Animus and Anima by Emma Jung
THE ANIMA AS AN ELEMENTAL BEING
The concept of elemental beings dwelling in water and air, in earth and fire, in animals and plants, is age-old and occurs all over the world, as is shown by countless examples in mythology and fairy tales, folklore and poetry.
Because these concepts reveal an astounding similarity not only to each other, but also to figures in the dreams and phantasies of modern people, we are led to conclude that more or less constant factors must underlie them, factors which always and everywhere express themselves in similar ways.
The researches of depth psychology have shown that the images and figures produced by the spontaneous, myth-making faculty of the psyche are not to be understood as merely reproducing or paraphrasing outer phenomena.
They are also expressions of inner psychic facts and may therefore be regarded as one kind of psychic self-representation.
This point of view can also be applied to the ideas of elemental beings, and in what follows we shall inquire whether and in what ways the anima is reflected in them.
A comprehensive survey of the material is impossible here.
I can give only a few examples, and, in connection with them, discuss only the characteristics which seem to me to be important in my context.
That is why, among all the elemental creatures, the giants, dwarves, elves, and so on, I am considering solely those which, because of their female sex or their relation to a man, can be accounted embodiments of the anima.
For the anima, as is well known, represents the feminine personality components of the man and at the same time the image which he has of feminine nature in general, in other words, the archetype of the feminine.
Therefore, these figures cannot be considered anima figures unless they contain typical and clearly recognizable feminine traits, and we shall give special attention to such traits in the hope of gaining a profounder insight into the nature of the anima generally.
Among the beings in question the best suited for such an investigation are the nymphs, Swan maidens, undines, and fairies, familiar from so many legends and tales.
As a rule, they are of enticing beauty but only half human; they have fish tails, like the nixie, or turn into birds, like the swan maidens.
Often they appear as more than one, especially as three; the undifferentiated animus also likes to appear as more than one.
With charms or enchanting songs these beings (sirens, the Lorelei, and so on) lure a man into their realm, where he disappears forevermore; or else – a very important point they try to bind the man in love, that they may live in his world with him.
Always they have something uncanny about them, and there is a taboo connected with them that must not be broken.
The figure of the swan maiden is exceedingly ancient and can almost be called mythological.
She comes from very far back and appears all over the world.
Probably the earliest literary formulation of this motif is the story of Punlravas and Urvasi, which is found in one of the oldest Vedic writings, the Rig-Veda, l and more clearly and in more detail in the Satapatha-Brahmana.2
I will give the latter version in a somewhat shortened form.
Urvasi the nymph (apsara loved Punravas and agreed to marry him upon her own conditions.
She said:
“Thrice a day shalt thou embrace me but do not lie with me against my will and let me not see thee naked, for such is the way to behave to us women.”
After living with him for several years she became pregnant, and the Gandharvas,3 finding that she had lingered long enough among human beings, devised a means for her return.
A ewe with two lambs, had been tied to her couch; these they stole during the night, one after the other, and each time she cried out:
“Alas, they are taking away my darling, as if where is no hero and no man! ” Hearing this, Pun1ravas sprang up, naked a s h e was, to follow the robbers, and at that instant the Gandharvas produced a flash of lightning so that Urvasi beheld her husband “as by daylight.”
Thus one of her conditions had been broken and so, when Punaravas returned, she had vanished.
In despair he wandered about the country, hoping to find Urvasi again, and one day he came to a lotus lake on which “there were nymphs swimming about it in the shape of swans,” and she whom he sought was among them.
When she saw Pun1ravas, she showed herself in human form, and recognizing her, he pleaded:
“Oh, my wife, stay thou, cruel in mind: let us now exchange words! Untold, these secrets of ours will not bring us joy . . .”
She replied: “What concern have I with speaking to thee? I have passed away like the first of the dawns. Pun1ravas, go home again: I am like the wind difficult to catch . . .”
Sorrowing, he said: “Then will thy friend rush away this day never to come back, to go to the farthest distance . . .” (to the wolf infested wilderness).
She replied: “Pun1ravas, do not die! do not rush away! let not the cruel wolves devour thee! Truly, there is no friendship with women, and their hearts are the hearts of hyenas . . .”
She added that, while among mortals, she had eaten a little sacrificial fat every day and still felt sated with it.
But finally her heart took pity on him and she told him to come back in a year.
Then his son would have been born and then, too, she would lie with him for one night.
When he came on the last night of the year, lo, there stood a golden palace, and he was told to enter it, and his wife was brought to him.
The next morning the Gandharvas offered him a boon and when, upon Urvasi’s advice, he asked to become one of them, they granted his wish.
But first he had to offer a sacrifice, and the Gandharvas put fire into a bowl and gave .it to him for the purpose. He took the fire and the son who had been born to him back to his native village.
Then, after seeking out suitable sticks for the sacrificial fire, he lighted them in the way that the Gandharvas had prescribed and became a Gandharva himself.
This ancient legend, early as it is, shows the typical features which we find in later versions and in other localities.
For example, union with such a being involves a definite set of conditions, non-fulfilment of which will be fatal. In our tale, for instance, Pun1ravas may not be seen naked by Urvasi.
A similar prohibition occurs in the famous story of “Cupid and Psyche,”4 only there it is reversed, in that Psyche is forbidden the sight of her divine husband, whereas Urvasi does not want to see the human Pun1ravas naked, that is, does not want to see his reality.
