[410] The arcanum artis, or coniunctio Solis et Lunae as supreme union of hostile opposites, was not shown in our first picture; but now it is illustrated in considerable detail, as its importance deserves, in a series of pictures. King and Queen, bridegroom and bride, approach one another for the purpose of betrothal or marriage. The incest element appears in the brother-sister relationship of Apollo and Diana. The pair of them stand respectively on sun and moon, thus indicating their solar and lunar nature in accordance with the astrological assumption of the importance of the sun’s position for man and the moon’s for woman. The meeting is somewhat distant at first, as the court clothes suggest. The two give each other their left hands, and this can hardly be unintentional since it is contrary to custom. The gesture points to a closely guarded secret, to the “left-hand path,” as the Indian Tantrists call their Shiva and Shakti worship. The left-hand (sinister) side is the dark, the unconscious side. The left is inauspicious and awkward; also it is the side of the heart, from which comes not only love but all the evil thoughts connected with it, the moral contradictions in human nature that are expressed most clearly in our affective life. The contact of left hands could therefore be taken as an indication of the affective nature of the relationship, of its dubious character, since this is a mixture of “heavenly and earthly” love further complicated by an incestuous sous-entendu. In this delicate yet altogether human situation the gesture of the right hands strikes us as compensatory. They are holding a device composed of five (4 + 1) flowers. The branches in the hands each have two flowers; these four again refer to the four elements of which two—fire and air—are active and two—water and earth—passive, the former being ascribed to the man and the latter to the woman. The fifth flower comes from above and presumably represents the quinta essentia; it is brought by the dove of the Holy Ghost, an analogy of Noah’s dove that carried the olive branch of reconciliation in its beak. The bird descends from the quintessential star (cf. fig. 1).
[411] The real secret lies in the union of right hands, for, as the picture shows, this is mediated by the donum Spiritus Sancti, the royal art. The “sinister” left-handed contact here becomes associated with the union, effected from above, of two quaternities (the masculine and feminine manifestations of the four elements) in the form of an ogdoad consisting of five flowers and three branches. These masculine numbers point to action, decision, purpose, and movement. The fifth flower is distinguished from the four in that it is brought by the dove. The three branches correspond to the upwelling of Mercurius triplex nomine or to the three pipes of the fountain. So once again we have an abbreviated recapitulation of the opus, i.e., of its deeper meaning as shown in the first picture. The text to Figure 2 begins significantly with the words: “Mark well, in the art of our magisterium nothing is concealed by the philosophers except the secret of the art which may not be revealed to all and sundry. For were that to happen, that man would be accursed; he would incur the wrath of God and perish of the apoplexy. Wherefore all error in the art arises because men do not begin with the proper substance,1 and for this reason you should employ venerable Nature, because from her and through her and in her is our art born and in naught else: and so our magisterium is the work of Nature and not of the worker.”2
[412] If we take the fear of divine punishment for betrayal at its face value, the reason for this must lie in something that is thought to endanger the soul’s salvation, i.e., a typical “peril of the soul.” The causal “wherefore” with which the next sentence begins can only refer to the secret that must not be revealed; but because the prima materia remains unknown in consequence, all those who do not know the secret fall into error, and this happens because, as said, they choose something arbitrary and artificial instead of pure Nature. The emphasis laid on venerabilis natura3 gives us some idea of that passion for investigation which ultimately gave birth to natural science, but which so often proved inimical to faith. Worship of nature, a legacy from the past, stood in more or less secret opposition to the views of the Church and led the mind and heart in the direction of a “left-hand path.” What a sensation Petrarch’s ascent of Mont Ventoux caused! St. Augustine had warned in his Confessions (X, viii): “And men go forth to admire the high mountains and the great waves of the sea and the broad torrent of the rivers and the vast expanse of the ocean and the orbits of the stars, and to turn away from themselves.…”
Figure 2
[413] The exclusive emphasis on nature as the one and only basis of the art is in flagrant contrast to the ever-recurring protestation that the art is a donum Spiritus Sancti, an arcanum of the sapientia Dei, and so forth, from which we would have to conclude that the alchemists were unshakably orthodox in their beliefs. I do not think that this can be doubted as a rule. On the contrary, their belief in illumination through the Holy Ghost seems to have been a psychological necessity in view of the ominous darkness of nature’s secrets.
