Mythical characters in dreams and mythical tradition

Animus, anima and the soul

In interpreting the stories as dreams I had to give up from many of the folkloristic methods and approaches and trust my knowledge based in the interpretation of dreams. An especially important difference to the logical methods is to see the mothers and the fathers, and also sisters and brothers and their representatives,  in stories often in part of the hero. They are images to express the hero’s or heroine’s  feelings and experiences.  Also the opposite part, the future spouse is seen as part of hero’s or heroine’s person. So most often I interpret all mothers and fathers expressing hero’s or heroine’s  experiences with his or hers father or mother. In my opinion, their is no clear difference between them in dreams and in fairy tales. This is the clear result of the process of free association. The mother or father that can come into the mind can be any of the mothers the dreamer has experienced.  In dreams for example the mother of the spouse is expressing the feelings connected to the mother of dreamer.  All mothers are but mothers and also all fathers are but fathers.  In interpretation we have to start from the meaningful connection. This will show the  meaning of the situation which we are discussing.

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The essence of mythical tradition derives from symbolism associated with diverse archetypes. For this very reason, the interpretation of these symbols is to be carried out within the tradition related to them, the mythical heritage. On a subconscious level, the various archetypes share firm and solid connections with one another. The pantheon of each culture constitutes a family mythology, with all the archetypes finding their ’niche’, their individual places, within the divine family. The problems inherent to growing up in a family are also easily found in schematic patterns within the divine network of relationships. The ancient Greeks were far-sighted in depicting their gods as human. This enables us to better understand that the gods live within us, and are not a separate, outside part of us. Symbolic interpretation will include in the divine drama. The interpretation, therefore, may incite and arouse the most touching and intensive sensations. No wonder, the typical myth came into existence for the very purpose of moving people, touching the humaneness in us.

Mythical characters in dreams and mythical tradition

Almost invariably, the various personalities manifesting the characters in dreams, fairy tales, folktales, and myths are representations of archetypal actors. The archetypal nature of these characters are not always easy to recognize. Archetypes are certain ways to grow in human family. They are by their nature complex of associative connections, which leads to certain emotions, reactions, and possible ways to behave.To understand human life, and stories we are creating is to recognize archetypes. This means to understand free associations in different situation, in different moods in us; how our mind moves from one thing to another. By recognizing the associative connections in dreams, we can make everyday life clearer and more understandable to us. Our subconscious mind acts more productively in the dream. We can get from dreams very good guidance for daily life. So, our inner wisdom, the soul, can also be turned into everyday practice.

During our working hours, the characters of dreams and mythical tradition render their energies to our actions. It is these very images that are the only active thing in us. Also, our conscious self consists of some of these characters, but its energies are subconscious. This may be instanced by Athena, the archetype of the ’Daddy’s girl’, who, in everything she does, acts on reason and seeks to have a complete control over her life. What an individual believes to be his or her conscious mind, can be a complex mixture of a great number of archetypal characters. It is essential for us to understand that our conscious mind, whatever our conception of it may be, is not the motor driving conscious activities.

     The real determinants for our every day life will become most clearly manifest in our dreams, and this is why it is advisable and worthy of the effort to try and recognize them in dreams, albeit the everyday personages, those present in our daily lives, will seldom manifest themselves in our dreams in their ’normal’, or ’real’ roles. Instead, they are something like actors (in the theatrical sense), ’dramatis personae’ in a play dramatized by the soul. In short: during the day, we act the same drama as in the night; during the night only the play is more readily recognizable. In our everyday routine, we can, if we pay more attention to it, discover that our moods are governed by a certain ’atmosphere’, or spirit. It is in these spirits or atmospheres that one can more easily find the real archetypal characters. If, for instance, my superior irritates me by giving me foolish instructions, I can soon detect that he or she is wearing the mask of my irritating father or mother. The roots of this irritation lie in the fact that, during my childhood, my parents have left within me unprocessed emotions, which remain an element that disturbs my spiritual release. Again and again, this irritates me, since it prevents me from working in peace and quiet following the way that best suits my personality. During the night, this self-same superior may appear in my dreams, through which my connection with the respective parent and the situation in which this disturbance arose can manifest itself in a plain form.

     The whole network of friends and acquaintances illustrate, each in accordance with their essential characteristics, their archetypal significance to the person dreaming about them. The dream will bring forth personalities representing such archetypal figures as carry an emotional disturbance the present life of the dreamer. It is these unprocessed, incomplete relationships, that, in particular carry us back to the emotional shocks experienced in childhood - shocks that tend to haunt our lives, sometimes even until death. The dream brings forth these phantoms so that we could release them and, in return, be rid of them. A great number of ’ghost stories’ link with situations where a haunting spirit, in other words, the emotional condition remaining undealed with, seeks to become manifest by its haunting. As soon as the matter has been dealt with, the haunting phantom disappears.

