Mythic Living
"What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth." --Joseph Campbell
For most of human history we had no idea how the world or ourselves worked. Most pre-scientific interpretations of universal forces involved spiritual or religious entities -- evil, elemental or ancestral spirits, or god and goddesses that manipulated reality for their own mysterious ends.
The gods found, ground, establish, and substantiate reality. The return to primordial origins is fundamental to all mythologies -- expressing a spontaneous regression to the ground that pierces through the world of appearances to 'reality', to immediacy. We experience our own origins through a kind of identity, through countless beings before and after oneself as the germ of infinity.
Our journey re-unfolds those same images which stream out of the ground, out of the abyss. In this way we are "grounding" ourselves. When we dive down to our own foundations we find the world of our common divine origin. Ceremony translates the mythological value into an act. The world of the ancestors is a subterranean storehouse of everything that grows and comes to birth.
We like to think we have outgrown the religious or spiritual superstitions of by-gone eras, but the fact remains that we still couch our interpretations of cosmic forces in theoretical or metaphorical terms. We can sweep away false assumptions and still retain our metaphorical relationships. The confluence of non-physical psyche and body forms our experience of reality. It is analogous to wave-particle duality.
Carl Jung proposed a convenient hypothesis for the unknown. Complex psychic phenomena share dynamic core elements. The "collective unconscious" is a vast information store containing the entire religious, spiritual and mythological experiences of humanity. According to Jung, these inherited ancient archetypes exist deep with the human psyche and heavily influence our psychophysical being. We access the noumenal via archetypal phenomena.
For most of human history we had no idea how the world or ourselves worked. Most pre-scientific interpretations of universal forces involved spiritual or religious entities -- evil, elemental or ancestral spirits, or god and goddesses that manipulated reality for their own mysterious ends.
The gods found, ground, establish, and substantiate reality. The return to primordial origins is fundamental to all mythologies -- expressing a spontaneous regression to the ground that pierces through the world of appearances to 'reality', to immediacy. We experience our own origins through a kind of identity, through countless beings before and after oneself as the germ of infinity.
Our journey re-unfolds those same images which stream out of the ground, out of the abyss. In this way we are "grounding" ourselves. When we dive down to our own foundations we find the world of our common divine origin. Ceremony translates the mythological value into an act. The world of the ancestors is a subterranean storehouse of everything that grows and comes to birth.
We like to think we have outgrown the religious or spiritual superstitions of by-gone eras, but the fact remains that we still couch our interpretations of cosmic forces in theoretical or metaphorical terms. We can sweep away false assumptions and still retain our metaphorical relationships. The confluence of non-physical psyche and body forms our experience of reality. It is analogous to wave-particle duality.
Carl Jung proposed a convenient hypothesis for the unknown. Complex psychic phenomena share dynamic core elements. The "collective unconscious" is a vast information store containing the entire religious, spiritual and mythological experiences of humanity. According to Jung, these inherited ancient archetypes exist deep with the human psyche and heavily influence our psychophysical being. We access the noumenal via archetypal phenomena.
MYTHICAL LIVING
A Metaphorical Perception of Experience
by Iona Miller, c1977
“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone
with others. Unfold your own myth.” --Rumi
"Jung has suggested that each individual life is based on a particular myth, and that we ought each to discover what our own basic myth is, so that we may live it consciously and intelligently, cooperating with the trend of this life pattern, instead of being dragged along unwillingly. These patterns can be seen recurring in the lives of certain people, who remain totally unconscious of what they are living. But if the individual becomes conscious in relation to the archetypal trend that underlies his life--his fate--he can begin to adapt himself to it consciously. The outer fate is then transmuted into the inner experience, and the true individuality of the man or woman begins to emerge. This is an important step in the quest for the Self." --M. Esther Harding/The I and the Not-I I.
"Myth is not fiction: it consists of facts that are continually repeated and can be observed over and over again. It is something that happens to man, and men have mythical fates just as much as the Greek heroes do." ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 648.
Myth may be defined as a paradigmatic model. In science, paradigms are thought-models which direct their holders to pose only certain questions and to utilize only certain methods in search of answers. This precisely parallels the effect of a given archetype when it is activated; it molds our attitudes in a characteristic manner so that we catch certain things but ignore or omit what just doesn't fit. The particular paradigmatic lenses we choose to form our conceptualization of reality function to shape the very reality we hope to capture and understand. By emphasizing particular relationships, or elements, they largely determine the nature of the "reality" we experience. This conceptualization of reality is known as one's worldview.
A person who embraces a particular paradigm can create a reality from his expectations, even without conscious intent to do so. In our technological world, most paradigms stress a routine or mechanical side of life. In order to acquire experiential freedom from cultural programming, one must have a model. A model is required for realization. Myths, then, serve a key function in the psychic economy. Myths provide the most comprehensive metaphors, or models, for the realization of liberating alternatives. The meaning in life is inherent in the archetypal experience of myth.
The aesthetic experience and its 'meaning' are identical. In a religious society, myths tell the people who they are and where they come from. To change the myth is to become lost in the most profound ontological (1) sense. Modern man lives in a world of intellectual fragmentation. He feels a need to dissect any and everything, especially himself, to find out the universal order of things and to seek his place in it. Mythological explanations arise when an individual or culture evolves the three primary questions:
1) who am I?
2) where do I come from?
3) where am I going?
The meaning of existence lies in a relevant answer to these questions. These answers formulate one's worldview. With these questions, a universal seed within man begins to germinate.
Self-consciousness begins to unfold its awareness of totality. The finite mind begins to bridge the gap to infinite awareness. In seeking to find the beginning of creation, man must first cease thinking in terms of space and time. In Reality there is neither. It is an illusion that man is contained in space and time. In fact, both are contained in man. Both experiences, together, illustrates psychic experience.
The Creations, as a psychological reality, was/is/will occur in the realm of the sacred, not the profane world. With our human limitations, sacred time is experienced as multiple recurrence. It is thus a continuous, timeless-creation. All parts of the process are inherent in its wholeness. Likewise, wholeness is inherent in all parts. This is the Alpha/Omega principle. As this universal seed starts to grow in an individual, he is plunged from his preconscious, womb-like security into a dazzling world of intellectual confusion. He experiences paradox. There is dichotomy, a lot of contradiction. So, man comes to duality of subject and object. Conflicts are produced, which, used creatively, may lead to the individuation, the subjective and objective spheres merge into one.
II. Orientation
A complete mythology provides helpful orientation in four ways:
1) In its metaphysical-mystical function, it wakens and maintains in the individual an experience of awe, humility, and respect in recognition of the ultimate mystery which transcends words and form.
2) It provides a cosmology, or an image of the universe. Science now serves this mythological function, admirably.
3) On the social level, myth supplies validation and maintenance of an established order.
4) Finally, on the psychological level, they provide models for the centering and harmonization of the individual.
Mythologies perform these functions through symbols. The focal point provided by image and symbol holds the mind to truth. The ultimate is, of course, unknowable. Therefore, the images themselves are not "the truth." For contemporary man, a journey into his unconscious provides the vital meanings and relatedness to the cosmic order that myths once gave us. It is a return to the source which goes a step further than genealogy. Meaning is inherent in conscious experience of archetypal processes. A model for pursuing the quest provides a foundation to which one's experience may be related.
The modern search for meaning is a variant of the age-old quest, or journey of the hero. This mythological motif is activated whenever cultural values and mores do not provide an adequate model for one's experience. The social boundaries dissolve and a person is thrown back on his own resources. Valuable connections and new forms must be re-established. During this period, symbols acquire great personal value. For many, this period is seen as an experience of rebirth or renewal.
This heroic stage does not go on indefinitely. Questing fades into the background when one becomes familiarized with the imaginal realm. Both processes, questing for and participating in the imaginal realm, require attention, effort, and creativity. Evidence of man's great desire for this experience is found in the common use of drugs in the counterculture. Rather than the gradual path of study, experience, and assimilation, drugs may provoke experiences which are "too much, to soon." Joseph Campbell has likened the situation to one found in Greek mythology "in which a person says to a god, 'Show me yourself in your full power.' And the god does and the person is blown to bits."
The personality suffers from an inability to relate, meaningfully, to society. Drug experiences provide ample evidence of the world of the psyche, but in order for us to obtain value from the contact, consciousness must be able to come to understanding, digestion, and assimilation of the experience. Liberating experiences require a context of strong ego-consciousness. This does not mean "willful assertion." It means that the ego has learned to discriminate between itself and the archetypal processes operating through and around it. It means, also, that the ego has learned to defer to, and cooperate with them.
A frightened ego, in danger of drowning in deep waters, will quickly regress to the natural standpoint, otherwise unaffected by its contact with the numinous. The boon, which the successful hero may bring back (which has both personal and collective significance), is not given to him. He does not find the gods cooperative. The lessons of the "trip" prove most troublesome and provide no benefit in daily life. He is lucky if his worst problem is merely the desire to stay "high."
There is a generation of "world-weary" people, eager to transcend off into some mythical realm. However, their methods are either haphazard, or ill-advised. This type of unassimilable experience stimulates the complex of the puer aeternus, or eternal adolescent. When it occurs in a woman, it is a puella complex. This complex is epidemic in our society, today. This was not the case a century ago, when our cultural model was more strictly defined. The ideal lies somewhere between, in a reunion of the values of tradition and futurity. This requires the ability to apply oneself to the task. It requires self-motivation, diligent effort, and the grace of god. When man enters the myth of transformation, he sets out to change the world. Soon, he becomes aware that he must first change himself. In this moment of transformation, myth is seen as an intuitive, ever-becoming processing. Man is not really contained in the myth, and in time. Both myth and time are contained within himself.
The gods and man are involved in a symbiotic relationship. Each requires the other for realization. When man seeks the motives behind the act of becoming, he transcends from concrete intellectual conception to metaphysical abstractions. Eventually, he comes to an understanding that metaphysics is the science of the content of myth. The so-called "occult" is mainly involved with developing man's latent subconscious powers, so he may develop greater access to the imaginal realm. This opens up a world which, by definition, contains wider parameters for experience and growth. It provides a comprehensive, cohesive method and model. With it, man may live his individuality within the context of tradition. There are aspects of creative mythology, and its form of metaphorical perception, which tie it in with a holographic concept of reality.
(2) Within metaphorical and mythic conception, a part does not merely stand in the place of or represent the union of several elements, but rather it is identical with the whole. If the part is the whole, then whoever controls the part controls the whole. In normal discourse, symbols represent their referents and are separable from what they represent; in metaphorical or mythic conception, the symbols are their referents; they cannot be separated. The elegance of language lies in its capacity to separate symbol from experience so that symbols can be manipulated in a way that experiences cannot be. While we cannot experience precisely the same thing ever again, we can attach similar symbols to represent two experiences as being roughly the same.
(3) The chaotic assortment of apparent and disguised mythological images have certain typical features. We may reduce the infinitely variegated and complex forms to their simplest expressions as a means of recognizing them. Jung's list of salient characteristics includes: Chaotic multiplicity and order; duality; the opposition of light and dark, upper and lower, right and left; the union of opposites in a third (complexio oppositorum); the quaternity (square, cross); rotation (circle, sphere); and finally the centering process and a radial arrangement usually followed by some quaternity system. The centering process is...the never-to-be-surpassed climax of the whole development, and is characterized as such by the fact that it brings with it the greatest possible therapeutic effect.
Experience of these archetypal processes offers the possibility of orienting oneself. Several traditional mystical exercises stress the importance of the centering process. Fundamental in these meditations is orienting oneself to the four cardinal directions. The role of creative imagination is fundamental.
Virtually any experience available to man is integrated via a form of imagery. Myth raises the individual to a superhuman or superhistorical plane. It enables him to approach Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane experience. If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate Reality of things, it is just because Reality manifests itself in contradictory ways and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.
James Hillman, Director of Studies in Imaginal Psychology at the University of Texas, states that "We can describe the psyche as a polycentric realm of nonverbal, nonspatial images. Myth offers the same kind of world. It too, is polycentric, with innumerable personifications in imaginal space. Just as dream images are not mere words in disguise...so the ancient personifications of myths are not concepts in disguise." He states further that these "soul events are not parts of any system. They are independent of the tandems in which they are placed, inasmuch as there is an independent primacy of the imaginal that creates its fantasies automatically, ceaselessly, and spontaneously. Myth-making is not compensatory to anything else."
The more paradigmatic models one has access to, the more freedom of creation one experiences. "It is egoistic to recognize oneself in only one portion of a tale, case in only one role." (4) Polytheistic consciousness allows us to experience the gamut of archetypal perspectives. This leads the individual to broader consciousness and greater tolerance of other individual's perspectives.
Myth is the comprehensive metaphor, "answering our requirements for intellectual puzzlement and explanation through enigma by providing as-if fictions in depth, complexity, and exquisite differentiation." "Myth," says Hermann Broch, "is the archetype of every phenomenal cognition, of which the human mind is capable. Archetype of all human cognition, archetype of science, archetype of art--myth is consequently that archetype of philosophy, too." We might deduce from this that myth functions as a sort of metapsychology.
