Psyche is the heroine of love, and the incarnation of the emotion of love and the work of marriage are the subjects of her overcoming and development. And because she is as heroic as the other heroes, she is challenged by the gods or goddesses.
And like the heroes of the sun, whose symbiosis with the gods and the mutual development of a god or goddess in front of a person in all kinds of aspects, also in this myth that deals with the heroine, we will see a complex reciprocal relationship but this time between beauty, passion, and love of human beings and beauty, passion and love as eternal qualities, as embodied both by the goddess Aphrodite-Venus and by her son Eros-Cupid.
The story of Psyche – soul, the most beautiful princess of all, is the story of the human soul on its journey to develop from a charming and sexually passionate beautiful maiden, self-centered and unaware, into a sensitive, loving soul capable of harnessing the passion and sexuality to the libido, to a high emotional bond with a soul outside of its ties with its nuclear family. It is a journey of the development of a female.
The heroine is aware that her love and sexuality are correctly connected and directed toward the object of her love.
But this is also the story of the goddess Aphrodite. Along with the development of the human psyche controlled and directed by her, the goddess of beauty and love, she undergoes a developmental process of the goddess within an archetypical historical process of the human psyche. And the god Eros also undergoes development as he falls in love with Psyche against his mother's will and is freed from her. He supposedly takes the passion out of the exclusive authority of the goddess and gives the fiancé to the disposal of human beings and their ability to love and communicate!
Again, we see how much there is a symbiosis between God and man and to what extent the development of man leads to the development of archetypal representation and vice versa! The development of the goddess reflects a process and addition of new aspects of the love archetype that goes from a physical passive desire, based on purely physical beauty, to a higher multifaceted desire capable of being freed both from the body and the senses and at its peak becoming a transformative spiritual love.
According to the story, Psyche-the soul was a maiden of indescribable beauty, a heavenly beauty said about her and worshiped her as they do to a real goddess. The cult that was created around Psyche, around the beauty of the woman, which happens to this day sometimes, carried an idolatrous character and the goddess Aphrodite, the one in charge of beauty in the service of love, love and passion, and a couple of relationships, was outraged that a cheeky and small daughter of Human becomes supposedly superhuman and occupies the place of those on earth.
The hubris of Psyche or her parents and her people who decided that Aphrodite descended from Olympus to earth and reincarnated as a
human being boiled her blood (the Greek gods are not as transcendent as the god Jehovah and express archetypical, transpersonal human traits. Aphrodite decided that Psyche
deserved a harsh punishment for her parents to put them in their place because of pride. Psyche herself does not enjoy the cult around her. She is a maiden who suffers from being turned into a cult, so they fear her. An admiring, numinous, natural look was directed at her and not a human gaze of a loving heart. The punishment that the great goddess decided to give to Psyche was that she would fall in love and marry a dragon monster, a difficult, frightening, joyless, and unaware marriage. The marriage, which is described as a punishment for the insolent psyche, is somewhat reminiscent of the marriage as perceived from the eyes of a young girl on the verge of her youth who would have married her in the ancient world before adulthood without love, without choice and proper treatment and awareness.
The god Eros, the son of Aphrodite, appears in mythology sometimes as a boy with a bow and an arrow, sometimes as a baby, and in the distant past was like a loving spirit of ancient.
connection energy, receives from his mother a task to send his arrow to Psyche so that she will fall in love with a monster.
Eros descends from Olympus to humans to carry out his mission. Still, when he sees Psyche as beautiful and magical as Goddesses, like his mother, he falls in love with her and is unwilling to send his arrow and lose her if, God forbid, she falls in love with a monster. Instead of sending his arrow to Psyche, he kidnaps Psyche for himself and intends to hide her from the eyes of all, including his mother, in a remote, isolated
palace.
Psyche rises in rank. From a beautiful human soul revered as a goddess but lacking in love, she becomes a maiden delighted with passion and sexuality in an unknown palace, without awareness with whom and still without love. She lives in a paradise of sensuality and passion without any awareness.
In the life of Psyche in the palace, Eros dominates! He commands her to enjoy all the goods she has, but she must know that she must never see him, never meet any of her family members, and not be curious and want to know. She must obey him.
