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She: Deep aspects of female psychology

Greek The myth of Eros and Psyche is one of the most suitable narratives for the study of female psychology. This ancient pre-Christian myth, which has a long history of oral traditions, was first written down in the era of antiquity, and has not yet lost its deep meaning.

This is not as strange as it might seem at first glance. Since the biological nature of man has remained unchanged since ancient times, his unconscious mental dynamics have not changed. Basic physiological and psychological needs remained constant all this time, while the form of their satisfaction changed from time to time.

That is why, to study personality and basic types of human behavior, it is very useful to go to the earliest sources. They are able to show the true picture, although we do not always have the ability to recognize it. But having opened it, we begin to see a huge variety and change in the behavioral styles characteristic of our time.

The role of myth

Myths are rich sources of psychological insight. Great literature, like great art, conveys the characteristic features of human nature extremely accurately. Myths are a special kind of literature that does not have one author. They are created over the course of an entire era of a particular culture, absorbing all the richness of human imagination and activity, representing an extract of the spirit and experience related to this culture. It is very likely that the main content of the myth arises together with a certain motive; then the plot is repeatedly clarified and spreads like circles on the water exactly: in the same way, people constantly retell entertaining stories to each other. In this way, themes characteristic and universal for humanity remain alive, while individual people and entire eras fade into history. Myths are reflections of a collective image; they contain and convey to us universal human truths.

Nevertheless, the common rationalistic definition of myth as a narrative with fictitious and fantastic content has strengthened in our consciousness. You often hear something like: “Yes, it’s just a myth, it’s complete fiction.” The details of a mythological story may not be confirmed in life or may even turn out to be absolute fantasy, but deep in the content of the myth lies a universal truth.

A myth can be a fantasy or a product of the imagination, while remaining true and adequate to reality. It embodies many facets and levels of existence, including both the external rational world and the less comprehensible internal world.

This confusion associated with a narrow definition of reality can be illustrated by the disturbing thoughts of a young boy following a nightmare. To calm him down, parents can persuade their son for as long as they like that it was just a dream, and the monster that appeared in it does not exist in life. But these persuasions do not convince the child, and he is right. For him, the monster was a reality, as alive and real as any other experience of events in the outside world. The dream monster existed in his head, and not in the bedroom, but still for the child it was a threatening situation, exciting him emotionally and physically. For him, it was his own inner reality, which was pointless to deny. Myths have been studied by many psychologists. C. G. Jung, exploring the deep levels of the human psyche, paid special attention to myths, because he believed that it was in them that the fundamental basis of the psychological structure was laid. Analyzing the myth of Eros and Psyche, we will try to find and comprehend it.

First of all, we must learn to think psychologically. When we begin to come into contact with the content of myths, fairy tales and our own dreams, something very important happens. The terminology and world of old myths seem very strange, archaic and far from modernity, but by listening deeply to them and taking them seriously, we begin to hear and understand something. Sometimes there is a need to interpret symbolic meanings, but once you grasp the general meaning of the content, it is not at all difficult to do.

Many psychologists have interpreted the myth of Eros and Psyche in terms of its relationship to female psychology. At the very beginning of our study, it makes sense to note that in a broader context we are talking about the manifestation of femininity in both men and women. To believe that this myth relates only to women is to significantly limit it.

In one of his most profound insights, Jung noted that every woman has a number of masculine psychological traits that are not fundamental to her, just as every man has recessive female hormones and chromosomes. Jung called the feminine part of a man the anima, and the masculine part of a woman the animus.

Enough has been written about anime and animus, and we, in turn, will say more about them later. From this point of view, when speaking about the manifestation of femininity in the myth of Eros and Psyche, we mean not only the woman, but also the anima of the man. The connection of this myth with female psychology can be considered the most obvious, for femininity is the predominant characteristic of a woman. At the same time, there is certainly a certain parallel with the inner femininity of male psychology.

Our story begins like this: “In one kingdom...” And without realizing it, we penetrate with our inner gaze into that very kingdom, which is called our inner world. If you listen to the melody of ancient languages, you can hear how the inner world hidden in them sounds, rarely accessible to modern rational consciousness. And this may mean that just a few words “in one kingdom…” promise us gold mines of valuable discoveries and insights.

The beginning of the story

Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen, and they had three daughters. The two eldest are ordinary princesses, nothing remarkable.

The third daughter is the embodiment of the human soul, even her name is appropriate - Psyche, or - translated from Greek - soul. She will take us with her on a journey into the depths of the inner world. Psyche has exactly the same relation to the mythical kingdom as to the earthly one.

Do you recognize all three in yourself? Who will not be able to recognize the most ordinary part of himself, and at the same time - the unique spiritual self, which feels very uncomfortable in ordinary everyday life.

The personality of this unusual princess was so attractive that people began to say: “This is the new Aphrodite, the goddess who will take her place in the temple of Aphrodite, for in all respects she will soon surpass her!” Aphrodite suffered and suffered, looking at the ashes left from the sacred fire in cooling temple, for her cult was giving way to the cult of a new beautiful maiden.

Elements of mythology

Robert Johnson wrote wonderful books.
As a follower of Jung, Johnson researched the myths on which he builds a detailed script. The idea is that a man, simply because he is born a man, takes the path. And this is the path that all men, without exception, take. Despite all this, there may be differences in the external manifestations of their fate. And although it can be realized in three different types of residence, the scenario is the same for all men. Simply because a man was born a man. Based on an ancient myth, Johnson explains the path of a man.
Likewise, a woman sets out on the path that is destined for all women on Earth simply because they were born women. And there is no escape from this. External aspects and shades of internal experiences may and do differ, but there is something that unites everything and appears on the female path. Simply because a woman was born a woman. Based on an ancient myth, Johnson explains the path of a woman.
Well, the integration of research is what happens between a man and a woman in the modern world. Romantic love, the basis of tragedies and comedies, something that we have all gone through and something that rare modern cinema creations do without propaganda. The book is complex and definitive. Despite the fact that Lego is readable because it is fascinating. What is romantic love, when and where did it originate, and what does it lead to? Removing the veil of maya. Based on ancient myth, Johnson explores the properties of romantic love. Honestly, it probably takes a certain maturity to accept this latest book. I’m not sure if I could have done it a few years ago, but now I accept it. However, for some time now I have been impressed by the Jungian approach as a whole.
So, now, what are we actually talking about?

"He: deep aspects of male psychology."
Book for:
- men who have at least once asked the question “Lord, yes, what is happening to me (in my life)?” (personally, the author of the magazine asks this question a couple of times a week)
- women who have at least once wondered, “Oh, God, why is he like this?”
Note: not for those women who, after reading the description, thought that this is a book about how all men are the same (although this is true, and the book is about that)

"She: deep aspects of female psychology."
Book for:
- women who have at least once tried to understand themselves, you may be interested in what a male psychologist wrote about this,
- men who are interested in learning more about the psychology of women.

"We: the deeper aspects of romantic love."
About relationships. The whole truth about romantic love. How it begins, how it develops, what it leads to, etc. Only for those who like to see things as they are.
For men and women, in pairs or without. Perhaps you will find parallels.

She: Deep aspects of female psychology

GreekThe myth of Eros and Psyche is one of the most suitable narratives for the study of female psychology. This ancient pre-Christian myth, which has a long history of oral traditions, was first written down in the era of antiquity, and has not yet lost its deep meaning.

The role of myth

Our story begins like this: “In one kingdom...” And without realizing it, we penetrate with our inner gaze into that very kingdom that is called our inner world. If you listen to the melody of ancient languages, you can hear how the inner world hidden in them sounds, rarely accessible to modern rational consciousness. And this may mean that just a few words “in one kingdom...” promise us gold mines of valuable discoveries and insights.

The beginning of the story

Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen, and they had three daughters. The two eldest are ordinary princesses, nothing remarkable.

Elements of mythology

By understanding the difference between these two births, one can understand the different nature of the two types of femininity. Aphrodite is a goddess born of the sea. She possesses the primitive oceanic feminine power, reigning since time immemorial in her domain - on the seabed. Psychologically this means that she rules in the unconscious, symbolized by the depths of the sea. It is almost inaccessible to ordinary consciousness: with the same success one can try to control the ebb and flow of the tides. This archetypal femininity can be admired, idolized, or crushed by it, but it is extremely difficult to connect with. Psyche's task is precisely to use her humanity to curb and soften the great oceanic archetypal feminine. This is the essence of the myth.

Every woman has Aphrodite inside her. She can be recognized by her overflowing femininity and by the greatness that catches the eye, but has no specific relationship to reality.

There are many interesting stories about Aphrodite and her dominion. For example, she has a servant who constantly carries a mirror in front of her, into which the goddess looks from time to time. Someone is preparing excellent perfume for her. Aphrodite is very jealous and intolerant of even the slightest rivalry. She constantly arranges marriages and is never satisfied. Everyone around should increase her wealth.

The influence of Aphrodite affects the reflection of external experience in our own consciousness. To the same extent that a man is busy searching, exploring and disseminating something new, Aphrodite reflects and assimilates. The mirror of Aphrodite is a symbol of the most profound features of the goddess of love. She often invites a person to look at the reflection in the mirror, where he can see himself, hopelessly burdened with his projections, which were hitherto indistinguishable. The process of realizing what is happening can begin with the question of what exactly is being reflected. The answer to it will help a person avoid getting involved in a tangled tangle of emotions. All this can happen against the backdrop of external events. However, it is very important to imagine and understand that many phenomena of the inner world are hidden for us and appear as external events if they are not fully reflected in the subjective inner world, where they, in fact, arose. Aphrodite makes us look in the mirror more than we want. When a person falls in love and recognizes another as a god or goddess, he sees Aphrodite reflecting immortality or godlikeness. We are so unprepared to see both virtues and shortcomings in ourselves that between their reflection in consciousness and final acceptance there usually lies a long path of suffering. Psyche made a long journey that began with her falling in love with Eros and ended with the discovery of her immortality (2).

Aphrodite is the great mother goddess from the point of view of her future daughter-in-law. When a woman brings her grace and beauty into the world, this indicates the influence of the internal energy of Aphrodite (or Venus). But if Aphrodite is in conflict with her daughter-in-law, she can be jealous, unyielding and creates obstacles for Psyche at every step. This kind of drama between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law is common in every culture; she contributes to the development of the personality of every young woman. For her, coping with the power of her mother-in-law means achieving female maturity. From that moment on, she is no longer a dewdrop, having naively entered the world and entered into marriage.

The modern intelligent woman is very embarrassed to discover the essence of Aphrodite in herself, which manifests itself in primitive tricks and the play of instincts. Aphrodite often demonstrates her tyrannical nature, believing that her word is law.

It is quite natural that at a certain stage of evolution, when a new incarnation of femininity appears, its previous incarnation is filled with anger. Aphrodite will use every means at her disposal to humiliate her rival. Every woman knows this, remembering the sudden regressive impulses of Aphrodite living deep inside; as soon as a woman becomes her prey, a terrible picture emerges. Only in a rare and very extraordinary family, at the moment of manifestation of her essence, can Aphrodite be called by her real name, and her energy sublimated for beneficial use.

Aphrodite's energy is of great value. It serves the development of the individual and stimulates everyone around her to grow. At the moment of growth, all old ways of behavior and old habits must give way to new ones. It seems that the old constantly interferes with the emergence and development of the new, but with a certain persistence in the “old” consciousness, the shoots of the new arise and ripen.

There is a parable about the first elephant born in captivity. At first the owner was very happy, but then he was horrified when he saw how the entire herd of elephants gathered in a circle and the adult elephants began to chase the newborn elephant in a circle from one elephant to another. The owner thought that they wanted to torture him to death, but the elephants simply forced the baby to breathe.

Internal struggle

Many of the troubles of a modern woman are associated with the confrontation between her two inner essences: Aphrodite and Psyche. Such a metaphor helps to recreate a picture of the psychological process; If a woman can understand what is happening to her, she will be on the right path to gaining a new consciousness.
Having learned something about the nature of Aphrodite, an ancient and therefore more primitive type of femininity, let's look at the new features of femininity that were formed later. Unlike Aphrodite, who was born in the sea foam, Psyche was born from dew that fell on the ground. This transition from the oceanic nature of Aphrodite to the earthly nature of Psyche speaks of a certain progress in the development of femininity from ancient oceanic traits to new human forms. So we move on. from oceanic proportions to a smaller, more comprehensible scale.

Psyche is such a magical and unearthly creature, she is so innocent and virginal that she can only be worshiped, but cannot be judged. She is doomed to constant loneliness and cannot find a husband.

Psyche exists within every woman as an incomparable experience of living alone. Any woman is, to some extent, a princess worthy of love, with unique perfections that are unique to her alone and a spiritual depth that is too great for ordinary everyday life. If a woman alone finds herself misunderstood by no one and believes that people are kind but far from her, it means that she has felt Psyche within herself. As a rule, this is a very painful sensation that a woman often experiences without understanding its nature. To fall into this state means to remain unaffected emotionally in relationships with others.

If a woman gives the opportunity for the Psyche nature to manifest itself in everyday relationships like “you - to me, I - to you,” nothing good will come of it. When the essence of Psyche fills a large part of a woman’s inner world, it becomes a serious and painful problem for her. She will shed tears, wailing: “Nobody understands me.” And indeed it is. Every woman at any stage of life has this trait within her. If you see this quality in a woman and can touch it, the incomparable beauty and divine charm of Psyche can reach consciousness, and then a beneficial evolution will begin.

If the woman is physically attractive, the problem is more complex. In this regard, a very typical example is the personality of Marilyn Monroe: despite universal worship, it was unimaginably difficult for her to find true intimacy in relationships with anyone. Eventually life became unbearable for her. It turned out that for such a woman, possessing divine traits and almost unattainable perfection, there are no simple human relationships in the world. If you understand this dynamic, you can imagine the evolution of Psyche.

Marriage of Psyche

In Ancient Greece, the predictions of oracles were not questioned, being considered an indisputable truth. Therefore, Psyche’s parents, fulfilling their sacred will, equipped a wedding cortege, which looked more like a funeral procession, seated Psyche there and brought her high into the mountains to a lonely rock. Here, in a stream of tears, the whiteness of wedding decoration and the gloom of funeral mourning were mixed. Then the parents extinguished the torches and left Psyche alone in the dark.

What can we learn from this? Psyche married - but to death. In fact, every girl seems to die on the day of her wedding, because a certain stage of her life has ended. Many of the traits that characterize the feminine essence that existed until now die in her. In this sense, marriage for her is a funeral. Many characteristic details of marriage ceremonies have been introduced since ancient times from funeral rites. The groom comes with his best friend and cronies to kidnap the bride while the bridesmaids guard her virginity. As required by the ritual, a struggle arises between them, and the bride cries as if part of her life had died away. A new life begins for her, and the wedding celebration marks the emergence of a new matriarchal power.

We do not fully appreciate the dual aspect of marriage and tend to see it only as festive white and pleasure. If the dying away of a part of the past life is not reflected in the corresponding rituals, it will still later manifest itself in an emotional mood and in a less acceptable form. For example, some women may feel very resentful and disgusted with the marriage after months or even years.

In photographs taken at a wedding ceremony in Turkey, I saw boys of eight or nine years old, each jumping on one leg, with the other leg bent at the knee and tied to the thigh. This ritual was supposed to remind us that in marriage there is not only pleasure, but also pain.

African weddings are not considered complete until the bride and groom have a certain number of scars and wounds. A marriage is not considered genuine unless there has been abduction. Marriage can be enjoyed after all the sacred ritual elements have been given their due. Aphrodite doesn't like it when girls die in the hands of men. She cannot allow a man to take her to the grave. Therefore, at the moment of the end of girlhood, Aphrodite cries in every woman. She continues to play her paradoxical role, on the one hand longing for marriage, and on the other resisting and mourning the loss of her girlhood. This echo of ancient rituals still lies deep within us and is most clearly manifested in the organization of rituals and ceremonies.

Here we are again faced with the paradox of evolution. It was Aphrodite who sentenced Psyche to death, but she also acted as a matchmaker, a harbinger of marriage and at the same time its opponent. The progressive evolutionary process towards marriage is accompanied by regressive spurts of passionate desire to gain autonomy and freedom and restore the status quo.

I once saw a very witty cartoon that reflected the archetypal power of marriage. It depicted the attitude of each of the parents to what was happening during the wedding. The newlywed's father was angry with the impudent man who dared to take his own daughter away from him. The husband's father experienced triumph, having become the owner of supreme power in male society. The newlywed's mother was horrified that the animal had taken possession of her child. The husband's mother was angry with the vixen who seduced and stole her son. This cartoon reflects many ancient archetypes, built-in and ingrained types of behavior and thinking in the human psyche, lying in the deep layers of the unconscious over countless years of the evolutionary process. If we do not pay attention to them in due time, they will make themselves known later and cause a lot of trouble.
Aphrodite intended to finally get rid of Psyche and for this she decided to use the help of her son, the god of love Eros. Eros, Cupid, Cupid are different names of one god - the god of love. Since Cupid has degraded to the level of playful love cards, and Cupid has to some extent lost his greatness, let us call this noble god Eros. Eros always had a full quiver of arrows with him, and a meeting with him promised trouble for every inhabitant of Olympus. All gods and goddesses felt the power. But Eros was under the thumb of his own mother, who forced him to inflame Psyche with love for the most disgusting beast in order to firmly bind her to him and thereby end the constant rivalry. One of the characteristic features of Aphrodite is constant regression. She wants everything to go back to the way it was before, for evolution to reverse. Aphrodite is the voice of tradition, but ironically it is she who helps further develop the plot of our story.

