents the deepest experience of the female "ms.teries" of the Self. For the male initiate, it means a progressive integration of the anima which then leads to an experience of the Self. While he is still mother-complexed, all the forms of the goddess are compounded in the figure of the Great Mother. Without transformation he is her eternal lover who is always subject to fragmentation of his personality (i.e. death and rebirth).
So, the story of Eros and Psyche on various arcs concerns such important human areas as anima (for a man) and animus (for woman); it is also a paradigm of developing relationship, and bears a strong message regarding developmental tasks in the natural process of women's (or feminine) consciousness raising. The action of the archetype of anima/animus means that we project our unconscious idea of the All-Woman or All-Man onto an individual in whom we see this ideal essence. No single person can be the carrier of all the divine attributes or qualities we project onto them. When they fail to live up to our unconscious expectations, the process of consciousness raising begins. The Venus function is a lens which can magnify or distort.
The story of Eros and Psyche reveals a process of deep metamorphosis and renewal where all the values of the feeling function, emotional life, and moral standards gradually gain new significance and purpose. There is a "change of heart." Eros moves from sexual objectification toward soulful love; Psyche from projection of her masculine qualities toward empowerment. Emotionally, they act out the dynamic of the puer/puella immature relationship in the meantime. This naturally leads toward active introspection on the mental level, which results in spiritual consciousness raising--a renewed sense of empathy and compassion.
This myth resonates with the Tarot trump, THE LOVERS. The Crowley deck shows an exalted version of the sacred marriage. But more mundane decks generally show a man flanked on either side by two women competing for his attention. He is in an unconscious relationship with both the more maternal, motherly type and the young sensual counterpart who probably represents an immature anima or soul image. These female figures are sometimes polarized as light and dark anima figures. If we view the young man as the immature ego, this card can also represent a woman with a split between the physical and spiritual aspects of love. Sometimes this dynamic becomes concretized, "acted out," in life through a love triangle.
The ego must bear responsibility for any action it takes in response to the conflicting figures. In the psychology of both men and women, male figures usually represent consciousness, intellectual attainment, and spirit; female figures symbolize aspects of the body, emotions, and soul. The polarity is between sexual passions, secret feelings, and spiritual strivings, which exert a definite hold on the ego. Each is compelling in a magical, magnetic way. The ego cannot detach itself from either of them in outer reality since each belongs to its inner reality.
If the ego stands its ground, and endures the tension of conflicting desires, it can becomes free of the spell of unconscious projection in either direction. We must come to terms with both instinctual draws to gain full stature. This is a step toward individuation. Otherwise we remain in thrall to our feminine, instinctual side which conditions our emotions. We live out a frozen, trance-like state of mystified love, rather than mature, soulful love. The challenge is to connect our spiritual and emotional life, through passionate involvement in all of life. Then we find ourselves in a new relationship with others and in harmony with ourselves, facing each individual conflict and suffering through it to its resolution or transcendence.
By facing our fears and pains -- becoming conscious of our conflicts -- we can find peace. New realizations appear in their embryonic stage as conflicts which offer us choices in life. These decision points become either our life's path or roads-not-taken. Eros, like Fate, is symbolic of the fatal power of attraction which brings opposites together. He is the incarnating life principle, which ushers in the irrational, passionate intensity which makes transformation possible. He "turns up the heat" on the psychic process; he is that spiritual or divine fire which can unite with instinct.
Eros and Psyche is a 12-part Mytheme:
1. Psyche--Wow, She's Gorgeous!
2. The Wrath of Venus
3. Eros Tumbles for Psyche
4. Eros Conceals Himself
5. Psyche Smells a Rat
6. Psyche Takes a Peek
7. Eros Abandons Psyche
8. Psyche Is Punished
9. Venus Imposes the Tasks
10. The Impossible Task
11. Eros Lends a Helping Hand
12. Psyche Joins the Immortals
The tale has great psychological value since it reveals the development of the initiate's relationship with his anima as a result of the initiatory process. Eros is a phallic god -- the erotic impulse -- who pricks and stings with his arrow of love. In the tale, Eros represents the reproductive passion which is transformed through its relationship with Psyche. The union of Eros with Psyche engenders bliss. Eros bonded with Psyche represents bonding of soul and mind. In the mytheme, Eros is cured from lust and cleaves to Psyche. Elements of this tale have come down in fairytales such as Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast.
In The Uses of Enchantment (1975), Freudian analyst Bruno Bettelheim interprets the "Cupid and Psyche" myth as a story about a the development of mature consciousness, the difficulty of joining wisdom and sexuality, and the problem of sexual anxiety. He also sees some aspects of Oedipal love involved in this story, especially Aphrodite’s possessive jealousy of her son, but overall, his interpretation is very optimistic about the psychological potential of human development as it is presented in the Eros and Psyche tale.
When Psyche breaks the taboo by using the lamp to see Eros in the darkness, Bettelheim understands this as an attempt to expand her consciousness before she is ready for it: The story warns that trying to reach for consciousness before one is mature enough for it or through short-cuts has far reaching consequences; consciousness cannot be gained in one fell swoop. In desiring mature consciousness, one puts one’s life on the line, as Psyche does when she tries to kill herself in desperation.
The incredible hardships Psyche has to endure suggest the difficulties we encounters when the highest psychic qualities (Psyche) are to be wedded to sexuality (Eros). Bettelheim emphasizes the dangers involved in developing consciousness. Psyche’s repeated decisions to kill herself in order to end her despair at the prospect of completing her seemingly impossible tasks symbolically express the depression which frequently accompanies psychological development.
For Bettelheim, a primary aspect of this development is the integration of sexuality with the highest aspirations of consciousness. He insists that nothing less than a spiritual rebirth is required to bring together these seemingly opposite aspects of the human being.
The troubled relationship between Eros and Psyche symbolizes the difficulty involved in this integrative process, and Psyche’s journey to the underworld dramatically portrays the powerful experience of rebirth which preceeds and helps to bring about this hard-won integration. . . .To begin with, the prediction that Psyche will be carried off by a horrible snake gives visual expression to the inexperienced girl’s formless sexual anxieties. The funeral procession which leads Psyche to her destiny suggests the death of maidenhood, a loss not easily accepted.
The readiness with which Psyche permits herself to be persuaded to kill Eros, with whom she cohabits, indicates the strong negative feelings which a young girl may harbor against him who has robbed her of her virginity. According to Bettelheim, the value of the animal-husband tales, including the Eros and Psyche story, is that they assure children that their fear of sex as something beastly is not unique to them and that sexual anxiety, which is often implanted by others, frequently turns out to be unfounded.
Stories about the animal-husband assure children that their fear of sex as something dangerous and beastly is by no means unique to them; many people have felt the same way. But as the story characters discovers that despite such anxiety their sexual partner is not an ugly creature but a lovely person, so will the child. On a preconscious level these tales convey to the child that much of his anxiety is implanted in him by what he has been told; and that matters may be quite different when one experiences them directly, from the way one sees them from the outside.
So when Psyche discovers that her lover is not the monster she feared but a magnificent god, this reassures people on a subconscious level that sex is not beastly but potentially beautiful. In this reasoning Bettelheim goes a step beyond [J.] Schroeder and [Jacques] Barachilon, who more or less use the Eros and Psyche myth to illustrate the dynamics of projection as a girl’s way of dealing with her sexual anxieties. Bettelheim stresses ore than these other two commentators the role of society in generating sexual anxiety in children and the positive unconscious role which the Eros and Psyche myth and other animal-husband tales have in offsetting such anxiety.
Erich Neumann sees Psyche as originally bound to Eros in a paradise of uroboric unconsciousness, and when she sees Eros in the light, this original unconscious tie is dissolved. For Neumann this change represents a shift from the principle of fascinating attraction and the fertility of the species to a genuine love principle of personal development and encounter. For Neumann the link between individuation and love as encounter is one of the central psychological insights of the myth: "With Psyche, then, there appears a new love principle, in which the encounter between feminine and masculine is revealed as the basis of individuation" (Amor and Psyche, p. 90).
Individuation is accomplished through a conscious encounter with the unconscious, which is symbolized by contrasexual symbols: the male achieves individuation by confronting his unconscious, personified as a feminine anima and the female meets her unconscious personified by male figures. This process is usually understood intrapsychically, but it is generally influenced by encounters with persons of the opposite sex in the external world. In this view, a loving encounter is often the occasion for an intensification of the individuation process.
From this traditional Jungian perspective Eros can be seen as either Psyche’s inner masculine side or as a figure who transcends (is outside of) her own mind—either as a person in the external world or as a god in a transcendent reality. In an accessible style and readable prose, Barbara Weir Huber explores the myth of Psyche, interweaving research from diverse disciplines such as current feminist and educational theories, mythology, literature, psychology, and cultural anthropology. She offers an original, critical reinterpretation of the myth, highlighting the way it overtly portrays female experience in a patriarchal context while covertly affirming all aspects of female life.
In Transforming Psyche Huber shows that the myth of Psyche and Eros can be interpreted to illuminate the experiences of twentieth-century women. In contrast to the portrayal of Psyche as indecisive and amorphous, Huber emphasizes those aspects of the tale that describe Psyche's connectedness - to her sisters, her own sexuality, her earth-bound experience and, ultimately, to the birthing of her child. Using the works of such writers as Emily Carr, Margaret Laurence, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf, Huber demonstrates that feminist theory and women's autobiography mirror the insights uncovered in her retelling of the Psyche story, a feminist response to Neumann's powerful classic, Amor and Psyche.
According to Jean Shinoda-Bolin, "In the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche, Psyche's story is about the growth of the soul that began with her decision to face the truth, and led her to being on her own, challenged to complete tasks that were initially beyond her ability to perform. In the myth, her unseen bridegroom would come to her in the dark of the night and be gone by morning. Metaphorically, she was in an unconscious relationship. Fearing that he could be a monster, Psyche followed her sister's advice, hid a lamp and a knife, and waited until he had fallen asleep. She needed the lamp to see him, and the knife to cut off his head if indeed her were a monster." "These two symbols, the lamp and the knife, are both necessary for a psyche--for a soul--to act decisively when we know the truth. The 'lamp' is a symbol of illumination, of consciousness, the means of seeing a situation clearly. The knife, like the sword, is a symbol of decisive action, of the capacity to cut through confusion. The lamp without the knife is not adequate; it is insight into the situation with the capacity to act upon this perception." "Myths and symbols are in the language of the soul. A myth helps us to take a situation to heart and know what we must do: if it is to see the truth and act upon it, then the image of Psyche with her sword provides a magic perspective. A symbolic object can then be a talisman that helps us to do what we need to do. Like passing a literal torch, these are rituals that empower us by infusing an act with a deeper meaning. To think and act this way is magical, metaphoric thinking that can call forth the qualities we need from within ourselves and may also tap into sources of help that lie beyond us." (Jean Shinoda-Bolin).
Psyche is a mortal incarnation of Eros' mother, Venus or Aphrodite. Since she is mortal, she represents that part of Eros' anima which is closer to consciousness. Venus becomes jealous of Psyche because mortals begin worshipping her beauty, preferring her to an abstract Olympian goddess. Psyche's appearance in an account of the Eleusinian Mysteries points to the identification between Psyche and Isis, and Aphrodite and Isis. One might think that the goddess, then, fights against herself. In a sense, she does.
She protests because of the narrowing of her potential into a finite mortal form. If Psyche is Venus in diminutive form, Eros actually takes part in a variation on the theme of sacred marriage with his mother/daughter/sister. This repeats the old Egyptian transformative formula of I.A.O. (Isis-Apophis-Osiris), concerning the mystery of rebirth. Psyche is a form of Kore, the eternal maiden, the mother goddess in rejuvenated, human form. Therefore, the Eros and Psyche tale is a variation of the Demeter-Kore myth (see CHAPTER VIII).
For the female initiate, this myth represents the deepest experience of the female "ms.teries" of the Self. For the male initiate, it means a progressive integration of the anima which then leads to an experience of the Self. While he is still mother-complexed, all the forms of the goddess are compounded in the figure of the Great Mother. Without transformation he is her eternal lover who is always subject to fragmentation of his personality (i.e. death and rebirth).
So, the story of Eros and Psyche on various arcs concerns such important human areas as anima (for a man) and animus (for woman); it is also a paradigm of developing relationship, and bears a strong message regarding developmental tasks in the natural process of women's (or feminine) consciousness raising. The action of the archetype of anima/animus means that we project our unconscious idea of the All-Woman or All-Man onto an individual in whom we see this ideal essence. No single person can be the carrier of all the divine attributes or qualities we project onto them. When they fail to live up to our unconscious expectations, the process of consciousness raising begins. The Venus function is a lens which can magnify or distort.
The story of Eros and Psyche reveals a process of deep metamorphosis and renewal where all the values of the feeling function, emotional life, and moral standards gradually gain new significance and purpose. There is a "change of heart." Eros moves from sexual objectification toward soulful love; Psyche from projection of her masculine qualities toward empowerment. Emotionally, they act out the dynamic of the puer/puella immature relationship in the meantime. This naturally leads toward active introspection on the mental level, which results in spiritual consciousness raising--a renewed sense of empathy and compassion.
This myth resonates with the Tarot trump, THE LOVERS. The Crowley deck shows an exalted version of the sacred marriage. But more mundane decks generally show a man flanked on either side by two women competing for his attention. He is in an unconscious relationship with both the more maternal, motherly type and the young sensual counterpart who probably represents an immature anima or soul image. These female figures are sometimes polarized as light and dark anima figures. If we view the young man as the immature ego, this card can also represent a woman with a split between the physical and spiritual aspects of love. Sometimes this dynamic becomes concretized, "acted out," in life through a love triangle.
The ego must bear responsibility for any action it takes in response to the conflicting figures. In the psychology of both men and women, male figures usually represent consciousness, intellectual attainment, and spirit; female figures symbolize aspects of the body, emotions, and soul. The polarity is between sexual passions, secret feelings, and spiritual strivings, which exert a definite hold on the ego. Each is compelling in a magical, magnetic way. The ego cannot detach itself from either of them in outer reality since each belongs to its inner reality.
If the ego stands its ground, and endures the tension of conflicting desires, it can becomes free of the spell of unconscious projection in either direction. We must come to terms with both instinctual draws to gain full stature. This is a step toward individuation. Otherwise we remain in thrall to our feminine, instinctual side which conditions our emotions. We live out a frozen, trance-like state of mystified love, rather than mature, soulful love. The challenge is to connect our spiritual and emotional life, through passionate involvement in all of life. Then we find ourselves in a new relationship with others and in harmony with ourselves, facing each individual conflict and suffering through it to its resolution or transcendence.
By facing our fears and pains -- becoming conscious of our conflicts -- we can find peace. New realizations appear in their embryonic stage as conflicts which offer us choices in life. These decision points become either our life's path or roads-not-taken. Eros, like Fate, is symbolic of the fatal power of attraction which brings opposites together. He is the incarnating life principle, which ushers in the irrational, passionate intensity which makes transformation possible. He "turns up the heat" on the psychic process; he is that spiritual or divine fire which can unite with instinct.
Lagrenee, Louis Jean Francois
PHYSICAL FORM
In the creation myths of many cultures, Primordial Wholeness divided into two polarizing aspects. Together these are known as the "syzygy" and indicate an archetypal coupling where one aspect is never separated from the other. In the "impersonal" aspect of lunar (or Venusian) experience, the Great Goddess is never separated from her masculine Son-Lover. They are locked in an eternal fascination for one another. One implies the other for wholeness. They exemplify the soul-spirit relationship on a naive level of psychological development.
On the "personal" level this tandem is expressed as anima/animus. They are the contrasexual component within us all. In other words, these soul figures embody our latent capacities for expression and realization of the traits normally associated with the opposite sex. Thus, the animus leads a woman to the outer world and promotes her ability in focused, rational thinking; conversely, the anima guides a man (or our ego) through the inner worlds of relationship. Since anima and animus build a bridge between the conscious and unconscious perspectives, they function as mediators between the known and the "unknown." This is the level of psychological "complex" where there is a blending of archetypal realities with our individual experiences.
Complexes function like psychological "strange attractors," magnetically centering portions of our energy within their particular patterns of expression. This magnetic draw is the attractive force of Eros coupled with the psychic urge toward manifestation. The imagery of anima/animus is based in archetypal symbolism and in childhood memories of significant others of the opposite sex. This includes parental attitudes and behavior, grandparents' influence, siblings, first-love, caregivers, mentors, and cultural expectations and norms. Anima/animus determines our conceptualization of the ideal mate, and is responsible for such phenomena as "love at first sight," and "star-crossed lovers." It takes the elements of fate and destiny and combines them in an impersonal formula, which paradoxically feels totally unique.
Anima/animus represents the balancing of masculine and feminine traits in us as individuals. This balancing is a form of sacred marriage, a union which produces a magickal child which is the higher Self, much like Eros and Psyche give birth to Voluptas, deep and abiding pleasure or satisfaction. The animus is the masculine personification of the soul. He carries both a transcendent spiritual aspect and a personal aspect. He is shown in the tale as a beautiful creature, whom Psyche is at first convinced is a terrible monster-- sort of an "all men are beasts" programming. Later, she learns his true nature.
