And this is the fourth and final task Venus gives Psyche to atone for her sin – to fetch a box of beauty cream from Persephone, queen of the underworld. Unlike the previous three tasks (sorting a pile of seeds, fetching a golden wave from the wild sun rams, and fetching water from the icy waterfall of Styx), this time the trials for Psyche are few in number and more difficult. Accordingly, the text in which Marie-Louise von Franz interprets their psychological dimension is longer. Personally, it is also the most valuable for me.
I believe that everything written by this amazing woman is worth reading, because it provides answers to painful questions in human relationships that each of us has more or less encountered. Only someone who has personally gone through the suffering of opposites uniting within themselves can write with such depth and wisdom. This is exactly how I feel when I read her books and, in particular, her psychological interpretation of this story. So:
“After she has brought the water of Styx to Venus, Psyche is sent by her into the world of the dead, in order to obtain a certain box with a perfumed beauty cream in it from Persephone, the queen of the underworld, a parallel to the dark face of Isis. In great despair, Psyche wants to kill herself by throwing herself down from a tower, but the tower begins to talk, and it advises her to go down into Hades and then gives her further instructions.
The tower, as Neumann interprets it, is a symbol of the Great Mother herself. It is also a symbol of introversion, of withdrawal into one’s own inner world, and of contemplation of oneself. It is the withdrawal that allows Psyche to face the tasks which await her.
While crossing the river of the underworld in Charon’s boat, a drowning old man, half-dead, begs her to take pity on him. But her task is to not listen to his piteous cries for help. A woman’s natural inclination is to mother, to nurse, and to have pity for everything. Wherever there is a wounded being around or anything that touches the natural, feminine, maternal instinct, she wants to support it. To say no to this old cripple is for a woman a more difficult deed than for a man.
Not to have any sentimental love for something that is doomed to die and has to go is very hard. This applies also in analysis: a neurotic attitude in the analysand naturally cries out for our pity, but to give in here would mean to keep alive something dying or already dead. To have pity and love, combined with the reckless “cruelty” to allow the condemned thing to die, is very difficult in practical life. It is so much easier to be full of feeling and to give in to one’s feminine inclination to sympathize.
To have a “knife” in the hand and, without listening to the cries of the patient, to cut off a wrong attitude, this can be very painful for the doctor himself. Naturally the same applies also to the contents of the unconscious which have outlived their time. One should not fall into retrospective sentimentality, but live forward, “letting the dead bury their dead.” Psyche succeeds in ignoring this old man who cries for help, and Charon takes her on across the river.
Charon appears here in his usual antique representation, as a miserly, ill-tempered old man who will only take those people over who can pay him. He is, in a sense, the negative personification of what Jung called the “transcendent function.” Jung meant by this the faculty of the unconscious for creating symbols. It is “transcendent,” for not only does it transcend our conscious grasp, but it is the only thing which, through the help of a symbol, enables man to pass from one psychic state to another. Hence the ferryman!
We would be forever stuck in an acquired state of consciousness if this transcendent function of the psyche did not help us over into new attitudes by creating a symbol which shares in both worlds: being associated with the psychic state of the present as well as the future, the symbol helps us over. “Habentibus symbolum facilis est transitus.”
Very often one sees in analysis that somebody has outgrown his old condition but feels lost and confused about the new thing. In this interregnum, or vacuum, one can only hold on to the chain of symbols which the unconscious produces, that is, to one’s own dreams, which never let us down, but safely lead us over from an outgrown into a new attitude of life. However, this stage between the two worlds of the conscious and the unconscious has also a quality of being narrowed in, of depression, and of having to cling to small things.
Charon has an Egyptian parallel in the god Acharantos, or Akeru, who, because of a similarity in the sound of the name, was identified with Charon in the syncretistic Graeco-Roman Egyptian religion.4 But Akeru has a more positive function in Egypt. He is depicted as a simple peasant who sows and reaps wheat, and so is interpreted in many texts of the Egyptian tombs as the agency of resurrection. One could say therefore that the “ferryman,” who from the extraverted standpoint is seen as negative—during his appearance there is a certain darkening of consciousness, and only the dreams go on producing symbols leading to the other shore—was seen more positively by the Egyptians, with their more introverted civilization. They saw therein a sowing of the wheat, which disappears in the earth and is awoken again to life.
