Cat symbolism

Cats keep appearing in my dreams and, while it's true that I love them (and live with several) I think these dreams are pointing to more than just the fact that I like them. I've come to the realization that I really need to do a thorough exploration of the symbolism of the cat.

As with owls, cats are often associated with the night – both animals hunt at night, both are characterized by their ability to see well when we ourselves can’t. And since the unconscious is like the unknown night, how you feel about the unconscious will generally be reflected in how you feel about animals of the night, whether you hate and fear them or find them fascinating and helpful.

In keeping with their connection with the unknown and unseen, one idea that often crops up with cat’s is invisibility:

Albertus Magnus, the teacher of Saint Thomas Aquinas, insisted that a man could become invisible by wearing on his thumb the ear of a black cat, boiled in the milk of a black cow. Apparently the recipe was never tested; or if it was, the negative results were ignored."

The Arabs assigned very peculiar properties to such a stone [tiger’s eye]. They believed it could make its wearer invisible in battle. They also believed it could prevent an adulterous wife from conceiving children by her lover, provided her husband made her drink milk in which the stone had been dipped, before he went away on a journey. Perhaps the stone, perceived as an eye, was thought to affect various phenomena of vision and watching.”

http://www.wisdomportal.com/Cats/CatSymbolism.html

All of this is pretty obvious I think and not super interesting, the whole black cat thing and everything. The first interesting thing I found about cats was Marie Louise von Franz's description of the cat and how it often symbolizes a kind of independent femininity:

“The cat in our country stems originally from Egypt, where it was once a divine animal. There, they had a cat goddess who was the goddess of music, sexuality, pleasure in life, and life-embracing feminine fertility. The cat, in contrast to the dog, has never sold its soul to man. It has a kind of egocentric reserve. The cat says, ‘You may stroke me and you may serve me,’ but it never becomes your slave. And if you annoy it, it just walks out on you. In women's dreams, therefore, the cat often is an image of something feminine, independent and sure of itself, just what modern women so often lack. That's why the cat goddess come up in women's dreams as a positive model of feminine behavior. It is not brutal; it does not display any masculine features. It is feminine and, at the same time, very firm, very identical with itself. The cat is not very amiable, but very true to itself.

(von Franz, Marie Louise, The Way of the Dream)

Cats are usually thought of as female... which makes it a bit weird for me because most of my cats have been boys. People are always asking me how “she” is doing, even though I've told them repeatedly that “she” is a he. There's just something about cats that people intuitively feel is feminine, and, this is just based on a very small sample but my impression is that people who don’t like cats often generally don’t like “girly” things either. Cats are Aphrodite-like animals; sensual, associated with pleasure, fertility and drinking (not just Bast but Sekhmet, Bast’s blood-thirsty sun-lion twin, was only appeased by alcohol mixed with blood). Bast’s temple in Egypt was described as small but beautiful, surrounded by water on three sides (very Aphrodite).

Another god associated with cats and alcohol is Dionysus, the god of drink, who’s usually portrayed wearing a leopard skin. The Dionysus man is sensual and fascinating, like a leopard, and also as dangerous emotionally. Cats have that Dionysus quality of sensuality but without the danger. Maybe that’s what people who hate cats really hate; the desire for sensual pleasure which refuses to be controlled. That independence and refusal to be controlled is an integral part of the cat:

This calm, cool exterior bleeds over into the Tarot to convey a sleek mood of secretiveness and obscurity. The cat is an ultimate authority of its own inner realms. It needs no permission to behave in one way or another - therefore the cat must be given full reign to rule as it sees fit.

http://www.tarotteachings.com/cat-symbolism-in-tarot.html

It makes sense that under Christianity cats would fall out of favor; cats are sensual animals, animals of Aphrodite (pleasure) and Dionysus (ecstasy). Body-negating and full of hatred for earthly pleasures, such a religion would hate animals that symbolized pleasure. (“Christian: Satan; darkness; lust; laziness.”) (http://www.wisdomportal.com/Cats/CatSymbolism.html)

All these ideas of connection between human and animal were more or less diabolized under the Christian system, which regarded animals as soulless or demonic, or at the very least devoid of any feelings that needed consideration. Men, jealous of women's propensity to make pets of animals and treat them with love, soon found ways to condemn women for sensual, affectionate relationships with their dogs or cats. A woman seen fondling or talking to her pet fell under suspicion of witchcraft. Even a woman who spoke to any animal, as one might say "Hello there" to a squirrel or a bird, could be considered a witch. During the centuries of persecution, women were often burned for keeping cats, or nurturing lambs, or talking to frogs, or raising colts, or even for having mice in the house or toads in the garden.

What really surprised me about the cat symbolism in my own dreams is my sudden realization that, for me, they’re one half of a split animus complex. This may be why they’re always male in my dreams (I’m sure the fact that my cats are all boys has something to do with it… or it may be that my cats are always boys because of my complex??) I read the following recently and a bolt of realization hit me:

The animus in the dreams of a woman in psychotherapy often displays an even sharper split, appearing again as two quite different ego-projected complexes. One is the dominating, judgmental, condemning side, personified as a patriarchal father, dictator, judge or menacing animals such as a tiger or bear. These animus personifications seem to attack the woman dreamer, corresponding to involuntary thoughts that may attack her in waking life, saying, "What good are you? What could you accomplish? All you do is worthless."

In the same woman, a complementing ego-projected complex may be weak, helpless, or impotent. He may be an oversensitive artist; a deformed, crippled, or crazy boy; a distant, indifferent, or frigid man unable to love; or a weak, helpless animal.”

(Donald F. Sander & John Beebe, Psychopathology and Analysis, from Murray Stein’s Jungian Analysis, p. 312)

This is true, for me at least. In all of my dreams, whenever cats have appeared, they’re always in danger. I always have to protect them and keep them out of danger. Or if it’s not a cats it’s another weak, helpless animal. I always thought these weak animals were my inner little girl but it may be that they’re really images of the weak, helpless half of a split animus. I do know that at least part of my animus is cruel, domineering and, at least until recently, degrading. Are these cats and other helpless animals the other half of my animus? It seems so to me, right now at least.

One final facet of the cat that I’d like to explore, one which is particularly appropriate in light of the way cats are in my own unconscious: the role they play as protectors. Cats, at least in Egypt, are actually seen as protectors of the Pharaoh. Cats kill not only kill grain eating vermin but also snakes and scorpions. In Egyptian mythology cats were protectors of the Pharaoh; the cat goddess Bast fought Apep, the snake god of evil, and killed him: “[I]n other myths, it was the cat goddess Bastet, daughter of Ra, who slew Apep in her cat form one night, hunting him down with her all seeing eye” (and here again is the association with vision and night-sight.)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apep)

Cats are, in an obvious way, associated with sensuality and pleasure, independence and the night. But they’re also warm-blooded protectors against that which is poisonous, or that which would devour the nourishment the unconscious depends on for life. Perhaps the independence and joy in earthly pleasures is one way of protecting ourselves from these things in our lives.

Calcinatio

Love is a devil. Love is an angel. Love is a demon who lies and says that if only you have it, all your desires will be met. Everything will be perfect. Love lies that finally, now you’ll be happy. That only with it can you be happy. If only you have it. Love is the doorway to God. It’s the trap that lures you out of your safe harbor, to risk everything… and then lose it all. Because only love is strong enough to make you risk everything, so that in the end, you can gain the world. Because the truth of the matter is this; only by losing everything can you find your Self. And love is the doorway, and the lure, to start that journey.