Anima/animus are potential guides to the depths of the unconscious, forming a bridge to daily life. They are factors which transcend consciousness, both light and dark. So in a relationship which seems to have everything going for it, there can be friction or "animosity" produced by the unconscious forces (complexes) operating below the surface. Most of these troubles stem from projecting the anima/animus image onto our loved ones, then maneuvering them into fulfilling our expectations. Internal conflicts come from the split nature of anima/animus which we experience in modern life. This again revolves mainly around the gulf between the "spiritual" and "sensual" aspects of the inner figure. For example, a Madonna/whore complex, which is a split between the holy mother and the erotic love goddess. Or, the spiritual animus might be projected onto the figure of a wise man, a ghostly lover to whom a woman faithfully goes in her fantasy-life, or onto an idealized brother/sister relationship devoid of sexual options.
Reality must be found between idealized (virtually non-existant) relationships and degraded relationships. The sensual animus may be presented as darker gods of impersonal sexuality, phallic or obscene in nature. In any event, the animus represents a woman's need for creative expression. The more fully she can manifest this trait, the better her inner relationship to the animus becomes. He provides her with inner light, not inspiration which is a function of her anima nature, the core of her Self. Anima/animus excite those feelings of longing, awe, fear of the unknown, and incomprehensibility. They imply that when we love deeply, we open ourselves to the possibility of betrayal and the pain of separation. We open ourselves to wounding, and this very woundedness is our openness. The transpersonal power of love can appear as an obsession or possession by another, against which rational thought is no protection. Eros and Psyche represent the experience of this emotional-sexual level and its projections, coupled with the exercise of discrimination between what is archetypal and what is personal in life.
Occupations and preoccupations associated with this eternal love story include:
bridal shop
bridesmaid
honeymoon hotel
intimacy workshop matchmaker
prince/princess
social butterfly
feminine consciousness-raising group
In the creation myths of many cultures, Primordial Wholeness divided into two polarizing aspects. Together these are known as the "syzygy" and indicate an archetypal coupling where one aspect is never separated from the other. In the "impersonal" aspect of lunar (or Venusian) experience, the Great Goddess is never separated from her masculine Son-Lover. They are locked in an eternal fascination for one another. One implies the other for wholeness. They exemplify the soul-spirit relationship on a naive level of psychological development.
On the "personal" level this tandem is expressed as anima/animus. They are the contrasexual component within us all. In other words, these soul figures embody our latent capacities for expression and realization of the traits normally associated with the opposite sex. Thus, the animus leads a woman to the outer world and promotes her ability in focused, rational thinking; conversely, the anima guides a man (or our ego) through the inner worlds of relationship. Since anima and animus build a bridge between the conscious and unconscious perspectives, they function as mediators between the known and the "unknown." This is the level of psychological "complex" where there is a blending of archetypal realities with our individual experiences.
Complexes function like psychological "strange attractors," magnetically centering portions of our energy within their particular patterns of expression. This magnetic draw is the attractive force of Eros coupled with the psychic urge toward manifestation. The imagery of anima/animus is based in archetypal symbolism and in childhood memories of significant others of the opposite sex. This includes parental attitudes and behavior, grandparents' influence, siblings, first-love, caregivers, mentors, and cultural expectations and norms. Anima/animus determines our conceptualization of the ideal mate, and is responsible for such phenomena as "love at first sight," and "star-crossed lovers." It takes the elements of fate and destiny and combines them in an impersonal formula, which paradoxically feels totally unique.
Anima/animus represents the balancing of masculine and feminine traits in us as individuals. This balancing is a form of sacred marriage, a union which produces a magickal child which is the higher Self, much like Eros and Psyche give birth to Voluptas, deep and abiding pleasure or satisfaction. The animus is the masculine personification of the soul. He carries both a transcendent spiritual aspect and a personal aspect. He is shown in the tale as a beautiful creature, whom Psyche is at first convinced is a terrible monster-- sort of an "all men are beasts" programming. Later, she learns his true nature.
Anima/animus are potential guides to the depths of the unconscious, forming a bridge to daily life. They are factors which transcend consciousness, both light and dark. So in a relationship which seems to have everything going for it, there can be friction or "animosity" produced by the unconscious forces (complexes) operating below the surface. Most of these troubles stem from projecting the anima/animus image onto our loved ones, then maneuvering them into fulfilling our expectations. Internal conflicts come from the split nature of anima/animus which we experience in modern life. This again revolves mainly around the gulf between the "spiritual" and "sensual" aspects of the inner figure. For example, a Madonna/whore complex, which is a split between the holy mother and the erotic love goddess. Or, the spiritual animus might be projected onto the figure of a wise man, a ghostly lover to whom a woman faithfully goes in her fantasy-life, or onto an idealized brother/sister relationship devoid of sexual options.
Reality must be found between idealized (virtually non-existant) relationships and degraded relationships. The sensual animus may be presented as darker gods of impersonal sexuality, phallic or obscene in nature. In any event, the animus represents a woman's need for creative expression. The more fully she can manifest this trait, the better her inner relationship to the animus becomes. He provides her with inner light, not inspiration which is a function of her anima nature, the core of her Self. Anima/animus excite those feelings of longing, awe, fear of the unknown, and incomprehensibility. They imply that when we love deeply, we open ourselves to the possibility of betrayal and the pain of separation. We open ourselves to wounding, and this very woundedness is our openness. The transpersonal power of love can appear as an obsession or possession by another, against which rational thought is no protection. Eros and Psyche represent the experience of this emotional-sexual level and its projections, coupled with the exercise of discrimination between what is archetypal and what is personal in life.
Occupations and preoccupations associated with this eternal love story include:
bridal shop
bridesmaid
honeymoon hotel
intimacy workshop matchmaker
prince/princess
social butterfly
feminine consciousness-raising group
"Psiche contempla Amore" (1898) di Middleton Alexander Jameson (1851 – 1919)
EMOTIONAL IMAGE
"It is wrong to think that Love comes from long companionship or persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of a spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a MOMENT it will not be created in years or even generations." -- Kahlil Gibran, from The Broken Wings In the tale, Psyche, the human soul is still in the cave of illusion. Her sisters: complete cave dwellers who behave like envious sisters in fairy tales every where.
Eros is the principle of desire for the good. Venus is placer of difficulties in Psyche's way. Psyche finally marries Cupid and becomes a goddess--the philosopher's soul by pursing divine desires can become immortal. The myth of Psyche and Eros is a wake-up call to the Soul. On archetypal levels, this awakening can only occur through the call of the Beloved, represented in this story by Eros.
The myth begins with the birth of a young girl, Psyche, whose beauty surpasses that of Aphrodite, representative of the collective consensus stuck in old ways and refusing to grow. She resents Psyche's beauty and to seek vengeance enlists the help of her son/lover, Eros, to shoot one of his arrows at her so that she will be "consumed with passion for a man who bring her endless agony."
Meanwhile, no one will marry Psyche, as her beauty is so great that it is perceived as "too much" and loneliness ensues. In desperation, her father seeks the advice of an oracle and is informed that she is to wed "Death." She is attired in funeral garb and led to a high mountain crag where she awaits her fate. Eros, having been commanded by his mother, is awaiting nearby and seeing her for the first time is so struck with her beauty that he accidentally pricks his own hand with one of his arrows and falls deeply in love with Psyche. Instead of falling off of the cliff, the winds carry her to an idyllic paradise and she becomes the bride of Love/Eros.
This myth has many layers of depth and meaning. The beauty of Psyche speaks of the beauty of our Soul, which if unexpressed and in an unawakened state, there is no metamorphosis, growth or transformation. This equates to Death in an archetypal sense. The call of the Beloved, Love/Eros, lures us into becoming more, reaching for more, unfolding and blossoming. The "too much" beauty of our Soul is often times shunned in our world when fully expressed, and we often want to retreat back into the quietness of slumber.
It is a wake-up call to the Soul individually, but in grander terms a wake-up call to all Souls of the collective conscious, as we sleepwalk through our global devastation and destruction caused by wars and other travesties. It is also a wake-up call to perceive all the beauties that surround us in our world daily that go unnoticed by the sleeping Soul. This is not meant to be a sounding of an alarm, but a gentle reminder of awakening through the gift of Love. Listen to the call of your Beloved to gently awaken your Soul and walk in awe of your own beauty. How does this myth of the divine lovers play out in modern emotional life? It is a metaphor of psychological growth -- "bringing up Psyche." It identifies certain developmental tasks fundamental to mature identity and the ability to love fully, such as sorting out feelings, setting appropriate boundaries, owning projections, developing a dispassionate Observer Self, and empowerment with compassion.
When relationships get stalled this process is stuck in the immature stage. John Bradshaw calls these "mystified relationships," still enmeshed in the dynamics of the very early family life of the partners. The issues of safety and trust are unresolved. These are relationships which stick together for the sake of the children, and the "children" are the regressive personalities of the lovers. The healthy Eros/Psyche relationship is one of empathy and intimacy, safety and passion. It is joyful and totally relaxed. When conflicts come up, as they inevitably will, there are means of negotiation. This is "soulful" love which includes many results of self-consciousness. It is generative in nature. There is bonding, commitment, vulnerability, self-disclosure, sensuality, ecstasy, as well as respect, caring, belonging,togetherness, toleration, and constancy.
Jeffrey Satinover, (M.D., physicist and Jungian analyst), examines the role of the Self in relationship in a tape called, "BEING SEPARATE, BEING TOGETHER." This talk is from a Jungian conference on wounding and healing in relationships. Every analyst knows that healthy, loving relationships are more healing than all the therapy in the world. The tale of Eros and Psyche is with us today in the psychological complex known as "puer/puella," (boy/girl). They are stuck at the adolescent stage of development.
This same complex is imaged in the Tarot Trump, VI, THE LOVERS. Much of psychic life remains hidden as in the initial stages of the myth. This includes secret thoughts, feelings, fears, criticisms, anticipations, etc. A psychological initiation occurs when we are suddenly forced to "go within" ourselves and discover or "own" the subconscious processes operating there. Gradually, we begin to recognize that relationship involves chronic "wounding and healing."
In the myth, for example, Psyche spills hot oil on Eros while trying to see what he looks like during his sleep. In love, the root experience is of the archetype of the Self. The broad, deep emotional experience coupled with detachment vacillates from impulse to action. This Self is the root of emotions when the ego is identified with it. The Self remains ineffable, or unknown, and is too sacred to be expressed in words. We experience the Self as our inner childlike nature when we act out a pattern of cyclic instability in our lovelife. We don't relate "adult to adult," but "wounded child to wounded child." Neediness on both parts keeps the legitimate needs of both from being met.
There are periods of despair and exaltation, wounding and healing. This is a variation of the archetype of the dying and resurrecting god. In its self-reflecting narcissism, this complex provides no stable sense of identity. We ask ourselves, "Who am I, and why can't I behave as I'd like to?" Some people seek therapy for this very absence of a stable sense of identity, after trying to form a false identity as a couple. Love brings alterations and fluctuations between feelings of fear, of "being nobody," or worthless when we are wounded, or feeling special and precious when things are going well.
These feelings may change rapidly depending on the emotional climate, and this is an unsettling feeling. The chronic emotion is a feeling of overwhelming longing for support of the loved one, coupled with feelings of extreme emptiness when the beloved is gone. Possessive jealousy comes from projecting our own negative self-image onto the rival who seems to succeed in an area where we have failed the loved one.
When the Self begins operating in an individual, the ego automatically begins acting defensively to protect itself against the intolerable sense of fragmentation which it anticipates will follow. The feeling of being unique and whole alternates with self-defense against feeling wounded and worthless. The defense consists of cutting off the roots of all intense emotional experience with the beloved, and may even extend into other friendships. Some people seek solace in the predictable gratification of alcohol or drugs as substitutes for the unpredictable pleasures of love. The Self's proper role in relationship is concerned with self-analysis or getting to knowone's inner workings better.
Each marriage or relationship consists of a union among four aspects -- the normal consciousness of the partners and their subconscious or inner Self. Thus, a woman loves not only a man as he behaves in outer life, but his inner "feminine" soul; a man embraces his wife and her inner "masculine" soul. This relationship was depicted in alchemy as the marriage of the alchemist and his mystic sister who is his inner nature. Instead of depending on one another for a sense of self-value (co-dependence), self-esteem emerges from within through reflective introversion. We can mirror, validate, and support ourselves when we listen to our inner nurturing voice.
When we explore our own personal depths, we come into our daily relationships as whole people. Then we can form truly interdependent, reciprocal relationships. "Falling in love" is a vehicle for the experience of the self. This experience, or even yearning for it, influences our daily life and human experience tremendously. As they say, "Love makes the world go around." Yet it automatically means there will be a fragmentation of personality following sooner or later, since an unconscious dynamic process has been unleashed.
The old personality must be dissolved before the new structure co-created by the partners can be established. Difficulties and disappointments follow when the other doesn't reflect back the expected sense of specialness or idealness. We often hold ideals of relationship which we have never seen and could not exist in real life. In an attempt to actualize our fantasy life, we unconsciously compel or manipulate the other person to fulfill it. There is a simultaneous attachment or identification of the ego with the vast potential of the Self, which no partner can maintain. When one partner doesn't fulfill expectations, the addictive yearning to experience the specialness of the Self changes into an indifference to the other which is not genuine. This is a reactionary defense against the Self in that both the unique and fragmentary periods produce pain for the ego.
It is difficult for the ego to "live up" to the idealized image, also. There is a pressure on the ego to live the demands of the Self, or cut them off entirely in a negative defensive move. Longing and disappointment change to seeming indifference and then the person begins to seek outward. This is a compulsive drive to recreate the appearance of the Self through yet another lover. The feeling of jealousy in the deserted party comes from feeling possessive of the lover as something of one's own, and experiencing the loss of Self, or even fear of the loss of Self.
The type of attachment that believes the other is responsible for the experience of the specialness of the self leads inevitably to painful separations. There is a "way of being together" in which both partners maintain separate identities. They are distinct, yet conjoined. In this liberated experience there is emotional intensity combined with detachment from compulsion. When each person experiences the Self with some degree of autonomy from identification with the ego, there is reduction of the strain in maintaining the Self of the other.
We cease to make such exaggerated demands on one another. We let go of the reactionary stage of power struggles, and become emotionally independent. The power-struggles (counterdependence) in relationship aren't for power, per se. They are manipulations and desperate maneuverings of the partners to maintain their individual sense of Self. These struggles are a natural stage which comes prior to true independence, individuation, or self-actualization.
True lovers are partners as well as friends and lovers -- head and heart, feeling and intellect combine. The associations of a complex can be detached from an image which should be archetypal. We can consciously separate out what is personal and human from what is archetypal and divine. We don't need to confuse our lovers with divine archetypal powers, though we each carry a divine component. When we reown our projections, the other doesn't carry the burden of our spirituality for us.
The spiritual problem is no longer disguised as a relationship problem. Our relationship with the higher power becomes direct. When each individual has an internal relationship with the Self, the other partner is not forced to carry and reinforce the projection of the Self. They are no longer exposed to the intense disappointment of the lover when they inevitably fail to live up to god-like qualities which only a higher power can carry.
Keywords for the cycle of Eros and Psyche include,
abandonment
anima/animus
duality
developmental path
lovers
love-at-first-sight
lovesick
enchantment
pregnancy
psychosexual
ring
rebirth
feminine spiritual quest initiation
incubation
fragmentation
metamorphosis
search
sensuality
ART IMAGES OF CUPID & PSYCHE http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~mjoseph/CP/ICP.html
"It is wrong to think that Love comes from long companionship or persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of a spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a MOMENT it will not be created in years or even generations." -- Kahlil Gibran, from The Broken Wings In the tale, Psyche, the human soul is still in the cave of illusion. Her sisters: complete cave dwellers who behave like envious sisters in fairy tales every where.
Eros is the principle of desire for the good. Venus is placer of difficulties in Psyche's way. Psyche finally marries Cupid and becomes a goddess--the philosopher's soul by pursing divine desires can become immortal. The myth of Psyche and Eros is a wake-up call to the Soul. On archetypal levels, this awakening can only occur through the call of the Beloved, represented in this story by Eros.
The myth begins with the birth of a young girl, Psyche, whose beauty surpasses that of Aphrodite, representative of the collective consensus stuck in old ways and refusing to grow. She resents Psyche's beauty and to seek vengeance enlists the help of her son/lover, Eros, to shoot one of his arrows at her so that she will be "consumed with passion for a man who bring her endless agony."
Meanwhile, no one will marry Psyche, as her beauty is so great that it is perceived as "too much" and loneliness ensues. In desperation, her father seeks the advice of an oracle and is informed that she is to wed "Death." She is attired in funeral garb and led to a high mountain crag where she awaits her fate. Eros, having been commanded by his mother, is awaiting nearby and seeing her for the first time is so struck with her beauty that he accidentally pricks his own hand with one of his arrows and falls deeply in love with Psyche. Instead of falling off of the cliff, the winds carry her to an idyllic paradise and she becomes the bride of Love/Eros.
