As The Red Book gets celebrated with its publication during the upcoming month, it feels appropriate to spend some time exploring the psychological concepts which were seeded in its pages.
Carl Jung spent a decade as he neared the end of his life writing his masterpiece Mysterium Coniunctionis. The entire volume explores the psychic implications of the combination of the opposites.
“The obvious analogy, in the psychic sphere, to the problem of the opposites is the dissociation of the personality brought about by the conflict of incompatible tendencies, resulting as a rule from an inharmonious disposition. The repression of one opposite leads only to a prolongation and extension of the conflict, in other words to a neurosis. The therapist therefore confronts the opposites with one another and aims a uniting them permanently.” Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW XIV, pg. xv.
hot/cold – male/female – old/young – life/death…
Experientially, these categories feel a bit elusive. Not so with stress/ease. Much of our cultural energy alternates between these opposing poles. What would the combination of both of these feel like simultaneously? Clearly, it would be a new thing.
Jung’s experience of the combination of the opposites is one of the plots which emerges in the pages of The Red Book.
Ariadne’s thread was the way back out for Theseus. After his encounter with the Minotaur, he wound his way through the maze of underground hallways much as the child in the fairy tale follows a path of bread crumbs. (That he later dropped her off on the exposed rock of Naxos once he got to sea is a story for another day).
Recognizing the value of the labyrinth as it expresses itself in our lives can help us integrate the seemingly endless winding paths and switchbacks which make up our lives.
Accepting that forces beyond the ego’s control shape what is unfolding takes psychological maturity. It’s been my experience that the ego likes following vectors and the logic they imply. The twisting path can often be met with rational resistance: But I want to go over there!
It’s helpful, when we encounter our own resistance, to consider that the beautiful pattern of the labyrinth gives us a symbolic view of our life passage from above. As Whitmont writes:
“The labyrinth is one of the oldest of symbols; it depicts the way to the unknown center, the mystery of death and rebirth, the risk of the search, the danger of losing the way, the quest, the finding and the ability to return. If we follow the path of the labyrinth from the floor of Chartres Cathedral we can observe that in the course of its tortuous evolution it not only connects the periphery with the center (the Self) but actually fills out and covers the total plane surface of the circle; in striving for the center the path integrates the total circle, the total field.” Edward Whitmont, The Symbolic Quest, pg. 306-307.
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