In cases where the uterus is represented by the body cavity of a monster the rebirth occurs most frequently by a spitting forth. Also the breaking forth by means of tearing apart the uterus occurs, [pg 316] and in every case it has the significance of a “powerfully tearing of oneself away,” the burning of bridges behind one, the final victory over the mother. To the descent into the underworld (introversion) corresponds, as characteristic of the subsequent rebirth, the rising to the light with the released treasure (magic word as above, water of life, as in Ishtar's hell journey, etc.).
A frequently used symbol for the released libido is the light, the sun. Reborn sun figures, in connection with a daily and yearly up and down, are also quite general. That the released libido appears thus may have several reasons. External ones, like the life-imparting properties of the sun, invite comparison. Then the parallel light = consciousness. [Also that higher or other consciousness that is mediated by the mystic religious work; for which expressions like illuminate, etc., are sufficiently significant. On this topic see my essay, Phant. u. Myth. (Jb., II, p. 597).] and also inner reasons, i.e., such as rest upon the actual light and warmth sensations, which occur, as literature and observations show, in persons who are devoted to spiritual training. Here the occasion may be offered to the mystic to utilize for conscious life and action, functions that hitherto had been unconscious. Of the appearance of light in the state of introversion, the histories of saints and ecstatics, and the autobiographies of this kind of men are full. An enormous number of instances might be given. I shall rest content with recalling that Mechthildis von Magdeburg has entitled her [pg 317] revelations: “A flowing Light of my Godhead” (“Ein vliessend Lieht miner Gotheit”), and with adding Jane Leade's words: “If any one asks what is the magic power [sought by the reborn] I answer, ‘It is to be compared to a wonderfully powerful inspiration to the soul, to a blood, coloring and penetrating and transmuting the inner life, a concentrating and essentially creative light and fire flame.’ ”
The Omphalopsychites or Hesychiasts, those monks who dwelt in the Middle Ages on Mount Athos, were given the following instructions by their Abbot Simeon: “Sitting alone in private, note and do what I say. Close thy doors and raise thy spirit from vain and temporal things. Then rest thy beard on the breast and direct the gaze with all thy soul on the middle of the body at the navel. [See [Note G].] Contract the air passages so as not to breathe too easily. Endeavor inwardly to find the location of the heart, where all psychic powers reside. At first thou wilt find darkness and inflexible density. When, however, thou perseverest day and night, thou wilt, wonderful to relate, enjoy inexpressible rapture. For then the spirit sees what it never has recognized; it sees the air between the heart and itself radiantly beaming.” This light, the hermits declare, is the light of God that was visible to the young men on Tabor.
Yoga-Sutra (Patanyali, I, 36) says: “Or that sorrowless condition of mind, full of light (would conduce to samadhi).” And the commentator Manilal Nabubhai Dvivedi remarks upon this: [pg 318] “The light here referred to is the light of pure sattva. When the mind is deeply absorbed in that quality, then, indeed, does this condition of light which is free from all pain follow. Vachaspatimisra remarks that in the heart there is a lotus-like form having eight petals and with its face turned downward. One should raise this up by rechaka (exhalation of the breath) and then meditate upon it, locating therein the four parts of the pranava, viz., a, u, m, and the point in their several meanings. When the mind thus meditating falls in the way of the susumna, it sees a perfect calm light like that of the moor of the sun, resembling the calm ocean of milk. This is the jyotis, light, which is the sure sign of complete sattva. Some such practice is here meant....” The similarity to the instruction of the Abbot Simeon is evident.
