What strikes one so much in the Egyptian religion and was recognized by the Greeks and the Romans is also the strange concretism of what we would call an idea. There was, for instance, a belief in immortality attained through chemical treatment of the corpse—an incredible, primitive-magic concretism! In the museum of Cairo there is a papyrus21 with the prescription for the embalming of the corpse: “See that the head does not fall back; remove the intestines, which will decay. . . .” It is a complete description of what should happen with the corpse, together with the exact words, the liturgy, and the texts, which had to be repeated during the execution of the work. Words and work went together. Everything was done concretely in such a way as to make the human being actually chemically immortal.
This concretism only apparently disappeared; it emerged secretly again in Christianity as the concretistic “reality of metaphysical facts.” The old primitive concretism, therefore, makes it quite impossible for many people to discuss facts in an objective empirical way. It provokes a kind of fanatical obsession of ideas inspired by the anima which much too often blocks every scientific understanding. There is always the hope that “somewhere” the ideas must have an absolute reality, but this does not allow any psychological discussion. Psychology is treated as “nothing but” psychology, a minor reality in relation to the “absolute truth.” This is where the depreciation of the feminine Goddess has led!
In the Jewish religion this very same concretism appears in the Law. In certain circles of Orthodox Jews at one time it was an important legal problem whether an electric light might be lit on the Sabbath, since it is forbidden to kindle a fire on that day; this was a matter of serious discussion. The mother goddess is not officially recognized in the Jewish religion. So she is hidden in the material aspect of the Law and in the idea that the announced kingdom of the Messiah will be on this earth, in other words, material.
All totalitarian political views, regardless of their orientation, proceed along the same lines. They preach beliefs that are completely concretistic, namely that the “kingdom of heaven” must be established here, and only here, on the earth, at any cost. For them, blessings, happiness, and psychic equilibrium are to be attained solely on earth. If one believes in such a Marxist, Fascist, or any other such ideology, one is saved, and if not, one is killed. Here the concretism of ideas reaches its climax.
However, in our day, this one-sided materialism has become obsolete, for modern physics has recognized that one must give up attempting to describe matter in itself and be content with creating mathematical models, in other words, psychic ideas about it. In fact, as Jung remarked, the psyche is the only reality that we can know through immediate experience. The names “material” or “spiritual” are no more than formal distinctions that we give to our psychic experiences; the first concerns those experiences that come to us from outside and from our bodies; the second are the inner experiences. This duality of perception is inherent in the structure of our conscious ego, but in the domain of the unconscious it does not seem to exist. As Jung formulated, outside this duality of our perception the world is probably one, an unus mundus,22 which transcends our conscious awareness. Rightly then, modern physics begins to be interested in parapsychological phenomena.23 On the higher coil of the spiral we are found therewith at a point in time which corresponds to the period in which the curiosity (curiositas) of Lucius-Apuleius toward the occult was awakened!
Although the secret of matter was recognized only a little in the Christian-Catholic Church and not at all in the Protestant, it survived in concealed form in alchemy, whose whole attempt consisted in finding “the divine soul in the prima materia.” Jung has elaborated on this in Psychology and Alchemy24 and in Mysterium Coniunctionis and has tried to bring back to our consciousness the relation to the “goddess” of matter, appearing in alchemy as the mother goddess Materia, or as a feminine anima mundi, as the soul in cosmic matter, and in other texts as Mater Alchemia, or even directly as Isis.
The second aspect of the goddess, mentioned before, which got lost as soon as she was interpreted as Ecclesia, was her aspect as a personal human being. Thus, the Eros principle—that is, the individual relation and warmth—was substituted by an organization, consisting of laws and hierarchies. This loss has become today so obvious and severe that we do not need to discuss it at length. It is the human problem of our time par excellence.
12
Matter and the Feminine
The next morning, on a beautiful spring day, the procession toward the sea in honor of the goddess Isis begins. The festival is celebrated after winter, when the ships and boats go to sea again, and the people carry lamps and lights down to the sea in order to launch the first ship. In the procession the priests of the mystery cult carry different symbols of the goddess,1 which all have a deep symbolic meaning.
One of the priests carries a golden lamp in the form of a ship, indicating that the light of the goddess carries one across the waters of the unconscious. Other priests carry small altars with gods on them, corresponding to the Egyptian custom of bathing the statues of the gods and then returning them to the temple. One carries the caduceus of Mercury, and the symbol of justice is alluded to by the left hand of Isis, carried by another priest. This custom goes back to a time more ancient than the Egyptian civilization, for the left hand is a very ancient apotropaic talisman. In Islam it later became the hand of Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed, which today still protects one against the evil eye.