[414] Now if a text which insists so much on pure nature is explained or illustrated by a picture like Figure 2, we must assume that the relationship between king and queen was taken to be something perfectly natural. Meditation and speculation about the mystery of the coniunctio were inevitable, and this would certainly not leave erotic fantasy untouched, if only because these symbolical pictures spring from the corresponding unconscious contents—half spiritual, half sexual—and are also intended to remind us of that twilit region, for only from indistinguishable night can the light be born. This is what nature and natural experience teach, but the spirit believes in the lumen de lumine— the light born of light.4 Somehow the artifex was entangled in this game of unconscious projection and was bound to experience the mysterious happening with shudders of fear, as a tremendum. Even that scoffer and blasphemer Agrippa von Nettesheim displays a remarkable reticence in his criticism of “Alkumistica.”5 After saying a great deal about this dubious art, he adds:6 “Permulta adhuc de hoc arte (mihi tamen non ad modum inimica) dicere possem, nisi iuratum esset (quod facere solent, qui mysteriis initiantur) de silentio”(I could say much more about this art—which I do not find so disagreeable—were it not for the oath of silence usually taken by initiates into mysteries).7 Such a mitigation of his criticism, most unexpected in Agrippa, makes one think that he is on the defensive: somehow he was impressed by the royal art.
[415] It is not necessary to think of the secret of the art as anything very lurid. Nature knows nothing of moral squalor, indeed her truths are alarming enough. We need only bear in mind one fact: that the desired coniunctio was not a legitimate union but was always—one could almost say, on principleincestuous. The fear that surrounds this complex—the “fear of incest”—is quite typical and has already been stressed by Freud. It is further exacerbated by fear of the compulsive force which emanates from most unconscious contents.
[416] The left-handed contact and crosswise union of the right hands—sub rosa— is a startlingly concrete and yet very subtle hint of the delicate situation in which “venerable nature” has placed the adept. Although the Rosicrucian movement cannot be traced further back than the Fama and Confessio fraternitatis of Andreae at the beginning of the seventeenth century,8 we are nevertheless confronted with a “rosie cross” in this curious bouquet of three flowering branches, which evidently originated sometime before 1550 but, equally obviously, makes no claim to be a true rosicrux.9 As we have already said, its threefold structure is reminiscent of the Mercurial Fountain, while at the same time it points to the important fact that the “rose” is the product of three living things: the king, the queen, and between them the dove of the Holy Ghost. Mercurius triplex nomine is thus converted into three figures, and he can no longer be thought of as a metal or mineral, but only as “spirit.” In this form also he is triple-natured—masculine, feminine, and divine. His coincidence with the Holy Ghost as the third person of the Trinity certainly has no foundation in dogma, but “venerable nature” evidently enabled the alchemist to provide the Holy Ghost with a most unorthodox and distinctly earth-bound partner, or rather to complement him with that divine spirit which had been imprisoned in all creatures since the day of Creation. This “lower” spirit is the Primordial Man, hermaphroditic by nature and of Iranian origin, who was imprisoned in Physis.10 He is the spherical, i.e., perfect, man who appears at the beginning and end of time and is man’s own beginning and end. He is man’s totality, which is beyond the division of the sexes and can only be reached when male and female come together in one. The revelation of this higher meaning solves the problems created by the “sinister” contact and produces from the chaotic darkness the lumen quod superat omnia lumina.
[417] If I did not know from ample experience that such developments also occur in modern man, who cannot possibly be suspected of having any knowledge of the Gnostic doctrine of the Anthropos, I should be inclined to think that the alchemists were keeping up a secret tradition, although the evidence for this (the hints contained in the writings of Zosimos of Panopolis) is so scanty that Waite, who knows medieval alchemy relatively well, doubts whether a secret tradition existed at all.11 I am therefore of the opinion, based on my professional work, that the Anthropos idea in medieval alchemy was largely “autochthonous,” i.e., the outcome of subjective experience. It is an “eternal” idea, an archetype that can appear spontaneously at any time and in any place. We meet the Anthropos even in ancient Chinese alchemy, in the writings of Wei Po-yang, about A.D. 142. There he is called chên-jên (‘true man’).12
[418] The revelation of the Anthropos is associated with no ordinary religious emotion; it signifies much the same thing as the vision of Christ for the believing Christian. Nevertheless it does not appear ex opere divino but ex opere naturae; not from above but from the transformation of a shade from Hades, akin to evil itself and bearing the name of the pagan god of revelation. This dilemma throws a new light on the secret of the art: the very serious danger of heresy. Consequently the alchemists found themselves between Scylla and Charybdis: on the one hand they ran the conscious risk of being misunderstood and suspected of fraudulent gold-making, and on the other of being burned at the stake as heretics. As to the gold, right at the beginning of the text to Figure 2, the Rosarium quotes the words of Senior: “Aurum nostrum non est aurum vulgi.” But, as history shows, the alchemist would rather risk being suspected of gold-making than of heresy. It is still an open question, which perhaps can never be answered, how far the alchemist was conscious of the true nature of his art. Even texts as revealing as the Rosarium and Aurora consurgens do not help us in this respect.
