Emma Jung: The Anima as an Elemental Being

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Animus and Anima by Emma Jung

THE ANIMA AS AN ELEMENTAL BEING

The concept of elemental beings dwelling in water and air, in earth and fire, in animals and plants, is age-old and occurs all over the world, as is shown by countless examples in mythology and fairy tales, folklore and poetry.

Because these concepts reveal an astounding similarity not only to each other, but also to figures in the dreams and phantasies of modern people, we are led to conclude that more or less constant factors must underlie them, factors which always and everywhere express themselves in similar ways.

The researches of depth psychology have shown that the images and figures produced by the spontaneous, myth-making faculty of the psyche are not to be understood as merely reproducing or paraphrasing outer phenomena.

They are also expressions of inner psychic facts and may therefore be regarded as one kind of psychic self-representation.

This point of view can also be applied to the ideas of elemental beings, and in what follows we shall inquire whether and in what ways the anima is reflected in them.

A comprehensive survey of the material is impossible here.

I can give only a few examples, and, in connection with them, discuss only the characteristics which seem to me to be important in my context.

That is why, among all the elemental creatures, the giants, dwarves, elves, and so on, I am considering solely those which, because of their female sex or their relation to a man, can be accounted embodiments of the anima.

For the anima, as is well known, represents the feminine personality components of the man and at the same time the image which he has of feminine nature in general, in other words, the archetype of the feminine.

Therefore, these figures cannot be considered anima figures unless they contain typical and clearly recognizable feminine traits, and we shall give special attention to such traits in the hope of gaining a profounder insight into the nature of the anima generally.

Among the beings in question the best suited for such an investigation are the nymphs, swan maidens, undines, and fairies, familiar from so many legends and tales.

As a rule, they are of enticing beauty but only half human; they have fish tails, like the nixie, or turn into birds, like the swan maidens.

Often they appear as more than one, especially as three; the undifferentiated animus also likes to appear as more than one.

With charms or enchanting songs these beings (sirens, the Lorelei, and so on) lure a man into their realm, where he disappears forevermore; or else – a very important point they try to bind the man in love, that they may live in his world with him.

Always they have something uncanny about them, and there is a taboo connected with them that must not be broken.

The figure of the swan maiden is exceedingly ancient and can almost be called mythological.

She comes from very far back and appears all over the world.

Probably the earliest literary formulation of this motif is the story of Punlravas and Urvasi, which is found in one of the oldest Vedic writings, the Rig-Veda, l and more clearly and in more detail in the Satapatha-Brahmana.2

I will give the latter version in a somewhat shortened form.

Urvasi the nymph (apsara loved Punravas and agreed to marry him upon her own conditions.

She said:

“Thrice a day shalt thou embrace me but do not lie with me against my will and let me not see thee naked, for such is the way to behave to us women.”

After living with him for several years she became pregnant, and the Gandharvas,3 finding that she had lingered long enough among human beings, devised a means for her return.

A ewe with two lambs, had been tied to her couch; these they stole during the night, one after the other, and each time she cried out:

“Alas, they are taking away my darling, as if where is no hero and no man! ” Hearing this, Pun1ravas sprang up, naked a s h e was, to follow the robbers, and at that instant the Gandharvas produced a flash of lightning so that Urvasi beheld her husband “as by daylight.”

Thus one of her conditions had been broken and so, when Punaravas returned, she had vanished.

In despair he wandered about the country, hoping to find Urvasi again, and one day he came to a lotus lake on which “there were nymphs swimming about it in the shape of swans,” and she whom he sought was among them.

When she saw Pun1ravas, she showed herself in human form, and recognizing her, he pleaded:

“Oh, my wife, stay thou, cruel in mind: let us now exchange words! Untold, these secrets of ours will not bring us joy . . .”

She replied: “What concern have I with speaking to thee? I have passed away like the first of the dawns. Pun1ravas, go home again: I am like the wind difficult to catch . . .”

Sorrowing, he said: “Then will thy friend rush away this day never to come back, to go to the farthest distance . . .” (to the wolf infested wilderness).

She replied: “Pun1ravas, do not die! do not rush away! let not the cruel wolves devour thee! Truly, there is no friendship with women, and their hearts are the hearts of hyenas . . .”

She added that, while among mortals, she had eaten a little sacrificial fat every day and still felt sated with it.

But finally her heart took pity on him and she told him to come back in a year.

Then his son would have been born and then, too, she would lie with him for one night.

When he came on the last night of the year, lo, there stood a golden palace, and he was told to enter it, and his wife was brought to him.

The next morning the Gandharvas offered him a boon and when, upon Urvasi’s advice, he asked to become one of them, they granted his wish.

But first he had to offer a sacrifice, and the Gandharvas put fire into a bowl and gave .it to him for the purpose. He took the fire and the son who had been born to him back to his native village.

Then, after seeking out suitable sticks for the sacrificial fire, he lighted them in the way that the Gandharvas had prescribed and became a Gandharva himself.

This ancient legend, early as it is, shows the typical features which we find in later versions and in other localities.

For example, union with such a being involves a definite set of conditions, non-fulfilment of which will be fatal. In our tale, for instance, Pun1ravas may not be seen naked by Urvasi.

A similar prohibition occurs in the famous story of “Cupid and Psyche,”4 only there it is reversed, in that Psyche is forbidden the sight of her divine husband, whereas Urvasi does not want to see the human Pun1ravas naked, that is, does not want to see his reality.

Even though the breaking of this command is unintentional, it results in the nymph’s return to her element.

When she says that she is sated with the bits of sacrificial fat which she consumed during her sojourn with Pun1ravas, this also seems to indicate that human reality is not to her taste; moreover, when she returns to her own world she draws her husband after her.

To be sure, a son is mentioned to whom she gives birth after her disappearance and whom Pun1ravas brings home later, so that apparently something with a place in the human realm results from their union, but one learns nothing further about it.5

In this relation the attitudes of Pun1ravas and the heavenly nymph are markedly different; he, with human feeling, laments the loss of his beloved, he tries to find her again and wants to speak with her, but her words, when she says that women have the hearts of hyenas, are the expression of a soulless elemental being passing judgment on itself.

As to the interpretation of swan maidens, the school which conceived of mythological images as embodiments of natural forces and events saw in them the mist which floats above the water and then, arising, condenses into clouds and moves across the sky like swans flying.

Even from the psychological point of view the comparison of these figures with mist and clouds is apt, for apparently as long as what are called the unconscious contents remain unconscious, or almost so, they are without firm outlines and can change, turn into each other, and transform themselves.

Only when they emerge from the unconscious and are grasped by consciousness do they become plainly and clearly recognizable, and only then can anything definite be said about them.

Really one does better not to picture the unconscious as an actual area, with firmly defined, quasi-concrete contents; such a concept is only occasionally helpful when it serves to bring the imperceptible closer to our understanding.

In hypnagogic visions or representations of unconscious contents a cloudlike formation often appears at the initial stage of a development which takes definite shape later.

Something of the kind floated before Goethe’s vision when he allowed Mephisto to say, in describing the realm of the Mothers to Faust:

” . . . . . . . . . Escape from the Existent To phantoms’ unbound realms far distant! Delight in what long since exists no more! Like filmy clouds the phantoms glide along.  Brandish the key, hold off the shadowy throng.”6

From this we may conclude that the femininity represented by the nymph, Urvasi, is as yet much too nebulous and incorporeal to live permanently and realize itself in the human realm, that is, in waking consciousness.

Her words, “I have passed away like the first of the dawns . . . I am like the wind difficult to catch,” also indicate the insubstantial, breath like character of her being, conforming to that of a nature spirit and producing an impression of dreamlike unreality. Entirely similar in character is “The Dream of Oenghus,” an Irish legend ascribed to the eighth century.7

Oenghus, who was himself of mythical descent, saw in a dream a beautiful girl approaching his couch, but as he went to take her hand she sprang away from him.

The following night the girl came again, this time with a lute in her hand, “the sweetest that ever was,” and she played a tune to him.

So it went on for an entire year and Oenghus fell into a “wasting sickness.”

But a physician diagnosed his trouble and thereupon messengers were sent to scour the whole of Ireland for the girl who – so the physician said – was destined to be his.

Finally they discovered that her father was the king of a fairy hill and that she changed her shape into that of a swan every other year.

To meet her, Oenghus must come on a definite day to a certain lake. Arriving there, he saw

three times fifty swans upon the water, linked together in pairs by silver chains.

But Oenghus called his dream lover by name, and she recognized him and said she would come ashore if he would promise that she might return to the lake again.

When he promised, she came to him and he threw his arms about her.

Then “they fell asleep in the form of two swans and went round the lake three times so that his promise might not be broken.”

Finally, as two white birds, they flew away (to his father’s castle) and sang a beautiful choral song that put the people to sleep for three days and three nights.

“The girl stayed with him after that.”

The dreamlike character of this story is particularly clear.

That Oenghus’ still-unknown beloved appears to him first in a dream, that she is expressly said to be destined for him, and that he cannot live without her, are circumstances which unquestionably point to the anima – to his other half.

He wins her by accepting her condition and allowing her for a time at least to return to the water; indeed, he becomes a swan himself.

In other words, he attempts to meet her in her own element, her niveau) in order to make her permanently his –

conduct which should also prove of value psychologically, in relating to the anima.

The magical song of the two swans is an expression of the fact that two beings of opposite nature, who yet belong together, have now in harmonious concord been united.

The Nordic Valkyries are archaic and mythical swan maidens of quite a different sort.

They are called Valkyries because, in the service of Odin, they recover the warriors fallen in battle and bear them to Valhalla.8

They also have a role in bestowing victory and defeat, which shows plainly that they are related to the Norns, who spin and cut the threads of fate.

On the other hand, when the Valkyrie in Valhalla hands the hero his drinking horn, she is performing the usual function of a serving maid.

Yet offering a drink is a meaningful gesture, too, expressing relationship and a mutual tie; and certainly a motif which occurs frequently is that of the anima figure filling a man’s cup with a potion of love, inspiration, transformation, or death.