Even though the breaking of this command is unintentional, it results in the nymph’s return to her element.
When she says that she is sated with the bits of sacrificial fat which she consumed during her sojourn with Pun1ravas, this also seems to indicate that human reality is not to her taste; moreover, when she returns to her own world she draws her husband after her.
To be sure, a son is mentioned to whom she gives birth after her disappearance and whom Pun1ravas brings home later, so that apparently something with a place in the human realm results from their union, but one learns nothing further about it.5
In this relation the attitudes of Pun1ravas and the heavenly nymph are markedly different; he, with human feeling, laments the loss of his beloved, he tries to find her again and wants to speak with her, but her words, when she says that women have the hearts of hyenas, are the expression of a soulless elemental being passing judgment on itself.
As to the interpretation of swan maidens, the school which conceived of mythological images as embodiments of natural forces and events saw in them the mist which floats above the water and then, arising, condenses into clouds and moves across the sky like swans flying.
Even from the psychological point of view the comparison of these figures with mist and clouds is apt, for apparently as long as what are called the Unconscious contents remain unconscious, or almost so, they are without firm outlines and can change, turn into each other, and transform themselves.
Only when they emerge from the unconscious and are grasped by consciousness do they become plainly and clearly recognizable, and only then can anything definite be said about them.
Really one does better not to picture the unconscious as an actual area, with firmly defined, quasi-concrete contents; such a concept is only occasionally helpful when it serves to bring the imperceptible closer to our understanding.
In hypnagogic visions or representations of unconscious contents a cloudlike formation often appears at the initial stage of a development which takes definite shape later.
Something of the kind floated before Goethe’s vision when he allowed Mephisto to say, in describing the realm of the Mothers to Faust:
” . . . . . . . . . Escape from the Existent To phantoms’ unbound realms far distant! Delight in what long since exists no more! Like filmy clouds the phantoms glide along. Brandish the key, hold off the shadowy throng.”6
From this we may conclude that the femininity represented by the nymph, Urvasi, is as yet much too nebulous and incorporeal to live permanently and realize itself in the human realm, that is, in waking consciousness.
Her words, “I have passed away like the first of the dawns . . . I am like the wind difficult to catch,” also indicate the insubstantial, breath like character of her being, conforming to that of a nature spirit and producing an impression of dreamlike unreality. Entirely similar in character is “The Dream of Oenghus,” an Irish legend ascribed to the eighth century.7
Oenghus, who was himself of mythical descent, saw in a dream a beautiful girl approaching his couch, but as he went to take her hand she sprang away from him.
The following night the girl came again, this time with a lute in her hand, “the sweetest that ever was,” and she played a tune to him.
So it went on for an entire year and Oenghus fell into a “wasting sickness.”
But a physician diagnosed his trouble and thereupon messengers were sent to scour the whole of Ireland for the girl who – so the physician said – was destined to be his.
Finally they discovered that her father was the king of a fairy hill and that she changed her shape into that of a swan every other year.
To meet her, Oenghus must come on a definite day to a certain lake. Arriving there, he saw
three times fifty swans upon the water, linked together in pairs by silver chains.
But Oenghus called his dream lover by name, and she recognized him and said she would come ashore if he would promise that she might return to the lake again.
When he promised, she came to him and he threw his arms about her.
Then “they fell asleep in the form of two swans and went round the lake three times so that his promise might not be broken.”
Finally, as two white birds, they flew away (to his father’s castle) and sang a beautiful choral song that put the people to sleep for three days and three nights.
“The girl stayed with him after that.”
The dreamlike character of this story is particularly clear.
That Oenghus’ still-unknown beloved appears to him first in a dream, that she is expressly said to be destined for him, and that he cannot live without her, are circumstances which unquestionably point to the anima – to his other half.
He wins her by accepting her condition and allowing her for a time at least to return to the water; indeed, he becomes a swan himself.
In other words, he attempts to meet her in her own element, her niveau) in order to make her permanently his –
conduct which should also prove of value psychologically, in relating to the anima.
The magical song of the two swans is an expression of the fact that two beings of opposite nature, who yet belong together, have now in harmonious concord been united.
The Nordic Valkyries are archaic and mythical swan maidens of quite a different sort.
They are called Valkyries because, in the service of Odin, they recover the warriors fallen in battle and bear them to Valhalla.8
They also have a role in bestowing victory and defeat, which shows plainly that they are related to the Norns, who spin and cut the threads of fate.
On the other hand, when the Valkyrie in Valhalla hands the hero his drinking horn, she is performing the usual function of a serving maid.
Yet offering a drink is a meaningful gesture, too, expressing relationship and a mutual tie; and certainly a motif which occurs frequently is that of the anima figure filling a man’s cup with a potion of love, inspiration, transformation, or death.
The Valkyries are also called Wish Maidens, 9 and now and then one of them becomes, as Brunnhilde did, the wife or lover of a great hero to whom she gives help and protection in battle.
One may well see in these semi-divine creatures an archetypal form of the anima, to be expected in savage and war loving men. Indeed it is said of the Valkyries that their principal passion is combat.
They embody simultaneously, as is also the case with the anima, both the man’s desire and his endeavor, and insomuch as these are directed towards battle, his feminine side appears in a form that is warlike.
F11rthermore, although the Valkyries are usually thought of as riding, they are also able to “course through air and water,” and take the shape of swans.10
One of the oldest songs of the Edda) “the Song of Wayland,” 11 begins with the swan maiden motif:
“The maidens flew from the south
By the murky forest,
Young swan maidens,
Battle to waken.