Marriage with death

Without an exact analogue in his own life, a man rarely understands that marriage for a woman is both death and resurrection. A wedding is not a sacred ceremony for a man, but for a woman it is very much so. One day the wife may look at her husband with eyes filled with horror, discovering that she is completely bound by the marriage, while he is not in the least degree. This connection is felt especially strongly if there are children. A woman can be offended by fate as much as she wants, but for her not to follow this path is worse than death.

There are fifty-year-old women who, despite the fact that they are already grandmothers, have never been to the Rock of Death. The fallen earth's dew does not obscure the whole world for them, even in middle age. On the other hand, there are young sixteen-year-old girls who have known this experience, gone through it and survived it. They can be recognized by the look of amazing wisdom hidden in the depths.

Such events do not occur automatically at any particular age. I knew a sixteen year old girl who had a child. She hid her pregnancy and childbirth so that everything would be quiet and calm, and then she gave the child to an orphanage, and it turned out that she practically did not see him. Returning to her old life as if nothing had happened, she learned nothing from the Rock of Death. Some time later she got married, and if anyone could be called a virgin, she would be the first contender. Psychologically, she was completely unaffected, despite the fact that she went through childbirth.

A collision with Eros inevitably leads to a farewell to female naivety and childish innocence, and it can occur at different moments in a woman’s life, and not just at the time of marriage. Many girls experienced this encounter very early, their experience was very cruel; others may not have known him at all.

Garden of Eden

Almost every man wants the same from his wife. If she minds her own business and does not try to understand too much, peace and tranquility reigns in the house. A man wants an old patriarchal marriage, where he decides all the most important issues, and the woman can only agree with his decisions, and then everything will be all right. Most men cherish the hope that everything will happen exactly like this and that someday, very soon, married life will be exactly like this.

Probably, this attitude towards marriage is an echo of the primitive patriarchal mentality, where the woman completely belonged to the man. In our modern traditions, traces of patriarchal customs are still preserved in some ways: for example, when a wife takes her husband’s surname. Eros insists that she not ask any questions and never look at him - these are the conditions of a patriarchal marriage.

Every immature Eros is the creator of paradise. Like a teenager, he kidnaps a girl and promises her a life full of happiness. This is the main secret of Eros: he wants to find his paradise, but without the slightest responsibility and serious conscious attitude. To one degree or another, this is inherent in every man. Femininity is necessary for evolution and personal growth, and maximum emphasis in myths is placed on the elements of femininity. For a man it is a terrible ordeal. He just wants to stay in heaven.

Listen to lovers creating a paradise for themselves. And the whole conversation, and each word separately, seemed to come from another, heavenly world. The paradise they create may be a harbinger of a true paradise which, with great effort, can be achieved much later. One should not be too critical of this premature Eden, but every experienced person knows that the first impression of it cannot be long-lasting and stable.

There is something in a man’s unconscious that feeds him with the hope of getting his wife’s consent not to ask him anything. Often his attitude towards marriage is that for him marriage should be convenient, but not burdensome. If a man is focused on something, he wants to be free and forget about being married. When a woman suddenly discovers this attitude in a man, she may be shocked. Marriage is a complete commitment for a woman, and for a man there is no hopelessness in it. I remember one woman saying that she cried for days after discovering that marriage was just one of many aspects of life for her husband, while for her he played the main role. So she from the wing of Eros, who is building paradise, in her husband.

Losing paradise

Every paradise has a flaw. Each one contains a snake, representing the complete opposite of the peace and tranquility that reigns in the Garden of Eden.

And in the paradise where Psyche lived, a snake soon appeared in the guise of her two older sisters, who mourned, although we very sincerely, the loss of the youngest. When they learned that Psyche, having married God, lived in the Garden of Eden, their jealousy knew no bounds. Approaching the foot of the cliff where they left Psyche, they began to call her, worrying about her health and wishing her all the best.

The naive Psyche informed Eros about this. Her husband repeatedly warned her about the impending danger. He said that if she listened to the sisters chasing her, disaster would happen. If Psyche continues to not ask him anything, she will have a child who will be an immortal god, but if she breaks her oath and asks a question, then a girl will be born who will be a mere mortal. Even worse, at the very first question, Eros will leave her. Then Psyche again agreed not to ask her husband anything. But the sisters called her again and again, and finally Psyche begged her husband for permission to let them visit her. A little time passed, and the sisters, brought from a high cliff by the West Wind, safe and sound, found themselves in the magnificent Garden of Eden. They admired and enjoyed as much as they could. But they were filled with envy and jealousy for their younger sister. They bombarded her with questions about her husband, and the naive Psyche tried to describe how she imagined him, for she had never seen him. She gave the sisters a pile of unusual and rare gifts and sent them home.

Eros constantly warned Psyche, but the sisters soon reappeared. This time Psyche, forgetting everything she had previously said about her husband, told them another fantasy. Upon returning home, the sisters thought for a long time and came up with a cunning and insidious plan, which consisted of this: when they came to visit their sister for the third time, they would tell her that in reality her husband was a terrible, disgusting snake. As soon as A a child will be born, the husband will devour him along with his mother.

But they want to save Psyche from such a terrible end. To stay alive, she must do the following: take a lamp, place it in a vessel, cover it with a blanket and place it in the bedroom. In addition, she should sharpen the knife and hide it near the bed. In the dead of night, when her husband is fast asleep, she will light a lamp, finally see her terrible husband and cut off his head. Psyche could not resist the pressure of her sisters for long and, heeding their advice, began to prepare to expose her terrible husband.

Eros returned home after dark, lay down on the bed next to Psyche and fell asleep. At midnight she took the cover off the lamp, grabbed a knife, rose above her husband and looked at him for the first time. To the greatest surprise and embarrassment, filled with guilt, she saw before her the god of love, the most beautiful of all existing on Olympus. Amazed and shocked by what she saw, Psyche decided to kill herself, paying for her terrible mistake. She was already ready to do this, but awkwardly took the knife and dropped it. At the same time, she accidentally pricked herself with one of the arrows of Eros and fell madly in love with her husband, whom she saw for the first time in her life.

Suddenly her hand holding the lamp trembled, and a drop of hot oil fell on Eros’s right shoulder. . Waking up from severe pain, he realized what had happened, immediately spread his wings and flew away. Poor Psyche clung to him, but her strength was only enough to be carried away outside the Garden of Eden. Abandoned, she fell to the ground and lay grief-stricken, completely alone. Eros flew up to her with a reproach that she did not listen to him and, having broken her word, lost the Garden of Eden. And he added that it would be as he had warned: she would have a child, a girl, a mere mortal. And now he must punish Psyche for disobedience and leave her. Having said this, he flew away to his mother Aphrodite.

Contemporary drama

Sisters are irritated voices heard inside us, and often from the outside, which have a dual function: the destruction of the previous attitude towards life and the awareness of a new one. During morning coffee, a scene often plays out where two sisters are plotting their evil plan. They often fulfill their dual mission of challenging the old patriarchal world and inciting each other to realize what is happening, the cost of which may be much higher than they imagine. We are probably paying a Promethean price to fully realize what we so passionately desire.

Interrogating sisters are a scary sight. Despite the fact that they are harbingers of awareness, there is still a danger for every woman to linger and freeze at this stage of development, remaining destructive throughout her subsequent life. You may see men as the source of your troubles, remaining on the rock of Death; in the same way, you can find yourself in the state of two older sisters and destroy everything that a man tries to create.

As a rule, a woman goes through a very unusual and perplexing sequence of relationships with her partner. A man for her can be the god of love, and Death on the top of a rock, and someone unknown in paradise, and a very receptive person with her persistent desire to understand something. And finally, when she comes to her own divinity on the summit of Olympus, he appears before her as the god of love. All this confuses a man. It should not be surprising that every day, when he comes home, he timidly looks around, trying to understand exactly what role is assigned to him today. Now add in the inclusion of his own anima and you have a very complex but entertaining plot.

The sisters personify the requirement of evolution, the source of which is unknown to us. This may be the shadow of Psyche. Jung described the shadow sides of personality as repressed elements or as yet unrealized possibilities of full personal potential. Due to lack of attention and obstacles to development, these unlived and repressed traits remain archaic or, going into the shadows, become dangerous. Despite the repression, this hidden potential for good or evil remains in the unconscious, where it accumulates energy until it finds release into consciousness, just as her sisters appeared at a critical moment in Psyche’s life.

If we look into ourselves, recognizing only the presence of love and generosity, as happened with Psyche, we will underestimate the existing shadow side. This will lead to the fact that we will be forced to leave the naive paradise in which it was so comfortable, and we will go in search of new discoveries of our true essence.

Jung said that the desire for personal growth often arises in the mind from the shadows. Therefore, the same sisters, playing a less rather than more pleasant and completely unsightly role in Psyche’s life, still conscientiously serve her 3.
Eros worked hard to keep Psyche in the dark. He promised her a heavenly life on the condition that she would not look at him or ask anything. This is how he hoped to maintain power over her.

Often a woman is under the power of a man for part of her life, but if she manages to get rid of this power, she inevitably becomes dependent on the animus, her inner masculinity. A woman's life path is a continuous struggle and evolution in relation to the male way of life, regardless of whether she finds it externally or internally, as her own animus. Exactly the same parallel exists in the life of a man when he tries to discover and comprehend his attitude towards the female way of life, regardless of whether he finds it in a relationship with a real-life woman or in the process of a heroic struggle taking place around the anima, his inner femininity.

Despite the endless variety of options that create a unique individuality of life, the search for a common language with the masculine element is to a certain extent predictable. For the first time, a young woman comes into contact with the masculinity of her father, then with the masculinity that absorbs her during the mating season, after that with Eros, which promises paradise if she does not ask questions. Later she finds in Eros the god of love, who he actually is. A lot of psychic energy is spent within and outside of this drama.

Probably, the biography of each woman contains reverent chapters describing her falling in love, the discovery and loss of the Garden of Eden, and in her quest for rapprochement with God - the rediscovery of the Garden of Eden in a state of maturity, which is no less beautiful than the first.

Facilities

The shadow compels the woman to explore the Garden of Eden and gives her exquisite and powerful means to do this. This is, first of all, a lamp hidden for the time being, symbolizing a woman’s ability to see the real essence of what is happening. In other words, this is her ability to realize. Light is always a symbol of consciousness, characterized by particular clarity and sharpness; in our case, its symbol is a lamp. Fuel extracted from the earth, or oil obtained from fruits, burning in a lamp, turns into a warm, soft and gentle light. This is not the harsh light of high-intensity sunlight, but the gentle feminine warmth of natural light. One of its names is the Light of Life.

Another tool is a very sharp knife. It should be noted that Psyche uses only one of the means available to her. It seems to me that this part of the myth contains very wise advice. A woman who carefully and gently sheds light in difficult situations can work wonders; a woman holding a knife is capable of killing. So what will follow: transformation or murder? This is a critical moment of choice, a moment of truth, especially for the modern woman. If the knife is used first, it will cause a lot of damage. If the lamp is used first, then there is a chance for awareness and inner growth. By handling her instruments carefully, a woman can make a miraculous discovery and discover the god of love, Eros, in his true form. And then she will be pleased with the fact that her light gives birth to a miracle. While lusting after a woman, a man often feels the need to receive light from her in order to discover his true nature and divinity. Every woman holds in her hands this elusive and at the same time powerful power.

What is a lamp and what does it help to detect? At best, a man knows what he is and understands that somewhere within him lies divine greatness and power. But at the moment when a woman lights the lamp, he feels the call of life, feels the call to realize his masculine strength and manifest it. Naturally he is shaking! In addition, he expects confirmation from the woman of his worth. A man who has been defeated and discovered his inadequacy in the manholes of a real or inner woman can find himself in a terrible state, since usually it is the presence of a woman that reminds a man of the best that is in him.

During the Second World War, several men's groups isolated from each other formed in the Aleutian Islands. Due to unexpected transport problems, they were deprived of rest and peace. In addition, they were not able to have fun and receive guests. More than half of the men suffered nervous breakdowns. They stopped shaving, let their hair grow longer, and stopped doing everything necessary to maintain a neat appearance. This happened because there was no woman nearby, Psyche, looking at Eros to remind him of his strength and wealth.

A discouraged man may need some sign of attention, or sometimes just a woman’s gaze, to gain a sense of his own worth. This probably reveals one of the most subtle points in male psychology. Most men get a deep sense of their masculine worth from a woman, wife or mother, or, if they are highly reflective, from their anima. By lighting a lamp, a woman sees for herself and shows a man its value.

Once I was present during a family scandal when a woman energetically grabbed a knife. Her husband had a whole list of offenses, and on this list the accusation that he came home late from work was far from the first. He was indignant, “Don’t you understand that I’m stuck at this damn job to earn more money and provide for my family?” The woman sat down. She heard something. The lamp took the place of the knife. He continued, "I wouldn't go to work if it weren't for you. I hate my job and I only go there for you and the kids." Thus, suddenly a new side to their family relationship opened up. The woman raised the lamp and looked at what was happening. And she liked what she saw.

A man is very dependent on a woman to illuminate family life, because he himself does not have the ability to reveal its meaning. Life for him is often dry and boring until someone brings a certain taste to it. Just a few words spoken by a woman can add meaning to a whole day of hard work and make a man feel grateful. A man knows and wants this, he strives for it with all his might, giving the woman the opportunity to shed at least a little light. When he comes home and talks about what happened that day, he is actually asking the woman to give meaning to his activities. The main calling of a woman is to keep the light.

Touching the light or consciousness is a serious and cruel test; often the realization becomes very painful for a man - maybe that’s why he is so wary of women. The main reason for a man's "rooster" behavior is futile efforts to hide his fear of a woman. Most often, a woman’s task is to lead a man to a gradual awareness of the existing relationship. Almost always it is she who utters this or a similar phrase: “Let’s sit down and talk about what’s happening between us.” In most cases, it is the woman who stimulates personal growth and the development of relationships. A man is afraid of everything, but he is even more afraid of losing it.

We can understand the function or symbolism of the oil in Psyche's lamp in two ways. We can talk about oil that reduces friction, that is, about a product that softens and eases a tense and confusing situation; it is possible - about falling into a cauldron with boiling oil. In the vague male perception of femininity, these two different meanings are not always clearly distinguished from each other.

One day I was sitting in the company of an old Jewish patriarch and talking to him about how life had disappeared from his house. The children grew up and left home, he himself retired from active work long ago, and darkness and emptiness had long settled in his empty home. I felt something was wrong and asked him if there were any rituals in his house. “There are no rituals,” he replied, “many years ago we stopped observing them. They have no meaning.” I advised him to ask his wife to light the Shabbat candles on the following Friday evening 4 . "Nonsense!" - he exclaimed. But I insisted and was very surprised by what he told me the next week when we met again. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, “but when I asked my wife to light the Shabbat candles, she began to cry and did what I asked. Since then, the house has been transformed for us and has become completely different!” And this is what happened. Firstly, an ancient ritual was restored in the house, and secondly, a woman regained her ancient right to create soft light that warms, animates and brings meaning. Few women understand how strong a man’s desire is to feel femininity next to him. However, this should not burden a woman, and she should not put this circumstance at the forefront, remaining internally lonely. As soon as a man discovers his inner femininity, he stops demanding from the woman nearby that she live only for his sake. But if a woman strives to give a man the most precious gift, if she really wants to satisfy a man's greatest hunger (a hunger that a man rarely demonstrates, but which constantly exists), she will be very feminine at the very moment when a man passionately desires this precious quality. The real truth is that by receiving the feeling of femininity from a woman at the moment when he needs it most, a man can again shoulder his burden and carry it without feeling tired.
Aphrodite solved the problem of the evolution of consciousness in a very unusual way! What was previously considered a chain of missteps and mistakes has turned into an amazing path of internal development. Cunning and insincere at heart, Aphrodite, in a fit of jealousy, did everything to force Psyche to become engaged to Death, a monster living high in the mountains. She sent her son, the god of love Eros, to arrange the wedding, but he accidentally pricked himself with one of his arrows and fell madly in love with Psyche. After this, at a critical moment of revelation, Psyche herself was injured by the love arrow of Eros and fell in love with the god of love!

What is the state of “falling in love” if the lover becomes so strong as to work miracles, not paying attention to the will of fate. Before you try to solve this mystery, you should note that love and being in love are two different concepts that should not be confused.

To love means to go through from beginning to end the entire experience of connecting one human existence with another. This means seeing a loved one as a real person and appreciating him for his ordinariness, flaws, originality and significance of the human person himself. If we can ever break through the fog of projection in which we spend most of our lives, we will begin to perceive the ordinary as exceptional. The whole problem is that we are blinded by our own projections; We rarely see another person as he is, appreciating his depth and nobility. Such love lasts a long time and exists along with the ordinariness of everyday life (“ordinariness”) in English - a derivative of the words “orderliness”). A certain meaning of such love is contained in the saying: “Everything is ground - there will be flour.” Love manifests itself in every event of everyday life; it does not need a superhuman scale 5. A person works, communicates, makes mistakes, escapes and lives, caught up in the daily flow of events.

