Dreams and Symbols

I was thinking about Egypt. How you said we must not return. Yet… it was a Donkey that carried Mary and the Baby Jesus into Egypt, in order to escape genocide. Here we have another Joseph—whose dreams are connected with seeking refuge and safety in Egypt. It is a necessary regression in the service of the ego, looking to reconnect with something valuable that was left behind or was lost in the religion of Israel.

“For Israel, Egypt is alternately a place of security and nourishment and a place of bondage. The pattern repeats itself in the life of Christ. No sooner is the Christ-child born than he must seek refuge in Egypt, later to return and fulfill the pre-established pattern, “out of Egypt have I called my son.” (Hosea 11:1; Matthew 2:15) The symbolism of Egypt also plays a prominent role in Gnosticism:

Egypt as a symbol for the material world is very common in Gnosticism (and beyond it). The biblical story of Israel’s bondage and liberation lent itself admirably to spiritual interpretation of the type the Gnostics liked. But the biblical story is not the only association which qualified Egypt for its allegorical role. From ancient times Egypt had been regarded as the home of the cult of the dead, and therefore the kingdom of Death; this and other features of Egyptian religion, such as its beast-headed gods and the great role of sorcery, inspired the Hebrews and later the Persians with a particular abhorrence and made them see in “Egypt” the embodiment of a demonic principle. The Gnostics then turned this evaluation into their use of Egypt as a symbol for “this world,” that is, the world of matter, of ignorance, and of perverse religion: “All ignorant ones (i.e., those lacking gnosis) are ‘Egyptians,'” states a Peratic dictum quoted by Hippolytus (V.16.5). . . . Generally the symbols for world can serve also as symbols for the body and vice versa. . . . Regarding ”Egypt” the Peratae, to whom it is otherwise “the world,” also said that “the body is a little Egypt” (Hippol. V.16.5; similarly the Naassenes, ibid. 7.41). As the “body” or “world,” descent into Egypt signifies incarnation or coagulatio, a necessary step in realization of the psyche. At an early stage of development Egypt serves as a nourishing, protective mother. Later she becomes bondage and tyranny from which to escape.”’— Edward Edinger, The Bible and the Psyche.

This goddess appears in three forms. There are Three fates, three Norns, three wyrd sisters, mother maiden crone.

The number three belongs to the juvenile age and to the early days of humanity. Being an odd number, it has been male since primeval times (for instance in China or Greece, but also see the Middle Ages in our region), and it points toward the male attribute and its function. The speculations about the symbolism of numbers in the Middle Ages were concerned with the number three, the Ternarium, as a divine trinity. Nonetheless, the connections with the primitive sexual image are clearly discernible. Like any archetype, the triad or the Ternarium can be represented either primitively by sexual images, or philosophically by abstract notions. An archetype is neither abstract nor concrete. It can express itself in primitive “instinctual language” (for instance, sexually) or “spiritually.” One can replace the other, just as sexual terminology can be replaced by a nutritional one. The Song of Songs, for example, drastically bears witness to this. This archetype in itself is plain “three-ness,” which can be filled with any content

The number half three is not easy to interpret, if we do not simply see it in a concrete way, as the actual hour it stands for. The symbolism of numbers is something special. I refer to the article by Professor Jung, Beitrag zur
Zahlensymbolik.30 One often does not succeed in getting to the bottom of the numbers appearing in a dream. Frequently, one sees the most obvious thing only at the very end, and needs the most detailed knowledge about the dreamer’s environment for a more exact interpretation.
An example: In a dream in which traveling and a train station played a role, the numbers 2.10 and 2.30 appeared. An attempt to break down these numbers in all possible ways failed. Only later was it found out that 2.10 was the phone number of the local train station, and 2.30 the phone number of the inn The Three Kings. The connection could be established. The dreamer did not consciously know these numbers.

The essential point is the number three, here as in the further course of the dream, the time “half three.” This could mean: it is not yet quite three o’clock, there is still a half hour left until then. All over the world the number three has a male meaning; this is in connection with male anatomy. The number three is not yet complete; there is no ripe fruit yet, no sexual maturity.
The post bringing forth a well: this is the motif of boring a well, conceived of as an act of impregnation. This is a parallel to the numerous traditions of fertilizing a field, of the phallic plow, the fertility gods who should fertilize the
fields. Priapus too was simply a post of fig wood. He is the ithyphallic Hermes, simply represented by a wooden post. He also exists already in megalithic form, because the menhir too has a phallic meaning.

