Symbols of the Mother and of Rebirth
The vision that follows the birth of the hero is described by Miss Miller as a “swarm of people.”
We know that this image symbolizes a secret, or rather, the unconscious.
The possession of a secret cuts a person off from his fellow human beings.
Since it is of the utmost importance for the economy of the libido that his rapport with the environment should be as complete and as unimpeded as possible, the possession of subjectively important secrets usually has a very disturbing effect.
It is therefore especially beneficial for the neurotic if he can at last disburden himself of his secrets during treatment.
I have often noticed that the symbol of the crowd, and particularly of a streaming mass of people in motion, expresses violent motions of the unconscious.
Such symbols always indicate an activation of the unconscious and an incipient dissociation between it and the ego.
The vision of the swarm of people undergoes further development: horses appear, and a battle is fought.
For the time being, I would like to follow Silberer and place the meaning of these visions in the “functional” category.
Because, fundamentally, the idea of the swarming crowd is an expression for the mass of thoughts now rushing in upon consciousness.
The same is true of the battle, and possibly of the horses, which symbolize movement or energy.
The deeper meaning of the horses will only become apparent in our treatment of mother-symbols.
The next vision has a more definite character and a more significant content: Miss Miller sees a “dream-city.”
The picture is similar to one she had seen a short time before on the cover of a magazine.
Unfortunately, further details are lacking.
But one can easily imagine that this dream-city is something very beautiful and ardently longed for—a kind of heavenly Jerusalem, as the poet of the Apocalypse dreamt it.
The city is a maternal symbol, a woman who harbours the inhabitants in herself like children.
It is therefore understandable that the three mother-goddesses, Rhea, Cybele, and Diana, all wear the mural crown.
The Old Testament treats the cities of Jerusalem, Babylon, etc. just as if they were women.
Isaiah cries out:
Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldaeans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate.
Take the millstones, and grind meal: uncover thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers.
Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and I will not meet thee as a man.
Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldaeans: for thou shalt no more be called, The lady of kingdoms.
Jeremiah says of Babylon:
Your mother shall be sore confounded; she that bare you shall be ashamed.
Strong, unconquered cities are virgins; colonies are sons and daughters.
Cities are also harlots.
Isaiah says of Tyre:
Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten.
And: How is the faithful city become an harlot!
We find a similar symbolism in the myth of Ogyges, the prehistoric king of Egypt who reigned in Thebes, and whose wife was appropriately called Thebe.
The Boeotian city of Thebes founded by Cadmus received on that account the cognomen “Ogygian.”
This cognomen was also applied to the great Flood, which was called “Ogygian” because it happened under Ogyges.
We shall see later on that this coincidence can hardly be accidental.
The fact that the city and the wife of Ogyges both have the same name indicates that there must be some relation between the city and the woman.
Which is not difficult to understand because the city is identical with the woman.
There is a similar idea in Hindu mythology, where Indra appears as the husband of Urvara.
But Urvara means the “fertile land.”
In the same way the seizure of a country by the king was regarded as his marriage with the land.
Similar ideas must also have existed in Europe.
Princes at their accession had to guarantee a good harvest.
The Swedish king Domaldi was actually killed as a result of failure of the crops.
In the Hindu Ramayana, the hero Rama marries Sita, the furrow.
To the same circle of ideas belongs the Chinese custom of the emperor’s having to plough a furrow on ascending the throne.
The idea of the soil as feminine also embraces the idea of continuous cohabitation with the woman, a physical interpenetration.
The god Shiva, as Mahadeva and Parvati, is both male and female.
He has even given one half of his body to his wife Parvati as a dwelling-place.
The motif of continuous cohabitation is expressed in the well-known lingam symbol found everywhere in Indian temples.
The base is a female symbol, and within it stands the phallus.
This symbol is rather like the phallic baskets and chests of the Greeks.
The chest or casket is a female symbol, i.e., the womb, a common enough conception in the older mythologies.
The chest, barrel, or basket with its precious contents was often thought of as floating on the water, thus forming an analogy to the course of the sun.
The sun sails over the sea like an immortal god who every evening is immersed in the maternal waters and is born anew in the morning.
Frobenius writes:
If, then, we find the blood-red sunrise connected with the idea that a birth is taking place, the birth of the young sun, the question immediately arises: Whose is the paternity?
How did the woman become pregnant?
And since this woman symbolizes the same idea as the fish, which means the sea (on the assumption that the sun descends into the sea as well as rises out of it), the strange primitive answer is that the sea has previously swallowed the old sun.
The resulting myth is that since the sea-woman devoured the sun and now brings a new sun into the world, she obviously became pregnant in that way. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 300-308
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
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