If a person is in love, it is as if he is in contact with a superhuman level of existence. He is carried away from the bustle of everyday life into the divine expanse, where there is no longer room for human values. It’s as if we are captured by a whirlwind coming from nowhere and thrown into a completely different world, where human values have no value. If love is 110 volts of mains voltage, then falling in love is 100,000 volts of superhuman energy, which cannot be constantly present at home. Falling in love is the destiny of gods and goddesses; it exists outside of time and space.

It has already been said that Psyche was the first mortal who managed to see the god of love in all his charm and remain alive to tell about it. This is the core of our story - a mortal girl falls in love with God and, without losing faith in love, remains true to her human nature. The sublime end of this story is a direct consequence of the fact that Psyche remained true to herself and her love 6.

Let's do a thought experiment: imagine that there is no one left on earth except you and one other person. Examine your relationship with this person throughout the day and notice how valuable he is to you. Very little time will pass, and this person becomes the embodiment of a miracle for you. This concentration of attention on one object, which has an unearthly origin, is characteristic of the state of falling in love. Every person can find themselves in this state, but only by chance, sometimes for a short time. It is not at all like love, where “everything will change,” which lasts a long time and exists in the home.” (If someone twenty years ago had told me that I would bring together love and a long term, I would have been shocked and, most likely very angry. But middle age brings small nuggets of wisdom).

It so happened that both Eros and Psyche were pricked with a magic arrow and found themselves in the world of lovers. A miracle occurred, which inevitably led to suffering. Psyche got rid of her marriage with Death, Eros revealed his divine appearance. Psyche is expelled from paradise; the suffering Eros flew away to his mother. Falling in love deprives people of ordinary human peace, but gives them enormous energy necessary for personal development.

Previously, the experience of contact with the divine principle primarily had a religious context; Now, having individual experience of deep experiences, we have gone far from these ideas. Nowadays, for ordinary people, romantic love is practically the only opportunity to come into contact with the divine. Falling in love is an exceptional opportunity to look at a person and see the divine essence behind him. It is not surprising that when we fall in love, we turn blind. We are close to a real person, but we turn our attention to something greater and more sublime than ordinary human existence. From a psychological point of view, this means that certain layers of our psyche that were formed even before this myth are affected. If you come into contact with the content of the archetype, you can simply be destroyed. The myth tells us that it may happen that a mere mortal can be affected by an archetype. He can survive this impact only by radically changing. Mortals come into contact with unearthly reality and continue to live talking about what they managed to survive. In this context, one can understand what it means to be wounded by an arrow from the god of love. Every person could experience this amazing impact, which led to profound changes in the psyche. Falling in love is an incredibly powerful life experience that can only be compared to an explosion.

Asians have no idea about falling in love. They enter into relationships calmly, gradually, without drama, untouched by the arrows of Eros. Marriages are always prepared in advance. According to tradition, the groom does not see his bride until the end of the marriage ceremony, until she takes off the flowers and garlands decorating her outfit. After this, following the script carefully laid out for the newlyweds, the groom leads the bride into the house. He conserves the energy that we expend during the period of love until he enters the bridal chamber, where the gods and goddesses will give him great strength.

Our story is about a woman who came into contact with something greater than ordinary human experience. The rest of the myth tells how Psyche experienced this divine touch.
The revelation of his divine essence led Eros to unbearable suffering. The end of heavenly life has come, for his true essence has been revealed - not the divine groom at a disastrous wedding or the creator of heavenly pleasures, but the living embodiment of love. This disclosure turned out to be very sensitive for him and no less painful than the glory of a deceiver and boaster who did less than he promised. How strange that our best abilities can cause so much pain! It is unlikely that everything can be foreseen in advance, but, nevertheless, this is exactly what happens in many life situations. My teacher told me an incident quite suitable to illustrate what was said above. A very excited young man came for a consultation after six months of analysis. "Tony, this is all terrible!" - "What happened? Bad news?" - Tony asked, no less excited. - “But what happened, finally tell me!” - “Tony, my neurosis has disappeared, I don’t know how to live further!” The meaning of this example is absolutely clear. Losing the old way of adapting to reality is bad news for a person, even if he can adapt much better in a new way. Both Eros and Psyche were deeply wounded at the onset of the next stage of the evolutionary process, although for each of them the wound turned out to be beneficial and useful.

Ironically, it is at the very moment when falling in love comes that you must recognize the individuality and uniqueness of the other person’s personality and, as a consequence of this, his need for his own personal space and some distance. Having moved away from each other, you immediately begin to realize the presence of this distance, to feel disunity and complications in the relationship. As a rule, a person (man or woman) develops a terrible feeling of blind submission as soon as he imagines a god or goddess in his partner. Following this comes isolation and loneliness.

Eros fulfilled his promise: Psyche had a child. Of course, it was a girl, not a boy, and not a goddess, but a mere mortal. And Eros left Psyche. This happens in real life: the pleasures of heaven are replaced by the mundane and earthly.

When such events happen in reality, very often early marriage turns into a sad drama. As soon as a woman discovers that a man is not the creator and creator of paradise, as she assumed, as soon as she reveals the tricks and secret of his “invisibility,” both spouses experience a strong shock. It carries within itself a huge potential for expanding consciousness, but it manifests itself in painful experiences. Both man and woman leave the Garden of Eden and find a solid footing in human life and the human dimension. And it’s very great that everything happens exactly this way, because people do more good by performing human actions than by divine actions. However, the price for this is human suffering.

So, Eros flew away to his mother, Aphrodite, and from now on will occupy very little place in our history. Poor Psyche will now continue her journey alone, although she has many more helpers than she thinks. Even the great devouring mother-in-law, Aphrodite, continues to take care of her throughout the winding and tangled path. At this time, a man can break the marriage ties and return to his parents' home. Or, without doing this physically, he may plunge into continuous silence, move to a superficial level of communication and not engage emotionally. This means that he has returned to his mother's house - if not to his real mother, then to his mother complex. At this time, Aphrodite takes control of the woman’s consciousness.

Considering Eros as an animus - the male part of the female psyche - we can remember that it was Eros who made it so that in paradise Psyche was in the unconscious power of the animus until she lit the lamp. When this happened and the full identity of Eros with the animus was revealed, he flew back to his inner world to which he belonged.

Animus

Jung noted that anima and animus are most powerful as mediators between the conscious and unconscious parts of the psyche. Returning to the world of Aphrodite, Eros began to help Psyche establish relationships with Aphrodite, Zeus and other gods and goddesses of the inner archetypal world. As we will see later, Eros will support Psyche at critical moments of its development, attracting all kinds of natural forces and creatures to its aid: reeds, ants and an eagle.

If a woman has already passed through adolescence in her development, she must get rid of the power of the dominant, secondary and largely unconscious male component, which often determines her attitude towards the outside world. The woman's development can continue if the animus, recognized as such, takes a position between the conscious ego and the unconscious inner world and mediates between them, helping wherever it can. Subsequently, he will help open the true spiritual world for her. A woman under the power of the animus, completely unaware of this, establishes relationships with the outside world through its mediation. She firmly believes that her behavior is determined not only by the animus, but by the conscious choice of the ego. But in fact, with rare exceptions, the ego is largely withdrawn from this function, and the leading role passes to the animus. Lighting the lamp of consciousness, a woman sees an absolutely correct picture: the animus, which is separate from her ego. Like Psyche, a woman is usually overwhelmed with feelings. The animus seems to her to be very powerful and god-like in comparison with her weak and helpless consciousness. At this moment she has a feeling of strong despair and danger threatening her. Then comes the shocking moment of the first awareness of her animus, and the woman is overwhelmed by a feeling of her own inadequacy, no less dangerous than an exaggerated sense of the greatness of superiority. Having discovered something like God within herself, she may find herself at the height of bliss. In this case, the woman is threatened with “falling in love with love itself.”

If you can comprehend and smooth out this development, constantly being in a dynamic balance between extremes in relation to a man as a man as death and a man as god, paradise and exile, delight and despair, then you have already begun to solve a truly human task - the development of consciousness . I ask you to believe this promise of mine: if you are ready to accept a man in his real appearance, you will not need anything other than a lamp. You will be able to recognize a god in a man - not the kind you wanted to see in heaven - but in a more significant, Olympian sense. Nothing more important comes to my mind that would make sense to promise.

This event in the life of Psyche is somewhat reminiscent of the moment in the life of Parsifal, when he first found the Grail castle 7. Parsifal saw a wonderful and incomprehensible world for him, but did not stay in it. In the same way, Psyche lost Eros almost immediately, barely revealing his true unearthly essence.

Heartbroken, Psyche decided to drown herself. Faced with great difficulties in life, she wanted to commit suicide. Isn't this desire evidence of a desire for self-sacrifice, when you have to give up one level of awareness and move to another? Almost always in human society, the desire to commit suicide has meant an extreme manifestation of the hoi level of consciousness. If you managed to kill in yourself the correct attitude towards life, that is, the old way of adaptation, and at the same time remain unharmed, then a new era of energetic activity begins. Before a woman comes into contact with archetypal content, she is often on the verge of destruction. It is at the moment of death that she quickly restores the connection with the archetype and recreates the inner world. This leads to the formation of very valuable and useful structures at deep levels of the psyche. This process occurs differently in a woman than in a man. While a man must go in search of exploits and adventures, killing hordes of dragons and freeing beautiful ladies, a woman retires to a quiet, calm place and remains there in solitude. One paradox gives rise to another; It dawns on her that while she was married, she embraced death, but it was the death of her old life.

A man can be incredibly amazed to discover how much better a woman is able to manage her feelings and control her inner world than most men. She can reach the most intimate corners in her depths, where the restoration of internal balance is located. Most men cannot control their feelings and master their inner world. Many women are only guessing about the existence of these differences, being very sensitive to the fact that men are not sensitive enough.

Falling in love can often tear you apart while at the same time allowing you to be creative. If you remain strong and courageous, the feeling of rupture will gradually lead to the realization of our uniqueness and significance. Of course, this is a difficult path, but for people of a certain temperament there is no other path. It is very likely that for a person of Western culture this is the only opportunity to reconnect with the energy of the archetypes called gods or goddesses.

The best way to resolve the dilemma is to try to remain calm, which is what Psyche ultimately did. Having experienced the desire to commit suicide, she calmed down. If you have been overcome by madness for some time or have been knocked out of your usual rut in life, the best way to come to your senses is to simply try to remain calm. In the Christian Eucharistic liturgy you can hear the following words: “we offer You a sacrifice and we ourselves present ourselves before You... as a living sacrifice.”

A woman's ability to remain calm deep inside is perhaps the most powerful behavior a person is capable of. As soon as a woman is affected by some deep processes, she needs to return to her calm inner center. This is a highly creative act, but it must be done correctly. A woman should be receptive, but not passive.

It is possible to turn infatuation into love. An example would be a successful marriage. Marriages in the West begin with falling in love, which, if everything goes well, turns into love. This is the main theme of our story. It began with a collision of the earthly and divine principles, two levels of existence of human and superhuman nature. Both sides must learn the very painful lesson that the superhuman cannot survive on the human level.

I remember a cartoon by James Thurber of a middle-aged married couple arguing. The husband asks his wife, looking at her point-blank: “So answer me straight, which of us ruined all the magic that once was in our marriage?”

How should we act when we come into contact with a god or goddess? In most cases in our culture this question remains unanswered. Most often, people suffer and suffer the withering of the divine form of their loved one, entering the banal everyday life of middle age, and from then on are completely convinced that their former admiration for the divine essence of their loved one was absolute stupidity. The continuation of our story is connected with a description of the woman’s depressive state, complete with torment and soul-searching, in which she found herself at the time when her love came to an end.

Psyche alone

To come into contact with the divine essence means to become open to the penetration of divine consciousness (divine - in the Greek Olympian sense). Once you take this road, you will never return to the simple, serene life where the unconscious leads. If a Western person fell in love, he made an unambiguous choice from all the possibilities outlined by the gods, choosing the path of evolution that must be followed, constantly having one single goal in front of him - awareness. The task that faces a woman is to turn the pain and suffering of tragic love into real waxing of opportunities for personal growth.

Psyche went to the river to drown herself, guided perhaps by false superficial motives, but following the right instinct.

The lame god Pan sat on the river bank and held the nymph Echo on his lap. Seeing that Psyche was about to throw herself into the water, he stopped her.

But why Pan? Pan is a narrow-minded, disobedient, half-crazy god, highly revered by the ancients, whose appearance makes us bitter and melancholy. The word "panic" comes from the name of the god Pan. The meeting with Pan saved Psyche. By meeting Pan at the right moment, that is, by leaving the normal state for an affective one and directing the excess energy of emotions in the right direction, you can derive certain benefits for yourself. Not reaching the level of strong emotions, for example, committing suicide means going down the wrong path.

If a woman cries, she is under the influence of Pan. Despite the humiliation he experiences (the word "humiliation" means "to be down on the ground"), dissolving in tears can lead her to something incomparably higher than herself. He comes to this point of evolution, being in the complete power of Aphrodite, who will help her take the next step without making a mistake.

Pan told Psyche that she should pray to the god of love, who listens to those who are inflamed by love, having been injured by his arrows. It is a delicious irony: you must ask for mercy from the very god who wounded you.

The god of love, Eros, is also the god of human relationships. The essence of femininity - whether it is contained in a woman or a man - consists of loyalty to Eros, that is, to relationships between people. To follow a path that allows you to maintain a relationship with the anima and animus, you must be sensitive to your inner life.

To find Eros, Psyche had to meet with Aphrodite, for now Eros was completely in her power. Everything in Psyche protested against this meeting, so she visited the temples of many goddesses, with the exception of the temple of Aphrodite. But all the other gods and goddesses, not wanting to irritate Aphrodite, one after another rejected Psyche. Everyone knew the power of the rage of the goddess of love, so no one wanted to risk it!

Here we can find a very interesting parallel between Psyche and Parsifal. Psyche goes from one temple to another until she finally comes to the temple of Aphrodite she needs. Parsifal dresses in red armor and fights heroically, defeating the dragons. One should keep in mind and remember this dynamic of masculinity and femininity, which exists in both men and women. Both man and woman have both masculine and feminine traits and must choose the necessary means to pass the test that fate confronts them with.

Finally, Psyche reached the temple of Aphrodite. Almost always, a wounded person sooner or later finds the healing remedy he needs.

Aphrodite, of course, could not resist her caustic, tyrannical speech, reducing Psyche to the position of a scullery maid, below which there was simply no existence. A woman often has to endure the temporary power of Aphrodite when she feels extreme humiliation. Finally, Aphrodite gave Psyche four tasks, by completing which Psyche could atone for her guilt.
The tasks that Aphrodite set for poor Psyche carry deep psychological content that is not often found in literature. Usually, our practical belt mind immediately asks: “Thank you very much for all this theory, but what should I do with it?” In this part of the myth, the picture of the development of female identity is clearly revealed, more clearly than anywhere else. The fact that this plot has been preserved since time immemorial in the history of our psyche does not in any way violate its correspondence to modern life, but, on the contrary, testifies to its universality and immortality. There are a huge number of descriptions of the development of male identity, but this theory is one of the few “feminine” ones that we have inherited. After Psyche had endured all of Aphrodite's poisonous ridicule, she received from her a task of such difficulty that it made her tremble. So why go to Aphrodite for him? Unfortunately, there is nowhere else to go. There is no other way out. Psychological events appear in their totality: naivety, problem, expectation and solution are carefully assembled into a single whole.

First task

Aphrodite showed Psyche the seeds of different plants mixed into one huge pile and told her to sort them before nightfall. If Psyche does not complete this task in time, she will die. Having declared without listening to any objections, Aphrodite went to celebrate another wedding. The task was clearly beyond Psyche's strength. She began to cry and again decided to commit suicide.

Suddenly a whole horde of ants came to her aid. They sorted all the seeds very quickly and skillfully, and by nightfall all the work was done. Upon returning, Aphrodite was unpleasantly surprised by how well the useless Psyche did the job.

What wonderful symbolism is contained in a pile of unsorted seeds! A woman often encounters something similar in household practice or in professional activities: she needs to simultaneously master the art of keeping in shape and doing the necessary work. Here, probably, a variety of things can come to mind: a cry from the corner of the room: “Mom, did you see where my sock went?”, or a list of products that should be bought in the store, or a title that needs to be thought up for a new article - this examples of sorting that requires getting things done and staying in shape at the same time. Without this division, the simple task of maintaining shape would be meaningless.

At the moment of physical intimacy, the man gives the woman a large number of seeds. She must choose one of them and perform the miracle of birth. Aphrodite's nature gives her so much! A woman, who initially has the ability to choose, must choose one single seed and make it fruitful.

Most cultures try to eliminate this contradiction between choice and obligation, characteristic of customs and laws. They somehow prescribe to the woman what she should do, relieving her of the need to choose. On Monday she has to wash, on Tuesday she has to iron, etc. But we are free people, we do not need such regulations. A woman must understand how to make distinctions and be able to choose creatively. But in order to master this art, she needs to discover within herself the ant essence, a primitive, chthonic, earthly quality that will help her. Ant essence contains no intellectual basis and does not give us rules to follow. She represents a primitive, instinctive and calm trait that is accessible to every woman.

In the art of choosing, every woman has her own skill. To solve problems, she uses an approach somewhat reminiscent of a geometric one: the nearest task or the task most closely related to the first feeling that arises is performed first. In this simple earthly way, the dead end of excess choice is overcome.