The Valkyries are also called Wish Maidens, 9 and now and then one of them becomes, as Brunnhilde did, the wife or lover of a great hero to whom she gives help and protection in battle.

One may well see in these semi-divine creatures an archetypal form of the anima, to be expected in savage and war loving men. Indeed it is said of the Valkyries that their principal passion is combat.

They embody simultaneously, as is also the case with the anima, both the man’s desire and his endeavor, and insomuch as these are directed towards battle, his feminine side appears in a form that is warlike.

F11rthermore, although the Valkyries are usually thought of as riding, they are also able to “course through air and water,” and take the shape of swans.10

One of the oldest songs of the Edda) “the Song of Wayland,” 11 begins with the swan maiden motif:

“The maidens flew from the south

By the murky forest,

Young swan maidens,

Battle to waken.

There on the borders of the lake

They reposed awhile.

These southern maidens,

And spun fine ftax.”12

The song does not say, but allows us to guess that here, as in other similar stories, Wayland and his brothers stole the maids’ swan garments so that they could not go away.

Then each of the brothers took one of the maidens and

“They remained after

Seven winters

Dwelling there eight

In all affection;

But in the ninth,

Necessitated by duty

The maidens desired

To go to the murky forest,

Young swan maidens,

Battle to waken.”

So they flew away, and two of the brothers followed to seek where they had vanished, but Wayland, fashioning gold rings, stayed at home and awaited their return.

There is nothing more about this in the further course of the song, which proceeds along another line.

The significant thing here is that the maidens feel an overwhelming yearning for battle and, by flying away, draw the brothers after them. In psychological language, this means that the yearning, the desire for new undertakings, makes itself felt first in the unconscious-feminine.

Before coming clearly to consciousness, the striving for something new and different usually expresses itself in the form of an emotional stirring, a vague impulse or unexplainable mood.

When this is given expression, as in “The Song of Wayland” and many other legends, through a feminine being, it means that the unconscious stirrings are transmitted to consciousness through the feminine element in the man, through his anima.

This occurrence starts an impulse, or acts like an intuition, disclosing new possibilities to the man and leading him on to pursue and grasp them.

When the swan maiden wishes to incite to battle, she plays the anima’s characteristic role of femme inspiratrice – although, to be sure, on a primitive level where the “work” to which the man is inspired is mainly that of fighting.

This is also a favorite role for women in the court poetry of the Middle Ages, albeit in a more refined form.

The knight fights for his lady in a tournament, wearing her token – her sleeve, for instance – on his helmet; her presence fires him and raises his courage; she bestows the guerdon of victory upon him and frequently this consists of her love.

But often she is cruel, demanding senseless and superhuman feats of her knight as the sign of his subservience. l3

Count William IX of Poitiers, renowned as the first troubadour, is reported to have had the portrait of his beloved painted on his shield.

However, in the literature of the troubadours, it is particularly interesting to see how the inspiration moved gradually to other things than fighting.

The name Lady Adventure (Frau Adventure) is another evidence of the masculine love of adventure being personified in feminine form.

A further peculiarity of the swan maiden is that she foretells the future.

The Valkyries, in spinning the fortunes of battle15 and so preparing the fate to be, resemble the Noms.

And in turn, the latter, whose names are Wurd, Werdandi and Skuld,16 appear to embody the natural life processes of becoming and passing away.

In the Celtic realm the same character is ascribed to the fairies, whose name is connected with fatuma and who also like to appear in threes.

Often it happens that the good bestowed by the first two is cancelled by the third, a feature likewise reminiscent of the Noms, or the Parcae.

The Nibelungenlied18 relates that on their journey to King Etzel the Nibelungs came to the high waters of the Danube, and Hagen went ahead to look for a way across.

There he heard water splashing and coming nearer saw “wisiu wip” (wise women) bathing in a beautiful spring.

Creeping up, he took their garments and hid them.

But if he would give them back, one of the women promised to tell him what would happen on the journey.

“They floated like sea birds before him on the flood.

It seemed to him their foresight must needs be sure and good.

Whatever they should tell him he therefore would believe.”19

So here, too, wise women, resembling water birds, appear as foretellers of future events.

It is well known that the Germanic peoples ascribed to woman the gift of prophecy, and for this reason she was especially esteemed by them, even honored.

Odin himself goes to a seeress, the Vala, to hear his fate.

Tacitus20 mentions a prophetess named Veleda, who enjoyed great authority among her clan, the Bruct􀇻ri, and was brought to Rome as a captive in Vespasian’s time, and Julius Caesar recounts that among the Germans it was customary “for the mothers of families to foretell, by casting lots and prophesying, whether it would be advisable to engage in battle or not . . . “21

Among the Greeks and Romans this function was exercised by Pythia and the sibyls. And such concepts seem to have been preserved for a long time, as is shown by a story concerning Charlemagne, which Grimm reports22 from a Leyden manuscript of the thirteenth century.

The legend is intended to explain the name of Aachen, originally Aquisgranum, and says that:

Charlemagne kept a wise woman there, “an enchantress or fairy, who by other names was also called a nymph, goddess, or dryad; “23 with her he had intercourse, and she was alive while he remained with her but died when he went forth.

One day, as he had his pleasure with her, he saw (that there was) a golden grain upon her tongue.

He had it cut away, whereupon the nymph died and never came to life again.

This nymph recalls the mysterious Aelia Laelia Crispis discussed by C. G. Jung in “The Bologna Enigma.”24

If we ask ourselves why second sight and the art of prophecy are ascribed to woman, the answer is that in general she is more open to the unconscious than man.

Receptivity is a feminine attitude, presupposing openness and emptiness, wherefore Jung25 has termed it the great secret of femininity.

Moreover, the feminine mentality is less averse to irrationality than the rationally oriented masculine consciousness, which tends to reject everything not conforming to reason and so frequently shuts itself off from the unconscious.

In the Phaedrus Plato criticizes this over-reasonable attitude – especially in the matter of love – and praises the irrational, even the insane, insofar as it may be a divine gift.

He mentions several forms of this:

1. The oracular wisdom pronounced by the Pythia, for instance, when giving advice as to the welfare of the state. Concerning

this he remarks: “For . . . the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses of Dodona, when out of their senses, have conferred great benefits on Hellas, both in public and in private life, but when in their senses, few or none.”26

2. The sibyl’s gift of prophecy which foretells the future.
3. The frenzy (enthousiasmos) inspired by the Muses.

Pythia, the sibyls and the Muses are feminine beings and may be likened to the northern seeresses; their sayings are of an irrational kind that looks like madness from the standpoint of reason or the logos.

Faculties such as these, however, do not belong to woman only; there have always been masculine seers and prophets, too, who are such by virtue of a feminine, receptive attitude which makes them responsive to influences from the other side of consciousness.

Because the anima, as the feminine aspect of man, possesses this receptivity and absence of prejudice toward the irrational, she is designated the mediator between consciousness and the unconscious.

In the creative man, especially, this feminine attitude plays an important role; it is not without cause that we speak of the conception of a work, of carrying out a thought, delivering oneself of it, or brooding over it.

The swan maiden motif occurs also in countless fairy tales;27 the story of “The Huntsman and the Swan Maiden” will serve as an example.

A forester, on the track of a deer, reached a lake just as three white swans came flying up.

They immediately turned into three fair maidens who bathed themselves in the lake, but after a while they emerged from the water and flew away as swans.

He could not get these maidens out of his mind and resolved to marry one of them.

So three days later he returned to the lake and again found them bathing.

Softly he crept up and took the swan mantle left on the shore by the youngest.

She implored him to give it back to her but he pretended to be deaf and took it home, so that the maid had to follow after.

She was received in friendly fashion by his people and agreed to marry the hunter.

But the swan mantle he gave to his mother who put it away in a chest.

One day, after this pair had lived happily together for several years, the mother in tidying up found the little chest and opened it.

As soon as the young woman caught sight of her swan mantle she threw it hurriedly around her, and with the words, “Who wants to see me again must come to the glass mountain that stands on the shining field”28 she swung herself into the air and flew away.

The unhappy hunter went to seek her and, with the assistance of friendly animals, after many difficulties, finally found her; then, having learned that she was enchanted, he set her free.

I have told this story in a good deal of detail because it includes a new and very significant motif, that of redemption.

The need for redemption, shown by the enchantment, indicates that the swan form is not an original condition, but secondary, like a dress hiding the princess.

Behind the animal form is concealed a higher being which must be redeemed and with which the hero will eventually unite.

The princess to be redeemed, appearing in so many fairy tales, clearly points to the anima.

Since, however, the story shows that the princess was there before the swan, this surely hints at an original state of unity and wholeness, which was ended by the enchantment, and must now be recreated.

The idea that a primal condition of perfection was destroyed, by either the sinful attitude of men or the envy of the gods, is a very ancient concept, forming the basis of many religious and philosophic systems.

Evidences of this are the Biblical doctrine of man’s fall, Plato’s originally spherical primal being which split into halves, and the Gnostic Sophia imprisoned in matter.

In psychological terms we say that life’s demands and the increasing development of consciousness destroy or mar the original wholeness of the child.

For example, in the development of masculine ego-consciousness the feminine side is left behind and so remains in a “natural state.”

The same thing happens in the differentiation of the psychological functions the so-called inferior function remains behind and, as a result, is undifferentiated and unconscious.

Therefore in the man it is usually connected with the likewise unconscious anima.

Redemption is achieved by recognizing and integrating these unknown elements of the soul.

The fairy tale of “The Stolen Veil”29 presents this theme in a new way characteristic of the Romantic period. Localized in the so-called Schwanenfeld30 in the mountains of Saxony,

where there is said to be a hidden, beauty-bestowing spring, the story contains the typical features already mentioned.

Instead of her swan raiment, however, a veil (and ring) are stolen from the bather.

The hero, who is a knight, takes her to his home, where their wedding is to be celebrated; and in this tale, too, confides the care of the veil to his mother.

Then, on the wedding day, the bride laments that she does not have it and the mother brings it to her;

whereupon the bride, putting on the veil and a crown, immediately turns into a swan and flies out of the window.