Jung on Children’s Dreams

So what is the beard? The hair which grows on the different parts of the body is reminiscent of our animal nature; it is the remains of the fur which we have lost and which most other animals still have. Hair evokes the idea of something primitive and instinctive and animal-like, but the meaning varies according to the part of the body on which the hair appears. The hair on the head carries the projection of unconscious involuntary thoughts and fantasies, because these grow out of our heads.Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri & Marie Louise Von Franz, The Mother Archetype in Fairy Tales

The Freudians argue that Delilah castrated Samson by cutting off his hair. But did she actually do that? In cutting off his hair, Delilah destroyed Samson’s soul or his creative conceptions, his thoughts and ideas, and therefore castrated him in a psychological sense. A woman can make a man completely stupid so that he loses his creative power. In medieval times of chivalry, a knight might not verliegen (lose by lying too long). If a medieval knight gave up his deeds and masculine adventures and stayed with his lady in the castle, then she had caught him, for he remained at home with his beloved and so lost all his ideals and enterprise and further spiritual development. This is what happened to Samson; he lost his masculinity in this way.
But what is the beard? It stands for something involuntary; it is the growth around the mouth. Thoughts and words bubble out of the mouth without your ever having thought them—they talk themselves. Automatic nervous talking is a typically neurotic symptom especially of women, though not only of women. A kind of constant nervous talking goes on and on, but without anything being said. “Brain declutched, mouth running on automatic,” says a proverb from Berlin. It goes on continually and is completely automatic; it is a logos flow which is quite uncontrolled and unconscious and creates a lot of trouble. Language invites such a thing. The grammatical structure of a language affords the suggestion; that is, if you begin a sentence in a certain way it is difficult not to end it typically. A French teacher once remarked to me that the clarité (clarity) of the French language was a disadvantage, for it invited you to let the words make sentences on their own—the sentences begin and end in a classical way.
Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri & Marie Louise Von Franz, The Mother Archetype in Fairy Tales

That is the animus beard, the thoughts which bubble out unconsciously. Jung has told a story of a husband who suffered so much from his wife’s scenes, but the wife could never be convinced afterward that she had said the things. Her husband once made a recording without her noticing it and in a favorable moment played it back to her. She swore she had not said the things, in spite of the recording of her own voice. “It” had talked, not she as a conscious person; the things had said themselves. Seen from the feminine angle, she was right in saying that she had not said them. That is an aspect of the animus, the wordiness of the animus, in fairy tales expressed as the demon’s beard. You have to pin him down, as in “Oll Rinkrank,” and say, “I will only let you out on such-and- such a condition.” The beard has to be pinned down. One has to ask oneself, “Who was talking, if it was not I?” One can best catch the animus at work in such thoughtless talk. In our story, the dwarf entangles himself. He catches himself, and the only thing for the girls to do would be to leave him in his own trap. Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri & Marie Louise Von Franz, The Mother Archetype in Fairy Tales

When the animus is rattling off on the wrong track, he generally contradicts himself. He generally gets caught out by the unconscious flow of thought. It would be sufficient to leave him there and realize that one has contradicted oneself and detach from it and say, if I can contradict myself so terribly, then I must find out what I really mean. If I do not know what I really want, I say this and that. Then it would be a question of stopping and saying that I had been contradicting myself and must stop and see what I really meant. But the girls pull the dwarf out, and he goes on doing the same thing. But here, in the end, the bear destroys the dwarf—that is, an animus-inspired emotional reaction in the woman herself. Usually women in the end get slowly sick of their own negative animus. If they don’t, they can probably never be cured—but a normal woman usually gets sick of her neurotic side and one day puts an end to it. Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri & Marie Louise Von Franz, The Mother Archetype in Fairy Tales

Again and again it is the great problem in feminine psychology. Women, even more than men, tend to identify with their own sex, and to remain in this archaic identity. In a girls’ school, for instance, one girl copies the other’s new hairstyle or way of talking. They are like a flock of sheep, all of the same type. As far as I know from what I have read, the same thing seems to be true in primitive villages. The archaic participation mystique has a great impact on women, who in general are more interested in eros, in relationship, and are identical with each other and swim along together. The fact that they have trouble in disidentifying accounts, perhaps, for a certain “bitchiness” among women. Because they are so apt to identify, they malign each other behind their backs. Being unconscious of their own unique personality, they indulge in all such tricks in order to make a separation.Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri & Marie Louise Von Franz, The Mother Archetype in Fairy Tales

A comb is used to tidy one’s hair. Hair generally means unconscious thoughts and fantasies. Some of one’s thoughts are neatly arranged inside one’s head, and they can be controlled, but there are others one is hardly conscious of, often symbolized by unruly hair. It grows from the head, playing round it like snakes. The poisoning of Snow White through the hair could thus imply harming oneself through unconscious poisoned thoughts and notions which kill the genuine emotions. A man too can foster thoughts inimical to the emotions, proceeding from his negative anima. Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri & Marie Louise Von Franz, The Mother Archetype in Fairy Tales

We must ask what Rapunzel’s hair signifies, falling to the earth. As it grows from the head, hair can mean thoughts, as mentioned earlier, and since it grows involuntarily it could be seen as unconscious thoughts and ideas. Something is being thought within Rapunzel which her ego is not yet capable of thinking.
Hair contains no nerves, and so can be cut without hurting us; it is thus a particularly good image for autonomous parts of the psyche we are unaware of. One cannot sense what is going on in them. They are not connected to consciousness by emotions or sensations. It is often amazing what a woman can think and even calculate in minute detail without even realizing it. The girl’s first contact with the world outside her tower was established through her golden hair. Her second is to be this precious ladder. Both of the links are made of valuable material, but the hair had grown independent of her own efforts, whereas now she intends to work hard on plaiting the ladder with her partner. So the ladder represents a feasible, although unsuccessful, attempt to establish contact with the earth. Before the witch punishes the girl by sending her into the wilderness, she takes a pair of scissors and snips off her lovely golden locks. Having her hair cut off does not only mean that she is “cut off” from her fantasies and idealistic thoughts, it also indicates a temporary general dimming of the “lightness” Rapunzel represents. The witch becomes the night, robbing the sun of its golden rays. The night tries to swallow the sun, but only succeeds in helping it to be reborn.- Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri & Marie Louise Von Franz, The Mother Archetype in Fairy Tales