It is very easy to discern another, internal dimension of the separation process. Our unconscious presents no less material for choice than modern reality, replete with possibilities. A woman’s distinctive feature lies in her ability to constantly differentiate and choose within this internal dimension in order to protect herself and her destiny from a powerful flow of emotional energy, which contains no less serious danger than the excessive abundance of the external world. Feelings, values, time, limitations - all of them together create a wonderful basis for making choices that result in higher values. And they turn out to be specific to women and femininity.

Symbolically, marriage can be imagined as two people standing back to back, thus protecting each other. A woman’s task is to protect not only herself, but also her man and family from danger coming from within: mood, devastation, outbursts and breakdowns, vulnerability and so-called obsession. With all this, female genius copes much better than male genius, which, as a rule, is necessary to live in the outside world and maintain the safety of the family. There is a special danger hidden in the life attitude of a modern person, which lies in the fact that both men and women are turned to the outside world and are busy only solving external problems. This leaves the inner world unprotected, so in family life many troubles arise precisely in this unprotected area. In this case, children are especially defenseless and vulnerable.

At the beginning of a marriage, partners are like two separate, slightly overlapping circles. There is a large psychological space between them, and each performs its own functions. As the marriage experience increases, each partner becomes more aware of the personality of the other, and the area of overlapping circles becomes larger.

Jung told a story about a man who sought help complaining of feeling unwell. When he was asked to tell about his dreams, he replied that he never sees dreams, but his little five-year-old son sees them all the time, and, moreover, very vivid ones. Jung recommended that he write down his son's dreams. Soon the man brought recordings of his son's singing over the past few weeks. After this, the man himself began to have dreams, and his son almost completely stopped seeing them! Jung explained this by saying that the father, unwittingly, being influenced by the attitude existing in modern society, did not pay enough attention to the changes taking place in his inner world, and his son was forced to take on this burden. If you want your children to inherit the best from you, leave them a pure unconscious instead of your own unlived life, which will be hidden in the unconscious until you are ready to face it.

As a rule, it is the woman who strives for such internal balance, but in the above example, the father’s problem fell on the son’s shoulders. When talking about masculinity and femininity, we must be well aware that we are talking not only about a man and a woman. The feminine part of a man can perform the function that we imagine a woman should perform, and vice versa.

Second task

Psyche’s second task, spoken by Aphrodite in the same arrogant and insulting tone, was as follows: Psyche should go to a distant field across the river and collect wool from the golden-fleece sheep grazing there. She must get home before dark or die.

Psyche had to muster all her courage, maybe even recklessness, to complete this dangerous task, since the rams were wild and ferocious. She again became desperate and decided to take her own life. Having gone to the river, beyond which there was a field where golden-fleece sheep were grazing, she decided to throw herself off a cliff and drown. At that moment she heard the rustling of reeds that grew on the river bank. Reed spoke to her and gave her advice.

Reed, a simple-minded child born at the meeting place of water and earth, warned Psyche not to approach the scary rams in daylight under any circumstances to collect wool from them. If she disobeys and approaches them, the rams will trample her to death. Instead, she should wait until dusk and collect the wool left on the blackberry bushes and on the branches of the trees in the grove where the sheep grazed. There, without attracting the attention of wild animals, she is able to collect enough golden fleece to satisfy Aphrodite. In other words, Psyche should not go straight to the rams and try to cut off the golden fleece: to do so would be to put her life in danger. She can achieve her goal by approaching these wild horned animals only by cunning.

When a woman needs to assimilate some part of her masculinity, she may associate this quality with the ram. Let's try to imagine a very feminine woman looking at the modern world and understanding the need to enter it and live in it. She is afraid that she will be killed, trampled to death, or depersonalized by the mutton nature of the patriarchal, competitive, soulless society in which we live.

The Ram represents the strong, masculine instinctual nature, which can suddenly manifest itself in the form of an aggressive complex existing in every person. This power gives rise to fear, similar to that which a person experiences at the sight of a huge burning bush. The power and energy that exists in the depths of the unconscious can be excessive for the limitations of the human psyche and destructive for it if the right approach is not found.

Our myth contains wise advice that helps Psyche master the power of the wild ram. She should not go to the field at the height of daylight; and collect golden wool from the branches of trees and bushes, but not from sheep. As a rule, most of our contemporaries see a sign of strength in pulling a tuft of golden wool from the back of a ram, and then, basking in the rays of glory, celebrating triumph. But power, like power, is a double-edged sword, so there is a very strict rule regarding them: they should not be taken more than the amount required, and should be done as calmly as possible. Taking power at a time when you are not ripe for it means being under the influence of your inner parental voice. Excessive power can quickly turn into violence and impotent rage at the sight of ruins and ruins.

Writer and therapist John Sanford noted that if a young person takes drugs, his ego may not be strong enough to cope with intense inner experiences. He may cease to exist as a person. This could mean that he tried to take wild power directly from the ram or took too much of it. We, modern men and women, are trying to grab as many sheep as possible, which then fall on us, smashing us to smithereens. The myth warns that we should not take strength and power in quantities that exceed our needs, and each time try to balance the strength we have with the need to use it.

The idea of collecting the remnants of lamb's wool, or picking up the remnants of a man's logos, male rational intellectual energy, may seem absurd and completely unacceptable for a modern woman. Why should a woman be satisfied with so little? Why doesn't she slaughter the ram, skin it, and return in triumph, as men do?

Delilah did just that, gaining power and authority in her own hands for a while. And what is the result? The next morning, all that was left was ruins. The myth of Psyche tells us that a woman can get the masculine energy she needs without a power struggle. The path of Psyche is much nobler. She shouldn't turn into Delilah and kill Samson to gain power.

This mythological episode raises a very important question for modern man: how much masculine energy is sufficient for him (or her)? I think there are no limitations in this regard as long as a woman remains true to her feminine identity and uses masculine energy as an instrument of consciousness in a roundabout way. The same is true for a man: he can use the energy of the femininity existing in him as much as he likes, with only one condition - that at the same time he remains a man who consciously uses his femininity. In each case, excess and excess can lead to big trouble.

Third task

To her amazement, Aphrodite saw that Psyche had collected a whole pile of golden wool. She became even more angry, but did not show it, this time deciding to destroy the girl for sure. She gave Psyche a crystal jug and ordered her to fill it with water from the Styx. The Styx is a river that flowed from a high mountain, disappeared into the bowels of the earth, and rose again to the mountain peaks. It was an endless cycle in which the water stream, returning to its source, immediately rolled down, reaching the underworld, from there again ascending to the top of a high cliff. Styx was guarded by huge, terrible monsters, and nearby there was not a single edge of earth on which one could put one’s foot to fill a jug with water.

As before, Psyche fell into despair, but this time she was so numb with grief that she could not even cry.

Suddenly, as if by magic, an eagle sent by Zeus appeared. It happened that the eagle sometimes helped Zeus in his love affairs, so they were very friendly. This time Zeus openly defended his son Eros and asked the eagle to help Psyche. He flew to the unfortunate girl and took from her the empty crystal jug left by Aphrodite. Flying to the middle of the rapid stream, he scooped up water from the Styx and returned with a full jug, safe and sound. And this task was completed.

Styx is the river of life and death. It flows in high mountains and lowlands, from huge cliffs it rushes down into the darkness of the underworld. The current of the Styx is swift and treacherous, and the banks are steep and slippery. To come close to it means to expose yourself to the danger of being carried away by a furious stream and drowning in it or breaking on the coastal rocks.

The third task symbolizes a woman’s attitude to the diversity and abundance of opportunities that exist in life. She can only fill one jug with water. Realization of one’s own potential for a woman means doing one thing at a time, doing her job well, observing a sense of proportion. This does not mean that she should refuse to do anything else, to start a second, third or tenth thing, but each time she should scoop up only one jug of water and do it in her own time.

The feminine aspect of the human psyche can be described as diffuse consciousness. The feminine essence dissolves in the variety of opportunities that exist in life and strives to realize everything, doing it all at the same time. But this is impossible, because no person can do everything at once. Many of the possibilities around us are in conflict with each other, therefore we have to choose. Like an eagle with keen eyesight, we must look around the stormy stream, choose the only suitable place, descend there and fill the jug with water.

There is a popular aphorism: if little is good, then more is better. If you follow this saying, life becomes unsuccessful. Even when you are doing a very important and interesting job and gaining rich life experience, you continue to look for something. You never get satisfaction from what you do, because future plans interfere with the implementation of present ones.

The myth tells us that very little content may be quite sufficient, provided there is a high degree of awareness of it. As one poet said, in one grain of sand you can see the whole world. We can focus on one aspect of life or one experience, revel in it and feel completely satisfied. Some time will pass, and a series of other events and other experiences will come. Everything has its time.

A crystal jug is a vessel where the water of life is stored. It is very fragile and precious. The only thing that can be compared to such a crystal jug is the human ego: it is the keeper of a small life-giving drop of the river of life. If this fragile ego-container, resembling a crystal jug, is used mercilessly and ineptly, the beautiful but treacherous river will break it into pieces. It is very important to have eagle vision in order to see this turbulent stream clearly and distinctly, find a suitable place and behave appropriately. The ego, which is trying to bring the enormous content of the unconscious into the conscious life of a person, must learn to fill only one jug with water at a time and in no case more, otherwise the overfilled vessel will not withstand the weight and will break. This may serve as a warning to us against trying to dive to great depths to grasp the meaning of all life. It’s better to have one crystal jug of water than a whole stream in which it’s easy to choke.

Looking at all these rapids and whirlpools, a down-to-earth person can feel complete hopelessness. But such a view is too narrow to be clear and promising. It is at this moment that a woman needs eagle vision, which gives her a wide perspective and allows her to see the flow of life in all its grandeur. When a small patch of shore seems inaccessible, an eagle's perspective opens up the possibility for us to take the next step - perhaps very small in the face of traditional ambition, but absolutely necessary from the point of view of the possibility of personal growth.

Almost every person is fed up and overwhelmed by the flow of events in modern life, even if we are talking about only a small fraction of them that happen in just one day. This means it's time for eagle vision and the mentality that goes with it: one full jug at a time and no more.

Fourth task

The fourth task turned out to be the most important and most difficult for Psyche. Rare women reach this stage in their development, so what will be discussed next may seem strange and have nothing to do with you. If this task is not for you, leave it and do something that seems more acceptable to you. But for those rare women who must go all the way to the end by completing the fourth task, the information contained in the myth is invaluable.

Remaining true to herself, Aphrodite set Psyche a task that was insoluble for mere mortals. Relying only on our own strengths, we would not have completed a single task and would not have survived; at least this can be absolutely certain regarding the fourth task. But as soon as the gods send us an assistant, the task immediately becomes solvable.

Aphrodite's fourth task is Psyche's final test. Aphrodite told her to go down to the underworld and ask for a vessel with magical ambrosia from the goddess Persephone, mistress of the underworld, eternal virgin, mistress of miraculous transformations.

Knowing full well the futility of all attempts to complete this task, Psyche climbed the high tower with the intention of throwing herself down and settling scores with her terrible fate and miserable life.

But the tower that Psyche chose told her everything that should be done. Once again she found her salvation in the council! Psyche must find the only place on earth, hidden from prying eyes, where a living person could penetrate into the kingdom of Hades, from where an endless path opened to the palace of Pluto, the god of the underworld. Psyche should not go there empty-handed, for there is a certain fee for entering the underworld. She must take a piece of barley cake in each hand, place two halfpenny coins under her tongue, and muster up enough fortitude to endure the ordeal that awaits her. Traveling to the land of Hades is expensive, so you need to be well prepared for it.

Psyche found the place where the endless path began, went down to the Styx and saw a lame man driving a lame donkey loaded with brushwood. Several branches fell to the ground, and Psyche, being a polite and kind girl, picked them up and returned them to the lame old man, despite the fact that she was forbidden to do so, so as not to waste her energy, saving it for future difficult trials. Then she saw the boatman Charon, who was transporting the shadows of the dead to the kingdom of Hades on a boat. He asked her for one coin for the crossing. Crossing the river, Psyche saw a drowning man begging to be saved, but swam past. While on the path to the goddess of the underworld, a woman must save all resources without wasting it on achieving less significant goals.

Finding herself in the kingdom of Hades, Psyche went further and met three old women who were spinning the threads of fate. They asked Psyche to help them, but she had to pass by, not paying any attention to their request. What woman can pass by three destinies without stopping? But Psyche was warned that if she stopped even for a moment, she would lose a piece of barley pie, and would lose payment for the transition to the kingdom of darkness that awaited her further. Without paying for the transition, Psyche will never be able to return back to the bright world of people.

Psyche walked forward and soon saw the guardian of the kingdom of the dead, Cerberus - a monstrous dog with three heads. She threw one of the pieces of barley pie to the vile monster, and while three heads were squabbling over it, she rushed past.

Finally, she entered the halls of Persephone, the eternal virgin, master of magical transformations. Following the wise warnings received from the tower, Psyche had to refuse the generous hospitality that Persephone would show her. All she had to do was take the simplest food and eat it while sitting straight on the ground. The old laws bind you to the house where hospitality was given, so by taking advantage of Persephone's favor, Psyche will remain forever associated with her.

Psyche, becoming stronger and wiser with each step (her strength increased as she overcame previous trials), did everything that was required and asked Persephone for a vessel with wonderful ambrosia. Without saying a word, Persephone gave her a magic bottle, and Psyche set off on her way back. But the myth tells that Persephone gave the girl a vessel in which a magical secret was kept. Here lies the key to the impasse that will arise in the near future. Psyche had a second piece of pie left to get past the terrible Cerberus, and a second halfpenny that should have been given to the boatman for the crossing.

The last piece of advice that the tower gave to Psyche was very important, but she did not follow it. The tower warned her not to open the vessel or inquire about its contents under any circumstances. At the end of the journey, seeing glimpses of the light of the human world, Psyche thought to herself: “In this bottle that I hold in my hands is what gives Aphrodite a magical charm. Am I really going to be an absolute fool and, having missed such an opportunity, I will not look into the vessel and won’t I take myself a drop of magical ambrosia to become irresistible in the eyes of my beloved Eros?” Thinking so, she opened the bottle, but found nothing there! No miracle happened, and Psyche lay down on the ground and fell into a deathly sleep. Defeated, she lay on the ground, resembling an unconscious corpse.

Having healed his wounds, Eros heard that his beloved Psyche was in trouble. He escaped from the supervision of his mother, and, flying up to his beloved, wiped the dead sleep from her face and collected it back into the vessel. He then awakened Psyche by pricking her with one of his arrows, and told the girl how curiosity had almost killed her.

Eros convinced Psyche to complete the task; she took the magic bottle and brought it to Aphrodite.

Then Eros flew straight to Zeus and confessed to him his love for Psyche. Zeus scolded Eros for his frivolous behavior, but gave him all the necessary honors as his son and promised to help. The Thunderer gathered all the gods for a council and ordered Hermes to deliver Psyche to his palace. He announced to all the inhabitants of Olympus that Eros had long been under the spell of love, and the time had come for this young rake and fidget to tie the knot. Since Eros chose for himself. The most beautiful bride in the world, Zeus ordered a wedding feast. But marriage between a mortal woman and an immortal god was impossible. Therefore, Zeus gave the beautiful Psyche a cup with the nectar of immortality and ordered her to drink every drop from it. So Psyche gained immortality and received a promise from Eros that he would never leave her, remaining a faithful and devoted husband.

Then a wedding was held on Olympus, which had no equal. Zeus sat at the head, Hermes was the main manager, and Ganymede treated everyone to the drink of the gods - magical nectar. Apollo played the harp, and even Aphrodite, who occupied one of the most honorable places, was happy with her son and daughter-in-law.

Time passed, and Psyche gave birth to a daughter named Pleasure.

Psyche's last task is the most important and deepest advancement on the path of a woman's personal growth. Rarely do women reach a stage in their development where they can take on this task. It would be completely foolhardy to embark on this journey prematurely. To do this means to invite disaster on your own head. Refusing to complete a task when it is possible to complete it is also bad. Previously, an ordinary woman rarely tried to go all this way. As a rule, she left this possibility aside, preferring the spiritual world to it. Now more and more women are following the path of this evolution. It gives the opportunity to manifest great inner strength, whether the woman is aware of it or not. The most important thing is to catch the moment when this process begins. If it occurs, you cannot ignore it, just as you cannot ignore pregnancy.

What have we learned from this story?
All three assistants who helped Psyche complete the first three tasks - the ant, the reed and the eagle - contain a natural element. The tower was built by man and embodies the cultural aspect of our civilization. She helps us learn a lot about what other women have done in the past to complete the fourth task. Saint Teresa of Avila speaks of the tower as an Interior Castle. Women who practiced Theosophy described visions of this tower. Modern feminists have a lot to say about this. A wealth of material can be found in the biographies of female saints in Christian history. Christian psychology has revealed several possible varieties of female destiny. It is extremely important to see the differences in those lines that existed in the west and east before, and those that exist now. After all, you usually make your way alone, keeping an inner tower to listen to from time to time.