Another object, carried by the priests, is a golden vessel in the form of a breast, a symbol of the mother goddess, dispenser of milk and nourishment. A libation of milk was always poured on the tomb of Osiris, for milk was supposed to have the power to nourish and revive the dead.2 From a historical perspective, it is interesting that Zosimos of Panopolis, the Graeco-Egyptian alchemist whose visions Jung has analyzed,3 writes at some length in a treatise about this “vessel in the form of a breast,” which the alchemists used in their work. He says that this breastlike vessel was a holy “secret of the art,” so here there is an immediate and factual connection between a symbol of the Isis mysteries and one of the earliest alchemical documents.4 There is actually a tremendous amount of connection between these two worlds. Zosimos, as an Egyptian, was certainly acquainted with the Isis mysteries and therefore used the vessels and instruments of her cult in an alchemical way. The next object carried is a golden basket for corn. This is also a symbol for Osiris, who dies and is resurrected like the corn. In the museum at Cairo there is a corn mummy in the form of Osiris, which was covered with linen and watered and kept damp so that corn grew on it. This was part of the resurrection ritual.
After this there follow in the procession a vessel which is not described and then a priest with the statue of Anubis. He is the one who is responsible for the whole ritual of mummification in Egypt, for Anubis, the god with a jackal’s head, according to the myth, found the bones of the dead Osiris and put them together again.
All the objects which are carried in the procession have a specific meaning. Some point to Isis and others to Osiris. But then the text emphasizes an especially holy symbol: a small round shining gold jar, covered with hieroglyphs, with a mouthpiece on one side, and a broad handle on which is a coiled serpent on the other. Apuleius does not give the deeper significance of this jar, but he says that it is “incredibly holy” and that one “must honour it in deep silence.” This round golden vessel reminds us first of all of the holy mystical vessel in alchemy, which was considered as a symbol of cosmic totality. Zosimos, for instance, says of the alchemical vessel that it is a round cup which represents the totality of the cosmos and in which the holy alchemical process takes place.5 In alchemy it represents the all-embracing principle and the concept (concipere, “to conceive”) of the contained thing; that is, the psychological attitude, or the approach toward matter, toward the mystery in alchemy. This symbolizes self-concentration and the absolutely essential introversion needed for this proper approach t
oward matter and the mystery of the cosmos. All this is symbolized by the vessel, and some alchemical philosophers even say that the lapis philosophorum, the philosopher’s stone, in the vessel and the vessel itself are the same thing, a different aspect of the same mystery. For Apuleius the vessel probably represents Osiris. I was delighted to find that Merkelbach comes to the same conclusion. Innumerable jars and vessels have been found in Egypt with human heads on them representing Osiris. He was also very often represented just by a vessel filled with Nile water. That was the holiest symbol, the unspeakable symbol; in its meaning it would correspond to the transubstantiated host, the great mystery in the Catholic Church.
Like other symbols, this vessel symbol, too, has its very deep primitive roots originating in Central Africa and has come down the Nile into Egypt. Leo Frobenius found tribes on the Upper Nile which had the following burial custom: when the chief died (the chief was the carrier of divine mana, the divine power, which was incarnated in him), his corpse was put in a hut by itself and placed over a kind of grid. Underneath that a vessel was put, into which the secretions of the corpse slowly dripped. After a while the corpse became dried out, and in the vessel appeared an unappetizing kind of juice, usually full of worms and larvae. This was put into a separate vessel because it was the soul which had left the body through these liquids. The vessel was then closed, except for one hole into which a little bamboo stick was placed as an opening. This was watched day and night, and when a worm or insect came out, it was believed that now the soul had come out. The vessel was then closed completely, and the dried-out corpse and the vessel were placed separately in a cave. Here the vessel with the liquid in it represents the spiritual soul essence of the dead king. It was believed that the soul, which left the vessel as an insect, went into the successor who then became the representative of the divine principle. (In Egypt the insect is the scarab.) In some other tribes there are somewhat divergent customs, but the idea is always of the transmission of the soul and spirit essence of the dead king into the continuing series of kings, or chiefs, of the tribe.
So the vessel contains the psychic essence of the god-king during his transformation from death to rebirth. According to Egyptian mythology, it would represent Osiris in the process of his transformation into Horus.6 When Osiris is dead Isis holds the vessel of his soul substance.7 Later he is reborn from there as Horus, the new sun god, the sun child. Seen psychologically, it is the mysterious moment of the transformation, when our conscious idea of the god is “dead” and is reborn in the unconscious. The mystery of the vessel represents for the Egyptians the secret of the death and the rebirth of the sun god. This vessel of the Isis mysteries continued in the mystery of the Holy Grail, which is a close parallel. According to the legend, Christ appeared to Joseph of Aramathea and gave him a vessel containing the blood from his wounded side, confiding it to him as the secret of the Grail tradition. So there again is the living substance of the dead god, the hidden secret which guarantees his life on earth. When Christ died he took his body with him. He left no relics of his earthly life except his blood, which the early Christian mystics interpreted as his psychic life, the anima Christi, which lived on in the Grail vessel.
That is how the story of the Grail tradition started in the Middle Ages. It is the mystery of the vessel containing the secret of the death and rebirth of the god image, the numinous possibility of the rebirth of the Horus child, of the god symbol, the symbol of the Self, which is no longer a partial principle but again comprises the totality of existence. Horus is identical with the reborn Osiris when he leaves the vessel. After that comes the sunrise. Primitive tribes make gestures of worship not to the sun, but to that numinous moment when the sun rises.8 When the sun is a bit over the horizon it is no longer divine. Sunrise, the aurora consurgens,9 is the moment when the realization of the Self appears out of the vessel of the unconscious psyche. It can perhaps be best described, or amplified, by modern African material whence this Egyptian and Grail symbolism mostly comes.
