Written in the Stars·Stand — Eternal Spring
Humans are bound to the Wheel of Fortune, and how could the gods be any different? The hegemony of the gods will always be a target of strife in the divine realm. Huddling in the Tartarus, The losers lick their wounds. The victor, the king, must still be ready to meet the yet-unknown rebel at an unknown time.
Typhoon
To avenge the Yan Emperor and Chiyou, Xingtian (Chinese: 刑天) challenges the Yellow Emperor. That is very similar to Typhon (Ancient Greek: Τυφῶν, Typhônyphon) fighting Zeus for the Titans (Ancient Greek: οἱ Τῑτᾶνες, hoi Tītânes, singular: ὁ Τῑτᾱ́ν, -ήν, ho Tītân).
The Chinese character for “Xing” (刑) means “cut,” and “tian” (天) means “head,” so the name “Xingtian” represents a warrior who had his head cut off and whose real name has not survived. Typhon, on the other hand, is remembered as the nomenclature of the typhoon, which in many records means “earth-born.”
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, typhoon is derived from Typhon in Greek mythology and Tai Fung (大風) in Chinese Cantonese. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that the legend of Typhon in Greek mythology reached India through Arabian. Around 1588, when an English ship was caught in a storm in the China Sea, the crew heard the word Tai Fung in Cantonese, which eventually led to the English word “typhoon.”
To date, we named typhoons storms formed by hotspot cyclones in the northwest Pacific, while hurricanes storms formed by hotspot cyclones in the Atlantic.
Caesarean Section
Uranus (Ancient Greek: Οὐρανός), the earliest king of the gods, once imprisoned himself and Gaia’s sons, three Hekatoncheires (Greek: Ἑκατόγχειρες), and three Cyclopes (Greek: Κύκλωπες, Kýklōpes), in Gaia’s womb.
Hekatoncheires, meaning “Hundred-Handed Ones,” had 50 heads and 100 arms, and the three giants were Cottus (Greek: Κόττος), meaning “the furious one,” Briareus or Aegaeon (Greek: Βριάρεώς), meaning “the goat of the sea,” and Gyges or Gyes (Greek: Γύης), meaning “long-limbed.”
Cyclopes, meaning “Circle-eyes” or “Round-eyes,” had a single eye on their foreheads, were emotionally impulsive and stubborn, and were very good at making and using tools and weapons. The three were Brontes, meaning “Thunder,” Steropes, meaning “Lightning,” and Arges (Greek: Ἄργης), meaning “Bright.”
When Cronus (Cronos, or Kronos; Greek: Κρόνος, Krónos) castrated his father Uranus with the sickle forged from adamantine that his mother Gaia forged, he used the sickle to slice through his mother Gaia’s womb, releasing six giant brothers. But the six giants were so ugly and vicious that Cronus imprisoned them in Tartarus.
Zeus, the son of Cronus, led the Olympians to challenge the Titans in the decade-long Titanomachy (Ancient Greek: Τιτανομαχία, romanized: Titanomakhía, lit. “Titan-battle”). The war dragged on, and Zeus could not win. So he freed the six giants from Tartarus. In gratitude to Zeus, Brontes gave Zeus his thunderbolt, and Cyclopes forged weapons for the Olympians, including the Trident of Poseidon and the Cap of invisibility for Hades. The Cap of invisibility is what Perseus (Greek: Περσεύς, Perseús) borrowed in the story of the beheading of Medusa we talked about before.
Hekatoncheires surpassed the Titans in power and helped Zeus defeat the Titans.
… among the foremost Cottus and Briareus and Gyges, insatiable of war, roused up bitter battle; and they hurled three hundred boulders from their massive hands one after another and overshadowed the Titans with their missiles. They sent them down under the broad-pathed earth and bound them in distressful bonds after they had gained victory over them with their hands, high-spirited though they were, as far down beneath the earth as the sky is above the earth.
— Hesiod, Theogony 711–720
The Cyclops had a tragic end, and later, Zeus worried that the Cyclops were making those weapons for others who could defeat him. To prevent potential opponents from obtaining the winning thunderbolt, Zeus killed them.
“Patricide”
In this myth, Cronus’ disembowelment of his mother’s womb also responds to the Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) in humans. The British psychoanalyst Donald Woods Winnicott (April 7, 1896– January 25, 1971) was twice president of the British Psychoanalytic Society (1956–1959 and 1965–1968). He discusses the notion of the transitional object or attachment object. He is best known for his ideas on the true self and false self, the “good enough” parent. He believed that “there’s no such thing as a baby,” only babies and their mothers.
