Psyche’s first task was to sort through a huge pile of seeds, and she tackled this ordeal with the help of the ants. I recall that Marie Louise von Franz interpreted this as help from the unconscious that comes when we are true to ourselves. After the first task comes the second, which teaches our inner Psyche another very important quality. What this task is, what this quality is and how Marie Louise von Franz comments on it, you will read below in the text.
“After having fulfilled the first task, Psyche must fetch the golden wool from dangerous wild solar sheep, or rams, which are very difficult to approach. Here she is helped by reeds which tell her that the rams are unapproachable at midday and that she should wait until evening when they get cooled down in their temperamental wildness. If Psyche approaches them too early they will tear her to bits.
The reeds, as Merkelbach points out, had a great meaning in Egypt: the hieroglyph for “reed” represents the king of Egypt and Horus, the new sun, the reborn sun god, the new king of Egypt. The reed represents the king in his rebirth form.
In many fairy tales, the reeds betray secret knowledge. In antiquity there are many stories where somebody is murdered and buried in a swamp. A shepherd comes along, cuts a reed, and makes himself a flute, and the flute sings and reveals the secret of the murder, and the murderer is discovered and punished. The reed can also betray or convey divine wisdom to man by the wind which whistles through it.
There is an instinct of truth in the human psyche which, in the long run, cannot be suppressed. We can pretend not to hear it, but it remains in the unconscious. And Psyche in our story has a kind of secret inspiration about how she can solve the task. The whistling reed, like the ants, corresponds to these tiny hints of truth which we get from the unconscious.
Jung always said that truth does not speak with a loud voice. Its low but unsuppressible voice announces itself as a malaise, or a bad conscience, or whatever one may want to call it. Great quiet is needed in order to feel these small hints. When the unconscious begins to talk loudly and to manifest itself with car accidents and such happenings, then the situation is already very bad. But in the normal state it has been whispering softly for years, before the thunderclap comes with accidents or other bad things. That is why we have analysis, where we try to hear what the reed says before the catastrophe comes.
The reed, as we have seen, is connected mythologically with the rebirth of the sun god in the form of Horus. You will recall that in Egypt the pharaoh is the earthly representative or the incarnation of the highest god. The first time the pharaoh sleeps with the queen, the moment of the hieros gamos in which the new king engenders his first son and successor, the king personifies the god and the queen personifies Isis. The suffering aspect and all that is suppressed by the king (who is the solar principle) is personified by Osiris.
Every day, for the twelve hours of the day, one is only one half of oneself. In order to be able to work, we must repress innumerable inner living reactions; one cannot even let them come up to consciousness. As long as conscious activity lasts, only one half of the psyche can constantly express itself, and the other unconscious half is in the situation of the suffering god in the underworld. When, therefore, the pharaoh ages and dies, he becomes, at the moment of death, Osiris. Thus one sees on the inscriptions their names connected as: Unas Osiris, Pepi Osiris. But at this moment the new king has already been reborn, as Horus. We will go into this in more depth later; here I only want to say that the reed is concerned with Horus, with the principle of what comes after. It whispers to us the truth and the anticipation of the future.
The ram has been well interpreted by Erich Neumann, and I think that its meaning is clear to anyone who has ever seen a horoscope. As a zodiacal sign of spring it means aggressive impulsiveness and a temperamental spirit of adventure, a kind of unreflected, naive, masculine initiative. For a woman it naturally represents the animus, but in our case it means an aggressive impulsiveness behind the anima. It would mean that one of the greatest dangers for a man, when he begins to let his anima live, is to fall into an unreflective impulsiveness. It is much more difficult for him to delay a decision than it is for a woman.
In Egypt the “ram of Mendes” was always associated with Isis, so that we have here again an allusion to the end of the book. One only needs to look into our newspapers: As soon as there is any kind of difficulty, too much rain, an avalanche, too many cars, and so on, the politicians say, “We must do something; we must have a committee; the state must . . .” Nobody proposes that we wait and see what happens! One must study the origin of these troubles, but one cannot wait. Some women, of course, are also threatened by the ram, but it is more frequent for men.
Of Course this animal also has a positive aspect. But it is unfavorable for the man who has to realize his anima, for under the influence of the ram he can never realize what she is. Feeling, especially in a man, is generally a slightly delayed reaction. He must be able to wait, to listen to what the feminine side might have to say. If a man overruns that, he will never become conscious of his anima.
Whenever we are caught in the temperamental wish for a quick action, we then understand how difficult it is to wait, to patiently let time pass. So Psyche not only has to wait but also has to collect a handful of wool from the ram’s hide, to take something from its wool fleece.
The motif of the ram also belongs to the famous story of Phrixos and Hellé: the myth of a brother and his little sister who are both persecuted by a stepmother who wants to kill them. But they hear of it and escape on a ram, which flies with them through the sky. On the way, Hellé bends over and looks down, and falls into the sea, which is how the Helléspont came into existence; the sea of Hellé. Phrixos is saved and is ordered to sacrifice the ram and to hang up the fleece on a tree.
Since then, the golden fleece has become the motif of the “unobtainable treasure” of the long journey of the Argonauts; and in later Christian interpretation, this golden fleece hung up on a tree was regarded as the prefiguration of Christ, the sacrificed lamb. This story has been very popular with the Church Fathers, with its amplification of the symbolism of Christ. Even today, among the Knights of the Golden Fleece, those of the highest rank of the Order have a golden chain with a little golden fleece; if they place this on any table, that table has the value of a consecrated altar.
Apuleius alludes here consciously to the story of Phrixos and Hellé. The lock of golden wool is the unobtainable treasure, and this Psyche has to obtain from the rams. Now, every powerful emotion is not only something hot; it is also something which brings light. Generally it is eighty percent destructive fire and twenty percent light. Therefore, if one is overwhelmed or attacked by a terrific emotion, the art is not to let the emotion tear one, but to find out what it could mean.
For instance, you may meet someone whom you loathe. Each time you meet that person you become exaggeratedly emotional without any visible reason. That is the reaction of the ram. Now you can either live your emotion out, and then there is catastrophe and failure, or you can repress it, but then you have not learned anything. The third possibility is not to give in to the emotion, but to pluck out its meaning, to ask, Why do I feel like this? What has got into me? Then you have really learned something.
Wherever there is a destructive emotion, there is possibly also light, and the art is to perceive this light without getting pulled into the primitiveness of uncontrolled emotion. And that is the meaning of the capacity of being able to wait for the right moment in order to obtain the ram’s wool.”
Marie-Louise von Franz, “The Golden Ass of Apuleius“
- Source: Amor and Psyche
The notion of “the instinct for truth” is one of my favourite concepts in Jung’s analytical psychology. Being in touch with this instinct is really very closely related to developing patience, because often the unconscious psyche itself needs time to give us the answer to the question we are looking for. I have shared everything I have learned about this important topic in the article “The Instinct For Truth“.
To be continued: The third task of Psyche – fetching water from the ice waterfall of Styx