In Abomey, Nigeria, there lived natives who worshipped the oracle god called Gbaadu. He personified the truth which expresses itself in oracles.10 It was said that Gbaadu represented the highest degree of self-knowledge that a human being can attain. A parallel is the god Fa. Fa’s names consist also of an entire African sentence: “The sun rises and the walls become rose-colored.” And an old medicine man added: “When one understands the truth, it is as if the sun rises and the gray walls become rose-colored.” This is Horus-Osiris, when he comes out of the vessel!
The ass Lucius sees the procession pass by and, following his own dream, searches for the eyes of the priest who carries a wreath of roses. As soon as he sees him, he presses through the crowd. The priest, having been ordered in a dream to do so, stretches the roses toward the ass, who succeeds in eating them. As soon as Lucius eats the flowers he loses his ass form, which falls off like a coat, and he stands there as a naked man. The priest calls to someone to bring him a linen garment and then addresses Lucius in front of everybody, telling that now he is free and saved by the great goddess Isis and must therefore become her servant. Everyone is amazed, and the people acclaim the goddess. Then the procession continues:
I was not deceived of the promise made onto me: for my deform and assy face abated, and first the rugged hair of my body fell off, my thick skin waxed soft and tender, my fat belly became thin, the hoofs of my feet changed into toes, my hands were no more feet but returned again to the work of a man that walks upright, my neck grew short, my head and mouth became round, my long ears were made little, my great and stony teeth waxed less, like the teeth of men, and my tail, which before cumbered me most, appeared nowhere. Then the people began to marvel, and the religious honoured the Goddess for so evident a miracle, which was foreshadowed by the visions which they saw in the night, and the facility of my reformation, whereby they lifted their hands to heaven and with one voice rendered testimony of so great a benefit which I received of the Goddess.11
In antiquity, roses were sacred to Aphrodite-Venus and to Dionysos and symbolized eros. One found wreaths of roses in sepulchers, where they probably represented the “victory wreath” that the dead received after their resurrection.12
Then the text relates that Lucius turns back to the beloved figure of the goddess and settles down in a house inside her holy area (temenos) where he lives for a long time before receiving his initiation:
I went again before the face of the Goddess, and hired me a house within the cloister of the temple, since I had been set apart for the service of the Goddess that hitherto had been kept private from me, so that I might ordinarily frequent the company of the priests, whereby I would wholly become devout to the Goddess, and an inseparable worshipper of her divine name: nor was there any night nor sleep but that the Goddess appeared to me, persuading and commanding me to take the order of her religion whereto I had been long since foreordained. But I, although I was endued with a desirous goodwill, yet the reverend fear of the same held me back, considering that as I had learned by diligent enquiry her obeisance was hard, the chastity of the priests difficult to keep, and the whole life of them, because it is set about with many chances, to be watched and guarded very carefully. Being thus in doubt, I refrained myself from all those things seeming impossible, although in truth I was hastening towards them.13
This passage refers to an institution widespread in antiquity called katoché. The katochoi were people who, gripped and possessed by a god or a goddess, dedicated themselves to their service and lived within the walls or courtyard of the temple over months or even years. These people were exempt from taxes and, if condemned to prison, could not be taken from the temple. Therefore, some interpreters assumed that all this had nothing to do with ecstatic possession by the divinity, but simply that these people took refuge in the sanctuary only to escape the police or anyone else who was after them. From the psychological viewpoint, however, quarrels about this subject are sterile. One could say simply that it means
to be under the domination of an archetype, or in the service of an archetypal figure, in a state of trance or inner transformation. The katachos submitted himself voluntarily to captivity which could last for years and withdrew from the outer world. A criminal also who would find refuge in the temple was virtually imprisoned; for if he put a foot outside he was caught; if he had committed some misdemeanor, he had the choice of a secular or a religious prison—in either case it was a prison.
About thirty years ago a papyrus was found written by a man named Ptolemaios, who lived in the katoché of a Serapis temple in Egypt. He wrote down his dreams, which was obligatory, and it seems as though the priests had interpreted them. If one read Artemidoros’s dream book, one would think that people dreamed differently then, dreaming only of synchronistic events, and that they had only “big dreams.” But, this is not true. It is just that in the scientific dream literature of antiquity, only such dreams were recorded. But in this papyrus of Ptolemaios the dreams of an ordinary man were preserved, and they are quite ordinary. He dreamed of his family, of money problems, and so on. These dreams are not understandable for us, because we do not have the personal associations, but at least we know through them that those people dreamed exactly as we do, though the rest of the literature recounts in detail only the archetypal dreams. In the temenos or the katoché around the temple there were even priests who specialized in the interpretation of dreams.14 So those in the katoché were actually “in analysis.” The procedure was the same as today except that the conclusions drawn from the dreams were somewhat different. So the katoché was a voluntary state of complete introversion and concentration on one’s dream life.15
The Golden Ass of Apuleius Page 23