[419] As regards the psychology of this picture, we must stress above all else that it depicts a human encounter where love plays the decisive part. The conventional dress of the pair suggests an equally conventional attitude in both of them. Convention still separates them and hides their natural reality, but the crucial contact of left hands points to something “sinister,” illegitimate, morganatic, emotional, and instinctive, i.e., the fatal touch of incest and its “perverse” fascination. At the same time the intervention of the Holy Ghost reveals the hidden meaning of the incest, whether of brother and sister or of mother and son, as a repulsive symbol for the unio mystica. Although the union of close blood-relatives is everywhere taboo, it is yet the prerogative of kings (witness the incestuous marriages of the Pharaohs, etc.). Incest symbolizes union with one’s own being, it means individuation or becoming a self, and, because this is so vitally important, it exerts an unholy fascination—not, perhaps, as a crude reality, but certainly as a psychic process controlled by the unconscious, a fact well known to anybody who is familiar with psychopathology. It is for this reason, and not because of occasional cases of human incest, that the first gods were believed to propagate their kind incestuously. Incest is simply the union of like with like, which is the next stage in the development of the primitive idea of self-fertilization.13
[420] This psychological situation sums up what we can all see for ourselves if we analyse a transference carefully. The conventional meeting is followed by an unconscious “familiarization” of one’s partner, brought about by the projection of archaic, infantile fantasies which were originally vested in members of the patient’s own family and which, because of their positive or negative fascination, attach him to parents, brothers, and sisters.14 The transference of these fantasies to the doctor draws him into the atmosphere of family intimacy, and although this is the last thing he wants, it nevertheless provides a workable prima materia. Once the transference has appeared, the doctor must accept it as part of the treatment and try to understand it, otherwise it will be just another piece of neurotic stupidity. The transference itself is a perfectly natural phenomenon which does not by any means happen only in the consulting-room—it can be seen everywhere and may lead to all sorts of nonsense, like all unrecognized projections. Medical treatment of the transference gives the patient a priceless opportunity to withdraw his projections, to make good his losses, and to integrate his personality. The impulses underlying it certainly show their dark side to begin with, however much one may try to whitewash them; for an integral part of the work is the umbra solis or sol niger of the alchemists, the black shadow which everybody carries with him, the inferior and therefore hidden aspect of the personality, the weakness that goes with every strength, the night that follows every day, the evil in the good.15 The realization of this fact is naturally coupled with the danger of falling victim to the shadow, but the danger also brings with it the possibility of consciously deciding not to become its victim. A visible enemy is always better than an invisible one. In this case I can see no advantage whatever in behaving like an ostrich. It is certainly no ideal for people always to remain childish, to live in a perpetual state of delusion about themselves, foisting everything they dislike on to their neighbours and plaguing them with their prejudices and projections. How many marriages are wrecked for years, and sometimes forever, because he sees his mother in his wife and she her father in her husband, and neither ever recognizes the other’s reality! Life has difficulties enough without that; we might at least spare ourselves the stupidest of them. But, without a fundamental discussion of the situation, it is often simply impossible to break these infantile projections. As this is the legitimate aim and real meaning of the transference, it inevitably leads, whatever method of rapprochement be used, to discussion and understanding and hence to a heightened consciousness, which is a measure of the personality’s integration. During this discussion the conventional disguises are dropped and the true man comes to light. He is in very truth reborn from this psychological relationship, and his field of consciousness is rounded into a circle.
[421] It would be quite natural to suppose that the king and queen represent a transference relationship in which the king stands for the masculine partner and the queen for the feminine partner. But this is by no means the case, because the figures represent contents which have been projected from the unconscious of the adept (and his soror mystica). Now the adept is conscious of himself as a man, consequently his masculinity cannot be projected, since this only happens to unconscious contents. As it is primarily a question of man and woman here, the projected fragment of personality can only be the feminine component of the man, i.e., his anima.16 Similarly, in the woman’s case, only the masculine component can be projected. There is thus a curious counter-crossing of the sexes: the man (in this case the adept) is represented by the queen, and the woman (the soror mystica) by the king. It seems to me that the flowers forming the “symbol” suggest this counter-crossing. The reader should therefore bear in mind that the picture shows two archetypal figures meeting, and that Luna is secretly in league with the adept, and Sol with his woman helper. The fact that the figures are royal expresses, like real royalty, their archetypal character; they are collective figures common to large numbers of people. If the main ingredient of this mystery were the enthronement of a king or the deification of a mortal, then the figure of the king might possibly be a projection and would in that case correspond to the adept. But the subsequent development of the drama has quite another meaning, so we can discount this possibility.17
[422] The fact that, for reasons which can be proved empirically, king and queen play cross roles and represent the unconscious contra-sexual side of the adept and his soror leads to a painful complication which by no means simplifies the problem of transference. Scientific integrity, however, forbids all simplification of situations that are not simple, as is obviously the case here. The pattern of relationship is simple enough, but, when it comes to detailed description in any given case, it is extremely difficult to make out from which angle the relationship is being described and what aspect we are describing. The pattern is as follows:
[423] The direction of the arrows indicates the pull from masculine to feminine and vice versa, and from the unconscious of one person to the conscious of the other, thus denoting a positive transference relationship. The following relationships have therefore to be distinguished, although in certain cases they can all merge into each other, and this naturally leads to the greatest possible confusion:
(a) An uncomplicated personal relationship.
