Coffee symbolism

I think this blog is going to turn into a giant dream dictionary lol! But the posts about symbolism are the most popular, and I do tend to deeply explore certain recurring or potent images that show up in my dreams so it’s all good. I am going to get into alchemy soon – I’m studying up on it but it is a HUGE topic and I have a lot more reading to do before I tackle it! So for now I will stick with symbols.

I keep dreaming about drinking coffee. Coffee is a major liquid for me – I don’t drink alcohol generally; besides water, coffee is it. And I looooooove the stuff! Too much‼ Although I’ve had to switch to decaf due to sleep disturbances I could still drink (the decaffeinated version) all day long. I have to force myself to drink something else. Coffee isn’t just a drink for me though. In the way alcohol is for many people, coffee is definitely a “mana” drink for me. It’s a drink that I can get a little obsessed about. And not just me! There are actually coffee tastings, similar to wine tastings (they call it “cupping”). I can see why. It’s definitely not just a drink.

First I want to look at meanings from around the web. Probably the most obvious meaning coffee has is of energy: it's what people turn to when they’re tired and sluggish. It also often indicates that change (and therefore the hard work to effect it) is needed. Or it could also suggest the need to be more aware of things that are going on around you.

Coffee is all about get-up and go. It is a liquid that is designed to give you pep. Therefore if you have a dream where you are drinking a lot of coffee then it means that you need to continue being peppy and being a little more energetic with your life. Have a bit more energy and admit that you just need to go out and have a little bit more fun as well. Energy is always equal to fun and you will not regret going out more.

This is probably what this kind of dream is supposed to be about. It is a warning that you need to be more alert and pay more attention to your surroundings. This could mean you need to be more alert in a literal sense, where your brain is trying to tell you to stop wearing it out by staying up so late and waking up so early. Orit could also be a message that there are tons of things happening all around you that you are missing out on just because you’re slogging through life instead of going through all of the necessary motions that you should have in order to keep awake, alert, and abreast of current events.

http://www.gotohoroscope.com/txt/dream-dictionary-coffee.html

Coffee is also associated with comradeship and companionship: It’s common to drink coffee when spending casual time with others. In that way it’s similar to the family-gathering quality of meals, but coffee is less family oriented and more about friends. People talk over coffee; for good or ill, whether they’re discussing deeply intellectual topics or gossiping about their neighbors.

As suggested above, coffee is often a signifier of taste or class: do you take it black, or as a “coffee drink” (the wine spritzer of coffee); is Starbucks coffee “too strong” for you; do you even drink it at all? The most “refined”, of course, is black, unsweetened coffee. And the most hardcore is espresso!

Finally, from around the web, here are some traditional dream interpretations that are interesting:

(arab).:

see coffee round: one slanders you, - one watches out for clap, - one gossips about you,

burn (roast): you will receive visit,

grind: Annoyance experiences, - also: one speaks bad person of you,

cook: Satisfaction attain, - also: wait and undertake nothing, before you do not know what the other wants,

pour out: you get dear visit,
drink: an invitation receive and a quick pleasure or a pleasant entertainment be certain, - also: you need an encouragement,

black: you will experience an excitement,

knows: a happy message,

coffee grounds: you hear a news.

(European ones).:

the coffee beans are the same symbol like fruits, - big domestic luck, - as a drink is coffee symbol of the suggestion,

see: Friends will disapprove of own marriage plans, - one is already married, it comes to violent differences of opinion,

act with coffee or sell: points to business losses,

shop: with ease keep his good call,

green coffee: stands for audacious enemies who do not show the right direction and pursue fall of one,

dry coffee beans: warn about bad intentions of strangers,

burn: one will have a pleasure,

prepare: brings pleasant guests,

grind: if a quiet family life, promises

see ground coffee: Bad luck successfully survives,

cook: comfortable family life, - soon pleasant guests can welcome, - also: if prosperity can announce,

other people with the coffee drinking see: a lot of clap and gossip is about one in the circulation,

drink themselves to good ones: a nice leisure pleasure or a very pleasant entertainment will arise,

cold with milk drink: brings a failure,

to black ones drink: meant an excitement,

with milk: one will receive an invitation,

wash coffeepot: if satisfaction brings after a heavy work,

see coffee grinder: domestic satisfaction, - care, one should bend forward any gossip by correct behaviour,

see coffee grounds: if illness and material worries tells in,
Seeing or serves a young woman to coffee, she becomes quick to the ridicule if she is not discreet.

Roasting a young woman coffee, she escapes bad things by a happy marriage with a stranger.