This story is too long to give in detail.

I t should be noted, however, that the mother, apparently with good intentions, is again the one who gives back the bride’s swan garment and so causes her departure.

Since the separation of the pair is brought about by the mother’s action, it is possible to deduce a hidden rivalry between the mother and the anima, such as is often met with in actuality.

On the other hand, this feature could also be understood as the tendency of the “Great Mother,” that is, of the

unconscious, to recall those who belong to her.

The swan maiden’s royal descent, shown by her crown, marks her as a being of a higher order, and can be related to the superhuman, divine aspect of the anima.

Yet in many stories it seems as if the figure of the enchanted princess should be interpreted from the standpoint of feminine psychology; in this case, she represents the woman’s higher personality, her Self.31

As for the bird shape: being a creature of the air, the bird symbolizes not only the animal quality of the natural being, but also contains an intimation of its unawakened spiritual potentialities.

Another elemental being enjoying special popularity and longevity is the nixie; theme of fairy tales, legends, and folksongs in every period, she is a figure made familiar to us by countless representations.

Also, she serves as a subject for modern poets,32 and often appears in dreams.

An ancient term, particularly favored by the poets of the thirteenth century for such watery beings, is “Merminne,”38 or “Merfei.”

Because they possess, like the swan maidens, the gift of prophecy and a knowledge of natural things, they are also called “wisiu wip” (wise women).

But in general, as we shall see, other factors take precedence over these, above all, the eros factor.

This is shown by the movement known as Frauendienst or Minnedienst, which expressed the new attitude toward women and toward eros arising during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and constituted a knightly counterpart to the nurture of logos values in the monasteries.

As the poetry of the period shows, not least among the causes contributing to this higher evaluation of women was the clearer emergence and increased effectiveness of the anima.84

Being essentially feminine, the anima, like the woman, is predominantly conditioned by eros, that is, by the principle of union, of relationship, while the man is in general more bound to reason, to logos, the discriminating and regulative principle.

So the Merminne and their companions always have a love relationship to a man or try to bring one about – an endeavor which is, indeed, a fundamental feminine aim.

In this regard they differ from the swan maidens, who for the most part do not seek such a relationship of their own accord but, by the theft of their feather garments, fall into the man’s power through a ruse.

Hence they try to escape at the first opportunity.

Such relationships are predominantly instinctive and lack psychological motive or any meaning beyond the instinctual.

For a man to take possession of a woman more or less by force is a clear sign that his erotic attitude is at a completely primitive level.

So it is not unreasonable for an elemental creature, upon uniting with such a man, to ask that she be done no violence, never be struck by his hand, or spoken to harshly.

Legends of water fairies and nixies are particularly widespread, especially in regions with a Celtic population.

In many places these tales are connected with definite localities and families, particularly in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, where they have been current up until very recent times.

As one example among many I shall give a legend from Wales, recorded by John Rhys,35 a well-known collector and student of Celtic folklore.

The events described are supposed to have occurred toward the end of the twelfth century in a village in Cannarthenshire in Wales.

Here lived a widow with her son.

One day, while pasturing his cattle in the hills, the son came upon a small lake where, to his astonishment, he saw “one of the most beautiful creatures that mortal eyes had ever beheld . . . a lady sitting on the unruffled surface of the water . . . arranging her tresses with a comb and using the glassy surface as a mirror.”

Suddenly she caught sight of the young man, staring at her steadily and holding out a piece of bread in the hope of luring her to shore.

She approached but, refusing the bread because it was too hard, she dove under the water when he tried to grasp her.

He returned home and came back the following day when, upon his mother’s advice, he offered the lady some unbaked dough; but the result was no better.

Not till the third day, when he tried half-baked bread, did the lady accept it, and even encourage him to take her hand.

Then, after a little persuasion, she agreed to become his bride, but on condition that they should live together only until she received from him “three blows without a cause.”

He acceded very willingly to this, whereupon she vanished again beneath the water.

Immediately afterward, however, there emerged two beautiful ladies just like her, together with a hoary headed man of imposing stature who introduced himself as the bride’s father and said that he would consent to the union if the young man could choose the right lady of the two.

This was no easy task since they were so much alike but he finally recognized his beloved by the way her sandals wen: tied.

Then her father promised her a dowry of as many sheep cattle, goats, and horses as she could count “without heaving or drawing breath,” and as she counted the animals came up out of the lake.

After that the couple went to live on a nearby farm and dwelt there in prosperity and happiness, and three sons were born to them.

One day they were invited to a christening.

The wife had no desire to go but the husband insisted, and when she was slow to bring the horses in from the field, he gave her a jocular slap on the shoulder with his glove, at which she reminded him of their agreement.

On another occasion when they were together at a wedding, she burst into tears in the midst of the cheerful company, and when her husband, tapping her on the shoulder, asked the reason for this, she replied: “Now trouble begins for this couple, and for you, too, because this is the second blow.”

After a time it happened that they attended a burial and, in contrast to the general mourning, she fell into fits of immoderate laughter.

Naturally this was very trying to her husband, so he hit her and admonished her not to laugh.

She said that she had laughed because people, when they die, are rid of their cares; and then she arose and left the house with these words: “The last blow has been struck; our marriage is broken and at an end. Farewell.”

Then, calling together all her animals from the farm, she wended her way with the whole herd back to the lake and dove in.

The story does not say what happened to the disconsolate husband but relates that the sons often wandered about the vicinity of the lake and that their mother sometimes appeared to them there.

Indeed she revealed to the oldest that he would benefit humanity by becoming a healer.

She gave him a sack of medical prescriptions for this purpose and promised that she would come whenever he needed her advice. In fact she showed herself frequently and taught her sons the qualities of the healing herbs, so that they attained great celebrity by their medical knowledge and skill.

The last descendants of this family of physicians are said to have died in 1719 and 1739.

The story is, therefore, not solely concerned with an instinctual, erotic relationship; the water woman brings her husband prosperity and transmits to her sons a knowledge of healing herbs which is obviously due to her connection with nature.

Rhys cites countless similar legends connected with definite persons who trace their descent to water women and are proud of it.

The taboos are not always the same; sometimes the man may not touch his wife with iron,36 or he may not speak unfriendly Words more than three times, and so on.

But always the violation of the condition results from heedlessness, or a fateful accident; it is never intentional.

Irrational as these conditions may be in themselves, the effect that follows from infringing them is as consistent and invariable as a natural law.

For half-human beings like these are part of nature and do not possess the freedom of choice allowed to man, which enables him sometimes to behave in a way that does not -correspond to nature’s laws, as, for example,

when his behavior is determined by insights and feelings which raise it above the purely natural.

Much is to be learned in this story from the three incidents in which the water fairy receives the fatal blows.

The first occasion is a christening, which she has no wish to take part in, and this means that the Christian rite is repugnant to her heathen nature.

According to the ideas of that time, elfin beings shied away from everything Christian; the sermons of the Christian missionaries were said to have driven them off and caused them to withdraw into the earth (into what were called fairy hills).

In the second incident she bursts into tears on a joyful occasion, and in the third she disturbs the mood of mourning with unruly laughter; she behaves in an unadapted way and her utterances, although they seem reasonable to her, do not suit the circumstances.

This is an indication that something undifferentiated is being expressed, because still unconscious or

repressed elements of the personality remain primitive and undifferentiated, and when outwardly manifested (in this form), telle quelle, are unadapted. Similar manifestations can be inwardly observed or experienced by anyone at any time.

The nixie who lives in the water, that is, in the unconscious, represents the feminine in a semi-human, almost unconscious state.

In so far as she is married to a man, one may assume that she represents his unconscious, natural anima, together with his undifferentiated feeling, since her transgressions occur in this realm.

At the same time it must be noted that she is unadapted not to matters of individual but of collective feeling.

It is a fact that one’s unconscious personality components (the anima, animus, and shadow), or one’s inferior functions, are always those which the world finds offensive, and which are therefore repressed again and again.

The nixie’s disappearance into her element describes what happens when an unconscious content comes to the surface but is still so little coordinated with the ego consciousness as to sink back at the slightest provocation.

That so little should be required to bring this about shows how fugacious and easily hurt these contents are.

In this context, too, belongs the revenge which elfin beings take when they are despised or insulted, for they are extremely touchy and likely to persevere in resentments unmodified by any human understanding.

The same may be said of the anima, the animus and the undifferentiated functions; indeed, the exaggerated touchiness frequently to be met with in otherwise robust men is a sign of anima involvement.

Likewise to be discerned in the anima are the incalculability, mischievousness and frequent malice of these elemental spirits, which constitute the reverse side of their bewitching charm.

These beings are simply irrational, good and bad, helpful and harmful, healing and destructive, like nature herself of which they are a part.37

And the anima, as the unconscious, feminine aspect of man, is not alone in showing these qualities; the same can be seen in many women.

For woman, in general, because of her biological task, has remained a more elemental being than man, and often manifests this kind of behavior more or less plainly.

It is easy for a man to project the anima image to the more elemental women; they correspond so exactly to his own unconscious femininity.

Because of this, elemental creatures, preferably nixies, also appear often in the imagery of women’s dreams and phantasies.

They may represent either the undeveloped and still natural femininity of the woman concerned, or else her inferior function; often, however, they are incipient forms of the higher personality, of the Self.

In this legend we meet another characteristic feature, namely, the water maiden combing her hair – like the Lorelei – and mirroring herself in the lake.

The combing of the hair can without difficulty be recognized as a means of sexual allurement still in use today. Looking in the mirror belongs with it, and the two actions together are often attributed to the anima figure in literature and the plastic arts.38

But the mirror as an attribute of the anima figure has still another meaning.

One function of the anima is to be a looking glass for a man, to reflect his thoughts, desires, and emotions, as did the Valkyries.

That is precisely why she is so important to him, whether as an inner figure or projected to an actual, outer woman; in this way he becomes aware of things about which he is still unconscious.

Often, to be sure, this functioning of the anima does not lead to greater consciousness and self-knowledge, but merely to a self-mirroring which flatters the man’s vanity, or even to a sentimental self-pity.