(b) A relationship of the man to his anima and of the woman to her animus.
(c) A relationship of anima to animus and vice versa.
(d) A relationship of the woman’s animus to the man (which happens when the woman is identical with her animus), and of the man’s anima to the woman (which happens when the man is identical with his anima).
[424] In describing the transference problem with the help of this series of illustrations, I have not always kept these different possibilities apart; for in real life they are invariably mixed up and it would have put an intolerable strain on the explanation had I attempted a rigidly schematic exposition. Thus the king and queen each display every conceivable shade of meaning from the superhuman to the subhuman, sometimes appearing as a transcendental figure, sometimes hiding in the figure of the adept. The reader should bear this in mind if he comes across any real or supposed contradictions in the remarks which follow.
[425] These counter-crossing transference relationships are foreshadowed in folklore: the archetype of the cross-marriage, which I call the “marriage quaternio,”18 can also be found in fairytales. An Icelandic fairytale19 tells the following story:
[426] Finna was a girl with mysterious powers. One day, when her father was setting out for the Althing, she begged him to refuse any suitor who might ask for her hand. There were many suitors present, but the father refused them all. On the way home he met a strange man, Geir by name, who forced the father at point of sword to promise his daughter to him. So they were married, and Finna took Sigurd her brother with her to her new home. About Christmas-time, when Finna was busy with the festive preparations, Geir disappeared. Finna and her brother went out to look for him and found him on an island with a beautiful woman. After Christmas, Geir suddenly appeared in Finna’s bedroom. In the bed lay a child. Geir asked her whose child it was, and Finna answered that it was her child. And so it happened for three years in succession, and each time Finna accepted the child. But at the third time, Geir was released from his spell. The beautiful woman on the island was Ingeborg, his sister. Geir had disobeyed his stepmother, a witch, and she had laid a curse on him: he was to have three children by his sister, and unless he found a wife who knew everything and held her peace, he would be changed into a snake and his sister into a filly. Geir was saved by the conduct of his wife; and he married his sister Ingeborg to Sigurd.
[427] Another example is the Russian fairytale “Prince Danila Govorila.”20 There is a young prince who is given a lucky ring by a witch. But its magic will work only on one condition: he must marry none but the girl whose finger the ring fits. When he grows up he goes in search of a bride, but all in vain, because the ring fits none of them. So he laments his fate to his sister, who asks to try on the ring. It fits perfectly. Thereupon her brother wants to marry her, but she thinks it would be a sin and sits at the door of the house weeping. Some old beggars who are passing comfort her and give her the following advice: “Make four dolls and put them in the four corners of the room. If your brother summons you to the wedding, go, but if he summons you to the bedchamber, do not hurry! Trust in God and follow our advice.”
[428] After the wedding her brother summons her to bed. Then the four dolls begin to sing:
Cuckoo, Prince Danila,
Cuckoo, Govorila,
Cuckoo, he takes his sister,
Cuckoo, for a wife,
Cuckoo, earth open wide,
Cuckoo, sister fall inside.
[429] The earth opens and swallows her up. Her brother calls her three times, but by the third time she has already vanished. She goes along under the earth until she comes to the hut of Baba Yaga,21 whose daughter kindly shelters her and hides her from the witch. But before long the witch discovers her and heats up the oven. The two girls then seize the old woman and put her in the oven instead, thus escaping the witch’s persecution. They reach the prince’s castle, where the sister is recognized by her brother’s servant. But her brother cannot tell the two girls apart, they are so alike. So the servant advises him to make a test: the prince is to fill a skin with blood and put it under his arm. The servant will then stab him in the side with a knife and the prince is to fall down as if dead. The sister will then surely betray herself. And so it happens: the sister throws herself upon him with a great cry, whereupon the prince springs up and embraces her. But the magic ring also fits the finger of the witch’s daughter, so the prince marries her and gives his sister to a suitable husband.