I once said: “there is no such thing as an infant” meaning, of course, that wherever one finds an infant one finds maternal care, and without maternal care there would be no infant.
— D.W. Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment
Mothers shape us — usually in the womb, through the interaction between mother and baby — and shape human emotions.
Carl Gustav Jung (July 26, 1875 — June 6, 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology, also known as Jungian analysis.
In November 1899, at 43, Sigmund Freud (born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; May 6, 1856 — September 23, 1939) published The Interpretation of Dreams (German: Die Traumdeutung). At this time, Jung was 25 years old and had just completed his degree. He began working as an intern under psychiatrist Paul Eugen Bleuler (April 30, 1857 — July 15, 1939) at the Burghölzli Hospital.
In 1903, Jung read The Interpretation of Dreams and realized his research had much in common with the theories in Freud’s work. That same year, Jung married Emma Jung (born Emma Marie Rauschenbach, March 30, 1882 — November 27, 1955), the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, Johannes Rauschenbach-Schenck, seven years his junior. She became a Swiss Jungian analyst and author lately.
In August 1904, Jung admitted for hospitalization a 19-year-old Russian Jewish girl named Sabina Nikolayevna Spielrein (Russian: Сабина Николаевна Шпильрейн, November 7, October 25, 1885, OS — August 11, 1942).
In March 1906, Jung began writing letters to Freud with his research paper, Studies in Word Association (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1904–1907). The same year, he published Diagnostic Association Studies, which he also sent to Freud.
Jung met Freud for the first time in Vienna on March 3, 1907, for a 13-hour session. Freud greatly appreciated Jung’s talent, and the two corresponded frequently, establishing a long-term friendship. Freud regarded the young Jung as the successor he had been looking for. Since Freud and other psychoanalyst contemporaries were Jewish and faced discrimination from rising anti-Semitism in Europe, Freud believed that Jung, a Christian, could carry forward his “new science” of psychoanalysis “legitimately.”
During Jung’s treatment of Sabina Spielrein, the two developed into lovers. Later, Sabina also worked as Jung’s assistant. A few years later, she came under Freud’s tutelage and became a prominent psychoanalyst. This incident caused a rift between Jung and Freud.
Freud lived with his wife, Martha Bernays (July 26, 1861 — November 2, 1951), and his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, who became a permanent member of Freud’s household. They set up what has (jokingly) been called a ménage à trois.
When Jung learned of this, he was vocal about it. Rumors of this also gradually circulated in the community, causing Freud to suspect it was Jung’s doing. Freud’s fear that Jung would become a “patricide” led to a complete break between the two giants in 1913.
In recent studies, Sabina was deemed to be an eminent thinker who profoundly influenced not only her contemporaries Jung, Freud, and Melanie Klein (née Reizes, March 30, 1882 — September 22, 1960), but also later psychologists, including Jean William Fritz Piaget (August 9, 1896 — September 16, 1980), Alexander Romanovich Luria (Russian: Алекса́ндр Рома́нович Лу́рия, July 16, 1902–14 August 14, 1977), and Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (Russian: Лев Семёнович Выготский; Belarusian: Леў Сямёнавіч Выгоцкі, November 17 [O.S. November 5], 1896 — June 11, 1934).
The Mature Age
Sabina’s relationship with her mentor was also very similar to that of the famous François Auguste René Rodin (November 12, 1840 — November 17, 1917) and his student Camille Rosalie Claudel (December 8, 1864 — October 19, 1943).
Camille Claudel began working in Rodin’s studio in 1883 and became a source of inspiration for Rodin. She was Rodin’s model, confidante, and lover. After an abortion for Rodin in 1892, Claudel ended her intimate relationship with Rodin, but they met each other regularly until 1898.
In 1899, Rodin was shocked and angered when he first saw The Mature Age sculpted by Claudel. He suddenly stopped supporting Claudel altogether. It is also highly likely that Rodin pressured the Ministry of Fine Arts to cancel funding for Claudel’s creations.
The French art critic Louis Vauxcelles (born Louis Meyer; January 1, 1870 — July 21, 1943) said that Claudel, like Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot (January 14, 1841 — March 2, 1895), the only other famous female painter of the century, was a female sculptor with a forehead that shone with the genius mark of a female sculptor. Claudel’s style was more masculine than many of her male colleagues.
The Mature Age, also known as Destiny, depicts three phases in a person’s life: the young woman, representing youth, attempts to save, and the man, representing maturity, held in both hands of an aged woman, who represents decaying old and death.