There on the borders of the lake
They reposed awhile.
These southern maidens,
And spun fine ftax.”12
The song does not say, but allows us to guess that here, as in other similar stories, Wayland and his brothers stole the maids’ swan garments so that they could not go away.
Then each of the brothers took one of the maidens and
“They remained after
Seven winters
Dwelling there eight
In all affection;
But in the ninth,
Necessitated by duty
The maidens desired
To go to the murky forest,
Young swan maidens,
Battle to waken.”
So they flew away, and two of the brothers followed to seek where they had vanished, but Wayland, fashioning gold rings, stayed at home and awaited their return.
There is nothing more about this in the further course of the song, which proceeds along another line.
The significant thing here is that the maidens feel an overwhelming yearning for battle and, by flying away, draw the brothers after them. In psychological language, this means that the yearning, the desire for new undertakings, makes itself felt first in the unconscious-feminine.
Before coming clearly to consciousness, the striving for something new and different usually expresses itself in the form of an emotional stirring, a vague impulse or unexplainable mood.
When this is given expression, as in “The Song of Wayland” and many other legends, through a feminine being, it means that the unconscious stirrings are transmitted to consciousness through the feminine element in the man, through his anima.
This occurrence starts an impulse, or acts like an intuition, disclosing new possibilities to the man and leading him on to pursue and grasp them.
When the swan maiden wishes to incite to battle, she plays the anima’s characteristic role of femme inspiratrice – although, to be sure, on a primitive level where the “work” to which the man is inspired is mainly that of fighting.
This is also a favorite role for women in the court poetry of the Middle Ages, albeit in a more refined form.
The knight fights for his lady in a tournament, wearing her token – her sleeve, for instance – on his helmet; her presence fires him and raises his courage; she bestows the guerdon of victory upon him and frequently this consists of her love.
But often she is cruel, demanding senseless and superhuman feats of her knight as the sign of his subservience. l3
Count William IX of Poitiers, renowned as the first troubadour, is reported to have had the portrait of his beloved painted on his shield.
However, in the literature of the troubadours, it is particularly interesting to see how the inspiration moved gradually to other things than fighting.
The name Lady Adventure (Frau Adventure) is another evidence of the masculine love of adventure being personified in feminine form.
A further peculiarity of the swan maiden is that she foretells the future.
The Valkyries, in spinning the fortunes of battle15 and so preparing the fate to be, resemble the Noms.
And in turn, the latter, whose names are Wurd, Werdandi and Skuld,16 appear to embody the natural life processes of becoming and passing away.
In the Celtic realm the same character is ascribed to the fairies, whose name is connected with fatuma and who also like to appear in threes.
Often it happens that the good bestowed by the first two is cancelled by the third, a feature likewise reminiscent of the Noms, or the Parcae.
The Nibelungenlied18 relates that on their journey to King Etzel the Nibelungs came to the high waters of the Danube, and Hagen went ahead to look for a way across.
There he heard water splashing and coming nearer saw “wisiu wip” (wise women) bathing in a beautiful spring.
Creeping up, he took their garments and hid them.
But if he would give them back, one of the women promised to tell him what would happen on the journey.
“They floated like sea birds before him on the flood.
It seemed to him their foresight must needs be sure and good.
Whatever they should tell him he therefore would believe.”19
So here, too, wise women, resembling water birds, appear as foretellers of future events.
It is well known that the Germanic peoples ascribed to woman the gift of prophecy, and for this reason she was especially esteemed by them, even honored.
Odin himself goes to a seeress, the Vala, to hear his fate.
Tacitus20 mentions a prophetess named Veleda, who enjoyed great authority among her clan, the Bructri, and was brought to Rome as a captive in Vespasian’s time, and Julius Caesar recounts that among the Germans it was customary “for the mothers of families to foretell, by casting lots and prophesying, whether it would be advisable to engage in battle or not . . . “21
Among the Greeks and Romans this function was exercised by Pythia and the sibyls. And such concepts seem to have been preserved for a long time, as is shown by a story concerning Charlemagne, which Grimm reports22 from a Leyden manuscript of the thirteenth century.
The legend is intended to explain the name of Aachen, originally Aquisgranum, and says that:
Charlemagne kept a wise woman there, “an enchantress or fairy, who by other names was also called a nymph, goddess, or dryad; “23 with her he had intercourse, and she was alive while he remained with her but died when he went forth.
One day, as he had his pleasure with her, he saw (that there was) a golden grain upon her tongue.
He had it cut away, whereupon the nymph died and never came to life again.
This nymph recalls the mysterious Aelia Laelia Crispis discussed by C. G. Jung in “The Bologna Enigma.”24
If we ask ourselves why second sight and the art of prophecy are ascribed to woman, the answer is that in general she is more open to the unconscious than man.
Receptivity is a feminine attitude, presupposing openness and emptiness, wherefore Jung25 has termed it the great secret of femininity.
Moreover, the feminine mentality is less averse to irrationality than the rationally oriented masculine consciousness, which tends to reject everything not conforming to reason and so frequently shuts itself off from the unconscious.
In the Phaedrus Plato criticizes this over-reasonable attitude – especially in the matter of love – and praises the irrational, even the insane, insofar as it may be a divine gift.