(ind).:

prepare: Prosperity in the house,

drink: you are liked with the people very much.

http://www.dreamtation.com/docs/1078.htm

The meanings are so varied that it’s hard to draw any general associations from the above but there seems to be a thread of friendship and/or domesticity or problems with same. Perhaps this is because of domestic nature of preparing coffee, and it’s tendency to be consumed among friends (with a lot of talk accompanying it.)

My own thoughts about coffee are really different, at least as they apply to me personally. When I was first thinking about coffee and what it meant in my most recent dream I kept thinking about two things: 1) it’s dual nature (bitter/sweet), which is like salt and 2) its similarity to wine. Salt has a dual nature of bitterness vs. wisdom.

What turns the ashes of failure into the crown of victory is indicated by the fact that ash is alchemically equivalent to salt… 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.” …

(Edward F. Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche)

Coffee is similar; with coffee, the dual nature is bitterness vs. sweet. Coffee is either drunk with a lot of cream and sugar or it’s black and bitter. The thing is, it’s the bitterness of the coffee that makes it so delicious when you add fat and sugar (it’s the same reason why chocolate is so addictive – add a bit of bitter to fat and sugar and the brain goes nuts.)

The other thing coffee reminds me of is wine: Like I said, as with wine coffee is a “mana” drink. It’s basically a liquid drug. Wine, which is associated with Dionysus, is an agent of solutio; it erases boundaries and brings everything together in a blur of ecstacy (or, pushed further, into madness.) Coffee is like an anti-Dionysian liquid; it’s strongly associated with work and getting things done. But it’s a mind altering liquid just the same. Where wine is an agent of solutio, coffee is an agent of exhilaration and the motivation to go after your desires.

Coffee is also black. It’s a black liquid, a kind of bitter nigredo. It’s black and bitter, but it’s the bitterness of the coffee that adds flavor to life. Without the bitterness, the sweet is just overwhelming… or worse, just bland and tasteless. It’s the bitterness of the chocolate that makes it so delicious, that and the sweetness and the richness. The inability to appreciate what is bitter in our lives is a sign of childishness; to love the bitter for itself shows a maturity of taste and a sophistication in the art of living. It’s the cold night that makes the warm light so pleasurable… but the night itself has its own winter-like beauty, if you’re artistically and emotionally sensitive enough, and mature enough.

I think this idea is what all these coffee dreams may have been leading to.

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.

Snake symbolism: Birth of the Sun Child

Zeus is the Eagle, raising itself higher and higher; competent, bright, bringing self-esteem upon oneself. The snake is pain and difficulty, feeling helpless, lost in the dark woods. The ego naturally seeks out the Eagle... but the Self seeks wholeness, because what the ego doesn't realize is that it's in our weakness that God can enter our lives. Children are our wholeness, including what is frail, weak, stupid, helpless and frustrating. It's our humiliation, and our uncontrolled passions. It is what is in us that is exactly what it is, regardless of what is socially desirable... or even socially acceptable. The Child, like the Ouroboros, is the symbol of wholeness.

Child, snake and lion

Very often, the snake appears in ancient mythology combined with the motif of the child. For instance, the mythical god of the Athenians was King Erechterus, who was the son of Athena and who was kept as a little child in a basket into which one should not look, for one would see a child surrounded by snakes. One cannot be sure exactly what it means, but coffrets grotesques have been found in Southern France (probably material from the Middle Ages and not earlier), in which naked children are playing with snakes. The child-god and the snake-god were very often combined like that.

The child-god is also the archetype of the poisoner, so to speak. The Cupid of antiquity has a very poisonous arrow with which he can even subdue - as the poets say - the great god Zeus, for if Cupid shoots an arrow at him, Zeus may have to hopelessly pursue an earthly woman, though he may not even like the situation... If you do like it, you will be happy and say that you have fallen in love. If you do not like it,  you will say that you have been poisoned; you are bound to do something you do not like and are forced into a situation which feels like subjection or poison to the ego.

(Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus)

Some people have a frustrated infant within them. Usually they are very correct and polite, and make very few demands on the analyst, but being too polite and correct and considerate is always suspect. One knows that they would like to eat up the analyst completely like the lion, making childish demands and scenes, because the analyst has stopped five minutes before the time, or answered the telephone, or put off the hour, or even had the flu!

That is the symbolism of the madness in the lead, but it also contains Osiris, the immortal man, and if only you accept that spot within you, you will come to the creative content where the Self is hidden. The frustrated child could be said to be an aspect covering up an image of the Self, and the devouring lion also an aspect of the Self.