Mythic metaphors elude literalism; they dramatically present themselves as impossible truths. They have the ability to transform concrete particulars into universals, and to present abstract universals as concrete actions. They are ways not only of speaking, perceiving, and feeling, but of existing. We may experience mythical consciousness by finding Gods in our concrete lives. They are found by entering myths, since that is where they are. We may participate with them by recognizing our concrete existence as metaphors, or mythic enactments.
However, Hillman is very deliberate in stating that: "myths resist being interpreted into practical life. They are not allegories of applied psychology, solutions to personal problems. This is the old moralistic fallacy, now become the therapeutic fallacy, telling us which step to take and what to do next, where the hero went wrong and had to pay the consequences, as if this practical guidance were what was meant by 'living one's myth'."
"Living one's myth doesn't simply mean living one myth. It means that one lives myth; it means mythical living...to try to use a myth practically keeps us still in the pattern of the heroic ego, learning how to do his deeds correctly. Myths do not tell us how. They simply give the invisible background which starts us imagining, questioning, going deeper." Myths do not carry one to a central meaning, or the center of meaning. "To enter myth we must personify, to personify carries us into myth."
III. Exercise
Personification is a mode of viewing archetypal processes in their traditional forms as gods and goddesses. This method allows us to love the gods, giving them attention and worship. Their names aid us in discriminating them one from another. They give us the ability to call upon them. This process of devotion takes place in the imaginal realm of the heart. In QBL, this is Tiphareth, the heart-center. In Eastern systems, it is known as anahata chakra. It is the realm of soul-making. Personification is a spontaneous process, springing from the heart, where imagination reigns. This process of active imagination allows us to "see through" the literalisms of mundane existence and to participate in relationships with the divine.
A primary purpose of Middle Pillar Exercise is to orient oneself with the Universe (5). It promises equilibration and renewal. In Middle Pillar Exercise, the gods are brought into consciousness by intoning their names. This creates a resonance effect which stimulates glands. These names are related, via correspondence, to various centers in the body. Repeated practice of Middle Pillar Exercise is fundamental for any Magickal development. It heals the culturally-preprogrammed split between mind, soul and body. The Banishing Ritual and Middle Pillar Exercise are particularly effective because they are a dramatization of the Creation Myth.
In his book, The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade states, "The creation of the world becomes the archetype of every human gesture, whatever its plane of reference may be. Every construction or fabrication has the cosmogony as paradigmatic model. Techniques of orientation (aligning oneself to the directions), are designed for the construction of sacred space. The more closely a ritual reproduces the work of the gods in creation, the more effective it is in producing the desired psychological results. Knowing the value of a ritual satisfies both the rational and aesthetic mind. The model for the creation of sacred space begins from a center and projects horizons in the four cardinal directions. This model has been followed throughout history when settling new territory or in the founding of cities. We always reside at the center of "our world."
This quadrated circle sets up the conditions necessary for us to enter into sacred time. The Banishing Ritual "cleanses" the portion of space within the perimeter of the circle. This eliminates unwanted thoughts which could cause distraction. One then has enhanced ability to focus and concentrate. The circle is cleared of all 'entities,' good or evil. Then one may call in specific gods, at will. We may contact the gods through the medium of the sacred pole or cosmic pillar. Sacred time appears under the paradoxical aspect of circular time, reversible and recoverable, a sort of mythical eternal present that is periodically reintegrated by means of rites. When we enter this space, we experience the feeling of immortality, since we are in a time which is equivalent to the "beginning."
The principle characteristics of sacred space are:
a) A break in the homogeneity of space;
b) This break is symbolized by an opening where passage from one cosmic region to another is facilitated (i.e. between heaven and earth; earth and the underworld);
c) Communication with heaven is expressed by variants of the Cosmic Pillar, which stands at the Center of the World. This Pillar is a useful symbol for what is termed in psychology the Ego-Self Axis.
The axis is built up through various psychological exercises, involving active imagination. It forms the link between ego-consciousness and the Self. This represents both the conscious and subconscious mind working together in harmony. It is known in Magick as Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. The Banishing and Middle Pillar exercises conform precisely to the creation myth. Since a myth is a paradigmatic model, one can see it is a very effective exercise. It establishes one's relationship to the cosmos, or totality.
Eliade has said: What men do on their own initiative, without a mythical model, belongs to the sphere of the profane; hence, it is a vain and illusory activity, in the last analysis, unreal. The more religious a man is, the more paradigmatic models he possesses to guide his attitudes and actions.
The importance of persistent practice of Middle Pillar technique, throughout the Magickal career, is not to be underestimated. Israel Regardie is quite firm on this point. "To my mind, the exercise described as the Middle Pillar is the groundwork of all actual developmental work. It is a process which is the basis of Magic. That this has been but seldom realized is obviously at the root of the futile attempts to do Ceremonial and perform Ritual, of which the general public hears every now and again. Even students of Magic of many years standing have been guilty of negligence in this respect, and also in failing to recommend it to their successors." (6)
Timelessness will appear as a multiple recurrence (chronicity). The archetypal order will make these appearances regular, both in time (wave frequency) and magnitude (wave amplitude). The ego has the option of actively participating in the process through the medium of active imagination. This develops insight. To restore our earth to a ground in creative imagination we must re-imagine the creation. (7)
A Metaphorical Perception of Experience
by Iona Miller, c1977
“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone
with others. Unfold your own myth.” --Rumi
"Jung has suggested that each individual life is based on a particular myth, and that we ought each to discover what our own basic myth is, so that we may live it consciously and intelligently, cooperating with the trend of this life pattern, instead of being dragged along unwillingly. These patterns can be seen recurring in the lives of certain people, who remain totally unconscious of what they are living. But if the individual becomes conscious in relation to the archetypal trend that underlies his life--his fate--he can begin to adapt himself to it consciously. The outer fate is then transmuted into the inner experience, and the true individuality of the man or woman begins to emerge. This is an important step in the quest for the Self." --M. Esther Harding/The I and the Not-I I.
"Myth is not fiction: it consists of facts that are continually repeated and can be observed over and over again. It is something that happens to man, and men have mythical fates just as much as the Greek heroes do." ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 648.
Myth may be defined as a paradigmatic model. In science, paradigms are thought-models which direct their holders to pose only certain questions and to utilize only certain methods in search of answers. This precisely parallels the effect of a given archetype when it is activated; it molds our attitudes in a characteristic manner so that we catch certain things but ignore or omit what just doesn't fit. The particular paradigmatic lenses we choose to form our conceptualization of reality function to shape the very reality we hope to capture and understand. By emphasizing particular relationships, or elements, they largely determine the nature of the "reality" we experience. This conceptualization of reality is known as one's worldview.
A person who embraces a particular paradigm can create a reality from his expectations, even without conscious intent to do so. In our technological world, most paradigms stress a routine or mechanical side of life. In order to acquire experiential freedom from cultural programming, one must have a model. A model is required for realization. Myths, then, serve a key function in the psychic economy. Myths provide the most comprehensive metaphors, or models, for the realization of liberating alternatives. The meaning in life is inherent in the archetypal experience of myth.
The aesthetic experience and its 'meaning' are identical. In a religious society, myths tell the people who they are and where they come from. To change the myth is to become lost in the most profound ontological (1) sense. Modern man lives in a world of intellectual fragmentation. He feels a need to dissect any and everything, especially himself, to find out the universal order of things and to seek his place in it. Mythological explanations arise when an individual or culture evolves the three primary questions:
1) who am I?
2) where do I come from?
3) where am I going?
The meaning of existence lies in a relevant answer to these questions. These answers formulate one's worldview. With these questions, a universal seed within man begins to germinate.
Self-consciousness begins to unfold its awareness of totality. The finite mind begins to bridge the gap to infinite awareness. In seeking to find the beginning of creation, man must first cease thinking in terms of space and time. In Reality there is neither. It is an illusion that man is contained in space and time. In fact, both are contained in man. Both experiences, together, illustrates psychic experience.
The Creations, as a psychological reality, was/is/will occur in the realm of the sacred, not the profane world. With our human limitations, sacred time is experienced as multiple recurrence. It is thus a continuous, timeless-creation. All parts of the process are inherent in its wholeness. Likewise, wholeness is inherent in all parts. This is the Alpha/Omega principle. As this universal seed starts to grow in an individual, he is plunged from his preconscious, womb-like security into a dazzling world of intellectual confusion. He experiences paradox. There is dichotomy, a lot of contradiction. So, man comes to duality of subject and object. Conflicts are produced, which, used creatively, may lead to the individuation, the subjective and objective spheres merge into one.
II. Orientation
A complete mythology provides helpful orientation in four ways:
1) In its metaphysical-mystical function, it wakens and maintains in the individual an experience of awe, humility, and respect in recognition of the ultimate mystery which transcends words and form.
2) It provides a cosmology, or an image of the universe. Science now serves this mythological function, admirably.
3) On the social level, myth supplies validation and maintenance of an established order.
4) Finally, on the psychological level, they provide models for the centering and harmonization of the individual.
Mythologies perform these functions through symbols. The focal point provided by image and symbol holds the mind to truth. The ultimate is, of course, unknowable. Therefore, the images themselves are not "the truth." For contemporary man, a journey into his unconscious provides the vital meanings and relatedness to the cosmic order that myths once gave us. It is a return to the source which goes a step further than genealogy. Meaning is inherent in conscious experience of archetypal processes. A model for pursuing the quest provides a foundation to which one's experience may be related.
The modern search for meaning is a variant of the age-old quest, or journey of the hero. This mythological motif is activated whenever cultural values and mores do not provide an adequate model for one's experience. The social boundaries dissolve and a person is thrown back on his own resources. Valuable connections and new forms must be re-established. During this period, symbols acquire great personal value. For many, this period is seen as an experience of rebirth or renewal.
This heroic stage does not go on indefinitely. Questing fades into the background when one becomes familiarized with the imaginal realm. Both processes, questing for and participating in the imaginal realm, require attention, effort, and creativity. Evidence of man's great desire for this experience is found in the common use of drugs in the counterculture. Rather than the gradual path of study, experience, and assimilation, drugs may provoke experiences which are "too much, to soon." Joseph Campbell has likened the situation to one found in Greek mythology "in which a person says to a god, 'Show me yourself in your full power.' And the god does and the person is blown to bits."
The personality suffers from an inability to relate, meaningfully, to society. Drug experiences provide ample evidence of the world of the psyche, but in order for us to obtain value from the contact, consciousness must be able to come to understanding, digestion, and assimilation of the experience. Liberating experiences require a context of strong ego-consciousness. This does not mean "willful assertion." It means that the ego has learned to discriminate between itself and the archetypal processes operating through and around it. It means, also, that the ego has learned to defer to, and cooperate with them.
A frightened ego, in danger of drowning in deep waters, will quickly regress to the natural standpoint, otherwise unaffected by its contact with the numinous. The boon, which the successful hero may bring back (which has both personal and collective significance), is not given to him. He does not find the gods cooperative. The lessons of the "trip" prove most troublesome and provide no benefit in daily life. He is lucky if his worst problem is merely the desire to stay "high."
There is a generation of "world-weary" people, eager to transcend off into some mythical realm. However, their methods are either haphazard, or ill-advised. This type of unassimilable experience stimulates the complex of the puer aeternus, or eternal adolescent. When it occurs in a woman, it is a puella complex. This complex is epidemic in our society, today. This was not the case a century ago, when our cultural model was more strictly defined. The ideal lies somewhere between, in a reunion of the values of tradition and futurity. This requires the ability to apply oneself to the task. It requires self-motivation, diligent effort, and the grace of god. When man enters the myth of transformation, he sets out to change the world. Soon, he becomes aware that he must first change himself. In this moment of transformation, myth is seen as an intuitive, ever-becoming processing. Man is not really contained in the myth, and in time. Both myth and time are contained within himself.
The gods and man are involved in a symbiotic relationship. Each requires the other for realization. When man seeks the motives behind the act of becoming, he transcends from concrete intellectual conception to metaphysical abstractions. Eventually, he comes to an understanding that metaphysics is the science of the content of myth. The so-called "occult" is mainly involved with developing man's latent subconscious powers, so he may develop greater access to the imaginal realm. This opens up a world which, by definition, contains wider parameters for experience and growth. It provides a comprehensive, cohesive method and model. With it, man may live his individuality within the context of tradition. There are aspects of creative mythology, and its form of metaphorical perception, which tie it in with a holographic concept of reality.
(2) Within metaphorical and mythic conception, a part does not merely stand in the place of or represent the union of several elements, but rather it is identical with the whole. If the part is the whole, then whoever controls the part controls the whole. In normal discourse, symbols represent their referents and are separable from what they represent; in metaphorical or mythic conception, the symbols are their referents; they cannot be separated. The elegance of language lies in its capacity to separate symbol from experience so that symbols can be manipulated in a way that experiences cannot be. While we cannot experience precisely the same thing ever again, we can attach similar symbols to represent two experiences as being roughly the same.
