If we wish to understand what lies at the very foundation of human psychic life, we must first understand what archetypes are. They are those particular energetic nuclei from which our desires arise, together with the images and ideas that accompany them, and which we usually perceive first through projection.
Different archetypes are sources of different desires, often mutually incompatible with one another.
We know of the existence of archetypes in the human psyche thanks to Jung. Personally, however, I came to understand what archetypes truly are primarily through astrology, and above all through the books of Liz Greene—a Jungian psychotherapist and astrologer, and one of the founders of the psychological school of astrology. The depth of her thinking and the scope of her erudition are, for me, comparable to the genius of another woman whose books I read with the same degree of devotion: Marie-Louise von Franz.
I say all this because I would like to present Liz Greene’s work on Neptune—the archetype of the highest forms of love and self-sacrifice, of creative imagination, and of the spiritual longing for enlightenment.
She has named the essence of the desire that flows from this archetype the longing for redemption. Why this is so becomes clear through the study of the myths associated with Neptune, foremost among them the Christian myth. Other expressions that describe this archetypal desire are the longing for the dissolution of ego identity and the experience of unity.
Like every archetype, this one has both positive and negative modes of manifestation within the dimension of duality—that is, within the world of matter. And, as is usually the case, the difference depends solely on the presence of consciousness: on the degree to which the centre of the ego has differentiated itself from the forces competing for dominance over it.
This is precisely what makes this book so valuable—the generation of consciousness through the exploration of the many concrete forms in which this archetype manifests in our lives.
Below are selected and paraphrased quotations from the Introduction to her book on Neptune, The Astrological Neptune and the Quest for Redemption, presented here in translation from the Bulgarian.
“The longing for redemption is an ancient, strange and many-headed demon that inhabits even the most earthly and prosaic of souls. Sometimes sweet-tongued, sometimes mute, this demon seeks some vaguely sensed union with an all-seeing, all-loving, ineffable Other in whose enfolding arms it may find final solace for the harsh limits of mortality and the frightening isolation of individuality that lie embodied somewhere, however unconsciously, in every life.
Even if we do not call the Other by some divine name, but instead direct our devotion and longing to such unacknowledged surrogates as humanity, family, nature, art, love, or the state, this quest is impossible to mistake and should not be confused with other, more individualized feelings such as desire, passion, love, or admiration for a particular person or thing.
The hallmarks of the longing for redemption are, first, that it is a longing; second, that it is compulsive and absolute and often clashes violently with individual values; and third, that its goal is not relationship but rather dissolution.
We have been creating images of the Other since our Paleolithic ancestors first began summoning the magical horse, mammoth, and bison to the empty cave wall—not only to receive supernatural aid in the hunt, but because we have always needed to feel that there is Something out there, beyond, that mitigates the transience and insignificance of mortal life. Alone among the animals, we human animals create rituals and works of art specifically designed to reconnect with the divine source from which we first came, and to which, one day after death, we may return.
Freud speculates on the possibility that such a persistent quest for the sacred return is a sublimation of the incestuous longing for the bliss of the womb and breasts, clothed in symbols that preserve the intensity and truth of the unconscious longing but avoid the crippling guilt and shame that lurks for those who break the ancient taboo. Jung speculates on the possibility that the longing for redemption is innate, an archetypal predisposition as primal and irresistible as the desire to procreate.
The main revelation of Symbols of Transformation, this seminal work that heralds Jung’s break with Freud, is that it is not the strict morality of the inner censor that prompts us to generate transcendent images of redemption. It is the unconscious psyche itself that seeks to transform its own compulsive and doomed instinctiveness through the mediating influence of the symbols it itself creates.
It is not society or the superego but the soul, according to Jung, that is ultimately responsible for the transformation of the crude libido into a work of glorified art, the noble humanitarian ideal, the astonishing dignity of sacred ritual, the profound and cruelly beautiful initiation in the transformation of human lead into human gold.
In other words, what we call God is really Nature—the chthonic nature described by Freud as the Id—seeking freedom from its own death-shadowed inertia through the gradual evolution not only of form, as Darwin would have preferred, but also of the expression of consciousness. And the instrument of this transformation is that ever-elusive faculty we call imagination.
It is possible that both Jung and Freud are right, although at first sight Jung seems more flattering about human motivation and more appealing to the spiritually inclined. Manifestations of the longing for redemption participate in both incest and transcendence. They also pose a profound moral dilemma as they encompass not only our myriad efforts to experience and formulate the eternal, but also many of the more horrifying forms of addiction, madness, and mental and physical decay that medicine, not religion, has had to deal with in recent times. We can no longer speak in whispers of the voice of God when an individual person—and even an individual body—breaks into fragments before the dictates of that voice and becomes unable to cope with the simplest demands of earthly life.
When is an artist no longer merely tragic or mad, but a divinely inspired genius whose excesses are tolerated because his or her suffering elevates our own? When does one display enough talent to justify, say, cutting off an ear like Van Gogh or committing suicide like Richard Dadd, who believed his father was really the Devil dressed in his father’s clothes? When is the visionary no longer just a lunatic but a saint?
There were once hundreds of saints, and they were easily—if posthumously—recognized by mere mortals. Today, the prevailing collective view of reality no longer trusts in miracles, intact virginity arouses pity rather than awe, a nasty death is available to all, and the requirements for canonization are more stringent.
What then is this poignant longing that justifies every sacrifice, this eternal cry from the wilderness of embodiment? Is it truly the voice of the soul heard through the prison walls of earthly substance? Or is it the desperate defense mechanism of a fragile personality unwilling or unable to face the demands of ordinary life?
How can we tell the difference—between Christ and Hitler—when both emerged in response to the cry of desperate people seeking redemption?
Everything that human beings experience belongs to the realm of the psyche and is therefore psychological. Every experience is subjective as it is lived by the individual. And if our political and spiritual beliefs are too precious to allow honesty about our own exclusively human motives, then what is left to stand between us and destruction in the name of redemption?
Astrology has a planetary symbol that describes this urge. In astrological language it is called Neptune. The longing for redemption is the longing for dissolution in the waters of pre-birth—maternal, cosmic, or both.
Longing for redemption is confusing. Sometimes it appears as radiant yearning for unity; sometimes as crippling regression to prenatal fantasy. Religious and psychoanalytic languages describe different faces of the same core impulse.
Neptune may symbolize the highest expressions of love and vision—or the most destructive impulses born of fear and denial. Which is true? Probably both.
One can never be sure—least of all of oneself.
It is precisely for this reason that I have attempted to articulate Neptune’s world more clearly.”
Selected ¶phrased passages from The Astrological Neptune and the Quest for Redemption by Liz Greene