In the imaginative world of primitives, too, hair and beard play an important role. In The Golden Bough, by James George Frazer, we read, among other references, about the significance of hair: the chiefs and magicians of the Masai, the African tribe, were afraid to lose their supernatural powers if they let their beards be cut; in many primitive cultures, hair and beard are considered “taboo.” In order to become immune to danger, they are not cut at all. The Frankonian kings were not allowed, from childhood on, to cut their hair. Cutting the hair would have meant relinquishing the throne and the power. Hair is regarded as a sign of extraordinary power and magical strength. The young warriors of the Teutons cut their hair and beards only after having slain the enemy. Samson, too, was deprived of his power after Delilah had cut off his curls. Cut hairs are kept in sacred places such as temples, graveyards, or trees. In Swabia, cut hairs are hidden in a place where neither sun nor moon may shine. Frazer gives a multitude of examples, from the Tyrd in Scotland and Ireland, from Siam, North Germany, Melanesia, and Patagonia, from Tahiti, or from the Solomon Islands. Everywhere the guiding idea is that there is a sympathetic connection between the cut hair, symbolizing power, and its former bearer, and so it has to be hidden from hostile influence.
This dream is a parallel to another dream discussed earlier. There it said: “something gruesome came in through the window, no bear, a man, he had those feet and stood on the quilt . . .” At the time we put this figure in analogy to a bear. In our dream, too, we can put the man covered with hair in analogy to a bear, which plays a great role in children’s imaginations. For thousands of years, our ancestors saw the bear as something threatening and dangerous, and it was one of the worst enemies. These impressions have been kept as such, and have an effect in the collective unconscious. There is a report about a belief in Scandinavian literature that very old bears had something devilish within them, and that they could not be killed with a normal shot, but only with a silver bullet. In this connection we have also to draw attention to the connection between the
bear and the Berserker. The Bear Skinner2 is a vague allusion to it. The notion of the soul is connected to the fur, the skin, the shirt, the outer form, for shirt (e.g.,
the swan shirt)3 and fur stand for a great potential of transformation in the
Teutonic tradition. Still today we use expressions such as aus der Haut fahren,4 an allusion to the bear, the skin of the Berserker. The bearskin was taken off in the evening, when other people slept; it gave an enormous increase in strength, the respective person got beside himself with rage, a raging demon took possession of him. The heroic song of King Rolf Krake, from the Danish house
of Skyoldung, tells of such a berserkergang.5 In the werewolf legend, too, the pelt of the wolf gives enormous strength. Summarizing the amplification of the “man covered with hair,” we get the following result: something children are afraid of, an uncanny and colossal power that can overwhelm you and make you so enraged as to lose consciousness; a magic force that overcomes you all of a sudden. – C.G. Jung, Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1940.

Troll

The troll destroys real values. Trolls often have no blood. If they had blood we can tend to think it is the blood he has sucked out his victims. He has the blood his victims lacking. The troll has stolen or attracted all life and emotion away from the human realm where it belongs, and thus brought people into a state of possession. Trolls represent those things which represent those things that we cannot touch lest we lose ourselves. Like some people say, “I can’t do that because when I do that… I can’t stop.” The trolls’ many heads signify the undirected dissociative force of the emotions.Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri & Marie Louise Von Franz, The Mother Archetype in Fairy Tales

Pale

People who are possessed, be it by some religious or political fanaticism or something else, are often physically pale. It is though they literally have no blood. And they certainly have no blood in the sense of having no warm feelings, no normal human affects. You cannot make them laugh, you can’t even make friendly contact with them. Their vitality is drained by their fanaticism. Therefore, they can’t enjoy life. They have no private life, no moments of joy, and because of that they lack enjoyment of life.Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri & Marie Louise Von Franz, The Mother Archetype in Fairy Tales

The tree symbolizes human life and development and the inner process of becoming conscious. One could say that it symbolizes in the psyche that something which grows and develops undisturbed within us, irrrespective of what the ego does; it is the urge toward individuation which unfolds and continues, independent of our consciousness. In European countries when a child is born a tree is planted at the same time and will die when the human dies. This expresses the idea that the tree provides an analogy to human life, that the tree carries life, like the lights on the Christmas tree, and that the sun rising at the top of the tree implies growth toward higher consciousness. There are many mythological stories which liken the tree to the human being, or in which the tree appears as a man-tree. The Self is the tree—that which is greater than the ego in man.