I felt compelled to write this on my iPhone the other day. Yes, this whole love thing is still working on me... Dammit!

Things were going super well with G. Then all of the sudden he's avoiding and ignoring me, and I'm flipping out. I thought I was over this... Wasn't I already over this??? Well, apparently not. But a lot of really amazing things have come out of this latest experience; the biggest one is the realization that this is a calcinatio experience, the stage in alchemy where you're heated up until all the impurities are burned off. Which is strangely how I've been feeling lately (not during, though - during it I was a hot mess!) And everything I read, despite the fact that I was re-reading everything, seemed to have something to say about it. It's incredible how that works - if it's a really good book then every time you read it you'll get something new and amazing out of it.

I was (re-)reading Edinger's Anatomy of the Psyche when, right at the very beginning of the book, he talks about the calcinatio.

What turns the ashes of failure into the crown of victory is indicated by the fact that ash is alchemically equivalent to salt. The symbolism of salt has been discussed comprehensively by Jung (Mysterium Coniunctionis, paras. 234 – 238). Basically salt symbolizes Eros and appears in one of two aspects, either as bitterness or as wisdom. Jung writes: “Tears, sorrow, and disappointment are bitter, but wisdom is the comforter in all psychic suffering. Indeed, bitterness and wisdom form a pair of alternatives: where there is bitterness wisdom is lacking, and where wisdom is there can be no bitterness. Salt, as the carrier of this fateful alternative, is coordinated with the nature of woman.” This piece of modern wisdom has an ancient parallel in Aeschylus:

In visions of the night, like dropping rain,
Descend the many memories of pain
Before the spirit’s sight; through tears and dole
Comes wisdom o’er the unwilling soul.

From the simplest standpoint, calcinatio is a drying-out process. An important part of psychotherapy involves the drying out of water-logged unconscious complexes. The fire or emotional intensity necessary for this operation seems to reside in the complex itself and becomes operative as soon as the patient attempts to make the complex conscious by sharing it with another person. All thoughts, deeds, and memories that carry shame, guilt or anxiety need to be given full expression. The affect liberated becomes the fire that can dry out the complex and purify it of its unconscious contamination.

The necessary frustration of desirousness or concupiscence is the chief feature of the calcination stage. First the substance must be located; that is, the unconscious, unacknowledged desire, demand, expectation must be recognized and affirmed. The instinctual urge that says “I want” and “I am entitled to this” must be fully accepted by the ego. There can be no proper calcinatio, as distinguished from masochistic self-flagellation, until the proper material is at hand. I think this is what underlies the following warning of an alchemist: “A great many students make the mistake at the very outset, by performing this calcinatio on a wrong substance;… or they choose a false method, and corrode instead of calcining the metallic bodies on which they operate. Calcination can take place only by means of the inward heat of the body, assisted by friendly outward warmth; but calcination by means of a heterogeneous agent can only destroy the metallic nature, in so far as it has any effect at all.

(p. 42)

The three texts quoted will suffice to demonstrate the nature of the substance to be calcined. It is called variously a “ravening wolf,” “black faeces,” a “dragon,” and a “mighty Ethiopian.” These terms tell us that the calcination is performed on the primitive shadow side, which harbors hungry, instinctual desirousness and is contaminated with the unconscious. The fire for the process comes from the frustration of these instinctual desires themselves. Such an ordeal of frustrated desire is a characteristic feature of the developmental process.

(p. 21)

What this whole experience has driven home is the utter importance of keeping all of these feelings contained inside yourself. Not bottled up; you can't try to not have them, or not feel them. And not sloppily flung out all over everyone around you either. I literally envision the alchemist's retort inside me, from throat to groin, and I pull everything I'm feeling together and force it in there. Sometimes I have to go inside myself but usually just containing the feelings is enough. And what's happening is that, as these feelings are contained, and after they've bubbled and boiled and then eventually burned themselves out, something is left behind. I don't know how to describe the feeling other than that it reminds me of the kind of emptiness/fullness you feel after a really big crying jag, when you're exhausted and everything is clean inside, and you feel like you can finally feel everything as it really is after a long, long, long time. Jung described the process like this:

In this transformation it is essential to take objects away from those animus or anima devils. They only become concerned with objects when you allow yourself to be self-indulgent. Concupiscentia is the term for that in the church… On this subject the great religions come together. The fire of desirousness is the element that must be fought against in Brahmanism, in Buddhism, in Tantrism, in Manicheanism, in Christianity. It is also important in psychology. When you indulge in desirousness, whether your desire turns towards heaven or hell, you give the animus or anima an object; then it comes out into the world instead of staying inside in its place… But if you can say: yes, I desire it and I shall try to get it but I do not have to have it, if I decide to renounce, I can renounce it; then there is no chance for the animus or anima. Otherwise you are governed by your desires, you are possessed… But if you have put your animus or anima into a bottle you are free of possession, even though you may be having a bad time inside, because when your devil has a bad time you have a bad time... Of course he will rumble around in your entrails. But after a while you will see that it was right (to bottle him up). You will slowly become quiet and change. Then you will discern that there is a stone growing in the bottle… insofar as self-control, or non-indulgence, has become a habit, it is a stone… when that attitude becomes a fait accompli, the stone will be a diamond.

(p. 44)

The transformative fire

An interesting confluence of dreams, readings and experiences has just happened. I woke up this morning and was pondering these recent events when I had an epiphany and came up with the following words:

The trick to using the fire of anger is not to turn it outwards but to turn it inward. Fire always burns itself out. That is its nature. When you turn it outwards at others or the world sooner or later you end up exhausted and defeated, the burden of the world on your shoulders. But when you contain the fire of desire and ego inside, it burns out all that is impure in you; what is sick, dying, weak, fearful and ungenerous. Everything that must die. With every encounter you have that enrages the ego... keep hold of that fire. Don't let it dissipate into fantasies of revenge or, even worse, into actual outward directed action. Keep that fire for yourself. Use it to burn another tiny bit of ego out; to fuel the long, slow transformation of your Self from mud into Diamond.

So... I've been dealing with issues of anger, of self-defense and protecting oneself from all the slings and arrows of living in a cold, hard city like New York. Every day brings endless (ENDLESS!) encounters with the millions of other New Yorkers all doing their best to annoy the shit out of you: the idiots who block the doorway of subway cars, not letting people get off or get on. The people who cut you off to save a couple nanoseconds... that you catch up to at the next red light. People constantly trying to get one over on someone else, or being angry when they can't. Biking in the city in particular has become an exercise in maintaining my zen despite almost unbelievable idiocy and rudeness.

I've always been one of those people who'd rather avoid confrontation and just let things go but recently I've felt the urge to "defend my space". And I have. And MY GOD IS IT EXHAUSTING!!! When people get onto a train with plenty of extra space but feel the need to crowd into you and lean on the pole you're trying to hold onto, and you try to bump them out of the way, but they decide they're not going to let you be the boss of them and bump you back, and then shake their umbrella on your leg like a dog peeing on his territory. Countless incidents like this.