[430] In this tale the incest is on the point of being committed, but is prevented by the peculiar ritual with the four dolls. The four dolls in the four corners of the room form the marriage quaternio, the aim being to prevent the incest by putting four in place of two. The four dolls form a magic simulacrum which stops the incest by removing the sister to the underworld, where she discovers her alter ego. Thus we can say that the witch who gave the young prince the fatal ring was his mother-in-law-to-be, for, as a witch, she must certainly have known that the ring would fit not only his sister but her own daughter.
[431] In both tales the incest is an evil fate that cannot easily be avoided. Incest, as an endogamous relationship, is an expression of the libido which serves to hold the family together. One could therefore define it as “kinship libido,” a kind of instinct which, like a sheep-dog, keeps the family group intact. This form of libido is the diametrical opposite of the exogamous form. The two forms together hold each other in check: the endogamous form tends towards the sister and the exogamous form towards some stranger. The best compromise is therefore a first cousin. There is no hint of this in our fairy-stories, but the marriage quaternio is clear enough. In the Icelandic story we have the schema:
In the Russian:
[432] The two schemata agree in a remarkable way. In both cases the hero wins a bride who has something to do with magic or the world beyond. Assuming that the archetype of the marriage quaternio described above is at the bottom of these folkloristic quaternities, the stories are obviously based on the following schema:
[433] Marriage with the anima is the psychological equivalent of absolute identity between conscious and unconscious. But since such a condition is possible only in the complete absence of psychological self-knowledge, it must be more or less primitive, i.e., the man’s relationship to the woman is essentially an anima projection. The only sign that the whole thing is unconscious is the remarkable fact that the carrier of the animaimage is distinguished by magical characteristics. These characteristics are missing from the soror-animus relationship in the stories; that is, the unconscious does not make itself felt at all as a separate experience. From this we must conclude that the symbolism of the stories rests on a much more primitive mental structure than the alchemical quaternio and its psychological equivalent. Therefore we must expect that on a still more primitive level the anima too will lose her magical attributes, the result being an uncomplicated, purely matter-of-fact marriage quaternio. And we do find a parallel to the two crossed pairs in the so-called “cross-cousin marriage.” In order to explain this primitive form of marriage I must go into some detail. The marriage of a man’s sister to his wife’s brother is a relic of the “sister-exchange marriage” characteristic of the structure of many primitive tribes. But at the same time this double marriage is the primitive parallel of the problem which concerns us here: the conscious and unconscious dual relationship between adept and soror on the one hand and king and queen (or animus and anima) on the other. John Layard’s important study, “The Incest Taboo and the Virgin Archetype,” put me in mind of the sociological aspects of our psychologem. The primitive tribe falls into two halves, of which Howitt says: “It is upon the division of the whole community into two exogamous intermarrying classes that the whole social structure is built up.”22 These “moieties” show themselves in the lay-out of settlements23 as well as in many strange customs. At ceremonies, for instance, the two moieties are strictly segregated and neither may trespass on the other’s territory. Even when going out on a hunt, they at once divide into two halves as soon as they set up camp, and the two camps are so arranged that there is a natural obstacle between them, e.g., the bed of a stream. On the other hand the two halves are connected by what Hocart calls “the ritual interdependence of the two sides” or “mutual ministration.” In New Guinea one side breeds and fattens pigs and dogs, not for themselves but for the other side, and vice versa. Or when there is a death in the village and the funeral feast is prepared, this is eaten by the other side, and so on.24 [Another form of such division elsewhere is]25 the widespread institution of “dual kingship.”26
[434] The names given to the two sides are particularly enlightening, such as—to mention only a few—east and west, high and low, day and night, male and female, water and land, left and right. It is not difficult to see from these names that the two halves are felt to be antithetical and thus the expression of an endopsychic antithesis. The antithesis can be formulated as the masculine ego versus the feminine “other,” i.e., conscious versus unconscious personified as anima. The primary splitting of the psyche into conscious and unconscious seems to be the cause of the division within the tribe and the settlement. It is a division founded on fact but not consciously recognized as such.
