-
Fifth Hour
- Cornell University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
fifth hour The Mystery of the Cavern of Sokar The Regenerative Force of Depression [3.133.124.167] Project MUSE (2024-04-18 00:32 GMT) Fifth Hour 102 The fifth hour of the night continues, in far greater depth, the theme of the fourth hour. The water is still shallow; the sun barque continues its journey, though with difficulty. Re’s boat must be towed by the two groups of deities, seven males and seven females, above the cavern of Sokar in the lower register. That the goddesses precede their male counterparts (as also in the twelfth hour) corresponds, as we shall see, to the fact that these images were created in a male-dominated culture that nevertheless highly honored the feminine element. From the psychological point of view, this image of the towing deities is quite meaningful. For man, it is his anima that always intuitively looks ahead.“Both the man and the woman have, not only in their body but also in their mind, opposite-sex components...Jung called (them) animus (in a woman) and anima (in a man)”.1 The anima embodies the feminine characteristics in a man, “moodiness, subjective judgment, whininess...and sentimentality”2 in her negative side, and his capacity for relationship, his feelings, the condition of his affects, empathy, eros, and so forth in her positive side. No wonder, then, that the feminine side knows how to proceed in this difficult moment of Re’s journey. To maintain the balance, however, male deities must also participate in this process of movement, for a man who is deeply moved by his soul will need a strong ego-consciousness not to fall under the spell of his anima. If he allows her to gain possession of him, he will most likely lose his clarity of mind and, in his enthusiasm, take the greatest nonsense to be the means of renewing his life, and his true feelings will deteriorate into mere sentimentality. If this were to happen, the result would be a rather childish and egocentric behavior that could in fact ruin a man’s life. Psychologically, we can understand the towing deities as archetypal powers that temporarily assist the Sungod in his process of cognition. Beneath the surface of all historical and political events, and beyond the personal experience of the individual, there are inner-psychic factors at work, contents of the collective unconscious; they are of an archetypal 1 M.-L. von Franz, “Nike and the Waters of the Styx,” in Archetypal Dimension of the Psyche (London: Shambhala, 1999), p. 159. 2 Ibid., pp. 169 and 364. Mystery of the Cavern of Sokar 103 nature and in some way connected with the Great Soul, that is, with the central archetypal core (the self). From this core, the self, arises every real growth of consciousness and all renewal. “This ‘something,’” says Marie-Louise von Franz,“which by its nature at all times transcends and encompasses our consciousness, is scarcely directly knowable for us, but it definitely manifests itself repeatedly in the unconscious psyche in the form of symbols.”3 In the religious language of the Amduat, these symbols are embodied in all the assisting deities who support Re’s journey. We may say, therefore, that the rope of the towing deities symbolizes an intimate connectedness with the innermost depths of the psyche and with the hidden archetypal stream of the collective unconscious, that is, with the renewing spirit, or Zeitgeist. The common task of the female and male deities and their connection to the Great Soul can be understood interpsychically as an image of totality or concretely as a symbol of interpersonal relatedness. Shared knowledge regarding the efficacy of the images of the unconscious, along with mutual acceptance of the dependence of the ego on archetypal powers, creates a psychic relatedness far beyond the subjective realm; this is because the individuals involved remain connected with the Great Soul—that is, with a profound creative process rooted in the self and not in the ego. The above-mentioned “eternal connection through fate” is reflected in this orientation toward connectedness with the self. The interpersonal relatedness originates in the fact that two persons partake of the one transcendent center (the Sungod). Thus, in the image of the towing goddesses and gods, we can recognize nothing less than an image of the creative dynamic of love, in which the two lovers do not live exclusively for themselves and for each other but, rather, are involved in a psychic...