At one point I realized that, although this was something I was glad to have done to prove to myself that I could, it was absolutely exhausting! And totally not worth it. But it got me to thinking about certain types, like Heras and Zeuses (like my grandfather), people for whom this kind of jockeying is a way of life, and I thought no wonder they're angry all the time!! I'm not sure about Zeuses but I've noticed that Heras' sense of hurmor tends to be on the bitter, angry side. And they're always, always so angry! Like, all the time. Well, I know why now; being constantly obsessed with not letting others "get one up on you" makes you angry!

This realization didn't happen until I gave up trying to defend myself, and getting all angry about it. But I still had to figure out what to do with all the anger being generated by living in a city filled with rude assholes, so I went back to being zen but this time with just observing the emotion and not trying to make it go away; just letting it be and burn itself out. And I found myself feeling stronger and calmer each time I did it. Then I had the dreams, and did the reading. And this morning, as I was thinking yet again about the issues of anger, and Heras, it occurred to me that that's what anger is for; anger is the purifying fire that burns out whatever needs to be destroyed. In one of my dreams was this part:

A huge enemy army is outside our walls, attacking us. Many of the walls are broken. I get a weapon and start shooting them. Then I realize heat is coming from my hands. I aim my palms at them and concentrate. They become hot. I go out of the defense and among them. I set them on fire, but its with compassion. I hold them and tell them they can rest now. As I’m doing this all, these sad people are being burned to charcoal. My people are safe, though. I had given them a message to take the group far away, to a certain location, and I’d meet them there. I take the burning hot fire and blow it back over the rest of the army, completely destroying them.

I realized that the "sad people" in the dream were these parts of myself that needed to be burned out, that were tired and exhausted and needed to rest.

I'm not sure where all of this is going but the following part of my dream reminds me of the final outcome card in my reading:

We try to leave, but a woman (commander?) catches us. She sees the girl’s “knife” and takes it. I say it belongs to the girl. I’m very strong, powerful and relaxed. I’m also angry and I want to hurt the woman commander. I take her by the wrist (her arm is very thin – she herself is pretty thin as well) and life her whole body up, levering it at her wrist. I won’t let go. Finally, I feel it start to crack. Then I put her down. She says I’m really strong, that I must work out a lot. I tell her I don’t (implying that I’m just naturally strong.)

When I interpreted the reading, this part reminded me of the above:

His decisions are almost always the right ones, because he sees the big picture and never lets his heart sway his judgement. Though they might not benefit the King directly, his decisions are always in everyone's best interests. When this part of you starts to manifest you'll know it right away. The King of Swords' arrival in your life is an event that almost never goes unnoticed simply because he commands attention from everyone around him. He does not linger waiting for something to do; he appears only when he is needed to drive raging emotions from you, or when his impartiality and cold judgement will help you solve a problem.

The dream seems to imply that I'm dealing with the masculine female and the feminine male. The masculine female I think is what I used to be - to try to use the sword of my will to defend myself. But something was wrong with that. The tarot reading also indicates it has something to do with masculinity and will. It appears that all that time I spent in the last year or so trying to develop a relationship with my animus is finally strarting to come to fruition.

Animus/anima and their function

Yes, I am still trying to work on some more snake symbolism posts (yes I am) but it is taking for-freaking-ever unfortunately... there is just so much! In the meantime, I've had a bit of a random musing about the animus/anima and Jung's understanding of their chracteristics. Jung describes the anima as a man's feelings and the animus as a woman's thinking, but when I think about my own animus, he's definitely not my thinking. I think pretty damn well, actually. And he's also not my spirituality. I have no problems there all on my own. Where I do have problems is in my feeling and sensation functions, and this is where my animus seems to like to spend his time. Who is my animus? What is he like? Well, he's exactly what I'm not... i.e. not intellectual, but rather with a calm, confident emotional stability... Or when he's acting up, a raging, out of control hurricane of a beast.

This leads me to believe that the animus/anima is actually of our opposite function. Since most women Jung knew seemed to be mostly of the feeling function and most men of the thinking, Jung formulated his theory that a woman's animus is thinking and a man's anima is feeling, but I'm leaning more towards our anima/us just being our opposite. Its still early days, and I don't have a lot of evidence to back this up, but this is the direction I'm leaning towards.

Race and ethnicity in dreams

A lot of my dreams have included people of different ethnic groups and I've puzzled over what these mean. Asia, particularly Japan, frequently shows up, both as people and as objects, and I'm starting to think that, being an American of Japanese ancestry, it means the unconscious realm; the mysterious, foreign land but also something vaguely familiar. It's as if it's calling me home, back to that far-away land. It's of the "foreign" spirit realm but it's also my true home. This would be different, of course, for people who have no relationship to Japan; probably for them, it's just a foreign country as India or China are for me. In my own dreams, India is more foreign as in pure foreign; exotic, and with no feeling of "home." China, which has also occasionally shown up in my dreams, is halfway in between India and Japan; foreign but with a tinge of the familiar.

The other group that shows up a lot in my dream, almost as much as Japan, is black people (they seem to be African American black people, not black African people) and I've often puzzled over what they mean in my unconscious. Being progressive, black people carry the following conscious meanings for me: maybe rough around the edges but honest; real; although often pushed down, never give up. But our unconscious ideas about things often differ from our conscious. Last night, as I was re-listening to Marie-Louise von Franz's The Way of the Dream, this caught my attention:

It was a hot summer's day, and I was walking with a gorgeous black woman through rolling green country along the side of a jungle. We'd known each other for a long time, and I called her my goddess. It was my pet name for her.

Suddenly she stopped and said, "I have a problem." I didn't understand what she meant, but instead of telling me with words she pulled down the strap of her dress and bared her shoulder. Her black skin on the top of her shoulder was peeling where it had been exposed to the sun, and under the top skin, underneath the black, her skin was golden-white. She looked at me and said, "If I keep seeing you, it's going to happen all over my body. I've got to talk to my mother and get some advice from her about what to do..."

In the alchemical tradition, the transformation of the Shulamite, or the Queen of Sheba plays a tremendous role. One of the recurring fantasies of the alchemists was that the matter which they wanted to transform into gold was initially black. They compared it to a black woman who then takes off her skin or black garment and is transformed into pure gold. Notice that in this dream the woman's skin is golden white under the black.

The black garment represents a typical feature of the undeveloped inner anima figure. Just as we shall see that the animus in women is sometimes destructive and negative, the black anima is relatively negative in a man. The black anima indicates that his whole capacity to love is mostly autoerotic. When a man has not developed his anima, his feminine side, he is generally very narcissistic. That's what a woman painfully feels when a man is meowing under her window like a tomcat. He really loves his own fantasy. He loves his own being in love, but that's a long way from learning to love her and not merely enjoying his own being in love. And often in literature, a young man, when he first discovers the experience of love, is completely autoerotic. It is a fantasy out of which, through a painful development, he has to learn to love the woman, not as the object of his romantic fantasies, but as a human partner.

Just as in a man his anima is originally narcissistic and autoerotic, in women our feelings of "love" are also initially narcissistic and ultimately autoerotic: the partner is basically just a living, breathing blow up doll, a convenient hook for our projection. An example is when women "fall in love" with a famous figure, as many girls and women have done with the characters in Twilight. While projection can be a useful way seducing one into the hard work of building an actual relationship with the actual person it is by it's nature itself only a relationship with yourself: you project a part of yourself onto the recipient and then proceed to fall in love with that part of yourself. And just like men, we also project our bright shadow and/or our animus and/or our Self onto our "beloved" instead of having a human relationship with the human right in front of us.