[435] The social split is by origin a matrilineal division into two, but in reality it represents a division of the tribe and settlement into four. The quartering comes about through the crossing of the matrilineal by a patrilineal line of division, [so that the entire population is divided into patrilineal as well as matrilineal moieties].27 The practical purpose of this quartering is the separation and differentiation of marriage classes, [or “kinship sections,” as they are now called]. The basic pattern is a square or circle divided by a cross; it forms the ground-plan of the primitive settlement and the archaic city, also of monasteries, convents, etc., as can be seen in Europe, Asia, and prehistoric America.28 The Egyptian hieroglyph for “city” is a St. Andrew’s cross in a circle.29
[436] In specifying the marriage classes, it should be mentioned that every man belongs to his father’s patrilineal moiety, [and the woman he marries must not come from his mother’s moiety. In other words, he can take a wife only from the opposite matrilineal and patrilineal moiety.] In order to avoid the possibility of incest, he marries his mother’s brother’s daughter and gives his sister to his wife’s brother (sister-exchange marriage). This results in the cross-cousin marriage.30
[437] This form of union, consisting of two brother-and-sister marriages crossing each other, seems to be the original model for the peculiar psychologem which we find in alchemy:
When I say “model” I do not mean that the system of marriage classes was the cause and our psychologem the effect. I merely wish to point out that this system predated the alchemical quaternio. Nor can we assume that the primitive marriage quaternio is the absolute origin of this archetype, for the latter is not a human invention at all but a fact that existed long before consciousness, as is true of all ritual symbols among primitives as well as among civilized peoples today. We do certain things simply without thinking, because they have always been done like that.32
[438] The difference between the primitive and the cultural marriage quaternio consists in the fact that the former is a sociological and the latter a mystical phenomenon. While marriage classes have all but disappeared among civilized peoples, they nevertheless re-emerge on a higher cultural level as spiritual ideas. In the interests of the welfare and development of the tribe, the exogamous social order thrust the endogamous tendency into the background so as to prevent the danger of regression to a state of having no groups at all. It insisted on the introduction of “new blood” both physically and spiritually, and it thus proved to be a powerful instrument in the development of culture. In the words of Spencer and Gillen: “This system of what has been called group marriage, serving as it does to bind more or less closely together groups of individuals who are mutually interested in one another’s welfare, has been one of the most powerful agents in the early stages of the upward development of the human race.”33 Layard has amplified this idea in his above-mentioned study. He regards the endogamous (incest) tendency as a genuine instinct which, if denied realization in the flesh, must realize itself in the spirit. Just as the exogamous order made culture possible in the first place, so also it contains a latent spiritual purpose. Layard says: “Its latent or spiritual purpose is to enlarge the spiritual horizon by developing the idea that there is after all a sphere in which the primary desire may be satisfied, namely the divine sphere of the gods together with that of their semi-divine counterparts, the culture heroes.”34 The idea of the incestuous hierosgamos does in fact appear in the civilized religions and blossoms forth in the supreme spirituality of Christian imagery (Christ and the Church, sponsus and sponsa, the mysticism of the Song of Songs, etc.). “Thus the incest taboo,” says Layard, “leads in full circle out of the biological sphere into the spiritual.”35 On the primitive level the feminine image, the anima, is still completely unconscious and therefore in a state of latent projection. Through the differentiation of the “four-class marriage system” into the eight-class,36 the degree of kinship between marriage partners is considerably diluted, and in the twelve-class system it becomes [further reduced]. These “dichotomies”37 obviously serve to enlarge the framework of the marriage classes and thus to draw more and more groups of people into the kinship system. Naturally such an enlargement was possible only where a sizeable population was expanding.38 The eight-class and particularly the twelve-class systems mean a great advance for the exogamous order, but an equally severe repression of the endogamous tendency, which is thereby stimulated to a new advance in its turn. Whenever an instinctive force—i.e., a certain sum of psychic energy—is driven into the background through a onesided (in this case, exogamous) attitude on the part of the conscious mind, it leads to a dissociation of personality. The conscious personality with its one-track (exogamous) tendency comes up against an invisible (endogamous) opponent, and because this is unconscious it is felt to be a stranger and therefore manifests itself in projected form. At first it makes its appearance in human figures who have the power to do what others may not do—kings and princes, for example. This is probably the reason for the royal incest prerogative, as in ancient Egypt. To the extent that the magical power of royalty was derived increasingly from the gods, the incest prerogative shifted to the latter and so gave rise to the incestuous hierosgamos. But when the numinous aura surrounding the person of the king is taken over by the gods, it has been transferred to a spiritual authority, which results in the projection of an autonomous psychic complex—in other words, psychic existence becomes reality. Thus Layard logically derives the anima from the numen of the goddess.39 In the shape of the goddess the anima is manifestly projected, but in her proper (psychological) shape she is introjected; she is, as Layard says, the “anima within.” She is the natural sponsa, man’s mother or sister or daughter or wife from the beginning, the companion whom the endogamous tendency vainly seeks to win in the form of mother and sister. She represents that longing which has always had to be sacrificed since the grey dawn of history. Layard therefore speaks very rightly of “internalization through sacrifice.”40
[439] The endogamous tendency finds an outlet in the exalted sphere of the gods and in the higher world of the spirit. Here it shows itself to be an instinctive force of a spiritual nature; and, regarded in this light, the life of the spirit on the highest level is a return to the beginnings, so that man’s development becomes a recapitulation of the stages that lead ultimately to the perfection of life in the spirit.