If you take the image of the devouring lion this is quite clear. If I think I ought to be top dog everywhere, have the most beautiful partner, have money, be happy, and so on, that is a paradise fantasy, and what is that? It is a projection of the Self! So actually, the childish thing is the desire to experience everything in the here and now. The fantasy in itself is entirely legitimate, it has the idea of the coniunctio, a perfect state, a state of harmony. It is a religious idea, but naturally if projected onto outside life and wanted there, in the here and now, that is impossible. The way in which the person wants to realize the fantasy is childish, but in itself it is valuable and has nothing wrong or unhealthy in it.

So just in that undominated mad spot of the person, or in the wild or problematic spot, there is the symbol of the Self. That gives it the drive, which is why people never know what to do for they cannot repress it; or if they are reasonable and just give the thing up and realize how childish it is and that one should be resigned and adapt to life, then they feel that they are cured but that they have been robbed of their best possibilities and so are frustrated.

(Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy)


Oh snaaaaaaap, more stuff related to the owl dream! I love when this happens :D  In it's positive aspect, the child is the symbol of renewal, but the child archetype also has some negative aspects: being incapable, less than perfect, weak... and being "childish;" irrational and unreasonably demanding. This is definitely a problem of mine. I want everything, but I deny myself anything. I know I have this devouring wolf inside of me that could eat, and eat, and eat whole fucking world, so I make sure to keep it down by not asking for anything, and being scrupulous about what I take from others. In fact, if I get more than I give, I feel uncomfortable.

This is also deeply intertwined with my need for love and connection. I grew up being sent from one family member to the other. I always thought my mother had sent me away; she was sick and almost died but, upon learning when I was twenty-four that even on (what she thought was) her death bed she begged to keep me, I burst into tears. I never even knew this had bothered me, just as I never realized that deep down, I felt like I always had to make people like me so they wouldn't send me away again. These are all realizations that came up years later.

I have the eternally hungry infant inside me, and this makes me both fear and long for love. What I long for is the rest and peace that comes with having a place of my own, without fear; as the Wiccan's say "perfect love and perfect trust." This is why I get so crazy in relationships. And this is precisely why I need to work through relationship issues.

In the owl, the child was beheading owls with a stick. I still don't know what the stick means but the child and the owls are pretty obvious: this neediness and childishness in me is beheading my wisdom - my owl's are "losing their heads." Also, both my interpretations are right: the child is a symbol of renewal, but a frustrating, childish one. And the owl is a symbol of wisdom. I don't think the dream is telling me whether I should do one thing or the other as much as just giving me an objective understanding of my situation.



Traveling in Egypt

This is a long excerpt, but it is positively overflowing with gems of insight and wisdom. And straight up excellent advice, in general and for the different types/functions. Here von Franz talks about the value of the inferior function/the child-like parts of ourselves.

[T]he child has a naive view of life, and if you recall your own childhood, you remember you were intensely alive. The child, if it is not already neurotic, is constantly interested in something. Whatever else from which the child may suffer, it does not suffer from remoteness from life, normally - only if it is thoroughly poisoned by the neuroses of its parents. Otherwise, it is fully alive, and that is why people, thinking back to their own childhood, long to have that naive vitality which they have lost in becoming a grown-up. The child is an inner possibility, the possibility of renewal, but how does that get into the actual life of a child?...

It has to do with he inferior function - through which the renewal comes - which has remained childlike and completely naive. Therefore, it conveys a new sight and a new experience of life when the worn-out superior function comes to its end, and it imparts all those naive pleasures which one has lost in childhood. That is why we have to learn to play again, but on the line of the fourth, or the inferior, function. It does not help if, for instance, an intellectual person starts some kind of intellectual play. If a thinking type were to quote the Bible, saying that unless you become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven, and then would go to a club to play chess - that would not help at all, for it would again be on the main function. There is a great temptation to do that; namely, to accept the idea of play and of turning to something else, something noncommittal, but to do it within the field of the main function. I have often seen feeling types whose feeling functions have run out. I tell them they must do something which has no purpose, something playful. Then they propose working in a kindergarten, or something like that. But that is nonsense, for that would again be on the feeling side; that would be a half-way acceptance and an escape at the same time. The really difficult thing is to turn directly to the inferior function and play there. For this, the ego must give up its directing line, because if you touch your inferior function, it decides on the kind of play; you cannot decide. The inferior function, just like an obstinate child, will insist that it wants to play at something or other, though you may say that it is not suitable and would not work well. For example, in an intuitive, the inferior function may want to play with clay, but the intuitive person lives in a hotel room and would much prefer something clean because clay makes a lot of dirt in a hotel room! But you cannot dictate to the inferior function! If you are an intuitive and your inferior function wants to play with stones or clay, then you have to make the effort to find an ambiance where that would be possible. That is exactly the difficulty. That is why the ego always has thousands of objections to turn to the inferior side. It is always something very difficult to arrange in practical life

