Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of ThoughtJung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Philosophy
Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of Thought
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Libido (Psychology); Mother and child; Psychoanalysis; Subconsciousness; Symbolism (Psychology)
We come across a similar symbolism in the myth of Ogyges, the mythical
king who rules in Egyptian Thebes and whose wife was appropriately named
Thebe. The Bœotian Thebes founded by Cadmus received on that account a
surname, “Ogygian.” This surname was also given to the great flood, as
it was called “Ogygian” because it occurred under Ogyges. This
coincidence will be found later on to be hardly accidental. The fact
that the city and the wife of Ogyges bear the same name indicates that
somewhere a relation must exist between the city and the woman, which is
not difficult to understand, for the city is identical with the woman.
We meet a similar idea in Hindoo lore where Indra appears as the husband
of Urvara, but Urvara means “the fertile land.” In a similar way the
occupancy of a country by the king was understood as marriage with the
ploughed land. Similar representations must have prevailed in Europe as
well. Princes had to guarantee, for example, a good harvest at their
accession. The Swedish King Domaldi was actually killed on account of
the failure of the harvest (Ynglinga sâga 18). In the Rama sâga the hero
Rama marries Sîtâ, the furrow of the field.[424] To the same group of
ideas belongs the Chinese custom of the Emperor ploughing a furrow at
his ascension to the throne. This idea of the soil being feminine also
embraces the idea of continual companionship with the woman, a physical
communication. Shiva, the Phallic God, is, like Mahadeva and Parwati,
male and female. He has even given one-half of his body to his consort
Parwati as a dwelling place.[425] Inman[426] gives us a drawing of a
Pundite of Ardanari-Iswara; one-half of the god is masculine, the other
half feminine, and the genitals are in continuous cohabitation. The
motive of continuous cohabitation is expressed in a well-known lingam
symbol, which is to be found everywhere in Indian temples; the base is a
female symbol, and within that is the phallus.[427] The symbol
approaches very closely the Grecian mystic phallic basket and chests.
(Compare with this the Eleusinian mysteries.) The chest or box is here a
female symbol, that is, the mother’s womb. This is a very well-known
conception in the old mythologies.[428] The chest, basket or little
basket, with its precious contents, was thought of as floating on the
water; a remarkable inversion of the natural fact that the child floats
in the amniotic fluid and that this is in the uterus.
This inversion brings about a great advantage for sublimation, for it
creates enormous possibilities of application for the myth-weaving
phantasy, that is to say, for the annexation to the sun cycle. The Sun
floats over the sea like an immortal god, which every evening is
immersed in the maternal water and is born again renewed in the morning.
Frobenius says:
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