Over time as it characterizes the human psyche. Psyche gets bored with its goodness and wants a different passion and interest. The curious and willful human psyche begins to be restless, and the desire to know burns in its bones. She also misses her family, sisters, and parents, with whom she has a love relationship of the kind she is familiar. She pleads with him.
Over time, the mysterious and hidden Eros responds to Psyche and allows her to meet her sisters. Still, he warns her not to tell them anything, not to listen to them, and not to be influenced by their opinions, especially not to take anything from them.
Psyche meets her sisters three times, and despite Erros' warnings, she finds herself telling them and even proud that she has a beautiful and good life. She tells them that she does not serve him, that she does not
go down to the place where women fall to serve the man! And she tells them that she owns a magical palace and enjoys her life very much! It arouses in them great envy that will lead to a challenge and development.
And when the jealous and disadvantaged sisters do not get an answer to the question of who she lives with, they encourage Psyche. They slowly even incite her to find at all costs who is the mysterious creature that lives with her and that she is not allowed to see. They influence her under the guise of concern of, course, telling her that perhaps her partner, after all, is the original monster with whom she was initially supposed to marry. They claim he's just fooling her. Psyche is torn between her loyalty to her master Eros, the promise she made to him and the fear of him, and the curiosity and suspicion that arise in her following the incitement of her sisters.
Despite Eros's warnings not to take anything from her sisters, Psyche takes from them what they offer her as protection against him. She took the dagger to kill the monster, a lamp to awaken the darkness she is subjected to, and a determination to know who he is. At this stage of the story, one can recall a young bride whose family members find it difficult to part with her and incite her against her husband who has now become his property. Many families fall into this stage, and the marriage fails due to the non-help of the family or the ability of the young bride to transfer the family libido to the new object of love, the spouse.
The awakening of fears, curiosity, and the influence of the family lead Psyche to get up at night, to wake up on the face of the creature lying next to her and wait for the worst, that she may be lying in bed with a monster. And she gets up at night and does it and gets in trouble! Getting involved out of a desire to know!
The dramatic moment in which she wakes Eros to love and injures him with the lamp's oil, she is frightened, and herself is injured by the arrow of love out of the rubbish of arrows, is the moment of the climax of the drama. At this moment, Psyche also sees his divine beauty, both falling in love and losing her beloved, and the crisis begins. There is infatuation, loss of infatuation, and loss of the beloved, and now it is necessary to work and develop this to recover the beloved and the love that was lost to a new kind of love.
Psyche experiences the initials of falling in love. And the primacy is archetypal numinous because it has not yet undergone personification! But right next to this high, divine, numinous infatuation, she experiences loss and pain, which also hurts her. "I told you and commanded you not to know, and if you know, you will lose me ", Eros tells her!
After the loss of her ideal beloved, Psyche is lost! She does not know what is happening to her; what is this great intensity of pain that she feels? What is she experiencing, and what should she do?
Eros disappears, and a total loss of libido turns into depression. It is precisely the god Pan, God of nature, half fierce and half-human, telling her what is happening to her and helping her to understand, he instills hope in her, and she will be able to restore her beloved through mental work. Work you will do. With the help of mental development
He also tells her that it is not the goddess Demeter, the great mother, and not Hera, the patroness of marriage, not the wise and strategic Athena, but Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love; she is the expert on love and the passage of emotional processes and the possibility of returning the beloved one.
This means there is nothing to go back to crying to your mother when you lost your partner's love. And there is nothing to consult and get a smart strategy from a belligerent marriage counselor. And of course, the marriage institution's law and order will not help the return of the beloved, but work and mental development are needed here!
And indeed, Psyche prays to the goddess, and Aphrodite comes into the picture. When the goddess hears about the actions of her son Eros and his psyche's place in his life, she punishes Psyche and employs her in a nutshell. Again, a motif that reminds us of the Genesis story: after eating the apple, the mind comes to the punishment, "With the sweat of your nose you will eat bread. "This… And again, this is a reminder for us of how much a high consciousness requires work and involves pain. Connect the Eros and the passion for love and libido to deepen, expand and preserve love. Infatuation is a miraculous mental mechanism, but there is a great deal of projection within it… In love with love, in love with an ideal object, an imagined illusion, and many wishes, and if all this is charming, lifting, evocative, and very quickly drops as deep as possible! And for love itself, there is probably to work.