Jesus alludes to the same Osiris mystery of the “resurrection” of the wheat.5 The general belief in antiquity that one had to have money for Charon can also be seen in this light: in most of the tombs of antiquity the dead have under their tongue a penny or a drachma for Charon, who otherwise could leave them on the shore between the two worlds. This shows that the transcendent function requires a minimum of conscious libido. The healing function of the unconscious cannot bring us over “to the other shore” if we do not give it libido, that means conscious attention.
One sees this so tragically in people who have dragged on for perhaps twenty years under terrific hidden suffering from a neurotic symptom. Such people have been arrested at the shore for lack of money for Charon. They did not have the right instruction, or they lacked the instinct or the generosity to follow it.
Then Psyche comes to an old man called Ocnus, who again and again winds up a black and white cord and unties it again. Ocnus means hesitation, and to him, also, Psyche must not pay any attention but must walk past and not take notice of what he tells her, otherwise she will get stuck with him. The rope, which also appears in other fairy-tale motifs, refers to a general mythological theme and is interpreted as the alternation of black and white, of day and night, and of other opposites. So one could say that Ocnus—hesitation—occupies himself incessantly with an endless chain of opposites in the unconscious and with the spinning of a yam from the opposites, so that he never comes to any deed or any breakthrough.
This is another classical form of getting stuck in the unconscious: many people realize that everything has a plus and a minus, that everything in the psyche is ambiguous, that everything one undertakes can be naively interpreted as a wonderful deed, but has its dark motivations as well. If one realizes that, then one often becomes unable to do or think anything, and then one falls into Ocnus. Shall I, or shall I not? Everything has a disadvantage, and anything I might do has its absolute counterpart. Such awareness might lame élan vital. The secret is to say, “Oh, well, if it has two aspects, to hell with it, I shall do this because this is me, and I am ready to pay for it; everything is half-wrong anyhow, whatever one does!”
People with a weak ego-consciousness and a weak feeling function cannot take responsibility for their decisions but get lamed in the face of paradox. In analysis they argue, “You said last time . . . ! But isn’t there another aspect?” One replies, “Yes, certainly, but then . . .” Generally they want you to decide for them, and that is the worst of all, for then they could remain infantile. All this sounds simple, but in reality it is terrible and dangerous, one of the real devilries of the unconscious! Ocnus, who is quite rightly represented here as a superdevil, must be avoided!
Next, Psyche has to walk past three old women who are weaving. These, we know from the mythological context, are parallel to the Germanic Norns or the Greek Parkae or Moirae, the weaving goddesses of Fate. Them, too, Psyche must leave alone, which means she must overcome them. Here is a big temptation for women and also for the man’s anima: the temptation to plot and help fate along. It is very meaningful that after Ocnus come these three women, because one could say that plotting generally comes after a feeling of hopelessness.
For example, if a woman loves a man and there is seemingly no chance for her to conquer him, she will start to plot in order to catch him. Had she the confidence that what is meant to come about will happen, she would not need to plot; but there is the temptation to corriger Ia fortune, to help fate. Here is a particular failing of women. If they happen to give in to the temptation, they destroy, as Jung explains in “Woman in Europe,” their Eros and their creative possibility. But it is also typical for the anima in men. If a man plots, one knows he is still possessed by the anima.
To give a kind of blunt primitive example: a man really is only interested in his fiancée’s bank account, but that is not allowed to come to consciousness, so he maneuvers himself into feeling that he loves the woman. In reality he wants to have the money but cannot separate this wish from the feeling of uninterested love, and so he keeps himself in a half-dark state, where he makes himself believe that this girl is the right one to marry. There is also perhaps a certain attraction, yet with this other little “thing” in the background: she has a rich father.
Psyche escapes this danger in that she walks past the three fate-weavers. Only when one becomes conscious of such unclean, half-unconscious motivations and “walks past them,” does not fall into them, can the individuation process continue. Therefore, if a man or a woman cannot desist from this plotting there is no true love, for the two are absolutely incompatible, though they are always close together. Psyche succeeds in escaping from all these dangers.
Psyche’s last task is to go down into the underworld and get from Persephone the box which contains divine beauty and to bring it to Venus. Here she is disobedient, opens the box, and falls immediately into a deadly sleep. But by a miracle Eros comes and wakens her back to life. Later, through the intervention of Zeus, Eros and Psyche marry, Venus is reconciled and even dances at the marriage festival. Later Psyche gives birth to a child on Olympus, called Voluptas (Pleasure).