[440] The specifically alchemical projection looks at first sight like a regression: god and goddess are reduced to king and queen, and these in turn look like mere allegories of chemical substances which are about to combine. But the regression is only apparent. In reality it is a highly remarkable development: the conscious mind of the medieval investigator was still under the influence of metaphysical ideas, but because he could not derive them from nature he projected them into nature. He sought for them in matter, because he supposed that they were most likely to be found there. It was really a question of a transference of numen the converse of that from the king to the god. The numen seemed to have migrated in some mysterious way from the world of the spirit to the realm of matter. But the descent of the projection into matter had led some of the old alchemists, for example Morienus Romanus, to the clear realization that this matter was not just the human body (or something in it) but the human personality itself. These prescient masters had already got beyond the inevitable stage of obtuse materialism that had yet to be born from the womb of time. But it was not until the discoveries of modern psychology that this human “matter” of the alchemists could be recognized as the psyche.
[441] On the psychological level, the tangle of relationships in the cross-cousin marriage reappears in the transference problem. The dilemma here consists in the fact that anima and animus are projected upon their human counterparts and thus create by suggestion a primitive relationship which evidently goes back to the time of group marriages. But in so far as anima and animus undoubtedly represent the contrasexual components of the personality, their kinship character does not point backwards to the group marriage but “forwards” to the integration of personality, i.e., to individuation.
[442] Our present-day civilization with its cult of consciousness—if this can be called civilization—has a Christian stamp, which means that neither anima nor animus is integrated but is still in the state of projection, i.e., expressed by dogma. On this level both these figures are unconscious as components of personality, though their effectiveness is still apparent in the numinous aura surrounding the dogmatic ideas of bridegroom and bride. Our “civilization,” however, has turned out to be a very doubtful proposition, a distinct falling away from the lofty ideal of Christianity; and, in consequence, the projections have largely fallen away from the divine figures and have necessarily settled in the human sphere. This is understandable enough, since the “enlightened” intellect cannot imagine anything greater than man except those tin gods with totalitarian pretensions who call themselves State or Fuehrer. This regression has made itself as plain as could be wished in Germany and other countries. And even where it is not so apparent, the lapsed projections have a disturbing effect on human relationships and wreck at least a quarter of the marriages. If we decline to measure the vicissitudes of the world’s history by the standards of right and wrong, true and false, good and evil, but prefer to see the retrograde step in every advance, the evil in every good, the error in every truth, we might compare the present regression with the apparent retreat which led from scholasticism to the mystical trend of natural philosophy and thence to materialism. Just as materialism led to empirical science and thus to a new understanding of the psyche, so the totalitarian psychosis with its frightful consequences and the intolerable disturbance of human relationships are forcing us to pay attention to the psyche and our abysmal unconsciousness of it. Never before has mankind as a whole experienced the numen of the psychological factor on so vast a scale. In one sense this is a catastrophe and a retrogression without parallel, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that such an experience also has its positive aspects and might become the seed of a nobler culture in a regenerated age. It is possible that the endogamous urge is not ultimately tending towards projection at all; it may be trying to unite the different components of the personality on the pattern of the cross-cousin marriage, but on a higher plane where “spiritual marriage” becomes an inner experience that is not projected. Such an experience has long been depicted in dreams as a mandala divided into four, and it seems to represent the goal of the individuation process, i.e., the self.
[443] Following the growth of population and the increasing dichotomy of the marriage classes, which led to a further extension of the exogamous order, all barriers gradually broke down and nothing remained but the incest-taboo. The original social order made way for other organizing factors culminating in the modern idea of the State. Now, everything that is past sinks in time into the unconscious, and this is true also of the original social order. It represented an archetype that combined exogamy and endogamy in the most fortunate way, for while it prevented marriage between brother and sister it provided a substitute in the cross-cousin marriage. This relationship is still close enough to satisfy the endogamous tendency more or less, but distant enough to include other groups and to extend the orderly cohesion of the tribe. But with the gradual abolition of exogamous barriers through increasing dichotomy, the endogamous tendency was bound to gain strength in order to give due weight to consanguineous relationships and so hold them together. This reaction was chiefly felt in the religious and then in the political field, with the growth on the one hand of religious societies and sects—we have only to think of the brotherhoods and the Christian ideal of “brotherly love”—and of nations on the other. Increasing internationalism and the weakening of religion have largely abolished or bridged over these last remaining barriers and will do so still more in the future, only to create an amorphous mass whose preliminary symptoms can already be seen in the modern phenomenon of the mass psyche. Consequently the original exogamous order is rapidly approaching a condition of chaos painfully held in check. For this there is but one remedy: the inner consolidation of the individual, who is otherwise threatened with inevitable stultification and dissolution in the mass psyche. The recent past has given us the clearest possible demonstration of what this would mean. No religion has afforded any protection, and our organizing factor, the State, has proved to be the most efficient machine for turning out mass-men. In these circumstances the immunizing of the individual against the toxin of the mass psyche is the only thing that can help. As I have already said, it is just conceivable that the endogamous tendency will intervene compensatorily and restore the consanguineous marriage, or the union of the divided components of the personality, on the psychic level—that is to say, within the individual. This would form a counterbalance to the progressive dichotomy and psychic dissociation of collective man.