Psyche had to travel to the underworld, through a deserted place (so many journeys begin at the least expected or least opportune moment), down an endless road into a dark tunnel of the underworld. Along the way, she should neither stop nor deviate to the side, guided by generosity and feminine kindness, so as not to become helpless and defenseless. Psyche paid for the crossing of the Styx with a coin. Without having accumulated enough strength at the beginning of her journey, she would not have been able to go all the way to the end. To make this journey, you need peace, solitude and the ability to save and maintain strength. She was supposed to distract the attention of the terrible dog guarding the entrance to the kingdom of Hades. You should not lose sight of all the magical attributes. They are constantly required for retribution, because they contain some valuable quality. For example, barley pie is usually mixed with honey.

The next important point to note is to save energy for the journey without wasting it by accepting Persephone's invitation to stay in her palace. Persephone is the mistress of the underworld, the most mysterious of all goddesses, the eternal virgin, the mistress of magical transformations. This part of a woman can be respected and adored, as we respect and adore all that is wonderful, but we should not achieve complete identification with it. Among women, it is very easy to identify Persephone who remained in the halls and stopped her further development.

On the way back, Psyche distracted the attention of the ominous dog and slipped past, paid the carrier with a second coin and returned to the bright world of people.

Psyche asked for a bottle of magic ointment, but it seemed to her that she received nothing. This is called the mystery of miracle and is of greater value than any quality that we are able to define. There is no need to look for a definition of the deep internal transformation that occurs in a woman. The essence of femininity lies precisely in this wonderful transformation, always mysterious for men and, perhaps, a little less mysterious for women. It partially carries a healing and even healing component.

Not heeding the warning, Psyche (deprivation of favor, as a rule, is necessary for a dramatic plot to unfold), opened a bottle of magic ointment. She decided to use it for her own needs, but did so unconsciously. This moment in the journey is the most dangerous; This is where many women fail. To identify with the magical, one must enter the unconscious, and this is the end of all development. Many women, who have so far walked the path without great losses, fall into a trap at this point, identifying with the magical charm of Persephone. And then their wonderful development stops, leaving them somewhat similar to a spiritual fossil, having nothing human in them.

Psyche did not pass this test, but her failure forced Eros to become active, i.e. her inner masculinity, to find masculine energy in herself in order to get rid of death. The prick of a love arrow woke her up, removing the shackles of her mortal sleep. Only love can save you from the incompleteness and lack of demand for spiritual life.

Eros fulfilled his divine function, and Psyche, finding herself in heaven, gained immortality. The connection with Eros was difficult and dangerous for her, but in the end she gave Psyche immortality. Finally, you discover the archetypal essence within yourself that was located in the depths hidden behind your individuality. Thus, you come to immortality, which was promised to you at the beginning of the myth, but its expectation was too vague and incomprehensible. All the enormous work of Psyche and her torment consisted in the transformation of the initially existing naive charm into perfect divine consciousness.
The easiest way is to attribute mythological stories to time immemorial, believing that they have lost their influence on events here and now. Only relatively recently in our history did the idea appear that myths and fairy tales were created for children. Before the Age of Enlightenment, when this attitude became established in human consciousness, the study of myths and fairy tales was considered a completely worthy and noble activity for adults. Only after the publication of the works of Jung, Fraser, Campbell and other scientists did myth finally begin to take its corresponding place in the study of the inner world of man. However, most people still have the prevailing attitudes formed in the nineteenth century.

Modern dream

Let's look at how mythology might work in modern times, and see that Psyche is still busy with her development, carrying out the "tasks" of Aphrodite.

Below is a description of the dream of modern Psyche - a woman whose evolution of consciousness occurs in the conditions and scale of our time. The dream uses the language of modern American culture. This woman is about thirty years old, she is married, has children, is quite satisfied with her profession and works with full dedication, engaging in activities related to the life of a modern city, typical of every member of a modern industrial society. Just as Psyche uses ancient reality as a backdrop for her drama, so this woman uses the modern world as grist in the mill of her own evolution. Myth cannot be limited by time, space or language.

This is the dream:

I am in a large, beautiful, old and almost empty house. I clean and put things in order, several people help me. My cleaning place is on the second floor. I walk up a wide staircase that turns right and leads me straight to “my” room. But as soon as I cross the threshold of this room, I immediately find myself in another world. It's as if I've been transported to another space and time. I find myself on a magnificent slope of a high mountain. Everything around me is white. After a few minutes, I realize that I’m not cold at all and everything around me is white - it’s not snow, but some strange magical substance. This substance emits light. A man comes up to me and greets me. His name is X and he speaks with a strong Slavic accent. He is about the same height and age as me, and wears a small beard. He is very handsome, polite and seductive and invites me to walk together and explore this wonderful place. I really want to go with him, but I’m afraid that if I agree, I’ll disappear from this world forever. Then I will lose the real world and home that exist in my imagination. I feel like I need to go back. Turning to me, X turns me around and shows me the way back, leading back to the threshold. I find myself back in the house.

Some sounds are heard below - in all likelihood, something is being moved below. I rush downstairs and run into B (another person doing the cleaning). He doesn’t say a word, he just grins slyly, and this grin makes a very unpleasant impression on me. Trying to figure out what happened, I suddenly catch the gaze of a woman with white, shoulder-length hair. She walks past me and disappears. I hear someone call her Millie and say that she has gone to another world. I run after her, trying to ask her about what she found out, but I only manage to see her turn the corner. I follow her up the stairs and then down the long hall into the room. When I reach that room, she has already disappeared into the space of another world.

I set off on my way back and go down the stairs, but as soon as I pass my room, I again find myself in the white world. X is there with his friend and says that they are waiting for me. He kisses me very affectionately and for a long time and shows me the carriage that is waiting to give me a lift. I'm very confused. On the one hand, I want to go with him, on the other hand, there is a doubt that having done this, I will never go back. I turn away from him to make a decision, and the next moment I find myself in a room in my house.

I'm going downstairs again. Everything there is in turmoil. People unknown to me bring some things into the house, furniture, food, something else. A large crowd gathers in the living room. I enter a small reception room and see my teacher there - a Buddhist. She sits calmly on a small chair in the corner of the room, dressed in her brown dress. I have the impression that there are many doors in the house like the one I discovered. I am afraid that since the whole house is occupied by people and their things, all the doors and entrances will be closed. I need to decide what to do before the crowd blocks the door from me. I try to explain this dilemma to the teacher, but she hardly responds. I begin to walk around the room, looking at the things that are in it. My attention is drawn to a blue pincushion lying on a small table. Everything happens as if I am trying to remember all the details of this world in order to take them with me to that other world. At some point I jump out of the room and run up the stairs, hoping to meet X again. I jump over the threshold and feel myself moving into the white world, and a second later I wake up.

After that, I fell asleep again and saw the same dream in full detail twice more during that night. Each time the same sequence of events was observed, with the only difference being that each next time the crowd in the house became more and more crowded, the number of things increased, and X and the other world captivated me more and more.

The content of a long dream can be treated in the same way as we treat mythological content, for a dream is no less energetically charged and has no less impact on a person than great myths, which, as a rule, we perceive impersonally. My Indian friend, to whom I revealed the meaning of the dream, exclaimed: “I’ve been God here all my life, without even knowing it!” This is the true truth: God and mythological language turn out to be much closer to us than modern thinking believes.

The dream above is a myth for this particular woman. It is very interesting to see some parallels with the type of relationship between Eros and Psyche that we know, and the existence of certain differences. We contain (or are we contained in it?) exactly the same psychological structure that a person who lived two and a half million years ago possessed, but at the same time, it is undeniably the fact that during this time there was a huge evolutionary process. Our modern world carries within itself the awe-inspiring timeless identity of the human psychic structure, while simultaneously capturing the uniqueness of modernity. This double meaning of mythological content can be found in every dream fragment.

The problem of Eros and Psyche, expressed in one word, is the problem of levels. All kinds of journeys, tasks and adventures of Psyche become much more understandable, being mediated by levels. Psyche was between earth and heaven, death and immortality, human and divine. The final victory of Psyche represents the synthesis of all these opposites. Her whole struggle is to reconcile the many polar levels that influence her in one way or another.

The same need to define levels arises in this modern dream. Remember how many times the dreaming woman went up and down the stairs! In fact, the entire dream revolves around the mutual transformation of the ordinary and white spiritual world. There is a mutual transformation of human characters and situations into divine characters and spiritual environment. Both Psyches, the one who lived two and a half million years ago and the current one, are fighting to become mediators between the two sets of these levels. The confident look and expression on the face of any modern mother waiting for her child to feed him dinner is a manifestation of the modern Psyche, located between two worlds: her love and the avalanche of practical affairs that make up the outline of modern life. Psyche's tasks changed only in detail.

One fine day a woman may wake up and encounter divine splendor and unearthly beauty, but she does not know what to do: whether to thank the gods for this divine gift, or to beg them to take it back and leave her to herself and her daily worries. Eros can take you into its luminous world and you will only be surprised how many obstacles you managed to bypass and overcome without stopping in front of them. At the heart of every myth is a contradiction. To avoid relationship with these levels means to avoid the deep evolutionary process.

Modern Psyche began her journey immediately by completing tasks. This may mean that most of the ancient myth turned out to be a passed stage for her. She has already passed the stage of teenage isolation and her own exclusivity, the stage of marriage, which turned out to be a double-edged sword for her, she has already lit a lamp, lost her innocence - these are already passed stages. The dream began with her performing a task - sorting out and cleaning her two-story (two-level) house, where she was suddenly exposed to another, imaginary world. It turns out that there is a huge need for an inner world that serves as a bridge connecting the heavenly and earthly worlds. If only that upper world could wait until the children grew up or life settled down! But the heavens give no sign that they are willing to wait. She rushes from the real world and practical life into the white world of imagination and fantasy and is horrified that, having allowed herself to stay in it and get to know it better, she may not find her way back to the real world. This is a serious danger, because it is easy to fall into a trap where the choice between maintaining common sense and losing it can be made in favor of the latter. Jung once said that medieval man lived by the principle of either-or, but modern man must live by the principle of either-and-or. The most modern woman today cannot go to a monastery or climb high into the Himalayas just to gain enlightenment, but on the other hand, she cannot lock herself into the narrow confines of family, profession and practical life. The primary and main goal of the modern personality is to combine both sides and live in everyday conditions. The woman who had the dream was very successful in this regard, finding the home in a symbolic expression of the principle of either-and-or.

The dream remained unfinished - but it should be so, for the woman had not yet reached the middle of her life. The second half of life is spent bringing the abundance of earthly and heavenly elements existing in the psyche to a synthetic unity and viable union. An old myth promises us that if this happens, a daughter named Delight will be born. When a person grows up and gains strength and wisdom, all the warring elements of his psyche, which caused him so much anxiety and suffering, become complementary to each other and, interacting with each other, create a great work of art, whose name is life.

According to the Olympian creation myth, nature and the population of the Earth appeared as a result of rain (or dew) that fell from Uranus the sky onto Gaia the earth. (editor's note)

Johnson Robert
She: Deep aspects of female psychology
The Greek myth of Eros and Psyche is one of the most suitable narratives for the study of female psychology. This ancient pre-Christian myth, which has a long history of oral traditions, was first written down in the era of antiquity, and has not yet lost its deep meaning.

The role of myth

Myths are rich sources of psychological insight. Great literature, like great art, conveys the characteristic features of human nature extremely accurately. Myths are a special kind of literature that does not have one author. They are created over the course of an entire era of a particular culture, absorbing all the richness of human imagination and activity, representing an extract of the spirit and experience related to this culture. It is very likely that the main content of the myth arises together with a certain motive; then the plot is repeatedly clarified and spreads like circles on the water exactly: in the same way, people constantly retell entertaining stories to each other. In this way, themes characteristic and universal for humanity remain alive, while individual people and entire eras fade into history. Myths are reflections of the collective image; they contain and convey to us universal human truths.

First of all, we must learn to think psychologically. When we begin to come into contact with the content of myths, fairy tales and our own dreams, something very important happens. The terminology and world of old myths seem very strange, archaic and far from modernity, but by listening to them deeply and taking them seriously, we begin to hear and understand something. Sometimes there is a need to interpret symbolic meanings, but once you grasp the general meaning of the content, it is not at all difficult to do.

Enough has been written about anime and animus, and we, in turn, will say more about them later. From this point of view, when speaking about the manifestation of femininity in the myth of Eros and Psyche, we mean not only the woman, but also the anima of the man. The connection of this myth with female psychology may be considered the most obvious, because femininity is the predominant feature of a woman. At the same time, there is certainly a certain parallel with the inner femininity of male psychology.

The personality of this unusual princess was so attractive that people began to say: “This is the new Aphrodite, the goddess who will take her place in the temple of Aphrodite, for in all respects she will soon surpass her!” Aphrodite suffered and suffered, looking at the ashes left from the sacred fire in the cooling temple, for her cult was giving way to the cult of a new beautiful maiden.

In those days, Aphrodite was the goddess of femininity, who ruled for a long time; no one could remember exactly when. Seeing the rise of a new goddess of femininity was unbearable for her. Her rage and jealousy were like the apocalypse; they will play a significant role in our history. To awaken divine wrath or demand a change of god or goddess means to shake all the foundations of the inner world.
Elements of mythology
Let us pay attention to the origin of both goddesses - Aphrodite and Psyche. Chronos, the youngest and most cunning son of the sky god Uranus, castrated his father with a sickle and threw his genitals into the sea, thus impregnating him. Thus Aphrodite was born. The birth of Afrodita was immortalized by Botticelli with his famous painting “The Birth of Venus”1: the goddess emerges from the sea foam in all her feminine splendor. This birth, as it were, personifies the unearthly nature of femininity in its archetypal form, which is in clear contrast with the human origin of Psyche, who, according to legend, was born from fallen dew. Pay attention to this amazing language! It becomes full of psychological insights if you are able to hear the timeless, archaic message it contains.

By understanding the difference between these two births, one can understand the different nature of the two types of femininity. Aphrodite is a goddess born of the sea. She possesses the primitive oceanic feminine power, reigning since time immemorial in her domain - on the seabed. Psychologically, this means that she rules in the unconscious, symbolized by the depths of the sea. It is almost inaccessible to ordinary consciousness: one can just as successfully try to control the ebb and flow of the tides. Such archetypal femininity can be admired, idolized or crushed by it, but it is extremely difficult to connect with it. Psyche's task is precisely to use her humanity to curb and soften the great oceanic archetypal feminine. This is the essence of the myth.

Every woman has Aphrodite inside her. She can be recognized by her overflowing femininity and by the greatness that catches the eye, but has no specific relationship to reality.

The influence of Aphrodite affects the reflection of external experience in our own consciousness. To the same extent that a man is busy searching, researching and disseminating something new, Aphrodite reflects and assimilates. The mirror of Aphrodite is a symbol of the most profound features of the goddess of love. She often invites a person to look at the reflection in the mirror, where he can see himself, hopelessly burdened with his projections, which were hitherto indistinguishable. The process of realizing what is happening can begin with the question of what exactly is being reflected. The answer to it will help a person avoid getting involved in a tangled tangle of emotions. All this can happen against the backdrop of external events. However, it is very important to imagine and understand that many phenomena of the inner world are hidden for us and appear as external events if they are not fully reflected in the subjective inner world, where they, in fact, arose. Aphrodite makes us look in the mirror more than we want. When a person falls in love and recognizes another as a god or goddess, he sees Aphrodite reflecting immortality or godlikeness. We are so unprepared to see both virtues and shortcomings in ourselves that between their reflection in consciousness and final acceptance there usually lies a long path of suffering. Psyche made a long journey that began with her falling in love with Eros and ended with the discovery of her immortality (2).

Aphrodite is the great mother goddess from the point of view of her future daughter-in-law. When a woman brings her grace and beauty into the world, this indicates the influence of the internal energy of Aphrodite (or Venus). But if Aphrodite is in conflict with her daughter-in-law, she can be jealous, unyielding, and creates obstacles for Psyche at every step. Such drama between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law is typical of any culture; she contributes to the development of the personality of every young woman. For her, coping with the power of her mother-in-law means achieving female maturity. From that moment on, she is no longer a dewdrop, having naively entered the world and entered into marriage.

It is quite natural that at a certain stage of evolution, when a new incarnation of femininity appears, its previous incarnation is filled with anger. Aphrodite will use every means at her disposal to humiliate her rival. Every woman knows this, remembering the sudden regressive impulses of Aphrodite living deep inside; as soon as a woman becomes her prey, a terrible picture emerges. Only in a rare and very extraordinary family, at the moment of manifestation of its essence, Aphrodite can be called by its real name, and the energy can be sublimated for beneficial use.

There is a parable about the first elephant born in captivity. At first the owner was very happy, but then he was horrified when he saw how the entire herd of elephants had gathered in a circle and the adult elephants began to chase the newborn elephant in a circle from one elephant to another. The owner thought that they wanted to torture him to death, but the elephants simply forced the baby to breathe.