Tree

Part of our life passes like a drama written by a novelist biographer, but behind that there is a mysterious process of growth which follows its own laws and takes place behind the biographical peripeteias of life and goes from childhood to old age. Viewed in a mythological context, the greater human being, the anthropos, is likened to a tree. The motif of the human-shaped Godhead being suspended on a tree mirrors the tragedy of human existence: the conscious man constantly pulls away, trying to free himself and to act freely and consciously, and he is then painfully pulled back to the inner process. The struggle reveals a tragic constellation if it is represented in this painful form. That is why the whole philosophy of the Christian religion has a tragic view of life: to follow Christ we have to accept mortification and repress certain impulses toward growth. The basic idea is that human life is based on conflict and strives toward spiritualization, which does not come of itself but is brought forth with suffering. The same idea is represented in a more archaic form in the Wotan myth—Wotan hanging on the tree. He is the eternal wanderer who roams all over the earth, the god of impulsiveness, of rage, of poetic inspiration, that element in the human being which lives in constant restlessness, bursting out into affects, and if this god was suspended on the tree for nine days and nine nights, he consequently discovered the runes of writing by which civilization based on the written word was founded.

The symbolism of the suspended god on the tree, the gallows, and the cross is very profound. Such a fate normally overtakes that part of the Divinity most interested in man; the philanthropic part of the Godhead falls into the tragedy of suspension and has to do with the bringing of civilization—as in the Wotan myth, where after suspension on the tree Wotan discovers the runes, an implication of a progress in human consciousness.

Whenever the conscious and animal personality is in conflict with the inner process of growth, it suffers crucifixion; it is in the situation of the god suspended on the tree and is involuntarily nailed to an unconscious development from which it would like to break away but cannot. We are nailed down to something greater than ourselves which does not allow us to move and which outreaches us.

The Attis myth, which is older than the myth of the crucified God in Christianity, represents this in specific form. Attis, the beloved son of the Great Mother and himself the type of divine youth that does not grow old and decay, represents the pattern of the puer aeternus, the perenially young God, eternally beautiful, the figure which cannot suffer sadness, human restriction, disease, ugliness, and death. Like this god, most young men who have a decided mother complex feel, at some moment in their lives, that the process of life does not allow for such a state of being eternal; it has to die. In the plenitude of life, life lies ahead with its meaningfulness and splendor; but we know that this never lasts—it is always destroyed by the dark side of life. Therefore this young god always dies early, nailed to the tree, which is again the mother; the maternal principle which gave birth to him swallows him back in the negative form, and he is reached by ugliness and death.

You see this sometimes in the case of a young man who should marry or choose a profession, or who discovers that the fullness of youth is leaving him and that he has to accept the ordinary human fate. Many at that moment prefer to die either by an accident or in war, rather than become old. At the critical time, between thirty and forty, the tree is growing against them, their inner development is no longer in tune with the conscious attitude, but grows against it, and in that moment they have to suffer a kind of death; it should mean a change of attitude, but may mean actual physical death, a kind of disguised suicide, because the ego cannot give up its attitude—that is the crucial moment where they are sacrificed by a process of inner development which has turned against them. When the inner growth is the enemy of consciousness, this means that something within the man wants to outgrow him that he cannot follow, and therefore he has to die; for the self-will of the conscious personality has to die and surrender to the process of inner growth.

Another aspect of hanging as a means of killing someone is that in most mythological systems the air is the place in which ghosts and spirits roam about, like Wotan and his army of ghosts of the dead that fly through the air, especially on stormy nights. Therefore, if you hang someone, you turn him into a ghost and he must now ride with the other dead, with Wotan in the air. In the cult of Dionysus gifts were put on swings on the tree with the idea that Dionysus was a spirit and would see them; the gifts could thus be lifted up into the air and given to the spiritual beings who lived there. An expression illustrates this situation from a certain angle: we speak of suspension. When an inner psychological conflict gets too bad, life gets suspended; the two opposites are equal, the yes and the no are equally strong, and life cannot go on. You wish to move with the right leg and the left refuses, and vice versa, and you have the situation of suspension, which means a complete stoppage in the flow of life and intolerable suffering. Being stuck in conflict, nothing happening, is the most painful form of suffering. There are several, especially German, fairy tales which represent the evil spirit nailed to a tree or wall. Or the two people might in the same way allude to Christ suspended on the cross and Wotan on the tree, the good god suspended on the cross and the other god on the tree. This is not too far-fetched, because the motif of the two divine beings nailed to the tree or the cross occurs in many Christian legends and in the legends of the Arthurian circles and the circle of the Holy Grail, where Perceval has to find not only the Grail containing Christ’s blood but also the stag, or stag’s head, nailed to an oak tree, from which he has to take it down. In the main legend he does not forget and he finds the Grail before finding the stag’s head and brings it to a divine female figure; or the stag is represented as an evildoer, a destroyer of the woods and Christ’s shadow. The stag with its beautiful antlers, an unnecessary decoration which hampers its movements and whose object is to impress the female deer, suggests the idea of an arrogant creature and therefore represents the shadow of the Christian principle, an incredible arrogance and superciliousness which we have acquired and which seems one of the worst shadow attitudes spread with the Christian teaching.

The nose is the organ with which one smells and therefore has much to do with the function of intuition. One can say that a stockbroker has a “flair” (from French flairer, to smell) for knowing the stockmarket, or that he “uses his nose” to scent out future possibilities. Also, you can “smell a rat” in a situation, or something can “have a bad smell.” There are many colloquial expressions related to smelling, usually connected with intuitive perceptions which you cannot get through mere sensation. Therefore, one could say that the king has lost his instinctive intuition; he can no longer instinctively smell out the right thing to do—that is, he is not in tune with his own unconscious.

