When Iseult weds King Mark of Cornwall, it represents something deep and powerful in our psyche. Anima is returned to the inner kingdom; feminine and masculine are joined; the self is completed and made whole. We hear bells pealing; the people crowd into the great church and line the streets to behold the new Queen and rejoice in her beauty. The soul has returned to Cornwall; the King has a wife; the land bursts into bloom.
We should give pause to appreciate what this means to us; for there is a corresponding marriage within us, a union we should not hold lightly. Iseult has been the Queen from the moment that a sparrow flew through the window of Tintagel and brought her golden hair to Mark. Tristan calls her the Queen before she is married to King Mark and addresses her as “Queen” even in the wilds of Morois. Iseult the Fair is first, last, and always the Queen: She can be nothing else.
The royal marriage tells us that it is correct that anima should be joined to the inner King. Even though Tristan tricked her and used force and guile, even though his motives were wrong and she came against her will, even though they drank the love potion on the high seas, nevertheless, Iseult is the Queen of the inner world, and she is destined for only one place: to be Queen on the throne next to King Mark, the inner King. No other place can be appropriate to her royalty and her divinity.
If we see this, then we understand why Tristan destroys the kingdom when he betrays King Mark. Not only does he betray the King, he reduces the Queen to a place of lesser dignity than is her right. This not only affects Tristan in his personal world but affects the whole kingdom. When Iseult married King Mark, healing and joy flowed through the whole land. When Tristan beguiles Iseult into secret trysts beneath the pine-tree, the reverberations are felt everywhere: The Queen is made less than she is; she is toppled from her throne and is banished. The Queen’s heart is divided; Tristan is divided; and soon the kingdom will be filled with discord because they can not resolve the conflict within themselves.
The dilemma of the myth, and the source of all the conflicts, confusions, and sufferings, is one simple demand: Tristan demands the right to possess Iseult for himself. She who should be Queen for a whole kingdom is stolen away by an individual. Ego usurps that which belongs to the self.
Now, what does this mean in the lives of modern men? The way that we pull anima away from her correct role within us, as Queen of the inner world, is by our attempts to make her into an external, physical woman. We do this by projection. This is our ego’s way of trying to possess anima, to imprison her in mortal flesh, to experience her on a personal, external, physical level.
One specific thing is required in order to return anima to her psychological role as Queen of the inner world: A man must be willing to withdraw the projection of anima from the women in his life. This alone makes it possible for anima to perform her correct role within his psyche. This alone makes it possible for him to see his woman as she is, unburdened by his projections.
Jung says this about the reclaiming of the projection:
The withdrawal of the projections makes the anima what she originally was: an archetypal image which, in its right place, functions to the advantage of the individual…. functioning between the ego and the Unconscious…. (Jung, Psychology of the Transference, par. 504*)
What is her “right place?” It is “functioning between the ego and the Unconscious,” living in a man’s inner psyche, his imagination, inspiring him from within.
When Tristan demands that he possess the Queen, it means that he insists on making anima into a physical being. He tries to make his soul physical, rather than recognize that she is a psychological being who lives in the inner world. Instead of experiencing her through symbol, as an inner feminine image, he tries to turn her into a literal physical woman. We not only take woman’s image as the symbol of anima, but we forget that we have made her a symbol. We believe that anima is woman, and that woman is anima. We demand of women that they act out that role and be goddesses rather than human beings. By humanizing anima we lose sight of our souls; by trying to make women divine we lose sight of their humanity and rob them of their womanhood.
Iseult’s royal marriage and her coronation as Queen tell us that she must always reign in the inner world as Queen. Try as we will, we may not draw her away from the inner King, pull her away from her royal marriage, or extrovert her into our physical relationships. If we try to do any of these, the kingdom is torn apart, the structure of human life and human relationships is damaged. And because Tristan keeps trying to see anima as physical woman, he never experiences her as “My Lady Soul,” which is his true desire and deepest wisdom.
There is another way. We can learn to differentiate the inner from the outer, relinquish the Queen to the King, and let her reveal a whole new world of consciousness—a world we can only see when we go to her as archetype, experienced within.
Tristan knows, in his deepest heart, that Iseult must always be the Queen. This is why he never tries to make an ordinary marriage with her; this is why, at a crucial moment, he places the naked sword between himself and Iseult. Ultimately, he knows he can not possess her in a personal and physical way. He relinquishes her to the King with one hand, even as he tries to possess her with the other. He does this unconsciously, begrudgingly, bemoaning his fate and not seeing the reasons behind his own actions.
If Tristan could make this sacrificial act consciously, if he could put the Queen back on her throne and understand why this must be so, his fate would not be the tragic story that it is. He could stay close by his Queen; he could experience her as the goddess that she is; he could live with her inwardly, on the correct level. He would have his soul, the High Queen, as inner reality, and he would be free to live with a mortal woman outwardly, to love her intensely in her own right, as is her due.