All the same, I do feel as if some amount of projection is a necessary part of falling in love. I'm not sure but it seems to be the reason why we fall in love with some people but not others. Some questions to think about are how thick and obscuring the projection is, and whether or not there's a significant part of the beloved that matches our projection or if it's just pure fantasy, but in any case, the ultimate goal is to relate to the human being underneath all the projections.

There are also some further questions: occasionally, while interpreting fairy tales or dreams, von Franz talks about the animus of the anima, or vice versa; i.e. the evil troll who has bewitched the princess into murdering all of her husbands. Who is this animus? Or, in the case of women's psychology, who is this primitive anima of a woman's animus? Is it even the anima of the animus? If it is, is it actually an aspect of the Self? I've had some indications that suggest that that's exactly who this figure is; the black women appearing in my dream, and at the same time I dream of a mutilated female figure who must be confronted and saved. The readings referring to the coming of a Queen when I ask about love and romance. It's as if through our travails with love, we heal the anima behind our animus, which is really the part of the Goddess who needs healing and wholeness. Once She is made whole we ourselves become whole. It also suggests that the way to heal the part of our Self that is mutilated is by working through love issues, and also that it's only when we heal this wound that we can truly love another person; it's only when the Goddess is whole that her servant, the animus, becomes healthy and strong.

There's still more to explore in this subject, but this is a good start.

"Twilight" of a god

Been thinking about Twilight because... um... it's pretty effing hard to avoid the damn thing! While writing the post about ejecting Mr. Negative Animus from his throne I realized that Edward and similar characters are basically an externalization of the Demon Lover animus:

What Marilyn Monroe was to men, Valentino was to women. He represented the ideal demon lover, who would carry the woman away into a romantic ecstasy where she could create fantasies about the Sheik. Of course, being carried away by the demon lover into a romantic us-two-aloneness goes on in modern films as well. Generally if women are unhappy in their relationships with their husbands or their lovers, they dream and fantasize about being carried away and having a secret, nocturnal love affair with their animus.

Which is why he exerts such a powerful influence, turning even sane grown women into drooling idiots. It doesn't matter how bad the writing is, or how silly and predictable the plot, or lame the characterization, none of that matters because of the hypnotic demon allure of their animus, reflected from the big screen with all of his seductive glory. That's not a particularly earth shattering revelation. But what came to me while watching Dr. Who certainly was food for thought. Despite the fact that Dr. Who and Mr. Sparkly appear to have little in common, they actually share quite a bit.

I've just finished up the fourth season of the Dr. Who reboot (the David Tennant Doctor) and, well, first off, that was one of the most emotionally draining and moving things I've ever seen. While this doctor is one of the most engaging, he's also one of the most wounded, and his pain revolves around being essentially ageless in a world where everyone he ever gets close to, everyone he ever loves, will die (if they don't leave him first.) Now, who does that sounds like? Hmmm... VAMPIRES! And gods.

Humans can't marry gods. In We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, Robert Johnson interprets Tristan's turning away from the flesh and blood woman he married ("Iseult of the White Hands") for the unearthly princess of the "foreign land" (i.e. his anima), also named Iseult. The gods - the archetypes - belong out of time, while we humans must live in time. To lose touch with the life giving archetypes is to live a half life, a life without life or meaning. But to live wholly in the other world is just as destructive - we see that fate in the lives of those who, like Tristan, reject the flesh and blood loves of this world for the pure, unearthly loves of the archetypal world.

Characters like Edward and the Doctor are essentially gods. Other characters can become gods (the way Bella is turned into a vampire) or gods can become human (as happens in Dr. Who... but I'm not giving any more away!) but the two can't mix. How much of that happens when, dissatisfied with the real Iseult (or the real Tristan for us women) we mortal humans give all of our love and passion to an undead and undying creature?

The "traditional spirit"

I was reading Jung's "Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy" and came across the following passage - it drew my attention to it over and over, feeling like there was something important that I needed to absorb. As I re-read it I remembered my small animal dream and the young feminine:

A childish consciousness is always tied to father and mother, and is never by itself. Return to childhood is always the return to father and mother, to the whole burden of the psychic non-egos represented by the parents, with its long and momentous history...

It is of course impossible to free oneself from one's childhood without devoting a great deal of work to it, as Freud's researches have long since shown. Nor can it be achieved through intellectual knowledge only; what is alone effective is a remembering that is also a re-experiencing. The swift passage of the years and the overwhelming inrush of the newly discovered world leave a mass of material behind that is never dealt with. We do not shake this off; we merely remove ourselves from it. So that when, in later years, we return to the memories of childhood we find bits of our personality still alive, which cling round us and suffuse us with the feeling of earlier times. Being still in their childhood state, these fragments are very powerful in their effect. They can lose their infantile aspect and be corrected only when they are reunited with adult consciousness. This "personal unconscious" must always be dealt with first, that is, made conscious, otherwise the gateway to the collective unconscious cannot be opened. The journey with father and mother up and down many ladders represents the making conscious of infantile contents that have not yet been integrated.

(Jung, Dreams, 1974, p. 136, para 79 & 81.)


There's some relationship with the father, as well - he keeps showing up in my dreams (including the most recent dream dancing to funk). I keep wondering what for - is it my actual father? Or the archetype of the father? Or both? And not just my father but G's "father" has been referred to. Earlier in the same lecture Jung talks about the archetype of the father:

The father, the embodiment of the traditional spirit as expressed in religion or a general philosophy of life, is standing in the way. He imprisons the dreamer in the world of the conscious mind and its values. The traditional masculine world with its intellectualism and rationalism is felt to be an impediment, from which we must conclude that the unconscious, now approaching him, stands in direct opposition to the tendencies of the conscious mind and that the dreamer, despite this opposition, is already favourably disposed towards the unconscious. For this reason, the latter should not be subordinated to the rationalistic judgments of consciousness; it ought rather to be an experience sui generis. (124, para 59)

This passage brought to mind the dream I had where my father was literally giving me "spirits" (alcohol) - in it he drank whiskey, but I wanted absinthe, a spirit that I associated with wildness, specialness. It's also a drink I associate with Marissa - we first drank it together (it's "our drink") - another association with the "wild, free feminine."

I spent the last 10 years, more or less, being extremely "rationalistic." This seems to have differentiated and sharpened what had previously been a mushing together of my thinking and intuitive functions; I had always thought intuitively, but the last 10 years I trained myself to be very clear, logical and rational in my thinking. Although I went too far in that direction, and certainly benefitted from moving back to a more balanced way of thinking, this process allowed me to separate out and differentiate the two. Now I can think rationally and intuitively, depending on what the situation calls for.


Dream sequence

I went back and looked at how the "father" changed in my dreams - he's been appearing a lot lately, in particular. As I was doing it I felt more and more of my childhood crowding in on me... and the "child" being born in me.

9/1/11

Heads, use different heads for different views of same story.

Old man is being annoying - it's Hades' father. Hades is taking care of him.

The ego finds Hades' father annoying but Hades is taking care of him. I need different heads in order to have different views of the same story; different heads means different ways of thinking. Hades here is an archetype, not a person; he's the archetype of the demon lover. Also, G is a Hades; is he part of the dream? The old man is the grandfather; before father, ancient way of looking, older than the father. Is this related to a different way of thinking? The animus has taken care of older way of thinking - I need a different way.