Very often, at the moment something new appears, it seems that something very terrible has happened, but soon we begin to understand that exactly what was needed happened. Aphrodite, who can be constantly reproached, nevertheless creates all the necessary conditions for the evolution of Psyche. It's very easy to be optimistic after an event has happened, but it's damn hard when it's just happening. This may resemble a constantly ongoing internal chaotic evolutionary struggle. Reflected in the nature of Aphrodite, the old way of life is regressive. He pulls the woman back into the unconscious, while at the same time forcing her to move towards a new life, sometimes at great risk. It may happen that evolution takes a different path, or that the influence of Aphrodite turns out to be the only stimulus for growth. For example, there are women who cannot reach maturity until they come face to face with a tyrannical mother-in-law or stepmother.
Internal struggle
Many of the troubles of a modern woman are associated with the confrontation between her two internal essences: Aphrodite and Psyche. Such a metaphor helps to recreate a picture of the psychological process; If a woman can understand what is happening to her, she will be on the right path to gaining a new consciousness.
Having learned something about the nature of Aphrodite, an ancient and therefore more primitive type of femininity, let's look at the new features of femininity that were formed later. Unlike Aphrodite, who was born in the sea foam, Psyche was born from dew that fell on the ground. This transition from the oceanic nature of Aphrodite to the earthly nature of Psyche speaks of a certain progress in the development of femininity from ancient oceanic traits to new human forms. So we move on. from oceanic proportions to a smaller, more comprehensible scale.

Psyche is such a magical and unearthly creature, she is so innocent and virginal that she can only be worshiped, but cannot be judged. She is doomed to constant loneliness and cannot find a husband.

Psyche exists within every woman as an incomparable experience of living alone. Any woman is, to some extent, a princess worthy of love, having unique perfections inherent only to her alone and a spiritual depth that is too great for ordinary everyday life. If a woman alone finds herself not understood by anyone and believes that people are kind but far from her, it means that she has felt the Psyche in herself. As a rule, this is a very painful sensation that a woman often experiences without understanding its nature. To get into this state means to remain unaffected emotionally in relationships with others.

If a woman gives the opportunity for the Psyche nature to manifest itself in everyday relationships like “you - to me, I - to you,” nothing good will come of it. When the essence of Psyche fills a large part of a woman’s inner world, it turns into a serious and painful problem for her. She will shed tears, wailing: “Nobody understands me.” And indeed it is. Every woman at any stage of life has this trait in herself. If you see this quality in a woman and can touch it, the incomparable beauty and divine charm of Psyche can reach consciousness, and then a beneficial evolution will begin.

I once saw a film in which two people, completely devoid of any external attractiveness, loved each other. Thanks to the magic of fantasy, each of them was beautiful in the eyes of the other, and it turned out that love existed between two charming, attractive people. At the end of the film, the camera again showed their faces as they really were. But the audience already knew a different appearance of the characters, because they saw the god and goddess that existed inside them, who were incomparably stronger and more powerful than the external unattractiveness of the heroes. This example demonstrates the abyss that exists between the inner divine nature of man and the external everyday life, the abyss to which our story is dedicated.
Marriage of Psyche
Psyche brought her parents to despair, because both of her older sisters successfully married neighboring kings, and no one asked for the hand of the younger one. Men only idolized her. The king went to the oracle, not knowing that he was under the influence of Aphrodite, and she, full of indignation and hatred of Psyche, forced the oracle to predict a terrible future for Psyche! The girl was about to be betrothed to Death, the most evil, disgusting and powerful creature. According to the law, Psyche should have been sent high into the mountains, chained there to a rock and left until the ominous Death got her.

In Ancient Greece, the predictions of oracles were not questioned, being considered an indisputable truth. Therefore, Psyche’s parents, fulfilling the sacred will, equipped a wedding cortege, which looked more like a funeral procession, seated Psyche there and brought her high into the mountains to a lonely rock. Here, in a stream of tears, the whiteness of wedding decoration and the gloom of funeral mourning were mixed. Then the parents extinguished the torches and left Psyche alone in the dark.

What can we learn from this? Psyche married - but to death. In fact, every girl seems to die on the day of her wedding, because a certain stage of her life has ended. Many of the traits that characterize the feminine essence that existed until now die in her. In this sense, marriage for her is a funeral. Many characteristic details of marriage ceremonies have been introduced since ancient times from funeral rites. The groom comes with his best friend and cronies to kidnap the bride while the bridesmaids guard her virginity. As it should be according to the ritual, a struggle arises between them, and the bride cries as if part of her life had died away. A new life begins for her, and the wedding celebration marks the emergence of a new matriarchal power.

We do not fully appreciate the dual aspect of marriage and tend to see it only as festive white and pleasure. If the dying away of a part of the past life is not reflected in the corresponding rituals, it will still later appear in an emotional mood and in a less acceptable form. For example, some women may feel very resentful and disgusted with the marriage after months or even years.

In photographs taken at a wedding ceremony in Turkey, I saw boys of eight or nine years old, each of whom was jumping on one leg, bending the other leg at the knee and tying its shin to his thigh. This ritual was supposed to remind us that in marriage there is not only pleasure, but also pain.

African weddings are not considered complete until the bride and groom have a certain number of scars and wounds. A marriage is not considered genuine unless there has been abduction. Marriage can be enjoyed after all the sacred ritual elements have been given due credit. Aphrodite doesn't like it when girls die in the hands of men. She cannot allow a man to take her to the grave. Therefore, at the moment of the end of girlhood, Aphrodite weeps in every woman. She continues to play her paradoxical role, on the one hand, passionately desiring marriage, and on the other, resisting and mourning the loss of her girlhood. This echo of ancient rituals still lies deep within us and is most clearly manifested in the organization of rituals and ceremonies.

Here we are again faced with the paradox of evolution. It was Aphrodite who sentenced Psihea to death, but she also acted as a matchmaker, a harbinger of marriage and at the same time its opponent. The progressive evolutionary process towards marriage is accompanied by regressive spurts of passionate desire to gain autonomy and freedom and restore the status quo.

I once saw a very witty caricature reflecting the archetypal power of marriage. It depicted the attitude of each of the parents to what was happening during the wedding. The newlywed's father was angry with the impudent man who dared to take his own daughter away from him. The husband's father experienced triumph, becoming the owner of supreme power in male society. The newlywed's mother was horrified that the animal had taken possession of her child. The husband's mother was angry with the vixen who seduced and stole her son. This cartoon reflects many ancient archetypes, built-in and ingrained types of behavior and thinking in the human psyche, lying in the deep layers of the unconscious over countless years of the evolutionary process. If we do not pay attention to them in due time, they will make themselves known later and cause a lot of trouble.
Aphrodite intended to finally get rid of Psyche and for this she decided to use the help of her son, the god of love Eros. Eros, Cupid, Cupid are different names of one god - the god of love. Since Cupid has degraded to the level of playful love cards, and Cupid has to some extent lost his greatness, we will call this noble god Eros. Eros always had a full quiver of arrows with him, and a meeting with him promised trouble for every inhabitant of Olympus. All gods and goddesses felt the power. But Eros was under the thumb of his own mother, who forced him to inflame Psyche with love for the most disgusting beast in order to firmly bind her to him and thereby end the constant rivalry. One of the characteristic features of Aphrodite is constant regression. She wants everything to return to the way it was before, for evolution to reverse. Aphrodite is the voice of tradition, but ironically it is she who helps further develop the plot of our story.

There are many levels to defining the role of Eros. He can be thought of as an abstract man, a husband, or the masculine side in human relationships; it can symbolize union and harmony; at the climax of the story, Eros is not only sexuality. It should be remembered that he shoots his arrows not at the genitals, but at the heart. Further, as the mythological plot develops, we will talk in more detail about these features of Eros.
Marriage with death
Eros went to carry out his mother's orders, but when he saw Psyche, he accidentally wounded his finger with one of his arrows and immediately fell in love. He decided to declare Psyche his bride and asked his friend named the West Wind to very carefully carry her from the mountain top to Paradise Valley. The West Wind did everything he was asked to do, and Psyche, who was awaiting the arrival of Death, suddenly found herself in an earthly paradise. She did not ask Eros anything, but only enjoyed herself, shocked by the unexpected turn of fate. Instead of Death, Eros came to Psyche, but despite its unearthly beauty, it nevertheless meant death for her. All husbands bring death to their wives in the sense that they deprive them of their girlhood life and push them towards evolution and female maturity. Paradoxically, you may simultaneously feel gratitude and resentment towards the person who forces you to humiliate yourself in order to begin the path of personal growth. The oracle was absolutely right: in an archetypal sense, a man is death for a woman. When a man sees a sad expression on his companion’s face, this means that the time has come for him to be affectionate and helpful. Perhaps at this moment she, to some extent, feels the dying of her girlhood. If a man is polite and understanding at this moment, he can significantly ease the woman’s difficult period of experiences.

Without an exact analogue in his own life, a man rarely understands that marriage for a woman is both death and resurrection. A wedding is not a sacred act for a man, but for a woman it is very much so. One day the wife may look at her husband with eyes filled with horror, discovering that she is completely bound by the marriage, while he is not in the least degree. This connection is felt especially strongly if there are children. A woman can be offended by fate as much as she wants, but for her not to follow this path is worse than death.

Such events do not occur automatically at any particular age. I knew a sixteen-year-old girl who had a child. She hid her pregnancy and childbirth so that everything would be quiet and calm, and then she gave the child to an orphanage, and it turned out that she practically did not see him. Returning to her old life as if nothing had happened, she learned nothing from the Rock of Death. Some time later she got married, and if anyone could be called a virgin, she would be the first contender. She was completely unaffected psychologically, despite the fact that she had gone through childbirth.

Marriage is a completely different experience for a man and a woman. It seems to make a man taller, gives him more strength and power, his importance and the statue increase. As a rule, the husband does not realize that he is killing Psyche in his wife and that he must do it. If she behaves strangely, everything turns out very badly, or endless sobs and streams of tears continue, this is due to the fact that the man usually does not understand that he and she perceive marriage completely differently. A woman also grows and develops in marriage, but this happens only after her stay on the Rock of Death.
Garden of Eden
Psyche found herself in a magical paradise. Everything she could possibly want was there. Her husband, the god Eros, was with her every night and limited her to only one thing. He made a promise that she would not look at him and watch where he went. She can have whatever she wants, live in paradise as long as she wants, but she must not ask any questions or even try to look at him. Psyche agreed to this.

Probably, this attitude towards marriage is an echo of the primitive patriarchal mentality, where the woman completely belonged to the man. In our modern traditions, traces of patriarchal customs are still preserved in some ways: for example, when a wife takes her husband’s last name. Eros insists that she not ask any questions and never look at him - these are the conditions of a patriarchal marriage.

Every immature Eros is the creator of paradise. Like a teenager, he kidnaps a girl and promises her a life full of happiness. This is the main secret of Eros: he wants to find his paradise, but without the slightest responsibility and serious conscious attitude. To one degree or another, this is inherent in every man. Femininity is necessary for evolution and personal growth, and the maximum emphasis in myths is placed on the elements of femininity. For a man it is a terrible ordeal. He just wants to stay in heaven.

The naive Psyche informed Eros about this. Her husband repeatedly warned her about the impending danger. He said that if she listened to the sisters pursuing her, disaster would happen. If Psyche continues to not ask him anything, she will have a child who will be an immortal god, but if she breaks her oath and asks a question, then a girl will be born who will be a mere mortal. Even worse, at the very first question Eros leaves her. Then Psyche again agreed not to ask her husband anything. But the sisters called her again and again, and finally Psyche begged her husband for permission to let them visit her. A little time passed, and the sisters, brought from a high cliff by the Western Wind, safe and sound, found themselves in the magnificent Garden of Eden. They admired and enjoyed as much as they could. But they were filled with envy and jealousy for their younger sister. They bombarded her with questions about her husband, and the naive Psyche tried to describe how she imagined him, for she had never seen him. She gave the sisters a pile of unusual and rare gifts and sent them home.

Eros constantly warned Psyche, but the sisters soon reappeared. This time Psi-hea, forgetting everything she had previously said about her husband, told them another fantasy. Upon returning home, the sisters thought for a long time and came up with a cunning and insidious plan, which consisted of this: when they came to visit their sister for the third time, they would tell her that in reality her husband was a terrible disgusting snake. As soon as a child is born, the husband will devour him along with the mother.

But they want to save Psyche from such a terrible end. To stay alive, she must do the following: take a lamp, place it in a vessel, cover it with a blanket and place it in the bedroom. In addition, she should sharpen the knife and hide it near the bed. Deep at night, when her husband is fast asleep, she will light a lamp, finally see her terrible husband and cut off his head. Psyche could not resist the pressure of her sisters for long and, heeding their advice, began to prepare to expose her terrible husband.

Suddenly her hand holding the lamp trembled, and a drop of hot oil fell on Eros’s right shoulder. Waking up from severe pain, he realized what had happened, immediately spread his wings and flew away. Poor Psyche clung to him, but her strength was only enough to be carried away beyond the boundaries of the Garden of Eden. Abandoned, she fell to the ground and lay grief-stricken, completely alone. Eros flew up to her with a reproach that she did not listen to him and, having broken her word, lost the Garden of Eden. And he added that it would be as he had warned: she would have a child, a girl, a mere mortal. And now he must punish Psyche for disobedience and leave her. Having said this, he flew away to his mother Aphrodite.
Contemporary drama
At different times, the spouses play out this drama again and again. What message does this archaic, poetic, mythological language convey to us about a woman and her relationship with a man and her inner masculinity?

Sisters are irritated voices that are heard inside us, and often from the outside, which have a dual function: the destruction of the old attitude towards life and the awareness of a new one. During morning coffee, a scene often plays out where two sisters are plotting their evil plan. They often fulfill their dual mission of challenging the old patriarchal world and inciting each other to realize what is happening, the cost of which may be much higher than they imagine. We are probably paying a Promethean price to fully realize what we so passionately desire.

As a rule, a woman goes through a very unusual and perplexing sequence of relationships with her partner. A man for her can be the god of love, and Death on the top of a rock, and someone unknown in paradise, and a very receptive person with her persistent desire to understand something. And finally, when she comes to her own divinity at the top of Olympus, he appears before her as the god of love. All this confuses a man. It should not be surprising that every day, when he comes home, he timidly looks around, trying to understand exactly what role is assigned to him today. Now add the inclusion of his own anima, and you get a very complex but entertaining plot.

Jung said that the desire for personal growth often arises in the mind from the shadows. Therefore, the same sisters, playing a less rather than more pleasant and completely unsightly role in Psyche’s life, still serve her conscientiously3.
Eros worked hard to keep Psyche in the dark. He promised her a heavenly life on the condition that she would not look at him or ask anything. This is how he hoped to maintain power over her.

Despite the infinite number of options that create a unique individuality of life, the search for a common language with the masculine element is to a certain extent predictable. For the first time, a young woman comes into contact with her father's masculinity, then with the masculinity that absorbs her during the marriage period, and after that with Eros, who promises paradise if she does not ask questions. Later she finds in Eros the god of love, who he actually is. Within the framework of this drama and outside of it, a lot of psychic energy is spent.

Probably, the biography of each woman contains reverent chapters describing her love, the discovery and loss of the Garden of Eden, and in her desire to get closer to God - the re-discovery of the Garden of Eden in a state of maturity, which is no less beautiful than the first.

The first time we enter the Garden of Eden is during the courtship honeymoon. At this time, Psyche finds herself in the most desirable of all existing paradises, where her every whim is fulfilled. This is a real Garden of Eden, the Garden of Eden, a place where a feeling of absolute happiness arises. We hope that this state will last forever, but in every garden there is a snake, that is, a ghost of a shadow that sooner or later leads a calm, happy life to its inevitable end.
Facilities
The shadow compels the woman to explore the Garden of Eden and gives her exquisite and powerful means to do this. This is, first of all, a lamp hidden for the time being, symbolizing a woman’s ability to see the real essence of what is happening. In other words, this is her ability to realize. Light is always a symbol of consciousness, characterized by particular clarity and sharpness; in our case, its symbol is a lamp. Fuel extracted from the earth, or oil obtained from fruits, burning in a lamp, turns into a warm, soft and gentle light. This is not the harsh light of high-intensity sunlight, but the gentle feminine warmth of natural light. One of its names is the Light of Life.

Another tool is a very sharp knife. It should be noted that Psyche uses only one of the means available to her. It seems to me that this part of the myth contains very wise advice. A woman who carefully and gently sheds light in difficult situations is capable of working miracles; a woman holding a knife is capable of killing. So what will follow: transformation or murder? This is a critical moment of choice, a moment of truth, especially for a modern woman. If the knife is used first, it will cause a lot of damage. If the lamp is used first, then there is a chance for awareness and inner growth. By handling her instruments carefully, a woman can make a miraculous discovery and discover the god of love, Eros, in his true form. And then she will be pleased with the fact that her light gives birth to a miracle. While lusting after a woman, a man often feels the need to receive light from her in order to discover his true nature and divinity. Every woman holds in her hands this elusive and at the same time powerful power.

What is a lamp and what does it help to detect? At best, a man knows what he is and understands that somewhere within him lies divine greatness and power. But at the moment when a woman lights the lamp, he feels the call of life, feels the call to realize his masculine strength and manifest it. Naturally he is shaking! In addition, he expects confirmation from the woman of his worth. A man who has been defeated and discovered his inadequacy in the holes of a real or inner woman can find himself in a terrible state, since usually it is the presence of a woman that reminds a man of the best that is in him.

During the Second World War, several men's groups isolated from each other formed in the Aleutian Islands. Due to unexpected problems with transport, they were deprived of rest and peace. In addition, they were not able to have fun and receive guests. More than half of the men suffered nervous breakdowns. They stopped shaving, let their hair grow, and stopped doing everything necessary to maintain a neat appearance. This happened because there was no woman nearby, Psyche, looking at Eros to remind him of his strength and wealth.

