Marion Woodman: “And a Crone Shall Lead Them”
Reading ancient myths and fairy tales can be very helpful because these stories came spontaneously from people who had not studied psychology.
The stories came straight out of their unconscious and, therefore, show us how the unconscious works unimpeded by conscious intervention.
The images are clear and stark.
For those of us who are interested in why we do what we do when we want to do the opposite, the stories are gold mines of information.
If we accept, as Jung believed, that there are what he called “archetypes” in our unconscious, then we can read myths and fairy tales with an open mind.
If we do not accept the existence of archetypes, then we have no way of explaining the superhuman surges of energy that magnetize us toward someone or something—or repel us.
The word does not matter.
What matters is our recognition of the power of these energy fields in our unconscious; they can dictate our destruction (if our ego is weak) or they can be our greatest gift in life.
If we cannot tell the difference between human and superhuman (or subhuman) energy, we identify with gods and goddesses, devils and enchantresses, and eventually walk into self-destruction.
We project images onto these energy fields.
The god for one generation is Elvis, for another, Michael Jackson.
The goddess may be the Virgin Mary, eclipsed by Lilith, eclipsed by Julia Roberts.
The task of the media promoters is to find the right image for whatever energy field is floating up from the unconscious mass at that moment.
Stars pass by like meteors and are gone.
Some planets, however, we have always with us: mother, father, child.
The god and goddess energy that the parents carry for the child is inherent in the infant/parent relationship.
“Mother” may be slender, pert, and pretty for one person; she may be big-bosomed, old, and funny for another.
Yet, for both, “Mother” carries energy that will influence their lives forever, for better or for worse.
In trying to understand god and goddess energy in ourselves we have to consider our relationship to our parents, since the god is at the core of the father complex and the goddess is at the core of the mother complex.
In reading the ancient tales, we can recognize the magnetic interplay of overwhelming energies within ourselves.
In her book The Golden Ass of Apuleius, Marie Louise von Franz shows how the ancient tale outlines the role of the feminine guide in the development of a man’s psyche.
The story also has much to say about the process of individuation in a woman.
Lucius, the hero of the tale, sets out on a white horse, the prototype of the knight in shining armor.
He imagines he can approach his journey rationally, without any real commitment to feeling.
In the first house in which he takes up lodgings, Lucius loses his head completely when he sees the servant girl Photis.
He regards her as the prize to be won, and together they are overtaken by lust.
She tells him tales of her mistress, Pamphile, a powerful enchantress.
Believing he will be turned into a bird, he goes with Photis to Pamphile.
Instead, he is turned into an ass.
He falls into his shadow side.
Lucius is forced to continue his journey as an ass in the company of criminals, usurers, sodomites, and sadists—all the underground characters of his own psyche.
As von Franz points out, “It is an underworld that also opens up today in the psyche of every man who identifies with only the intellect and its false ideals and who represses his development of feeling.”
In the midst of his confrontation with his own darkest shadow, he meets Charite, a young girl who has been overpowered by robbers.
Lucius’ own wretched condition gives him great sympathy for her.
Through her, Lucius experiences his own compassion.
She is a symbol of the woman, usually the wife, who connects a man to his feelings.
Often, this woman carries the soul projections of the man, the values that he does not consciously recognize as his own.
Until this aspect of the feminine is integrated into a man, she may be one-half of the equation in the virgin/whore split in his psyche—the nurturing, protective wife, who carries his feeling values.
The other half may be a mistress, who carries his lust.
Lucius’s next important encounter is in the story of Psyche and Eros, an encounter Apuleius recounts halfway through his novel.
Lucius hears about Psyche, but in his “ass” state, he does not really understand her.
Still, he is fascinated by the tale of love between Psyche and Eros.
Having been connected to genuine feeling through Charite, Lucius is now able to sense the possibility of love.
Psyche is not an ordinary woman.
Rather, “She is represented as a girl with butterfly wings, that is, as a spiritual being or as a being not of concrete reality but real enough psychologically.
She represents an archetypal aspect of the feminine in Apuleius, that is remote from consciousness.”
Here the projection is beginning to be withdrawn from the “outside” woman, and Lucius begins to get in touch with his own inner feminine nature.
When a man begins to sense the feminine within himself, he begins to experience the possibility of his own wholeness.
Whereas Psyche is one incarnation of the Goddess, she is not the transcendent Goddess.
“Isis, who appears at the end of the novel in all her cosmic majesty, personifies the archetypal collective aspect of the anima.
There is no longer anything of Apuleius’ personal wishes nor of his desire for her.
She is the remote, lofty revelation of his deepest, transpersonal fate.”
Lucius becomes the devoted follower of Isis and serves in her temple.
As a man moves deeper into experiencing his inner feminine, he becomes connected to the Self.
His feminine is the bridge that allows him to experience his own godliness—his own creative powers in whatever dimension he wishes to create.
His projection onto a woman may begin that process, but ultimately, the fire must come from within himself.
Paradoxically, his love for the transcendent feminine releases the love that inspires his creativity—painting, sculpture, music, life.
Transcendence and immanence are two sides of one deity.
Encountering the Goddess within is not a task for the faint-hearted.
Only a hero can take the journey to find her.
To reach her, he must pass through his own wasteland, give up his false sense of power, and discover what is of real value to him.
Only then can he give full expression to his own creative power.
Patriarchy, and the sons and daughters of patriarchy, do know the Goddess.
Locked in fear of her judgments, they see her as a negative mother who could destroy them; therefore, they want either to dominate her or please her.
In her positive form, the Goddess is the cup, the vessel, the womb in which they need to be protected if they are ever to know the parts of themselves that are not recognized by the collective. ~Marion Woodman, Dancing in the Flames, Page 126-128
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
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