Of the four works that Psyche must perform: the first includes the sorting of nuclei of all types, grains, and seeds that serve as food and hints not only at the sorting work, classification and diagnosis but also at the proximity to food and housework. These hardworking ants help her in this difficult task, and she overcomes the first task. It learns to distinguish, sort, know better what true love is and what serves the self, and sharpen the positive instincts about love. This task hints at the Sisyphean work in love and the need to discern, arrange, and work diligently. This work is also about giving in love and emphasizing the practicality and everydayness of living. But that's still not enough.
Aphrodite is not satisfied with this; she claims Psyche's lack of independence burdens her with further work. She must bring a ball of gold wool that will be collected from the golden deer of Helios to the sun, those known for their danger and aggression. Psyche despairs being unable to perform such a dangerous task, which seems threatening and impossible to her. She cries, and whoever helps her now of crisis are the reeds by the river, those whose records tell her what she should do. From listening to nature, she learns that she must wait patiently when the deer to come to drink in the river.
The task requires listening to nature, patience, and timing, knowing when it is right and dangerous when to build and destroy. The gold wool hints that there is an elevation of consciousness here. Awareness of the power that hides and not to fight and attack when it is not true. This is like the wisdom of dealing with the shadow of the relationship against the hidden things that are usually "under the rug"! When everything is beautiful from above: "a perfect couple," for example!
Aphrodite, in any case, is not yet provided, and the burden on the psyche is getting harder and harder. To reach the high loved one, one must try harder and endure even more difficult experiences.
If the previous mission was on the land with the instincts, the next task requires Psyche to ascend to the source of a spring of the Stitches River (the hated one) that flows to the heart of Hades! It is a river whose pure origin is located high at the top of a mountain, and its flow later collects a lot of dirt on its way until it reaches the resurrection of Hades; the river acquires monsters and scary and dirty creatures. Psyche must somehow rise to the top of the mountain, reach the source of the river and bring to Aphrodite a jug filled with pure and pristine water from the source, from the very beginning. Remember how love began, for example, and why it began to deteriorate, how to return to the same source!
Psyche is unhappy and does not know her soul from sorrow, she prays begging, and Zeus hears her voice and sends her the eagle on his back will ride and reach the height of love, the source of high love, perhaps divine love for its own sake. The source that will always remind us of pure and high primary love. In this mission, it is necessary to rise to the top, to see things from above from a high place, from the eagle's flight and the connection to the source of love, even before it gets dirty with anger, frustrations, quarrels, and spoilage. The ability to return to the source and rise above can sometimes help us when we are hurt, frustrated and angry. We forget the main thing and are preoccupied with self-harm and what we lack! Rise, I sometimes say to myself or some patients, look high! Where is your compassion? What is this pettiness?
This is sometimes the sacred injury or the holy rage, which is difficult to give up.
Aphrodite still refuses to return her lost lover to Psyche. It is not satisfied with the new place that the love that Psyche gives has; it must go through another stage in which it will reach the depths of spiritual love, non-material, non-material, and not necessarily physical love. Know the love that adjusts to the unique love and love in which the ability to discern the inner and mental beauty is expressed.
It is about spiritual, mental love, that beauty, and love that are freed from the body, physicality, and everything that the initial desire or recollection of it generates. For this task, the human psyche must be able to free itself from everything that characterizes infatuation built on physical desire. To be free of a love that depends on the thing and to develop a love for the other because of what it is mentally and spiritually.
Psyche hears that this task requires her to go down to Hades and bring the Persephone beauty box. What does it mean to go down to Hades? To that kingdom of the dead? Go through a depressive crisis? Psyche panics and is sure that to get the beauty box of Persephone, the queen of the underworld, she must die. Perhaps she must be a spirit, a soul that comes out of the body. She climbs a tall tower from which she wants to jump to die, and the tower turns to her and tells her that it is possible to descend to Hades, to the realm of souls, to the place of the spirit even without dying physically. A person can undergo such a transformation; he can deepen and enter a state that symbolizes the entry into the world of the spirit of the soul. He can die mentally and change, supposedly reborn after a difficult, traumatic event. Psyche has not yet discovered this ability of the human soul in its development, towards its ability to feel beauty and love in the spiritual dimension.
