Carl Jung: The Battle for Deliverance From the Mother
There now comes a short pause in the production of the visions.
Then the activity of the unconscious is energetically resumed.
A wood appears, with trees and bushes.
After our discussion in the preceding chapter, we need only say that the meaning of the forest coincides essentially with that of the tabooed tree.
The sacred tree is generally found in a wood or in a paradiselike garden.
Sometimes the forbidden grove takes the place of the tabooed tree and is invested with all the attributes of the latter.
The forest, like the tree, has a maternal significance.
In the vision which now follows, the forest forms the setting for the dramatic representation of Chiwantopel’s end.
I will first give the beginning of the drama, i.e., the first attempt at sacrifice, as it appears in the original text.
The reader will find the continuation, the monologue and sacrificial scene, at the beginning of the next chapter.
The figure of Chi-wan-to-pel comes up from the south, on horseback, wrapped in a blanket of bright colours, red, blue, and white.
An Indian, dressed in buckskin, beaded and ornamented with feathers, creeps forward stealthily, making ready to shoot an arrow at Chiwantopel, who bares his breast to him in an attitude of defiance.
The Indian, fascinated by this sight, slinks away and disappears into the forest.
Chiwantopel appears on horseback.
This fact seems to be of some importance because, as the next act of the drama will show, the horse does not play a neutral role, but suffers the same death as the hero, who even calls him his “faithful brother.”
This points to a curious similarity between horse and rider.
There seems to be an intimate connection between the idea of man and the subordinate sphere of animal instinct.
Parallel representations would be Agni on the ram, Wotan on Sleipnir, Ahura-Mazda on Angramainyu.
The mock crucifixion on the Palatine shows the Crucified with an ass’s head, which may perhaps be a reference to the old legend that the image of an ass was worshipped in the temple at Jerusalem.
In the form of Drosselbart (‘horse’s beard’) Wotan is half man, half horse.
An old German riddle puts this unity of horse and rider very nicely: “Who are the two that go to the Thing? Together they have three eyes, ten feet and one tail, and thus they travel over the land.”
Legend attributes properties to the horse which psychologically belong to the unconscious of man.
There are clairvoyant and clairaudient horses, path-finding horses who show the way when the wanderer is lost, horses with mantic powers.
In the Iliad, the horse prophesies evil.
They hear the words the corpse utters on its way to the grave—words which no human can hear.
Caesar was told by his human-footed horse that he would conquer the world.
An ass prophesied to Augustus the victory of Actium.
Horses also see ghosts.
All these things are typical manifestations of the unconscious.
We can therefore see why the horse, as a symbol of the animal component in man, has numerous connections with the devil.
The devil has a horse’s hoof and sometimes a horse’s form.
At critical moments he shows the proverbial cloven hoof, just as, during the abduction of Hadding, Sleipnir suddenly looked out from behind Wotan’s mantle.
The devil, like the nightmare, rides the sleeper; hence it is said that those who have nightmares are ridden by the devil.
In Persian lore the devil is the steed of God.
He represents the sexual instinct; consequently at the Witches’ Sabbath he appears in the form of a goat or horse.
The sexual nature of the devil is imparted to the horse as well, so that this symbol is found in contexts where the sexual interpretation is the only one that fits.
Loki propagates in the form of a horse, and so does the devil, as an ancient god of fire.
Lightning, too, is represented theriomorphically as a horse.
An uneducated hysterical patient once told me that as a child she was terrified of thunderstorms, because after each flash of lightning she saw a huge black horse rearing up to the sky.
Indian legend tells of the black thunder-horse of Yama, the god of death, who dwells in the south, the mythical place of storms.
In German folklore the devil is a god of lightning who hurls the horse’s hoof—lightning—on the rooftops.
In accordance with the primitive idea that thunder fertilizes the earth, lightning and horses’ hoofs both have a phallic meaning.
An uneducated woman patient who had been violently forced by her husband to have coitus with him often dreamt that a wild horse leapt over her and kicked her in the abdomen with his hind foot.
Plutarch records the following words of a prayer from the Dionysian orgies: Come, Dionysus, into thy temple at Elis, come with the Graces into thy holy temple, come with the bull’s foot thundering, worthy bull, worthy bull!
