The Golden Ass of Apuleius Read online

  Folk tradition picked this up and spun out the figure of a Xanthippe who made continuous scenes in her desperate efforts to uphold the rights of emotion, of primitive warm feeling and involvement. The feminine principle, except in its sublime Diotima form, was not recognized by the school of Greek philosophy. The woman, as she is in reality, and not only in her sublime anima aspect, was not seen but was brushed aside as inferior. The famous discussion of Alcibiades with Socrates is an illustration: “How can you stand those scenes made by Xanthippe?” To which Socrates replies, “Oh, they do not disturb me any more than the cackling of the ducks and geese on your farm.” Alcibiades answers, “Oh, well, but the ducks and geese on my farm lay eggs, they are at least useful.” Socrates replies, “Well, Xanthippe gave me sons.” With such an attitude one can expect that the feminine principle would become negative and destructive. This is revealed in our present story of Panthia, the “all-goddess,” and of Meroe, the “wine goddess,” who embody negative feeling and sex-possession and who completely overrun Socrates. The choice of the names points to an abysmal problem of the time, a problem which only centuries later shifted into consciousness and which in a certain way today has still not been solved.

  As we know, in Greek philosophy the main society of the polis consisted of male groups such as the Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Stoic philosophical schools. These were patriarchal, not recognizing either the feminine element or the feminine aspect of Eros, nor, consequently, the anima. In later antiquity, however, a reinstatement of the feminine archetype began. As the next step one might then have expected either a regression to matriarchy or an attempt to develop the feminine aspect, but instead, the whole civilization broke down and was once more conquered by a patriarchal movement, the Judeo-Christian religion, which again reinforced the patriarchal trend. Early Christian theology assimilated much of Greek philosophy and its way of thinking; in their rejection of the feminine they were akin.

  The whole sex morality of the Catholic Church, for instance, is not based on the Gospels. Squeeze the Gospels as much as you like, but you will not get the rules for sex which the Catholic Church has set up. Greek traditions and theological Gnostic and other traditions of the time were the main influence. The way the Church coped with the feminine, with sex, and so on—grosso modo—was partly due to the Jewish patriarchy, which continued into Christianity, and was partly also influenced by these Greek trends. That is a sketch in black and white, but there are naturally many shades. The return of the feminine, however, the reintegration of the feminine which began so hopefully, is the quintessence of Apuleius’s book, but it was nipped in the bud and was repressed by the new patriarchal development which Christianity represented. It was as if the time had not yet come, as if still more patriarchal conditions, more development of the Logos principle and depreciation of the irrational had to be achieved before there could be an integration of the feminine principle and of the feminine goddess.

  The Mediterranean civilization into which the Greeks immigrated was, not sociologically but mostly religiously, a matriarchal civilization. The Greeks broke into this older civilization with their strong patriarchal tradition. The classic Greek civilization is characterized by the antagonism of these two traditions and by the effort to bring together something which (according to the excellent formulation of the philologist Charles Seltmann)10 is expressed symbolically through the unhappy marriage between Zeus and Hera. It is not by chance that the highest god of the Greek religion had a very quarrelsome marriage! Zeus and Hera were always together, but they fought from morning till night and, as most couples do in such cases, pulled their children into the conflict. In a way, that mirrors one of the deepest conflicts of the Greek soul. This underlying conflict probably gave dynamism to Greek civilization and is partly responsible for the birth of the scientific mind and the mental development to which we still hold nowadays. But on the other side it also set the stage for a conflict from which we are still suffering.

  In the time of Apuleius impulses appeared which strove to bring to light the feminine. We will find them later in Psyche’s fate, with the Isis initiation, and in several other inserted episodes. They appear not only in this novel but also, for instance, in the beautiful story of Dido and Aeneas in Virgil: in it, Venus, by helping Dido, tries to bring up the feminine principle. But in order to realize a political plot, Venus cuts the love relation apart, which then results in the suicide of Dido. Because the gods decide that Rome has to be founded, Aeneas cannot stay forever in the happy land of Carthage: the love affair which the gods themselves have arranged cannot go on. The destroyed feminine roams about as the ghost of an unredeemed suicide, as in the beautiful scene where Aeneas goes in the underworld and sees Dido there from far away. She turns away, still deeply resentful. The problem therefore does not appear only in our novel, but in many documents; and it always ends tragically.