The love for the other exists when we notice the spirit of the other in its unique inner beauty, perhaps also unique to us; we see in it the special. Psyche still does not understand this; she thinks about death about physical beauty. When she goes down to Hades, the tower, which represents something that is man-made, tells her that she must be careful not to be caught in over-pity and be sucked into giving everything to the spirits, to the stray souls in Hades. Souls want blood means the higher consciousness, and it must take care of itself, knowing how not to have too much mercy. It is a primary maternal emotion that is not always good regarding love.
In developing love in its higher stages, separating a mother's love or mercy from love for another is necessary. We know that for women, this task is often difficult. They are motherly, pitiful, and sure that this is love. Sometimes they feel sorry and remain in a destructive relationship with themselves. The love of a mother and the degree of mercy precedes the love of the other, and in development, it is necessary to know the difference. It is necessary to be aware of the beauty and love of others.
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When Psyche descends into the underworld, she must take sweet cookies to give the watchdog, Cerberus, the three-headed boundary dog. She must keep the cookies and give them to him at the entrance and exit of Hades so that she can enter and exit. And even when the hungry spirits try to awaken her mercy that she will give them from her food, she must keep them for her airy purpose, the goal of learning the deep beauty and love that requires diagnosis!
And another thing that has to do with Psyche's Hybris, like there is Hybris every Hero she also has. For Hercules, it was around power; for Odysseus, it was around wisdom and ingenuity" and for Oedipus, around his youthfulness! When Psyche reaches Hades, she must bow her head in front of the goddess of the underworld Persephone. She must know modesty and bend in the face of forces greater than herself. Psyche gets into Hades and receives this incoherent box of beauty from Persephone. What is in the box wonders psyche and is intrigued; she was instructed not to open it, not to know the contents of the box, and to hand it directly to Aphrodite. Not to see and not to know but to believe that this is the task. It is a task of spirit, of meaning; there is no substance, physicality, or physical beauty here! And in general, not seeing the face of God is an accepted and well-known idea. To believe without seeing anything concrete is the point of this high task. Not to think about what I got out of it, but what it means to me ….
But Psyche, the heroine of beauty and love, is incapable, at this stage, of maintaining beauty and love in a completely symbolic way without opening the box! She is, nevertheless, a woman who wants to return to her beloved. Psyche is unable to ascend back to the concrete physical world without seeing what is in the box; curiosity prevails over it, and when she opens the box, the beauty box of the goddess of the underworld, the sleep that appears as a kind of spirit that envelops her and faint.
Psyche falls into a coma from which only her beloved Eros can save her, waking her up. In this part of love, there is a need for the other, who wakes up, shows, and helps in friendship! Also, love, in this case, is towards the significant other. The one for whom she is beautiful and loves him, the one for whom her love is in a new dimension, love in the spirit. It is that you love when you see the inner workings of others and show them ours, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The idea of convergence and the idea of needing the other as part of the development of love appear here at this stage as the most essential. Love and mutual connection, in all its physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions, do not develop without recognition of the other. But the psyche reaches it only after crises, depressions, and declines….
In this, Psyche ends her long journey and discovers all the secrets and forms of love that are strange and deep, and thus, she is ready to become an eternal and archetypal figure that symbolizes beauty and love for its form shades. The gods agreed that Psyche would marry Eros, and they would both ascend to Olympus to be the ones symbolizing the eternal connection of love and Eros. These two had a daughter named Hedva in Hebrew, who is the joy of love.
There is no doubt that this myth can correspond to the personal development of each person in love with the beauty and ability to love. It also shows us human consciousness's historical and mental process and its high capacity for love and compassion because both Aphrodite-Venus and Eros-Amor change!
In this chapter, I also used the legend of Amor and Psyche of Apuleius as it appears in the Golden Us.
And, in the book of E. Neumann, Amor & Psyche – about the development of femininity.
Published by Devir Pub. 1953
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