The inferior function is a real nuisance, just as children are, whom you cannot put in a box and take out when it suits you. It is a living entity with its own demands, and it is a nuisance to the ego which wants to have its own way... But if you accept the humiliating experience of making the ego submit itself to the demands of the inferior of childish part of the personality, then the divine child becomes a source of life; then life has a new face, you discover new experiences, and everything changes

I often notice that when the feeling type begins to think, he does so exactly like the early Greek pre-Socratic philosophers. He has thoughts like those of Heraclitus or Democritus, and such people, and is as fired by these as were the early Greek philosophers. If you read Empedocles or Heraclitus, you will find an eternal youth in the way they think. That is why I love those philosophers so much. Nowadays, it seems very like mythological thinking - not very scientific. For instance, the atomic theories of Democritus are awfully naive, if looked at according to modern theories, but there is a kind of wholeness and enthusiasm about them, together with the idea that now they see the whole picture. Naturally, the material is full of projections of the symbol of the Self, so one gets quite carried away when reading it. There is a kind of springtime of the spirit; the early Greek philosophy is like the blossoming spring of philosophy. Very often, if a feeling type gets down to his own thinking, he comes to this kind of experience; when that happens, the thinking type must retire to his own estate and not say that one knew that twenty-thousand years ago! The same thing applies to the thinking type if you get him or her to bring up naive real feeling, rather than something organized. Usually, the thinking type is so much a thinker that he even organizes his feelings appropriately, and because he does not get on with his real feelings, because they are unadapted, he generally has a pseudo-adaptation to feeling. I would say that the main method for getting to the playfulness of the inferior function is to scratch away the pseudo-adaptation with which we all cover the inferior function. The feeling type, for instance, is usually full of school and university theories and imagines that those are his thoughts. But they are not: they are pseudo-thinking adaptations to cover up the fact that his real thinking is awfully embryonic and naive. The same holds true for the thinking type who has very naive feelings; for instance, "I love you, I hate you." If he went round the world saying that, or saying, "I can't stand you," you can imagine what a stumbling block it would be! It would not work for two minutes! Even in school, you cannot tell your teacher that you cannot stand him! I am a thinking type myself and I loved certain teachers and hated others. But I would never dissimulate my feelings sufficiently; I always showed her how I felt. I knew it would have been much more diplomatic not to show too clearly how much I despised a certain teacher, but it was always quite obvious. When you become adult, you hide these reactions and acquire a pseudo-feeling adaptation. Thinking types are often very amiable and seem to have very balanced, amiable feeling reactions, but never trust that! That is just a pseudo-adaptation, because the other is so painful and helpless and childish that one cannot show it. But if you have to go to it, then you must again dig up the naiveté of your real feeling and get the crust off the pseudo-adaptation

Intuitives very often have no relationship to the body and are likely to dress badly or be dirty, but since that does not work, they learn to wash and put on nice clothes, and so on; although they may be quite correctly dressed, there is no personal style. If they would dig up their real sensation, their taste would be artistic, but weird and very much out of the ordinary. Intuitives who get down to their sensation cannot buy ready-made clothes; everything has to be made for them. Neither can they eat hotel food; they must either have a cook or they must cook for themselves, and it must be very special. It gives them a lot of trouble to discover this, and, what is worse, it is a nuisance and expensive both in money and time. You can have the tailor and the cook but that is not quite genuine, or you can go down to the inferior function, but that is the greatest time thief in existence, because it is primitively slow

You know that in primitive countries it is impossible to hurry people. If you travel in Egypt, it is no good ordering the cars for 9:00 am and expecting to be beyond the Nile or in the Kings' Tomb at 10 am. Everyone who travels in the Orient knows that he must put up with being two or three hours late; he cannot arrive on time as Europeans do. But once you have made the adaptation, life is much nicer, because you have all kinds of experiences: the car breaks down and causes a lot of fun, and instead of arriving at the Kings' Tomb, you get into the desert and do a lot of swearing, and so forth. But that's life too! You cannot organize the inferior function. It is awfully expensive and needs a lot of time, and that is one reason why it is such a cross in our lives: it makes us so inefficient if we try to act through it. It has to be give whole Sundays and whole afternoons of our lifetimes and nothing may come out - except that the inferior function will come to life. But that is the whole point. A feeling type will only bring up his thinking if he begins to think about something he cannot use in this world, neither for examination nor study; but if he will think about something which interests himself - that is how to get going because it is not possible to yoke inferior playfulness to utilitarian motives. The essence of play is that it has no visible meaning and is not useful. I would tell a feeling type to learn what he needs by heart for his exams, and not try to think, because he won't be able to do so. He should make pseudo-adaptations, and if the thinking type gets into a situation where he has to behave - say he has to attend a funeral - then he must on no account pull out his personal feelings. He must just behave and do the conventional thing with flowers and condolences; that is the right pseudo-adaptation for him. To get at his real feeling, the thinking type must find a situation where he can play with it, and then it will be quite different. So the first thing to do is to take it out of the adaptation field and keep the pseudo-adaptation for those cases where it is necessary. I think nobody can really develop the inferior function before having first created a temenos; namely, a sacred grove, a hidden place where he can play. The first thing is to find a Robinson Crusoe playground, and then when you have gotten rid of all onlookers, you can begin!

(Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus)

So basically, the Snake is also the Child, for ill and for good. It's the part of us that causes us humiliation and pain... and also the door through which God comes. It's the poisoner... and the source of new life. Its why its our weakness and imperfection that is the part of ourselves that is the most valuable.

There's not much I can actually add to this. Go and do as von Franz suggests (as will I.)

Snake symbolism: Dragonfire

When a snake dream occurs, it is a signal that consciousness is especially far away from instinct; it shows that the conscious attitude is not natural and that there is an artificial dual personality which appears to be, in some ways, too well adapted and too much fascinated by the outer world and, at the same time, inclined to fail hopelessly in decisive moments. In such a case, Jung continues, we find that there always exists a sort of secret attraction to the missing inner double, which one both fears and loves as that which could make one whole. That is why the snake is essentially double in mythology. It arouses fear, brings death, and poisons; it is an enemy of light and at the same time a savior in animal form - a symbol of the logos and of Christ. When it appears in the latter form, it represents the possibility of becoming conscious and whole. Instead of intellectual understanding, it promises knowledge born from immediate inner experience: insight and secret wisdom - gnosis.

(Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus)


My recent realization about aging is actually turning out to be the perfect intro to the complex (and vast!) symbolism related to the snake. And the child archetype, the two are closely connected. It's somewhat ironic but I think aging, in our culture, represents the child/double snake archetype; it is what is unadapted to the outer world, repulsive even, but the source of renewal.

Just before his resurrection, the sun god is represented as an ithyphallic man lying on his back with erect phallus and around him is the snake which eats its own tail. The inscription merely says: "This is the corpse." You see therefore that in the underworld when the sun god has reached the moment when death  and resurrection meet, when he is in his tomb at the depth of the underworld, he is represented as surrounded by this snake. According to the Egyptian text, the snake which eats its own tail is considered to be the guardian of the underworld and it is probably the snake which is invoked here.

(Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy)

The first aspect of the snake that we see is a repulsiveness that inspires horror and revulsion. The snake represents everything that we fear, everything we try to run away from. The snake is the guardian of the Underworld; in mythologies around the world, the snake is the destroyer, killed by the Sky God in order to create a world for his people.

This is one of the most persistent themes in mythology, the antagonism of the Sky God and the Serpent. In myths around the world, the great Serpent battles the Sky God (Jörmungandr and Thor, Typhon and Zeus, Vritra and Indra, Leviathan and Yahweh, Tiamat and Marduk). The Sky God universally represents consciousness. The serpent is the chaotic origin of all life, out of which the hero God has to struggle in order to live... She's the Devouring Mother, but, at the same time, the source of all life. Leviathan "lives over the Sources of the Deep." Tiamat, the original Great Mother, who mixed fresh water and salt to produce the gods and was later split by Marduk to form the earth, the heavens, and humanity. Jörmungandr, Thor's nemesis, the tail eating "World Serpent" who holds the world together (another Ouroboros). Ophion incubating the primordial egg. And Amduat, the many coiled serpent from which all creation arose.

The other opposition inherent in the animosity of Sky God and Serpent is success vs. death, specifically the death of the ego. The Sky God represents the Sun at midday, at the zenith of it's power. But the Serpent is the fall from those heights; suffering in the deep, painful, humiliating Underworld. This is why the snake arouses such horror in us; it's everything we fear, everything we instinctively run away from. It's death... and suffering in the fires of Hell. The snake is the fire of our impurities... as well as devouring fire that burns all of our impurities to ashes.

[T]his bringing together of opposites means they are secretly one, for the fire has to be put out by fire, or has to be cooled, refrigerated, by its inner fire.

[Emotion] transforms, cooks, and enlightens, that is the way in which fire brings light: if I am emotionally gripped by something I can understand it; if I am not emotionally wrestling with my problems, or something else, then nothing comes out.