Both naturally enhance the power of the anima and are therefore not without danger.

Yet it is part of feminine nature to serve man as a mirror, and the astonishing adroitness that the woman often develops for this is what fits her especially to carry the man’s anima projection.

The fair Melusine, also, belonged to the race of water fairies,39 and, although the legend about her is well known, it contains several important points, so I will give it briefly.40

Raymond, adopted son of the Count of Poitiers, had killed the Count in a hunting accident and fled into the woods in unconsolable grief.

There in a clearing he came upon three beautiful maidens sitting beside a spring, one of whom was Melusine.

He poured out his sorrow to her and she gave him good counsel, whereupon he fell in love with her and asked her to marry him.

She agreed upon one condition, that he would allow her to spend every Saturday in complete seclusion without ever intruding upon her.

He accepted this and they lived happily together for many years.

She bore him several sons, who all, however, had something abnormal and monstrous about them.

She also had a splendid castle built and named it “Lusinia” after herself, although later it came to be known as Lusignan.

Then one Saturday, disquieted by rumors that had reached him about his wife, Raymond spied upon her and finding her in her bath chamber, saw to his horror that she had the tail of a fish or sea-serpent.

At first this discovery seemed to make no difference, but a little later news came that one of Melusine’s sons had attacked and burned a monastery which she had founded, and that another of the sons, who was a monk there, had perished. She tried to console her husband, but he pushed her aside saying: “Away, odious serpent, contaminator of my honorable race! “At these words she fainted. But when she recovered she took tearful leave of her husband and commended the children to his care; then, flying out of the window, she vanished “with a long wail of agony.”

Later she reappeared occasionally to look after the children, some of whom were still small, .and for a long while the legend persisted that she would reappear over the ramparts of the castle whenever one of the Lords of Lusignan, who were supposed to be her descendants, was about to die.

Melusine’s condition was that she be allowed once a week to return to her element and resume her nixie form. This is the secret which may not be spied upon.

The non-human, the natural, in this case the fish tail, must not be seen. It is reasonable to assume that the weekly bath with its return to the natural state is equivalent to a renewal of life.

Water is, indeed, the life element par excellence.

It is indispensable for the preservation of life, and healing baths or springs which bring about the recovery and renewal of life have always been held numinous and have often enjoyed religious veneration.

But the cults of trees, stones and springs, and the burning of fires and lights beside them were prohibited as heathen practises42

by the council of Avignon in the year 442 A.D.

In their stead images of the Virgin, decorated with flowers and candles, are raised near springs in many places as Christian expressions of the ancient feeling that still survives even today.

One cognomen of Mary is “pegeJ” which means spring.

The numinous quality of water is also expressed by the very old concept of a “water of life” possessing supernatural power, or the “aqua permanens” of the alchemists.

Nymphs or fairies, dwelling in or near springs, have a special affinity with the water, which is believed to be the life element, and, since the source of life is an unsolved mystery, so the nymph, too, has about her something mysterious which must remain hidden. In a sense these beings are the guardians of the springs and certain healing springs have a patron saint to this day: Baden, for example, has St. Verena, who replaced a pagan nymph and is also connected with Venus.

The anima, whose name expresses her animating character, fulfils a similar function. So she often appears in dreams or phantasies as this kind of fairy being. For instance, a young man, who was very rational in his attitude and therefore exposed to the danger of desiccation, dreamed as follows:

“I am going through a dense wood; then, there comes toward me a woman enveloped in a dark veil, who takes me by the hand and says that she will lead me to the wellspring of life.”

Recounting an early experience, the English writer William Sharp43 (1855-1905) tells of a beautiful white woman of the woods who appeared to him beside a small lake encircled with plane trees.

As a child he called her “Star-Eyes,” later “Lady of the Sea,” and he says that he knew her “to be no other than the woman who is in the heart of all women.”

Plainly, she is the primal image of womanhood, an unmistakable anima figure.44

The anima represents the connection with the spring or source of life in the unconscious.

When no such connection exists, or when it is broken, a state of stagnation or torpor results, often so disturbing that it causes the person involved to seek out a psychiatrist.

Gottfried Keller describes this condition most impressively in his poem, “Winter Night.”45

“Not a wing beat in the winter sky,

Still and dazzling white the fallen snow.

Not a cloudlet veiled the stars on high.

No wave stirred the frozen lake below.

“From the deep rose up a water-tree

Till its top froze in the icy screen;

On a branch a nixie climbed toward me,

Gazing upward th1 0ugh the frigid green.

“Standing there upon the glassy sheet

Parting me from depths so black and dim,

I could see, now close beneath my feet

Her white beauty gleaming, limb by limb.

“She, in muffled misery, probed to find

In that rigid roof some fissured space –

She is always, always, in my mind;

Never will I forget her shadowy face.”

The nixie, imprisoned in ice, corresponds to the enchanted princess in the glass mountain, who was mentioned above; botllglass (lncl ice fo_rm a_ cglc} hard, and rigid armor, imprisoning what is living so that it needs to be set free.

Still another important feature of the Melusine legend should be mentioned. When her son sets fire to the monastery that Melusine has founded, this obviously expresses the antagonism already referred to between the elfin race and Christianity.

On the other hand, according to many accounts, it appears that these beings also desired redemption.

Paracelsus, who wrote a whole treatise on such elemental spirits as nymphs, sylphs, pigmies, and salamanders, says that although they do indeed resemble human beings, they are not descended from Adam, and have no souls.

The water people are the most like men and try the hardest to enter into connections with humans.

They “have not only been truly seen by man but have married him and have borne him children.”46

And further:

“It is said of the nymphs, that they come to us from the water, and sit on the banks of the brooks where they have their abode, where they are seen, taken also, caught and married, as we said before.”47

Through union with a man they receive a soul and the children, too, of such unions possess souls.

“From this it follows that they woo man, and that they seek him assiduously and in secret,”47 in the same way that a “heathen begs for baptism and woos it in order to acquire his soul and to become alive in Christ.”

These disquisitions by Paracelsus provided the material for F. de la Motte Fouque’s Undine/8 written at the beginning of the nineteenth century, that is, in the Romantic period, when the idea of a soul informing nature was revived, and also when the idea of the unconscious was first talked about.49

In this story the central motif is the soullessness of the nixie.

Undine is the daughter of a sea king who reigns in the Mediterranean.

At his wish, so that she may acquire a soul, she is secretly brought to a fisher couple, who, believing that their own child has drowned, take the foundling instead.

Undine grows up a charming girl, yet often alienates her foster parents by her strangely childish nature, her constant inclination to mischievous tricks.

During a storm an errant knight seeks shelter in the fisherman’s hut, and Undine, though usually wayward and shy, is confidingly friendly toward him.

Her charm and childlike ways enchant him and, since the storm has conveniently deflected a reverend father

to the hut, the pair are wedded by him.

But now Undine admits to her husband that she has no soul, and he begins to feel uneasy.

Despite all his love, he is plagued by the thought of being married to an elfin being.

She begs him not to cast her off, since her kind cannot win souls except through a bond of human love.

She asks one thing of him only, that he will never – particularly if they are near the water – say a harsh word to her, since, if he does, the water people who are her guardians will come and fetch her away.

The knight takes her home to his castle, and then fate appears in the figure of Berthalda, a damsel who had hoped to become his wife.

Undine receives her in friendly fashion, but the knight grows increasingly uneasy. Finally, while they are boating on the Danube, this uneasiness finds expression in his accusing Undine of witchcraft and jugglery when, in place of Berthalda’s necklace that had fallen into the water, she lifts out a string of corals.50

Deeply hurt, Undine swings herself from the boat and disappears weeping beneath the flowing water, but not before warning her husband that if he fails to remain true to her the water spirits will take revenge.

Nevertheless his marriage to Berthalda is soon planned.  On the wedding day Berthalda asks to have her beauty lotion brought from the castle well, which previously had been sealed on Undine’s order, to prevent the water spirits from coming in.

When the stone is removed, Undine’s figure emerges veiled in white.

Weeping, she moves toward the castle and knocks softly at her husband’s window. In a mirror he sees her entering and approaching him.

As she nears his couch, she says: “They have opened the well, so I am come, and now you must die.”

Unveiling herself, she takes him in her arms and he dies as she kisses him. 51

What brings about the catastrophe here is the conflict between the anima, that is the nature creature, and the human woman.

In the Siegfried legend this plays an- important part, as the strife between the Valkyrie Brunhilde and Chriemhilde, and it frequently leads to great difficulties in actual life.

Fundamentally, such conflict expresses that opposition between two worlds, the outer and the inner, the conscious and the unconscious, which it seems to be the special task of our time to bridge.

Another type of anima experience is presented in “Le Lai de LanvalJ”52 which is part of the Breton cycle of legend stained him wondrously and bestowed upon him the favor of her love.

Her only condition was that he should never betray any part of it.

She also promised to fulfil his every wish and to appear whenever he desired her.

Thanks to this his other longings were gratified, and he was able to fit himself out so handsomely as to gain more and more consideration at court.

He even attracted the attention of the queen, who offered him her love.

When he refused this, she was so hurt that she finally forced him to admit that he had a mistress more beautiful than herself.

Angrily, she demanded that the king should call Lanval before a court of judgment to defend himself against the charge of having insulted the queen.

To do so he would have to prove that his mistress was really as beautiful as he said.

But the difficulty was that now he could no longer summon the lady, because he had betrayed the secret of her love.

All hope seemed lost when, accompanied by four fair damsels and riding upon a splendidly caparisoned white

palfrey, his beloved appeared, like beauty in person, garbed in white and wearing a purple mantle. Lanval was now justified; all were compelled to admit that he had not claimed too much.

The song ends with the fairy taking her love away on the horse· to her kingdom. 53

Being carried away to fairyland is, psychologically, a very important motif.

In the Celtic tradition this realm does not have the terrible and fearful character that it possesses elsewhere.