Being from the land of death, divine beauty is obviously something poisonous which is kept for the gods and which human beings should not have. One could compare this to the biblical story in which Adam and Eve steal consciousness from God and thus start the tragedy of mankind. But here the sin lies not in the stealing of the knowledge of good and evil, but in the wish to want to participate in divine beauty. This has to do with the well-known aestheticism of the anima in men. A man’s anima whispers to him: what is beautiful is also good, in the Platonic sense of the word (kalon k’agathon, “the good and the beautiful go together”).
One of man’s deepest problems is that he is practically incapable of loving a woman if she is very ugly. He cannot separate his feeling from aestheticism. There is the story of the man who couldn’t decide between two women. The one was beautiful, the other ugly but a wonderful singer. After a long struggle the singer won. Then on the first morning of the honeymoon he wakes up, looks at her, and shakes her, saying, “For God’s sake, sing!” It is a terrible anima problem, for the man feels that beauty is divine and that it goes with goodness, whereas evil and ugliness belong together.
As Merkelbach has already worked out, Kore, or Persephone, is a variation of Venus-Isis in her underworldly aspect. But why the problem of beauty? In the story, Psyche naturally opens the box—as in all fairy tales, for nothing has ever been forbidden in a fairy tale which has not been done—and what comes out is a confusion, a soporific mist, which puts her into a deathlike sleep. Thus, she is thrown even deeper into the unconscious.
The ointment has a completely negative role in our context, for it was not created for Psyche. It was meant for Venus, who, probably quite legitimately, wanted to heighten her own charms. Venus would not have fallen into sleep if she had opened the box. Therefore we must go into the meaning of ointment.
Oil and many sorts of creamy ointment had, in Egypt, a sacramental or religious function: they represented life substance. The Egyptians bathed and anointed their gods. They brought their statues down to the Nile and washed them regularly and then anointed them with a creamlike substance; the idea behind it was to give them life.8 They realized, in a projected form at least, that even the gods would be without the slighest life function or importance if men did not give them their psychic substance.
In the Christian tradition the holy oil still plays a great role in Catholic sacraments, representing the Holy Ghost and its gifts. For this reason the king is also anointed. He is the “anointed” one, because he represents the Christian principle on earth and because he fulfills his office with “God’s grace.” Jesus, the king of kings, is the “anointed” par excellence, but in a more invisible sense than the Egyptian kings. So one could say that oil and creams represent the life substance of the psyche in its aspect of ultimate spiritual devotion, devotion with complete awe. By anointing the statues, the Egyptians gave their gods the best they could, unconditional devotion and reverence which made them alive.
The ointment has therefore also to do with love, with the reverential awe which a human being can give to a being who is greater than himself. If people try to exploit their dreams for their own purposes, without this loving respect for that which the unconscious conveys to them, then everything turns wrong. It turns dead, and after a relatively good time at the start they begin to doubt the analytical process and their dreams, doubting that they will lead somewhere or further.
But they started this wrong way because they did not give unconditioned loving reverence, did not recognize that a living mystery within their own souls has to be kept alive, not for any other purpose than its own sake. Therefore it is right that the ointment should belong to Venus and not to a human girl. Human beings may not steal it; if it is stolen, it creates this soporific effect, which is visible here. Psyche is not killed, but she falls into a complete unconscious state, into the state of the gods, and loses the feeling for her own individuality.
This cream in our story is specifically called Beauty, a beauty cream. We are reminded that the girl to which Psyche later will give birth is called Voluptas, sensuous lust. Here we see clearly that in our context the tale of Eros and Psyche is an anima story. Man’s anima today is still very much the same as in late antiquity.
To identify the highest values with beauty leads to a kind of aestheticism which is an inadequacy toward life, because life in every respect is a pair of opposites. It is beautiful, but also ugly, and both poles belong to reality, and chasing only beauty and aestheticism, even in their highest form, is a kind of hubris, an inflation, an unreal attitude, but one with which the anima in men especially tries to seduce.
Eternal beauty does not exist in nature; it is always varied by gruesomeness and horror, and the same is true for our life. For instance, in the I Ching, Hexagram 22 speaks of Grace and Beauty, and there one can read that the great sage Confucius once threw this hexagram and got very depressed, for he realized that aestheticism was not an adequate answer to many of life’s questions.
Today we have an overaesthetic attitude about religion. Our churches, our images, and the music played, all must be as beautiful as possible, for only that pleases God. Everything which is dirty, ugly, and out of tune does not belong. This shows how much we are also possessed by that prejudice—then we wonder that some of our youths dance their real religious dances in cellars, sweating in dirt, and have more inner experience there then with sober church beauty!