9/22/11

[G and I] sit down on the ground, amongst a bunch of gangster type black youths. He pulls out a gun. He puts it down on his bag while we talk. I eventually get too freaked out by it and put it away in his bag. I ask him why on earth he has it and he says he got it from his father.

The gun is male power... potent, directed, point and shoot, the male member (which "shoots" sperm). It's also related to death, which can indicate rebirth (this is related to later dreams about pregnancy and birth.) The group of black men is group of men is undifferentiated masculinity, dissolving into a multiplicity (or maybe coming together?) In the last dream Hades took care of his father. In this one, G, a Hades, has directed power which he got from the father.

12/24/11

A woman is showing me how to take care of someone who's pregnant. she takes some small towels, puts them on another towel (that's on a bed?) and sprays them with alcohol to disinfect them. Then she tells me I'm pregnant. I want to get an abortion but she disapproves...

Amanda's had her child. It (he?) is in the other room, sleeping on his stomach. I have the urge to rub the child's back. The Dad is nowhere to be seen but Donald is there, talking witht he child. I think to myself the child is going to imprint on Don as the father figure.

I'm pregnant - something is being born from me. In the second part of the dream I want to take care of the child. Don is like G; he, too, has both Hades and Poseidon in his personality (although his primary and secondary types are reversed from G's.) Don's also like the Father - he's my father's brother - they're of the same generation - and, in addition, he was my surrogate father for a while. The third part is my connection with G; our relationship has impregnated me with the "child"

1/2/12

There's an open house of an apartment that's opened. I don't think I can buy it because I already have one and my money is in that - it's not as nice and it's smaller. This one is huge and has all sorts of great features built in. One is a red hood over the stove. The other is a dish cabinet that has a bench and chairs built in - when you have company you pull down the chairs. If you have a lot of company you can pull the whole bench down. I go exploring around the apartment. There are book cases - they make a small, windowed alcove in the corner for a tiny study "for the father to sit in."

"New apartment" means a new home, a new self (i.e. ego.) A new self has opened up - huge, with great features. I have a lot invested in my old self. The "built in features" of this new self are the red hood, the dish cabinet and the table and chairs - all have to do with cooking and eating, with food and nourishment. There's also a built in alcove "for the father," the mind. It's like the dream is saying, "Don't worry, there's a place for the intellect here, too."

3/1/12

With family in an old house (Victorian). There's a drink machine. The father pushes a button and gets a bunch of liquor. When he puts it out he tells me to be careful, it's strong. It's in a big green bottle - I can tell it's port. Then I ask for absinthe, which I drink.

The Victorian house is the traditional self, a traditional idea of the self. The father is there - it's the family house. It's a traditional idea of the collective unconscious. The drink machine is to "quench thirst" but with an element of something mechanical; push a button and out it comes. Is this because the traditional idea of spirit and religion is like that? The father, the traditional spirit, drinks traditional spirit (whiskey) but I drink absinthe, something young, wild, unusual and special. Something I associate with Marissa, the "young spirit."

3/11/12

I'm in a car with my Dad and a black woman - she's the one who's driving. I'm giving her directions, trying to get us out to the main road, where I assume she'll be able to figure out how to go from (we're at my Grandparent's neighborhood wehre I grew up.) We end up driving over our property and onto our driveawy. I think this is true because we can get out from there, and we do. As we drive down the road which will take us to the main road, I see they've put up barbed wire fencing. They turned that part (which used to be a wilderness) into a golf course. I feel bad. They tell me they did this at another place, too.

The black woman is the black anima, the natural woman. She's the anima of my animus... or at least the traditional spirit part of my animus. Does this mean that part of me is stuck in animal desire and/or power games? She's the one who's driving us on this trip. We're at my grandparents' place; the place of my past (before my father) but also of my own childhood. The wilderness is changed to a golf course - "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot." The golf course is tame, civilized. It's where old people go. The wild place was destroyed to make a place for the "traditional spirit."

3/20/12

A man (and his son?) are looking for a phone. They ask me and we all (I guess I'm with others) go all around with the two. We go all around but we can't find a single public phone. We go into my food coop to look for one. While we're looking, he picks up some food (some meat). We find a guard. Before he can accuse us I go over to him and ask him where there's a phone. He accuses us anyway, pointing to the food. I say that we paid for those (which we had) and get my membership card to slap down on the table in front of him. Then he's a tiny dog (or has a tiny dog head, or something like that.)

The father and son want to communicate (like the previous letter?) The food coop and food - the Father gets the meat. The guard (the Inner Cop) tries to stop it - dogs are servile, companions. They're also associated with police dogs. He has a small head - he can't think. The cop is just following what he was told, not thinking. The son is the child, the child who was born previously. He's the new project. The traditional spirit is with the new project, trying to communicate. The inner policeman is in the way but we get past the "tiny dog" - he's smaller and weaker than he first might appear.

3/27/12

Some people have been forcibly kept there by my father. I go find out from them what they need and gather the things up to take to their ship. They ask if my father won't try to stop me. As I try to go to their ship, my father stands in my way and starts talking, quite reasonably. He falls or lays down in front of me. I start yelling at him, that he's trying to stop them from leaving, and that if it was him who was taken prisoner I'd die to set him free. I'm banging bottles on the metal scaffolding as I talk. I finally just walk over him, twisting my foot in his wound while I walk over him.

The traditional spirit/intellect is keeping other parts of my personality from going where they need to, but I'm trying to help them. They're travelling on a ship - travel is a common theme in my dreams. A ship is a vessel that goes over water, over the unconscious. The "father" tries to stop me by being "reasonable," a typical move for the negative animus. It tries to convince you that you're wrong and crazy. I get past him by walking over him (although he himself lays down first.) But am I hurting him while doing this?

3/28/12

My father is out with his co-workers in the water - they're in fake boats (like robots) working while their real boats are inside. He notices bad guys (the bad guy?) They're amused - they take our ship. Whey they go back in they see that all the rest of the people are scared - the bad guys took over while they were in the water. The bad guy robot beats up the robot of my father. He's hurting him - at that point, my father's face becomes square, like a lego man.

From here on out the dreams become difficult for me to understand; I've noticed that if I wait a few days, or even longer, they becomes much more intelligible. Going back and looking over my dreams today, I noticed that many of the them were amazingly clear - I guess I've progressed enough that what was my "backside" then has become my front side.

Earlier in this dream it mentioned that I was "studying Japanese" (which feels like Jungianism to me - a different language, different country, a desired "place," the place of dreams, the past, of the ancestors.) In this part of the dream, the intellect/traditional spirit is with other parts of my personality which work together with it. They're in "fake boats" - this reminds me of the boat the other parts of my personality were trying to get on which the "father" was trying to keep them from. These boats are robots; they're mechanical, not alive - robots look like people but they're not. The real boats are inside - why didn't they take the real boats? Is it because the intellect here, or the traditional spirit, is incapable of getting the real boats? That it's too mechanical in it's approach? The "bad guys" (whoever they are) took over while the "father" was out in the water in the fake boats. The bad guy's robot beats up the intellect/spirit (I'm really unsure about this whole dream...)