One day I was sitting in the company of an old Jewish patriarch and talking to him about how life had disappeared from his house. The children grew up and left home, he himself retired from active work long ago, and darkness and emptiness had long settled in his empty home. I felt something was wrong and asked him if there were any rituals in his house. “There are no rituals,” he replied, “many years ago we stopped observing them. They make no sense.” I advised him to ask his wife to light the Shabbat candles on the following Friday evening4. "Nonsense!" - he exclaimed. But I insisted and was very surprised by what he told me the next week when we met again. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, “but when I asked my wife to light the Shabbat candles, she began to cry and did what I asked. Since then, the house has been transformed for us and has become completely different!” And this is what happened. Firstly, an ancient ritual was restored in the house, and secondly, a woman regained her ancient right to create soft light that warms, animates and brings meaning. Few women understand how strong a man’s desire is to feel femininity nearby. However, this should not burden a woman, and she should not put this circumstance at the forefront, remaining internally lonely. As soon as a man discovers his inner femininity, he stops demanding from the woman nearby that she live only for his sake. But if a woman strives to give a man the most precious gift, if she really wants to satiate the greatest male hunger (a hunger that a man rarely demonstrates, but which constantly exists), she will be very feminine precisely at the moment when a man passionately desires this precious quality. The real truth is that by receiving the feeling of femininity from a woman at the moment when he needs it most, a man can again shoulder his burden and carry it without feeling tired.
Aphrodite solved the problem of the evolution of consciousness in a very unusual way! What was previously considered a chain of missteps and mistakes has turned into an amazing path of internal development. Cunning and insincere at heart, Aphrodite, in a fit of jealousy, did everything to force Psyche to become engaged to Death, a monster living high in the mountains. She sent her son, the god of love Eros, to arrange the wedding, but he accidentally pricked himself with one of his arrows and fell madly in love with Psyche. After this, at a critical moment of revelation, Psyche herself was injured by the love arrow of Eros and fell in love with the god of love!

To love means to go through from beginning to end the entire experience of connecting one human being with another. This means seeing a loved one as a real person and appreciating him for his ordinariness, flaws, originality and significance of the human person himself. If we can ever break through the fog of projection in which we spend most of our lives, we will begin to perceive the ordinary as exceptional. The whole problem is that we are blinded by our own projections; We rarely see another person as he is, appreciating his depth and nobility. Such love lasts a long time and exists along with the ordinariness of everyday life (“ordinariness”) in English - a derivative of the words “orderliness”). A certain meaning of such love is contained in the saying: “Everything is ground - there will be flour.” Love manifests itself in every event of everyday life; it does not need a superhuman scale5. A person works, communicates, makes mistakes, escapes and lives, caught up in the daily flow of events.

It has already been said that Psyche was the first mortal who managed to see the god of love in all his charm and remain alive to tell about it. This is the heart of our story - a mortal girl falls in love with God and, without losing faith in love, remains true to her human nature. The sublime end of this story is a direct consequence of the fact that Psyche remained true to herself and her love6.

Let's do a thought experiment: imagine that there is no one left on earth except you and one other person. Examine your relationship with this person throughout the day and notice how valuable he is to you. Just a little time will pass, and this person becomes the embodiment of a miracle for you. This concentration of attention on one object, which has an unearthly origin, is characteristic of the state of falling in love. Every person can find themselves in this state, but only by accident, sometimes for a short time. It is not at all like love, where “everything changes”, which lasts a long time and exists in the home." (If someone had told me twenty years ago that I would bring love and a long term together, I would have been shocked -van and, most likely, became very angry. But middle age brings small grains of wisdom).

Previously, the experience of contact with the divine principle primarily had a religious context; Now, having individual experience of deep experiences, we have gone far from these ideas. Nowadays, for ordinary people, romantic love is practically the only opportunity to come into contact with the divine. Falling in love is an exceptional opportunity to look at a person and see the divine essence behind him. It is not surprising that when we fall in love, we turn blind. We are close to a real person, but we turn our attention to something greater and more sublime than ordinary human existence. From a psychological point of view, this means that certain layers of our psyche that were formed even before this myth are affected. If you come into contact with the content of the archetype, you can simply be destroyed. Myth tells us that it may happen that a mere mortal may be influenced by an archetype. He can survive this impact only by radically changing. Mortals come into contact with unearthly reality and continue to live talking about what they managed to survive. In this context, one can understand what it means to be wounded by an arrow from the god of love. Every person could experience this amazing impact, which led to profound changes in the psyche. Falling in love is an incredibly powerful life experience that can only be compared to an explosion.

Asians have no idea about falling in love. They enter into relationships calmly, gradually, without drama, untouched by the arrows of Eros. Marriages are always prepared well in advance. According to tradition, the groom does not see his bride until the end of the marriage ceremony, until she takes off the flowers and garlands decorating her outfit. After this, following the script carefully laid out for the newlyweds, the groom leads the bride into the house. He saves the energy that we expend during the period of love until he enters the bridal chamber, where the gods and goddesses will give him great strength.

Our story is about a woman who came into contact with something greater than ordinary human experience. The rest of the myth tells how Psyche experienced this divine touch.
The revelation of his divine essence led Eros to unbearable suffering. The end of heavenly life came, for his true essence was revealed - not the divine groom at a disastrous wedding or the creator of heavenly pleasures, but the living embodiment of love. This revelation turned out to be very sensitive for him and no less painful than the glory of a deceiver and braggart who did less than he promised. How strange that our best abilities can cause so much pain! It is unlikely that everything can be foreseen in advance, but, nevertheless, this is exactly what happens in many life situations. My teacher told me an incident quite suitable for illustrating what was said above. A very excited young man came for a consultation after six months of analysis. "Well, this is all terrible!" - "What happened? Bad news?" - asked Tony, no less excited. - “But what happened, finally tell me!” - “Tony, my neurosis has disappeared, I don’t know how to live further!” The meaning of this example is absolutely clear. Losing the old way of adapting to reality is bad news for a person, even if he can adapt much better in a new way. Both Eros and Psyche were deeply wounded at the onset of the next stage of the evolutionary process, although for each of them the wound turned out to be beneficial and useful.

Eros fulfilled his promise: Psyche had a child. Of course, it was a girl, not a boy, and not a goddess, but a mere mortal. And Eros left Psyche. This is what happens in real life: the pleasures of heaven are replaced by the mundane and earthly.

So, Eros flew away to his mother, Aphrodite, and from now on will occupy very little place in our history. Poor Psyche will now continue her journey alone, although she has many more helpers than she thinks. Even the great devouring mother-in-law, Aphrodite, continues to take care of her throughout the winding and tangled path. At this time, a man can break the marriage ties and return to his parents' home. Or, without doing this physically, he can plunge into continuous silence, move to a superficial level of communication and not get involved emotionally. This means that he has returned to his mother's house - if not to his real mother, then to his mother complex. At this time, Aphrodite takes control of a woman’s consciousness.

Translation by V. Mershavka

Introduction

Greek The myth of Eros and Psyche is one of the most suitable narratives for the study of female psychology. This ancient pre-Christian myth, which has a long history of oral traditions, was first written down in the era of antiquity, and has not yet lost its deep meaning. This is not as strange as it might seem at first glance. Since the biological nature of man has remained unchanged since ancient times, his unconscious mental dynamics have not changed. Basic physiological and psychological needs remained constant all this time, while the form of their satisfaction changed from time to time. That is why, to study personality and basic types of human behavior, it is very useful to go to the earliest sources. They are able to show the true picture, although we do not always have the ability to recognize it. But having opened it, we begin to see a huge variety and change in the behavioral styles characteristic of our time. The Role of Myth Myths are rich sources of psychological insight. Great literature, like great art, conveys the characteristic features of human nature extremely accurately. Myths are a special kind of literature that does not have one author. They are created over the course of an entire era of a particular culture, absorbing all the richness of human imagination and activity, representing an extract of the spirit and experience related to this culture. It is very likely that the main content of the myth arises together with a certain motive; then the plot is repeatedly clarified and spreads like circles on the water exactly: in the same way, people constantly retell entertaining stories to each other. In this way, themes characteristic and universal for humanity remain alive, while individual people and entire eras fade into history. Myths are reflections of a collective image; they contain and convey to us universal human truths. Nevertheless, the common rationalistic definition of myth as a narrative with fictitious and fantastic content has strengthened in our consciousness. You often hear something like: “Yes, it’s just a myth, it’s complete fiction.” The details of a mythological story may not be confirmed in life or may even turn out to be absolute fantasy, but deep in the content of the myth lies a universal truth. A myth can be a fantasy or a product of the imagination, while remaining true and adequate to reality. It embodies many facets and levels of existence, including both the external rational world and the less comprehensible internal world. This confusion associated with a narrow definition of reality can be illustrated by the disturbing thoughts of a young boy following a nightmare. To calm him down, parents can persuade their son for as long as they like that it was just a dream, and the monster that appeared in it does not exist in life. But these persuasions do not convince the child, and he is right. For him, the monster was a reality, as alive and real as any other experience of events in the outside world. The dream monster existed in his head, and not in the bedroom, but still for the child it was a threatening situation, exciting him emotionally and physically. For him, it was his own inner reality, which was pointless to deny. Myths have been studied by many psychologists. C. G. Jung, exploring the deep levels of the human psyche, paid special attention to myths, because he believed that it was in them that the fundamental basis of the psychological structure was laid. Analyzing the myth of Eros and Psyche, we will try to find and comprehend it. First of all, we must learn to think psychologically. When we begin to come into contact with the content of myths, fairy tales and our own dreams, something very important happens. The terminology and world of old myths seem very strange, archaic and far from modernity, but by listening to them deeply and taking them seriously, we begin to hear and understand something. Sometimes there is a need to interpret symbolic meanings, but once you grasp the general meaning of the content, it is not at all difficult to do. Many psychologists have interpreted the myth of Eros and Psyche in terms of its relationship to female psychology. At the very beginning of our study, it makes sense to note that in a broader context we are talking about the manifestation of femininity in both men and women. To believe that this myth relates only to women is to significantly limit it. In one of his most profound insights, Jung noted that every woman has a number of masculine psychological traits that are not fundamental to her, just as every man has recessive female hormones and chromosomes. Jung called the feminine part of a man the anima, and the masculine part of a woman the animus. Enough has been written about anime and animus, and we, in turn, will say more about them later. From this point of view, when speaking about the manifestation of femininity in the myth of Eros and Psyche, we mean not only the woman, but also the anima of the man. The connection of this myth with female psychology can be considered the most obvious, for femininity is the predominant characteristic of a woman. At the same time, there is certainly a certain parallel with the inner femininity of male psychology.

Birth of Psyche

The beginning of the story

Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen, and they had three daughters. The two eldest are ordinary princesses, nothing remarkable. The third daughter is the embodiment of the human soul, even her name is appropriate - Psyche, or - translated from Greek - soul. She will take us with her on a journey into the depths of the inner world. Psyche has exactly the same relation to the mythical kingdom as to the earthly one. Do you recognize all three in yourself? Who will not be able to recognize the most ordinary part of himself, and at the same time - the unique spiritual self, which feels very uncomfortable in ordinary everyday life. The personality of this unusual princess was so attractive that people began to say: “This is the new Aphrodite, the goddess who will take her place in the temple of Aphrodite, for in all respects she will soon surpass her!” Aphrodite suffered and suffered, looking at the ashes left from the sacred fire in cooling temple, for her cult was giving way to the cult of a new beautiful maiden. In those days, Aphrodite was the goddess of femininity, who ruled for a long time, since exactly when - no one could remember. To see the rise of a new goddess of femininity was unbearable for her. Her rage and jealousy resembled the apocalypse; they will play a significant role in our history. To awaken divine wrath or demand a change in god or goddess is to shake the entire foundations of the inner world.

Elements of mythology

Let us pay attention to the origin of both goddesses - Aphrodite and Psyche. Chronos, the youngest and most cunning son of the sky god Uranus, castrated his father with a sickle and threw his genitals into the sea, thus impregnating him. Thus Aphrodite was born. The birth of Aphrodite was immortalized by Botticelli with his famous painting “The Birth of Venus” 1: the goddess emerges from the sea foam in all her feminine splendor. This birth seems to personify the unearthly nature of femininity in its archetypal form, which is in clear contrast with the human origin of Psyche, who, according to legend, was born from fallen dew. Pay attention to this amazing language! It becomes full of psychological insights if you are able to hear the timeless, archaic message it contains. By understanding the difference between these two births, one can understand the different nature of the two types of femininity. Aphrodite is a goddess born of the sea. She possesses the primitive oceanic feminine power, reigning since time immemorial in her domain - on the seabed. Psychologically this means that she rules in the unconscious, symbolized by the depths of the sea. It is almost inaccessible to ordinary consciousness: with the same success one can try to control the ebb and flow of the tides. This archetypal femininity can be admired, idolized, or crushed by it, but it is extremely difficult to connect with. Psyche's task is precisely to use her humanity to curb and soften the great oceanic archetypal feminine. This is the essence of the myth. Every woman has Aphrodite inside her. She can be recognized by her overflowing femininity and by the greatness that catches the eye, but has no specific relationship to reality. There are many interesting stories about Aphrodite and her dominion. For example, she has a servant who constantly carries a mirror in front of her, into which the goddess looks from time to time. Someone is preparing excellent perfume for her. Aphrodite is very jealous and intolerant of even the slightest rivalry. She constantly arranges marriages and is never satisfied. Everyone around should increase her wealth. The influence of Aphrodite affects the reflection of external experience in our own consciousness. To the same extent that a man is busy searching, exploring and disseminating something new, Aphrodite reflects and assimilates. The mirror of Aphrodite is a symbol of the most profound features of the goddess of love. She often invites a person to look at the reflection in the mirror, where he can see himself, hopelessly burdened with his projections, which were hitherto indistinguishable. The process of realizing what is happening can begin with the question of what exactly is being reflected. The answer to it will help a person avoid getting involved in a tangled tangle of emotions. All this can happen against the backdrop of external events. However, it is very important to imagine and understand that many phenomena of the inner world are hidden for us and appear as external events if they are not fully reflected in the subjective inner world, where they, in fact, arose. Aphrodite makes us look in the mirror more than we want. When a person falls in love and recognizes another as a god or goddess, he sees Aphrodite reflecting immortality or godlikeness. We are so unprepared to see both virtues and shortcomings in ourselves that between their reflection in consciousness and final acceptance there usually lies a long path of suffering. Psyche made a long journey that began with her falling in love with Eros and ended with the discovery of her immortality (2). Aphrodite is the great mother goddess from the point of view of her future daughter-in-law. When a woman brings her grace and beauty into the world, this indicates the influence of the internal energy of Aphrodite (or Venus). But if Aphrodite is in conflict with her daughter-in-law, she can be jealous, unyielding and creates obstacles for Psyche at every step. This kind of drama between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law is common in every culture; she contributes to the development of the personality of every young woman. For her, coping with the power of her mother-in-law means achieving female maturity. From that moment on, she is no longer a dewdrop, having naively entered the world and entered into marriage. The modern intelligent woman is very embarrassed to discover the essence of Aphrodite in herself, which manifests itself in primitive tricks and the play of instincts. Aphrodite often demonstrates her tyrannical nature, believing that her word is law. It is quite natural that at a certain stage of evolution, when a new incarnation of femininity appears, its previous incarnation is filled with anger. Aphrodite will use every means at her disposal to humiliate her rival. Every woman knows this, remembering the sudden regressive impulses of Aphrodite living deep inside; as soon as a woman becomes her prey, a terrible picture emerges. Only in a rare and very extraordinary family, at the moment of manifestation of her essence, can Aphrodite be called by her real name, and her energy sublimated for beneficial use. Aphrodite's energy is of great value. It serves the development of the individual and stimulates everyone around her to grow. At the moment of growth, all old ways of behavior and old habits must give way to new ones. It seems that the old constantly interferes with the emergence and development of the new, but with a certain persistence in the “old” consciousness, the shoots of the new arise and ripen. There is a parable about the first elephant born in captivity. At first the owner was very happy, but then he was horrified when he saw how the entire herd of elephants gathered in a circle and the adult elephants began to chase the newborn elephant in a circle from one elephant to another. The owner thought that they wanted to torture him to death, but the elephants simply forced the baby to breathe. Very often, at the moment something new appears, it seems that something very terrible has happened, but soon we begin to understand that exactly what was needed happened. Aphrodite, who can be constantly reproached, nevertheless creates all the necessary conditions for the evolution of Psyche. It's very easy to be optimistic after an event has happened, but it's damn hard when it's just happening. This may resemble an ongoing internal chaotic evolutionary struggle. Reflected in the nature of Aphrodite, the old way of life is regressive. He pulls the woman back into the unconscious, while simultaneously forcing her to move towards a new life, sometimes at great risk. It may happen that evolution will take a different path, or that the influence of Aphrodite will be the only stimulus for growth. For example, there are women who cannot reach maturity until they come face to face with a tyrannical mother-in-law or stepmother.

