Part 5: Androgyny in Spiritual Alchemy, Cont.

We’ve described the archetypes in some detail in our Seventh World psychology section. We don’t need to cover old territory here. But a little review is in order. The moment we become conscious of self, we become conscious of separation. One bite of the apple of self-knowledge and we’ve bought ourselves a paradisical exit pass. Zen, as indeed all religions are, is just a way of getting back into Eden. There is no more "thee and me", no more Yin and Yang, no more distinctions of any kind. In Eden, the Empty Circle, there is only the Oneness of God. We are connected to everything.

So, here we are. Eden Ex-pats. Aliens in a strange and hostile land. How would nature have programmed us to help us survive? Nature would, and did, provide us with a headful of instincts, archetypes or "gods" who would direct us as best as time and place allowed. Of course, self-knowledge (the ego) itself tries to function as a god... hubris and all that. But the ego is largely a fiction, one that thinks it thinks; one that supposes that because it can manipulate numbers and words and recall what it had for dinner last night, it is capable of determining its own destiny - whom it will love and whom it will hate, what it will do and what abstain from doing, and so on through all the vagaries of ratiocination. Unfortunately, the gods seldom if ever listen to reason. ( "Free will" is another illusion.)

To survive, we need instincts of self-preservation. How do we preserve ourselves? We need friends to support us in times of personal distress or group emergency, allies who will also constitute a suitable gene pool for our offspring. Gaining friends is therefore one way we enhance our chances for survival. Another way we preserve our lives is to kill or at least weaken our enemies. Anyone who overtly threatens us or our private support group is our enemy. Accordingly, we evaluate everyone we encounter. How useful will this person be... how reliable... how resourceful ... how pleasurable, and so on. We also evaluate potential enemies. How might someone diminish our well-being or the dollar-amount of our inheritance? How might he rob us of our goods, our reputation, our playmates?

The instinct that governs self-preservation is the two-sided Shadow. For friends, we have the Friendly Shadow; for enemies, the Enemy Shadow.

When we project this god upon a person - say, a friend, we form an emotional bond, a bond that is usually quite conditional. To maintain the bond the friend must conform to certain standards. He must not betray our confidences or fail to return borrowed money or goods. He must keep golf dates and return phone calls. He must keep his distance from our chosen sex object. And so on.

Likewise, we need to recognize an enemy as quickly and accurately as possible. After all, if he becomes a serious enough threat, we might have to kill the fellow... or rat him to the IRS... or tell his wife where he really goes when he is out of town. This, as we might imagine, requires an inordinate amount of psychic energy and so this potent Shadow God of Enemies is a mighty power.

And so that we, ourselves, may be desirable and gather unto ourselves that supportive network of Beautiful People - people who matter - we have an instinct to excel, to acquire a reputation for having those qualities which others so desperately want and admire: a fashion sense; a literary flair; a talent for dancing; a ‘hollow leg’... whatever it takes. This instinct is called The Persona.

Before beginning the alchemical Opus we have to send these gods to Mount Olympus. Nobody can climb the Path saddled with friends, enemies or pride. Let’s assume that we have taken a genuine "live and let live" attitude towards our enemies and that we have ceased "reaching out to touch someone," i.e., needing to be stroked by friends, and can therefore enjoy the glorious state of not having friends but of just being friendly, then we can proceed to work on the Persona. We cannot seek to be connected to the cosmos if we wouldn’t be caught dead driving up to nirvana’s gate in public transportation.

Finally, we achieve humility. We trade-in our sophisticated, urbane attitudes and become rustic farmhands... plowmen, to use an oriental alchemical term.. Having divested ourselves of all our expensive toys, decorations and titles, we achieve simplicity by converting self-aggrandizement into self-effacement. With pride out of the way we continue in earnest to "prepare the way" or "plow the field."

We turn our attention inwards and deal with our sexual attachments. It so happens that two of those other archetypes, those instinct gods that nature gave us, are the anima goddess of love (in men) and the animus god of love (in women). When this anima goddess or animus god is projected upon someone, we fall in love and become sexually serious creatures. Nothing insures survival of the species the way reproduction does. However, for so long as we are in love our projected anima or animus is not in residence (inside our heads) and is therefore not at home to deal with us. Our god or goddess of love is out there in the world draped over some ungrateful mortal - and being worshipped by us. We are therefore not ready for divine marriage since we have no god available to subsume our ego and sneak us into the Bridal Chamber. For the great secret of androgyny is that a woman enters the Bridal Chamber in the body of her animus; just as a man enters the Bridal Chamber in the body of his anima... his "soul" in Latin. This is, of course, why all alchemical texts contain illustrations of a central character which has one body with two heads, a male and a female, the so-called Rebis.

Rebis Figure. Androgyne with Goats’ Heads. Codex germanicus Monacensis. Germany 15th Century. It is not enough, however, merely not to be in love. For if we are unripe and suffer from loneliness, i.e., if we have a restless anima or animus who prowls our psyche like a tiger in a cage, we’re also not candidates for divine nuptials. The god who wants to be projected out of us, or escape from us, has already, by definition, rejected us. We have to become fit or worthy for divine marriage, to make ourselves spiritually desirable. The initial phase of the Opus, then, is also a period in which we convert loneliness into solitude. We have to enjoy being alone. In concert with the hard work of spiritual rehabilitation comes the tough regimen of prayer, meditation, study and the disciplines of a healthy lifestyle - dietary control, exercise, and so on.

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