This myth has many layers of depth and meaning. The beauty of Psyche speaks of the beauty of our Soul, which if unexpressed and in an unawakened state, there is no metamorphosis, growth or transformation. This equates to Death in an archetypal sense. The call of the Beloved, Love/Eros, lures us into becoming more, reaching for more, unfolding and blossoming. The "too much" beauty of our Soul is often times shunned in our world when fully expressed, and we often want to retreat back into the quietness of slumber.
It is a wake-up call to the Soul individually, but in grander terms a wake-up call to all Souls of the collective conscious, as we sleepwalk through our global devastation and destruction caused by wars and other travesties. It is also a wake-up call to perceive all the beauties that surround us in our world daily that go unnoticed by the sleeping Soul. This is not meant to be a sounding of an alarm, but a gentle reminder of awakening through the gift of Love. Listen to the call of your Beloved to gently awaken your Soul and walk in awe of your own beauty. How does this myth of the divine lovers play out in modern emotional life? It is a metaphor of psychological growth -- "bringing up Psyche." It identifies certain developmental tasks fundamental to mature identity and the ability to love fully, such as sorting out feelings, setting appropriate boundaries, owning projections, developing a dispassionate Observer Self, and empowerment with compassion.
When relationships get stalled this process is stuck in the immature stage. John Bradshaw calls these "mystified relationships," still enmeshed in the dynamics of the very early family life of the partners. The issues of safety and trust are unresolved. These are relationships which stick together for the sake of the children, and the "children" are the regressive personalities of the lovers. The healthy Eros/Psyche relationship is one of empathy and intimacy, safety and passion. It is joyful and totally relaxed. When conflicts come up, as they inevitably will, there are means of negotiation. This is "soulful" love which includes many results of self-consciousness. It is generative in nature. There is bonding, commitment, vulnerability, self-disclosure, sensuality, ecstasy, as well as respect, caring, belonging,togetherness, toleration, and constancy.
Jeffrey Satinover, (M.D., physicist and Jungian analyst), examines the role of the Self in relationship in a tape called, "BEING SEPARATE, BEING TOGETHER." This talk is from a Jungian conference on wounding and healing in relationships. Every analyst knows that healthy, loving relationships are more healing than all the therapy in the world. The tale of Eros and Psyche is with us today in the psychological complex known as "puer/puella," (boy/girl). They are stuck at the adolescent stage of development.
This same complex is imaged in the Tarot Trump, VI, THE LOVERS. Much of psychic life remains hidden as in the initial stages of the myth. This includes secret thoughts, feelings, fears, criticisms, anticipations, etc. A psychological initiation occurs when we are suddenly forced to "go within" ourselves and discover or "own" the subconscious processes operating there. Gradually, we begin to recognize that relationship involves chronic "wounding and healing."
In the myth, for example, Psyche spills hot oil on Eros while trying to see what he looks like during his sleep. In love, the root experience is of the archetype of the Self. The broad, deep emotional experience coupled with detachment vacillates from impulse to action. This Self is the root of emotions when the ego is identified with it. The Self remains ineffable, or unknown, and is too sacred to be expressed in words. We experience the Self as our inner childlike nature when we act out a pattern of cyclic instability in our lovelife. We don't relate "adult to adult," but "wounded child to wounded child." Neediness on both parts keeps the legitimate needs of both from being met.
There are periods of despair and exaltation, wounding and healing. This is a variation of the archetype of the dying and resurrecting god. In its self-reflecting narcissism, this complex provides no stable sense of identity. We ask ourselves, "Who am I, and why can't I behave as I'd like to?" Some people seek therapy for this very absence of a stable sense of identity, after trying to form a false identity as a couple. Love brings alterations and fluctuations between feelings of fear, of "being nobody," or worthless when we are wounded, or feeling special and precious when things are going well.
These feelings may change rapidly depending on the emotional climate, and this is an unsettling feeling. The chronic emotion is a feeling of overwhelming longing for support of the loved one, coupled with feelings of extreme emptiness when the beloved is gone. Possessive jealousy comes from projecting our own negative self-image onto the rival who seems to succeed in an area where we have failed the loved one.
When the Self begins operating in an individual, the ego automatically begins acting defensively to protect itself against the intolerable sense of fragmentation which it anticipates will follow. The feeling of being unique and whole alternates with self-defense against feeling wounded and worthless. The defense consists of cutting off the roots of all intense emotional experience with the beloved, and may even extend into other friendships. Some people seek solace in the predictable gratification of alcohol or drugs as substitutes for the unpredictable pleasures of love. The Self's proper role in relationship is concerned with self-analysis or getting to knowone's inner workings better.
Each marriage or relationship consists of a union among four aspects -- the normal consciousness of the partners and their subconscious or inner Self. Thus, a woman loves not only a man as he behaves in outer life, but his inner "feminine" soul; a man embraces his wife and her inner "masculine" soul. This relationship was depicted in alchemy as the marriage of the alchemist and his mystic sister who is his inner nature. Instead of depending on one another for a sense of self-value (co-dependence), self-esteem emerges from within through reflective introversion. We can mirror, validate, and support ourselves when we listen to our inner nurturing voice.
When we explore our own personal depths, we come into our daily relationships as whole people. Then we can form truly interdependent, reciprocal relationships. "Falling in love" is a vehicle for the experience of the self. This experience, or even yearning for it, influences our daily life and human experience tremendously. As they say, "Love makes the world go around." Yet it automatically means there will be a fragmentation of personality following sooner or later, since an unconscious dynamic process has been unleashed.
The old personality must be dissolved before the new structure co-created by the partners can be established. Difficulties and disappointments follow when the other doesn't reflect back the expected sense of specialness or idealness. We often hold ideals of relationship which we have never seen and could not exist in real life. In an attempt to actualize our fantasy life, we unconsciously compel or manipulate the other person to fulfill it. There is a simultaneous attachment or identification of the ego with the vast potential of the Self, which no partner can maintain. When one partner doesn't fulfill expectations, the addictive yearning to experience the specialness of the Self changes into an indifference to the other which is not genuine. This is a reactionary defense against the Self in that both the unique and fragmentary periods produce pain for the ego.
It is difficult for the ego to "live up" to the idealized image, also. There is a pressure on the ego to live the demands of the Self, or cut them off entirely in a negative defensive move. Longing and disappointment change to seeming indifference and then the person begins to seek outward. This is a compulsive drive to recreate the appearance of the Self through yet another lover. The feeling of jealousy in the deserted party comes from feeling possessive of the lover as something of one's own, and experiencing the loss of Self, or even fear of the loss of Self.
The type of attachment that believes the other is responsible for the experience of the specialness of the self leads inevitably to painful separations. There is a "way of being together" in which both partners maintain separate identities. They are distinct, yet conjoined. In this liberated experience there is emotional intensity combined with detachment from compulsion. When each person experiences the Self with some degree of autonomy from identification with the ego, there is reduction of the strain in maintaining the Self of the other.
We cease to make such exaggerated demands on one another. We let go of the reactionary stage of power struggles, and become emotionally independent. The power-struggles (counterdependence) in relationship aren't for power, per se. They are manipulations and desperate maneuverings of the partners to maintain their individual sense of Self. These struggles are a natural stage which comes prior to true independence, individuation, or self-actualization.
True lovers are partners as well as friends and lovers -- head and heart, feeling and intellect combine. The associations of a complex can be detached from an image which should be archetypal. We can consciously separate out what is personal and human from what is archetypal and divine. We don't need to confuse our lovers with divine archetypal powers, though we each carry a divine component. When we reown our projections, the other doesn't carry the burden of our spirituality for us.
The spiritual problem is no longer disguised as a relationship problem. Our relationship with the higher power becomes direct. When each individual has an internal relationship with the Self, the other partner is not forced to carry and reinforce the projection of the Self. They are no longer exposed to the intense disappointment of the lover when they inevitably fail to live up to god-like qualities which only a higher power can carry.
Keywords for the cycle of Eros and Psyche include,
abandonment
anima/animus
duality
developmental path
lovers
love-at-first-sight
lovesick
enchantment
pregnancy
psychosexual
ring
rebirth
feminine spiritual quest initiation
incubation
fragmentation
metamorphosis
search
sensuality
ART IMAGES OF CUPID & PSYCHE http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~mjoseph/CP/ICP.html
Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898)
Cupid Finding Psyche
Watercolour mounted on linen c1865 48 x 70 cm
Cupid Finding Psyche
Watercolour mounted on linen c1865 48 x 70 cm
INTELLECTUAL IDEA
Though many versions of this tarot trump depict the classic love triangle, this card has much deeper meanings. Depth experience of the higher Self comes from being actively introspective, as shown by THE LOVERS in the Rider Tarot Deck. The male (consciousness) looks to the female (subconscious) who in turn looks to the Angel (Self) for guidance and direction. We should look within ourselves for validation and certain fulfillment. We need to examine our own feelings and thoughts, not pass the buck for our unhappiness onto our partners. Psyche abandoned by Eros becomes lovesick or depressed.
In "Depression: Soul's Quest for Depth, Meaning & Wholeness" Maureen Roberts, PhD explores the prospective meaning of depression. Sufferers of depression are often forced to endure, in addition to their pain and energy loss, the stigma of being told that they're 'ill', hence that their depression is a problem to be eliminated, or that it has no value, meaning, or purpose. From a soul-centred perspective, however, depression is not primarily another word for unhappiness; nor is it 'mental illness.' It is, rather, in many instances a response to soullessness (or what shamans call 'soul loss'), including, ironically enough, the soullessness of the materialist medical model which continues to 'treat' depression as a biologic illness that can be.
To achieve genuine individual and cultural healing, we need, instead, more wholeness , that is, more soulful and well-rounded individuals who embody life's dance of opposites and in so doing live fully human, fully divine lives. We need more people who are not ashamed of, or embarrassed by their pain, but who can instead respond to their own and others' suffering - as an unavoidable facet of the human condition - with love, patience, sympathy, nurturing and respect.
True happiness, after all, does not exclude sadness, but rather embraces it within the living paradox which personal wholeness demands. As the quiet contentedness of joy, such happiness is not attained by seeking happiness, nor by eliminating sadness through addressing purely personal wants, needs, fears, anxieties and insecurities. Indeed, a reactionary cult of 'happiness', based on the indiscriminate elimination of all psychospiritual suffering, is in the longrun as lopsided, narrow, false, repressive and self-defeating as the current 'epidemic' of depression.
Endorsing happiness above sadness, in other words, simply amounts to replacing one extreme (which is falsely viewed in a totally negative light) with its opposite, which is seen as positive. In reality, though, not all happiness is positive - and not all depression is 'bad'. From soul's angle, far from being an 'insidious illness', depression is often a valuable phase of a person's life journey, a critical juncture at which a soul-searching re-assessment of priorites, directions, relationships, work, gifts, self-image, home life, spirituality and/or values is being called for.
For this reason, dreams and myths often contain the theme of the 'buried treasure', symbolically the soul hidden, or trapped in the unconscious depths, which the hero or heroine must retrieve in order to become healed, mature, content and whole. Mythically, the gods reside not only in celestial realms, but also down below in Underworld, the mythic equivalent of the unconscious. Soul, which unlike light, airy 'spirit', gravitates to the body, the Earth and the watery realms of night and ocean depth, does not lift us to mountainous heights, but pulls us - when it's neglected, stifled, or shunned - down into neurosis, depression, suicide, psychosis and psychospiritual chaos.
As an example, in the Greek myth of the human girl Psyche, whose name means 'soul', Psyche abandoned by Eros (the divine Love which soul needs) is left alone, directionless, depressed - literally, 'pulled down' - hence she is finally driven to Underworld depths. For Eros, mysterious god of entanglements in relationship, involvement with life, immersion in suffering, depth and joy, is the god behind human vulnerability, the one who exposes us, through love, betrayal, cruelty and kindness, to life's inseparable blend of woundedness and pleasure. Psyche, in other words, is a myth that provides a 'psych-ological' context for understanding depression as soul's need to descend in order to retrieve its Underworld treasure.
By exploring depression from this soul-centred perspective, we have thus re-mythologized a universal (archetypal) human experience: soul's hunger for depth and for the elusive riches harbored by Hades, Lord of the dark Underworld of the unconscious. Just as Psyche had to journey 'down under' to find her way back to lost Eros, so we shall be driven to the depths of our wounds, depressions, madness and fears in order to be reunited with lost soul. In the shamanic vision that this re-mythologizing of our lives is the medicine we need if we are to help one another reconnect to a life wrestled with, shared and celebrated in all its fullness, vibrancy, imaginal richness, pain and joy. With this guiding vision at heart, the following soul-centred delineation of depression offers itself as a yeast, vessel and catalyst to help reactivate the sense of soul within the individual, in the floundering field of mental health, and throughout global culture as a whole.
Depression, which literally means 'a lowering', occurs when energy (libido) which is normally available for day-to-day conscious living, becomes depleted, blocked, pulled down, or trapped in the depths of the unconscious. Depression can arise through endless combinations of psychospiritual and physical causes, but in many cases, its primary source is an unresolved, repressed, or forgotten grief, trauma, crisis, conflict or loss. In addition, depression is often an emotional, relational and spiritual response to a sense of meaninglessness, lack of harmony with Nature, or lack of truthfulness with oneself and others. Poor diet, seasonal changes, lack of sunshine and lack of exercise can contribute to depression, as can soulless environments, materialism, lack of imagination, damaging relationships, dull routine, empty forms of work, and apparent lack of life purpose.
Depression is a natural human response to an endless variety of circumstances and states of unresolved suffering, or tension within the psyche. While it can be debilitating (for example, in cases of repressed conflict, extreme crisis, or forgotten childhood trauma), it can also have a creative outcome. For example, some depressions are caused by a lowering of consciousness in order to retrieve needed wisdom, or creative and healing gifts from the unconscious. This kind of depression is best dramatized as myth, when the hero or heroine must go through a symbolic death and rebirth. Examples of such myths are Dionysus, Osiris, Christ, Demeter and Persephone, Orpheus and Eurydice. Reading and reflecting on such myths can help provide an imaginal context for soul's journey through depression. Bear in mind that the depression is never the end of the story. There's always a rebirth at the end of the journey.
The Self is a powerful internal dynamism of positive and negative manifestations which range from despair to exaltation. Since it symbolizes this entire range of emotion, you can't depend on it like a benevolent parent. When each partner isn't held responsible for what they are, they have the option of acting with charity or benevolence, instead of out of a compulsion to control one another. The nature of any relationship cannot be predicted from the qualities of the separate people involved.
For example, oxygen and hydrogen chemistries do not predict the emergent properties of their combination in water. Both are completely altered in the process of uniting. When people enter a relationship, there is a trans-FORM-ation of personality. The old form of the ego must die to be reborn in service to the relationship. Even the word 'transformation' contains images which intimate a knowledge of the fear of death. Morphe- (also in metamorphosis) means to gleam or sparkle with an appearance seen as beauty. "Trans-" contains images of piercing, mutilation, or maiming. These images of needs and distress produce relationship, but not idealism. Eros embodies both compulsion and inhibition.
We are both anxious and wary or leery of love. Love and fear seem to go together. The natural inhibitions of Eros need not be overcome. They are his way of eventually getting in touch with Psyche on a more profound level. Eros embodies both creative and destructive instincts, therefore love can be a long process of being wounded and regenerated. Psyche would still be a virgin if she and Eros didn't go through this cycle. She is the reflective instinct, who would still be fascinated with her own dreams and visions if Eros didn't change her.
Eros makes Psyche's potential fertility into a regeneration of the power of love. At last, Eros and Psyche are united in vitality and passion through the imaginal aspects of interested love. The archetypal patterns are not only perceived in life, there is an active participation in the cycle. There is a suffering of impossible love until Psyche's soul work, symbolized by her tasks, is completed. Then a psychologically creative union produces experiences of pleasure, the "Pleasure born of the soul." There is perception of the dimension of immortality intimated by love. How does the heart open to the other? This riddle has long obsessed human-kind. In the blink of an eye, Eros's dart pierces the shield of isolation, and fragmentation is no more. A new question appears: who am I who is so easily smitten?
The first lesson of the lover is vulnerability. Acceptance is indeed a work. To allow love to show its beauty, the soul must submit to onerous trials, as Harriet Eisman describes in her study of the tale of Eros and Psyche. If we harden our position, and our hearts, into thinking that love is our due and not an earning, then the end of this story is all too familiar. Love turns into its opposite, attachment. The ego may immediately inflate to an even larger size, forsaking the call of integration. The addiction of a Cassanova or Don Juan is the self-centered solution to love's enigma. Yet if we accept the "wound" of love, a bridge to what Jacob Needlemancalls another level of being springs into existence. Wholeness, advaita, nirvana: different traditions express the same mystery of crossing over. In each, the embrace of a non-dual consciousness frees us from the desire of conquest. In this way, we are touched by the mystery in which love blends two into one that yet remain different. If we accept, what must be accepted is the essential incompleteness of our humanity.