As you may know, most animals have a large lobe in the brain which concentrates on the function of smelling, and we must conclude that they have a great sense of smell and that man is very much crippled in this respect. Apparently in order to build up one capacity in the brain, others have to be sacrificed, and there is a theory that man’s intelligence has been built up by the sacrifice of the sense of smell. People do not depend on sight and smell as much as formerly, and it is possible that these capacities will be sacrificed to produce other functions of the brain, for a capacity lost on one concrete level may return, so to speak, on a higher level; it may become a psychological function and be replaced by intuition, by psychological perception instead of physical perception. Therefore, if the king has no nose he has lost his natural capacity for distinguishing facts, and that fits in with the fact that he falls in with destructive suggestions and does not “smell a rat.”

Standpoint.

We know that from the story of Achilles that the heel is a particularly sensitive spot of the hero. First, the heel is on one’s back side; therefore it signifies a place where one does not see oneself very well— where one is unconscious of oneself. Such places are unguarded and vulnerable to evil forces. Secondly l, the heel has to do with the foot and therefore is associated with one’s standpoint.

Achilles help problems represents the mother complex, because it was the place where the mother held Achilles as she dipped him in the river.

A person’s Ways.

Forest

The layer in the unconscious that is very close to somatic processes. The psychosomatic layer area of the unconscious. Just as the forest draws it’s nourishment from inorganic matter, so this layer of the unconscious is in immediate living contact with the physiological process of the body—matter itself. We generally project on to the body the “just so” reality of our existence and personality.

Shoes generally have to do with someone’s standpoint in life. If a boy or a girl grows up, the Germans say they should put off their childhood shoes. Or if a son follows exactly the life pattern of his father, we say he steps in his father’s shoes. And if a woman has her husband completely under her thumb, we say, “He’s under the slipper.” Traditionally the victor puts his shoe on the neck of the vanquished enemy, as if to say, “it’s my standpoint to which you now have to bow. I say how it should be and you must bow to it.” If a princess ruins her shoes by dancing, it means she progressively loses more and more of her standpoint on earth. She becomes estranged from reality.

Shoemaker

The shoemaker also has to do with clothing, but only for the feet, and therefore the difference between clothes in general and shoes has to be specified. If the clothes represent attitudes, then their interpretation must vary in accordance with the part of the body which they cover. You might say that trousers have to do with the sexual attitude and the brassiere with the maternal attitude—a woman often dreams of a brassiere to represent a criticism of this attitude. A German proverb says that a man’s shirt is closer to him than his coat; it is closer to the skin and therefore represents an intimate attitude. It has been contended that the foot is a phallic symbol, for which there is some support, the shoe representing the female organ surrounding the foot.

The sexual aspect is implicitly contained in the symbolism of the shoe, but it is not an outstanding aspect: we can assume that people of the layer of society depicted in this fairy tale would speak more directly and would say sex if that was what they meant, so there is a slightly different meaning. If we start from the hypothesis that the shoe is simply the article of clothing for covering the foot and that with it we stand on the earth, then the shoe is the standpoint, or attitude toward reality. There is much evidence for this. The Germans say when someone becomes adult that he “takes off his childish shoes,” and we say that the son “steps into his father’s shoes” or “follows in his father’s footsteps”—he takes on the same attitude. There is also a connection with the power complex, for one “puts one’s foot down” if one wishes to assert power, as the victorious soldier, illustrating that he now has power, puts his foot on the neck of his conquered foe. In German there is an expression “the slipper hero,” referring to the man who is under his wife’s domination—she puts her foot down, and he is subordinate to her in the house. Therefore you might say that our standpoint toward concrete reality always has to do with the assertion of power because we cannot take the standpoint of reality without, to a certain extent, asserting ourselves; when it comes to reality you have to make a choice, to make one side decisive. So the shoemaker would represent an archetypal figure similar to that of the tailor, but one specially concerned with the standpoint towards reality.

The shoemaker’s trade is regarded as one of the simple professions, even more simple than the tailor’s, though neither is socially on a high level according to the bourgeois level of these fairy tales. There are many legends and stories which have to do with the simple level of the shoemaker. There is a legend that Saint Anthony, who saw an angel of God, got the idea that he had achieved something and become a great saint, but one day an angel told him that there was a still more saintly man in Alexandria. Saint Anthony, feeling jealous, wanted to see the man, and the angel led him to a very poor quarter of Alexandria and to a miserable hovel where an old shoemaker, who had a miserable wife, sat making shoes. Saint Anthony was amazed but began to talk to him and, wanting to find out in what way he was more saintly, asked him about his religious views and attitude toward religion; but the shoemaker just looked up at him and said that he was just making shoes to earn money for his wife and children. Saint Anthony thereupon was enlightened. The story shows how the shoemaker has to do with the standpoint toward reality in contrast to Saint Anthony, who strove only to become more and more holy. The shoemaker had a completely human and humble contact with reality, which is what most saints lack and was what the angel of God told Saint Anthony. There is a proverb which says, “Shoemaker, stick to your tools,” for, if he leaves them, things go very wrong, which has to do with the relation to reality, for we have to be completely realistic and remain within our own limits. The shoemaker does this and, according to the proverb, is right

And the king, on entering to see his guests, saw a man there who had not robed himself in a WEDDING ROBE. And He said to him : “Friend, how did’st thou enter here, not possessing a WEDDING ROBE * * And he was as one tongue-tied. Then the king said to his officers : “Bind him hand and foot [in his works and ways]. Take him up and put him Outside into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and grinding of teeth [the Eating of hard experi ence].