It is not a kingdom of the dead but is called “Land of the Living” or “Land under the Waves,” and is thought to be

composed of “green islands,” which are inhabited by fair feminine beings and so sometimes called “islands of women.”64

Eternally young and beautiful, these creatures enjoy a life without sorrow, full of music and dancing and the joys of love.

The fairies live here, including famed Morgan la Fee (Fata Morgana) whose name implies that she is “seaborn,” and thither they lead their human lovers.

Psychologically, this Elysium, comparable to the Gardens of the Hesperides, can be interpreted as a dream land, which is alluring and pleasant, to be sure, but not without peril.

That the anima rules this realm and leads the way to it is well known.

The danger of getting lost there, that is, in the unconscious, seems to have been felt even in early times, for countless stories describe the knight, caught in the bonds of love, who forgets his knightly duties55 and in a self-sufficient twosome with his lady becomes estranged from the world and from reality.

An extreme example of this kind is the case of the enchanter Merlin, whose beloved, the fairy Vivian, used the magic arts which she had learned by eavesdropping upon him, to tie him in invisible bonds and imprison him in a hawthorn bush from which he was never able to escape.

This story is particularly instructive because the figure of Merlin so very fittingly embodied the consciousness and the thinking faculty which were lacking in the masculine world around him.

He was a Luciferian, Mephisto-like being, and as such represented the intellect in statu nascendi, that is, in still primitive form.

To this he owed his magic power; but because his feminine side had been neglected, it drew him back in the form of eros, and bound in the toils of nature this man who had identified himself with the logos principle.

To a somewhat later period belongs the Tannhauser legend which Richard Wagner revived; it apparently dates from the fifteenth century and was widely known in the sixteenth throughout Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands.56

“Now is forsooth my lay begun

Of Danhauser I’ll sing thee,

And of the wonders he hath done

With Venus, the noble Minnie. 57

“Danhauser was a sturdy knight

In quest of wonders he

Did wish to enter Venus’ mount,

Where pretty women be.”

That is the way most versions of the song begin, but there is a Swiss form from St. Gallen, accounted one of the oldest, which says:

“Danuser was ein wundrige Knab

Grauss Wunder got er go schaue

Er got wol uf der Frau Vrenesberg5s

Zu dene dri schone Jungfraue.

“Die sind die ganze Wuche gar scho

Mit Gold und mit Side behange,

Hand Halsschmeid a und Maiekro

A m Suntig sind s’ O tre und Schlange!”59

Whereby the residents of the Venusberg are marked as relatives of Melusine.

Though I believe I may assume that the legend is familiar, let us recall the circumstances.

After Tannhauer had lingered for a long while in the Venusberg, his conscience smote him and he went to Rome to ask for absolution from the Pope.

But this was denied him and he was told that his sin would no more be forgiven than the dead branch before him would become green again.

So he returned to the Venusberg and remained there, even when the Pope sent him a messenger with tidings that a miracle had occurred, that the branch had grown green once more.

The end of the song, in many versions, goes as follows:

“Thus he within the mount again

Doth choose her love to be,

And to the Pope, the fourth Urban,

Is lost eternally.”

As the name shows, Venusberg is a place of love’s pleasures

and delights where Venus hold sway.61

It corresponds in every way to the “islands of women” or the fairy hills, spoken of earlier, and all the legends about it resemble each other closely in that they tell of a man being lured to such a place and held there by a woman’s enchantment, and of his never, or only with the greatest difficulty, being able to find his way out again.

An example of this in antiquity was Calypso, who held Odysseus on her island and released him only at the behest of the gods.

The enchantress Circe belongs in this category, too; but her character was more witch-like, since she changed her victims, Odysseus’ comrades, into swine.

The antagonism between Christianity and paganism, already intimated in the story of Melusine, comes clearly to light in the Tannhauser legend.

However, the paganism which emerged at the time of the Renaissance was not that of the northern peoples, but that of antiquity.

An example suited to our theme is the famous Hipnero tomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna.62 Here a monk describes how, in a dream, his beloved, the nymph Polia, after letting him see and experience a series of psychologically significant scenes and images from classical antiquity, finally leads him to Cytherea, where Venus gives the pair of them her blessing.

Another work important to mention here is i.e Paradis de la Reyne Sibylle by Antoine de la Sale.63

It was preserved in two fifteenth century manuscripts and printed in 1521.

This “paradise,” according to one Italian tradition, lies on the Monte della Sibilla in the Appennines.

The author, who had visited the place, gives an account of it and of the traditions connected with it.

A cave in the mountain is supposed to be the entrance to Queen Sibylle’s palace and her realm within corresponds exactly to the Venusberg.

The legend resembles that of Tannhauser, except that here the repentant knight is promised immediate forgiveness for his sins.

However, his squire leads him to believe that the pope is deceiving him and really intends to imprison them, so they both return to the sibyl’s paradise.

That in this story the queen and her maidens should retire, every Friday at midnight, to their chambers for twenty-four hours and assume snake forms is a feature already familiar to us from the Melusine legend.

I regret that the space at my disposal does not permit me to discuss the book further.

However, it is interesting in the light of what has already been said to note that in this tradition the Venusberg and the sibyl’s mountain are identical.

According to Desonay the sibyl referred to is the Cumaean one, who told Aeneas the way to the underworld, explaining where the golden branch could be found that would open its entrance.64

This was supposed to be in a cave near Lake Avernus, and a grotto said to be the sibyl’s is still shown in the vicinity.

Obviously the tradition has been combined with that of the cave on the Monte della Sibilla, which also lies near a lake and was believed to lead to Queen Sibylle’s paradise.65

But there is still more: Desonay66 conjectures that possibly this grotto may once have been dedicated to Cybele, the mother of the gods, whose cult in 204 B.C. was introduced into Rome as the result of a saying in the Sibylline Books, and subsequently spread as far as northern Italy and Gaul.67

As life bestower and goddess of fertility, Cybele ruled the waters; as Mountain Mother and Mistress of Animals, she loved and ruled all that was wild in nature.

She bestowed the gift of prophecy, but caused madness also, and her orgiastic cult was related to that of Dionysus.68

She is familiar to us as the mother of Attis, but to go further into that myth now would lead us too far.

I want only to recall that part of the cult of this goddess was that the priests should emasculate themselves.

As we have seen, those held prisoner in the fairy realm69 experienced the equivalent of emasculation, too, losing their virility and becoming womanlike and soft.

The great difference, however, is that whereas they succumbed to temptation and were subdued by feminine magic, the priests of Cybele offered a sacrifice to the goddess.

Unquestionably the character of the goddess Cybele can be compared to that of the “Reyne Sibylle,” even if Desonay’s hypothesis is not substantiated by archaeological findings.

This sibyl’s paradise contains almost all the features previously noted in the various stories of swan maidens, nixies and fairies.

That a complex of ideas, such as this, should have existed all over the world since primeval times, always recurring in the same combination or else simply remaining unchanged, clearly indicates that the material with which we are dealing is basically archetypal.

The Great Mother) the Prophetess and the Love Goddess are all aspects of primal femininity and also, therefore, aspects of the anima archetype.

According to Kerenyi’s conclusions/° Cybele and Aphrodite are in the last analysis one and the same figure, and both may be equated to the great nature goddess the divine figure reflected in the elemental creatures described above and in the legends associated with them, the same figure whose traits the anima likewise shares.

But swan maidens and nixies are not the only forms in which elemental feminine nature shows itself.

Melusine is scolded by her husband for being a “serpent,” and this figure, too, can embody the primal feminine.

It represents a more primitive and chthonic femininity than the fish does, for example, and certainly more than the bird, while at the same time cleverness, even wisdom, is ascribed to it.

Moreover, the serpent is also dangerous.

Its bite is poisonous and its embrace suffocating,71 yet everyone knows that despite this dangerousness the effect that it exerts is fascinating.

Appearing in countless myths and fairy tales, the serpent’s role is not always expressly feminine.

In modern dreams and phantasies, of men as well as of women, it often stands for pre-human and undifferentiated libido rather than for a psychic component that is conscious or capable of becoming conscious. 72

Yet there are certainly instances where the serpent has an expressly anima character.

In discussing the psychological aspects of the Kore figure,73 Jung tells of a young man’s dream about a female snake which behaved “tenderly and insinuatingly”

and spoke to him in a human voice.

Another man, who sometimes sees a ringed snake in his garden, says that he feels it looks at him with remarkably human eyes, as if it wanted to make a relation with him.

The spirit of nature also appears as a snake or as a “golden green triple snakeling,” in the story of “The Golden Pot” by E. T. A. Hoffmann.74

Here the little snake, which looks at the hero of the tale with “inexpressible yearning,” turns into Serpentina, a real anima figure who possesses the golden pot.

The pot is a vessel in which “the wonderful land of Atlantis” is mirrored and this land, being sunk in the sea, represents the unconscious.

In letting the hero behold such images, Serpentina fulfils a typical anima function, and besides this she helps him to decipher some enigmatic writing found on an emerald, green leaf, which is not hard to recognize as a leaf from nature’s book.

Whenever the anima appears as a beast of prey, as often happens in dreams and phantasies, it is her dangerousness that is being stressed.

A man, for example, may dream that a lioness which has left her cage approaches and circles ingratiatingly around him.

Then she turns into a woman, becomes threatening and wants to devour him.

Tigers, panthers, leopards, and beasts of prey, generally, appear in this kind of dream.

In China the female fox plays a big role; she likes to present herself as a beautiful maiden, but her tail can be recognized.

Often there is something ghostly about her and she is taken to be the embodiment of a departed spirit.

Women have similar dreams, but in their case the animal, in so far as it is female, represents the shadow or the primitive femininity of the dreamer.

In recent literature the figure of Antinea in Benoit’s novel, L’Atlantide,15 most impressively reveals both the serpent and the beast-of-prey aspects of the elemental anima.

Fascinating all the men who come her way with the beauty of Venus, the wisdom of the serpent, and the cruelty of the carnivore, she works irresistible magic upon them and without exception they perish.

Then their mummified corpses are used to ornament a mausoleum erected especially for the purpose.