In Plato's image, we once were eight-limbed and double-sexed, but were bisected by gods who feared for their power. Moved by erotic desire, we now perpetually and unsuccessfully seek our "other half." However the relentless pull is explained, poetry of all ages, as Sam Hamill shows, celebrates longing for union with the beloved. Eros, erotic love, finds us unexpectedly, without warning, and instantly we are all attention. Called back from dreams, we are again ready to meet joys and sorrows of the hero's journey. But what if we find total fulfillment in our beloved and forget the unending role of the hero? Francesca, the most sympathetic figure in Dante's spiritual journey, speaks of such inner death:
Love, which permits no loved one not to love,
took me so strongly with delight in him
that we are one in Hell, as we were above. (V.105)
Most remarkable of all in Eros is his mighty force. It is a force with two edges. Turn it one way, and it cuts through walls of separation. Turn it another, and discernment is sacrificed. With what knowledge must we travel to face the hero's challenge with skillful choice? (David Appelbaum).
Further reading on Eros and Psyche may be found in the following:
IN SEARCH OF THE BELOVED, Jean Houston, (guided imagery exercises for Eros and Psyche)
THE GOLDEN ASS, M.L. VonFranz
AMOUR AND PSYCHE, Erich Neumann
SHE!, Robert A. Johnson
EROS IN LANGUAGE, MYTH, AND DREAM, Russell Lockhart
THE MOON AND THE VIRGIN, Nor Hall
THE MYTH OF ANALYSIS, James Hillman (Part I)
FROM CHAOS TO EROS, "Eros and the Experience of At-Homeness in Reality," Betty Meador
"Being Separate, Being Together," Jeffrey Satinover (audiotape, 1980)
CREATING LOVE, John Bradshaw
THE COUPLE'S JOURNEY, Susan Campbell
A CONSCIOUS PERSON'S GUIDE TO RELATIONSHIPS, Ken Keyes, Jr.
LIFEMATES, Harold Bloomfield, M.D. & Sirah Vettese, Ph.D.
P.C. MILLER, "Plenty Sleeps There", The myth of Eros and Psyche in Plotinus and Gnosticism", in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, ed. R.T.W. ALLIS, 1992, p.223-238.
Psyche’s Knife examines the myth of Eros and Psyche as a metaphor for the development of soul in the psychology of women, explicating the tropes of love and power as depicted by Psyche’s use of a knife in attempting to learn the identity of her lover.
Nelson examines the metaphor of the knife from all angles—alchemical, sacrificial, lunar, phallic—and delves into the mythology and imagery of women and knives, connecting our deep past to our present lives and our possibilities for the future.
Voluptas is pictured with her parents, Cupid and Psyche, at far right in Banquet of Amor and Psyche by Giulio Romano.
SPIRITUAL MYTH
The tale of Eros and Psyche relates the trials and tribulations of a maturing love affair. It means moving from separation and control toward praise, honor, and love. It occurs within the psyche through the process of metamorphosis. In fact, the Greek word 'Psyche' means butterfly and this process of essential restructuring involves cocooning and re-emergence in the new, potentiated form. The failure or stalling of this natural growth process is a spiritual issue, and may become a spiritual problem, which most frequently is perceived as a relationship problem. Eros and Psyche are the primordial lovers. In this context Eros is more of a transpersonal daimon than a god. The Gods relate among themselves, but a daimon mediates between gods and men.
Psyche is a diminutive incarnation of Eros' mother, Aphrodite. She personifies the anima and positive mother-complex. By her attributes, we can see that Eros has a good feeling relationship with women and the unconscious, but one which is still too naive. His attitudes toward love are idealized. Eros himself has been acting like the archetypal Don Juan before his encounter with Psyche, expressing the pattern of behavior his mother favors. This shows he is still identified with her, still in the grips of the puer complex. He is a son-lover, still compelled to serve his mama. Aphrodite is jealous of her own incarnation in matter. This deep level of the unconscious does not wish her son to develop out of his naive, unquestioning attitude toward her role and desires for him. She is angry and tries to destroy Psyche or Eros' reflective ability.
She realizes that Psyche embodies the mother-complex of Eros, but as his anima image is closer to consciousness than she is. Things proceed well, though blindly, in the newlywed's paradisical realm until Aphrodite stirs up trouble by sending in Psyche's jealous sisters. These sisters instill grave doubts in Psyche regarding her lover. They are too skeptical, too cynical, and too aware of the mundane side of relationship. Secretly, they wish they could recapture some of Psyche's naive romantic attitudes in their own relationships. The closeness of their friendship opens the doorway for envy to enter. What is needed, though is a mature attitude which recognizes the paradox of love.
There is always a divine and banal aspect to relationships. Both together represent a realistic, well-rounded experience, that is neither debased nor idealized. Psyche begins her marriage as mortals do by being "in love." She is contained in a very unconscious state in the palace of Eros. She is possessed by love -- in love with love. She longs for that superhuman quality of perfection in her lover. However, her humanness makes it necessary for her to make a transition to being consciously loving, accepting imperfection.
All of the forces which surround her conspire to make this absolutely necessary. The agents of this process include Psyche's inner desire toward consciousness, the sisters, Aphrodite, and Eros himself. She needs to divest herself of her myths about relationship and personal growth. Eros compels her by remaining in the dark. His soul is still in the grips of primitive passion -- sexual objectification. So, of course, after a time, Psyche resolves that she wants a real relationship and wants to see her lover "as he really is." She has wearied of "nothing but sexuality." Her real motivation is her fear, but the unconscious has its own, as-yet-unknown goal. She also has the burning passion which wants to know real love.
When she surrenders to the mysteries of the soul, she embodies the genuine, personal love. Paradoxically, at this point, Eros flees her (incapable of emotional intimacy). Aphrodite (in an attempt to destroy her) sets the tasks which further her inner development. These are experienced as insurmountable problems, and she has suicidal impulses at each difficult point. These symbolize her readiness for self-sacrifice, but also allow her to transform from one level of consciousness to another.
Psyche's first task, sorting a huge pile of seeds, is set by Aphrodite. Psyche's biological instincts come to her aid in the form of ants. This "ant-quality" is a primitive, quiet quality which is part of her inner masculinity. It is a discriminating function of Eros. In fact, she has instinctually discriminated and sorted seed in a literal sense. She becomes pregnant by Eros while still in the paradisical state of unconsciousness. Even though she has seen the divine quality of her lover, she is no longer only animus possessed, but begins to live woman's inner biological mystery. In a way, Eros is with her through all the trials in her inner world as her incubating child.
She regains enough faith to tackle the second task which is gathering some fleece from the "golden rams of the sun." This time, she earns a bit of the Logos, or the power of the spiritual impulse, which is a trait of masculine consciousness. But she does it, thanks to wise counsel, by avoiding direct contact with it in its destructive form. She can wield some masculine power, but need not gain it in an aggressive way. She is coming to know Eros' nature better, even though he is not there. Psyche is coming to know and understand him from the inside out, by contacting her inner animus, acknowledging the potential of her inner masculinity, while remaining absolutely feminine to the core. Through this process, she is coming to know herself. Psyche is mustering her inner strengths as well as courage and valor; but true to form, she collapses at the prospect of the third test.
Aphrodite makes the trials progressively harder. This time she must fill a crystal goblet with water from the river Styx, the powerful current of psychic energy. Psyche succeeds in capturing a bit of this river of life with the help of Ganymede, an eagle sacred to Zeus. This eagle represents high-flying spiritual intuition. She is, once again, saved from destruction by an act of grace. By dipping only a small amount from the river of libido, her fragile ego (the container) is not shattered. By listening to her quiet, inner guiding voice, Psyche was able to complete her nearly impossible task, through methodical concentration. Psyche's ability to touch her unconscious depths gave her access to the creative solution. She understood this through an intuitive vision.
The final test involves a terrible journey to the underworld. One needs proper guidance for such a journey. Modern examples of this task of making Psyche more conscious include the therapeutic process of individuation and spiritual disciplines like yoga and mysticism. This process of understanding one's depths repeats the shaman's initiation in the underworld and leads to self-realization of inner potentials. We become progressively more enlightened by shedding our illusions about self and world. It requires all of the energy and resources we can muster. Once begun it must be followed through to the end. Psyche fortunately acquires the treasure of the subconscious as the box of divine beauty which Aphrodite has demanded of her.
The beauty of Persephone is the resplendence of the most profound depths of the feminine Self. Betty Meador calls it "the awesome and overpowering essence of death and resurrection, the passage of the female goddess through the dark regions of Hell into rebirth and transformation." This process was the subject of both the Isis and Eleusinian Mysteries. On her return from the underworld (subconscious), for love of Eros, Psyche opens the box of beauty ointment. Seeking to make herself more desirable to Eros, (and inadvertently cheating Aphrodite), she does not have the courage to face Eros as herself.
She want to remain disguised in Eros' anima projections, which hark back his mother-complex. Her fantasy is that then they could continue to share the paradisical state. True, she does this for love of Eros, but this keeps him in his adolescent phase, devoid of the maturity a real relationship would bring. She regresses into an unconscious state of deep sleep. She becomes a "sleeping beauty." In this apparent failure, she shows herself to be most human! How unbearably egotistical Psyche might have been if she had completed the tasks perfectly. Through her regression into humanness, Eros is redeemed from his boyish hangups and allowed to mature. He can show some true love, rather than instinctual reproductive passion.
Through his love Eros redeems Psyche and awakens her to an understanding of the archetypal functioning of the animus as a bridge to the divine. She is transformed from her mortal condition to an awareness of her own immortality of soul. Together they experience the birth of their child as joy, mutual ecstasy, and the pleasure of life and love. There is a blending of the human and divine qualities in love. The opposites merge in mutual love, and experience unification on a profound level which has both depth and conscious awareness.
Eros is contained within Psyche. The reproductive instinct transforms into a highly differentiated feeling function, and Psyche goes through rebirth which frees her "butterfly" nature. Feeling is a reflective function which requires time more than perception. When Psyche evokes true feelings from Eros, her task is complete. Daily life is connected with archetypal reality. Eros embodies the Mystery of the Inner Process in matter and spirit. Love is the fundamental universal principle that even holds atoms and molecules together as matter. Eros is a mysterious energy inherent in the whole of creation, fascinating seekers all over the world. Across the cultures, Eros takes different names but still remains the same agent that has to be awakened from within, since it is the only element that can transform the human psyche.
Psyche has to be pacified and Eros’ "fire" has to be transformed into "light" so that he can become the mediator and guide that gently pushes and pulls the seeker towards the source of divine love—Eros the Beloved—that awakens from within, guides and accompanies the seeker from within the inner planes. He is the inner witness, the agent within the seeker that unfolds gnosis, or divine knowledge. This divine knowledge awakens higher levels of consciousness within him and, in turn, these levels of consciousness aroused by Eros lead the seeker back to the source of light. The Greek mysteries relate that at the very beginning of creation, only chaos existed, and from chaos was born the cosmogonic Eros.
Elsewhere, according to mythology, we are told that amongst the gods, Eros was the most handsome. This is how theogonia (the birth of the gods) begins and we are assured that the poet Isiodos heard it from the mouth of the Muse herself. According to Isiodos, Eros represents the driving force behind the entire theogonia. The Orphics agree that Eros appears at the beginning of theogonia and cosmogonia in general, and they tell us that his mother was Night, the dark goddess, and his father the Wind. From their first cosmic and elemental embrace, Eros was born from a silver egg.
For the Greeks, the essence of Eros is the unfoldment of human thought, and in Greek philosophy, he is described as a liberating agent who releases and activates the creative process of the mind. Eros inspires and opens the channel of intuition to the higher and abstract understanding and communion with beauty and truth. The myth of Eros and Psyche describes in detail the inner process of transformation.
In fact, Eros cannot be separated from his beloved Psyche, since they are united by a secret and sacred bond, invisible and unconscious in man. In fact, man’s psyche remains filled with erotic, sensual, carnal desires that keep him and his mind trapped on the physical plane along with his emotions and consciousness. But a seeker must transmute the attraction of Eros and awaken the bond with his psyche so that he can rise towards the "beloved," the invisible golden thread that links his consciousness to the universal qualities of beauty and love.
The gifts of Eros affect the emotional and thought processes of humanity, especially those of a seeker who has to learn how to open up and integrate these gifts in his psyche. From the lowest and most physical levels of consciousness to the most spiritual ones, Eros remains forever present,gradually transforming the inner fire into pure light. Eros operates in every living creature, and Greek poetry and philosophy describe how nature partakes of the gift of Eros.
We could say that Eros’ contribution to humanity is not only inherent in man’s psyche, but that it is also involved in the process that awakens the ego to its true nature, the beauty and unconditional love of the soul. This awakening activated by Eros and Aphrodite reveals the qualities of pure love and gnosis in the consciousness of the seeker. This level of consciousness cannot be described, however, because it is itself a higher aspect of intelligence in which abstract knowledge and impersonal love are combined.
We could simply call this level of awakening, wisdom. So, on one hand, Eros can simply mean carnal love and desire for material possessions, but on the other, it can also express the spiritual energy that attracts and leads the psyche towards the Center of Pure Being, where the beauty and love of the soul are revealed. Many Greek philosophers, Plato and Pythagoras included, said the same thing—that beauty and gnosis are inseparable and inherent in the essence of Eros. Thus, we understand that in the psyche of man, Eros rules over his carnal desires but also over his higher aspirations and longing for wisdom. This is not the playful cupid, the winged son of Aphrodite and Mars, but an elderly primordial deity, worshiped by the ancient Greeks as the first element of the primordial creative cause, the element that binds and attracts spirit and matter together.
Greek philosophers saw the spirit of Dionysus penetrating the whole of nature and binding together the two aspects of Eros, the penetration and blending energy of matter with its counterpart and complement, spirit. Esoterically, Eros is the leading force within a seeker that takes him away from a level of duality to a level of unity and wholeness. Furthermore, Eros is the key to transforming psychic vibratory rates. He does that by placing a seeker on his axial center, the neutral and timeless zone within his conscious self. This level of being brings about the integration of ego with soul. Hence,
Eros is the god or essence that gives us the possibility of letting go of the past and living in the present moment, embracing spontaneously everything within and without our reach. Eros allows us to see everything as part of our own nature. He also shows us how to transmute carnal and unconscious attractions and desires of all kinds, and how to re-direct and reintegrate their energies back into the center of pure love and wisdom.
This inner process must be conscious, because the ego and psyche must harmonize and unite before being invited to enter into the higher realms, where the qualities and gifts of Eros are awakened. On that level of achievement and realization, the seeker receives more gifts from Eros who directs him towards his own invisible and sacred Center of Pure Being, not really a "place" at all, but more a level of being and attunement. This is a level of consciousness where the essence of pure love and beauty manifest themselves through ordinary consciousness and can be said to be a part of the undivided unique consciousness of the whole of creation.
In Symposium, Plato expounded that Eros had two aspects, one physical the other intellectual, i.e., wisdom. He knew that they had to harmonize and blend so as to transform ordinary men into heroes. According to Empedocles, "Aphrodite is Eros himself," the immortal force that unites and harmoniously blends together all the elements in nature, the "bringer" and "giver" of life. He also said, "the path to knowledge can be achieved only through Eros himself. The energy represented by Eros brings about a balance between pleasure, delight and gnosis, and this harmonious and enthusiastic search for gnosis comes not so much from the answers one receives but more from the search itself."
Hence the quest goes on forever, since pleasure and gnosis go hand-in-hand and cannot be separated. Eros questions everything because he loves wisdom and is, therefore, the living source at the center of Greek philosophy. So Eros teaches the Greeks how to become free and fearless in the face of the unknown. He invites them to follow the path of knowledge and apply the sacred principles of freedom and equality, qualities that belong to Eros’ mother, Aphrodite, whom Empedocles identifies with Eros for, without the freedom and courage to explore our inner nature with imagination and intuition, we remain unconscious prisoners of conventional ideas, routines and vicious circles.
Eros is himself the "mixer of the seeds and sperms" in creation, the primal cause, the bringer of life in the womb of nature. Eros’s gift to the seeker, therefore, is the transmuting energy of pure love, which is synonymous with the Logos. The oldest mythology of Homer does not mention Eros. Apparently Eros was not born out of a popular tradition but he is the creation of an abstract philosophical conception.
In Greek esoteric philosophy, the Eros of theogonia took part in the creation of life itself. Eros pulls the sexes together and rules over all living creatures through the need for procreation and, for that reason, we see Plato, Sophocles, Eurepides, etc., praise his irresistible influence along with his mother, Aphrodite, as they both give life and rebirth. The orphic firstborn god Phanes Protogonus, known also as Eros, Pan and Phanes-Jupiter who sprang from the primeval egg. In the picture, he seems to be emerging in flames from the sundered halves of Phanes’ egg, above his head and below his feet. The symbolism also includes solar rays and a lunar crescent behind his head and shoulders; masks of ram, lion and goat on his torso; thunderbolt and staff in his hands (the attributes of Serapis), whilearound him are the familiar circle of the zodiac and the square of the winds. The inscription "Felix Pater"and an erased female name suggests a Mithraic environment, thereby identifying this picture also as Aion.