(3) The chaotic assortment of apparent and disguised mythological images have certain typical features. We may reduce the infinitely variegated and complex forms to their simplest expressions as a means of recognizing them. Jung's list of salient characteristics includes: Chaotic multiplicity and order; duality; the opposition of light and dark, upper and lower, right and left; the union of opposites in a third (complexio oppositorum); the quaternity (square, cross); rotation (circle, sphere); and finally the centering process and a radial arrangement usually followed by some quaternity system. The centering process is...the never-to-be-surpassed climax of the whole development, and is characterized as such by the fact that it brings with it the greatest possible therapeutic effect.
Experience of these archetypal processes offers the possibility of orienting oneself. Several traditional mystical exercises stress the importance of the centering process. Fundamental in these meditations is orienting oneself to the four cardinal directions. The role of creative imagination is fundamental.
Virtually any experience available to man is integrated via a form of imagery. Myth raises the individual to a superhuman or superhistorical plane. It enables him to approach Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane experience. If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate Reality of things, it is just because Reality manifests itself in contradictory ways and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.
James Hillman, Director of Studies in Imaginal Psychology at the University of Texas, states that "We can describe the psyche as a polycentric realm of nonverbal, nonspatial images. Myth offers the same kind of world. It too, is polycentric, with innumerable personifications in imaginal space. Just as dream images are not mere words in disguise...so the ancient personifications of myths are not concepts in disguise." He states further that these "soul events are not parts of any system. They are independent of the tandems in which they are placed, inasmuch as there is an independent primacy of the imaginal that creates its fantasies automatically, ceaselessly, and spontaneously. Myth-making is not compensatory to anything else."
The more paradigmatic models one has access to, the more freedom of creation one experiences. "It is egoistic to recognize oneself in only one portion of a tale, case in only one role." (4) Polytheistic consciousness allows us to experience the gamut of archetypal perspectives. This leads the individual to broader consciousness and greater tolerance of other individual's perspectives.
Myth is the comprehensive metaphor, "answering our requirements for intellectual puzzlement and explanation through enigma by providing as-if fictions in depth, complexity, and exquisite differentiation." "Myth," says Hermann Broch, "is the archetype of every phenomenal cognition, of which the human mind is capable. Archetype of all human cognition, archetype of science, archetype of art--myth is consequently that archetype of philosophy, too." We might deduce from this that myth functions as a sort of metapsychology.
Mythic metaphors elude literalism; they dramatically present themselves as impossible truths. They have the ability to transform concrete particulars into universals, and to present abstract universals as concrete actions. They are ways not only of speaking, perceiving, and feeling, but of existing. We may experience mythical consciousness by finding Gods in our concrete lives. They are found by entering myths, since that is where they are. We may participate with them by recognizing our concrete existence as metaphors, or mythic enactments.
However, Hillman is very deliberate in stating that: "myths resist being interpreted into practical life. They are not allegories of applied psychology, solutions to personal problems. This is the old moralistic fallacy, now become the therapeutic fallacy, telling us which step to take and what to do next, where the hero went wrong and had to pay the consequences, as if this practical guidance were what was meant by 'living one's myth'."
"Living one's myth doesn't simply mean living one myth. It means that one lives myth; it means mythical living...to try to use a myth practically keeps us still in the pattern of the heroic ego, learning how to do his deeds correctly. Myths do not tell us how. They simply give the invisible background which starts us imagining, questioning, going deeper." Myths do not carry one to a central meaning, or the center of meaning. "To enter myth we must personify, to personify carries us into myth."
III. Exercise
Personification is a mode of viewing archetypal processes in their traditional forms as gods and goddesses. This method allows us to love the gods, giving them attention and worship. Their names aid us in discriminating them one from another. They give us the ability to call upon them. This process of devotion takes place in the imaginal realm of the heart. In QBL, this is Tiphareth, the heart-center. In Eastern systems, it is known as anahata chakra. It is the realm of soul-making. Personification is a spontaneous process, springing from the heart, where imagination reigns. This process of active imagination allows us to "see through" the literalisms of mundane existence and to participate in relationships with the divine.
A primary purpose of Middle Pillar Exercise is to orient oneself with the Universe (5). It promises equilibration and renewal. In Middle Pillar Exercise, the gods are brought into consciousness by intoning their names. This creates a resonance effect which stimulates glands. These names are related, via correspondence, to various centers in the body. Repeated practice of Middle Pillar Exercise is fundamental for any Magickal development. It heals the culturally-preprogrammed split between mind, soul and body. The Banishing Ritual and Middle Pillar Exercise are particularly effective because they are a dramatization of the Creation Myth.
In his book, The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade states, "The creation of the world becomes the archetype of every human gesture, whatever its plane of reference may be. Every construction or fabrication has the cosmogony as paradigmatic model. Techniques of orientation (aligning oneself to the directions), are designed for the construction of sacred space. The more closely a ritual reproduces the work of the gods in creation, the more effective it is in producing the desired psychological results. Knowing the value of a ritual satisfies both the rational and aesthetic mind. The model for the creation of sacred space begins from a center and projects horizons in the four cardinal directions. This model has been followed throughout history when settling new territory or in the founding of cities. We always reside at the center of "our world."
This quadrated circle sets up the conditions necessary for us to enter into sacred time. The Banishing Ritual "cleanses" the portion of space within the perimeter of the circle. This eliminates unwanted thoughts which could cause distraction. One then has enhanced ability to focus and concentrate. The circle is cleared of all 'entities,' good or evil. Then one may call in specific gods, at will. We may contact the gods through the medium of the sacred pole or cosmic pillar. Sacred time appears under the paradoxical aspect of circular time, reversible and recoverable, a sort of mythical eternal present that is periodically reintegrated by means of rites. When we enter this space, we experience the feeling of immortality, since we are in a time which is equivalent to the "beginning."
The principle characteristics of sacred space are:
a) A break in the homogeneity of space;
b) This break is symbolized by an opening where passage from one cosmic region to another is facilitated (i.e. between heaven and earth; earth and the underworld);
c) Communication with heaven is expressed by variants of the Cosmic Pillar, which stands at the Center of the World. This Pillar is a useful symbol for what is termed in psychology the Ego-Self Axis.
The axis is built up through various psychological exercises, involving active imagination. It forms the link between ego-consciousness and the Self. This represents both the conscious and subconscious mind working together in harmony. It is known in Magick as Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. The Banishing and Middle Pillar exercises conform precisely to the creation myth. Since a myth is a paradigmatic model, one can see it is a very effective exercise. It establishes one's relationship to the cosmos, or totality.
Eliade has said: What men do on their own initiative, without a mythical model, belongs to the sphere of the profane; hence, it is a vain and illusory activity, in the last analysis, unreal. The more religious a man is, the more paradigmatic models he possesses to guide his attitudes and actions.
The importance of persistent practice of Middle Pillar technique, throughout the Magickal career, is not to be underestimated. Israel Regardie is quite firm on this point. "To my mind, the exercise described as the Middle Pillar is the groundwork of all actual developmental work. It is a process which is the basis of Magic. That this has been but seldom realized is obviously at the root of the futile attempts to do Ceremonial and perform Ritual, of which the general public hears every now and again. Even students of Magic of many years standing have been guilty of negligence in this respect, and also in failing to recommend it to their successors." (6)
Timelessness will appear as a multiple recurrence (chronicity). The archetypal order will make these appearances regular, both in time (wave frequency) and magnitude (wave amplitude). The ego has the option of actively participating in the process through the medium of active imagination. This develops insight. To restore our earth to a ground in creative imagination we must re-imagine the creation. (7)
Myth reveals old and new patterns of thinking and self-reflection and while
there is continuity between old and new, they can be experienced as wholly
different in character and the transition between them is tantamount to
dialoguing with the Other. As mediator of ego consciousness and the
transcendent, myth is in liminal space and is symbolic in status. Myth is a
conscious interpretation of unconscious communication and as such its
nature is both rational and non-rational, archetypal image and ineffable,
numinous `content'. As symbols, myths are clothed with finite images that
are subjectively designed by the ego according to its response to the transcendent
and its own conscious attitude or orientation (Jung 1951c: 355).
The image has a subjective power and can therefore be experienced as a
symbol for one person and an ineffective sign for another.
--Huskinson, Dreaming the Myth Onwards
"Like dreams, myths are productions of the human imagination. Their images, consequently—though derived from the material world and its supposed history—are, like dreams, revelations of the deepest hopes, desires and fears, potentialities and conflicts, of the human will—which in turn is moved by the energies of the organs of the body operating variously against each other and in concert. Every myth, that is to say, whether or not by intention, is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors."
Joseph Campbell, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space
(courtesy of the Joseph Campbell Foundation)
"A mythological canon is an organization of symbols, ineffable in import, by which the energies of aspiration are evoked and gathered toward a focus. The message leaps from heart to heart by way of the brain, and where the brain is unpersuaded, the message cannot pass.The life, then, is untouched. For those in whom a local mythology still works, there is an experience both of accord with the social order, and of harmony with the universe. For those, however, in whom the authorized signs no longer work––or, if working, produce deviant effects––there follows inevitably a sense both of dissociation from the local social nexus and of quest, within and without, for life, which the brain takes to be for 'meaning.' "
Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Vol. IV: Creative Mythology
(courtesy of the Joseph Campbell Foundation)
[Carl Jung on “What is the myth you are living?”]
Besides the obvious personal sources, creative fantasy also draws upon the forgotten and long buried primitive mind with
its host of images, which are to be found in the mythologies of all ages and all peoples.
The sum of these images constitutes the collective unconscious, a heritage which is potentially present in every individual.
It is the psychic correlate of the differentiation of the human brain.
This is the reason why mythological image are able to arise spontaneously over and over again, and to agree with one another not only in all the corners of the wide earth, but at all times.
As they are present always and everywhere, it is an entirely natural proceeding to relate mythologems, which may be very far apart both temporally and ethnically, to an individual fantasy system.
The creative substratum is everywhere this same human psyche and this same human brain, which, with relatively minor variations, functions everywhere in the same way. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Page xxix
I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: “What is the myth you are living?”
I found no answer to this question, and had to admit that I was not living with a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust.
I did not know that I was living a myth, and even if I had known it, I would not have known what sort of myth was ordering my life without my knowledge.
So, in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get to know “my” myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks, for—so I told myself—how could I, when treating my patients, make due allowance for the personal factor, for my personal equation, which is yet so necessary for a knowledge of the other person, if I was unconscious of it? I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me, from what rhizome I sprang.
This resolve led me to devote many years of my life to investigating the subjective contents which are the products of unconscious processes, and to work out methods which would enable us, or at any rate help us, to explore the manifestations of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Pages xxiv-xxv
Besides the obvious personal sources, creative fantasy also draws upon the forgotten and long buried primitive mind with its host of images, which are to be found in the mythologies of all ages and all peoples. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Pages xxiv-xxv
“The Gods and Goddesses of myth, legend and fairy tale represent archetypes, real potencies and potentialities deep within the psyche, which, when allowed to flower permit us to be more fully human.” --Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon
"For me, mythology is a function of biology...a product of the soma's imagination. What do our bodies says? And what are our bodies telling us? The human imagination is grounded in the energies of the body. And the organs of the body are the determinants of these energies and the conflicts between the impulse systems of the organs and the harmonization of them. These are the matters of myth".
--JOSEPH CAMPBELL
JEFFREY MISHLOVE: Hello and welcome. Our topic today is "Understanding Mythology," and our guest is perhaps the world's foremost mythologist, Joseph Campbell, the author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Masks of God, and the Atlas of World Mythology. Welcome to the program.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Thank you.
MISHLOVE: It's a pleasure to have you here. In your approach to mythology, you've come to take the view recently that mythology stems from the human body itself, from our own experiences -- that every mythological story or experience comes from our experiences as human beings in a physical body.
CAMPBELL: Yes.
MISHLOVE: I would think that would be quite contrary to an earlier idea that mythology is pretty much the product of fantasy or imagination.
CAMPBELL: Fantasy and imagination is a product of the body. The energies that bring forth the fantasies derive from the organs of the body. The organs of the body are the source of our life, and of our intentions for life, and they conflict with each other. Among these organs, of course, is the brain. And then you must think of the various impulses that dominate our life system -- the erotic impulse; the impulse to conquer, conquest and all that; self preservation; and then certain thoughts that have to do with ideals and things that are held up before us as aims worth living for and giving life its value and so forth. All of these different forces come into conflict within us. And the function of mythological imagery is to harmonize them, coordinate the energies of our body, so that we will live a harmonious and fruitful life in accord with our society, and with the new mystery that emerges with every new human being -- namely, what are the possibilities of this particular human life? And mythology has to do with guiding us --first, in relation to the society and the whole world of nature, which is outside of us but also within us, because the organs of our body are of nature; and then also, the guiding of the individual through the inevitable stages of life, from childhood to maturity, and then on to the last gate. And this is concerned with those matters.
Question 2: Can myth be equated with a collective dream? If so, are we to assume that a historical event either precedes or follows it?
Dr. Jung: Here you must define more precisely what you mean by myth.
Strictly speaking, a myth is a historical document.
It is told, it is recorded, but it is not in itself a dream.
It is the product of an unconscious process in a particular social group, at a particular time, at a particular place.
This unconscious process can naturally be equated with a dream.