Antinea claims to have risen from the Lost Atlantis and to be descended from Neptune; hence, like Morgan la Fee and Aphrodite, she is sea-born.

She is a purely destructive anima figure; those whom she enchants lose all of their masculine strength and virtue and finally die.

As may be seen from these examples, succumbing to the power of the anima always has the same fatal effect and is in a way comparable to the emasculation of the priests of Cybele.

That Antinea should explain her nefarious behavior as revenge upon man, who for centuries has exploited woman and misused her, is psychologically significant.

In so far as she embodies negative archetypal femininity, this would be the feminine principle revenging itself for the devaluation to which it has been subjected.

When, as happens in so many legends, an elemental creature seeks to unite with a human being and be loved by him in order to acquire a soul, it can only mean that some unconscious

and undeveloped component of the personality is seeking to become joined to consciousness and so to be informed with soul.

This striving is expressed in the same way in dreams, and C. G. Jung gives an example of the kind:76

A young man dreams that a white bird flies into the window of his room. It turns into a little girl about seven years old who, after perching herself on the table beside him, changes back into a bird again, but still speaks with a human voice.

This shows that a feminine creature wants admission to the dreamer’s house; but it is still a child, that is, undeveloped; this is also expressed by the fact that it becomes a bird again.

It is a first clear appearance of the anima figure, emerging to the threshold of consciousness, but only half-human as yet.

For the unconscious has not only a tendency to persist in its primal state and to engulf and extinguish what has already been made conscious;77 it also shows plain signs of activity in the opposite direction.

There are unconscious contents that struggle to become conscious and, like elves, revenge themselves if this is not taken into account.

The urge toward increased consciousness seemingly proceeds from the archetypes, as though, so to speak, there were an instinct tending toward

this goal. But where such an impulse comes from, or what the nature of the dynamis is which sets it going, we do not know.

It belongs among the undiscovered secrets of the psyche and of life.

The urge toward increase of consciousness in the material discussed above is expressed in the desire of a creature, still bound to nature and only half human, to approach a human being and be accepted by him, that is, by consciousness.

In this connection, perhaps another motif which has not yet been mentioned deserves consideration; namely, the fact that these elemental beings quite often possess a (more or less hidden) father.

The Valkyries are Odin’s maidens and Odin is a god of wind and spirit.

In the tale of the huntsman and the swan maiden, who has to be released from the glass mountain, her father is with her and is released at the same time.

The Welsh nixie’s father gives her in marriage to the man, and Undine, too, is sent by the sea-king, her father, to live among men in order to gain a soul.

In modern dreams and active imagination, the anima also appears frequently in the company of a father figure.

This can be taken as an intimation that behind the feminine nature element there lies a masculine-spiritual factor, to which may be ascribed the knowledge of hidden things possessed by these elemental feminine creatures.

Jung calls this factor “the Old Wise Man,” or the “archetype of meaning,” while he designates the anima as the “archetype of life.”78

The meaningful factor in the unconscious is what makes it possible for consciousness to develop.

In a certain sense this factor is comparable to the idea of the lumen naturae, which Paracelsus describes as an invisible light that “reaches man, as in a dream.”

He says that ”since the light of Nature cannot speak, it buildeth shapes in sleep from the power of the Word (of God).”79

Reviewing all that has been said about these elemental creatures, we see that in general they possess the same qualities and behave in similar ways.

Moreover, these qualities and the effects they produce can well be likened to those of the anima.

Both the nature creature and the anima represent the eros principle, the former transmitting hidden knowledge, just as the latter transmits information about the contents of the unconscious.

Both exert a fascinating effect and often possess a power overwhelming enough to produce ruinous results, especially when certain conditions affecting the relationship between the human being and the elemental one, or between the conscious ego and the anima, are left unfulfilled.

This failure is the reason why many legends end unsatisfactorily, that is, with the relationship broken off or made impossible.

From this it may be seen that such a tie is a delicate matter, as is also the relation to the anima. Indeed, we know from experience that the anima makes certain demands upon a man.

She is a psychic factor that insists on being considered, no1 neglected as is the general tendency, since a man naturally likes to identify himself with his masculinity.

However, it is not a question of either surrendering his masculinity completely to the service of the Lady Anima or losing her entirely, but only of granting a certain space to the feminine, which is also a part of his being.

This he does by recognizing and realizing the eros, the principle of relationship, which means that he not only becomes aware of his feeling,

but also makes use of it, because to create, and especially to preserve, a relationship, a value judgment (which is what feeling is) cannot be dispensed with.

A man by nature tends to relate to objects, to his work, or to some other field of interest; but what matters to a woman is the personal relation, and this is true also of the anima.

Her tendency is to entangle a man in such relationships, but she can also serve him well in giving them shape – that is, she can do so after the feminine element has been incorporated into consciousness.

As long as this element works autonomously, it disturbs relations or makes them impossible.

The researches and discoveries of depth psychology have shown that for modern people (or a:t least for many of them) a coming to terms with the unconscious is essential.

To a man the relation with the anima is of special importance; to a woman, that with the animus.

These factors, by building a sort of bridge, establish the connection with the unconscious in general.

The anima as a rule is projected first upon a real woman; this may lead the man to enter upon a relation with

her that he might otherwise find impossible; on the other hand, it may also result in his becoming much too dependent upon her, with the fatal results described above.

As long as such a projection exists it is naturally difficult for the man to find a relation to the inner anima, to his own femininity.

Yet figures of women that cannot be identified with actual persons often occur in dreams.

They appear usually as the “stranger,” the “unknown” or the “veiled woman,” or, as in the legends, they take the form of not quite human creatures.

Dreams of this kind are likely to make a strong impression and be colored with feeling; it is easy to believe that they concern an inner psychic magnitude with which a relationship must be established.

In literature there is a contrast between the great number of figures like this, with all their attendant circumstances and effects, and the rarity of cases in which relationships between men and such elemental creatures are brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

This may result from lack of sufficient consciousness in the human being. It is essential in establishing a relation to the unconscious that the ego be strong and well-defined

enough to resist the danger, always present when one deals with the unconscious, of being overwhelmed and extinguished by it.80

A clearly defined ego is also needed to maintain the continuity of a relation of this kind, for although the unconscious figures would like to be accepted by men, that is, admitted into consciousness, they are by nature fugacious and easily disappear again. (As Urvasi says: “I have passed away like the first of the dawns . . . I am like the wind difficult to catch.”)

Yet the solution of this problem appears to be a task of special urgency today, as psychotherapists and psychologists can testify, and in the method known as active imagination C. G. Jung has pointed out an approach to it.81

The confrontation and coming to terms of the ego personality with these figures of the unconscious serve on the one hand to differentiate them from the ego, on the other, to relate them to it, and both sides are affected.

A good and very charming example of this is to be found in “Libussa,” an originally Czech fairy tale, newly edited by Musaeus.82

Briefly, the story is as follows:

A tree nymph, seeing her oak endangered, obtains protection from a young and noble squire named Krokus. For his service she proposes to reward him with the fulfilment of a wish: for fame and honor, perhaps, or riches, or happiness in love. But he chooses none of these, desiring instead “to rest in the shade of the oak from the weary marching of war,” and there from the mouth of the nymph to learn “lessons of wisdom for unriddling the secrets of the future.”

This wish is granted and every evening at twilight she comes to him and they wander together along the reedy shores of a pond.

“She instructed her attentive pupil,” we are told, “in Nature’s secrets, taught him the origin and essence of things, their natural and magical qualities, and so transformed the crude warrior into a thinker and a man of world-embracing wisdom.

In the degree that the young man’s sensitivity and feeling became refined by his association with this fair elf, her fragile, shadowy figure seemed to take on additional solidity and substance.

Her breast gained warmth and life, her brown eyes sparkled fire and, along with this womanly aspect, she seemed also to acquire the feelings of blossoming maidenhood.”

Here is an unusually apt description of the effects and counter-effects resulting from a relationship with the anima figure.

She becomes more real and more alive; while the man’s feeling undergoes a differentiation, and he is taught, too, to become “a thinker and a man of world-embracing wisdom,” thereby achieving fame.

The story comes to a natural conclusion; 88 after they have lived together for a long time, the nymph one day says farewell to her husband, foreseeing that the end of her oak tree can no longer be averted.

Then the tree is struck by lightning and she, whose life has remained bound to it despite her human quality, disappears forever.

A remarkable and, I believe, unique relation to the anima was found by William Sharp,84 the English author I have already mentioned.

At the wish of his merchant father he first studied law but proved unsuited to it.

Then he spent three years, equally unsatisfactorily, in a London banking house.

Resigning this position, he turned to art and literary criticism and also published some psalms.

These occupations brought him into touch with London literary and artistic circles and he became especially friendly with Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

In the biography from which this material is taken (written by his wife who was also his cousin) we are told that university teaching posts were repeatedly offered to him which he could not accept because of his health. Besides this critical and intellectual side, he had also a lively life of dreams and phantasies which he called the “green life,” because it was so closely connected with nature, for which he cherished a great love.

This side of his character came into its own during his annual trips to the sea, and above all in Scotland.

In his boyhood a Scottish nurse had familiarized him with Gaelic legends, and Scotland for him seemed a home of the soul.

During one stay there he started writing a Celtic romance entitled Pharais, he became aware as he wrote of the predominance of the feminine element in it, and of how much the book owed its inception to the subjective, feminine side of his nature. In consequence he decided to publish it under the name Fiona Macleod, which

came “ready-made” to his mind; subsequently he wrote a number of other books under this pseudonym, vividly rendering the special character of Scotland and its inhabitants.

Due to the awakening of a new interest in Celtic things among a group of writers at this period, these were very well received.

According to William Butler Yeats, among the new voices none was more distinctive than the mysterious and remarkable voice revealing itself in the stories of Fiona Macleod, which seemed itself to become the voices of these simple people and elemental things – not by observation of them only, but by identity of nature.

The art of these stories, Yeats said, was of the kind that rested upon revelation; it dealt with invisible, ungraspable things.