Tarot card VI is the Lovers, representing an inner process. It portrays Eros, the universal power of union and love, the agent that brings a new level of consciousness to the seeker, and of "being alive" in the world. Eros is shown pointing his arrow towards the seeker’s crown chakra, meaning that the seeker is in a higher initiation that will unite the two opposites and paradoxical sides within himself, and blend them on his axial level. In that axial inner space within his being, the soul reveals itself to the seeker in many subtle ways.
The gifts of Eros are many and they manifest in the ever-fleeting present as sudden bursts of enlightenment and intuition that are part of a transcendent primordial knowledge that gradually unfolds in his life. Interpret this card as representing a high level of initiation that corresponds to a baptism of fire, or the awakening in a seeker of a higher level of the abstract mind that remains a grace and a sacred mystery. Receiving the "wound" of the arrow of Eros illuminates the ego, or the limited mind of a seeker, and opens it up to receive higher truth, from where it unites itself with the source of the primordial tradition. The conscious choice of the seeker to enter a new dimension of being comes after his spiritual transformation and rebirth when the arrow of Eros opens his crown chakra, and from that opening, spiritual love pours down and inundates the psyche of the seeker who, from that moment on, transforms from being a lover of self to a lover of God.
Eros brings about conscious spiritual transformation in a seeker, unfolding in him higher levels of consciousness. Later on, Eros appears as a cruel, playful child who torments gods and mortals alike, giving them more sorrow and misery than harmony and joy. Cupid aims his arrow directly at the human heart, piercing it, but we should look at this as purifying, as awakening and introducing the spiritual element into the nature of psyche itself. It also teaches us how to escape the entrapment of the lower energies In Kabbalah, the imagery of love, or eros, is crucial for a discussion of Shekinah.
Eros implies a yearning for unity, harmony, and completion. Shekinah is the aspect which receives an impulse from its masculine counterpart, Yesod, and engages in the creative activity of harmonization. It is a mystical marriage bringing balance to the world. This marriage is God’s call to Himself in a transfiguration of His harmony in love. One important principle in Zoharic thought is man’s role in maintaining the sefirotic balance. What is found in heaven is found in transfigured parallel in the world. The actions of man affect sefirotic harmony, balance, and wholeness. In following Torah, one influences one’s sefirotic counterparts, thereby helping to keep the divine realms in harmony.
CULTURAL COUNTERPARTS
Cupid and Psyche (Roman)
Kama, lord of love (Hindu)
Sir Lancelot and Guinevere (Celtic legend)
CONTEMPORARY EXAMPLE
It looked as if a modern counterpart to Eros and Psyche would be the fairytale romance of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. It came complete with a meddling mother and jealous siblings, but no fairy tale ending. The jealousy was there when Diana's good looks and sparkling personality captured the affections of the world. But the relationship quickly went from the "in love" stage to that of counterdependent behavior and power struggles. Charles triangulated the relationship from the beginning, leaving room only for pseudointimacy based on false-self roles. When the relationship degraded further, they began living totally independent lives based on their respective interests. The conflicts cooled down because they simply left one another alone, relying on their "false couple" image. The marriage de-railed prior to the stage of co-creative interdependence. John Lennon and Yoko Ono; Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
KEYWORDS Intimacy, empathy, safety, passion, joyful, bonding, commitment, soulful, vulnerability,ecstasy, desire, sensuality, self-disclosure, heartache, togetherness, longing, toleration, constancy, respect, caring, self-consciousness, belonging, compromise, generativity.
The tale of Eros and Psyche relates the trials and tribulations of a maturing love affair. It means moving from separation and control toward praise, honor, and love. It occurs within the psyche through the process of metamorphosis. In fact, the Greek word 'Psyche' means butterfly and this process of essential restructuring involves cocooning and re-emergence in the new, potentiated form. The failure or stalling of this natural growth process is a spiritual issue, and may become a spiritual problem, which most frequently is perceived as a relationship problem. Eros and Psyche are the primordial lovers. In this context Eros is more of a transpersonal daimon than a god. The Gods relate among themselves, but a daimon mediates between gods and men.
Psyche is a diminutive incarnation of Eros' mother, Aphrodite. She personifies the anima and positive mother-complex. By her attributes, we can see that Eros has a good feeling relationship with women and the unconscious, but one which is still too naive. His attitudes toward love are idealized. Eros himself has been acting like the archetypal Don Juan before his encounter with Psyche, expressing the pattern of behavior his mother favors. This shows he is still identified with her, still in the grips of the puer complex. He is a son-lover, still compelled to serve his mama. Aphrodite is jealous of her own incarnation in matter. This deep level of the unconscious does not wish her son to develop out of his naive, unquestioning attitude toward her role and desires for him. She is angry and tries to destroy Psyche or Eros' reflective ability.
She realizes that Psyche embodies the mother-complex of Eros, but as his anima image is closer to consciousness than she is. Things proceed well, though blindly, in the newlywed's paradisical realm until Aphrodite stirs up trouble by sending in Psyche's jealous sisters. These sisters instill grave doubts in Psyche regarding her lover. They are too skeptical, too cynical, and too aware of the mundane side of relationship. Secretly, they wish they could recapture some of Psyche's naive romantic attitudes in their own relationships. The closeness of their friendship opens the doorway for envy to enter. What is needed, though is a mature attitude which recognizes the paradox of love.
There is always a divine and banal aspect to relationships. Both together represent a realistic, well-rounded experience, that is neither debased nor idealized. Psyche begins her marriage as mortals do by being "in love." She is contained in a very unconscious state in the palace of Eros. She is possessed by love -- in love with love. She longs for that superhuman quality of perfection in her lover. However, her humanness makes it necessary for her to make a transition to being consciously loving, accepting imperfection.
All of the forces which surround her conspire to make this absolutely necessary. The agents of this process include Psyche's inner desire toward consciousness, the sisters, Aphrodite, and Eros himself. She needs to divest herself of her myths about relationship and personal growth. Eros compels her by remaining in the dark. His soul is still in the grips of primitive passion -- sexual objectification. So, of course, after a time, Psyche resolves that she wants a real relationship and wants to see her lover "as he really is." She has wearied of "nothing but sexuality." Her real motivation is her fear, but the unconscious has its own, as-yet-unknown goal. She also has the burning passion which wants to know real love.
When she surrenders to the mysteries of the soul, she embodies the genuine, personal love. Paradoxically, at this point, Eros flees her (incapable of emotional intimacy). Aphrodite (in an attempt to destroy her) sets the tasks which further her inner development. These are experienced as insurmountable problems, and she has suicidal impulses at each difficult point. These symbolize her readiness for self-sacrifice, but also allow her to transform from one level of consciousness to another.
Psyche's first task, sorting a huge pile of seeds, is set by Aphrodite. Psyche's biological instincts come to her aid in the form of ants. This "ant-quality" is a primitive, quiet quality which is part of her inner masculinity. It is a discriminating function of Eros. In fact, she has instinctually discriminated and sorted seed in a literal sense. She becomes pregnant by Eros while still in the paradisical state of unconsciousness. Even though she has seen the divine quality of her lover, she is no longer only animus possessed, but begins to live woman's inner biological mystery. In a way, Eros is with her through all the trials in her inner world as her incubating child.
She regains enough faith to tackle the second task which is gathering some fleece from the "golden rams of the sun." This time, she earns a bit of the Logos, or the power of the spiritual impulse, which is a trait of masculine consciousness. But she does it, thanks to wise counsel, by avoiding direct contact with it in its destructive form. She can wield some masculine power, but need not gain it in an aggressive way. She is coming to know Eros' nature better, even though he is not there. Psyche is coming to know and understand him from the inside out, by contacting her inner animus, acknowledging the potential of her inner masculinity, while remaining absolutely feminine to the core. Through this process, she is coming to know herself. Psyche is mustering her inner strengths as well as courage and valor; but true to form, she collapses at the prospect of the third test.
Aphrodite makes the trials progressively harder. This time she must fill a crystal goblet with water from the river Styx, the powerful current of psychic energy. Psyche succeeds in capturing a bit of this river of life with the help of Ganymede, an eagle sacred to Zeus. This eagle represents high-flying spiritual intuition. She is, once again, saved from destruction by an act of grace. By dipping only a small amount from the river of libido, her fragile ego (the container) is not shattered. By listening to her quiet, inner guiding voice, Psyche was able to complete her nearly impossible task, through methodical concentration. Psyche's ability to touch her unconscious depths gave her access to the creative solution. She understood this through an intuitive vision.
The final test involves a terrible journey to the underworld. One needs proper guidance for such a journey. Modern examples of this task of making Psyche more conscious include the therapeutic process of individuation and spiritual disciplines like yoga and mysticism. This process of understanding one's depths repeats the shaman's initiation in the underworld and leads to self-realization of inner potentials. We become progressively more enlightened by shedding our illusions about self and world. It requires all of the energy and resources we can muster. Once begun it must be followed through to the end. Psyche fortunately acquires the treasure of the subconscious as the box of divine beauty which Aphrodite has demanded of her.
The beauty of Persephone is the resplendence of the most profound depths of the feminine Self. Betty Meador calls it "the awesome and overpowering essence of death and resurrection, the passage of the female goddess through the dark regions of Hell into rebirth and transformation." This process was the subject of both the Isis and Eleusinian Mysteries. On her return from the underworld (subconscious), for love of Eros, Psyche opens the box of beauty ointment. Seeking to make herself more desirable to Eros, (and inadvertently cheating Aphrodite), she does not have the courage to face Eros as herself.
She want to remain disguised in Eros' anima projections, which hark back his mother-complex. Her fantasy is that then they could continue to share the paradisical state. True, she does this for love of Eros, but this keeps him in his adolescent phase, devoid of the maturity a real relationship would bring. She regresses into an unconscious state of deep sleep. She becomes a "sleeping beauty." In this apparent failure, she shows herself to be most human! How unbearably egotistical Psyche might have been if she had completed the tasks perfectly. Through her regression into humanness, Eros is redeemed from his boyish hangups and allowed to mature. He can show some true love, rather than instinctual reproductive passion.
Through his love Eros redeems Psyche and awakens her to an understanding of the archetypal functioning of the animus as a bridge to the divine. She is transformed from her mortal condition to an awareness of her own immortality of soul. Together they experience the birth of their child as joy, mutual ecstasy, and the pleasure of life and love. There is a blending of the human and divine qualities in love. The opposites merge in mutual love, and experience unification on a profound level which has both depth and conscious awareness.
Eros is contained within Psyche. The reproductive instinct transforms into a highly differentiated feeling function, and Psyche goes through rebirth which frees her "butterfly" nature. Feeling is a reflective function which requires time more than perception. When Psyche evokes true feelings from Eros, her task is complete. Daily life is connected with archetypal reality. Eros embodies the Mystery of the Inner Process in matter and spirit. Love is the fundamental universal principle that even holds atoms and molecules together as matter. Eros is a mysterious energy inherent in the whole of creation, fascinating seekers all over the world. Across the cultures, Eros takes different names but still remains the same agent that has to be awakened from within, since it is the only element that can transform the human psyche.
Psyche has to be pacified and Eros’ "fire" has to be transformed into "light" so that he can become the mediator and guide that gently pushes and pulls the seeker towards the source of divine love—Eros the Beloved—that awakens from within, guides and accompanies the seeker from within the inner planes. He is the inner witness, the agent within the seeker that unfolds gnosis, or divine knowledge. This divine knowledge awakens higher levels of consciousness within him and, in turn, these levels of consciousness aroused by Eros lead the seeker back to the source of light. The Greek mysteries relate that at the very beginning of creation, only chaos existed, and from chaos was born the cosmogonic Eros.
Elsewhere, according to mythology, we are told that amongst the gods, Eros was the most handsome. This is how theogonia (the birth of the gods) begins and we are assured that the poet Isiodos heard it from the mouth of the Muse herself. According to Isiodos, Eros represents the driving force behind the entire theogonia. The Orphics agree that Eros appears at the beginning of theogonia and cosmogonia in general, and they tell us that his mother was Night, the dark goddess, and his father the Wind. From their first cosmic and elemental embrace, Eros was born from a silver egg.
For the Greeks, the essence of Eros is the unfoldment of human thought, and in Greek philosophy, he is described as a liberating agent who releases and activates the creative process of the mind. Eros inspires and opens the channel of intuition to the higher and abstract understanding and communion with beauty and truth. The myth of Eros and Psyche describes in detail the inner process of transformation.
In fact, Eros cannot be separated from his beloved Psyche, since they are united by a secret and sacred bond, invisible and unconscious in man. In fact, man’s psyche remains filled with erotic, sensual, carnal desires that keep him and his mind trapped on the physical plane along with his emotions and consciousness. But a seeker must transmute the attraction of Eros and awaken the bond with his psyche so that he can rise towards the "beloved," the invisible golden thread that links his consciousness to the universal qualities of beauty and love.
The gifts of Eros affect the emotional and thought processes of humanity, especially those of a seeker who has to learn how to open up and integrate these gifts in his psyche. From the lowest and most physical levels of consciousness to the most spiritual ones, Eros remains forever present,gradually transforming the inner fire into pure light. Eros operates in every living creature, and Greek poetry and philosophy describe how nature partakes of the gift of Eros.
We could say that Eros’ contribution to humanity is not only inherent in man’s psyche, but that it is also involved in the process that awakens the ego to its true nature, the beauty and unconditional love of the soul. This awakening activated by Eros and Aphrodite reveals the qualities of pure love and gnosis in the consciousness of the seeker. This level of consciousness cannot be described, however, because it is itself a higher aspect of intelligence in which abstract knowledge and impersonal love are combined.
We could simply call this level of awakening, wisdom. So, on one hand, Eros can simply mean carnal love and desire for material possessions, but on the other, it can also express the spiritual energy that attracts and leads the psyche towards the Center of Pure Being, where the beauty and love of the soul are revealed. Many Greek philosophers, Plato and Pythagoras included, said the same thing—that beauty and gnosis are inseparable and inherent in the essence of Eros. Thus, we understand that in the psyche of man, Eros rules over his carnal desires but also over his higher aspirations and longing for wisdom. This is not the playful cupid, the winged son of Aphrodite and Mars, but an elderly primordial deity, worshiped by the ancient Greeks as the first element of the primordial creative cause, the element that binds and attracts spirit and matter together.
Greek philosophers saw the spirit of Dionysus penetrating the whole of nature and binding together the two aspects of Eros, the penetration and blending energy of matter with its counterpart and complement, spirit. Esoterically, Eros is the leading force within a seeker that takes him away from a level of duality to a level of unity and wholeness. Furthermore, Eros is the key to transforming psychic vibratory rates. He does that by placing a seeker on his axial center, the neutral and timeless zone within his conscious self. This level of being brings about the integration of ego with soul. Hence,
Eros is the god or essence that gives us the possibility of letting go of the past and living in the present moment, embracing spontaneously everything within and without our reach. Eros allows us to see everything as part of our own nature. He also shows us how to transmute carnal and unconscious attractions and desires of all kinds, and how to re-direct and reintegrate their energies back into the center of pure love and wisdom.
This inner process must be conscious, because the ego and psyche must harmonize and unite before being invited to enter into the higher realms, where the qualities and gifts of Eros are awakened. On that level of achievement and realization, the seeker receives more gifts from Eros who directs him towards his own invisible and sacred Center of Pure Being, not really a "place" at all, but more a level of being and attunement. This is a level of consciousness where the essence of pure love and beauty manifest themselves through ordinary consciousness and can be said to be a part of the undivided unique consciousness of the whole of creation.
In Symposium, Plato expounded that Eros had two aspects, one physical the other intellectual, i.e., wisdom. He knew that they had to harmonize and blend so as to transform ordinary men into heroes. According to Empedocles, "Aphrodite is Eros himself," the immortal force that unites and harmoniously blends together all the elements in nature, the "bringer" and "giver" of life. He also said, "the path to knowledge can be achieved only through Eros himself. The energy represented by Eros brings about a balance between pleasure, delight and gnosis, and this harmonious and enthusiastic search for gnosis comes not so much from the answers one receives but more from the search itself."
Hence the quest goes on forever, since pleasure and gnosis go hand-in-hand and cannot be separated. Eros questions everything because he loves wisdom and is, therefore, the living source at the center of Greek philosophy. So Eros teaches the Greeks how to become free and fearless in the face of the unknown. He invites them to follow the path of knowledge and apply the sacred principles of freedom and equality, qualities that belong to Eros’ mother, Aphrodite, whom Empedocles identifies with Eros for, without the freedom and courage to explore our inner nature with imagination and intuition, we remain unconscious prisoners of conventional ideas, routines and vicious circles.
Eros is himself the "mixer of the seeds and sperms" in creation, the primal cause, the bringer of life in the womb of nature. Eros’s gift to the seeker, therefore, is the transmuting energy of pure love, which is synonymous with the Logos. The oldest mythology of Homer does not mention Eros. Apparently Eros was not born out of a popular tradition but he is the creation of an abstract philosophical conception.