There now comes a short pause in the production of the visions.
Then the activity of the unconscious is energetically resumed.
A wood appears, with trees and bushes.
After our discussion in the preceding chapter, we need only say that the meaning of the forest coincides essentially with that of the tabooed tree.
The sacred tree is generally found in a wood or in a paradiselike garden.
Sometimes the forbidden grove takes the place of the tabooed tree and is invested with all the attributes of the latter.
The forest, like the tree, has a maternal significance.
In the vision which now follows, the forest forms the setting for the dramatic representation of Chiwantopel’s end.
I will first give the beginning of the drama, i.e., the first attempt at sacrifice, as it appears in the original text.
The reader will find the continuation, the monologue and sacrificial scene, at the beginning of the next chapter.
The figure of Chi-wan-to-pel comes up from the south, on horseback, wrapped in a blanket of bright colours, red, blue, and white.
An Indian, dressed in buckskin, beaded and ornamented with feathers, creeps forward stealthily, making ready to shoot an arrow at Chiwantopel, who bares his breast to him in an attitude of defiance.
The Indian, fascinated by this sight, slinks away and disappears into the forest.
Chiwantopel appears on horseback.
This fact seems to be of some importance because, as the next act of the drama will show, the horse does not play a neutral role, but suffers the same death as the hero, who even calls him his “faithful brother.”
This points to a curious similarity between horse and rider.
There seems to be an intimate connection between the idea of man and the subordinate sphere of animal instinct.
Parallel representations would be Agni on the ram, Wotan on Sleipnir, Ahura-Mazda on Angramainyu.
The mock crucifixion on the Palatine shows the Crucified with an ass’s head, which may perhaps be a reference to the old legend that the image of an ass was worshipped in the temple at Jerusalem.
In the form of Drosselbart (“horse’s beard”) Wotan is half man, half horse.
An old German riddle puts this unity of horse and rider very nicely: “Who are the two that go to the Thing? Together they have three eyes, ten feet and one tail, and thus they travel over the land.”
Legend attributes properties to the horse which psychologically belong to the unconscious of man.
There are clairvoyant and clairaudient horses, path-finding horses who show the way when the wanderer is lost, horses with mantic powers.
In the Iliad, the horse prophesies evil.
They hear the words the corpse utters on its way to the grave—words which no human can hear.
Caesar was told by his human-footed horse that he would conquer the world.
An ass prophesied to Augustus the victory of Actium.
Horses also see ghosts.
All these things are typical manifestations of the unconscious.
We can therefore see why the horse, as a symbol of the animal component in man, has numerous connections with the devil.
The devil has a horse’s hoof and sometimes a horse’s form.
At critical moments he shows the proverbial cloven hoof, just as, during the abduction of Hadding, Sleipnir suddenly looked out from behind Wotan’s mantle.
The devil, like the nightmare, rides the sleeper; hence it is said that those who have nightmares are ridden by the devil.
In Persian lore the devil is the steed of God.
He represents the sexual instinct; consequently at the Witches’ Sabbath he appears in the form of a goat or horse.
The sexual nature of the devil is imparted to the horse as well, so that this symbol is found in contexts where the sexual interpretation is the only one that fits.
Loki propagates in the form of a horse, and so does the devil, as an ancient god of fire.
Lightning, too, is represented theriomorphically as a horse.
An uneducated hysterical patient once told me that as a child she was terrified of thunderstorms, because after each flash of lightning she saw a huge black horse rearing up to the sky.
Indian legend tells of the black thunder-horse of Yama, the god of death, who dwells in the south, the mythical place of storms.
In German folklore the devil is a god of lightning who hurls the horse’s hoof—lightning—on the rooftops.
In accordance with the primitive idea that thunder fertilizes the earth, lightning and horses’ hoofs both have a phallic meaning.
An uneducated woman patient who had been violently forced by her husband to have coitus with him often dreamt that a wild horse leapt over her and kicked her in the abdomen with his hind foot.
Plutarch records the following words of a prayer from the Dionysian orgies: Come, Dionysus, into thy temple at Elis, come with the Graces into thy holy temple, come with the bull’s foot thundering, worthy bull, worthy bull! -Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 419-425
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
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