The ring is a circular object and is one of the symbols of the Self. The ring has in general two functions besides its quality of roundness, which makes it an image of the Self. It symbolizes either a connection or a fetter. The marriage ring, for instance, can mean connectedness with the partner, but it can also be a fetter—which is why some people take it off and put it in their pocket when they go traveling! So it depends on your own feeling toward it, whether it is a fetter or a meaningful connection. If a man gives a ring to a woman, he expresses, whether he knows it or not, the wish to be connected with her in a suprapersonal way, to be connected with her not just in an ephemeral love affair. He wants to say, “This is forever. It is eternal.” And that means a connection via the Self, not only via ego-moods. Thus in the Catholic world marriage is a sacrament, and the connection is not only that of two egos making up their minds to have, as Jung expressed it, “a little financial society for the bringing up of children.” If a marriage is more than that, it means the recognition that something suprapersonal, or, in religious language, divine enters into it and that it is meant forever in a much deeper sense than just the love mood or some calculation which brings people first together. The ring expresses an eternal connection through the Self, and whenever an analyst has to cope with marriage troubles or to accompany a human being on the last terrifying steps to the guillotine of his wedding day, very interesting dreams often point in this direction—that the marriage has to be made for the sake of individuation. That gives you a profoundly different basic attitude toward the everyday troubles which may arise. One knows that for better or worse, it is the fate by which one has to work through to higher consciousness and that one cannot just throw one’s marriage over the first time something upsets one. That is secretly expressed by the wedding ring, which symbolizes a connection through the Self. -Marie Louise Von Franz, Interpretation of Fairy Tales

In general the ring means any kind of connectedness, and therefore it sometimes has quite a different aspect. Before performing many religious rituals, people must take off their rings. No Roman or Greek priest was allowed to perform any sacramental act without first removing all his rings. There it meant that he had to connect with the Godhead and therefore must put aside all other connections; he must strip himself of all other obligations so that he may be open only to the divine influence. In this sense the image of the ring stands—very often negatively in mythology—for being tied to something to which one should not be tied, being enslaved by some negative factor such as, for instance, a demon. In psychological language that would symbolize a state of being fascinated and being the slave of some emotional unconscious complex.-Marie Louise Von Franz, Interpretation of Fairy Tales

In amplifying the ring symbolism, we could pull in not only the ring for the finger but all other rings, such as a witch’s ring or marching in a ring to carrying a hoop. In general the ring in this wider sense has the meaning of what Jung describes as a temenos, the sacred space set apart either by circumambulation or by drawing a circle. In Greece, a temenos was simply a small sacred place in a wood or on a hill, into which one might not enter without certain precautions, a place where people could not be killed. If one who was persecuted took refuge in a temenos, he could be neither captured nor killed while there. A temenos is an asylum, and within it one is asulos (inviolable). As a place of the cult of the god, it signifies the territory that belongs to the Godhead. Witches’ rings have a similar meaning; they are a piece of earth marked off, a round place reserved for a numinous, archetypal purpose. Such a place has the double function of protection for what is within and exclusion of what is without, and of concentration on what is within. That is the general meaning which is to be found in so many forms. The word temenos comes from temno, to cut. It indicates being cut out from the meaningless, profane layer of life—a part cut out and isolated for a special purpose.-Marie Louise Von Franz, Interpretation of Fairy Tales

Gold ring- Gold, as a most precious metal, has always in the planetary system been ascribed to the sun and is generally associated with incorruptibility and immortality. It is everlasting and in former times was the only known metal which did not decay or become black or green and resisted all corrosive elements. Gold treasures can be buried in the earth and dug up unharmed after a thousand years, unlike copper or silver or iron, so it is the immortal, the transcendental element, that which outlasts ephemeral existence; it is the eternal, the divine, and the most precious, and whenever something is made of gold, it is said to have that eternal quality. That is why a wedding ring is made of gold, for it is meant to last forever; it should not be corrupted by any negative earthly influences, and the precious stones emphasize this even more. Precious stones generally symbolize psychological values.-Marie Louise Von Franz, Interpretation of Fairy Tales

The ring is a symbol of union. In its positive meaning, it stands for a consciously chosen obligation toward some divine power, that is, toward the Self; in its negative aspect it means fascination, being caught, being bound, with a negative connotation: for instance, being caught in one’s complex or in one’s emotions, being caught in a “vicious circle.”-Marie Louise Von Franz, Interpretation of Fairy Tales

