3.5 The descent into the bath
In
the next picture (see on the right; 4th picture of Jung’s essay)
the king and the queen are descending into the bath. As we have noted, this
symbolic act is also interpreted as sinking into the uterus. The water
represents the previously mentioned psyche that the alchemists saw as half
spiritual and half material.
The psyche is the so-called vinculum
amoris,
the band of love that was able to unify the masculine with the feminine. From
a psychological point of view this symbolism means,
in the case of unconsciousness about the real meaning of the coniunctio, the flooding with sexual libido that compensates the too
intellectual consciousness.
This
reminds us naturally of the sexual revolution of the sixties in Europe in the
last century which culminates in modern times in the unrestrained living out
of the archaic aspect of the Eros in sexual promiscuity. Like this,
promiscuity compensates today’s intellectual one-sidedness. This preliminary
stage of the real, today constellated opus of the future seems however
necessary, as only such an experience allows us to see that the concretistic
variation of the creation myth, of the divine coniunctio,
is on the long run unsatisfactory and meaningless.
Only
this way can modern
man see that the concretization does not lead into the mystical experience
which obviously is the goal of the symbolically indicated process in the Rosarium.
In
my judgment there is however urgent need to overcome the unconsciousness about
the flooding with sexual libido demonstrated in today’s sexual libertinism.
It is this need that is the reason why I decided to publish my modern
interpretation of the Rosarium
together with a series of sexual imaginations of a patient (with his consent;
see chapters 7 to 10).
By
the acceptance of his sexual fantasies as the prima
materia of an inner alchemical opus, he
- in matters of promiscuous sex not too innocent – took responsibility for
them. Like this he was able to grow into a new consciousness, instead of
concretizing his fantasies, thus
acting them out and stay unconscious about their archetypal/psychophysical
background.
Only
such a behavior allowed him to begin a Body-Centered Imagination <link?>
under my guidance. Decades ago, this process showed me for the first time the
possibilities and the importance of such an introverted
dealing with one’s own collective sexual fantasies. Further, I began to
realize the amazing fact that such fantasies have – in contrast to the
mainstream’s opinion – almost nothing to do with a personal Eros
relationship, though they of course appeared first in projections onto his
female partner.