Hence anyone who "mythologizes," that is, tells myths, is speaking out of this dream, and what is then retold or actually recorded is the myth.
But you cannot, strictly speaking, properly take the myth as a unique historical event like a dream, an individual dream which has its place in a time sequence; you can do that only grosso modo.
You can say that at a particular place, at a particular time, a particular social group was caught up in such a process, and perhaps you can so to speak condense this process, covering it may be several thousand years, and say this epoch historically precedes such and such, and historically follows such and such.
This is a very troublesome undertaking.
What precedes the myth of Osiris, for example?
The Osiris myth goes back to approximately 400o B.C.
What preceded it?
Total darkness.
We just don't know.
And what followed it?
The answer to this is of course much easier: the Osiris myth was followed by the Christ myth.
That is perfectly clear, even though theologians assure us that remarkably enough the mental outlook of the New Testament has nothing to do with Egyptology, or precious little; but it is simply that people know too little, that's all.
I will give you only one example.
As you know, Christ's genealogical table in the New Testament consists of 3 x 14 names.'
The number 14 is significant, because at the great Heb-Sed festival of the ancient Egyptians, celebrated every thirty years to reaffirm Pharaoh as God's son, statues of 14 of his ancestors were carried before him at the procession, and if 14 ancestors couldn't be found, some invented ones were added—there had to be 14 of them.'
Well, in the case of God's son Christ, who was of course infinitely more exalted than Pharaoh, there had to be 3 x 14 generations, and that is a Trishagion, the well-known triple formula for "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Sabaoth."
This triple repetition is simply an expression of the numinosity of the "Thrice Holy."
Here, then, we have one such trace [of Egyptian influence].
If you carefully study the statements about Christ that have been handed down historically, you will find they are mythological statements intimately connected with the myth of Osiris.
That is why Christianity spread into Egypt without meeting the slightest resistance.
The country was Christianized in no time because all the necessary precedents already existed.
Take for example the fish, the fish attribute of Christ: it was swallowed by the Egyptians without question because they already had a day on which a certain fish might be eaten and on other days not.
All this quite apart from the spiritual content of the Osiris myth.
Now it is the case with most myths, when you examine them more closely, that the historical event can be established post festum but not ante festum, because the more numinous these mythological statements are, the further they recede into the dim bygone of human history.
We at any rate are in the fortunate position of late epigoni, who, looking back on three Platonic months, three aeons of conscious history, can demonstrate that these myths form a continuity.
Thus the Osiris myth was clearly superseded by the Christ myth.
This is one of the finest examples of mythological continuity.
It is as though in the course of the millennia slow upheavals took place in the unconscious, each new aeon being as it were ushered in by a new myth.
The myth is not new, it is age-old, but a new version, a new edition of it, a new interpretation characterizes the new epoch.
That is why, for the ancients, the transition from one age to another was an important event.
For instance Hammurabi, the famous Babylonian lawgiver, felt he was the Lord of a new aeon; he lived around 2000 B.C.
That is roughly the time when the Jewish tradition began.
Think, also, of the Augustan Age another two thousand years later, which began with Divus Augustus, whose birth was regarded as the birth of a savior.
And if you recall Virgil's 4th Eclogue,' you will see that the child who ushers in the coming age is a bringer of peace, a savior, who was naturally interpreted by the Christians as Christ.
The date of Virgil's poem is pre-Christian. For him it was certainly the birth of Augustus that was meant.
At that time there was a tremendous longing for redemption in Italy, because two thirds—please note—two thirds of the population consisted of slaves whose fate was hopelessly sealed.
That gave rise to a general mood of depression, and in the melancholy of the Augustan Age this longing for redemption came to expression.
Therefore a man who knew how to "mythologize," like Virgil, expressed this situation in the 4th Eclogue.
Thanks to this prophetic gift he is also the psychopomp in Dante, the guide of souls in purgatory and in hell.
Afterwards, of course, in the Christian paradise, he had to surrender this role to the feminine principle [Beatrice], and this is naturally highly significant in view of the future recognition of the feminine figure in Christianity.
But all that was in Dante's time.
Then, as you know, it was six hundred years until the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was promulgated by Pius IX,' and another hundred years until the promulgation of the Assumption. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking – Interviews and Encounters, Pages 370-373.
there is continuity between old and new, they can be experienced as wholly
different in character and the transition between them is tantamount to
dialoguing with the Other. As mediator of ego consciousness and the
transcendent, myth is in liminal space and is symbolic in status. Myth is a
conscious interpretation of unconscious communication and as such its
nature is both rational and non-rational, archetypal image and ineffable,
numinous `content'. As symbols, myths are clothed with finite images that
are subjectively designed by the ego according to its response to the transcendent
and its own conscious attitude or orientation (Jung 1951c: 355).
The image has a subjective power and can therefore be experienced as a
symbol for one person and an ineffective sign for another.
--Huskinson, Dreaming the Myth Onwards
"Like dreams, myths are productions of the human imagination. Their images, consequently—though derived from the material world and its supposed history—are, like dreams, revelations of the deepest hopes, desires and fears, potentialities and conflicts, of the human will—which in turn is moved by the energies of the organs of the body operating variously against each other and in concert. Every myth, that is to say, whether or not by intention, is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors."
Joseph Campbell, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space
(courtesy of the Joseph Campbell Foundation)
"A mythological canon is an organization of symbols, ineffable in import, by which the energies of aspiration are evoked and gathered toward a focus. The message leaps from heart to heart by way of the brain, and where the brain is unpersuaded, the message cannot pass.The life, then, is untouched. For those in whom a local mythology still works, there is an experience both of accord with the social order, and of harmony with the universe. For those, however, in whom the authorized signs no longer work––or, if working, produce deviant effects––there follows inevitably a sense both of dissociation from the local social nexus and of quest, within and without, for life, which the brain takes to be for 'meaning.' "
Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Vol. IV: Creative Mythology
(courtesy of the Joseph Campbell Foundation)
[Carl Jung on “What is the myth you are living?”]
Besides the obvious personal sources, creative fantasy also draws upon the forgotten and long buried primitive mind with
its host of images, which are to be found in the mythologies of all ages and all peoples.
The sum of these images constitutes the collective unconscious, a heritage which is potentially present in every individual.
It is the psychic correlate of the differentiation of the human brain.
This is the reason why mythological image are able to arise spontaneously over and over again, and to agree with one another not only in all the corners of the wide earth, but at all times.
As they are present always and everywhere, it is an entirely natural proceeding to relate mythologems, which may be very far apart both temporally and ethnically, to an individual fantasy system.
The creative substratum is everywhere this same human psyche and this same human brain, which, with relatively minor variations, functions everywhere in the same way. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Page xxix
I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: “What is the myth you are living?”
I found no answer to this question, and had to admit that I was not living with a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust.
I did not know that I was living a myth, and even if I had known it, I would not have known what sort of myth was ordering my life without my knowledge.
So, in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get to know “my” myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks, for—so I told myself—how could I, when treating my patients, make due allowance for the personal factor, for my personal equation, which is yet so necessary for a knowledge of the other person, if I was unconscious of it? I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me, from what rhizome I sprang.
This resolve led me to devote many years of my life to investigating the subjective contents which are the products of unconscious processes, and to work out methods which would enable us, or at any rate help us, to explore the manifestations of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Pages xxiv-xxv
Besides the obvious personal sources, creative fantasy also draws upon the forgotten and long buried primitive mind with its host of images, which are to be found in the mythologies of all ages and all peoples. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Pages xxiv-xxv
“The Gods and Goddesses of myth, legend and fairy tale represent archetypes, real potencies and potentialities deep within the psyche, which, when allowed to flower permit us to be more fully human.” --Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon
"For me, mythology is a function of biology...a product of the soma's imagination. What do our bodies says? And what are our bodies telling us? The human imagination is grounded in the energies of the body. And the organs of the body are the determinants of these energies and the conflicts between the impulse systems of the organs and the harmonization of them. These are the matters of myth".
--JOSEPH CAMPBELL
JEFFREY MISHLOVE: Hello and welcome. Our topic today is "Understanding Mythology," and our guest is perhaps the world's foremost mythologist, Joseph Campbell, the author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Masks of God, and the Atlas of World Mythology. Welcome to the program.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Thank you.
MISHLOVE: It's a pleasure to have you here. In your approach to mythology, you've come to take the view recently that mythology stems from the human body itself, from our own experiences -- that every mythological story or experience comes from our experiences as human beings in a physical body.
CAMPBELL: Yes.
MISHLOVE: I would think that would be quite contrary to an earlier idea that mythology is pretty much the product of fantasy or imagination.
CAMPBELL: Fantasy and imagination is a product of the body. The energies that bring forth the fantasies derive from the organs of the body. The organs of the body are the source of our life, and of our intentions for life, and they conflict with each other. Among these organs, of course, is the brain. And then you must think of the various impulses that dominate our life system -- the erotic impulse; the impulse to conquer, conquest and all that; self preservation; and then certain thoughts that have to do with ideals and things that are held up before us as aims worth living for and giving life its value and so forth. All of these different forces come into conflict within us. And the function of mythological imagery is to harmonize them, coordinate the energies of our body, so that we will live a harmonious and fruitful life in accord with our society, and with the new mystery that emerges with every new human being -- namely, what are the possibilities of this particular human life? And mythology has to do with guiding us --first, in relation to the society and the whole world of nature, which is outside of us but also within us, because the organs of our body are of nature; and then also, the guiding of the individual through the inevitable stages of life, from childhood to maturity, and then on to the last gate. And this is concerned with those matters.
Question 2: Can myth be equated with a collective dream? If so, are we to assume that a historical event either precedes or follows it?
Dr. Jung: Here you must define more precisely what you mean by myth.
Strictly speaking, a myth is a historical document.
It is told, it is recorded, but it is not in itself a dream.
It is the product of an unconscious process in a particular social group, at a particular time, at a particular place.
This unconscious process can naturally be equated with a dream.
Hence anyone who "mythologizes," that is, tells myths, is speaking out of this dream, and what is then retold or actually recorded is the myth.
But you cannot, strictly speaking, properly take the myth as a unique historical event like a dream, an individual dream which has its place in a time sequence; you can do that only grosso modo.
You can say that at a particular place, at a particular time, a particular social group was caught up in such a process, and perhaps you can so to speak condense this process, covering it may be several thousand years, and say this epoch historically precedes such and such, and historically follows such and such.
This is a very troublesome undertaking.
What precedes the myth of Osiris, for example?
The Osiris myth goes back to approximately 400o B.C.
What preceded it?
Total darkness.
We just don't know.
And what followed it?
The answer to this is of course much easier: the Osiris myth was followed by the Christ myth.
That is perfectly clear, even though theologians assure us that remarkably enough the mental outlook of the New Testament has nothing to do with Egyptology, or precious little; but it is simply that people know too little, that's all.
I will give you only one example.
As you know, Christ's genealogical table in the New Testament consists of 3 x 14 names.'
The number 14 is significant, because at the great Heb-Sed festival of the ancient Egyptians, celebrated every thirty years to reaffirm Pharaoh as God's son, statues of 14 of his ancestors were carried before him at the procession, and if 14 ancestors couldn't be found, some invented ones were added—there had to be 14 of them.'
Well, in the case of God's son Christ, who was of course infinitely more exalted than Pharaoh, there had to be 3 x 14 generations, and that is a Trishagion, the well-known triple formula for "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Sabaoth."
This triple repetition is simply an expression of the numinosity of the "Thrice Holy."
Here, then, we have one such trace [of Egyptian influence].
If you carefully study the statements about Christ that have been handed down historically, you will find they are mythological statements intimately connected with the myth of Osiris.
That is why Christianity spread into Egypt without meeting the slightest resistance.
The country was Christianized in no time because all the necessary precedents already existed.
Take for example the fish, the fish attribute of Christ: it was swallowed by the Egyptians without question because they already had a day on which a certain fish might be eaten and on other days not.
All this quite apart from the spiritual content of the Osiris myth.
Now it is the case with most myths, when you examine them more closely, that the historical event can be established post festum but not ante festum, because the more numinous these mythological statements are, the further they recede into the dim bygone of human history.
We at any rate are in the fortunate position of late epigoni, who, looking back on three Platonic months, three aeons of conscious history, can demonstrate that these myths form a continuity.
Thus the Osiris myth was clearly superseded by the Christ myth.
This is one of the finest examples of mythological continuity.
It is as though in the course of the millennia slow upheavals took place in the unconscious, each new aeon being as it were ushered in by a new myth.
The myth is not new, it is age-old, but a new version, a new edition of it, a new interpretation characterizes the new epoch.
That is why, for the ancients, the transition from one age to another was an important event.
For instance Hammurabi, the famous Babylonian lawgiver, felt he was the Lord of a new aeon; he lived around 2000 B.C.
That is roughly the time when the Jewish tradition began.
Think, also, of the Augustan Age another two thousand years later, which began with Divus Augustus, whose birth was regarded as the birth of a savior.
And if you recall Virgil's 4th Eclogue,' you will see that the child who ushers in the coming age is a bringer of peace, a savior, who was naturally interpreted by the Christians as Christ.