  When the Christian civilization spread into the world of antiquity, the feminine principle was once again pushed into the background. In the third century A.D. there followed an attempt toward the recognition of a goddess-mother, especially in Ephesus, where the cult of the Virgin Mary had reached its zenith. This movement reinforced itself in the Middle Ages, when the men devoted themselves to courtly love, which was then itself transformed into the worship of the Virgin Mary. But this cult, in contrast to courtly love, accepted the feminine principle only in a sublimated purified form. This engendered a countermovement, completely negative, in the form of witch persecution. The last witch in Switzerland was burnt only about two hundred years ago—we are always a bit behind. So this conflict is still going on today and we see that the story of Apuleius still concerns itself with one of the most important problems of the modern soul.

  The first inserted story tells of two drunken, chthonian, destructive feminine beings, who ruin an idiotic old fellow named Socrates. It plays a completely complementary role to the reports which we possess of the philosopher Socrates, and thus corresponds completely to the psychological laws of compensation. The opposites are separated in such a way that no solution is possible anymore; they appear in a very grotesque but psychologically very characteristic form. There one can already see that this inserted story, according to my hypothesis, is understandable, if one takes it as a “dream.” Indeed, the whole scene could be the typical complementary dream of a Neoplatonic philosopher: a drunken witch destroys Socrates because he behaves toward women like an idiot.

  The miserable Socrates, naked, later betrayed and killed by the witches, embodies also an unconscious aspect of Apuleius himself: by avoiding his own emotional side, he becomes a victim of the witches. But, though the witches in the story of Aristomenes are nothing else but ugly, stingy old women, their names tell us that at the same time they are goddesses. Socrates is therefore actually murdered by goddesses. It is not just human dirt which overcomes him but the feminine principle itself in its destructive form, the same which later appears with the characteristics of Isis. This agrees with a very deep general psychological truth: the divine is often met first in its pathological and morbid form. Here is the divine experience, and that is what makes it difficult to accept. A Freudian would have enlightened Lucius-Apuleius about his Oedipus complex and probably gotten him away from elderly women. But then he would have never met the goddess Isis. This is the reason why the neurotic person often clings to his sickness; deeply he himself suspects that it is exactly there that his “god” is. But on the contrary, it also becomes evident that the highest value cannot be integrated in this low form; if one assimilates it at that level nothing will be accomplished but a falling back into the dirt and chaos.

  Lucius finds the story very interesting, and thanks the traveling merchant for it, and when they come to the city of Hypate the three part company. Lucius has been given the address of a very rich and very stingy old man called Milo. He has a wife called Pamphile, the “all-loving” (pan = “all,” phileo = “to love”). This woman, like Meroe, pursues all men for sexual ple
asure but seems also to afford a good opportunity for Lucius to study witchcraft. In addition, there is in the house a young, attractive maid, Photis. This good-looking kitchen maid literally illuminates the darkness of the house. With her, the first image of the anima, the positive feminine element, emerges for Lucius; for the time being, however, it is experienced as simple sexual attraction.

  3

  Lucius Meets Byrrhena, Photis, and Goatskins

  Lucius wakes up the next morning anxious to see some of the marvelous things to be found in Thessaly, where by common report sorceries and enchantments are often practiced. He remembers Aristomenes’ story about the city, and everything in it seems to be transformed:

  Neither was there anything which I saw there that I did not believe to be the same which it was indeed, but everything seemed unto me to be transformed into other shapes by the wicked power of enchantment, in so much that I thought the stones against which I might stumble were indurate and turned from men into that figure, and that the birds which I heard chirping, and the trees without the walls of the city, and the running waters were changed from men into such feathers and leaves and fountains. And further I thought that the statues and images would by and by move, and that the walls would talk, and the kine and other brute beasts would speak and tell strange news, and that immediately I should hear some oracle from the heaven and from the ray of the sun.1

  “Vexed with desire,” Lucius “unawares” comes to the marketplace.