The Chinese, who, being a people of high culture and great taste, were always threatened by aestheticism, did something compensatory, which was really just a trick, but still seems to me characteristic. In the best time of the Han, Sung, and Ming periods, when the greatest pieces of art were created, if a craftsman made a vase or a bronze vessel, he would make a tiny little mistake on purpose, chip it a bit, or put a little spot of wrong color, so that his work would not be perfect. Something perfect is, in a deeper sense of the word, imperfect. It must contain the opposites, and in order to be complete it must be slightly asymmetrical.
But we still identify our highest values with aesthetic values. Only in modern art do the artists try to get away from aestheticism. Their art wants to destroy the false kind of aestheticism and show the “naked truth.” One could interpret the cream of beauty, which makes Psyche sink into the unconscious, also as the danger of being fascinated by the divine otherworldliness of beauty. It creates an ecstatic condition in which one loses interest in the concrete everyday life. Psyche therefore withdraws into the realm of the gods, into the realm of Venus, and makes no more progress toward the Venus incarnation on earth.
The aestheticism of the anima is always a problem. Even if a woman is beautiful, she may yet get some disease or have to undergo an operation. Women sometimes fear that they may lose their husband’s affection after an operation, which shows that the feeling relationship is not quite right. Or they are not rightly married if she fears losing her husband’s love for beauty reasons.
In antiquity, aestheticism was a much stronger bond between the sexes. Here, too, Christianity has brought about some change, but the problem has not been developed and needs more understanding. This problem of beautiful form and its connection and disconnection with inner truth is something we are still up against and here is represented for Psyche as the greatest danger.
Marie Louise von Franz, “The Golden Ass of Apuleius“
- Source: Amor & Psyche
So the challenges to our soul development this time are the greatest, because they relate to the journey into the underworld. In the previous, third, problem, Psyche is still on the other side of Styx, in the world of the living, and it is the eagle of Zeus that flies alone to its icy waters. The emotion then is more of fear and dread of the eerie air of the place and the dragons flying by the rocks. This time she crosses that river herself and with the help of the boatman Charon, crosses over into the world of the dead.
The encounter with the world of death and the afterlife brings a different kind of feeling and has a profoundly transformative effect on our attitudes to life. Here the libido, our vital energy, has reached its deepest point of introversion and so the only way to meet the challenge is to stand alone and in isolation until help comes from the side of the unconscious. But before Eros comes and wakes us from our deadly sleep, the long journey into the world of death and the dead, i.e. depression, takes place. Each of the trials in this task, which Marie Franz interprets, describes different aspects of the depressive state (the dark night of the soul, the nigredo).
- Here is the desire to be “separate and alone” in order to deal with the little psychic energy, left available to the ego-will.
- Hence the attitude to “hold on to the small things“, not to pursue big external goals, until this period of inner maturation and timelessness is over and our new self is born.
- The old man who is sinking – our old identity and everything connected with it (attachments, identifications, neurotic attitudes) – resists and wants to survive, but if we want to evolve, we must pay no attention to his cries and protests. In the period of dying there is no room for “retrospective sentimentality“.
- The same applies to other forms of resistance to change – the temptation to ‘collude with fate‘, which corresponds to the ‘bargaining‘ stage (the third stage of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ model of acceptance of death).
- During depression, our vacillation can reach paralyzing proportions. We can cope with the inner Ocnus if we are deeply committed to the care of our soul, and from this comes another kind of resolve – the willingness to pay the price for it, whatever it costs us.
- The longing for perfection is deeply wounded because depression meets ugliness – our own and others’. We need to develop a morality that can transcend duality in the manifestation of the archetype of love in matter so that love of a different quality can emerge in our lives. Then, like the fox in Exupéry’s book, we too will know that “The most essential is invisible to the eye.”
Marie Franz writes that the healing function of the unconscious can only take us “to the other shore” if we give it libido, i.e., our conscious attention. And for doing this we need two things – (1) to receive the right instructions for the passage through the underworld and (2) to have the generosity of heart to follow them. What she has written above contains these instructions, which act as the“ointment” (the life-giving substance from the beauty box) for the soul of man whose soul development processes have taken him into the world of the dead and of death. The latter depends on ourselves and our spiritual maturity. What follows is a sequel – the end of the story of Amor and Psyche.