He mentions several forms of this:
- The oracular wisdom pronounced by the Pythia, for instance, when giving advice as to the welfare of the state. Concerning
this he remarks: “For . . . the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses of Dodona, when out of their senses, have conferred great benefits on Hellas, both in public and in private life, but when in their senses, few or none.”26
- The sibyl’s gift of prophecy which foretells the future.
- The frenzy (enthousiasmos) inspired by the Muses.
Pythia, the sibyls and the Muses are feminine beings and may be likened to the northern seeresses; their sayings are of an irrational kind that looks like madness from the standpoint of reason or the logos.
Faculties such as these, however, do not belong to woman only; there have always been masculine seers and prophets, too, who are such by virtue of a feminine, receptive attitude which makes them responsive to influences from the other side of consciousness.
Because the anima, as the feminine aspect of man, possesses this receptivity and absence of prejudice toward the irrational, she is designated the mediator between consciousness and the unconscious.
In the creative man, especially, this feminine attitude plays an important role; it is not without cause that we speak of the conception of a work, of carrying out a thought, delivering oneself of it, or brooding over it.
The swan maiden motif occurs also in countless fairy tales;27 the story of “The Huntsman and the Swan Maiden” will serve as an example.
A forester, on the track of a deer, reached a lake just as three white swans came flying up.
They immediately turned into three fair maidens who bathed themselves in the lake, but after a while they emerged from the water and flew away as swans.
He could not get these maidens out of his mind and resolved to marry one of them.
So three days later he returned to the lake and again found them bathing.
Softly he crept up and took the swan mantle left on the shore by the youngest.
She implored him to give it back to her but he pretended to be deaf and took it home, so that the maid had to follow after.
She was received in friendly fashion by his people and agreed to marry the hunter.
But the swan mantle he gave to his mother who put it away in a chest.
One day, after this pair had lived happily together for several years, the mother in tidying up found the little chest and opened it.
As soon as the young woman caught sight of her swan mantle she threw it hurriedly around her, and with the words, “Who wants to see me again must come to the glass mountain that stands on the shining field”28 she swung herself into the air and flew away.
The unhappy hunter went to seek her and, with the assistance of friendly animals, after many difficulties, finally found her; then, having learned that she was enchanted, he set her free.
I have told this story in a good deal of detail because it includes a new and very significant motif, that of redemption.
The need for redemption, shown by the enchantment, indicates that the swan form is not an original condition, but secondary, like a dress hiding the princess.
Behind the animal form is concealed a higher being which must be redeemed and with which the hero will eventually unite.
The princess to be redeemed, appearing in so many fairy tales, clearly points to the anima.
Since, however, the story shows that the princess was there before the swan, this surely hints at an original state of unity and wholeness, which was ended by the enchantment, and must now be recreated.
The idea that a primal condition of perfection was destroyed, by either the sinful attitude of men or the envy of the gods, is a very ancient concept, forming the basis of many religious and philosophic systems.
Evidences of this are the Biblical doctrine of man’s fall, Plato’s originally spherical primal being which split into halves, and the Gnostic Sophia imprisoned in matter.
In psychological terms we say that life’s demands and the increasing development of consciousness destroy or mar the original wholeness of the child.
For example, in the development of masculine ego-consciousness the feminine side is left behind and so remains in a “natural state.”
The same thing happens in the differentiation of the psychological functions the so-called inferior function remains behind and, as a result, is undifferentiated and unconscious.
Therefore in the man it is usually connected with the likewise unconscious anima.
Redemption is achieved by recognizing and integrating these unknown elements of the soul.
The fairy tale of “The Stolen Veil”29 presents this theme in a new way characteristic of the Romantic period. Localized in the so-called Schwanenfeld30 in the mountains of Saxony,
where there is said to be a hidden, beauty-bestowing spring, the story contains the typical features already mentioned.
Instead of her swan raiment, however, a veil (and ring) are stolen from the bather.
The hero, who is a knight, takes her to his home, where their wedding is to be celebrated; and in this tale, too, confides the care of the veil to his mother.
Then, on the wedding day, the bride laments that she does not have it and the mother brings it to her;
whereupon the bride, putting on the veil and a crown, immediately turns into a swan and flies out of the window.
This story is too long to give in detail.
I t should be noted, however, that the mother, apparently with good intentions, is again the one who gives back the bride’s swan garment and so causes her departure.
Since the separation of the pair is brought about by the mother’s action, it is possible to deduce a hidden rivalry between the mother and the anima, such as is often met with in actuality.
On the other hand, this feature could also be understood as the tendency of the “Great Mother,” that is, of the
unconscious, to recall those who belong to her.
The swan maiden’s royal descent, shown by her crown, marks her as a being of a higher order, and can be related to the superhuman, divine aspect of the anima.
Yet in many stories it seems as if the figure of the enchanted princess should be interpreted from the standpoint of feminine psychology; in this case, she represents the woman’s higher personality, her Self.31
As for the bird shape: being a creature of the air, the bird symbolizes not only the animal quality of the natural being, but also contains an intimation of its unawakened spiritual potentialities.
Another elemental being enjoying special popularity and longevity is the nixie; theme of fairy tales, legends, and folksongs in every period, she is a figure made familiar to us by countless representations.
Also, she serves as a subject for modern poets,32 and often appears in dreams.
An ancient term, particularly favored by the poets of the thirteenth century for such watery beings, is “Merminne,”38 or “Merfei.”