Asked why he wrote under a woman’s name, Sharp replied, “I can write out of my heart in a way I could not do as William Sharp . . . This rapt sense of oneness with nature, this cosmic ecstasy and elation, this wayfaring along the extreme verges of the common world, all this is so wrought up with the romance of life that I could not bring myself to expression by my outer self . . .” 85

He made a close secret of his identity with Fiona Macleod and for a long while not even his friends were made acquainted with “her”; William Sharp had his own correspondence, and Fiona Macleod kept up a separate one with her readers. To his wife he wrote:

“More and more absolutely, in one sense, are W. S. and F. M. becoming two persons – often married in mind and one nature, but often absolutely distinct;”86 and he signed this letter “Wilfion” (a contraction of William and Fiona).

Sometimes, too, on his birthday he exchanged letters with Fiona, in which he expressed gratitude to her and she gave him advice.

Here we have a case where the inner anima attained a rare degree of reality.

Perhaps this was due to a special disposition on the part of William Sharp; in principle, however, it corresponds to what we mean when we speak of relating to or integrating the anima – which, in a certain degree, is surely possible to all men.

For the integration of the anima, the feminine element, into a man’s conscious personality is part of the individuation process.

In this connection, however, a point of special importance must be taken into consideration, for the feminine element which must become an integrated component of the personality is only a portion of the anima, namely, its personal aspect.

The anima also represents the archetype of womanhood, which is suprapersonal in nature and therefore cannot be integrated.

Behind the elemental beings of our study stand, as we have seen, the divine figures of Cybele and Aphrodite – in the last analysis, the Goddess Nature.

This archetypal background explains the irresistible force which can emanate from such an anima figure; for if in it Nature herself is encountered, then it is understandable that a man may be overcome and fall into its power. This happens particularly when no differentiation is made between the archetypal and the personal aspects of the anima. Indeed, confusing the two aspects is what gives the anima superior power, and that is why it is most important to discriminate between what belongs to the personal and what to the suprapersonal.

This separation is sometimes represented in dreams and phantasies by the death of the suprapersonal anima figure.

I know of one phantasy in which she rises to heaven, and the ordinary woman remains behind; in The Dream of Poliphilo, which has already been mentioned, the dream closes with the nymph Polia dissolving “into thin

air, like a heavenly image.”87

1. G. Jung tells of a man’s dream in which a female figure of more than life size and with a veiled face stands in a church – in the place of the altar. Indeed, like the Platonic ideas, the archetype of the anima is of superhuman nature and dwells in a celestial place.

Though distinct from the personal, feminine components of the soul, she is nevertheless the primal image standing behind them and shaping them to her likeness.

As Great Mother and Goddess of Love, as “Mistress,” or by whatever other name she may be called, the anima in her archetypal aspect is to be met with reverence.

On the other hand, a man must come to terms with his personal anima, the femininity that belongs to him, that accompanies and supplements him but may not be allowed to rule him.

In attempting, as I have in this study, to present the anima as an elemental being, I have left out the higher forms of its manifestation as, for example, Sophia.

This is because it seemed important to me to emphasize the natural aspect which so markedly belongs to the essence of feminine being.

When the anima is recognized and integrated a change of attitude occurs toward the feminine generally.

This new evaluation of the feminine principle brings with it a due reverence for nature, too, whereas the intellectual viewpoint dominant in an era of science and technology leads to utilizing and even exploiting nature, rather than honoring her.

Fortunately, signs can be observed today pointing in the latter direction. Most important and significant of these is probably the new dogma of the Assumptio Mariae and her proclamation as mistress of creation.

In our time, when such threatening forces of cleavage are at work, splitting peoples, individuals, and atoms, it is doubly necessary that those which unite and hold together should become effective; for life is founded on the harmonious interplay of masculine and feminine forces, within the individual human being as well as without.

Bringing these opposites into union is one of the most important tasks of present-day psychotherapy. ~Emma Jung, Animus and Anima, Page 45-94

NOTES

1913. Lieder des Rig- Veda. Translated into German by H. Hillebrandt. Gottingen: Vandenhoock & Ruprecht, 1913. X. 95, p. 142.
1914. Satapatha-Brahmana in Sacred Books of the East, XLIV. Ed. F. Max Mueller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1900. p. 69 ff.
1915. The Apsaras (those who move in water) are celestial water nymphs of great beauty, devoted to song and dance. Their masculine partners

are the likewise music-loving Gandharvas. See Hastings. Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, under “Brahmanism.”

4. Apuleius. The Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass. See Erich Neumann’s Am or and Psyche: The Psychic Development of the Feminine.

Bollingen Series LIV. New York: Pantheon Press, 1956.

5. Cf. Adalbert Kuhn. Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks. Berlin: Dummlers Verlag Buchhandlung, 1859. Here this son is conceived of as fire.
6. Johann W. Goethe. Faust. Translated by George M. Priest. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950.
7. Taken from A Celtic Miscellany. Translated by K. H. Jackson. London: Routledge 8c Kegan Paul, 1951. Also, H. Arbois de Jubainville.

The Irish Mythological Cycle and Celtic Mythology. Translated from the French by R. I. Best. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis 8c Co. Ltd., 1903.

8. Wilhelm K. Grimm. Deutsche Mythologie. Vol. I, Chaps. XVI, IV, 1835. This work has been republished, Vienna 8c Leipzig: Bernina Verlag, 1939. All the following references, however, are to the 1835 edition. (Ed. note)
9. One of Odin’s names is Wunsch (Wish). W. Grimm, ibid., Vol. I, Chap. XVI.

1 0. W. Grimm, ibid.

11. f. Wayland Smith. Translated from the French of Dopping and Michel by S. W. Singer. London: William Pickering, 1947. This English version was chosen because it most closely resembles the German used by Mrs. Jung, (Edda. Vol I, Translated into German by Felix Genzmer. Jena: Diederichs Verlag, 1912). A few changes, however, have been required to make it correspond entirely. (Ed. note)
12. This means that, as Valkyries, they spun the threads of victory and fame.
13. Cf. also M.-L. von Franz. Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales. Zurich: Privately printed, 1951. Chap. V.

1 4. According to Grimm (ibid. Chap XII) the swan was considered a prophetic bird, and that the word schwanen is equivalent to ahnen (to have a presentiment) seems to have a connection with this. According to J. A. MacCulloch (The Religion of the Ancient Celts. Edinburgh: T. 8c T. Clark, 1911) the Badb, or “battle crow,” an old war goddess of Irish mythology, is related to the Valkyries, but has the more sinister character of a foreteller of evil.

15. On the anima as a spinner, see C. G. Jung. Aion. Zurich: Rascher Verlag, 1. An E961nglish translation of this section of Aion appeared as “Shadow, Anima, and Animus” in Spring 1950, published by the Analytical Psychology Club of N.Y. Inc. p. 3.
16. Udr, Verdandi and Skuld are the past, present, and future of the verb, to be. See Prose Edda. Scandinavian Classics. Vol. V. New York: Oxford University Press, 1929. Notes 12, 13, 14, p. 28.

1 7. Fatum means statement, prophecy (See A. Walde. Lateinisches Etymologisches Worterbuch, 1910).

1 8. The Lay of the Nibelungs. Metrically translated from the Old German text by Alice Horton. London: George Bell & Son, 1901. The following passage occurs in Adventure XXV, Verse 1536.

19. “Sie swebten sam die Vogele vor im uf der vluot. Des duhten in ir Sinne stare unde guot. Zwas si im sagen wolden, er geloubte in dester bas.”
20. Tacitus. Germania B. Quoted from W. Grimm (ibid., Vol. I, Chap. v, p. 78).
21. “ut matres familias eorum sortibus et vaticinationibus declararent utrum proelium committi ex usu esset nee ne.” Grimm, ibid., Vol. I, Chap. V, p. 78.
22. Grimm, ibid., Vol. I, p. 361.
23. “quandam mulierem fatatam, sive quandam fatam, que alio nomine nimpha, vel dea, vel adriades (dryas) appelatur.”
24. “The Bologna Enigma” was published in English in Ambix, Vol. II; Journal of the Society for the Study of Alchemy and Early Chemistry. London: Dec. 1946.
25. Cf. C. G. Jung. “The Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype” in Spring 1943 (published by the Analytical Psychology Club of N.Y.

Inc.) and translated from the German in the Eranos-Jahrbuch VI. Zurich: Rhein Verlag, 1939.

26. The Works of Plato. Translated by B. Jowett. New York: Dial Press, No date. p. 401.
27. See in this connection, “Der Jager und die Schwanjungfrau” (The Huntsman and the Swan Maiden) in Deutsche Miirchen seit Grimm, hrsg. von Paul Zaunert. Jena: Diederichs, 1919. See also “Die weisse und die schwarze Braut” (The White and the Black Bride) and “Die Rabe” (The Raven) from Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmiirchen, Vols. I & II, and “Die Entenjungfrau,” (The Young Duck Woman)

a Russian tale all to be found in Miirchen der Weltliteratur. J en a: Diederichs, 1915. Likewise “The Adventures of Hassan of Bassora,” which is the tale of the 577th night in The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night.

28. According to Germanic and Northern sources the glass mountain was thought of as a place in the Beyond, the dwelling of the dead or the

blessed; according to other ideas, swan maidens, fairies, witches, dwarfs, and similar beings lived there. In many fairy tales people are led there by a spirit or demon and have to be redeemed. (Cf. Handworterbuch des deutschen A berglaubens, published by H. Baechtold-Staubli, under “Glasberg”) This place in the Beyond may well be equated with the unconscious.