Internal struggle

Having learned something about the nature of Aphrodite, an ancient and therefore more primitive type of femininity, let's look at the new features of femininity that were formed later. Unlike Aphrodite, who was born in the sea foam, Psyche was born from dew that fell on the ground. This transition from the oceanic nature of Aphrodite to the earthly nature of Psyche speaks of a certain progress in the development of femininity from ancient oceanic traits to new human forms. So we move on. from oceanic proportions to a smaller, more comprehensible scale. Psyche is such a magical and unearthly creature, she is so innocent and virginal that she can only be worshiped, but cannot be judged. She is doomed to constant loneliness and cannot find a husband. Psyche exists within every woman as an incomparable experience of living alone. Any woman is, to some extent, a princess worthy of love, with unique perfections that are unique to her alone and a spiritual depth that is too great for ordinary everyday life. If a woman alone finds herself misunderstood by no one and believes that people are kind but far from her, it means that she has felt Psyche within herself. As a rule, this is a very painful sensation that a woman often experiences without understanding its nature. To fall into this state means to remain unaffected emotionally in relationships with others. If a woman gives the opportunity for the Psyche nature to manifest itself in everyday relationships like “you - to me, I - to you,” nothing good will come of it. When the essence of Psyche fills a large part of a woman’s inner world, it becomes a serious and painful problem for her. She will shed tears, wailing: “Nobody understands me.” And indeed it is. Every woman at any stage of life has this trait within her. If you see this quality in a woman and can touch it, the incomparable beauty and divine charm of Psyche can reach consciousness, and then a beneficial evolution will begin. If the woman is physically attractive, the problem is more complex. In this regard, a very typical example is the personality of Marilyn Monroe: despite universal worship, it was unimaginably difficult for her to find true intimacy in relationships with anyone. Eventually life became unbearable for her. It turned out that for such a woman, possessing divine traits and almost unattainable perfection, there are no simple human relationships in the world. If you understand this dynamic, you can imagine the evolution of Psyche. I once saw a film in which two people, completely devoid of any external attractiveness, loved each other. Thanks to the magic of fantasy, each of them was beautiful in the eyes of the other, and it turned out that love existed between two charming, attractive people. At the end of the film, the camera again showed their faces as they really were. But the audience already knew the different appearance of the characters, because they saw the god and goddess that existed within them, who were incomparably stronger and more powerful than the external unattractiveness of the heroes. This example demonstrates the abyss that exists between the inner divine nature of man and the external everyday life, the abyss to which our story is dedicated.

Marriage of Psyche

Psyche drove her parents into despair, because both of her older sisters had successfully married neighboring kings, and no one asked for the hand of the younger one. Men only idolized her. The king went to the oracle, not knowing that he was under the influence of Aphrodite, and she, full of indignation and hatred of Psyche, forced the oracle to predict a terrible future for Psyche! The girl was about to be betrothed to Death, the most evil, disgusting and powerful creature. According to the law, Psyche should have been sent high into the mountains, chained there to a rock and left until the ominous Death got her. In Ancient Greece, the predictions of oracles were not questioned, being considered an indisputable truth. Therefore, Psyche’s parents, fulfilling their sacred will, equipped a wedding cortege, which looked more like a funeral procession, seated Psyche there and brought her high into the mountains to a lonely rock. Here, in a stream of tears, the whiteness of wedding decoration and the gloom of funeral mourning were mixed. Then the parents extinguished the torches and left Psyche alone in the dark. What can we learn from this? Psyche married - but to death. In fact, every girl seems to die on the day of her wedding, because a certain stage of her life has ended. Many of the traits that characterize the feminine essence that existed until now die in her. In this sense, marriage for her is a funeral. Many characteristic details of marriage ceremonies have been introduced since ancient times from funeral rites. The groom comes with his best friend and cronies to kidnap the bride while the bridesmaids guard her virginity. As required by the ritual, a struggle arises between them, and the bride cries as if part of her life had died away. A new life begins for her, and the wedding celebration marks the emergence of a new matriarchal power. We do not fully appreciate the dual aspect of marriage and tend to see it only as festive white and pleasure. If the dying away of a part of the past life is not reflected in the corresponding rituals, it will still later manifest itself in an emotional mood and in a less acceptable form. For example, some women may feel very resentful and disgusted with the marriage after months or even years. In photographs taken at a wedding ceremony in Turkey, I saw boys of eight or nine years old, each jumping on one leg, with the other leg bent at the knee and tied to the thigh. This ritual was supposed to remind us that in marriage there is not only pleasure, but also pain. African weddings are not considered complete until the bride and groom have a certain number of scars and wounds. A marriage is not considered genuine unless there has been abduction. Marriage can be enjoyed after all the sacred ritual elements have been given their due. Aphrodite doesn't like it when girls die in the hands of men. She cannot allow a man to take her to the grave. Therefore, at the moment of the end of girlhood, Aphrodite cries in every woman. She continues to play her paradoxical role, on the one hand longing for marriage, and on the other resisting and mourning the loss of her girlhood. This echo of ancient rituals still lies deep within us and is most clearly manifested in the organization of rituals and ceremonies. Here we are again faced with the paradox of evolution. It was Aphrodite who sentenced Psyche to death, but she also acted as a matchmaker, a harbinger of marriage and at the same time its opponent. The progressive evolutionary process towards marriage is accompanied by regressive spurts of passionate desire to gain autonomy and freedom and restore the status quo. I once saw a very witty cartoon that reflected the archetypal power of marriage. It depicted the attitude of each of the parents to what was happening during the wedding. The newlywed's father was angry with the impudent man who dared to take his own daughter away from him. The husband's father experienced triumph, having become the owner of supreme power in male society. The newlywed's mother was horrified that the animal had taken possession of her child. The husband's mother was angry with the vixen who seduced and stole her son. This cartoon reflects many ancient archetypes, built-in and ingrained types of behavior and thinking in the human psyche, lying in the deep layers of the unconscious over countless years of the evolutionary process. If we do not pay attention to them in due time, they will make themselves known later and cause a lot of trouble.

Eros

Aphrodite intended to finally get rid of Psyche and for this she decided to use the help of her son, the god of love Eros. Eros, Cupid, Cupid are different names of one god - the god of love. Since Cupid has degraded to the level of playful love cards, and Cupid has to some extent lost his greatness, let us call this noble god Eros. Eros always had a full quiver of arrows with him, and a meeting with him promised trouble for every inhabitant of Olympus. All gods and goddesses felt the power. But Eros was under the thumb of his own mother, who forced him to inflame Psyche with love for the most disgusting beast in order to firmly bind her to him and thereby end the constant rivalry. One of the characteristic features of Aphrodite is constant regression. She wants everything to go back to the way it was before, for evolution to reverse. Aphrodite is the voice of tradition, but ironically it is she who helps further develop the plot of our story. There are many levels to defining the role of Eros. He can be thought of as an abstract man, a husband, or the masculine side in human relationships; it can symbolize union and harmony; at the climax of the story, Eros is not just sexuality. It should be remembered that he shoots his arrows not at the genitals, but at the heart. Further, as the mythological plot develops, we will talk in more detail about these features of Eros.

Marriage with death

Eros went to carry out his mother's orders, but when he saw Psyche, he accidentally wounded his finger with one of his arrows and immediately fell in love. He decided to declare Psyche his bride and asked his friend named the West Wind to very carefully carry her from the mountain top to Paradise Valley. The West Wind did everything he was asked to do, and Psyche, who was awaiting the arrival of Death, suddenly found herself in an earthly paradise. She did not ask Eros anything, but only enjoyed herself, shocked by the unexpected turn of fate. Instead of Death, Eros came to Psyche, but despite its unearthly beauty, it nevertheless meant death for her. All husbands bring death to their wives in the sense that they deprive them of their girlhood life and push them towards evolution and female maturity. Paradoxically, you may simultaneously feel gratitude and resentment towards the person who forces you to humiliate yourself in order to begin the path of personal growth. The oracle was absolutely right: in an archetypal sense, a man is death to a woman. When a man sees the sad expression on his companion’s face, this means that the time has come for him to be affectionate and helpful. Perhaps at this moment she, to some extent, feels the dying of her girlhood. If a man is polite and understanding at this moment, he can greatly alleviate this difficult period of experience for a woman. Without an exact analogue in his own life, a man rarely understands that marriage for a woman is both death and resurrection. A wedding is not a sacred ceremony for a man, but for a woman it is very much so. One day the wife may look at her husband with eyes filled with horror, discovering that she is completely bound by the marriage, while he is not in the least degree. This connection is felt especially strongly if there are children. A woman can be offended by fate as much as she wants, but for her not to follow this path is worse than death. There are fifty-year-old women who, despite the fact that they are already grandmothers, have never been to the Rock of Death. The fallen earth's dew does not obscure the whole world for them, even in middle age. On the other hand, there are young sixteen-year-old girls who have known this experience, gone through it and survived it. They can be recognized by the look of amazing wisdom hidden in the depths. Such events do not happen automatically at any particular age. I knew a sixteen-year-old girl who had a child. She hid her pregnancy and childbirth, so that everything would be quiet and calm, and then gave it away the child to a shelter, and it turned out that she practically did not see him. Returning to her old life as if nothing had happened, she learned nothing from the Rock of Death. Some time later she got married, and if anyone could be called a virgin, she would be the first contender. Psychologically, she was completely unaffected, despite the fact that she went through childbirth. A collision with Eros inevitably leads to a farewell to female naivety and childish innocence, and it can occur at different moments in a woman’s life, and not just at the time of marriage. Many girls experienced this encounter very early, their experience was very cruel; others may not have known him at all. Marriage is a completely different experience for a man and a woman. It seems to make a man taller, gives him more strength and power, his importance and the statue increase. As a rule, the husband does not realize that he is killing Psyche in his wife and that he must do it. If she behaves strangely, everything turns out very badly, or endless sobs and streams of tears continue, this is due to the fact that the man usually does not understand that he and she perceive marriage completely differently. A woman also grows and develops in marriage, but this happens only after her stay on the Rock of Death.

Garden of Eden

Psyche found herself in a magical paradise. Everything she could possibly want was there. Her husband, the god Eros, was with her every night and limited her to only one thing. He made a promise that she would not look at him and watch where he went. She can have whatever she wants, live in paradise as long as she wants, but she must not ask any questions or even try to look at him. Psyche agreed to this. Almost every man wants the same from his wife. If she minds her own business and does not try to understand too much, peace and tranquility reigns in the house. A man wants an old patriarchal marriage, where he decides all the most important issues, and the woman can only agree with his decisions, and then everything will be all right. Most men cherish the hope that everything will happen exactly like this and that someday, very soon, married life will be exactly like this. Probably, this attitude towards marriage is an echo of the primitive patriarchal mentality, where the woman completely belonged to the man. In our modern traditions, traces of patriarchal customs are still preserved in some ways: for example, when a wife takes her husband’s surname. Eros insists that she not ask any questions and never look at him - these are the conditions of a patriarchal marriage. Every immature Eros is the creator of paradise. Like a teenager, he kidnaps a girl and promises her a life full of happiness. This is the main secret of Eros: he wants to find his paradise, but without the slightest responsibility and serious conscious attitude. To one degree or another, this is inherent in every man. Femininity is necessary for evolution and personal growth, and maximum emphasis in myths is placed on the elements of femininity. For a man it is a terrible ordeal. He just wants to stay in heaven. Listen to lovers creating a paradise for themselves. And the whole conversation, and each word separately, seemed to come from another, heavenly world. The paradise they create may be a harbinger of a true paradise which, with great effort, can be achieved much later. One should not be too critical of this premature Eden, but every experienced person knows that the first impression of it cannot be long-lasting and stable. There is something in a man’s unconscious that feeds him with the hope of getting his wife’s consent not to ask him anything. Often his attitude towards marriage is that for him marriage should be convenient, but not burdensome. If a man is focused on something, he wants to be free and forget about being married. When a woman suddenly discovers this attitude in a man, she may be shocked. Marriage is a complete commitment for a woman, and for a man there is no hopelessness in it. I remember one woman saying that she cried for days after discovering that marriage was just one of many aspects of life for her husband, while for her he played the main role. So she from the wing of Eros, who is building paradise, in her husband.

Losing paradise

Every paradise has a flaw. Each one contains a snake, representing the complete opposite of the peace and tranquility that reigns in the Garden of Eden. And in the paradise where Psyche lived, a snake soon appeared in the guise of her two older sisters, who mourned, although we very sincerely, the loss of the youngest. When they learned that Psyche, having married God, lived in the Garden of Eden, their jealousy knew no bounds. Approaching the foot of the cliff where they left Psyche, they began to call her, worrying about her health and wishing her all the best. The naive Psyche informed Eros about this. Her husband repeatedly warned her about the impending danger. He said that if she listened to the sisters chasing her, disaster would happen. If Psyche continues to not ask him anything, she will have a child who will be an immortal god, but if she breaks her oath and asks a question, then a girl will be born who will be a mere mortal. Even worse, at the very first question, Eros will leave her. Then Psyche again agreed not to ask her husband anything. But the sisters called her again and again, and finally Psyche begged her husband for permission to let them visit her. A little time passed, and the sisters, brought from a high cliff by the West Wind, safe and sound, found themselves in the magnificent Garden of Eden. They admired and enjoyed as much as they could. But they were filled with envy and jealousy for their younger sister. They bombarded her with questions about her husband, and the naive Psyche tried to describe how she imagined him, for she had never seen him. She gave the sisters a pile of unusual and rare gifts and sent them home. Eros constantly warned Psyche, but the sisters soon reappeared. This time Psyche, forgetting everything she had previously said about her husband, told them another fantasy. Upon returning home, the sisters thought for a long time and came up with a cunning and insidious plan, which consisted of this: when they came to visit their sister for the third time, they would tell her that in reality her husband was a terrible, disgusting snake. As soon as A a child will be born, the husband will devour him along with his mother. But they want to save Psyche from such a terrible end. To stay alive, she must do the following: take a lamp, place it in a vessel, cover it with a blanket and place it in the bedroom. In addition, she should sharpen the knife and hide it near the bed. In the dead of night, when her husband is fast asleep, she will light a lamp, finally see her terrible husband and cut off his head. Psyche could not resist the pressure of her sisters for long and, heeding their advice, began to prepare to expose her terrible husband. Eros returned home after dark, lay down on the bed next to Psyche and fell asleep. At midnight she took the cover off the lamp, grabbed a knife, rose above her husband and looked at him for the first time. To the greatest surprise and embarrassment, filled with guilt, she saw before her the god of love, the most beautiful of all existing on Olympus. Amazed and shocked by what she saw, Psyche decided to kill herself, paying for her terrible mistake. She was already ready to do this, but awkwardly took the knife and dropped it. At the same time, she accidentally pricked herself with one of the arrows of Eros and fell madly in love with her husband, whom she saw for the first time in her life. Suddenly her hand holding the lamp trembled, and a drop of hot oil fell on Eros’s right shoulder. . Waking up from severe pain, he realized what had happened, immediately spread his wings and flew away. Poor Psyche clung to him, but her strength was only enough to be carried away outside the Garden of Eden. Abandoned, she fell to the ground and lay grief-stricken, completely alone. Eros flew up to her with a reproach that she did not listen to him and, having broken her word, lost the Garden of Eden. And he added that it would be as he had warned: she would have a child, a girl, a mere mortal. And now he must punish Psyche for disobedience and leave her. Having said this, he flew away to his mother Aphrodite.

Contemporary drama

At different times, the spouses play out this drama again and again. What message does this archaic, poetic, mythological language convey to us about a woman and her relationship with a man and her inner masculinity? Sisters are irritated voices heard inside us, and often from the outside, which have a dual function: the destruction of the previous attitude towards life and the awareness of a new one. During morning coffee, a scene often plays out where two sisters are plotting their evil plan. They often fulfill their dual mission of challenging the old patriarchal world and inciting each other to realize what is happening, the cost of which may be much higher than they imagine. We are probably paying a Promethean price to fully realize what we so passionately desire. Interrogating sisters are a scary sight. Despite the fact that they are harbingers of awareness, there is still a danger for every woman to linger and freeze at this stage of development, remaining destructive throughout her subsequent life. You may see men as the source of your troubles, remaining on the rock of Death; in the same way, you can find yourself in the state of two older sisters and destroy everything that a man tries to create. As a rule, a woman goes through a very unusual and perplexing sequence of relationships with her partner. A man for her can be the god of love, and Death on the top of a rock, and someone unknown in paradise, and a very receptive person with her persistent desire to understand something. And finally, when she comes to her own divinity on the summit of Olympus, he appears before her as the god of love. All this confuses a man. It should not be surprising that every day, when he comes home, he timidly looks around, trying to understand exactly what role is assigned to him today. Now add in the inclusion of his own anima and you have a very complex but entertaining plot. The sisters personify the requirement of evolution, the source of which is unknown to us. This may be the shadow of Psyche. Jung described the shadow sides of personality as repressed elements or as yet unrealized possibilities of full personal potential. Due to lack of attention and obstacles to development, these unlived and repressed traits remain archaic or, going into the shadows, become dangerous. Despite the repression, this hidden potential for good or evil remains in the unconscious, where it accumulates energy until it finds a way out into consciousness, just as her sisters appeared at a critical moment in Psyche’s life. If we look into ourselves, recognizing only the presence of love and generosity, as happened with Psyche, we will underestimate the existing shadow side. This will lead to the fact that we will be forced to leave the naive paradise in which it was so comfortable, and we will go in search of new discoveries of our true essence. Jung said that the desire for personal growth often arises in the mind from the shadows. Therefore, the same sisters, playing a less rather than more pleasant and completely unsightly role in Psyche’s life, still conscientiously serve her 3.