The date of Virgil's poem is pre-Christian. For him it was certainly the birth of Augustus that was meant.
At that time there was a tremendous longing for redemption in Italy, because two thirds—please note—two thirds of the population consisted of slaves whose fate was hopelessly sealed.
That gave rise to a general mood of depression, and in the melancholy of the Augustan Age this longing for redemption came to expression.
Therefore a man who knew how to "mythologize," like Virgil, expressed this situation in the 4th Eclogue.
Thanks to this prophetic gift he is also the psychopomp in Dante, the guide of souls in purgatory and in hell.
Afterwards, of course, in the Christian paradise, he had to surrender this role to the feminine principle [Beatrice], and this is naturally highly significant in view of the future recognition of the feminine figure in Christianity.
But all that was in Dante's time.
Then, as you know, it was six hundred years until the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was promulgated by Pius IX,' and another hundred years until the promulgation of the Assumption. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking – Interviews and Encounters, Pages 370-373.
3.4 MYTH
Gowan, TAC
3.41 General Introduction
True myth is defined by Graves (1955:10) as "the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals. ... Their subjects were archaic magic-makings that promoted the fertility or stability of a sacred queendom, . . ." Graves goes on to point out that magic, supernatural or totem calendar-beasts figured in these rituals, and that to understand Greek mythology we must appreciate the matriarchal and totemistic system which held sway there before incursion of patriarchal invaders. An example of such a mythical beast was the chimera, with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
While Jung believes that myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, Graves holds that a "true science of myth should begin with a study of archaeology, history, and comparative religion" (1955:22).
Eliade concludes that the value of myth lies in its ability to evoke a numinous relationship through a priest or by proxy for a believer who is otherwise, however, incapable of any other relationship with the ground of being. He says (1969:59):
The myth continually reactualizes the Great Time and in so doing raises the listener to a superhuman and suprahistorical plane; which among other things, enables him to approach a Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane, individual existence.
It may be seen that this indeed is the function of all parataxic representation, not only with myth, but also with archetypes, dreams, art, and especially ritual. For whether we consider ritual magic or the Mass of the Church, it is obvious that ritual has the common purpose of gaining merit and personal advantage for the celebrant and his constituency, through approach to the numinous element or some manifestation of it.
The archaeology of man's developing social thought is preserved in myth. Recently acquired is the "loose and separate" consciousness of Western man which separates him from the continuum of nature in time, space, and personality. More primitive consciousness was not so differentiated; it was more dreamy and less clear. In myth we find remnants of images now less than precise, whose equivocal ambivalence was once an asset. In the dawning of consciousness, wherein myth abounded, it was easier to believe that man might be metamorphosed into an animal or vice versa, that magical flight could conquer space, and that precognition could reverse time. The vestiges of these motifs in myth is testimony to the development of a conscious ego from a primal self which did not know itself as distinct from nature. The periodic developmental stage theory (Gowan 1972,1974) presents an ontogenic recapitulation of evolutionary phylogeny. The differentiation of ego functioning culminates in stage 5, (the Eriksonian identity crisis), as the individual correlate of the evolution of the personal ego in the species.
Eliade (1969:14) points out that this mythical repository in modern man has been relegated to the attic of the unconscious:
For the unconscious is not haunted by monsters only: the gods, goddesses, the heroes, and the fairies dwell there too; moreover, the monsters of the unconscious are themselves mythological, seeing that they continue to fulfill the same functions that they fulfilled in all the mythologies - in the last analysis that of helping man liberate himself. . . .
But images possess the disadvantage of not being categorical. Says Eliade (1969:15):
Images by their very nature are multivalent (i.o.). If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate reality of things, it is just because reality manifests itself in contradictory ways, and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.
Eliade (1969:57) tells us:
Myth is an account of events which took place in principio, that is "in the beginning," in a primordial and non-temporal instant, a moment of sacred time (i.o.). The mythic or sacred time is qualitatively different from profane time, from continuous and irreversible time of our everyday de- sacralized existence. In narrating a myth one reactualizes in some sort the sacred time in which the events narrated took place.
Myth, therefore is a way of bringing the numinous to the common man without involving him in an altered state of consciousness. Its sacramental character veils an inner numinous truth which is explicated by the ritual which the myth demands, and which action reaffirms the relationship between the present which is in time, and the numinous which is out of time.
Eliade (1963:18) says:
Myth as experienced in archaic societies:
(1) constitute the history and acts of the supernaturals;
(2) this history is considered to be absolutely true ... and sacred;
(3) that myth is always related to creation (it tells how something came into existence);
(4) that by knowing the myth one knows the origin of things, and hence can control and manipulate them at will (by) a knowledge that one "experiences" ritually, either by ceremonially recounting the myth, or by performing the ritual for which it is the justification;
(5) that in one way or another one "lives" the myth, in the sense that one is "seized" by the sacred exalting power of the events recollected or re-enacted.
Gaster (1950:11) traces the origin of myth as "a sequence of ritual acts, which ... have characterized major seasonal festivities." These as he explains (1950:9) are "derived from a religious ritual designed to ensure the rebirth of a dead world." He elaborates on the central thesis (1950:17) as follows:
Seasonal rituals are functional in character. Their purpose is to revive the topocosm (i.o.), that is, the entire complex of any given locality conceived as a living organism. But this topocosm possesses a ... durative aspect, representing not only actual and present community, but also the ideal of community, an entity, of which the latter is but the current manifestation. Accordingly, seasonal rituals are accompanied by myths which are designed to present the purely functional acts in terms of ideal and durative situations. The impenetration of myth and ritual creates drama. ... What the King does on the punctual plane, the God does on the durative. . . . The pattern is based on the conception that life is vouchsafed in a series of leases which have annually to be renewed.3
It would be difficult to state more clearly and concisely the central motivating elements of myth than has here been done. The concept that the topocosm needs to be renewed like an annual lease, and that since it exists on the transcendental (durative) level, it can be affected as if in sympathetic magic on the temporal (punctual) level, and finally that it is a living organism amenable to the efforts of man, is both good anthropology and excellent psychology regarding man's parataxic relationship to the numinous element.
In contrast to the void of the numinous element, but in no wise the antithesis of it, stands a conceptualization identified by Gaster (1950) as the "durative topocosm." It would be easy to say that this represents nature, seen in her anthropomorphic aspects, but that is too simple; another partial view would equate this conceptualization to the goddess Ceres with all her manifestations of bounty, but even this does not capture the full "durative" aspect. For it embraces not merely the progression of the seasons, and the fecundation of nature, processes which eventuate at a given time and place, but the generative element in these processes which continues as in a procession or ceremony to provide the continual source and origin of what man merely sees as an outcome at a given time and place. It is the numinous clothed and housed in forms which we perceive as natural.
Thus Malinowski (1928:23) says:
We can find among the most primitive peoples and throughout the lower savagery a belief in a supernatural impersonal force, moving all those agencies which are relevant to the savage and causing all the really important events in the domain of the sacred. Thus mana (i.o.) not animism is the essence of "pre-animistic religion," and is also the essence of magic. . . .
The durative topocosm is generally celebrated as Sir James Frazer noted in "The Golden Bough"in cults and ceremonies of vegetation and fertility. As in totemism (Malinowski 1968:45) "This ritual leads to acts of a magical nature, by which plenty is brought about" and man by his rites certifies the renewal of the annual lease of the potential bounty of the topocosm.
Malinowski (1968:73) quotes Codrington as saying:
This mana is not fixed in anything, and can be conveyed in almost anything. (It) acts in all ways for good and evil . . ., shows itself in physical force or in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses.
Ultimate reality, in the guise of the durative topocosm, cannot adequately present itself through a language of tensed verbs. Hence it must do so through a metaphor of continual recurrence; we should learn to recognize such usage in myth and fable as signifying the advent of the "spacious present" in which clock time is transcended. Such fables as Sisyphus rolling up the stone, which rolls down again, the Medusa which grows two heads when one is cut off, Brigadoon which keeps appearing one day every hundred years, ghosts which keep haunting a castle on an anniversary, are alike examples of an incident which "occur" in durative time, and which, therefore, seem to keep repeating in ours. A second example of the durative nature of this reality is the fact that mortals immersed in it (in fable) are apt to find that a shorter duration in it amounts to a much longer elapse of clock time. Examples which come to mind include Brigadoon, Rip Van Winkle, and many fairy tales.10
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Myth involves explication of psychic tensions which activate archetypes and dreams, but are now expressed in the ordinary state of consciousness in terms of images. Cassirer (1955:11:25-36) points out the development of image in the parataxic mode as follows:
The mythical world is concrete ... because in it the two main factors, thing and signification are undifferentiated. . . . The concresence of name and thing in the linguistic consciousness of primitives and children might be illustrated ... (striking example: name tabus).... But as language develops, distinct from all mere physical existence and all physical efficacy, the word emerges in its own specificity, in its purely ideal significatory function. And art leads us to still another stage of development. . . . Here for the first time the image world acquires a purely immanent validity and truth. . . . Thus for the first time the world of images becomes a self-contained cosmos ... severing its bonds with immediate reality, with material existence and efficacy which constitute the world of magic and myth; it embodies a new step.
Psychic tensions exist in a society as well as in individuals. The parataxic outlet for these tensions in the individual is art; in society it is myth and ritual. Myth of course is an example of the outletting of such tensions: Abell explains (1966:94):
Similarly a myth has not only its "active period of psychic eruption and imaginative overflow, but also its subsequent period of extinction and disintegration." A later form of extinct myth will differ greatly from the earlier expression of the active period and may retain little of the tension-imagery.
He continues (1966:96):
The action of eruptive and erosive forces in the sphere of the near myth can be observed in the phases through which every artistic movement seems destined to pass. An exploratory or "creative" phase is eventually succeeded by a stereotyped or "academic" phase. Artists, participating in the exploratory phase, ... work with feverish intensity and bring forth results that are dazzling, often bewildering and seemingly unreasonable to those who witness their cultural emergence.
Some writers, perhaps metaphorically, see myth as the record of a "social womb" in which primitive man, not yet endowed with full cognition, is protected from reality by a dreamy placental envelope.
Hall (1960: 10) points out that from an occult point of view mythologies and mythological characters may have developed from racial memories of super-identities who helped our species become human.
3.42 Examples of Myth11
Henderson (Jung 1964:101) points out that the "hero myth" is the most common and popular in the world. He says:
Over and over again one hears a tale describing a hero's miraculous but humble birth, his early proof of superhuman strength, his rapid rise to prominence or power, his triumphant struggle with the forces of evil, his fallibility to the sin of pride (hubris) and his fall through betrayal or a heroic sacrifice that ends in death.
Radin (1948) in Hero Cycles of the Winnebago notes four cycles in the evolution of the hero myth, calling them (1) the trickster cycle, (2) the hare cycle, (3) the red horn cycle, and (4) the twin cycle. The trickster sees his environment as a giver or withholder of good things, and craftily exploits it or appeases it to get what he wants. The hare represents a socialization of the trickster for he cooperates with his group instead of exploiting them. The third cycle Red Horn, is a younger brother who has envious brethren and who proves himself through endurance, thus raising his self-esteem. Finally, the twins are a pair of superhuman brothers who conquer heaven and earth, but finally sicken of their power, and either fall out or one betrays the other, and the death of one ensures. It is very easy to see in this hero myth parallels to the development of self-concept in the growing boy from a solitary exploiter of the world (in the third stage), through socialization in the fourth stage to identification with a brother in the fifth stage. Thus does ontogeny in the individual parallel phylogeny in the species.12
Henderson (Jung 1964:130) points out another universal myth that is often found in dreams of adolescent girls who are having difficulty accepting their feminine role as wife and mother. He says:
A universal myth expressing this kind of awakening is found in the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast. The best known version of this story related how Beauty, the youngest of four daughters, becomes her father's favorite because of her unselfish goodness. When she asks her father for only a white rose, she is aware only of her inner sincerity of feeling. She does not know that she is about to endanger her father's life and her ideal relation with him. For he steals the white rose from the enchanted garden of the Beast, who is stirred to anger by this theft, and requires him to return in three months for his punishment, presumably death.
As Henderson points out, the rose is the (sublimated) sexual love between daughter and father, a love which really belongs to a younger rival (the Beast), whose bestial aspects personify the rejected overt sex from which Beauty is free as long as she is "daddy's little girl." But as the tale tells us, Beauty is required to make an overt sexual advance (kiss the beast), and when she does so, she finds that he is transformed into a wonderful prince.
A third example of universal myth comes from tribal Africa. In Hahn's book on Africa (1961) "Ntu" is the numinous element, never seen but in its manifestations which are Muntu (man), Nommo (the power of the word) Kuntu (Modes and Styles), and Hantu (culture). All of these are part of the topocosm, that durative world of which our own series of events in space and time is only a shadow.
These three examples of myth account for bravery in males, beauty and charm in females, and the numinous quality found in man and indeed in nature.
