FOR THOSE WHO have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero-journey is with a protective figure (often a little old crone or old man) who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass.

“In every primitive tribe,” writes Dr. Géza Róheim, “we find the medicine man in the center of society and it is easy to show that the medicine man is either a neurotic or a art is based on the same mechanisms psychotic or at least that his as a neurosis or a psychosis. Human groups are actuated by their group ideals, and these are always based on the infantile situation.” “The infancy situation is modified or inverted by the process of maturation, again modified by the necessary adjustment to reality, yet it is there and supplies those unseen libidinal ties without which no human groups could exist.”” The medicine men, therefore, are simply making both visible and public the systems of symbolic fantasy that are present in the psyche of every adult member of their society. “They are the lead- ers in this infantile game and the lightning conductors of common anxiety. They fight the demons so that others can hunt the prey and in general fight reality.”

And so it happens that if anyone-in whatever society-under- takes for himself the perilous journey into the darkness by descend- ing, either intentionally or unintentionally, into the crooked lanes of his own spiritual labyrinth, he soon finds himself in a landscape of symbolical figures (any one of which may swallow him) which is no less marvelous than the wild Siberian world of the pudak and sacred mountains. In the vocabulary of the mystics this is the second stage of the Way, that of the “purification of the self,” when the senses are “cleansed and humbled,” and the energies and interests “concentrated upon transcendental things”; or in a vocabulary of more modern turn: this is the process of dissolving, transcending, or transmuting the infantile images of our personal past. In our dreams the ageless perils, gargoyles, trials, secret helpers, and instructive figures are nightly still encountered; and in their forms we may see reflected not only the whole picture of our present case, but also the clue to what we must do to be saved.

“I stood before a dark cave, wanting to go in,” was the dream of a patient at the beginning of his analysis; “and I shuddered at the thought that I might not be able to find my way back.”, “I saw one beast after another,” Emanuel Swedenborg recorded in his dream book, for the night of October 19-20, 1744, “and they spread their wings, and were dragons. I was flying over them, but one of them was supporting me.”10* And the dramatist Friedrich Hebbel recorded, a century later (April 13, 1844): “In my dream I was being drawn with great force through the sea; there were terrify- ing abysses, with here and there a rock to which it was possible to hold.”” Themistocles dreamed that a snake wound itself around his body, then crept up to his neck and when it touched his face became an eagle that took him in its talons and, carrying him upward, bore him a long distance, and set him down on a golden herald’s staff that suddenly appeared, so safely that he was all at once relieved of
his great anxiety and fear.  The specific psychological difficulties of the dreamer frequently are revealed with touching simplicity and force:

“I had to climb a mountain. There were all kinds of obstacles in the way. I had now to jump over a ditch, now to get over a hedge, and finally to stand still because I had lost my breath.” This was the dream of a stutterer.

“I stood beside a lake that appeared to be completely still. A storm came up abruptly and high waves arose, so that my whole face was splashed”; the dream of a girl afraid of blushing (ereuthophobia), whose face, when she blushed, would become wet with perspiration.

* “I was following a girl who was going ahead of me, along the dark street. I could see her from behind only and admired her beautiful figure. A mighty desire seized me, and I was running after her. Suddenly a beam, as though released from a spring, came across the street and blocked the way. I awoke with my heart pounding.” The patient was a homosexual; the transverse beam, a phallic symbol.5

* “I got into a car, but did not know how to drive. A man who sat behind me gave me instructions. Finally, things were going quite well and we came to  a plaza, where there were a number of women standing.

The basic story of the hero’s journey involves giving up where you are, going into the realm of adventure, coming to some kind of symbolically rendered realization, and then returning to the field of normal life.”

Brahmā, Vişnu, and Śiva, respectively Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, constitute a trinity in Hinduism, as three aspects of the operation of the one creative substance. After the seventh century B.C., Brahmā, declining in importance, became merely the creative agent of Visnu. Thus Hinduism today is divided into two main camps, one devoted primarily to the creator-preserver Vişnu, the other to Śiva, the world-destroyer, who unites the soul to the eternal. But these two are ultimately one. In the present myth, it is through their joint operation that the elixir of life is obtained.

You should find a way to realize your shadow in your life somehow. Next comes the problem of gender. Every man has to be a manly man, and all of the things that society doesn’t allow him to develop he attributes to the feminine side. These parts of himself he represses in his unconscious. This is the counterplayer to the persona. They become what Jung calls the anima: the female ideal in the masculine unconscious.

Likewise, the woman carries the animus in her unconscious: the male aspect in herself. She’s a woman, and the society gives her certain things to do. All that is in her that she has associated with the masculine mode of life is repressed within the animus.

The interesting thing is that biologically and psychologically-we have both sexes in us; yet in all human societies, one is allowed to accent only one. The other is internalized within us. Furthermore, our imagery and notions of the other are functions of our biography. This biography in- cludes two aspects. One is general to the human species: nearly everybody has a mother and a father. The other aspect is peculiar to yourself: that your mother should have been as she was and your father as he was. There is a specification of the male and female roles as experienced, and this has com- mitted, has determined, the quality of our experience of these great, great bases which everyone experiences. Everyone experiences Mother; everyone experiences Father.

In both cases, the buried ideal tends to be projected outward. We usually call this reaction falling in love: projecting your own ideal for the opposite sex onto some person who, by some kind of magnetism, causes your anima /animus to emerge. Now, you can go to a dance and there’s some perfectly decent, nice-looking girl who’s sitting all alone. Then there’s some other little bumblebee with everybody all around her. What’s she got? Well, it’s something about the way her eyes are set that just evokes anima projections from all the males in the neighborhood. There are ways to present yourself that way; yet we don’t always know what they are or how to achieve them. I’ve seen people who are perfectly good anima ob- jects so make themselves up that they repel the anima projection.

Two people meet and fall in love. Then they marry, and the real Sam or Suzy begins to show through the fantasy, and, boy, is it a shock. So a lot of little boys and girls just withdraw their anima or animus. They get a divorce and wait for another receptive person, pitch the woo again, and, uh-oh, another shock. And so on and so forth.

what goes on when you marry this love-at-first-sight situation? Well, what you have married is a projection. You have married something that has been projected from yourself: the mask that you’ve put over the other person.

What is the sensible thing to do in a circumstance like this? What is the pedagogically advisable thing to do in a situation like this? What shows itself through the mask of the projection is a fact. The mask is your ideal. This fact does not coincide with the ideal; it is imperfect. What do you do about what is imperfect?

Jung believed that the idea is to reject all projections. Not to identify the women you meet with your anima projection. Not to identify yourself with your persona projection. To release all projections and ideals. This is what Jung means by individuation. Jung calls the individual who identifies himself with his persona a mana personality; we would call him a stuffed shirt. That’s a person who is nothing but the role he or she plays. A person of this sort never lets his actual character develop. He remains simply a mask, and as his powers fail-as he makes mistakes and so forth.

he becomes more and more frightened of himself, puts more and more of an ef- fort into keeping up the mask. Then the separation between the persona and the self takes place, forcing the shadow to retreat further and further into the abyss.

You are to assimilate the shadow, embrace it. You don’t have to act on it, necessarily, but you must know it and accept it.

You are not to assimilate the anima/animus-that’s a different chal- lenge. You are to relate to it through the other.