[It] is hard to accept: the fire has to burn the fire, one just has to burn in the emotion till the fire dies down and becomes balanced. That is something which unfortunately cannot be evaded. The burning of the fire, of the emotion, cannot be tricked out of one’s system; there is no recipe for getting rid of it, it has to be endured. The fire has to burn until the last unclean element has been consumed, which is what all alchemical texts say in different variations and we have not found any other way either. It cannot be hindered but only suffered till what is mortal or corruptible, or, as our text says so beautifully, till the corruptible humidity, the unconsciousness, has been burnt up. That is the meaning, it is the acceptance of suffering.

Sitting in Hell and roasting there is what brings forth the philosopher’s stone; as it is said here, the fire is extinguished with its own inner measure. Passion has its own inner measure; there is no such thing as chaotic libido, for we know that the unconscious itself, as pure nature, has an inner balance. The lack of balance comes from the childishness of the conscious attitude. If you only follow your own passion according to its own indications it will never go too far, it will always lead to its own defeat.

The fire of the passion looks for that which will extinguish it, and that is why the urge for individuation, as long as it is a natural inordinate urge, seeks impossible situations; it seeks conflict and defeat and suffering because it seeks its own transformation.

(Alchemy)

Fire blinds us and burns us up, consumes us. But fire also creates light, which allows us to see. We must have fire (emotion) in order to understand a thing. Our fiery, burning impurities are the prima materia, the Fruedian unconscious; double in aspect (both good and bad). Despite problems it can and does create, it's the basic material needed for individuation. If left by itself it's useless; it needs consciousness. This is why need projection (passion, love, etc.), as painful, humiliating and crazy-making as they are; only in projection are these archetypes made conscious, and consciousness is necessary for transformation. Jung said that projection can either lead to growth, or murder. Fire and suffering are the only things that can bring forth the philosopher's stone. Fire transforms a thing into a divine substance.

This is definitely what I have been going through. It is only by suffering in the torments of our passions in the Underworld that that unclean, corrupted fire can burn itself, finally purifying itself. Everyone has that one area which we keep to the side, that one little area we don't want to look at. We're willing to make sacrifices, or do the work, in any area but that one... But you know what you have to do. It's that area in which you must make the sacrifice.

If left to our own devices, we would try to stay in the Sky God's light and hide from the Snake. But delaying one's journey to the Underworld too long is the cause of our neuroses, or even if we don't succumb to neuroses, it's where we constantly seem to trip ourselves up. We become our worst enemies. It's as if there's something - or Someone - inside us which is determined to wreck everything. In those situations, where we're resisting our growth, the Self takes on the guise of the devouring serpent, but that's only because we're resisting It. Not that burning in the fire isn't painful, but that's what we're here for: to burn, to be burned, until all that is corruptible in us is burned away and the beauty we long for is born from the ashes.

“And Cleopatra said to them: the waters enter and awake the bodies and the weakened spirits in them since they must suffer in the underworld for a long time and then they sprout out of the underworld and come up and clothe themselves in beautiful colors like the flowers in Spring and Spring itself rejoices in the beauty which it gives them. To you who understand me, I will say, when you lift up the plants and the elements and the stones from their original places, they look beautiful but are not, but after having been tested with the fire then they acquire the beautiful color and much more beautiful glory, namely the hidden glory which has the longed for beauty, and that comes when the matter is changed by the fire into a divine substance.”

(Marie-Louise von Franz, Creation Myths)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_(symbolism)

The Albedo

Being deep in nigredo, a white light appears. We have arrived at the second stage of the Great Work: albedo, or whiteness. The alchemist has discovered within himself the source from which his life comes forth. The fountain of life from which the water of life flows forth giving eternal youth.

(Dirk Gillabel)

Aargh! I really wanted to write on snake and child symbolism but more stuff came up in my dreams recently! Most of my dreams are pretty humdrum - probably having more to do with Fruedian, personal issues - but lately I've been getting more archetypal/collective dreams. Which is cool! And make me feel like I'm making some significant breakthroughs, especially this last one.

The dream focused on images of looking for a partner. I take that to be the search for the coniunctio; the union of the male and female halves, usually internally, i.e. with our animus/anima but occasionally externally with an actual partner or even both at the same time (i.e. sex! and romance!). I've obviously been doing a lot of animus work lately, both internally and externally, and something appears to have changed. While I'm "looking for a partner" suddenly I'm in a giant tree, like the World Tree and all of these images of nature come up.