3.43 Myth and Animals
Because primitive man lived much closer to the animals than we do and had reason to fear and totemize some of them, it is natural to find that animals play a great part in his myths. Myths about animals fall into three categories: (1) the transformation of man into animal or vice versa, (2) the totemization of a feared animal, and (3) the nagual or animal-twin of individual men. These categories are of course interconnected. They all represent attempts to extract the numinous quality from the animal and incorporate it into the individual (in character) or in society (in totem).
One of the environmental penalties of modern urban life is the estrangement of mankind from the animals. We do not realize this until we revert to the farm in the country or visit a game park. Man in simpler times, whether hunter or agriculturalist, lived on intimate terms with the animals in his habitat. He hunted them, he was hunted by them, he used them, he had them round and often in his dwelling, he played with them, lived close to them, and used anecdotes about them in his songs and dances. The importance of animals in the thinking of primitive man can scarcely be exaggerated; it is seen in myth and legend. The importance of animals in the farm life of man during the last millenium can be seen even in the different etymology and plurals of such ancient words as oxen, geese, mice, kine, deer.
One of the most important relationships of man to the animals in the hunting stage was success in finding game upon which sustanence and perhaps life itself might depend. Myth and ritual of the great hunter and the successful hunt thereby came to be very important.
Baumann (1954:149-50) explains the Lascaux Caves hunting magic dance pictures as follows:
These dances seem incredibly wild and grotesque. To an outsider the dancers appear to be quite beside themselves. And that is exactly what they are. Their burning desire carries them away while they are still dancing on the trail of the beast on which their thoughts are concentrated. In the dance their souls reach the utmost height of tension. Suddenly they let themselves go as the hunters' hand lets the arrow speed from the taut bow. They fall down; their bodies lie soulless, while their souls which have become arrows ... fly out and strike the beast.
But man was not only the hunter, he was sometimes the hunted. The universality of fear produced psychic tension which gave expression in myth. The prevalence of wolves as the primary predators upon our European ancestors is nowhere more noticeable than in the myth of lycanthropy as a projective defense mechanism. Wedeck (1961:171) tells us: "The werewolf appears in every culture and in every age. The ancients from Homer to Mela, from Varro and Virgil to Apuleius, Stabo, and Solinus testify to the prevalence of lycanthropy." The major predator explanation is reinforced again by Wedeck (1971:171) who points out that while werewolves are confined to Europe,
in some countries the change from man to animal involves another creature. In Malaya, for example, the human being changes into a tiger; in Iceland a bear; in Africa a tiger, hyena, or leopard; in India a tiger or leopard.
Let us remember that this fear of the supernatural animal is itself a totemization of an even more irrational fear of demons and monsters which plagued primitive man and is revealed in myth. But if animals were first invested with these magic properties of transformation, the fear of them could also be totemized by making the animal a blood brother ("I won't hunt you, and you won't hunt me), and this process eventually led to the myth of nagualism. Let us trace this syndrome in detail.
Abell asks (1966:155):
Was belief in the monster myths a useless though spontaneous result of the tensions of Neolithic life or did it perform some positive psychic function? . . . . Freud observes that "the dream relieves the mind like a safety valve, and that as Roberts has put it, all kinds of harmful material are rendered harmless by representation in dreams." No doubt the same could be said about myth.
He continues (1966:156):
The myth centered tribal fears in a being so formidable that no man could be condemned for fearing him; an indirect way of granting the fears a social sanction.
Abell opines that the positive note in religious belief is a developing function in culture, little seen in early man. He states (1966:158):
It seems evident that the positive aspects of Neolithic tension imagery were relatively little developed, offering nothing comparable in vividness or intensity to the monsters who swarmed around the negative pole.
According to Salar (1964) a nagual has two definitions; (1) the animal alter ego of an individual, a "guardian-spirit" or "destiny animal" (Middleton 1967:71, who gives many other cites), sometimes with astrological significance. Saler states that some believe in an affinity between the human and animal in regard to character traits and destiny; and (2) that of a transforming witch (akin to our werewolf) who is able to change into animal form in order to do evil at night.
Oakes (1951:170ff) reports that the Guatemalan Indians of the highlands show traces of a belief in nagualism (animal co-spirits for humans). According to this belief each child has a nagual animal and their lives are closely connected. From this it is easy to go to the ability of chimans (shamans) to change at will into animal form, and she relates tales of this sort given by the natives. Whereas the animal form in Europe is generally the wolf (werewolves), the animal form in this location is the coyote. For more on nagualism see Brinton (1894).
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Radin (1927:343) describes how the bear totem affects ceremonial treatment of the captured animal:
When a bear is caught, it is treated with all imaginable veneration and respect. First the hunter addresses a few words of apology and explanation to the animal. Then it is killed and dressed up in all the finery obtainable. . . . When a dead bear is dressed up, this is done as an offering or prayer to the chief of the bears, that he may send the Indians more of his children. ... In gratitude for the treatment accorded him, the bear forgives his slayers and enters their traps a willing and fascinated sacrifice.
Baumann (1954:152) speaking of the Lascaux cave drawings discusses nagualism as follows:
And just as every Red Indian felt he was bound in some special way to some animal, so also did every ice-age hunter. The guardian spirit dwelled in this one animal. Among the Red Indians the animal is called the totem. The ice-age hunter too had his totem animal, and he also tattooed the picture of his animal on his breast.
This process of "totemizing" the fearsome aspects of experience whether found in the natural world or in the numinous is extremely important as it shows how myth was used to reduce fear and irrational dread and to bring the experience into rational consciousness from the trauma with which it was first associated. It is hence necessary to discuss the totemization of myth.
3.44 Totemization of Myth
3.441 General
For a definition of "totem" we go to Malinowski (1928:24-5):
Totemism, to quote Frazer's classical definition: is an inanimate relation which is supposed to exist between a group of kindred people on the one side and a species of natural or artificial objects on the other, which objects are called the totems of the human group.
Malinowski (1928:25) quotes Durkheim as saying:
"In this the totemic principle which is identical with mana and with the God of the clan ... can be nothing else than the clan itself."
As man ascends in evolutionary development, he becomes more conscious of the numinous element and of himself as apart from it. He also begins the totemization of the more dreadful aspects of the numinous element: indeed, the whole parataxic mode is a kind of veiling of the head of Medusa. There is also a kind of slow change in regard to man's relation to various manifestations of the generalized preconscious.
We thus have a historical progress corresponding to slow evolutionary psychic development which goes somewhat as follows in regard to man's relationship to the numinous element:
1. In the ancient world man is seen as the puppet of the numinous element, which behaves in a capricious and irrational manner toward him.
2. Second, man is seen at the mercy of devils and demons; while menacing, they have only the power to tempt him, and may not punish or torture him unless he sins; furthermore he may at least partially ward off their evil influence by faith in the mother church.
This Christian belief has its pagan correlate in the similar belief about monsters and mythical animals (cf. Beowulf). As time goes on, however, the man triumphs over the monster more often, and remains to tell the tale. Sometimes (St. George and the Dragon) there is fusion of the Christian and Pagan elements.
A further change reduces the Christian numinous element to ghosts and the pagan counterpart to witches, fairies, and animals with supernatural power (werewolves).
3. Third, as the numinous element grows less to be feared, the human will comes more to be respected, and Promethean man is in process of birth.
To trace this progression more clearly let H stand for the human protagonist, and let N stand for the numinous element in some presentation indicated by a parenthesis:
1. H the plaything and puppet of N (gods and demons)
2. H preyed upon by N (mythical animals) (Beowulf)
3. H wars with and sometimes conquers N (animals with supernatural powers (St. George and the Dragon)
4. H plagued by devils who tempt him, but can resist them if faithful to tenets of mother church.
5. H plagued by N (witches, ghosts) whose power is definitely limited, and who may by craft be defeated or limited.
6. H helped by N (saints) who as former humans lived good lives.
7. H helped or hindered by N (fairies) whose magic is severely limited.
8. H aided by N (now a talisman or thing) whose power is beneficent but limited.
9. H uses N in a psychological manner for alleviation of pain (as in hypnotism, biofeedback, etc.).
10. H becomes creative and meditative (section 4.3, 4.6) thus "gentling" the effect of N, and placing it under more control.
11. H understands orthocognition (section 4.5) and gains fuller use of N, now expressed as power over environment.
12. H becomes psychedelic (4.7) and N is expressed in very positive affect and knowledge.
This interaction ranges from the human individual being used and persecuted to his using and exploiting, in other words from passivity to activity. The N variable goes from gods and demons through mythical animals, witches, fairies, talismans, and finally to a broader concept of the numinous element as an impersonal force.
3.442 Talismans
A talisman (Webster's International Dictionary) is a figure of a heavenly sign cut or engraved on a stone, metal, or ring sympathetic to the influence of the star, hence something that (is carried) to produce extraordinary effects, such as averting evil. "Talisman" connotes wider and more positive powers than "amulet." "Charm" may be equivalent to either.
Table VII Mythic Manifestations of Numinous Element
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Whereas a talisman may well be a gem with general powers for good, amulet (Dictionary of Magic) is generally a specific against a particular calamity, such as black magic, imprisonment, loss of property, and the like. "The amulet may be a gem or the tail of a fox, a lizard, a mandrake root, or colored threads, a ring, nail, key, or knot." There are specific amulets against nightmares; also some amulets were considered particularly efficacious on certain days of the week or at certain locations.
The concept of a talisman is an end anchor of a sequence of continued totemization in three factor dimensions: 1) from very malignant to potentially beneficial, 2) from strong and uncontrolled will to weak and residing in an object, and 3) from very active in all aspects, to passive and useful only in certain prescribed instances. Psychologists will recognize these three factors as the three major dimensions of Osgood's Semantic Differential which is a distillation by factor analysis of all the adjectives applied to things, events, and persons. Table VII spells out the details.
Jaffe (Jung 1964:257ff) notes that even when the numinous element has gone through the full cycle from a dreadful and all powerful god to the relative immobility of a talisman, mysterious qualities still remain, making it a powerful symbol. She discusses three of these symbols, the stone, the animal, and the circle, and notes the long history of each as an object, as a talisman, and as a universal art symbol or mandala.
History shows the amelioration not only of the major presentation of the numinous (as noted above), but also in some of its specific forms. Hahn and Benes (1971:17ff) make this point clearly in the case of angels. They show that seraphs in the Bible are described as winged serpents with fiery bites. They further say (1971:21):
The word "cherub" comes from the Babylonian karibu designating a monster looking like the Garuda of Hindu mythology, that is a griffin or cross between a mammal and giant bird. . . . The cherubim of Moses and Solomon were sphinxes or griffins.
They note that Psalm 18 has God riding on such a cherub. These fearsome forms in the guise of mythical beasts are a far removal from the chubby cherubim that float over saints or the pale angels in the heavenly choir of more modern fancy.
While ancient and medieval man saw this process as concerned with the gradual freeing of himself from the onslaughts of gods and demons, we should not forget, looking at it from the stance of modern psychology, that what has happened is the gradual totemization of the numinous element from prototaxic states involving no cognitive
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control from the individual consciousness, through parataxic states, to syntaxic states involving considerable such control. The decrease with respect to time is in numinous entropy, and the increase is in human will.
From a psychological point of view, once the feared and dreaded aspects of the numinous can be totemized, expressed, and externalized in myth, the symbol loses its frightening aspect and becomes benign, being used in intercession and prayer to the extent that it becomes habitual and hence seems friendly.
3.45 Myth and Ritual
Myth and ritual are especially closely connected, since ritual is often the celebration of the myth. Before we turn to ritual, it may be helpful to consider the connection more closely.
Myth is finally connected with ritual as Fontenrose (1966:50-1) states:
We do of course, find some fairly exact correspondence of myth and ritual, both in the Old World and the New. Wherever this happens, the ritual is in fact a ritual drama, and in every instance we may suppose that it was purposely designated to enact the myth. Surely ancient Greek tragedy ... and the Japanese No plays were constructed on previously formed myths.
In general, however, Fontenrose does not believe that the origin of myth is in ritual, for he sees many kinds of myth, some of which are mere story-telling, like folklore.
But as Henderson (Jung 1964:123) tells us, ritual as well as myth recapitulates for the individual, developmental process in the race. He says:
In tribal societies, it is the initiation rite that most effectively solves this problem. The ritual takes the novice back to the deepest level of original mother-child identity or ego-self identity, thus forcing him to experience a symbolic death. In other words, his identity is temporarily dismembered or dissolved in the collective unconscious. From this state he is then ceremonially rescued by the rite of a new birth. This is the first act of true consolidation of the ego with the larger group, expressed as totem, clan, or tribe or all three combined.
The construct of "ritual as the enactment of myth" presents myth as source. This concept is controversial; many scholars posit that the action, the ritual, existed and the tale was created from the need to account for this action.
Nagendra enters the controversy by saying (1972:32):
In fact the controversy whether myth is prior to ritual or ritual prior to myth arises only because the two are taken to be temporal relatives. If they are viewed as atemporal forms, the question of their temporal origin would not arise at all. When we say that ritual is acting out of a myth we do not suggest that the latter is prior to the former in point of historical origin. What we aim to emphasize is that ritual cannot be understood without action. And as the action must be logically prior to ritual, so myth must logically precede ritual.