The life that was, is, and will be in Maturity contains within its movement both the relentless movement of Clotho and the rhythmic, graceful, whirling movement of Fortune, generating a single and sustaining movement or image out of the differences within
— Angelo Caranfa, Camille Claudel : a sculpture of interior solitude. Lewisburg London: Bucknell University Press Associated University Presses. ISBN 9780838753910. 1999
The cited figure, Clotho (Greek: Κλωθώ) or Klotho, meaning “the spinner,” is the youngest of the Three Fates, Moirai in Greek mythology. As we said in the previous narrative, Clotho was responsible for spinning the thread of life. After Clotho spun the thread of one’s life, Lachesis (Ancient Greek: Λάχεσις), meaning “disposer of lots,” was responsible for passing the thread of life through the various twists and turns of fate, and Atropos (Ancient Greek: Ἄτροπος), meaning “without turn,” then cuts the thread of life (meaning death).
One can see one’s needs, but one cannot see one’s deep-seated desires. Cutting off the father’s penis, and cutting open the mother’s uterus, are all attempts to cut off the “creator (and master) of life” in the contemplation of “where we come from” under the spiritual entanglement, from the “break” in the body to seek a solution.
At the third interview the little girl related a dream she had had when she was five years old, and by which she was greatly impressed. She says, “I’ll never forget this dream.” The dream runs as follows: “I am in a wood with my little brother and we are looking for strawberries. Then a wolf came and jumped at me. I took to a staircase, the wolf after me. I fall down and the wolf bites my leg. I awoke in terror.”
Before we go into the associations given by our little patient, I will try to form an arbitrary opinion about the possible content of the dream, and then compare our result afterwards with the associations given by the child. The beginning of the dream reminds us of the well-known German fairy-tale of Little Red-Ridinghood, which is, of course, known to the child. The wolf ate the grandmother first, then took her shape, and afterwards ate Little Red-Ridinghood. But the hunter killed the wolf, cut open the belly and Little Red-Ridinghood sprang out safe and sound. This motive is found in a great many fairy-tales, widespread over the whole world, and it is the motive of the biblical story of Jonah. The original significance is astro-mythological: the sun is swallowed up by the sea, and in the morning is born again out of the water. Of course, the whole of astro-mythology is at the root but psychology, unconscious psychology, projected on to the heavens, for myths have never been and are never made consciously, but arise from man’s unconscious. For this reason, we sometimes find that marvellous, striking similarity or identity in the forms of myths, even among races that have been separated from each other since eternity as it were. This explains the universal dissemination of the symbol of the cross, perfectly independent of Christianity, of which America, as is well known, furnishes us especially interesting instances. It is impossible to agree, that myths have been made to explain meteorological or astronomical processes. Myths are, first of all, manifestations of unconscious currents, similar to dreams. These currents are caused by the libido in its unconscious forms. The material which comes to the surface is infantile material, hence, phantasies connected with the incest-complex. Without difficulty we can find in all the so-called sun-myths infantile theories about generation, childbirth and incestuous relations. In the fairy-tale of Little Red-Ridinghood, we find the phantasy that the mother has to eat something which is similar to a child, and that the child is born by cutting open the mother’s body. This phantasy is one of the most universal, to be found everywhere.
We can conclude, from these universal psychological observations, that the child, in its dream, elaborates the problem of generation and childbirth. As to the wolf, the father probably has to be put in its place, for the child unconsciously assigns to the father any act of violence towards the mother. This anticipation can be based on innumerable myths which deal with the problem of any act of violence towards the mother. In reference to the mythological parallelism, let me direct your attention to Boas’s collection, where you will find a beautiful set of Indian legends; also to the work of Frobenius, “Das Zeitaltes Sonnengottes”; and, finally, to the works of Abraham, Rank, Riklin, Jones, Freud, Spielrein, and my own investigations in my “Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido.”
— C. G. Jung, The Theory of Psychoanalysis
The womb is the origin of life and the origin of power. Man tries to isolate the past to master the present, but ultimately, finds it just a clone of history.
Arno Will, December 16, 2023, May 21, 2024, revised June 4
Ideas and Myths·Awakening
Ideas and Myths·Purpose For Man
Ideas and Myths·Written in the Stars
Written in the Stars·Predestined Fate
Written in the Stars·Destinies
Written in the Stars·Stand
Stand — Thunderbolt
Stand — Eternal Spring
Stand — Truth in Black
Stand — Feast of Human Flesh
Stand — Wonder Wheel
Stand — Blood Sword
Written in the Stars·Curses
Ideas and Myths·Liberation