In Greek esoteric philosophy, the Eros of theogonia took part in the creation of life itself. Eros pulls the sexes together and rules over all living creatures through the need for procreation and, for that reason, we see Plato, Sophocles, Eurepides, etc., praise his irresistible influence along with his mother, Aphrodite, as they both give life and rebirth. The orphic firstborn god Phanes Protogonus, known also as Eros, Pan and Phanes-Jupiter who sprang from the primeval egg. In the picture, he seems to be emerging in flames from the sundered halves of Phanes’ egg, above his head and below his feet. The symbolism also includes solar rays and a lunar crescent behind his head and shoulders; masks of ram, lion and goat on his torso; thunderbolt and staff in his hands (the attributes of Serapis), whilearound him are the familiar circle of the zodiac and the square of the winds. The inscription "Felix Pater"and an erased female name suggests a Mithraic environment, thereby identifying this picture also as Aion.
Tarot card VI is the Lovers, representing an inner process. It portrays Eros, the universal power of union and love, the agent that brings a new level of consciousness to the seeker, and of "being alive" in the world. Eros is shown pointing his arrow towards the seeker’s crown chakra, meaning that the seeker is in a higher initiation that will unite the two opposites and paradoxical sides within himself, and blend them on his axial level. In that axial inner space within his being, the soul reveals itself to the seeker in many subtle ways.
The gifts of Eros are many and they manifest in the ever-fleeting present as sudden bursts of enlightenment and intuition that are part of a transcendent primordial knowledge that gradually unfolds in his life. Interpret this card as representing a high level of initiation that corresponds to a baptism of fire, or the awakening in a seeker of a higher level of the abstract mind that remains a grace and a sacred mystery. Receiving the "wound" of the arrow of Eros illuminates the ego, or the limited mind of a seeker, and opens it up to receive higher truth, from where it unites itself with the source of the primordial tradition. The conscious choice of the seeker to enter a new dimension of being comes after his spiritual transformation and rebirth when the arrow of Eros opens his crown chakra, and from that opening, spiritual love pours down and inundates the psyche of the seeker who, from that moment on, transforms from being a lover of self to a lover of God.
Eros brings about conscious spiritual transformation in a seeker, unfolding in him higher levels of consciousness. Later on, Eros appears as a cruel, playful child who torments gods and mortals alike, giving them more sorrow and misery than harmony and joy. Cupid aims his arrow directly at the human heart, piercing it, but we should look at this as purifying, as awakening and introducing the spiritual element into the nature of psyche itself. It also teaches us how to escape the entrapment of the lower energies In Kabbalah, the imagery of love, or eros, is crucial for a discussion of Shekinah.
Eros implies a yearning for unity, harmony, and completion. Shekinah is the aspect which receives an impulse from its masculine counterpart, Yesod, and engages in the creative activity of harmonization. It is a mystical marriage bringing balance to the world. This marriage is God’s call to Himself in a transfiguration of His harmony in love. One important principle in Zoharic thought is man’s role in maintaining the sefirotic balance. What is found in heaven is found in transfigured parallel in the world. The actions of man affect sefirotic harmony, balance, and wholeness. In following Torah, one influences one’s sefirotic counterparts, thereby helping to keep the divine realms in harmony.
CULTURAL COUNTERPARTS
Cupid and Psyche (Roman)
Kama, lord of love (Hindu)
Sir Lancelot and Guinevere (Celtic legend)
CONTEMPORARY EXAMPLE
It looked as if a modern counterpart to Eros and Psyche would be the fairytale romance of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. It came complete with a meddling mother and jealous siblings, but no fairy tale ending. The jealousy was there when Diana's good looks and sparkling personality captured the affections of the world. But the relationship quickly went from the "in love" stage to that of counterdependent behavior and power struggles. Charles triangulated the relationship from the beginning, leaving room only for pseudointimacy based on false-self roles. When the relationship degraded further, they began living totally independent lives based on their respective interests. The conflicts cooled down because they simply left one another alone, relying on their "false couple" image. The marriage de-railed prior to the stage of co-creative interdependence. John Lennon and Yoko Ono; Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
KEYWORDS Intimacy, empathy, safety, passion, joyful, bonding, commitment, soulful, vulnerability,ecstasy, desire, sensuality, self-disclosure, heartache, togetherness, longing, toleration, constancy, respect, caring, self-consciousness, belonging, compromise, generativity.
Psyche et L'Amour, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
DIALOGUE WITH EROS & PSYCHE
You may use a little self-reminder, when caught in old emotional patterns in your relationships. Just "Ask your Anima!" or animus, discussing it with the contrasexual aspect of yourself. Even if the discussion is not fluid, the response of the inner figure will be quite revealing. Is there envy, competition, immaturity, narcissism, or an opening for safely revealing yourself to the "other"? Notice how your beloved is similar to or different from your parent and idealized anima or animus image. What is realistic. Remember, no one will ever love you truly unconditionally simply because they are human. Also remember, the archetypal dynamic operates in, through, and behind all human relationship, conditioning it with its own divine agenda irrespective of our personal needs.
Some of the issues and areas of intimacy include sexuality, emotional intimacy, intellectual sharing, and other forms of communication. Aesthetics, creativity, recreation, crisis management, conflict management, commitment and spiritual sharing are fertile areas to dialogue about with these inner daimones. Also, try communing with their daughter, Voluptas, whose name originally meant "plunging into life." Jean Houston concludes her contemplation this mytheme with an image of fulfillment: "Thus Psyche's search for the Beloved of her soul has plunged her into discovering the psychic source of instinct, wisdom, discrimination, and culture. She now rises on strong but gossamer wings as the vision of transformation and the call to the soul."
EROS AND PSYCHE IN YOUR LIFE
1. Do you believe, or ever act like you believe that love means giving up yourself for another. Do you allow their needs to supersede your own?
2. Married or not, do you carry the fantasy that the "right" person will come along and heal your wounds if you simply wait long enough?
3. Do you "fall in love" with potential lovers quickly, or stay stuck in relationships where no growth takes place?
4. Can you relate to Psyche's tasks from any period of your life? Is this dynamic still in process? If the developmental process derailed in any of your relationships have you noticed a pattern or similarity with your early childhood situation?
5. How committed are you to your personal growth and how supportive of your partner's personal growth?
6. Do you have a means of negotiating conflicts and differences? What is it?
7. During the "in love" stage, we are essentially still "living at home" in a state of blissful fusion, trying to recreate and maintain the unconscious unity of parent and child. The yearning for this original condition may be the source of divine longing. What is your relationship to this developmental stage right now?
8. Plato called love the "child of fullness and emptiness." We can be filled with it, or feel it as loneliness, heartache, and anguish. In your dialogue, you may also include the child of the union, Voluptas. How do you experience the fullness and emptiness of love? Describe your emotional hunger.
9. What does "soulful love" mean to you personally?
10. The dark side of love includes disillusionment, betrayal, anger, and grief. What was your biggest disappointment? What unrealistic expectations did you hold?
11. Have you used the imagination process (psyche) in a therapeutic way to further the bonding and intimacy in your relationships? How? We need to be able to imagine being different to change. Just imagine what different behaviors could produce different outcomes.
12. What significant relationship are you involved in? How does this relationship mirror your own sense of self-worth? What choice or decision do you need to make? What responsibility will you have to take for your decision? What needs to be combined, synthesized or brought together?
Eric Neumann, Amor and Psyche, p. 55-56
Psyche counters Aphrodite’s promiscuity with an instinctual ordering principle.
While Aphrodite holds fast to the fertility of the swamp stage (using Bachofen’s category), which is also represented by Eros in the form of a dragon, a phallic serpent-monster, Psyche possesses within her an unconscious principle which enables her to select, sift, correlate, and evaluate, and so find her way amid the confusion of the masculine.
In opposition to the matriarchal position of Aphrodite, for whom the masculine is anonymous . . .
Psyche, even in her first labor, has reached the stage of selectivity .
Eric Neuman, Amor and Psyche, p. 55-56
Psyche counters Aphrodite’s promiscuity with an instinctual ordering principle.
While Aphrodite holds fast to the fertility of the swamp stage (using Bachofen’s category), which is also represented by Eros in the form of a dragon, a phallic serpent-monster, Psyche possesses within her an unconscious principle which enables her to select, sift, correlate, and evaluate, and so find her way amid the confusion of the masculine.
In opposition to the matriarchal position of Aphrodite, for whom the masculine is anonymous . . .
Psyche, even in her first labor, has reached the stage of selectivity .
Eric Neuman, Amor and Psyche, p. 55-56
Hale, Psyche at the Throne of Venus
http://www.mythicjourneys.org/newsletter_jul05_transitions_bolen.html
by Jean Shinoda Bolen
Aphrodite gives her four tasks that she must learn to get through this particular zone. The story, then, is about her four tasks and her growth. As she learns each task, she grows beyond what she knew before. The first task is to sort all the seeds that are heaped up in a room. This is a wonderful metaphor for all of the possibilities, all of the emotions at the beginning of a transition period. Sorting the seed is really taking stock. What are all of the seeds of possibility in your psyche of your world? How much money do you have in the bank? How much energy do you have for this? How much talent do you have for this? What are you putting together out of all your possibilities? To plan to have a conference? If this is your particular dream, then you've got to sort out the seeds.
In this particular story, Psyche's first reaction to every single task is despair. It's more than she's ever done before, she's consciously not up to the task, and she wants to give up. Sort the seeds of possibility. At the beginning, she doesn't know how, and then the symbol comes to her. Ants. All the ants come sorting out the seeds, one seed at a time, so that by morning they've been sorted, each into its own kind, every one into its own stack.
Aphrodite comes back to find the task is done. The goddess doesn't seem to be at all pleased about it, so she then gives Psyche another task. The second task is to get some golden fleece from the rams of the sun, gather a small amount of it, and bring it to Aphrodite. So our young Psyche goes and looks at these animals ranging up and down the field, in this meadow, in that valley, all having a wonderful time. These rams are butting their heads up against each other, roughing each other up. They've got a great deal of competitive power, but they're big and they've got the strength and they're doing fine. It's just a big game with them, this competitiveness.
Psyche realizes that, if she goes out and tries to grab some fleece from the rams as they're charging and hitting each other and running up and down the field, she would be trampled. This does not seem to be the thing to do. So she goes down to the river again, and this time a reed tells her, "Psyche, you don't have to go out there and do it that way. The rams are energized by the sun. Wait until the sun goes down. Then you can go pick fleece that they have scraped off against the bushes and trees. Gather enough of it for your use and fulfill the task."
The reed that tells Psyche to bide her time has wisdom. It isn't just about attaining a certain amount of power, climbing to great heights or participating in competition. The wisdom of the reed tells you to listen to your own rhythms. It advises when and how you can gain the power that you need, but not have your soul destroyed in the acquisition. Listen and learn from the voice of the reed, which is organic and grows out of the water, the river.
The application here has something to do with the feminine psyche or soul, but it has to do with the soul of both men and women. When you are in a competitive game (and almost everything that is about outer commerce or outer success involves competition), you can be trampled if you get caught up in wanting to grab more and more and more golden fleece. If you go out and take on the archetypes to play the game (because these are archetypes, these rams of the sun) and leave your soul behind or forget that you have a soul, it will be trampled.
The third task was the creative task: Psyche is told that she must fill a crystal flask with water from a stream that runs in a continual cycle from the River Styx to the highest crag. The great water of life, the water of creativity, cycles. It is archetypal. It moves and moves and moves, and yet each person needs to seize some of that fluidity and give it shape. Some of that is a conscious desire to capture archetypal energies, visions, emotions and give them shape through your own personality, which is relative to the great expanse of the archetypal world of gods and goddesses. It is symbolically fragile, and yet this is the task.
Again Psyche looks at the task. She sees this river that is carved into the side of the mountain. It goes down to the River Styx and then rises up through a spring to come up to the top again and down the face, etching its way into the mountain. If that isn't bad enough, there are snake-like dragons on either side warning, "Stay away! Stay away!" The water itself is hissing. Psyche again thinks, "Too much! I can't do it!" when another symbol comes to her aid.
Now, this third task is supported by Zeus' eagle. Zeus is an archetype that succeeds very well as an entrepreneur in this world. After all, he is the Chief Executive Officer of Mount Olympus. He has lightning bolts. He can punish. His symbol, the eagle, has the ability to see what it wants and plunge from the sky to grab it in its talons. That ability to see the overall picture, to see the forest but not each individual tree, is a way of being in the world. If you're a man with Zeus as your innate archetype, then the world (especially capitalistic United States) rewards you very well. An entrepreneurial woman with Zeus as an archetype finds it really helpful to see the overall picture, to not get emotional about losing a sale or being undercut in business. An eagle doesn't stop and have an emotional fit if that succulent mouse that she had her eye on suddenly follows intuition and runs under a rock. The eagle just flies up again and looks for another dinner somewhere else. That unemotional ability is very successful.
Of all the innate male air sign archetypes that have to do with the sky like Apollo and Hermes, Zeus succeeds very well in this world. Some people have more of them than others. If you are a man in this culture and you happen to have these archetypes, they will be stretched on that Procrustean bed to fill the picture. Those parts of you that have to do with creativity and emotionality are often ignored and, therefore, you are cut off from them.
Zeus' eagle now comes to this very personal Psyche giving her an overview of how to go after what you need, how you avoid the dangers, keep your eye on the prize, and go for it. The eagle takes the flask. It returns to give Psyche the flask, now filled with Stygian water that she was to get for task three. One would say that at each step Psyche has learned something new.
The fourth step is the first time that Psyche will end up accomplishing the task herself. As her very last task, Aphrodite commands that Psyche must go into the underworld, fill an empty box with beauty ointment from Persephone, the goddess of the underworld, and return it to her. For the first time, Psyche thinks, "She must want me dead." The only way she knows to go into the underworld is to die. Psyche now climbs up the highest tower to throw herself off. This time the tower talks to her saying, "Psyche, there is another way to finish this task. Go into the underworld via the Vent of Dis. Take coins with you for the ferryman. Take two cakes for the three-headed dog; one to let you into the underworld, and one to let you out again."
And then the tower warns her saying, "Three times you will be asked for help, Psyche. You must harden your heart to pity, refuse, and go on." And so Psyche does. Three times she is asked by very pathetic creatures or people to stop for a moment and help. Each time she remembers the advice. She says "No" and she walks on. She gives one of the coins to the ferryman who ferries her across. Even as she's going across the River Styx, a pathetic man says, "Just hold my hand and pull me across. I didn't have a coin." But she ignores his plea. There was one other piece of advice from the tower. "Psyche, once you get the beauty ointment in the box, DON'T OPEN THE BOX!" (Laughter)
Psyche enters the underworld, gives the three-headed dog one cake, fills the box with beauty, gives the three-headed dog another cake, comes back across the river (because she has one more coin) and returns to the upper world.
All of the advice that the tower gave her was good. Psyche, having done exactly what the tower told her understands that, if she had stopped to help, she would have had to lend a hand. In each hand she had one cake and one coin. Had she lost what she was holding, she would not have had the means to return from the underworld.
People in the transition often have limited amounts of strength, health or energy as they go into the underworld. For example, the story of Psyche speaks to people living with cancer. They say, "Cancer was a cure for my co-dependency. Cancer was a way in which I could say to people, "I can't do that." The ability to say "No" is one of the challenges for a feeling man or the feminine psyche. When other people expect you to always be there for them, and you break form by saying "No," you create a crisis in a relationship. It may be that you need to not stay in the underworld of your own depression or your own addiction or your own whatever it is, it is there. Addiction, illness, and depression are images of the underworld that you need to get through in order to get out. This liminal period of transition is a very long one. The tasks to be done keep on growing. It's hard. It's scary. If you're going to make it through this transition to the new phase of your life in which you have integrated the new you, with all that you are for the next phase of your life, you've got to often learn to say "No." Otherwise the people who have expectations of you will use your energy. Say "No," and they'll say, "You're selfish." Psyche manages to do all of that. She returns to the upper world. She's no longer in the underworld. She has made it through.
By now, you can imagine, she's very tired. She's pregnant, and she's been on this journey a long time. Because she is who she is, her archetypes are related to the relationship goddesses. That is, her archetype is she's the Mother. She started out the Maiden very much like Persephone. She became a Lover, so she was like Aphrodite. She is pregnant, so she's like Demeter. And she wants to be reconnected with this bridegroom, so she's got the persistent energy of Hera.
For all that she has learned in mastering these good things, these are not strengths that she particularly feels deeply connected to as her meaning. What she wants most of all, after accomplishing all these tasks, is to be beautiful in order that Eros might love her and return. Psyche opens the box and death-like sleep envelopes her. She falls, like Snow White, as if dead. This is the point in the story where some people find fault with her decision. "Oh Psyche, after all this, did you have to become unconscious again?"
It is this action that calls Eros to her side, but Eros has been transformed as Psyche has grown through her ordeals. He used to be this child who ran home to mother, who hid things from mother. He felt betrayed because Psyche actually looked at him. It didn't matter that when she looked at him she actually consciously loved him. He was so wounded that she broke the form and disobeyed him. Now we see a very different Eros who comes to her side, wipes the death-like sleep off of her, and then takes her to Olympus. There, in front of all the gods and goddesses, Eros announces that this is the conscious relationship that he wants. The Olympians celebrate a grand wedding now, no longer a hidden affair, not this unconscious relationship of love and soul, because those are the names of these two folks.
