2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
The purpose of carefully designed rituals is to separate the person from the previous stage of existence.
and helping him to transfer psychic energy to the next stage of life.
Carl Gustav Jung
The word "baptism" in the original source sounds like "baptism", and means "dipping", or "total immersion." Mirchi Eliada writes: “… Already ap. Paul endowed the sacrament of baptism with symbolism, archaic in its structure: ritual death and resurrection occur in the rite, the new birth of Ap. Paul also says that in baptism one finds the reconciliation of opposites: “there is no slave, no free; there is no male or female “(Galatians 3:28). In other words, the person receiving baptism acquires the original state of androgyny androgyny - an ancient and ubiquitous symbolic expression of human perfection …"
From these words of M. Eliade, one can see that the sacrament itself was given the significance of not only a transforming, but also an integrating character. As already noted, the rite of complete immersion in water for the purpose of renewal, rebirth, came from ancient times, and was known long before John the Baptist. It was practiced by both pagans and Jews (dipping into the mikvah). For example, a Roman patrician, acquiring a slave for himself, immersed him completely in water, and after that he gave him a new name as a sign of complete belonging to himself. Also here you can remember the sacred Hindu ritual of bathing in the Ganges.
In alchemy, such a concept as alchemical transmutation can be taken as an analogue of baptism. Transmutation is the transformation of lead into gold or the transformation of mercury into a philosopher's stone; symbolically, it is about transforming, and speaking in the Jugian language, transforming the imperfect human psyche into the unity of the God-man, that is, finding the self. Great doing begins with the Nigredo stage, literally "blackness", this stage psychologically can correspond to a state of crisis, disorientation, destruction of former ideals and prolonged depression.
Next comes Albedo literally "white color" - a state of purification, baptism, light. On a psychological level, this can symbolize the process of regression, a return to the state of uroboros. That is, in order to transform and integrate parts of the psyche, we need to plunge headlong into the unconscious (in analytical psychology, it is customary to consider water as one of the symbols of the unconscious).
The final stage of transmutation in Rubedo alchemy, literally "redness", is the fourth stage of the Alchemical act, which consists in achieving an enlightened consciousness, merging spirit and matter, creating a philosopher's stone.
M.-L. von Franz in his book "Getting rid of witchcraft in fairy tales" the first motive for getting rid of witchcraft leads to bathing. She writes that in many fairy tales there is a character - a sworn or bewitched person (man or woman) who has to do evil deeds, but he can get rid of the spell imposed on him by taking a dip somewhere. I will highlight here the following symbols of baptism: water, a form containing a water-vessel, a circle, a cross.
Water
It is known that about 71% of the Earth's surface is covered with water and water is of key importance in the creation and maintenance of life on Earth, in the chemical structure of living organisms, in the formation of climate and weather. And it was in the water that the first primitive living organisms appeared, and only after a long time in the process of evolution, bacteria and cyanobacteria mastered the land and formed a layer of fertile soil on it, created the biosphere. That is, life is born from the water, just as a mother gives birth to her child, just as consciousness appears from the vast expanses of the unconscious in the process of the formation of the psyche. It is water that reveals to us the meaning of baptism and is the oldest symbol. Water refers to the symbolism of the unconscious, and temporary immersion in water, apparently, has some analogy with immersion in the unconscious.
M-L. von Franz writes: “… In many dreams, the analytical process is compared with taking a bath, and the analysis itself is often compared to washing or bathing. Bathing is associated with amplification or with a psychological attitude aimed at restoring the complex in its initial fullness, and …"
We come across the symbol of water as a transforming and integrating symbol in such a tale as Ivan Tsarevich and the Gray Wolf. Let us recall the episode of the fairy tale where the Wolf finds Ivan Tsarevich dead and decides to revive him with dead and living water that the crow brings him. The death and resurrection of Ivan Tsarevich is a symbol of the transformation of the psyche, with a new level of awareness. Another example of the transforming properties of water is Peter Ershov's fairy tale "The Little Humpbacked Horse", namely the final episode of the fairy tale, where Ivan jumps first into milk, then into boiling water and cold water, and as a result Ivan becomes a handsome man.
Form containing water-vessel
Natural vessels that contain water - oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, groundwater, springs - they all have a certain shape that can be filled with content. In his work The Great Mother, Erich Neumann gives the following equality: Woman = body = vessel = world. He believes that this is the basic formula for the human stage, where the feminine prevails over the masculine, the unconscious over the ego and consciousness.