Because they possess, like the swan maidens, the gift of prophecy and a knowledge of natural things, they are also called “wisiu wip” (wise women).
But in general, as we shall see, other factors take precedence over these, above all, the eros factor.
This is shown by the movement known as Frauendienst or Minnedienst, which expressed the new attitude toward women and toward eros arising during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and constituted a knightly counterpart to the nurture of logos values in the monasteries.
As the poetry of the period shows, not least among the causes contributing to this higher evaluation of women was the clearer emergence and increased effectiveness of the anima.84
Being essentially feminine, the anima, like the woman, is predominantly conditioned by eros, that is, by the principle of union, of relationship, while the man is in general more bound to reason, to logos, the discriminating and regulative principle.
So the Merminne and their companions always have a love relationship to a man or try to bring one about – an endeavor which is, indeed, a fundamental feminine aim.
In this regard they differ from the swan maidens, who for the most part do not seek such a relationship of their own accord but, by the theft of their feather garments, fall into the man’s power through a ruse.
Hence they try to escape at the first opportunity.
Such relationships are predominantly instinctive and lack psychological motive or any meaning beyond the instinctual.
For a man to take possession of a woman more or less by force is a clear sign that his erotic attitude is at a completely primitive level.
So it is not unreasonable for an elemental creature, upon uniting with such a man, to ask that she be done no violence, never be struck by his hand, or spoken to harshly.
Legends of water fairies and nixies are particularly widespread, especially in regions with a Celtic population.
In many places these tales are connected with definite localities and families, particularly in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, where they have been current up until very recent times.
As one example among many I shall give a legend from Wales, recorded by John Rhys,35 a well-known collector and student of Celtic folklore.
The events described are supposed to have occurred toward the end of the twelfth century in a village in Cannarthenshire in Wales.
Here lived a widow with her son.
One day, while pasturing his cattle in the hills, the son came upon a small lake where, to his astonishment, he saw “one of the most beautiful creatures that mortal eyes had ever beheld . . . a lady sitting on the unruffled surface of the water . . . arranging her tresses with a comb and using the glassy surface as a mirror.”
Suddenly she caught sight of the young man, staring at her steadily and holding out a piece of bread in the hope of luring her to shore.
She approached but, refusing the bread because it was too hard, she dove under the water when he tried to grasp her.
He returned home and came back the following day when, upon his mother’s advice, he offered the lady some unbaked dough; but the result was no better.
Not till the third day, when he tried half-baked bread, did the lady accept it, and even encourage him to take her hand.
Then, after a little persuasion, she agreed to become his bride, but on condition that they should live together only until she received from him “three blows without a cause.”
He acceded very willingly to this, whereupon she vanished again beneath the water.
Immediately afterward, however, there emerged two beautiful ladies just like her, together with a hoary headed man of imposing stature who introduced himself as the bride’s father and said that he would consent to the union if the young man could choose the right lady of the two.
This was no easy task since they were so much alike but he finally recognized his beloved by the way her sandals wen: tied.
Then her father promised her a dowry of as many sheep cattle, goats, and horses as she could count “without heaving or drawing breath,” and as she counted the animals came up out of the lake.
After that the couple went to live on a nearby farm and dwelt there in prosperity and happiness, and three sons were born to them.
One day they were invited to a christening.
The wife had no desire to go but the husband insisted, and when she was slow to bring the horses in from the field, he gave her a jocular slap on the shoulder with his glove, at which she reminded him of their agreement.
On another occasion when they were together at a wedding, she burst into tears in the midst of the cheerful company, and when her husband, tapping her on the shoulder, asked the reason for this, she replied: “Now trouble begins for this couple, and for you, too, because this is the second blow.”
After a time it happened that they attended a burial and, in contrast to the general mourning, she fell into fits of immoderate laughter.
Naturally this was very trying to her husband, so he hit her and admonished her not to laugh.
She said that she had laughed because people, when they die, are rid of their cares; and then she arose and left the house with these words: “The last blow has been struck; our marriage is broken and at an end. Farewell.”
Then, calling together all her animals from the farm, she wended her way with the whole herd back to the lake and dove in.
The story does not say what happened to the disconsolate husband but relates that the sons often wandered about the vicinity of the lake and that their mother sometimes appeared to them there.
Indeed she revealed to the oldest that he would benefit humanity by becoming a healer.
She gave him a sack of medical prescriptions for this purpose and promised that she would come whenever he needed her advice. In fact she showed herself frequently and taught her sons the qualities of the healing herbs, so that they attained great celebrity by their medical knowledge and skill.
The last descendants of this family of physicians are said to have died in 1719 and 1739.
The story is, therefore, not solely concerned with an instinctual, erotic relationship; the water woman brings her husband prosperity and transmits to her sons a knowledge of healing herbs which is obviously due to her connection with nature.
Rhys cites countless similar legends connected with definite persons who trace their descent to water women and are proud of it.
The taboos are not always the same; sometimes the man may not touch his wife with iron,36 or he may not speak unfriendly Words more than three times, and so on.
But always the violation of the condition results from heedlessness, or a fateful accident; it is never intentional.
Irrational as these conditions may be in themselves, the effect that follows from infringing them is as consistent and invariable as a natural law.
For half-human beings like these are part of nature and do not possess the freedom of choice allowed to man, which enables him sometimes to behave in a way that does not -correspond to nature’s laws, as, for example,
when his behavior is determined by insights and feelings which raise it above the purely natural.