What is really fascinating is that we know all along she was pregnant, which is the symbol of the journey. A new child is often present in dreams when you are growing into the next phase of your life. Sometimes the dreamer is actually pregnant, but more often the dreams I've listened to over the years show an exceptional, divine child (divine in the sense that it's exceptional; it's little and it talks.) Something of this wonderful child is growing as a symbol in the person as they move into this new phase of life.
When it's announced on Mount Olympus that the marriage of Eros and Psyche is celebrated, she gives birth to the child that was forecast to be a god if she kept the secret and a mortal if she gave the secret away. The child is born, a girl, and her name is Joy. This is the first mortal in Greek mythology that is made an immortal. The soul (Psyche) is elevated and made divine as well, becoming part of the Olympian landscape. This is actually the archetypal world of the gods and goddesses in our psyches. She goes through this chrysalis phase. That's her name, after all: it is butterfly, it is Psyche, it is soul. Trust emerges when there is a willingness to die to the old, to be vulnerable and have faith. There is a time when you know that you have been taken only so far by your own human abilities. Something else must come in to make the soul reconnect with Eros. And often when we start the transition journey there is a loss of love, or of our ability to love. We're depressed. We have had difficulties.
In a very similar way, womb or tomb is a story of Jesus. The short-form is that all kinds of people expect him to be the Messiah. He arrives on Palm Sunday with great hosannas, and by Good Friday he's crucified. On Saturday he is in the tomb. At that point in his story, Easter Sunday hasn't happened yet. Is this going to be a tomb? Or is it going to be a womb from which a new aspect is born out of suffering and descent? Most of the myths that have to do with the underworld have, as a story in our psyches, an implicit descent. There is the possibility of being like that caterpillar. In the cocoon stage, you enter into solution, and become vulnerable. You do not know whether this is a birthing place or whether it is an ending place.
I'm going back to the images of birth, of people who help others deliver babies living out the archetype of Hecate, the goddess of the crossroads, the goddess of twilight, the crone. Hecate was also the archetype of the Mid-wife/Healer. The first women who went to the stake in the Inquisition lived out of this archetype. As goddess of the crossroads, Hecate appeared at every major fork in the road where transition decisions are made. She sees where you are coming from and where the two paths will take you. At important forks in the road in ancient Greece, you'd see a little statue with three faces: one facing the direction you had come from, and the others facing two paths you might choose. This is the archetype of people who act as midwives to other people. It is also the archetypal observer in ourselves who has seen us through many descents and many transitions. This observer has an overview of the pain and the joy, the suffering and the changes.
This is the archetype of the midwife who is a therapist, because every therapist is a midwife. People come to therapists at times of transition and crisis. The Hecate in us can see where they came from. We have some idea of where their choices might take them. Patients stay with us at the crossroad until they become clear which direction they will choose. The path that is most authentically them is about individuation. The choices often are to conform and go back to an old form, one that other people are comfortable with, as well as a part of themselves. Then there's the individuation path that does not promise that everyone will like you at all. Instead, this path promises that it will feel true as long as you do what Joseph Campbell says about living your personal myth.
Keith Thompson writes about how a man in his audience asked Dr. Campbell, "But how do I find my personal myth?" And Campbell answered with a question: "What gives your life bliss and harmony? Find it and follow it." Bliss is a strange word. It sounds too, too, too...actually. (Laughter) When you live from an archetype it means that you're in the world with the energy of whatever that role is that the archetype holds. That archetype is deeply rooted in the matrix of your self. There is a sense that when life is lived from an archetypal depth, that life has meaning. Someone else doing the same thing might feel like they were doing time. That's what it feels like when you've outgrown or chosen a path that is not deeply your own path but someone else's idea of who you should be. You're going through the motions. Life is okay if you can conform. When you live from an archetypal depth, then it may take suffering, but there's something worthy and true about who I am when I do it that is me. Living your personal myth, in fact, is all about the crises, the transitions, and the suffering. It is about integrating your personal myth into yourself as you move along the path. Those of us that are psychotherapists or artists or writers or anybody here who draws from the stuff of your own life, know that no experience you have ever gone through is wasted. You can use it in your art, in your therapy, in your compassion for or understanding of what comes through the suffering that you personally integrated into yourself. You can use the experience in your work, and nothing goes to waste.
As you get older, your path becomes increasingly a realization that you have moved in an authentic way along the journey. There are the archetypes in both men and women: goddesses in every woman, gods in every man. Had I known better, I would have written a big book called Gods and Goddesses in Every Person. As I stand up here and talk about archetypes, I am not embodying a goddess archetype. I'm being Hermes, the messenger god, talking about entering the underworld and returning to the upperworld. Most men and women find that they're a mix of different archetypal energies, much as we are all mixes of human talents. Imagine if you had the gift of a Mozart and you never heard music. Then in the second half of your life you were introduced to music. You had a sense that said, "This is who I am!"
This individuation happens to people often in the second half of life. The middle-aged person has done that which was possible for them to do. You were either successful in fulfilling the educational/career/relationship patterns that the first half of life is about (or not.) You either do it or you don't. And here you are. I wrote in my last book called Crones Don't Whine that the third phase of life is the actual real essence of being present to the path that you are on. Unless you can grieve for losses, let go of your sense of entitlement, you will stand at the gate, never get through that transition, never get under the pubic bone to the other side. If you sit at the gate whining, you're looking back at the past feeling that you, of all people, deserve better. Your kids should have turned out differently. Your marriage should have turned out better. The world should have recognized you differently. You're whining about what happened or didn't happen to you. You have no perspective on the whole wide world experience of being human. For one thing, you don't understand the amount of suffering and pain and reality that exists if you're still here. You're standing at the gate into the individuation path of the Crone. The Crone, an archetype that both men and women draw from, is about wisdom, and compassion, and active action, and healing humor, and a lot of other good things. But it's an internal experience. The Crone archetype exists in men and women who can change the world.
I see in the metaphoric story about Psyche, the much more dramatic whistle-blower experience that Jesus represents. Did Jesus have a sense that what he was supposed to do would go against everybody's expectations, would scare everybody to death, and yet would involve him with great suffering? In the midst of the great suffering, he even felt that maybe he was wrong, that this was not what he was supposed to do at all. He did that. A number of people go against expectations, and they suffer as whistle-blowers. Or they make a choice that other people just didn't expect, and they experience anger and disappointment and crucifixion at some symbolic level. Once it happens, the old self dies.
We've returned to the symbology of death/rebirth. When you are no longer who you are, you're in a transition zone. You're learning something about who you are now, and what you have in terms of sorting seeds. You're giving form to your creativity. How much power do you have? Do you have the ability to put boundaries on your own energy? Then you can pass through into the next phase, a spiritual path, which may also demand of you that you now call upon something greater than yourself.
I've often said to look at us all as spiritual beings on a human path, rather than human beings who may or may not be on a spiritual path. At some level, think how absurd it is that an immortal soul comes into the dysfunctional lives we all have. An immortal soul has chosen to be human. Human path is very strange. At the beginning, most people seem to have their own version of dysfunctional family with lots of mistakes, and difficulties, and loves, and sufferings, and lessons along the way. Then it's over so soon. Nobody gets through without suffering. Now why would an immortal soul do that?
Yet, all of us intuitively would say, "I believe I have a soul." As soon as you do that, you assume that you are essentially a spiritual being in a human body for now. There must be something about this journey of vulnerability, of sharing it with others, of suffering, of learning, of trusting, of finding that sometimes grace comes in the form of love, and that Eros rescues us when we're unconscious again.
This is a story that resonates at many different levels and it's about us all. It's also about reconnecting with that which is in solution. We were caterpillars; we enter this solution in which everything got dissolved. Somehow, if we're fortunate, we reform and come out as a butterfly. In our transition times we travel down to the underworld, down to the unconscious, and reconnect with what mattered to us before. Or we uncover a talent that gives our life meaning, and we claim it consciously and bring it up. We make it part of what gets reformed when we break out of our cocoon into the next phase of our life.
As human beings and immortal souls in this life, the major metamorphosis for us all is just to know that the last metamorphosis is the great mystery. When we die and we leave this body, what of us continues on? What I find enormously heartening and fascinating on many different levels is how many people have had after-death communications from others who have gone on in many different forms. Sometimes there are visitation dreams. Sometimes there is a sense of presence. Sometimes there's actually a hearing or a seeing the person.
Recently, I've had a number of people who are close to me who aren't here anymore but of whom I have had a real sense of presence. Now I'm going to tell you a story that was told publicly. I believe it because of my own other experiences.
I went to a memorial service for the son of two friends of mine. He had a head-on accident and died on the spot. It was a great loss. Jed was only 26 years old, and he had this wonderful soul and spirit. His sister was angry and weeping a day or two before the memorial service. She was really having trouble with it, and finally she just wanted to be by herself. So she said, "I'm just going to go for a walk." As she was walking, Jed appeared to her and walked along with her. He spoke to her saying,"I'm really okay, and I want you to be okay. I want you to hold my hand." The sister said, "People must have thought I was really dumb because they saw me holding his hand. I mean, I'm sure they couldn't see Jed, but there I was holding his hand."
Now, Jed was known for giving big hugs. It seemed to be his trade mark. Once he even got hit by a man who fell into a homosexual panic. The fellow moved toward Jed. Of course, Jed interpreted it as "He wants a big hug." And when Jed hugged him, the man felt threatened by that closeness and hit Jed. This is a guy who had this type of physical reputation, right?
This walk with Jed, which his sister said was 28 minutes long, calmed his sister down. At the end of the walk Jed asked,"Can I give you a hug?" and she said,"Sure." He gave her a big hug, and then he asked, "Can you feel it?" He was disembodied so, of course, she couldn't feel it. In her wisdom she said, "I can feel it in my heart."
The journey of spiritual beings on a human path holds major questions that have to do with the big picture at each major transition fork in the road. What did I come to do? What is my purpose? What did I come to learn? Who did I come to love? From a psychological viewpoint, those questions can only be answered from deep within. Nobody else can ever answer them for you.
I see this all as having many incarnations, many important relationships that come and go, and many important experiences including this intensive conference to which the same questions could apply. What did really I come here to do? You may not find the answer to that question until the conference is over or almost over. What did I come to learn, really? Who did I come to love? What did I come to love in myself, out here? What am I remembering and reconnecting by this emerging experience?
The journey continues. Whether it's a long weekend, or a marriage, or a career... whatever it is...if it did not go to waste, then it was part of your journey. There's something now to remember and learn about it in order to bring it into consciousness and have it in the full circle of who you are. You can reclaim those things from which you have cut yourself off because of shame. That's part of the learning experience: you might have compassion if you have compassion for yourself. You can then have compassion for others.
This is an amazing story, the personal myth business that we are all on. When that's said, I think it's an amazing story that we are in. We are here now. Humanity has the capacity to destroy this planet, the garden that we were given. I heard Robert Bly talk about the poem in which he presents men with the question: "What did you do with the garden I trusted you with?"
There has never been a generation of women the likes of which are in this room right now. The lives of 45 million American women over the age of 50 have been influenced by the Women's Movement. They have therefore had responsibility, the ability to have major choices, education, the birth control pill, and reproductive rights that may be taken from us.
Here we are, this generation of conscious people, spiritual people, disoriented people who have possibly something to do with the fate of the earth. I think so. Something that has grown out of my work is the notion of us needing to be in circle where the spiritual center is egalitarian in order to admit the feminine principle. This circle is necessary for men as well as women to be able to talk about vulnerability, share stories, and enjoy the strength, connection, and depth of being human with each other. Because I'm of the generation of the Women's Movement, I know that women together in consciousness-raising groups have changed the world. It doesn't seem at all strange to me to think that we could create a critical mass of consciousness from the hypothetical millionth circle which grows out of the hypothetical hundredth monkey (which was a story that kept the anti-nuclear activists going.) It is, as Malcolm Gladwell says, "a tipping point." We should serve ourselves to have a support system of like-souled others who understand that the personal myth is something we are trying to live.
And so, I leave you with all of this as a transition because we are all in transition as a planet. We are in a transition as individuals. And we have a remarkable opportunity to make a difference. Every one of us who has gotten older and wiser can be a circle of influence in our nuclear extended families, our institutions and, really, the world. I think it matters a lot that we do spiritually oriented activism, political activism based not on anger and hate. Again, like the Beyond War people moved us with the anti-nuclear activist movement, it has to do with love of our potential and a wish not to destroy it. It may be, because we are born at this time and are here now, that we each have as part of our personal mythology to do something politically beginning now.
http://www.mythicjourneys.org/newsletter_jul05_transitions_bolen.html
by Jean Shinoda Bolen
Aphrodite gives her four tasks that she must learn to get through this particular zone. The story, then, is about her four tasks and her growth. As she learns each task, she grows beyond what she knew before. The first task is to sort all the seeds that are heaped up in a room. This is a wonderful metaphor for all of the possibilities, all of the emotions at the beginning of a transition period. Sorting the seed is really taking stock. What are all of the seeds of possibility in your psyche of your world? How much money do you have in the bank? How much energy do you have for this? How much talent do you have for this? What are you putting together out of all your possibilities? To plan to have a conference? If this is your particular dream, then you've got to sort out the seeds.
In this particular story, Psyche's first reaction to every single task is despair. It's more than she's ever done before, she's consciously not up to the task, and she wants to give up. Sort the seeds of possibility. At the beginning, she doesn't know how, and then the symbol comes to her. Ants. All the ants come sorting out the seeds, one seed at a time, so that by morning they've been sorted, each into its own kind, every one into its own stack.
Aphrodite comes back to find the task is done. The goddess doesn't seem to be at all pleased about it, so she then gives Psyche another task. The second task is to get some golden fleece from the rams of the sun, gather a small amount of it, and bring it to Aphrodite. So our young Psyche goes and looks at these animals ranging up and down the field, in this meadow, in that valley, all having a wonderful time. These rams are butting their heads up against each other, roughing each other up. They've got a great deal of competitive power, but they're big and they've got the strength and they're doing fine. It's just a big game with them, this competitiveness.
Psyche realizes that, if she goes out and tries to grab some fleece from the rams as they're charging and hitting each other and running up and down the field, she would be trampled. This does not seem to be the thing to do. So she goes down to the river again, and this time a reed tells her, "Psyche, you don't have to go out there and do it that way. The rams are energized by the sun. Wait until the sun goes down. Then you can go pick fleece that they have scraped off against the bushes and trees. Gather enough of it for your use and fulfill the task."
The reed that tells Psyche to bide her time has wisdom. It isn't just about attaining a certain amount of power, climbing to great heights or participating in competition. The wisdom of the reed tells you to listen to your own rhythms. It advises when and how you can gain the power that you need, but not have your soul destroyed in the acquisition. Listen and learn from the voice of the reed, which is organic and grows out of the water, the river.
The application here has something to do with the feminine psyche or soul, but it has to do with the soul of both men and women. When you are in a competitive game (and almost everything that is about outer commerce or outer success involves competition), you can be trampled if you get caught up in wanting to grab more and more and more golden fleece. If you go out and take on the archetypes to play the game (because these are archetypes, these rams of the sun) and leave your soul behind or forget that you have a soul, it will be trampled.
The third task was the creative task: Psyche is told that she must fill a crystal flask with water from a stream that runs in a continual cycle from the River Styx to the highest crag. The great water of life, the water of creativity, cycles. It is archetypal. It moves and moves and moves, and yet each person needs to seize some of that fluidity and give it shape. Some of that is a conscious desire to capture archetypal energies, visions, emotions and give them shape through your own personality, which is relative to the great expanse of the archetypal world of gods and goddesses. It is symbolically fragile, and yet this is the task.
Again Psyche looks at the task. She sees this river that is carved into the side of the mountain. It goes down to the River Styx and then rises up through a spring to come up to the top again and down the face, etching its way into the mountain. If that isn't bad enough, there are snake-like dragons on either side warning, "Stay away! Stay away!" The water itself is hissing. Psyche again thinks, "Too much! I can't do it!" when another symbol comes to her aid.
Now, this third task is supported by Zeus' eagle. Zeus is an archetype that succeeds very well as an entrepreneur in this world. After all, he is the Chief Executive Officer of Mount Olympus. He has lightning bolts. He can punish. His symbol, the eagle, has the ability to see what it wants and plunge from the sky to grab it in its talons. That ability to see the overall picture, to see the forest but not each individual tree, is a way of being in the world. If you're a man with Zeus as your innate archetype, then the world (especially capitalistic United States) rewards you very well. An entrepreneurial woman with Zeus as an archetype finds it really helpful to see the overall picture, to not get emotional about losing a sale or being undercut in business. An eagle doesn't stop and have an emotional fit if that succulent mouse that she had her eye on suddenly follows intuition and runs under a rock. The eagle just flies up again and looks for another dinner somewhere else. That unemotional ability is very successful.