I go up into the trees. It's precarious. I have to cling on a large bundle or rope of vines, many of which pull off as I pull myself up, but I trust the tree. I know the tree is helping me. All the land is one organism; the large tree, the water, and the rock below it. There is white (in the water). The white gathers. It's connected to the rock (the rock is a solidified whiteness?) I chop out a small slab of the rock and bring it back to the others...

While I was thinking about the dream the first thought in my head was that this was the "albedo" stage referred to in alchemy. Jung realized that alchemy was really a psychological/spiritual compensation for the excessively spiritual emphasis of the dominant Christian religion. In other words alchemy is a description of the path of individuation in symbolic language.

The Great Work (Latin: "Magnum Opus") is an alchemical term for the process of creating the philosopher's stone. It has been used to describe personal and spiritual transmutation in the Hermetic tradition... It originally had four stages:

Nigredo, a blackening or melanosis
Albedo, a whitening or leucosis
Citrinitas, a yellowing or xanthosis
Rubedo, a reddening, purpling, or iosis

...Other color stages are sometimes mentioned, most notably the cauda pavonis (peacock's tail) in which an array of colors appear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnum_opus_%28alchemy)

The colors symbolize the various stages a person goes through in the individuation process. And there are four of them - shocker! - or not, as 4 is the number Jung found to represent wholeness in dreams, myths, etc. The four colors are associated with the four Jungian archetypes that characterize these stages; "In the Jungian archetypal schema, nigredo is the Shadow; albedo refers to the anima and animus (contrasexual soul images); citrinitas is the wise old man (or woman) archetype; and rubedo is the Self archetype which has achieved wholeness." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrinitas)

Nigredo ("Blackening")

Nigredo, or blackness, in alchemy means putrefaction or decomposition... In analytical psychology, the term became a metaphor 'for the dark night of the soul, when an individual confronts the shadow within'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigredo

Albedo ("Whitening")

...Following the chaos or massa confusa of the nigredo stage, the alchemist undertakes a purification in albedo, which is literally referred to as ablutio – the washing away of impurities. In this process, the subject is divided into two opposing principles to be later coagulated to form a unity of opposites or coincidentia oppositorum during rubedo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo_%28alchemy)

Citrinitas ("Yellowing")

[It is the] "transmutation of silver into gold" or "yellowing of the lunar consciousness." In alchemical philosophy, citrinitas stood for the dawning of the "solar light" inherent in one's being, and that the reflective "lunar or soul light" was no longer necessary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrinitas

Rubedo ("Reddening")

Rubedo is a Latin word meaning "redness" that was adopted by alchemists to define the fourth and final major stage in the Magnum Opus. Both gold, and the philosopher's stone were associated with the color red, as rubedo signalled alchemical success, and the end of the great work. Rubedo can be interpreted as achieving enlightened consciousness and the total fusion of spirit and matter... In the framework of psychological development (especially followers of Jungian psychology) these four alchemical steps are to be taken as analogous to the process of attaining individuation: In an archetypal schema, rubedo would represent the Self archetype, and would be the culmination of the four stages. The Self manifests itself in "wholeness," a point in which a person discovers his or her true nature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubedo



Midnight Sun

There are many other symbols in alchemy for the second phase, or albedo: the white swan, the rose, the white queen, and so on. As lead is the metal of nigredo, silver is the metal of albedo, transmuted from lead. As silver is the metal of the moon, the moon was also a symbol for albedo. Alchemists also talk about the white stone or white tincture. They all means basically the same thing, although one has to understand them in the context in which they were written.

So... It looks like the (*mumble mumble curse*) nigredo phase I've been going through is letting up. And it certainly feels that way; even when thinking about work, or G, I don't feel torn and angsty anymore, just peaceful. Jung said that we don't get rid of our problems, we outgrow them, and this certainly seems to be happening (yay!) Also, the bit about the albedo in the white stone or the tincture reminds me of the white in the water, and how it was in the stone. Will need to do more thinking (and living) on this as all this albedo stuff is really new for me - I'm sure lots more stuff will come up in the future!

At any rate, now that the albedo phase appears to be coming up I did a bit of searching around on it. This is what Dirk Gillabel of House of the Sun has to say about it (the quotes in the rest of this post come from him, too):

Albedo happens when the Sun rises at midnight. It is a symbolic expression for the rising of the light at the depth of darkness. It is the birth of Christ in the middle of the winter. In the depth of a psychological crises, a positive change happens.

This reminds me of The Star and The Moon cards in the Tarot: The Star for obvious reasons (the light shining in the dark) but The Moon, too. The next stage, Citrinitas, talks about changing the white to yellow, the lunar consciousness to the sun. And both of these cards comes right before the Sun in the Tarot. This makes me think that this lunar awareness, which is what light is, comes before the solar; i.e., we become aware of things internally and then we live them in the world (?)