Much is to be learned in this story from the three incidents in which the water fairy receives the fatal blows.
The first occasion is a christening, which she has no wish to take part in, and this means that the Christian rite is repugnant to her heathen nature.
According to the ideas of that time, elfin beings shied away from everything Christian; the sermons of the Christian missionaries were said to have driven them off and caused them to withdraw into the earth (into what were called fairy hills).
In the second incident she bursts into tears on a joyful occasion, and in the third she disturbs the mood of mourning with unruly laughter; she behaves in an unadapted way and her utterances, although they seem reasonable to her, do not suit the circumstances.
This is an indication that something undifferentiated is being expressed, because still unconscious or
repressed elements of the personality remain primitive and undifferentiated, and when outwardly manifested (in this form), telle quelle, are unadapted. Similar manifestations can be inwardly observed or experienced by anyone at any time.
The nixie who lives in the water, that is, in the unconscious, represents the feminine in a semi-human, almost unconscious state.
In so far as she is married to a man, one may assume that she represents his unconscious, natural anima, together with his undifferentiated feeling, since her transgressions occur in this realm.
At the same time it must be noted that she is unadapted not to matters of individual but of collective feeling.
It is a fact that one’s unconscious personality components (the anima, animus, and shadow), or one’s inferior functions, are always those which the world finds offensive, and which are therefore repressed again and again.
The nixie’s disappearance into her element describes what happens when an unconscious content comes to the surface but is still so little coordinated with the ego consciousness as to sink back at the slightest provocation.
That so little should be required to bring this about shows how fugacious and easily hurt these contents are.
In this context, too, belongs the revenge which elfin beings take when they are despised or insulted, for they are extremely touchy and likely to persevere in resentments unmodified by any human understanding.
The same may be said of the anima, the animus and the undifferentiated functions; indeed, the exaggerated touchiness frequently to be met with in otherwise robust men is a sign of anima involvement.
Likewise to be discerned in the anima are the incalculability, mischievousness and frequent malice of these elemental spirits, which constitute the reverse side of their bewitching charm.
These beings are simply irrational, good and bad, helpful and harmful, healing and destructive, like nature herself of which they are a part.37
And the anima, as the unconscious, feminine aspect of man, is not alone in showing these qualities; the same can be seen in many women.
For woman, in general, because of her biological task, has remained a more elemental being than man, and often manifests this kind of behavior more or less plainly.
It is easy for a man to project the anima image to the more elemental women; they correspond so exactly to his own unconscious femininity.
Because of this, elemental creatures, preferably nixies, also appear often in the imagery of women’s dreams and phantasies.
They may represent either the undeveloped and still natural femininity of the woman concerned, or else her inferior function; often, however, they are incipient forms of the higher personality, of the Self.
In this legend we meet another characteristic feature, namely, the water maiden combing her hair – like the Lorelei – and mirroring herself in the lake.
The combing of the hair can without difficulty be recognized as a means of sexual allurement still in use today. Looking in the mirror belongs with it, and the two actions together are often attributed to the anima figure in literature and the plastic arts.38
But the mirror as an attribute of the anima figure has still another meaning.
One function of the anima is to be a looking glass for a man, to reflect his thoughts, desires, and emotions, as did the Valkyries.
That is precisely why she is so important to him, whether as an inner figure or projected to an actual, outer woman; in this way he becomes aware of things about which he is still unconscious.
Often, to be sure, this functioning of the anima does not lead to greater consciousness and self-knowledge, but merely to a self-mirroring which flatters the man’s vanity, or even to a sentimental self-pity.
Both naturally enhance the power of the anima and are therefore not without danger.
Yet it is part of feminine nature to serve man as a mirror, and the astonishing adroitness that the woman often develops for this is what fits her especially to carry the man’s anima projection.
The fair Melusine, also, belonged to the race of water fairies,39 and, although the legend about her is well known, it contains several important points, so I will give it briefly.40
Raymond, adopted son of the Count of Poitiers, had killed the Count in a hunting accident and fled into the woods in unconsolable grief.
There in a clearing he came upon three beautiful maidens sitting beside a spring, one of whom was Melusine.
He poured out his sorrow to her and she gave him good counsel, whereupon he fell in love with her and asked her to marry him.
She agreed upon one condition, that he would allow her to spend every Saturday in complete seclusion without ever intruding upon her.
He accepted this and they lived happily together for many years.
She bore him several sons, who all, however, had something abnormal and monstrous about them.
She also had a splendid castle built and named it “Lusinia” after herself, although later it came to be known as Lusignan.
Then one Saturday, disquieted by rumors that had reached him about his wife, Raymond spied upon her and finding her in her bath chamber, saw to his horror that she had the tail of a fish or sea-serpent.
At first this discovery seemed to make no difference, but a little later news came that one of Melusine’s sons had attacked and burned a monastery which she had founded, and that another of the sons, who was a monk there, had perished. She tried to console her husband, but he pushed her aside saying: “Away, odious serpent, contaminator of my honorable race! “At these words she fainted. But when she recovered she took tearful leave of her husband and commended the children to his care; then, flying out of the window, she vanished “with a long wail of agony.”
Later she reappeared occasionally to look after the children, some of whom were still small, .and for a long while the legend persisted that she would reappear over the ramparts of the castle whenever one of the Lords of Lusignan, who were supposed to be her descendants, was about to die.