Of all the innate male air sign archetypes that have to do with the sky like Apollo and Hermes, Zeus succeeds very well in this world. Some people have more of them than others. If you are a man in this culture and you happen to have these archetypes, they will be stretched on that Procrustean bed to fill the picture. Those parts of you that have to do with creativity and emotionality are often ignored and, therefore, you are cut off from them.
Zeus' eagle now comes to this very personal Psyche giving her an overview of how to go after what you need, how you avoid the dangers, keep your eye on the prize, and go for it. The eagle takes the flask. It returns to give Psyche the flask, now filled with Stygian water that she was to get for task three. One would say that at each step Psyche has learned something new.
The fourth step is the first time that Psyche will end up accomplishing the task herself. As her very last task, Aphrodite commands that Psyche must go into the underworld, fill an empty box with beauty ointment from Persephone, the goddess of the underworld, and return it to her. For the first time, Psyche thinks, "She must want me dead." The only way she knows to go into the underworld is to die. Psyche now climbs up the highest tower to throw herself off. This time the tower talks to her saying, "Psyche, there is another way to finish this task. Go into the underworld via the Vent of Dis. Take coins with you for the ferryman. Take two cakes for the three-headed dog; one to let you into the underworld, and one to let you out again."
And then the tower warns her saying, "Three times you will be asked for help, Psyche. You must harden your heart to pity, refuse, and go on." And so Psyche does. Three times she is asked by very pathetic creatures or people to stop for a moment and help. Each time she remembers the advice. She says "No" and she walks on. She gives one of the coins to the ferryman who ferries her across. Even as she's going across the River Styx, a pathetic man says, "Just hold my hand and pull me across. I didn't have a coin." But she ignores his plea. There was one other piece of advice from the tower. "Psyche, once you get the beauty ointment in the box, DON'T OPEN THE BOX!" (Laughter)
Psyche enters the underworld, gives the three-headed dog one cake, fills the box with beauty, gives the three-headed dog another cake, comes back across the river (because she has one more coin) and returns to the upper world.
All of the advice that the tower gave her was good. Psyche, having done exactly what the tower told her understands that, if she had stopped to help, she would have had to lend a hand. In each hand she had one cake and one coin. Had she lost what she was holding, she would not have had the means to return from the underworld.
People in the transition often have limited amounts of strength, health or energy as they go into the underworld. For example, the story of Psyche speaks to people living with cancer. They say, "Cancer was a cure for my co-dependency. Cancer was a way in which I could say to people, "I can't do that." The ability to say "No" is one of the challenges for a feeling man or the feminine psyche. When other people expect you to always be there for them, and you break form by saying "No," you create a crisis in a relationship. It may be that you need to not stay in the underworld of your own depression or your own addiction or your own whatever it is, it is there. Addiction, illness, and depression are images of the underworld that you need to get through in order to get out. This liminal period of transition is a very long one. The tasks to be done keep on growing. It's hard. It's scary. If you're going to make it through this transition to the new phase of your life in which you have integrated the new you, with all that you are for the next phase of your life, you've got to often learn to say "No." Otherwise the people who have expectations of you will use your energy. Say "No," and they'll say, "You're selfish." Psyche manages to do all of that. She returns to the upper world. She's no longer in the underworld. She has made it through.
By now, you can imagine, she's very tired. She's pregnant, and she's been on this journey a long time. Because she is who she is, her archetypes are related to the relationship goddesses. That is, her archetype is she's the Mother. She started out the Maiden very much like Persephone. She became a Lover, so she was like Aphrodite. She is pregnant, so she's like Demeter. And she wants to be reconnected with this bridegroom, so she's got the persistent energy of Hera.
For all that she has learned in mastering these good things, these are not strengths that she particularly feels deeply connected to as her meaning. What she wants most of all, after accomplishing all these tasks, is to be beautiful in order that Eros might love her and return. Psyche opens the box and death-like sleep envelopes her. She falls, like Snow White, as if dead. This is the point in the story where some people find fault with her decision. "Oh Psyche, after all this, did you have to become unconscious again?"
It is this action that calls Eros to her side, but Eros has been transformed as Psyche has grown through her ordeals. He used to be this child who ran home to mother, who hid things from mother. He felt betrayed because Psyche actually looked at him. It didn't matter that when she looked at him she actually consciously loved him. He was so wounded that she broke the form and disobeyed him. Now we see a very different Eros who comes to her side, wipes the death-like sleep off of her, and then takes her to Olympus. There, in front of all the gods and goddesses, Eros announces that this is the conscious relationship that he wants. The Olympians celebrate a grand wedding now, no longer a hidden affair, not this unconscious relationship of love and soul, because those are the names of these two folks.
What is really fascinating is that we know all along she was pregnant, which is the symbol of the journey. A new child is often present in dreams when you are growing into the next phase of your life. Sometimes the dreamer is actually pregnant, but more often the dreams I've listened to over the years show an exceptional, divine child (divine in the sense that it's exceptional; it's little and it talks.) Something of this wonderful child is growing as a symbol in the person as they move into this new phase of life.
When it's announced on Mount Olympus that the marriage of Eros and Psyche is celebrated, she gives birth to the child that was forecast to be a god if she kept the secret and a mortal if she gave the secret away. The child is born, a girl, and her name is Joy. This is the first mortal in Greek mythology that is made an immortal. The soul (Psyche) is elevated and made divine as well, becoming part of the Olympian landscape. This is actually the archetypal world of the gods and goddesses in our psyches. She goes through this chrysalis phase. That's her name, after all: it is butterfly, it is Psyche, it is soul. Trust emerges when there is a willingness to die to the old, to be vulnerable and have faith. There is a time when you know that you have been taken only so far by your own human abilities. Something else must come in to make the soul reconnect with Eros. And often when we start the transition journey there is a loss of love, or of our ability to love. We're depressed. We have had difficulties.
In a very similar way, womb or tomb is a story of Jesus. The short-form is that all kinds of people expect him to be the Messiah. He arrives on Palm Sunday with great hosannas, and by Good Friday he's crucified. On Saturday he is in the tomb. At that point in his story, Easter Sunday hasn't happened yet. Is this going to be a tomb? Or is it going to be a womb from which a new aspect is born out of suffering and descent? Most of the myths that have to do with the underworld have, as a story in our psyches, an implicit descent. There is the possibility of being like that caterpillar. In the cocoon stage, you enter into solution, and become vulnerable. You do not know whether this is a birthing place or whether it is an ending place.
I'm going back to the images of birth, of people who help others deliver babies living out the archetype of Hecate, the goddess of the crossroads, the goddess of twilight, the crone. Hecate was also the archetype of the Mid-wife/Healer. The first women who went to the stake in the Inquisition lived out of this archetype. As goddess of the crossroads, Hecate appeared at every major fork in the road where transition decisions are made. She sees where you are coming from and where the two paths will take you. At important forks in the road in ancient Greece, you'd see a little statue with three faces: one facing the direction you had come from, and the others facing two paths you might choose. This is the archetype of people who act as midwives to other people. It is also the archetypal observer in ourselves who has seen us through many descents and many transitions. This observer has an overview of the pain and the joy, the suffering and the changes.
This is the archetype of the midwife who is a therapist, because every therapist is a midwife. People come to therapists at times of transition and crisis. The Hecate in us can see where they came from. We have some idea of where their choices might take them. Patients stay with us at the crossroad until they become clear which direction they will choose. The path that is most authentically them is about individuation. The choices often are to conform and go back to an old form, one that other people are comfortable with, as well as a part of themselves. Then there's the individuation path that does not promise that everyone will like you at all. Instead, this path promises that it will feel true as long as you do what Joseph Campbell says about living your personal myth.
Keith Thompson writes about how a man in his audience asked Dr. Campbell, "But how do I find my personal myth?" And Campbell answered with a question: "What gives your life bliss and harmony? Find it and follow it." Bliss is a strange word. It sounds too, too, too...actually. (Laughter) When you live from an archetype it means that you're in the world with the energy of whatever that role is that the archetype holds. That archetype is deeply rooted in the matrix of your self. There is a sense that when life is lived from an archetypal depth, that life has meaning. Someone else doing the same thing might feel like they were doing time. That's what it feels like when you've outgrown or chosen a path that is not deeply your own path but someone else's idea of who you should be. You're going through the motions. Life is okay if you can conform. When you live from an archetypal depth, then it may take suffering, but there's something worthy and true about who I am when I do it that is me. Living your personal myth, in fact, is all about the crises, the transitions, and the suffering. It is about integrating your personal myth into yourself as you move along the path. Those of us that are psychotherapists or artists or writers or anybody here who draws from the stuff of your own life, know that no experience you have ever gone through is wasted. You can use it in your art, in your therapy, in your compassion for or understanding of what comes through the suffering that you personally integrated into yourself. You can use the experience in your work, and nothing goes to waste.
As you get older, your path becomes increasingly a realization that you have moved in an authentic way along the journey. There are the archetypes in both men and women: goddesses in every woman, gods in every man. Had I known better, I would have written a big book called Gods and Goddesses in Every Person. As I stand up here and talk about archetypes, I am not embodying a goddess archetype. I'm being Hermes, the messenger god, talking about entering the underworld and returning to the upperworld. Most men and women find that they're a mix of different archetypal energies, much as we are all mixes of human talents. Imagine if you had the gift of a Mozart and you never heard music. Then in the second half of your life you were introduced to music. You had a sense that said, "This is who I am!"
This individuation happens to people often in the second half of life. The middle-aged person has done that which was possible for them to do. You were either successful in fulfilling the educational/career/relationship patterns that the first half of life is about (or not.) You either do it or you don't. And here you are. I wrote in my last book called Crones Don't Whine that the third phase of life is the actual real essence of being present to the path that you are on. Unless you can grieve for losses, let go of your sense of entitlement, you will stand at the gate, never get through that transition, never get under the pubic bone to the other side. If you sit at the gate whining, you're looking back at the past feeling that you, of all people, deserve better. Your kids should have turned out differently. Your marriage should have turned out better. The world should have recognized you differently. You're whining about what happened or didn't happen to you. You have no perspective on the whole wide world experience of being human. For one thing, you don't understand the amount of suffering and pain and reality that exists if you're still here. You're standing at the gate into the individuation path of the Crone. The Crone, an archetype that both men and women draw from, is about wisdom, and compassion, and active action, and healing humor, and a lot of other good things. But it's an internal experience. The Crone archetype exists in men and women who can change the world.
I see in the metaphoric story about Psyche, the much more dramatic whistle-blower experience that Jesus represents. Did Jesus have a sense that what he was supposed to do would go against everybody's expectations, would scare everybody to death, and yet would involve him with great suffering? In the midst of the great suffering, he even felt that maybe he was wrong, that this was not what he was supposed to do at all. He did that. A number of people go against expectations, and they suffer as whistle-blowers. Or they make a choice that other people just didn't expect, and they experience anger and disappointment and crucifixion at some symbolic level. Once it happens, the old self dies.
We've returned to the symbology of death/rebirth. When you are no longer who you are, you're in a transition zone. You're learning something about who you are now, and what you have in terms of sorting seeds. You're giving form to your creativity. How much power do you have? Do you have the ability to put boundaries on your own energy? Then you can pass through into the next phase, a spiritual path, which may also demand of you that you now call upon something greater than yourself.
I've often said to look at us all as spiritual beings on a human path, rather than human beings who may or may not be on a spiritual path. At some level, think how absurd it is that an immortal soul comes into the dysfunctional lives we all have. An immortal soul has chosen to be human. Human path is very strange. At the beginning, most people seem to have their own version of dysfunctional family with lots of mistakes, and difficulties, and loves, and sufferings, and lessons along the way. Then it's over so soon. Nobody gets through without suffering. Now why would an immortal soul do that?
Yet, all of us intuitively would say, "I believe I have a soul." As soon as you do that, you assume that you are essentially a spiritual being in a human body for now. There must be something about this journey of vulnerability, of sharing it with others, of suffering, of learning, of trusting, of finding that sometimes grace comes in the form of love, and that Eros rescues us when we're unconscious again.
This is a story that resonates at many different levels and it's about us all. It's also about reconnecting with that which is in solution. We were caterpillars; we enter this solution in which everything got dissolved. Somehow, if we're fortunate, we reform and come out as a butterfly. In our transition times we travel down to the underworld, down to the unconscious, and reconnect with what mattered to us before. Or we uncover a talent that gives our life meaning, and we claim it consciously and bring it up. We make it part of what gets reformed when we break out of our cocoon into the next phase of our life.
As human beings and immortal souls in this life, the major metamorphosis for us all is just to know that the last metamorphosis is the great mystery. When we die and we leave this body, what of us continues on? What I find enormously heartening and fascinating on many different levels is how many people have had after-death communications from others who have gone on in many different forms. Sometimes there are visitation dreams. Sometimes there is a sense of presence. Sometimes there's actually a hearing or a seeing the person.
Recently, I've had a number of people who are close to me who aren't here anymore but of whom I have had a real sense of presence. Now I'm going to tell you a story that was told publicly. I believe it because of my own other experiences.
I went to a memorial service for the son of two friends of mine. He had a head-on accident and died on the spot. It was a great loss. Jed was only 26 years old, and he had this wonderful soul and spirit. His sister was angry and weeping a day or two before the memorial service. She was really having trouble with it, and finally she just wanted to be by herself. So she said, "I'm just going to go for a walk." As she was walking, Jed appeared to her and walked along with her. He spoke to her saying,"I'm really okay, and I want you to be okay. I want you to hold my hand." The sister said, "People must have thought I was really dumb because they saw me holding his hand. I mean, I'm sure they couldn't see Jed, but there I was holding his hand."
Now, Jed was known for giving big hugs. It seemed to be his trade mark. Once he even got hit by a man who fell into a homosexual panic. The fellow moved toward Jed. Of course, Jed interpreted it as "He wants a big hug." And when Jed hugged him, the man felt threatened by that closeness and hit Jed. This is a guy who had this type of physical reputation, right?
This walk with Jed, which his sister said was 28 minutes long, calmed his sister down. At the end of the walk Jed asked,"Can I give you a hug?" and she said,"Sure." He gave her a big hug, and then he asked, "Can you feel it?" He was disembodied so, of course, she couldn't feel it. In her wisdom she said, "I can feel it in my heart."
The journey of spiritual beings on a human path holds major questions that have to do with the big picture at each major transition fork in the road. What did I come to do? What is my purpose? What did I come to learn? Who did I come to love? From a psychological viewpoint, those questions can only be answered from deep within. Nobody else can ever answer them for you.
I see this all as having many incarnations, many important relationships that come and go, and many important experiences including this intensive conference to which the same questions could apply. What did really I come here to do? You may not find the answer to that question until the conference is over or almost over. What did I come to learn, really? Who did I come to love? What did I come to love in myself, out here? What am I remembering and reconnecting by this emerging experience?
The journey continues. Whether it's a long weekend, or a marriage, or a career... whatever it is...if it did not go to waste, then it was part of your journey. There's something now to remember and learn about it in order to bring it into consciousness and have it in the full circle of who you are. You can reclaim those things from which you have cut yourself off because of shame. That's part of the learning experience: you might have compassion if you have compassion for yourself. You can then have compassion for others.
This is an amazing story, the personal myth business that we are all on. When that's said, I think it's an amazing story that we are in. We are here now. Humanity has the capacity to destroy this planet, the garden that we were given. I heard Robert Bly talk about the poem in which he presents men with the question: "What did you do with the garden I trusted you with?"
There has never been a generation of women the likes of which are in this room right now. The lives of 45 million American women over the age of 50 have been influenced by the Women's Movement. They have therefore had responsibility, the ability to have major choices, education, the birth control pill, and reproductive rights that may be taken from us.
Here we are, this generation of conscious people, spiritual people, disoriented people who have possibly something to do with the fate of the earth. I think so. Something that has grown out of my work is the notion of us needing to be in circle where the spiritual center is egalitarian in order to admit the feminine principle. This circle is necessary for men as well as women to be able to talk about vulnerability, share stories, and enjoy the strength, connection, and depth of being human with each other. Because I'm of the generation of the Women's Movement, I know that women together in consciousness-raising groups have changed the world. It doesn't seem at all strange to me to think that we could create a critical mass of consciousness from the hypothetical millionth circle which grows out of the hypothetical hundredth monkey (which was a story that kept the anti-nuclear activists going.) It is, as Malcolm Gladwell says, "a tipping point." We should serve ourselves to have a support system of like-souled others who understand that the personal myth is something we are trying to live.
And so, I leave you with all of this as a transition because we are all in transition as a planet. We are in a transition as individuals. And we have a remarkable opportunity to make a difference. Every one of us who has gotten older and wiser can be a circle of influence in our nuclear extended families, our institutions and, really, the world. I think it matters a lot that we do spiritually oriented activism, political activism based not on anger and hate. Again, like the Beyond War people moved us with the anti-nuclear activist movement, it has to do with love of our potential and a wish not to destroy it. It may be, because we are born at this time and are here now, that we each have as part of our personal mythology to do something politically beginning now.
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This site may contains some copyrighted material which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. This constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.