     Mythical tradition describes family traumas, since it is in the intra-family events that we become stuck with. This is one of the singular features of man; nearly everybody has a traumatic family history behind him. In mythical tradition, these archetypal characters manifest when in fairy tale characters, when in gods and goddesses. Any particulars associated with their personal character must not be detrimental to our ability to orientate ourselves with their realm. In other words, the various personages of a fairy tale may be equally important or ’sacred’ as gods or goddesses appear to be to us. Accordingly, even if this study relies a great deal to the archetypal gods and goddesses functioning within us, as delineated by Ms Shinoda Bolen in her works, they are to be regarded as mere archetypal actors, nothing less, nothing more. Gaining a deep, intuitive, glance into any of these gods or goddesses is nothing ’sacred’ in itself, for any divinities linking with the father, mother, brother or sister within us may be truly demonic archetypal actors. Like any ’lesser’ characters, these are also to be closely studied and then discarded and released, for there is no reason to keep admiring them. Ordinarily, no sooner has a person discovered the continued presence of such a divinity within him or her than they become proud of such a touch of grandeur. Eventually, each and every deity has to be discarded. The sole instance allowed a permanent existence is Love; and Love has no ultimate shape or name - it only exists as a true life in the persons. In addition, each and every image of a god or goddess is false. This vision is neatly depicted in the teachings of some spiritual teachers, exemplified by Zen gurus, stating that ”If you see within you any spirits or divinities during your meditation, kill these.” Possibly this same aspect was stressed by St Peter in his legendary speech at the Areopagus, exhorting us to discard various divinities.

Animus, anima and the soul

The soul is not a separate entity functioning within us, but an idea of being. This is why the archetypal characters never represent the soul directly, in themselves; it is but their best aspects that carry us closer to the soul, to the life that we should lead.

     Among the various character employed by mythical tradition, those that are closest to the soul are what are usually called the archetypes of the true man and of the true woman. In Jungian terminology, the animus and anima. The essence of the soul is dual in nature: in each and every individual these two aspects are functioning towards the end of showing us which of them is possibly lacking, or excessive. When in the shape of an animal, when in that of a human, the anima will appear to a person who is about to lose touch with the woman inside him or her. The animus will become manifest whenever the inner man is in danger of becoming disconnected. As a general rule, the average woman is running the risk of losing her ’inner man’ (the animus); and vice versa: the average man of losing his ’inner woman’ (the anima). This means, in addition, that the person’s natural masculine or feminine essence (the one deriving from their gender) is at stake.

     In traditional Chinese philosophy, the animus and the anima are encapsulated in the respective principles of the ’yin’ and the ’yang’. This outlook makes an emphatic statement that, even if contrasting, these energies cannot last without one another: the loss of the animus will also be ruin of the anima, and vice versa. Mythical tradition describes the mutual discovery (of a man by the woman, and vice versa) in the hero’s marriage with the princess, or the heroine’s with the prince. The prince(ss) about to marry is the token most frequently employed by mythical tradition to suggest the animus or the anima. They will incite one another by the energies of love, and these images will entwine one another in the form of eternal play, manifesting when a man, when a woman. While one grows or becomes more manifest, the other will become accordingly hidden. This is the same eternal play that the mystic Jacob Boehme described as the God’s play.

     Because of a variety of fears, most people have practically become locked in a certain fixed pattern or mould. In the background of this lockup, looms conflicting patterns of man or woman often deriving a long way from in one’s ancestry. Conflicting, in that they are laden with shame, guilt, denial, obligations, exemptions, liberties and the like. Whatever these special features are, their common result is in distortions or deformations of one sort or another. A woman, for instance, may carry a rigid or constrained inner masculine aspect resulting in her tendency towards silent conformity. Or a man may be ’deformed’ by his distorted image of the real man, or of her thwarted inner woman. Our inner man or woman may be guided only by the continual playful energies of love, which, in fact, needs not be restricted by the natural drives of respective biological gender. It is mostly true, the biological gender will provide the strongest basis for the manifestation of man and woman within an individual.

     The basic characters of an inner man and woman are contrasting to one another: essentially, the woman is of receptive, listening in silence and peace - principles the basic elements of which are water and earth. The basic aspects of a man’s essence are activity, mobility, searching for novelties, varying interests, and activeness in general. In certain situations, however, a woman will allow herself a ’completely’ masculine approach, and become the active actor. Similarly, it is most educating for a man to permit himself an occasional spell of feminine energies: stop to merely be and listen; attend to silence.

     While the animus and the anima are manifestations of the soul, they do not, in themselves, constitute the soul. The soul, in itself, consists in the erotic play and way of living in love characteristic of the individual in question55.

     All concepts about and attributes of the soul contain erroneous elements. Among the best is the concept of individuation developed by C.G.Jung and further reworked by his successors . Some of these attach to it the additional concept of spirituality, suggestive to ’becoming the self’ in the sense of ability to differentiate between the object and the subject. ’Spiritual’ in the sense of becoming detached from the matter is not, however, characteristic of spiritual, of the soul. Apparently, the soul ’enjoys’ being involved in the erotic play of the physical, material body, since it is a part of the soul. To ’enjoy’ is an inaccurate term in this connection, as the soul is no being experiencing various things, but is the experience itself. In it the experiencer and the experience have become inextricably intermingled.