[444] It is of supreme importance that this process should take place consciously, otherwise the psychic consequences of massmindedness will harden and become permanent. For, if the inner consolidation of the individual is not a conscious achievement, it will occur spontaneously and will then take the well-known form of that incredible hard-heartedness which collective man displays towards his fellow men. He becomes a soulless herd animal governed only by panic and lust: his soul, which can live only in and from human relationships, is irretrievably lost. But the conscious achievement of inner unity clings to human relationships as to an indispensable condition, for without the conscious acknowledgment and acceptance of our fellowship with those around us there can be no synthesis of personality. That mysterious something in which the inner union takes place is nothing personal, has nothing to do with the ego, is in fact superior to the ego because, as the self, it is the synthesis of the ego and the supra-personal unconscious. The inner consolidation of the individual is not just the hardness of collective man on a higher plane, in the form of spiritual aloofness and inaccessibility: it emphatically includes our fellow man.
[445] To the extent that the transference is projection and nothing more, it divides quite as much as it connects. But experience teaches that there is one connection in the transference which does not break off with the severance of the projection. That is because there is an extremely important instinctive factor behind it: the kinship libido. This has been pushed so far into the background by the unlimited expansion of the exogamous tendency that it can find an outlet, and a modest one at that, only within the immediate family circle, and sometimes not even there, because of the quite justifiable resistance to incest. While exogamy was limited by endogamy, it resulted in a natural organization of society which has entirely disappeared today. Everyone is now a stranger among strangers. Kinship libido—which could still engender a satisfying feeling of belonging together, as for instance in the early Christian communities—has long been deprived of its object. But, being an instinct, it is not to be satisfied by any mere substitute such as a creed, party, nation, or state. It wants the human connection. That is the core of the whole transference phenomenon, and it is impossible to argue it away, because relationship to the self is at once relationship to our fellow man, and no one can be related to the latter until he is related to himself.
[446] If the transference remains at the level of projection, the connection it establishes shows a tendency to regressive concretization, i.e., to an atavistic restoration of the primitive social order. This tendency has no possible foothold in our modern world, so that every step in this direction only leads to a deeper conflict and ultimately to a real transference neurosis. Analysis of the transference is therefore an absolute necessity, because the projected contents must be reintegrated if the patient is to gain the broader view he needs for free decision.
[447] If, however, the projection is broken, the connection—whether it be negative (hate) or positive (love)—may collapse for the time being so that nothing seems to be left but the politeness of a professional tête-à-tête. One cannot begrudge either doctor or patient a sigh of relief when this happens, although one knows full well that the problem has only been postponed for both of them. Sooner or later, here or in some other place, it will present itself again, for behind it there stands the restless urge towards individuation.
[448] Individuation has two principal aspects: in the first place it is an internal and subjective process of integration, and in the second it is an equally indispensable process of objective relationship. Neither can exist without the other, although sometimes the one and sometimes the other predominates. This double aspect has two corresponding dangers. The first is the danger of the patient’s using the opportunities for spiritual development arising out of the analysis of the unconscious as a pretext for evading the deeper human responsibilities, and for affecting a certain “spirituality” which cannot stand up to moral criticism; the second is the danger that atavistic tendencies may gain the ascendency and drag the relationship down to a primitive level. Between this Scylla and that Charybdis there is a narrow passage, and both medieval Christian mysticism and alchemy have contributed much to its discovery.
[449] Looked at in this light, the bond established by the transference—however hard to bear and however incomprehensible it may seem—is vitally important not only for the individual but also for society, and indeed for the moral and spiritual progress of mankind. So, when the psychotherapist has to struggle with difficult transference problems, he can at least take comfort in these reflections. He is not just working for this particular patient, who may be quite insignificant, but for himself as well and his own soul, and in so doing he is perhaps laying an infinitesimal grain in the scales of humanity’s soul. Small and invisible as this contribution may be, it is yet an opus magnum, for it is accomplished in a sphere but lately visited by the numen, where the whole weight of mankind’s problems has settled. The ultimate questions of psychotherapy are not a private matter—they represent a supreme responsibility.