Fontenrose points out (1966:57)
Myth narrates the primal event which sets the precedent for an institution. It may be a ritual institution or a cult. . . .
The old myth, which always holds within it something yet older and more aboriginal, remains the same, this being an essential quality of all forms of religion; it only undergoes a new interpretation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
Nobody seems to have noticed that without a reflecting psyche the world might as well not exist, and that, in consequence, consciousness is a second world-creator, and also that the cosmogonic myths do not describe the absolute beginning of the world but rather the dawning of consciousness as the second Creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
Gowan, TAC
3.41 General Introduction
True myth is defined by Graves (1955:10) as "the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals. ... Their subjects were archaic magic-makings that promoted the fertility or stability of a sacred queendom, . . ." Graves goes on to point out that magic, supernatural or totem calendar-beasts figured in these rituals, and that to understand Greek mythology we must appreciate the matriarchal and totemistic system which held sway there before incursion of patriarchal invaders. An example of such a mythical beast was the chimera, with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.
While Jung believes that myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, Graves holds that a "true science of myth should begin with a study of archaeology, history, and comparative religion" (1955:22).
Eliade concludes that the value of myth lies in its ability to evoke a numinous relationship through a priest or by proxy for a believer who is otherwise, however, incapable of any other relationship with the ground of being. He says (1969:59):
The myth continually reactualizes the Great Time and in so doing raises the listener to a superhuman and suprahistorical plane; which among other things, enables him to approach a Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane, individual existence.
It may be seen that this indeed is the function of all parataxic representation, not only with myth, but also with archetypes, dreams, art, and especially ritual. For whether we consider ritual magic or the Mass of the Church, it is obvious that ritual has the common purpose of gaining merit and personal advantage for the celebrant and his constituency, through approach to the numinous element or some manifestation of it.
The archaeology of man's developing social thought is preserved in myth. Recently acquired is the "loose and separate" consciousness of Western man which separates him from the continuum of nature in time, space, and personality. More primitive consciousness was not so differentiated; it was more dreamy and less clear. In myth we find remnants of images now less than precise, whose equivocal ambivalence was once an asset. In the dawning of consciousness, wherein myth abounded, it was easier to believe that man might be metamorphosed into an animal or vice versa, that magical flight could conquer space, and that precognition could reverse time. The vestiges of these motifs in myth is testimony to the development of a conscious ego from a primal self which did not know itself as distinct from nature. The periodic developmental stage theory (Gowan 1972,1974) presents an ontogenic recapitulation of evolutionary phylogeny. The differentiation of ego functioning culminates in stage 5, (the Eriksonian identity crisis), as the individual correlate of the evolution of the personal ego in the species.
Eliade (1969:14) points out that this mythical repository in modern man has been relegated to the attic of the unconscious:
For the unconscious is not haunted by monsters only: the gods, goddesses, the heroes, and the fairies dwell there too; moreover, the monsters of the unconscious are themselves mythological, seeing that they continue to fulfill the same functions that they fulfilled in all the mythologies - in the last analysis that of helping man liberate himself. . . .
But images possess the disadvantage of not being categorical. Says Eliade (1969:15):
Images by their very nature are multivalent (i.o.). If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate reality of things, it is just because reality manifests itself in contradictory ways, and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.
Eliade (1969:57) tells us:
Myth is an account of events which took place in principio, that is "in the beginning," in a primordial and non-temporal instant, a moment of sacred time (i.o.). The mythic or sacred time is qualitatively different from profane time, from continuous and irreversible time of our everyday de- sacralized existence. In narrating a myth one reactualizes in some sort the sacred time in which the events narrated took place.
Myth, therefore is a way of bringing the numinous to the common man without involving him in an altered state of consciousness. Its sacramental character veils an inner numinous truth which is explicated by the ritual which the myth demands, and which action reaffirms the relationship between the present which is in time, and the numinous which is out of time.
Eliade (1963:18) says:
Myth as experienced in archaic societies:
(1) constitute the history and acts of the supernaturals;
(2) this history is considered to be absolutely true ... and sacred;
(3) that myth is always related to creation (it tells how something came into existence);
(4) that by knowing the myth one knows the origin of things, and hence can control and manipulate them at will (by) a knowledge that one "experiences" ritually, either by ceremonially recounting the myth, or by performing the ritual for which it is the justification;
(5) that in one way or another one "lives" the myth, in the sense that one is "seized" by the sacred exalting power of the events recollected or re-enacted.
Gaster (1950:11) traces the origin of myth as "a sequence of ritual acts, which ... have characterized major seasonal festivities." These as he explains (1950:9) are "derived from a religious ritual designed to ensure the rebirth of a dead world." He elaborates on the central thesis (1950:17) as follows:
Seasonal rituals are functional in character. Their purpose is to revive the topocosm (i.o.), that is, the entire complex of any given locality conceived as a living organism. But this topocosm possesses a ... durative aspect, representing not only actual and present community, but also the ideal of community, an entity, of which the latter is but the current manifestation. Accordingly, seasonal rituals are accompanied by myths which are designed to present the purely functional acts in terms of ideal and durative situations. The impenetration of myth and ritual creates drama. ... What the King does on the punctual plane, the God does on the durative. . . . The pattern is based on the conception that life is vouchsafed in a series of leases which have annually to be renewed.3
It would be difficult to state more clearly and concisely the central motivating elements of myth than has here been done. The concept that the topocosm needs to be renewed like an annual lease, and that since it exists on the transcendental (durative) level, it can be affected as if in sympathetic magic on the temporal (punctual) level, and finally that it is a living organism amenable to the efforts of man, is both good anthropology and excellent psychology regarding man's parataxic relationship to the numinous element.
In contrast to the void of the numinous element, but in no wise the antithesis of it, stands a conceptualization identified by Gaster (1950) as the "durative topocosm." It would be easy to say that this represents nature, seen in her anthropomorphic aspects, but that is too simple; another partial view would equate this conceptualization to the goddess Ceres with all her manifestations of bounty, but even this does not capture the full "durative" aspect. For it embraces not merely the progression of the seasons, and the fecundation of nature, processes which eventuate at a given time and place, but the generative element in these processes which continues as in a procession or ceremony to provide the continual source and origin of what man merely sees as an outcome at a given time and place. It is the numinous clothed and housed in forms which we perceive as natural.
Thus Malinowski (1928:23) says:
We can find among the most primitive peoples and throughout the lower savagery a belief in a supernatural impersonal force, moving all those agencies which are relevant to the savage and causing all the really important events in the domain of the sacred. Thus mana (i.o.) not animism is the essence of "pre-animistic religion," and is also the essence of magic. . . .
The durative topocosm is generally celebrated as Sir James Frazer noted in "The Golden Bough"in cults and ceremonies of vegetation and fertility. As in totemism (Malinowski 1968:45) "This ritual leads to acts of a magical nature, by which plenty is brought about" and man by his rites certifies the renewal of the annual lease of the potential bounty of the topocosm.
Malinowski (1968:73) quotes Codrington as saying:
This mana is not fixed in anything, and can be conveyed in almost anything. (It) acts in all ways for good and evil . . ., shows itself in physical force or in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses.
Ultimate reality, in the guise of the durative topocosm, cannot adequately present itself through a language of tensed verbs. Hence it must do so through a metaphor of continual recurrence; we should learn to recognize such usage in myth and fable as signifying the advent of the "spacious present" in which clock time is transcended. Such fables as Sisyphus rolling up the stone, which rolls down again, the Medusa which grows two heads when one is cut off, Brigadoon which keeps appearing one day every hundred years, ghosts which keep haunting a castle on an anniversary, are alike examples of an incident which "occur" in durative time, and which, therefore, seem to keep repeating in ours. A second example of the durative nature of this reality is the fact that mortals immersed in it (in fable) are apt to find that a shorter duration in it amounts to a much longer elapse of clock time. Examples which come to mind include Brigadoon, Rip Van Winkle, and many fairy tales.10
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Myth involves explication of psychic tensions which activate archetypes and dreams, but are now expressed in the ordinary state of consciousness in terms of images. Cassirer (1955:11:25-36) points out the development of image in the parataxic mode as follows:
The mythical world is concrete ... because in it the two main factors, thing and signification are undifferentiated. . . . The concresence of name and thing in the linguistic consciousness of primitives and children might be illustrated ... (striking example: name tabus).... But as language develops, distinct from all mere physical existence and all physical efficacy, the word emerges in its own specificity, in its purely ideal significatory function. And art leads us to still another stage of development. . . . Here for the first time the image world acquires a purely immanent validity and truth. . . . Thus for the first time the world of images becomes a self-contained cosmos ... severing its bonds with immediate reality, with material existence and efficacy which constitute the world of magic and myth; it embodies a new step.
Psychic tensions exist in a society as well as in individuals. The parataxic outlet for these tensions in the individual is art; in society it is myth and ritual. Myth of course is an example of the outletting of such tensions: Abell explains (1966:94):
Similarly a myth has not only its "active period of psychic eruption and imaginative overflow, but also its subsequent period of extinction and disintegration." A later form of extinct myth will differ greatly from the earlier expression of the active period and may retain little of the tension-imagery.
He continues (1966:96):
The action of eruptive and erosive forces in the sphere of the near myth can be observed in the phases through which every artistic movement seems destined to pass. An exploratory or "creative" phase is eventually succeeded by a stereotyped or "academic" phase. Artists, participating in the exploratory phase, ... work with feverish intensity and bring forth results that are dazzling, often bewildering and seemingly unreasonable to those who witness their cultural emergence.
Some writers, perhaps metaphorically, see myth as the record of a "social womb" in which primitive man, not yet endowed with full cognition, is protected from reality by a dreamy placental envelope.
Hall (1960: 10) points out that from an occult point of view mythologies and mythological characters may have developed from racial memories of super-identities who helped our species become human.
3.42 Examples of Myth11
Henderson (Jung 1964:101) points out that the "hero myth" is the most common and popular in the world. He says:
Over and over again one hears a tale describing a hero's miraculous but humble birth, his early proof of superhuman strength, his rapid rise to prominence or power, his triumphant struggle with the forces of evil, his fallibility to the sin of pride (hubris) and his fall through betrayal or a heroic sacrifice that ends in death.
Radin (1948) in Hero Cycles of the Winnebago notes four cycles in the evolution of the hero myth, calling them (1) the trickster cycle, (2) the hare cycle, (3) the red horn cycle, and (4) the twin cycle. The trickster sees his environment as a giver or withholder of good things, and craftily exploits it or appeases it to get what he wants. The hare represents a socialization of the trickster for he cooperates with his group instead of exploiting them. The third cycle Red Horn, is a younger brother who has envious brethren and who proves himself through endurance, thus raising his self-esteem. Finally, the twins are a pair of superhuman brothers who conquer heaven and earth, but finally sicken of their power, and either fall out or one betrays the other, and the death of one ensures. It is very easy to see in this hero myth parallels to the development of self-concept in the growing boy from a solitary exploiter of the world (in the third stage), through socialization in the fourth stage to identification with a brother in the fifth stage. Thus does ontogeny in the individual parallel phylogeny in the species.12
Henderson (Jung 1964:130) points out another universal myth that is often found in dreams of adolescent girls who are having difficulty accepting their feminine role as wife and mother. He says:
A universal myth expressing this kind of awakening is found in the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast. The best known version of this story related how Beauty, the youngest of four daughters, becomes her father's favorite because of her unselfish goodness. When she asks her father for only a white rose, she is aware only of her inner sincerity of feeling. She does not know that she is about to endanger her father's life and her ideal relation with him. For he steals the white rose from the enchanted garden of the Beast, who is stirred to anger by this theft, and requires him to return in three months for his punishment, presumably death.
As Henderson points out, the rose is the (sublimated) sexual love between daughter and father, a love which really belongs to a younger rival (the Beast), whose bestial aspects personify the rejected overt sex from which Beauty is free as long as she is "daddy's little girl." But as the tale tells us, Beauty is required to make an overt sexual advance (kiss the beast), and when she does so, she finds that he is transformed into a wonderful prince.
A third example of universal myth comes from tribal Africa. In Hahn's book on Africa (1961) "Ntu" is the numinous element, never seen but in its manifestations which are Muntu (man), Nommo (the power of the word) Kuntu (Modes and Styles), and Hantu (culture). All of these are part of the topocosm, that durative world of which our own series of events in space and time is only a shadow.
These three examples of myth account for bravery in males, beauty and charm in females, and the numinous quality found in man and indeed in nature.
3.43 Myth and Animals
Because primitive man lived much closer to the animals than we do and had reason to fear and totemize some of them, it is natural to find that animals play a great part in his myths. Myths about animals fall into three categories: (1) the transformation of man into animal or vice versa, (2) the totemization of a feared animal, and (3) the nagual or animal-twin of individual men. These categories are of course interconnected. They all represent attempts to extract the numinous quality from the animal and incorporate it into the individual (in character) or in society (in totem).