3/29/12

I'm thinking of things to do on the trip. I want to get out and do things, like G did on his trip. There's a tiny house. Two young girls are playing in the front. I go in to see how they fixed it up. I hear a voice telling me that they put the twins' bunkbeds in the old fireplace to save space. I look at it but it just looks like a bricked in old fireplace. Two doors swing out - I can see two beds fitted into the alcove behind it in the tiny, closet like space. When you swing the doors closed there's a narrow gap left between them - this way you can open it easily but the doors still provide a visual barrier to the beds. I look around for the parents' bed. I go around to an alcove but but there's nothing there. When I look back at the main room again, I see the bed right there out in the open. The father's lounging on it.

The two young girls are the twins; the two sides of me, the conscious me and the soft side of me. The fireplace is the hearth, the "heart" of a home. I'm again on my journey, and again in a new home, a new self. The Father is there again - he's in the bed, the personal space, the inner space, the space where dreams are made (not quite sure of this dream either...)



The sequence is from distance to closeness, varying between helpful, obstructive and ineffective. One things that's interesting is his association with the child - the new project that's being born in me. He's often with him, or helping him or the child needs him. And there's definitely a place for him in my new life. Another interesting thing are the two couples: the animus and me, and the father and his anima. Both of us seem to be struggling with the "natural man/woman" - the anima(us) that is born with us, which needs to be transformed into a subtle form.

There's fertility; sex, birth, death. There's spirituality; "spirits" and the water. There's childhood and the mind. All of these things are bound up with the archetype of the "father" in my head.


... I feel like I'm not ending this post properly. I'm going to have to let this concept cook a little more - I'm sure there will be an edit in the future!

Meet Mr. Helathy Animus

I had an amazing reading - although I did it about my dream about the little creature it ended up saying some amazing things about my animus. When I was doing the reading, and thinking about the King of Cups, it suddenly came to me, ZAP, this is my animus! Or, at least my animus as it could be.

All my life I've been attracted to men like the King of Cups - calm, confident, king, with a great sense of humor, a natural leader but not pushy or egocentric. Just the opposite in fact. One of my early realizations was that we project our bright shadow onto our objects of desire was looking at the kind of men I was attracted to, and how they carried the very qualities I keenly felt the lack of. I saw this in others; G for instance, and his attraction to fiery, passionate, confident women... women who carry his suppressed Ariean shadow. Well, now I know... Our anima(us), when healthy, is our bright shadow. This is the beloved that we constantly search for outside ourselves, that, if we don't realize we carry them within us, we can never find. Ironically, it was only when I stopped clinging to the animus that he was able to start to become his best self.

Au revoir, demon lover... and good riddance!

I search
but the desert is everywhere;
I gasp
but there is no water to quench;
I cry
but there are no arms to enfold;
I yearn
but there is no breast to suck;
I long
but there is no milk to nourish;
I need
but there is no phallus to embrace;
I feel
only the exploitation of my friends;
I fear
that death may be the same.


I've been going through a rather earth shattering experience lately, the kind that completely changes the way you look at everything: I've come face to face with the demon lover side of my animus. Or, more appropriately, I've come to realize that's who's been acting in my life lately... And not just lately, but really my entire life.

I kept having dreams that seemed to be pointing to a change in my relationship with G (another lover, color project, shelf house), dreams where another lover makes an appearance, but I still have feelings for G and can't decide. I finally did a reading asking what I should do, if I was doing something wrong, or not doing enough. For a while before this I had decided that it would be best for both me and for G if I waited until he had the courage - or just wanted me enough (if ever) - to make a move himself. After all, he knew damn well how I felt, and he was the one who had rejected me.

Well, the reading was pretty unambiguous (or as unambiguous as a tarot reading can be). Basically, it said that I had a possible future of love and fulfillment in all areas (the 9 of cups  "wish card" for the possible future and the 2 of cups for the probable future). It also said that I had had an opportunity in front of me but I had failed myself in some way. But the card that really got me to thinking was the Queen of Swords, which was in the position of the outer self.

... She never shows her emotional side, but her judgment can sometimes be swayed by her heart... The negative side of the Queen of Swords stems in part from her honesty and desire for the truth. Once she has a view of the situation she lets everyone involved know her opinion, and heaven help them if they disagree! Her mind is as sharp as a razor and when it is not occupied slicing away lies, it will start to cut the perceived liars. This type of person often has very few friends, and they are often depressed and unsatisfied with themselves because they cannot live up to their own high standards. The Queen of Swords often uses her dry and vicious humor to keep others from seeing her bitterness and her dissatisfaction.

And then I got the cosmic 2x4 over the head - another one of those groan-out-loud moments - when I read the chapter titled "The Tyrant" in Fraser Boa's Conversations on Jungian Dream Interpretation with Marie-Louise von Franz. The book is based on a documentary series (this post begins with a poem from the book). The chapter starts:

In its negative form a woman's inner man, the animus, is a power of evil destructive to human life. He separates a woman from her own femininity. He cuts her off from human warmth and kindness, and leaves her isolated in a meaningless world, martyred by unseen hands. She experiences herself as a victim, a captive, trapped either by external circumstance or by a cruel fate.

... And that was just the first 2x4. The whole chapter was basically the universe beating me over the head with a large stick, trying to get me see what was going on.


Self-hate

Then, in the dream, the chief of police declares that the woman is crazy. That's the secret voice in her that says, whenever she follows her own feeling, "No, that's crazy! Don't do that. You are crazy if you do that."

(p. 157)

That's the negative animus. Those collective opinions rape the woman of her own individual thoughts or feeling reactions.

For instance, when I have indulged in destructive thoughts about myself or my work, I have often dreamt of being pursued by hostile men. The dream is saying, "Those negative thoughts are not you. They are the hostile animi in you. You should run away from those destructive thoughts. They will destroy you if you stay with them."

(p. 163)

There's a voice inside women's head. We think it's us, just our "rational", "level-headed" selves but it's not. It belongs to the demon that sets up camp in us when our relationship to our inner man is crooked. An animus in his positive role is an energizing source of power and a guide to the spirit, but when he's demonic he drives others away from us... and drives us away from the love we long for. And, ironically, his rigid pronouncements are nothing more than bland, meaningless platitudes, not the truth that he declares them to be.

As with a man's relationship with his mother, our relationship with our father sets the template for our relationship with our animus:

If the relationship to the father constellates itself negatively, the girl will react negatively toward the father... later on she generally has dificulties with men, and difficulties in finding her own masculine side. In the extreme case she might not be able to approach men at all... If it is not such an extreme case, she would be what one would call a very difficult woman. She would argue with men, challenge them, criticize them, and try to pull them down. She would expect negativity from them, and this expectation would naturally put difficulties on her partner.

In other words, the animus, her own masculinity, would be a problem to her. Such a woman would tend to behave toward herself as her father behaved toward her. If her father was tyrannical, even after his death, the woman would still tyrannize herself with ideas and opinions which came from the father image. And so a girl's relationship to her father and her detachment from the father always play a big role in her development as a woman.

(p. 156)

Not only does a negative relationship with her father create an image inside the woman that continually spills it's poison inside her, it also spills it's poison onto others. And it makes her expect other men to to act the same, putting her on the defensive, even when there's no need for defense.

[T]he worst thing is that she experiences it as if she thinks it herself... That's one of the great difficulties in analytical work: to make women distinguish between what they really think themselves and what it thinks in them.