Melusine’s condition was that she be allowed once a week to return to her element and resume her nixie form. This is the secret which may not be spied upon.
The non-human, the natural, in this case the fish tail, must not be seen. It is reasonable to assume that the weekly bath with its return to the natural state is equivalent to a renewal of life.
Water is, indeed, the life element par excellence.
It is indispensable for the preservation of life, and healing baths or springs which bring about the recovery and renewal of life have always been held numinous and have often enjoyed religious veneration.
But the cults of trees, stones and springs, and the burning of fires and lights beside them were prohibited as heathen practises42
by the council of Avignon in the year 442 A.D.
In their stead images of the Virgin, decorated with flowers and candles, are raised near springs in many places as Christian expressions of the ancient feeling that still survives even today.
One cognomen of Mary is “pegeJ” which means spring.
The numinous quality of water is also expressed by the very old concept of a “water of life” possessing supernatural power, or the “aqua permanens” of the alchemists.
Nymphs or fairies, dwelling in or near springs, have a special affinity with the water, which is believed to be the life element, and, since the source of life is an unsolved mystery, so the nymph, too, has about her something mysterious which must remain hidden. In a sense these beings are the guardians of the springs and certain healing springs have a patron saint to this day: Baden, for example, has St. Verena, who replaced a pagan nymph and is also connected with Venus.
The anima, whose name expresses her animating character, fulfils a similar function. So she often appears in dreams or phantasies as this kind of fairy being. For instance, a young man, who was very rational in his attitude and therefore exposed to the danger of desiccation, dreamed as follows:
“I am going through a dense wood; then, there comes toward me a woman enveloped in a dark veil, who takes me by the hand and says that she will lead me to the wellspring of life.”
Recounting an early experience, the English writer William Sharp43 (1855-1905) tells of a beautiful white woman of the woods who appeared to him beside a small lake encircled with plane trees.
As a child he called her “Star-Eyes,” later “Lady of the Sea,” and he says that he knew her “to be no other than the woman who is in the heart of all women.”
Plainly, she is the primal image of womanhood, an unmistakable anima figure.44
The anima represents the connection with the spring or source of life in the unconscious.
When no such connection exists, or when it is broken, a state of stagnation or torpor results, often so disturbing that it causes the person involved to seek out a psychiatrist.
Gottfried Keller describes this condition most impressively in his poem, “Winter Night.”45
“Not a wing beat in the winter sky,
Still and dazzling white the fallen snow.
Not a cloudlet veiled the stars on high.
No wave stirred the frozen lake below.
“From the deep rose up a water-tree
Till its top froze in the icy screen;
On a branch a nixie climbed toward me,
Gazing upward th1 0ugh the frigid green.
“Standing there upon the glassy sheet
Parting me from depths so black and dim,
I could see, now close beneath my feet
Her white beauty gleaming, limb by limb.
“She, in muffled misery, probed to find
In that rigid roof some fissured space –
She is always, always, in my mind;
Never will I forget her shadowy face.”
The nixie, imprisoned in ice, corresponds to the enchanted princess in the glass mountain, who was mentioned above; botllglass (lncl ice fo_rm a_ cglc} hard, and rigid armor, imprisoning what is living so that it needs to be set free.
Still another important feature of the Melusine legend should be mentioned. When her son sets fire to the monastery that Melusine has founded, this obviously expresses the antagonism already referred to between the elfin race and Christianity.
On the other hand, according to many accounts, it appears that these beings also desired redemption.
Paracelsus, who wrote a whole treatise on such elemental spirits as nymphs, sylphs, pigmies, and salamanders, says that although they do indeed resemble human beings, they are not descended from Adam, and have no souls.
The water people are the most like men and try the hardest to enter into connections with humans.
They “have not only been truly seen by man but have married him and have borne him children.”46
And further:
“It is said of the nymphs, that they come to us from the water, and sit on the banks of the brooks where they have their abode, where they are seen, taken also, caught and married, as we said before.”47
Through union with a man they receive a soul and the children, too, of such unions possess souls.
“From this it follows that they woo man, and that they seek him assiduously and in secret,”47 in the same way that a “heathen begs for baptism and woos it in order to acquire his soul and to become alive in Christ.”
These disquisitions by Paracelsus provided the material for F. de la Motte Fouque’s Undine/8 written at the beginning of the nineteenth century, that is, in the Romantic period, when the idea of a soul informing nature was revived, and also when the idea of the unconscious was first talked about.49
In this story the central motif is the soullessness of the nixie.
Undine is the daughter of a sea king who reigns in the Mediterranean.
At his wish, so that she may acquire a soul, she is secretly brought to a fisher couple, who, believing that their own child has drowned, take the foundling instead.
Undine grows up a charming girl, yet often alienates her foster parents by her strangely childish nature, her constant inclination to mischievous tricks.
During a storm an errant knight seeks shelter in the fisherman’s hut, and Undine, though usually wayward and shy, is confidingly friendly toward him.
Her charm and childlike ways enchant him and, since the storm has conveniently deflected a reverend father
to the hut, the pair are wedded by him.
But now Undine admits to her husband that she has no soul, and he begins to feel uneasy.
Despite all his love, he is plagued by the thought of being married to an elfin being.
She begs him not to cast her off, since her kind cannot win souls except through a bond of human love.
She asks one thing of him only, that he will never – particularly if they are near the water – say a harsh word to her, since, if he does, the water people who are her guardians will come and fetch her away.