Here we have yet another motif—jumping through a ring. This comprises a double action since it means jumping high and at the same time being able to aim accurately at the center of the ring to get through it. In folklore there is mention of the old spring festivals in German countries, when, riding on horseback, the young men had to strike through the center of a ring with a spear. It was a spring fertility rite and at the same time an acrobatic test for the young men on their horses. There again is the motif of aiming at the center of the ring in a contest. This brings us closer to the meaning of aiming at, or through, the center of the ring. Though it seems rather remote, a connection can also be made with the Zen Buddhist art of archery, where the idea is to aim at the center, not in the extraverted way Westerners would do it, by physical skill and conscious concentration, but by a form of deep meditation by which the archer puts himself inwardly into his own center (what we would call the Self ), from whence, naturally, he can hit the outer target. Thus, in their highest performances, with their eyes shut and without aiming, Zen Buddhist archers can effortlessly hit the target. The whole practice is meant as a technical help to find the way to dwell in one’s own inner center without being diverted by thoughts and ambitions and ego impulses.-Marie Louise Von Franz, Interpretation of Fairy Tales

Now jumping through a burning ring is not practiced, as far as I can discover, except in the circus, where it is one of the most popular tricks. Tigers and other wild animals have to jump through burning rings. The more undomesticated the animal, the more exciting it is to see it jump through a ring, a motif to which I will return later.

Aiming accurately through the center of the ring is not so difficult to interpret. We could say that, although exteriorized in an outer symbolic action, it is the secret of finding the inner center of the personality and is absolutely parallel to what is attempted in Zen Buddhist archery. But there is a second difficulty. The person who jumps has to leave the earth—reality—and get at the center in a movement through midair. So the anima, the princess figure, when she goes through the center of the ring, is hovering in midair; it is specially emphasized that she could do this well. The peasant girls, however, were so heavy and awkward, the story says, that they could not do it without falling and breaking their legs, the gravitation of the earth being too strong for them.-Marie Louise Von Franz, Interpretation of Fairy Tales

The king represents the dominating principle. For the symbolism of the king I refer you to Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis,3 where there is a whole chapter on this subject. The king represents on a primitive level a personification, or is a carrier of the mystical life power of the nation or tribe, which is why in many primitive civilizations, as you can read in Frazer’s “The Dying God,” the health and physical and spiritual power of the king guarantees the power of the tribe, and he has to be killed if he becomes impotent or ill. He is deposed after a certain number of years because the carrier of this power has always to be young. He is an incarnated Godhead, the living strength of the tribe. Among the Shilluks in the Upper White Nile this is clearly expressed by the fact that the old king, when he is to be killed, is shut up in a hut with an untouched virgin and starved to death with the girl; the so-called throne (a primitive little chair) is put in front of the hut, and his successor sits there: at the moment of death the life spirit of the old king enters the body of the new king. From then on he is the king and carrier of this principle. —Marie Louise Von Franz, The Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales

Again jumping to conclusions, you might say that the king has all the aspects of a symbol of the Self, but this is too general and inaccurate in fact, though the king is the life principle and image of God and the center of physical and spiritual organization and in that way carries the projection of the Self, the regulating dominating center of the aspect of totality. But that is not right, insofar as the archetype of the Self is, according to our experience, not so much bound to time as that. Also we have the image of the dying king, or the sick or old king who has to be deposed, which does not fit with the idea of the Self as regulating center of the psyche, which does not have to be deposed. Therefore, in what way is he and is he not the Self? The answer is given in the ritual of the Shilluks which I described to you. The king is not the Self, but a consciously formulated symbol of that archetype. The king of our civilization is Christ, he is a symbol of the Self, he is the specific formulated aspect of the Self which dominates our civilization, the King of Kings, the dominating content. I would say that Buddha is the formulated aspect of the symbol of the Self in the Buddhist civilizations. Thus the king is not the archetype of the Self but a symbol of the Self, which has become a central dominating representation in a civilization.—Marie Louise Von Franz, The Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales

It seems an archetypal law of general validity that every symbolism which has taken shape and form in collective human consciousness wears out after a certain time and resists renewal owing to a certain inertia of consciousness. Most inner experiences after ten or twenty years lose some of their strength and, especially in collectivity, most religious symbols tend to wear out. Think of all the children who should relate to the symbol of Christ and be Christian and who by the time they are six years old are already bored and shut their inner ear because to them it has already become a kind of slogan and makes no more sense, it has lost its numinous qualities and its value. I have also been told by parsons and priests that it is practically impossible always to write a sermon into which they can put themselves, for there will inevitably be days when the man is tired, or has quarreled with his wife, when this “wearing out” effect will be visible. If Christ were completely numinous to him, that would not happen. It seems a tragic fact that human consciousness tends to be unilateral and single-track, not always adapted to inner processes, so that certain truths are formulated and adhered to for too long.—Marie Louise Von Franz, The Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales

The same thing applies to the inner evolution of an individual—someone has an inner experience and lives it for a while, but then life changes, and the attitude should change, but this is not noticed until dreams show that a readaptation must be made. In midlife, consciousness tends to persist in certain attitudes and does not notice quickly enough that now that the inner direction of life has changed, consciousness should also change for approaching death. Religious contents also, as soon as they become conscious and spoken of, lose their immediate freshness and their numinosity, for which reason the great religious systems undergo movements of renewal, or there is a complete change and renewal or reinterpretation so that the system regains its immediacy and original meaning. The aging king who has to be replaced by a new king expresses this general psychological law. Whatever has reached general recognition is, in a way, already doomed; it would only be wisdom to know that and always be ready for a change of attitude. But just as the individual generally perseveres in his old attitude, so does the collective, and to a much greater extent. Then you have to face the inertia which can be dangerous to the content. The mystery of the renewal of the king refers to this.—Marie Louise Von Franz, The Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales

The king has another aspect: he is not only the profound hope of a civilization, but at the same time the religious representative. An effort was made to evade the unavoidable tragedy of the king having to die from time to time by doubling the power, that is, by having a medicine man and a king. The medicine man is not so much involved in the earthly activities of organization, for his task is to cope with the immediacy of the religious experience. Therefore, in many primitive tribes there is discord between king and medicine man, who is the “gray eminence” behind the king, or who is kept down by the absolute rule of the chief. This is a squabble which was carried on in our own history when the Catholic Church tried to be the power over the king, or certain kings tried to replace the pope, or to govern him and rule the religious life of the Catholic Church. The idea behind the division of power was to keep the two separate, so that the religious aspect should have the possibility of renewal, and organization should keep to its own duties. In this way it might be possible to keep balance in the opposites, the tendency toward the continuity of consciousness and the necessity for constant inner renewal. The drawback is the danger of a quarrel and split between the two powers, which really belong together in the psyche.—Marie Louise Von Franz, The Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales

In fairy tales it is often the simple person who becomes the next king, after many processes and peripeteias. We must investigate what this means. If the prince becomes king, he is the right person by inheritance, and we could call that a renewal within the same dominant, like for instance that of the Order of Saint Francis of Assisi within the Catholic Church. There was a moment of danger for the Catholic Church when the Order of Saint Francis might have formed a movement of its own, but remaining within the Catholic Church, it became a rejuvenating movement of spiritual life. This would be analogous to the prince becoming king. On the other hand, if the fairy tale says that a very anonymous and unexpected person becomes king, then the renewal of the dominant of collective consciousness comes from an angle, both sociological and archetypal, from which it was least expected. The dogma of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary provides such an example, for in some circles of theology this new dogma was rather looked down upon, but the pope emphasized that it was the general popular wish that it should take place. He met with great opposition and referred to the visions of Fatima in Portugal; thus the assumption of the Virgin Mary is based more on a feeling movement among the simple people than on theological thought. The pope himself is said to have had visions (though this is not officially stated). From an unexpected corner such as the pope’s unconscious, such a new symbol came to light: the renewal comes from the unexpected place.—Marie Louise Von Franz, The Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales

In general, we might conclude that if the fairy tale tells us of a simple man becoming king, it describes a process of renewal of collective consciousness which comes from the unexpected and officially despised part of the psyche, and from the simple people, for in a population, in a confused way, the simple suffer more than the learned people from the undercurrents of archetypal development. For example, in universities and all educated circles it is argued that there is too much technique and not enough relation to nature in the life of modern man. The more dominant classes are aware of this, but a simple peasant boy who leaves his village to work in a factory is not, yet he suffers from it much more immediately and may become desperate and perhaps hate his fellow men and not know that he is suffering from the disease of the time. In his psyche a longing for a change of attitude may be constellated and expressed symbolically. He may try to overcome his trouble by going to a renewal meeting, for he sees things on a very primitive level, and he may try to cure his sickness in this way. Such vague suffering may be solved in a symbolically demonstrated form, or he may feel that his life is meaningless and drink himself to death.—Marie Louise Von Franz, The Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales

The archetype of the king can indicate the fertility and strength of the tribe or nation, or the old man who suffocates new life and should be deposed. The hero can be the renewal of life or the great destroyer, or both. Every archetypal figure has its own shadow. We do not know what an archetype looks like in the unconscious, but when it enters the fringe of consciousness, as in a dream, which is a half-conscious phenomenon, it manifests the double aspect. Only when light falls on an object does it throw a shadow.—Marie Louise Von Franz, The Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales

In ancient times there were souls called sin-eaters. These were personified by spirits, birds, or animals, sometimes humans, who somewhat like the scapegoat, took on the sins, that is, the psychic waste of the community, so people could be cleansed and redeemed from the detritus of difficult life or life not well lived.

We have seen how the wild nature is exemplified by the finder of the dead, the one who sings over the bones of the dead, bringing them back to life again. This Life/Death/Life nature is a central attribute of the instinctual nature of women. Likewise, indorse mythology, the sin-eaters are carrion eaters who devour the dead, incubate them in their bellies, and carry them to Hel, who is not a place but a person. Hel is the Goddess of life and death. She shows the dead how to live backward. They become younger and younger until they are ready to be reborn and re-released back into life.

This eating of sins and sinners, and the subsequent incubation of them, and their release back into life once more, constitutes an individuation process for the most base aspects of the psyche. In this sense it is right and proper that energy is drawn out of the predatory elements of the psyche, killing them so to speak, draining their powers. Then they may be returned to the compassionate Life/Death/Life Mother, to be transformed and re-issued, hopefully in a less contentious state.