The problem is that they think animus thoughts are their own. Even after working for years on that, I sometimes still have negative thoughts against myself, and if you asked me at that moment, I would say, "Yes, that's what I think about myself." Later, I would have a dream of a man raping me, and realize, "No, that was an evil animus in me who thought that." And then I could disidentify and wonder, "Why on earth did I ever think that about myself? Naturally, I don't think that." But you see, that is the essence of what one calls possession. When a woman is possessed by the animus, she thinks that the animus is herself. Only when, or if, she wakes up does she come to realize, "No, that's not me."

(p. 159)

Looking back at my life, I can see - so clearly now - how this negative animus held me under it's spell. It was an incredible experience reading this chapter - it was my life she was describing! From my youth, where I couldn't even let a man touch me, to getting past that but always crashing on the rocks of my own insanity when I was in a relationship.

The incredible thing is that I've been proud of my negative animus. Being in my animus made me feel strong, and tough, like I wouldn't take any bullshit from anyone... And then I'd freak out when I damaged a relationship and had to face the consequences of my actions. Von Franz describes the negative animus as a gangster; he attacks and uses the woman as his shield. When a man strikes back at the animus, he ends up hitting the woman. That's been me, too.

My whole life I've been paralyzed by the negative talk from my animus - I'm always convinced I did something stupid, that people despise me, that I can never do anything right. THIS IS MY BLUEBEARD ANIMUS!! It isn't me - it isn't me at all!!! This revelation about who is really the source of all of these negative self thoughts by itself has made a huge difference in my life; when they start coming up, I can say "No, that's not me. Calm down, animus. Take your rightful place - not this stupid, self-destructive crap. You're better than this!"


Jealous Lover

The negative animus behaves here like a jealous lover. He wants to keep the woman for himself by cutting her off from all men. When she has some loving feelings toward any man, then up comes this "You should not do that" animus. Or it's projected.

(p. 158)

He doesn't just cut us off from romantic love - he'll try to interfere with any relationship - but love lights a jet under his butt so he's hopping around your head, making you think you're a complete idiot. And the more you like someone, the more vicious he gets. Which was why I never let myself like anyone... or if I did I'd squash those feelings right away. After all, I was an idiot and a jerk and too crazy to have a relationship with anybody, right?

That is the greatest tragedy arising from the negative animus. It flares up with its power whenever a woman loves. It tries to cut women off from any kind of relationship by belittling it or calling it crazy. The negative animus mainly manifests itself as an opinionated resistance to any feelings of love. If a woman has a tendency to fall in love or even to be interested in a man, her negative animus comes up and makes her ruin the relationship.

Subjectively, she doesn't know what is happening. She thinks she is under a curse. Just when she wants to talk to the man she loves, something in her makes a tearful scene. And then she goes home and cries. She may project and say, "He was so nasty to me," but if she's a bit more honest she will say, "I wanted to have a good love relationship with him, and just because I wanted the relationship I made a scene." And she doesn't know what devil's mechanism made her do it. If a woman hits you as a man, you can be sure she's interested in you. She would really like to love you, but she doesn't know how.

(p. 158)

But it doesn't matter if you don't have a real relationship with an actual man... Demon Lover will be the perfect lover; reliable, well muscled, sensitive when you need it, and great in bed to boot! (Too bad he only exists in your fevered imagination.)

What Marilyn Monroe was to men, Valentino was to women. He represented the ideal demon lover, who would carry the woman away into a romantic ecstasy where she could create fantasies about the Sheik. Of course, being carried away by the demon lover into a romantic us-two-aloneness goes on in modern films as well. Generally if women are unhappy in their relationships with their husbands or their lovers, they dream and fantasize about being carried away and having a secret, nocturnal love affair with their animus.

The demon lover figure exerts a kind of demonic or divine fascination on the woman and makes her incapable of relating to an ordinary human being. He is personified as Heathcliff in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. In the novel, Bronte shows the power of the identification by having her heroine say, "I don't love Heathcliff... I am Heathcliff." It's interesting that Emily Bronte herself even had the idea that her genius, her great gift as a writer, had made her into a lonely, tragic figure. Generally, having such a demon lover ends tragically. People become incapable of living and relating to others; they are sucked away into the dream world and into the unconscious.

(p. 165)

One of the dreams that made me start questioning things was when a "new lover" showed up, one that was going to be more reliable than G. And the animus is reliable... and reliable at cutting you off from real relationships. Or being the person you're supposed to be. Or growing, which means relating to others, not running away from them to live a perfect life with the perfect lover in your imagination.

He's also made his appearance in previous dreams - for example, I went back to this one by accident and read it in a completely different way this time (the edit where I change my interpretation is all the way at the bottom.)


Wisdom

There is a great psychological danger in the figures which Jung called animus and anima. These contrasexual elements can estrange a human being completely from reality and society. The animus, like the anima, is a very ambiguous, very dangerous inner figure which must be approached with great wisdom.

(p. 165)

So what do we do? Let's not let the negative animus make any of it's blanket pronouncements. Sometimes you have to run away. In my case, I was informed (in my dream) that I needed to talk with him. My first impulse was to fight him, but I guess talking is the best way for me right now. Below, von Franz talks about one way of dealing with the destructive animus:

The classical example of the destructive animus, which the women has at all costs to escape, is illustrated in the famous fairy tale of Bluebeard, in which the heroine gets into a castle where she secretly discovers that the owner has cut up and slaughtered all his former wives. After discovering this terrible secret she, with the help of her brothers, barely manages to escape. Bluebeard is the classical image of the destructive animus. If a woman cannot escape the self-destructive and self-annihilating thoughts of the negative animus, it may lead to a severe psychological disturbance. Women who can't escape their Bluebeard generally become isolated, bitter women whom men cannot love, who find no partners, and how live in bitter isolation, if not in an even worse situation.

(p. 164)

This is just one way of dealing with the animus but, as in all relationships, there are no rules in our relationship with our inner man. Sometimes we have to do run away from him, sometimes the complete opposite. All we can do, as with any relationship, is to try to be present and do what comes up naturally, from the depths of our being.

The consequences of having a bad relationship with our animus can range from a lack of energy and drive, being a doormat, to being a shrill, angry shrew. But on the other side, a healthy relationship with our animus gives a woman strength and drive, the ability to think clearly, but with tolerance. Last night I did another reading - it was about a dream I'd had but the answer that came up was about the animus. I was trying to figure out what the reading was about, wondering if the King of Cups card was about G again, when I realized it was about my animus.

Usually a man of art or religion, the King of Cups appears as a wise advisor and a noble healer. He listens to the suggestions of others, even when they are in conflict with his own carefully formed opinions. He never judges, never blames others for their faults, and is always a sympathetic supporter.

The appearance of the King is often a sign that you should employ peace and tolerance to solve your problems. Use diplomacy rather than force, and accept different points of view. Do not blame others for their failures, but help them see how they can succeed again.

When I read this I was so moved by the vision of what he could be. And I remembered that when I was projecting my "bright shadow*" onto love interests, this was exactly the kind of man I was attracted to. I knew G wasn't a mere projection of my desired but unavailable traits because... well, because he's not that kind of man at all. And I no longer feel drawn to those kind of men, probably because I'd withdrawn those projections. But now, after this experience with the negative animus, and seeing what he can be, I realize that what I was drawn to wasn't just the things I felt I didn't have. It was the things I do have, as my animus. Now I have to work at freeing him from the role of the Demon Lover so that he can finally be who he's meant to be; the calm and powerful King of Cups.