29. “Der geraubte Schleier.” See J. K. Musaeus. Volksmiirchen der Deutschen, Vol. II, in Miirchen der Weltliteratur. l. c.
30. “Field of Swans.” Here the editor injects the amusing remark that this locale got its name from a certain Schwanhildis and her father Cygnus “who both belong to the race of fairies and probably stem from Leda’s eggs.”
31. See C. G. Jung. “The Psychological Aspects of the Kore” in Jung and Kerenyi. Essays on a Science of Mythology. Bollingen Series XXII. New York: Pantheon Press, 1 949.
32. See Goethe’s poem “Der Fischer” (The Fisher); Gottfried Keller’s “Nixie im Grundquell” (Nixie in the Spring) (Gesammelte Werke. Berlin: W. Herz, 1891-92) and his “Winternacht” which is given in translation later in this article; Gerhart Hauptmann’s The Sunken Bell (Freely rendered into English by C. H. Meltzer. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Page &: Co., 1914); Jean Giraudoux’s Undine (English version prepared in conjunction with Schuyler Watts. New York, 1941).
33. Minne meaning love. Cf. Minnesiinger (Singer of Love). See W. Grimm. Deutsche Mythologie, l. c., Vol. I, p. 360. According to F. Kluge in Deutsches Mythologisches Worterbuch the original meaning of the word Minne is remembrance, commemoration, recollection.

It is related to the English word mind, and stems from the Indo-Germanic root men or man, meaning thinking, meaning. Grimm connects it with manus, man.

34. See, for example, the interesting study by R. Bezzola on “Guillaume IX de Poitiers” in Romania, Vol. LXVI.
35. John Rhys. Celtic Folklore. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901. p. 3 ff.
36. To iron is attributed the power of protecting against elfin beings.
37. This is quite startlingly described in a northern fairy tale “Die Waldfrau” (The Forest Woman) (Miirchen der Weltliteratur, l. c.) which tells of a wood-chopper, enchanted by a beautiful maiden whom he has met in the forest. Every night she takes him with her into her mountain where everything is more splendid than anything he has ever seen. One day, as he is chopping, she brings him a meal

in a beautiful silver bowl but, as she sits down on the tree trunk, he sees – to his horror – that she has a cow’s tail and that it has fallen into the cleft in the tree. Quickly, he pulls out his wedge so that the tail is caught and pinched off. Then he writes the name of Jesus on the bowl. Immediately the woman disappears, and the bowl with the food becomes nothing but a piece of beef with cow dung on it.

38. The mirror is known in folk superstition as an instrument of magic. It has a numinous effect, since one sees one’s shadow or double in it. A magic mirror shows what is happening all over the world, or it foretells the future and in general reveals secret and hidden things. (See Handworterbuch des Deutschen A berglaubens. l. c., Vol. IX under “Spiegel”).

S9. See C. G. Jung. Paracelsica (Zurich: Rascher Verlag, 1942) where the legend is fully told, and the figure of Melusine is interpreted as the anima in connection with alchemical symbolism and the Paracelsian concept of the Melusines as dwelling in the blood.

40. From S. Baring-Gould. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages. London, Oxford &: Cambridge: Rivingtons, 1869.
41. As, for instance, Lourdes.
42. After Alfred Maury. Croyances et Legendes du Moyen-Age. Paris: 1896.

4S. William Sharp (Fiona Macleod): A Memoir compiled by his wife Elizabeth Sharp. New York: Duffield &: Co., 1912, p. 9.

44. Ibid., p. 9.
45. English version by the translator. (Ed. note)
46. Four Treatises of Theophrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus. Edited by Sigerist. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 194 1. p. 2S6.
47. Ibid., p. 2S9 ff.
48. F. de la Motte Fouque. Undine. Translated from the German by Edmund Gosse. London: Sidgwick &: Jackson, Ltd., 1912.
49. Carl Gustav Carus. Psyche. Jena: Diederichs Verlag, 1926.
50. The loss of Berthalda’s necklace having been brought about by Undine’s water guardians, without her foreknowledge. (Ed. note)
51. That this same material has been used very recently by Giraudoux in his play Undine shows that it is not yet outdated.
52. Four Lais of Marie de France – Guingamor, Lanval, Tydet, Bisclavet. Rendered into English by Jessie L. Weston. London: D. Nutt, 1910.

5S. A similar German legend is reported by Paracelsus in the treatise mentioned above, as also in W. Grimm in Deutsche Sagen. (Munich

&: Leipzig: Georg Mueller, No date. Vol. II) It tells of a knight from Stauffenberg who, one day as he was riding to church, met a marvelously beautiful maiden sitting all alone at the edge of a forest. As it turned out, she had been waiting there for him. She told him that she had always loved and guarded him, whereupon they became engaged. This maiden, too, was a fairy who could always be summoned by wishing. She provided him with money and property on the condition that he should form no tie with another woman. When his family pressed him to marry and he agreed to do so in spite of this, she first gave him a warning, then brought about his death mysteriously within three days. In this maiden who has loved the knight since the beginning, it is not difficult to recognize his own feminine element; its exclusive demand is a characteristic anima trait which often leads to difficult conflicts and entanglements.

54. See J. A. MacCullough. The Religion of the Ancient Celts. l. c
55. This motif plays an important role in, for example, Chretien de Troyes’ poems “Yvain” and “Erec and Enide.” The last work is the subject of a very discriminating study by R. Bezzola (Le sens de l’ A dventure et de l’ Amour. Paris: Ed. La jeune Parque). The heaviest task of the lovelorn hero consists in his having to fight with an opponent in the same condition, that is, to some extent with his double.

Overcoming him signifies that he can liberate himself from the isolating enchantment of love and turn back with his wife to society and the world.

56. P. S. Barto. Tannhiiuser and the Mountain of Venus. New York: Oxford University Press, American branch, 1916. See pp. 74, 75 for the English version given here which precisely parallels the German given by Mrs. Jung. (Ed. note)
57. In some versions it says ” Venus der Dilvelinne” (Venus of the Devilesses).
58. Here Venus has become the Swiss Verena.
59. Unfortunately no English rendering of this could be found. It runs roughly:

“Danuser was a wondrous youth

Great wonders came he to see.

He came to Lady Venere’s mount

To those beauteous maidens three.

“Throughout the week they’re fair all day

Decked out with silk and gold,

Rings and beads and crowns of May,

But Sunday they’re otters and snakes.”

60. Barto. l. c., p. 95. The version given by Mrs. Jung runs as follows:

“Do was er wider in den Berg

Und het sin lieb erkoren.

Des must der vierte Babst Urban

Auch ewigklich sein verloren.”

61. See also W. Grimm. Deutsche Mythologie. l. c. In the later Middle Ages in Germany, Venusberg was identified with the Grail, this appellation in the course of time having acquired the meaning of feast and merriment. W. Hertz quotes a chronicler who says: “History writers believe that the swan knight came from the mountain where Venus is in the Grail.” (Parzival und der Graal)
62. For a detailed psychological study of this work, see Linda Fierz-David: The Dream of Poliphilo. Bollingen Series XXV. New York: Pantheon Press, 1950.
63. Antoine de la Sale. Le Paradis de la Sibylle. Edited and with a critical commentary by Fernand Desonay. Paris: Librairie E. Droz, 1930.
64. See W. J. Roscher. Lexikon der griechischen und romischen Mythologie.
65. Le Paradis de la Sibylle. l. c.
66. Ibid.
67. The image of the goddess, a sacred stone, was at that time taken from Pessinus and brought to Rome.
68. In an Orphic hymn she is invoked as “Preserver of Life and Friend of raging Passion.” (Orpheus, Altgriechische Mysteriengesiinge.

Translated into German by J. 0. Plassmann. Jena: Dietrichs Verlag, 1928)

69. One could also designate it as the “realm of the Mothers” (Goethe). I chose the other term because in this story it is not the maternal aspect of the feminine, but the eros aspect, that stands foremost.
70. K. Kerenyi. “Die Gottin Natur” in Eranos-Jahrbuch XIV. Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, 1947.
71. C. G. Jung. Symbole der Wandlung. 4th edit. Zurich: Rascher Verlag, 1952. p. 53 &1 p. 610. For English, see Psychology of the Unconscious. New York: Moffat Yard & Co., 1921. p. 183 & p. 211. (Will be Vol. V in the Collected Works)
72. See C. G. Jung, ibid.; also Erich Neumann. The Origin and History of Consciousness. Bollingen Series XLII. New York: Pantheon Press, 1954.
73. Jung and Kerenyi. Essays on a Science of Mythology. l. c., p. 242.
74. I refer you to Aniela Jaffe’s excellent study, Bilder und Symbols aus E. T. A. Hoffmanns Miirchen “Der goldne Topf,” included in C. G. Jung’s Gestaltungen des Unbewussten. Zurich: Rascher Verlag, 1950.
75. Pierre Benoit. Atlantida. Translated into English by Mary C. Tongue and Mary Ross. New York: Duffield & Co., 1920.
76. Jung and Kerenyi. Essays on a Science of Mythology. l. c., “The Psychological Aspects of the Kore,” p. 241.
77. C. G. Jung. Symbole der Wandlung. l. c. (for English, see note 71), and E. Neumann. The Origin and History of Consciousness. l. c.
78. See C. G. Jung. “Uber die Archetypen des kollectiven Unbewussten” in Von dem Wurzeln des Bewusstseins. An English translation of this revised article will be published in Vol. X of the Collected Works. At present the only English version available is the unrevised article entitled “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious” in Integration of the Personality. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., 1939. For reference to the anima, see p. 77; to the Wise Man, p. 88. See also Jung’s “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales” in Spirit and Nature. Bollingen Series XXX. l. New York: Pantheon Press, 1954.
79. Quoted by C. G. Jung in “The Spirit of Psychology” in Nature and Spirit. l. c., pp. 405, 406. See also Paracelsus Selected Writings. Bollingen Series XXVIII. New York: Pantheon Press, 1951. p. 255.
80. C. G. Jung. “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious” in Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Bollingen Series XX. New York: Pantheon Press, 1953.
81. Jung and Kerenyi. Essays on a Science of Mythology. l. c., p. 228 II.
82. J. K. Musaeus. Volksmiirchen der Deutschen, Vol. II, in Miirchen der liltliteratur. l. c.
83. The story also describes the fates of the couple’s three daughters, which I will not go into here.
84. William Sharp (Fiona Macleod): A Memoir compiled by his wife Elizabeth Sharp, l. c.
85. Ibid., p. 227.
86. Ibid., p. 285.
87. See Linda Fierz-David. The Dream of Poliphilo. l. c., p. 2 10.