The knight takes her home to his castle, and then fate appears in the figure of Berthalda, a damsel who had hoped to become his wife.
Undine receives her in friendly fashion, but the knight grows increasingly uneasy. Finally, while they are boating on the Danube, this uneasiness finds expression in his accusing Undine of witchcraft and jugglery when, in place of Berthalda’s necklace that had fallen into the water, she lifts out a string of corals.50
Deeply hurt, Undine swings herself from the boat and disappears weeping beneath the flowing water, but not before warning her husband that if he fails to remain true to her the water spirits will take revenge.
Nevertheless his marriage to Berthalda is soon planned. On the wedding day Berthalda asks to have her beauty lotion brought from the castle well, which previously had been sealed on Undine’s order, to prevent the water spirits from coming in.
When the stone is removed, Undine’s figure emerges veiled in white.
Weeping, she moves toward the castle and knocks softly at her husband’s window. In a mirror he sees her entering and approaching him.
As she nears his couch, she says: “They have opened the well, so I am come, and now you must die.”
Unveiling herself, she takes him in her arms and he dies as she kisses him. 51
What brings about the catastrophe here is the conflict between the anima, that is the nature creature, and the human woman.
In the Siegfried legend this plays an- important part, as the strife between the Valkyrie Brunhilde and Chriemhilde, and it frequently leads to great difficulties in actual life.
Fundamentally, such conflict expresses that opposition between two worlds, the outer and the inner, the conscious and the unconscious, which it seems to be the special task of our time to bridge.
Another type of anima experience is presented in “Le Lai de LanvalJ”52 which is part of the Breton cycle of legend stained him wondrously and bestowed upon him the favor of her love.
Her only condition was that he should never betray any part of it.
She also promised to fulfil his every wish and to appear whenever he desired her.
Thanks to this his other longings were gratified, and he was able to fit himself out so handsomely as to gain more and more consideration at court.
He even attracted the attention of the queen, who offered him her love.
When he refused this, she was so hurt that she finally forced him to admit that he had a mistress more beautiful than herself.
Angrily, she demanded that the king should call Lanval before a court of judgment to defend himself against the charge of having insulted the queen.
To do so he would have to prove that his mistress was really as beautiful as he said.
But the difficulty was that now he could no longer summon the lady, because he had betrayed the secret of her love.
All hope seemed lost when, accompanied by four fair damsels and riding upon a splendidly caparisoned white
palfrey, his beloved appeared, like beauty in person, garbed in white and wearing a purple mantle. Lanval was now justified; all were compelled to admit that he had not claimed too much.
The song ends with the fairy taking her love away on the horse· to her kingdom. 53
Being carried away to fairyland is, psychologically, a very important motif.
In the Celtic tradition this realm does not have the terrible and fearful character that it possesses elsewhere.
It is not a kingdom of the dead but is called “Land of the Living” or “Land under the Waves,” and is thought to be
composed of “green islands,” which are inhabited by fair feminine beings and so sometimes called “islands of women.”64
Eternally young and beautiful, these creatures enjoy a life without sorrow, full of music and dancing and the joys of love.
The fairies live here, including famed Morgan la Fee (Fata Morgana) whose name implies that she is “seaborn,” and thither they lead their human lovers.
Psychologically, this Elysium, comparable to the Gardens of the Hesperides, can be interpreted as a dream land, which is alluring and pleasant, to be sure, but not without peril.
That the anima rules this realm and leads the way to it is well known.
The danger of getting lost there, that is, in the unconscious, seems to have been felt even in early times, for countless stories describe the knight, caught in the bonds of love, who forgets his knightly duties55 and in a self-sufficient twosome with his lady becomes estranged from the world and from reality.
An extreme example of this kind is the case of the enchanter Merlin, whose beloved, the fairy Vivian, used the magic arts which she had learned by eavesdropping upon him, to tie him in invisible bonds and imprison him in a hawthorn bush from which he was never able to escape.
This story is particularly instructive because the figure of Merlin so very fittingly embodied the consciousness and the thinking faculty which were lacking in the masculine world around him.
He was a Luciferian, Mephisto-like being, and as such represented the intellect in statu nascendi, that is, in still primitive form.
To this he owed his magic power; but because his feminine side had been neglected, it drew him back in the form of eros, and bound in the toils of nature this man who had identified himself with the logos principle.
To a somewhat later period belongs the Tannhauser legend which Richard Wagner revived; it apparently dates from the fifteenth century and was widely known in the sixteenth throughout Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands.56
“Now is forsooth my lay begun
Of Danhauser I’ll sing thee,
And of the wonders he hath done
With Venus, the noble Minnie. 57
“Danhauser was a sturdy knight
In quest of wonders he
Did wish to enter Venus’ mount,
Where pretty women be.”
That is the way most versions of the song begin, but there is a Swiss form from St. Gallen, accounted one of the oldest, which says:
“Danuser was ein wundrige Knab
Grauss Wunder got er go schaue
Er got wol uf der Frau Vrenesberg5s
Zu dene dri schone Jungfraue.
“Die sind die ganze Wuche gar scho
Mit Gold und mit Side behange,
Hand Halsschmeid a und Maiekro
A m Suntig sind s’ O tre und Schlange!”59
Whereby the residents of the Venusberg are marked as relatives of Melusine.
Though I believe I may assume that the legend is familiar, let u