One of the environmental penalties of modern urban life is the estrangement of mankind from the animals. We do not realize this until we revert to the farm in the country or visit a game park. Man in simpler times, whether hunter or agriculturalist, lived on intimate terms with the animals in his habitat. He hunted them, he was hunted by them, he used them, he had them round and often in his dwelling, he played with them, lived close to them, and used anecdotes about them in his songs and dances. The importance of animals in the thinking of primitive man can scarcely be exaggerated; it is seen in myth and legend. The importance of animals in the farm life of man during the last millenium can be seen even in the different etymology and plurals of such ancient words as oxen, geese, mice, kine, deer.
One of the most important relationships of man to the animals in the hunting stage was success in finding game upon which sustanence and perhaps life itself might depend. Myth and ritual of the great hunter and the successful hunt thereby came to be very important.
Baumann (1954:149-50) explains the Lascaux Caves hunting magic dance pictures as follows:
These dances seem incredibly wild and grotesque. To an outsider the dancers appear to be quite beside themselves. And that is exactly what they are. Their burning desire carries them away while they are still dancing on the trail of the beast on which their thoughts are concentrated. In the dance their souls reach the utmost height of tension. Suddenly they let themselves go as the hunters' hand lets the arrow speed from the taut bow. They fall down; their bodies lie soulless, while their souls which have become arrows ... fly out and strike the beast.
But man was not only the hunter, he was sometimes the hunted. The universality of fear produced psychic tension which gave expression in myth. The prevalence of wolves as the primary predators upon our European ancestors is nowhere more noticeable than in the myth of lycanthropy as a projective defense mechanism. Wedeck (1961:171) tells us: "The werewolf appears in every culture and in every age. The ancients from Homer to Mela, from Varro and Virgil to Apuleius, Stabo, and Solinus testify to the prevalence of lycanthropy." The major predator explanation is reinforced again by Wedeck (1971:171) who points out that while werewolves are confined to Europe,
in some countries the change from man to animal involves another creature. In Malaya, for example, the human being changes into a tiger; in Iceland a bear; in Africa a tiger, hyena, or leopard; in India a tiger or leopard.
Let us remember that this fear of the supernatural animal is itself a totemization of an even more irrational fear of demons and monsters which plagued primitive man and is revealed in myth. But if animals were first invested with these magic properties of transformation, the fear of them could also be totemized by making the animal a blood brother ("I won't hunt you, and you won't hunt me), and this process eventually led to the myth of nagualism. Let us trace this syndrome in detail.
Abell asks (1966:155):
Was belief in the monster myths a useless though spontaneous result of the tensions of Neolithic life or did it perform some positive psychic function? . . . . Freud observes that "the dream relieves the mind like a safety valve, and that as Roberts has put it, all kinds of harmful material are rendered harmless by representation in dreams." No doubt the same could be said about myth.
He continues (1966:156):
The myth centered tribal fears in a being so formidable that no man could be condemned for fearing him; an indirect way of granting the fears a social sanction.
Abell opines that the positive note in religious belief is a developing function in culture, little seen in early man. He states (1966:158):
It seems evident that the positive aspects of Neolithic tension imagery were relatively little developed, offering nothing comparable in vividness or intensity to the monsters who swarmed around the negative pole.
According to Salar (1964) a nagual has two definitions; (1) the animal alter ego of an individual, a "guardian-spirit" or "destiny animal" (Middleton 1967:71, who gives many other cites), sometimes with astrological significance. Saler states that some believe in an affinity between the human and animal in regard to character traits and destiny; and (2) that of a transforming witch (akin to our werewolf) who is able to change into animal form in order to do evil at night.
Oakes (1951:170ff) reports that the Guatemalan Indians of the highlands show traces of a belief in nagualism (animal co-spirits for humans). According to this belief each child has a nagual animal and their lives are closely connected. From this it is easy to go to the ability of chimans (shamans) to change at will into animal form, and she relates tales of this sort given by the natives. Whereas the animal form in Europe is generally the wolf (werewolves), the animal form in this location is the coyote. For more on nagualism see Brinton (1894).
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Radin (1927:343) describes how the bear totem affects ceremonial treatment of the captured animal:
When a bear is caught, it is treated with all imaginable veneration and respect. First the hunter addresses a few words of apology and explanation to the animal. Then it is killed and dressed up in all the finery obtainable. . . . When a dead bear is dressed up, this is done as an offering or prayer to the chief of the bears, that he may send the Indians more of his children. ... In gratitude for the treatment accorded him, the bear forgives his slayers and enters their traps a willing and fascinated sacrifice.
Baumann (1954:152) speaking of the Lascaux cave drawings discusses nagualism as follows:
And just as every Red Indian felt he was bound in some special way to some animal, so also did every ice-age hunter. The guardian spirit dwelled in this one animal. Among the Red Indians the animal is called the totem. The ice-age hunter too had his totem animal, and he also tattooed the picture of his animal on his breast.
This process of "totemizing" the fearsome aspects of experience whether found in the natural world or in the numinous is extremely important as it shows how myth was used to reduce fear and irrational dread and to bring the experience into rational consciousness from the trauma with which it was first associated. It is hence necessary to discuss the totemization of myth.
3.44 Totemization of Myth
3.441 General
For a definition of "totem" we go to Malinowski (1928:24-5):
Totemism, to quote Frazer's classical definition: is an inanimate relation which is supposed to exist between a group of kindred people on the one side and a species of natural or artificial objects on the other, which objects are called the totems of the human group.
Malinowski (1928:25) quotes Durkheim as saying:
"In this the totemic principle which is identical with mana and with the God of the clan ... can be nothing else than the clan itself."
As man ascends in evolutionary development, he becomes more conscious of the numinous element and of himself as apart from it. He also begins the totemization of the more dreadful aspects of the numinous element: indeed, the whole parataxic mode is a kind of veiling of the head of Medusa. There is also a kind of slow change in regard to man's relation to various manifestations of the generalized preconscious.
We thus have a historical progress corresponding to slow evolutionary psychic development which goes somewhat as follows in regard to man's relationship to the numinous element:
1. In the ancient world man is seen as the puppet of the numinous element, which behaves in a capricious and irrational manner toward him.
2. Second, man is seen at the mercy of devils and demons; while menacing, they have only the power to tempt him, and may not punish or torture him unless he sins; furthermore he may at least partially ward off their evil influence by faith in the mother church.
This Christian belief has its pagan correlate in the similar belief about monsters and mythical animals (cf. Beowulf). As time goes on, however, the man triumphs over the monster more often, and remains to tell the tale. Sometimes (St. George and the Dragon) there is fusion of the Christian and Pagan elements.
A further change reduces the Christian numinous element to ghosts and the pagan counterpart to witches, fairies, and animals with supernatural power (werewolves).
3. Third, as the numinous element grows less to be feared, the human will comes more to be respected, and Promethean man is in process of birth.
To trace this progression more clearly let H stand for the human protagonist, and let N stand for the numinous element in some presentation indicated by a parenthesis:
1. H the plaything and puppet of N (gods and demons)
2. H preyed upon by N (mythical animals) (Beowulf)
3. H wars with and sometimes conquers N (animals with supernatural powers (St. George and the Dragon)
4. H plagued by devils who tempt him, but can resist them if faithful to tenets of mother church.
5. H plagued by N (witches, ghosts) whose power is definitely limited, and who may by craft be defeated or limited.
6. H helped by N (saints) who as former humans lived good lives.
7. H helped or hindered by N (fairies) whose magic is severely limited.
8. H aided by N (now a talisman or thing) whose power is beneficent but limited.
9. H uses N in a psychological manner for alleviation of pain (as in hypnotism, biofeedback, etc.).
10. H becomes creative and meditative (section 4.3, 4.6) thus "gentling" the effect of N, and placing it under more control.
11. H understands orthocognition (section 4.5) and gains fuller use of N, now expressed as power over environment.
12. H becomes psychedelic (4.7) and N is expressed in very positive affect and knowledge.
This interaction ranges from the human individual being used and persecuted to his using and exploiting, in other words from passivity to activity. The N variable goes from gods and demons through mythical animals, witches, fairies, talismans, and finally to a broader concept of the numinous element as an impersonal force.
3.442 Talismans
A talisman (Webster's International Dictionary) is a figure of a heavenly sign cut or engraved on a stone, metal, or ring sympathetic to the influence of the star, hence something that (is carried) to produce extraordinary effects, such as averting evil. "Talisman" connotes wider and more positive powers than "amulet." "Charm" may be equivalent to either.
Table VII Mythic Manifestations of Numinous Element
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Whereas a talisman may well be a gem with general powers for good, amulet (Dictionary of Magic) is generally a specific against a particular calamity, such as black magic, imprisonment, loss of property, and the like. "The amulet may be a gem or the tail of a fox, a lizard, a mandrake root, or colored threads, a ring, nail, key, or knot." There are specific amulets against nightmares; also some amulets were considered particularly efficacious on certain days of the week or at certain locations.
The concept of a talisman is an end anchor of a sequence of continued totemization in three factor dimensions: 1) from very malignant to potentially beneficial, 2) from strong and uncontrolled will to weak and residing in an object, and 3) from very active in all aspects, to passive and useful only in certain prescribed instances. Psychologists will recognize these three factors as the three major dimensions of Osgood's Semantic Differential which is a distillation by factor analysis of all the adjectives applied to things, events, and persons. Table VII spells out the details.
Jaffe (Jung 1964:257ff) notes that even when the numinous element has gone through the full cycle from a dreadful and all powerful god to the relative immobility of a talisman, mysterious qualities still remain, making it a powerful symbol. She discusses three of these symbols, the stone, the animal, and the circle, and notes the long history of each as an object, as a talisman, and as a universal art symbol or mandala.
History shows the amelioration not only of the major presentation of the numinous (as noted above), but also in some of its specific forms. Hahn and Benes (1971:17ff) make this point clearly in the case of angels. They show that seraphs in the Bible are described as winged serpents with fiery bites. They further say (1971:21):
The word "cherub" comes from the Babylonian karibu designating a monster looking like the Garuda of Hindu mythology, that is a griffin or cross between a mammal and giant bird. . . . The cherubim of Moses and Solomon were sphinxes or griffins.
They note that Psalm 18 has God riding on such a cherub. These fearsome forms in the guise of mythical beasts are a far removal from the chubby cherubim that float over saints or the pale angels in the heavenly choir of more modern fancy.
While ancient and medieval man saw this process as concerned with the gradual freeing of himself from the onslaughts of gods and demons, we should not forget, looking at it from the stance of modern psychology, that what has happened is the gradual totemization of the numinous element from prototaxic states involving no cognitive
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control from the individual consciousness, through parataxic states, to syntaxic states involving considerable such control. The decrease with respect to time is in numinous entropy, and the increase is in human will.
From a psychological point of view, once the feared and dreaded aspects of the numinous can be totemized, expressed, and externalized in myth, the symbol loses its frightening aspect and becomes benign, being used in intercession and prayer to the extent that it becomes habitual and hence seems friendly.
3.45 Myth and Ritual
Myth and ritual are especially closely connected, since ritual is often the celebration of the myth. Before we turn to ritual, it may be helpful to consider the connection more closely.
Myth is finally connected with ritual as Fontenrose (1966:50-1) states:
We do of course, find some fairly exact correspondence of myth and ritual, both in the Old World and the New. Wherever this happens, the ritual is in fact a ritual drama, and in every instance we may suppose that it was purposely designated to enact the myth. Surely ancient Greek tragedy ... and the Japanese No plays were constructed on previously formed myths.
In general, however, Fontenrose does not believe that the origin of myth is in ritual, for he sees many kinds of myth, some of which are mere story-telling, like folklore.
But as Henderson (Jung 1964:123) tells us, ritual as well as myth recapitulates for the individual, developmental process in the race. He says:
In tribal societies, it is the initiation rite that most effectively solves this problem. The ritual takes the novice back to the deepest level of original mother-child identity or ego-self identity, thus forcing him to experience a symbolic death. In other words, his identity is temporarily dismembered or dissolved in the collective unconscious. From this state he is then ceremonially rescued by the rite of a new birth. This is the first act of true consolidation of the ego with the larger group, expressed as totem, clan, or tribe or all three combined.
The construct of "ritual as the enactment of myth" presents myth as source. This concept is controversial; many scholars posit that the action, the ritual, existed and the tale was created from the need to account for this action.
Nagendra enters the controversy by saying (1972:32):
In fact the controversy whether myth is prior to ritual or ritual prior to myth arises only because the two are taken to be temporal relatives. If they are viewed as atemporal forms, the question of their temporal origin would not arise at all. When we say that ritual is acting out of a myth we do not suggest that the latter is prior to the former in point of historical origin. What we aim to emphasize is that ritual cannot be understood without action. And as the action must be logically prior to ritual, so myth must logically precede ritual.
Fontenrose points out (1966:57)
Myth narrates the primal event which sets the precedent for an institution. It may be a ritual institution or a cult. . . .
The old myth, which always holds within it something yet older and more aboriginal, remains the same, this being an essential quality of all forms of religion; it only undergoes a new interpretation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
Nobody seems to have noticed that without a reflecting psyche the world might as well not exist, and that, in consequence, consciousness is a second world-creator, and also that the cosmogonic myths do not describe the absolute beginning of the world but rather the dawning of consciousness as the second Creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
(c) Iona Miller; All Rights Reserved, 2017