* A bright shadow is the opposite of a dark shadow. Where the dark shadow is made up of the undesirable parts of yourself that you project onto the people you find repulsive, your bright shadow is made up of the desired parts of yourself that are equally invisible to you that you project onto the people you are attracted to.


Note: All quotes come from Fraser Boa's Conversations on Jungian Dream Interpretation with Marie-Louise von Franz, including the poem that starts the post.

Musings: von Franz's "Alchemy"... and further on the pin

The stories of Eve and of Isis getting secret knowledge from angels, is a man's view of growth. Eve is the Anima who steals knowledge from God (the Self). As a result, a man's unconscious paradise is lost and now he has to do all the hard, painful work of psychological growth. Or the story of Isis who, as his Anima, coerces the secret from the Angels and gives it to her Son (the man.) But what is a woman's story? Where are the stories of an Animus, the woman's mediator between her and God/Self? How do women gain secret knowledge? Or is it even knowledge that she gains? Prometheus steals fire from the Gods and therefore must suffer every day while his liver is eaten... and every night it heals. Is this the image of a woman's Animus? But it's not knowledge her Animus steals. Rather it's fire; power, energy and vitality; the light which illuminates the darkness and reveals what was hidden. As a result a woman's Animus is wounded during the day but is healed at night, when dreams come.

Another is the story of Inanna going into the Underworld, the land of her dark sister, Ereshkigal. Enki (the god of mischief, water, intelligence and creation) sends two little people he makes from the dirt under his fingernails to mourn her as she hangs on the meat hook. When she returns to her world above she has to choose someone to take her place. She picks her consort, Dumuzi, who was the only person who didn't mourn her death, but his sister loved him so much that she offered to take his place so half the year she's in the Underworld and the other half Dumuzi is.  What is the woman's Animus providing here? Sympathy, from Enki? A sacrifice, from Dumuzi, to suffer in her place (which calls to mind Prometheus' suffering during the light half of a day.)

Persephone was abducted by Hades, also of the Underworld. She doesn't want to go but she must if she's to find her power as a Queen. Here the Animus is the Demon Lover who kidnaps the woman to Death (in other words, he kills her old self.) Unlike Inanna here the woman is dragged kicking and screaming to her death, her transformation, in which she must give up her old self in order to be reborn to a greater, more whole and more powerful self. Here the Animus is the abductor, or Death himself. The woman resists her transformation initially. It is only by choosing Hades/her Animus/her transformation, giving up her old self, that she grows (because I made the choice, my Hades abduction is psychological rather than literal - my growth is through us *not* having a relationship.)

"[Y]ou wonder whether you should stick a pin in him and a drop of the poison of knowledge and give him an idea as to what it really means..." (von Franz, writing about whether an increase in consciousness is good or not in "Alchemy" p. 54.)

My dream of the dark man sticking a pin into my "other self" - the "dark man" is obviously my Animus in his role as the destroyer, the demon lover, Hades, Death. He sticks a pin in her and brushes the powder of knowledge - that is, of his own essence (the essence of the Self?) and that destroys the old me, the "other me," the one who must die in order for the new me to be born. He wants to unite sexually with me; he brushes his consciousness onto me to do so. By being covered with his essence does he unite with the me that's being born?

Is it real or is it a projection?

I've been reading Marie-Louise von Franz's book The Interpretations of Fairy Tales and came across the following:

"Men [and women] who know nothing about psychology tend simply to project the anima onto a real woman, experiencing her [his anima] entirely outside. But if through psychological introspection they realize that the attraction exerted upon them by the anima is not only an outer factor but is something they carry within themselves - an inner image of a feminine being which is the true ideal and soul guide - then often, as a next problem, the ego raises a pseudo-conflict between the inner and outer realms by saying, "I don't know if this dream figure is my anima inside or if it concerns the real woman outside...[C]onsciousness, with its extraverted bias, gets caught in a false conflict between concrete outer and symbolic inner realization and in this way cuts the phenomenon of the anima artificially in two.

"To get into this conflict indicates a lack of feeling-realization; it is a typical conflict, raised not by the feeling function but by thinking, which makes an artificial contrast between inside and otuside, between ego and object. Actually the answer is that it is neither the outside nor the inside because it has to do with the reality of the psyche perse, and that is neither outside nor inside. It is both and neither. It is precisely the anima which has to be realized as a reality per se. If she, the anima, likes to come from the outside, she has to be accepted there. If she likes to come from within, she has to be accepted there."

(Page 94)

The question of anima/animus projection and whether or not our romantic relationships are a useful place to work out those issues has been on the back burner of my mind for a while, since I wrote Thoughts on the animus/anima. In that post, I wrote about how our animus makes itself felt in the kinds of stories we find ourselves drawn to, as if we're instinctively drawn to working through those issues, and I was warned about the dangers of projection, something I'd never even heard of.

Further reading showed that yes, projection was problematic, and probably quite common, the reason so many people fall in and out of love all the time. BUT I felt as if it could be helpful if used consciously, asking the right questions: Am I projecting? What am I projecting? And exploring the projection. Also, I felt that, although we need to be dealing with the true people themselves in our relationships, an element of projection might be useful in romantic relationships, adding a tinge of the eternal.

Reading the above quote by von Franz has added an extra layer to this issue: While it's undoubtedly good that we're progressing from viewing others and the world purely in primitive, symbolic and superstitous terms, we can lose sight of the fact that, to our subconscious, everything actually is one, and the person as a symbol and what the symbolic person stands for are one and the same. The problem isn't to figure out which one it is - it's not an either/or thing. The problem is to be conscious about it, seeing which direction it's coming from, now from the inside and now from the outside, and deal with it as it comes up.

Thoughts on the animus/anima

I always thought the animus (or anima, if you're a man) was the archetype of the opposite sex that you expressed the most. Now I wonder...

I figured my animus was Hermes because I have several Hermes-like traits, even though I feel nothing for him and he never appears in any active visualizations. By contrast, I have done a LOT of work with my inner Hades (who has a deep connection to my archetype, Persephone). So now I'm thinking... maybe our animus is actually the archetype, or archetypes, that our own archetype matches with romantically? Which would make sense, as those are the people with whom we can do the most spiritual work, and grow the most with. Perhaps we seek a romantic partner who is a manifestation of that inner animus to carry on the work with on a different level.

It just doesn't make sense that our animus would be so completely non-existent in our inner world. And now that I think of it, when I read romances, this is the kind of story I'm the most drawn to. Although I can appreciate any well written story that has engaging characters, it's stories about weak, diffuse, lost women and chthonic men that I find the most compelling. So, like everything else in our lives, our reading habits can help us understand what's going on inside us.

... One further note: For someone who used to read, and watch movies, as much as I did, I'm finding it almost impossible to do so now. It might be because I'm finally living what I used to read about, but I don't think that's actually it. My Persephone has a very strong will - I used to think she (and I) was lazy, or incapable of getting work done. I realize it's because she needed to find her true work, her life's labor. And now that she's found it, she isn't interested in anything else. If I could do this from the time I woke up to the time I collapsed into bed, I think it wouldn't be enough for her.

I'm not sure how long this is going to last. While I struggle to get my basic needs done (like cleaning my apartment... or keeping my job!) it's exciting to have all this energy and focus.



Also... if I'm right and this is the case, then gay people would be "double souled" - they have both a male and female archetype... and matching animus/anima's. Pretty busy in there!