The Fountain

The source is one: male and female are united. In alchemical images we see a fountain from which two streams of water flow into one basin.

This brings me to the second apparent aspect of the albedo stage. I don't have as good a feel for this as I do for the "midnight sun," which I definitely feel in my own life and consciousness, but this is something that frequently comes up, that of the splitting into two, i.e., animus/anima work.

I feel like I was going through a bunch of animus work along with my nigredo/shadow phase... although that may have been because it was so much a part of my shadow. I think the concept is that once you deal with depression and darkness, then you're ready for working through issues of union. This makes a lot of sense to me even though I don't feel like I really know what this is talking about; until we deal with our shadow, all of our animus/anima work, whether internally or with others, will really be working on shadow issues. We'll either project our bright shadow onto our partner and be infatuated, or our dark shadow onto them and hate them. It's only after integrating our shadow that we can work on separating out the male/female.

The union of Hermes and Aphrodite. The moon is above the retort, indicating this is the stage of Albedo. The sun above is the next stage of Rubedo. At the same time sun and moon are again the opposites to be united. Aphrodite has two torches. One pointing down, representing the lower passions to be transmuted. The upside down torch is the purified energies. Aphrodite is standing on a tetrahedron, the perfect three dimensional body, as all corners are equally distant from each other, resulting in a lack of tension.

As we mentioned above, Aphrodite/Venus as the morning star is a central image for the albedo phase of the Great Work. Aphrodite was born from the foam that arose when the genitals of Uranus (cut of by Chronos, out of hate and jealousy) fell into the sea. The cutting of the genitals represents repressed and tormented love. The sea, symbol of the soul, however will bring forth the love goddess. Liberation will happen when we become conscious again of the contents of the soul. As Aphrodite is born from the sea, she is the guide through the fearful world of the unconscious (the sea, or the underworld). The alchemist descends into these depths to find the ‘prima materia’, also called the ‘green lion’. The color green refers to the primal life forces. Venus also has the green color. An important characteristic of Aphrodite is that she helps us in our human shortcomings. She gives ideals and dreams to fulfill. But she also gives frightening images in order to make man aware of his lower nature. "By her beauty Venus attracts the imperfect metals and gives rise to desire, and pushes them to perfection and ripeness." (Basilius Valentinus, 1679) Liberation can only happen by becoming conscious of the lower nature and how we transmute it.

In Jungian psychology Venus/Aphrodite is the archetype of the anima (in alchemy also the ‘soror’ or ‘wife’ of the alchemist). The anima is the collective image of the woman in a man. It is an image especially tainted by his first contact with his mother. The anima represents all the female tendencies in the psyche of a man, such as feelings, emotions, moods, intuition, receptivity for the irrational, personal love and a feeling for nature. She is the bearer for the spiritual. Depending on the development of the man she can also be the seductress who lures him away to love, hopelessness, demise, and even destruction.

Other alchemical images for albedo are baptism and the white dove, both derived from Christianity. Baptism symbolizes the purification of both body and soul by ‘living water’. ‘Living water’ was regarded as the creative force of the divine. It allowed the soul to be received into the community of the holy spirit. Thus baptism allows the purified soul to bring forth the resurrection of Christ in oneself. This is the ‘hieros gamos’, the ‘sacred marriage’ between the soul and Christ. Christ here represent our own inner divine essence.

http://www.soul-guidance.com/houseofthesun/alchemy%202.htm

This union seems to be about many things; one's relationship with one's internal contrasexual partner, one's relationship with one's external partner, but also about body and spirit and other pairs in one's life. My dream specifically talked about "looking for a partner" so I assume this is going to continue to be an important part of my growth.

Not sure what else I have to say about this topic - this post is just a preliminary exploration of the Albedo. I'll write more as more comes up.


Edit

Something that occurred to me on re-reading this post; the coniunctio doesn't have to do with sex, even with the internal, contrasexual part of us (i.e., the animus, or anima.) It could be anything which is complex and split in our lives which we need to heal and bring into a higher union (very dialectical materialism-esqe.) For example, a couple oppositions/tensions in my life right now are:

• the internal world and the external
• play/rest and work
• youth and age

I think that the male/female opposition, while it can be about our relationship with the other sex, whether internal or external, is also a powerful symbol of all the oppositions in our lives. This albedo stage is where we're separating out the confused mass of the nigredo, like Psyche with the seeds. Then, during the rubedo stage, we can see where there is an underlying and higher unity.