The light and sun symbolism in alchemistic writings is everywhere used; yet gold also = sun, indeed the same sign [Symbol: Gold] serves for both. I should like to call attention incidentally to a beautiful use of the sun symbol in “Amor Proximi,” which differs slightly from the more restricted gold symbolism. On p. 32 ff. we read: “See Christ is not outside of us, but he is intimately within us all, but locked up, and in order that he may unlock that which is locked up in us, did he once become outwardly visible, as a man such as we are, the hard sin enclosure excepted, and of this the [Symbol: Gold] in this world is the true copy, which quickly convinced the heathens from the beginning of the world that God must become man [pg 319] even as the light of nature has become a body in the [Symbol: Gold]. Now the [Symbol: Gold] is not alone in the firmament outside of all other creatures, but it is much more in the center of all creatures but shut up, but the external [Symbol: Gold] is as a figure of Christ, in that it unlocks in us the enclosed [Symbol: Gold], as its image and substance, just as Christ does, through his becoming man, also unlock in us the image of God. For were this not so, then the sphere of the earth would approach in vain to the [Symbol: Gold] in order to derive its power from it, and nothing at all would grow from the accursed [Symbol: earth]. [The symbol [Symbol: earth] means earth.] So the [Symbol: earth] shows us that inasmuch as it approaches near to the [Symbol: Gold] it is unlocked, so we, too, approaching Christ, shall attain again the image of God; then at the end of time this [Symbol: earth] will be translated into the point of the sun [in Solis punctum] [Cf. what has been said about the point in the [Symbol: Gold].];” and still farther on: “Ye see that the [Symbol: earth] turns to the sun, but the reason ye know not; if the earth had not in the creation gone out of the Solis punctum, it could not have turned and yearned according to its magnetic manner, so this turning around shows us that the world was once renewed, and in its beginning, as [Symbol: Gold] is punctum; it desires to return, and its rest will be alone in that; therefore the soul of man is also similarly gone out of the eternally divine sun, towards which it also yearns....”
Our parable, to which I should like now to revert, appears in a new light. It would be a waste of time to lead the reader once more through all the adventures [pg 320] of the wanderer. He again, without difficulty, will find all the aforesaid elements in the parable, and will readily recognize the introversion and rebirth. I therefore pick out for further consideration only a few particular motives of the parable or alchemy which seem to me to require special elucidation.
We should not forget the singular fact that after the introversion, at the beginning of the work of rebirth, a deluge occurs. This flood takes place not merely in the alchemistic process (when the bodies undergo putrefaction in the vessel and become black), but we see the mythic deluges coming with unmistakable regularity at the same time, i.e., after the killing of the original being (separation of the primal parents, etc.), and before the new creation of the world by the son of God. Stucken (SAM., p. 123): “We see corroborated ... what I have already emphasized, that on the appearance of the flood catastrophe the creation of the world is not yet finished. Even before the catastrophe there was indeed an earth and life on it, but only after the flood, begins the forming of the present Cosmos. Thus it is in the germanic Ymir-saga, and in the Babylonian Tiamat-saga, in the Egyptian and likewise in the Iranian.” What may the flood be in the psychological sense. Dreams and poetry tell us, in that they figure the passions in the image of a storm-tossed sea. After the introversion, whose perils have already been mentioned, there is always an outbreak of the passions. Not without consequences is the [pg 321] Stone of the Deeps elevated, which locks the prison of the subterranean powers. (Cf. Book of Enoch, X, 5, and passim.) The point is to seize the wildly rushing spirits and to get possession of their powers without injury. The entire inundation must, in the philosophical vessel, be absorbed by the bodies that have turned black, and then it works on them for the purpose of new creation, fructifying them like the floods of water upon the earth. It does no damage to the materia only then, when it is actually black (stage of victory). If this happens, it (the materia) is in contrast to the waters raging over it, like an ocean which suffers no alteration by the influx of waters. “Like an ocean that continually fills itself and yet does not overflow its boundaries, even with the inflowing waters, so the man acquires calm, into whom all desires flow in similar wise, and not he who wantonly indulges his desire.” (Bhag. Gita, II, 70. Latin: translated by Schlegel: German [Schroeder].)
“Wer wie das Meer in das die Wasser strömen
Das sich anfüllet und doch ruhig dasteht
Wer so in sich die Wünsche lässt verschwinden,