M.-L. von Franz notes: “… the vessel or container is the bosom of the church, the uterus, and therefore it has certain feminine maternal qualities. And since a vessel is a reservoir for storing liquid, made by human hands, it is associated with the function of consciousness. A vessel denotes a concept or a way of understanding …"
The baptismal font can also be viewed as a "maternity ward", where at first everyone is symbolically drowned and then born. It is known that in the early stages of Christianity they immersed themselves in the baptismal font, which was much larger than it is now, and in many churches baptisms were erected in a separate building on its own foundation, which was a circle.
A circle
In the Orthodox ritual of baptism, after some previous events, the priest performs chrismation and then, with the baptized person and his godparents, goes around the baptismal font three times as a sign of eternity. The font is bypassed, outlining a circle. The idea of a magic circle was known in ancient times, a circle was drawn around everything that they want to protect from hostile influences and the disappearance of which they want to prevent. The magic circle is an archaic idea and is often found in folklore. For example, when a person is looking for a treasure and is going to dig it up in one place or another, then he draws a magic circle around himself in order to protect himself from the devil. Here I recall the work of N. V. Gogol Viy and the episode when Thomas, in fear, outlines a circle around himself with chalk in order to protect himself from the corpse of a witch.
In ancient times, when the foundation of the city was laid, it was customary to perform a ritual of detour or detour around it in order to protect everyone within this circle. “… In Sanskrit, the word mandala means a circle inscribed in a square. In the center of the circle is a god or symbol of divine energy. The symbol of the mandala, the circle, carries in itself precisely the meaning of a sacred place that protects the center. And this symbol is one of the most important motives in the objectification of unconscious images. This is a means of protecting the center of the personality from exposing it to the outside and from outside encroachments …”- wrote CG Jung. In the ritual of baptism, from my point of view, walking around the font can symbolize the final stage of the formation of the psyche, the achievement of integrity, individuation and selfhood.
Cross
Crucifixion was a common method of execution in ancient Rome, borrowed from the Carthaginians - the descendants of the Phoenician colonists. Usually robbers were sentenced to death on the cross. The word cross has many variations. The English word "cross" comes from the Latin "crux", meaning "a tree, gallows or other wooden instruments of execution," and the verb "cruciare" means "torture, torture."
In the Symbols of Transformation, CG Jung writes: “… It is known that trees have long played an important role in all cults and myths. In Egyptian myths, images and images of a tree are everywhere found - as an archetypal place of a mythical birth. Often the tree is depicted as a Goddess providing food …”. That is, here the tree acts as a symbol of the female, the mother, who provides food, birth. And further: “… Often in the paintings of artists you can see the image of Christ not on the usual cross, but crucified on a tree. A typical mythical tree is the tree of paradise or the Tree of Life, which is sufficiently confirmed by both Babylonian and Jewish sources, in pre-Christian myths we meet it in the form of the Attis pine, in the tree or trees of Mithra. The image of Attis hanged from a pine tree, the hanged Marsyas, which became the theme for numerous artistic images of the hanging of Odin, the Drenwegerman sacrifices by hanging, the whole series of the hanged gods - all this teaches us that the crucifixion of Christ on the cross is by no means unique in mythology. In this world of images, the cross of Christ is both the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death, a coffin. And if we recall once again that the tree is predominantly female, a maternal symbol, then we can understand the mythological meaning of this form of burial - the deceased is passed back to the mother for rebirth Cross is a symbol many-sided and its main meaning is the meaning of the Tree of Life and Mother …”.
If, in the ideal case, we consider the process of Jungian analysis as a way of individuation of the psyche, of a person, the search for and acquisition of selfhood, then I would like to note that the very first session is the beginning of one global ritual of baptism, the purpose of which is individuation, slow immersion in the waters of the unconscious, and each subsequent session is an analogue of a baptism ritual lasting 50 minutes, after each session we leave the room where this sacrament was held, renewed, even if not so much that our ego-consciousness would notice it, but still changed.
“… People who have been analyzing for a long time do not need to analyze each dream in the same detail as at the beginning of the process. One mention is enough for them; analogous to this is the custom of sprinkling the faithful with holy water (asperges). This ritual replaces immersion in the baptismal font, which is not a very pleasant procedure from an aesthetic point of view …”writes Maria-Louise von Franz.
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