Marie-Louise von Franz, Archetypal Journey in Fairy Tales, The Hero’s Journey
Introduction
In Volume 1 we showed that there are two spheres in fairytales, the profane
and the magical, and that these reflect the human world of consciousness and the unconscious.
We believe that the main processes described in fairytales comprise statements about the unconscious. Furthermore, we focused on four figures that are of general importance and appear again and again in fairytales with only minor variations. First, the figure of the half-light and half-dark father, a spirit hidden in nature. Then there is the Great Mother, matter and nature in her life-fostering and death-bringing aspects. Next was the shadowy companion of the hero, partly a miscreant, partly an animal, and
partly a divine prince.
Finally, we presented the anima, the soul image of a man with all her dazzling and iridescent, sometimes high and sometimes low,
manifestations.
All these figures are, however, woven together. They merge one into the
other, and often are very difficult to separate. The behavior and characteristics of these figures depend on human consciousness, an ego, that refers them to a center of consciousness.1
The fairytale always presumes the presence of human consciousness because only then is it useful to represent what happens to the individual who behaves in one way or the other, and what logic is inherent in his or her experience in the magical. It then reveals that humans are not merely playthings of those unconscious powers, but that an intention underlies the plot, a striving for the realization of an individual destiny, a meaningful development that, through suffering and dramatic conflicts, pushes through to the final goal. This thread, which runs through the fairytale,
is usually laid bare by the interpretation of the peripeteia. In the following we will focus on uncovering this meaningful thread.
The constellated archetype that steers and determines the inner course of
events is most commonly represented in fairytales as the “Great Journey”2 the adventurous quest to find the “precious treasure that is hardest to reach.”
This is a symbol of the Self,3 and this journey – interpreted psychologically – is the process of inner development (individuation) in a temporal sequence of events. Whether the hero wanders aimlessly or follows a clearly defined goal, this objective is often only ambiguously circumscribed. This goal (the Self) is always a symbol whose meaning can only be deduced in relation to the recurring adventures and the whole dynamic process. Jung writes of this:
The heroes are usually wanderers, and wandering is a symbol of longing,
of the restless urge which never finds its object, of nostalgia for the lost mother.
The sun comparison can easily be taken in this sense: the heroes are like the
wandering sun, from which it is concluded that the myth of the hero is a solar myth. It seems to us, rather, that he is first and foremost a self-representation of the longing of the unconscious, of its unquenched and unquenchable desire for the light of consciousness.
But consciousness, continually in danger of being led astray by its own light and of becoming a rootless will-o’-the-wisp, longs for the healing power of nature, for the deep wells of being and for unconscious communion with life in all its countless forms.4 5
The quest is a journey over unknown ways, it is “. . . the perilous adventure
of the night sea journey . . . whose end and aim is the restoration of life,
resurrection, and the triumph over death . . . ”6 It is the same basic idea as the journey to Hades to renew the inner being, which is rooted in many ancient mystery cults.
It is a return to the archetypal images out of which all religious and artistic experience arises. This descent constitutes a significant risk because the human feels a deep fear of drowning in himself. “If it were only resistance that he felt, that would not be so bad. In actual fact, however, the
psychic substratum, that dark realm of the unknown, exercises a fascinating attraction that threatens to become the more overpowering the further one penetrates into it.”7
The human is in danger of losing himself completely to the images of the unconscious, in whose flood he becomes alienated from the world.8
A well-known example of the hero’s journey as a metaphor for a
temporary entry into the unconscious is the Jonah motif: being swallowed up by the whale and being reborn out of the maternal monster.9 In the fairytales already discussed, the night sea journey, or being swallowed up by the whale dragon, is represented in “Tseremsaaks,” “Makonaura and Anuanaitu,” “Giviok (Kiviok),” “The Visit to Heaven,” “The Witchdoctor Makanaholo” and “The Strange Boy.”10
Not only in these, but also in many fairytales that we have not
mentioned, this motif signals a journey to the magical kingdom, differing only in the symbols chosen to represent the unconscious. An example of a final engulfment without return was given in “The Disowned Princess.”
Marie-Louise von Franz, Archetypal Journey in Fairy Tales, The Hero’s Journey, Introduction, Para 1-6
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