  It is obvious that Aristomenes’ tale, which consciously Lucius had not taken very seriously, has touched him somewhere. Unconsciously something was constellated in him, for these ideas about the city of Hypate are a classical description of an abaissement du niveau mental: nothing seems quite real. He is in a dream world, and the outer and inner worlds begin to be close to each other. One knows this state from one’s own experience, when one feels bewitched or enchanted. Autobiographies of schizophrenic people give classic descriptions in which suddenly reality is removed or different. It is both a normal and an abnormal state, which means that the unconscious is close to the conscious. There is also the motif of the transformation of men. Everything is in preparation for what is to happen to Lucius later when he is transformed into an ass.

  We only know that a condition of strong emotional excitement brings about an abaissement du niveau mental. The range of consciousness is narrowed to a very small area, and in those moments synchronistic events occur. In some cases the experience becomes frightening. For instance, in an outbreak of psychosis, when people are just at the snapping point, strange things happen from morning till night. They ring up their analyst and say that it is absolutely terrible, that they cannot take a step or do a thing, for everything is synchronistic. Actually, what they do not see is that they have fallen into the collective unconscious where they are identical with their whole surroundings, so everything that happens around them is themselves. They are already, so to speak, spread into it, into the unus mundus, where everything that happens concerns them, and they begin to experience that, but this can happen also to normal people whenever they are tremendously emotionally involved. That is why Jung said he observed synchronistic phenomena only when an archetype was constellated, because that is where one gets involved with the deeper layers of the personality. When one is really involved, really gripped, the whole thing begins to play on those lines. The same thing happens when people do creative research, because there again they are involved with something deeper and more important than themselves and their little problems. They are generally involved in some way in an archetypal constellation, and the whole thing begins to act up. What this suggests is that the psychic and the physical energy interact somewhere, or are somewhere transformable into each other, so that there is a lowering of consciousness and a charging up of the intensity of the unconscious.

  Lucius is rather dismayed to find that his host, Milo, is an old, stingy, narrow-minded bourgeois, and Pamphile obviously such an uncanny witch. But in the same house he also has discovered Photis, with whom a normal, youthful contact is at once established. Contrary to the fact that his relationship to Photis takes the normal course for a young Roman man of that time, and of youth in general, this relationship proves later to be actually strangely unfeeling. After Lucius has been turned into an ass, and the robbers have broken into the house of Milo and Pamphile, he never bothers to ask himself what became of Photis. He worries about his money and about his horse, but not about her, which shows a rather amazing lack of feeling. After all, he has had a very nice time with this beautiful girl, and she has very generously offered him her love, as he also has made her happy. We know from other stories and from the sociological insight they allow that Photis, after her captivity by the robbers, could not expect a nice life. The robbers would either kill her or make her a slave, and what it meant to be a slave we learn later throughout the book. But Lucius never asks a question about her, which shows clearly that he does not react quite as he should. In modern terms we would say that he has a feeling deficiency, which is very elegantly covered up by the love scene.

  We know that Lucius gets turned into an ass by mistake, for he really wants to turn into a bird, or a winged being, but Photis uses the wrong box of ointment. This must be an unconscious revenge on her part! She probably feels that something is lacking, that he does not care for her in the most simple human way. She plays another trick on him when she is supposed to secretly obtain Pamphile’s lover’s hair from the hairdresser. The hairdresser catches her and takes it from her. So on her way home when she sees a man shearing goatskins in order to make them into bags, she grabs a bunch of them as a substitute. Thus when Pamphile performs her magic rites with these instead of with the hair of her lover, there comes to the gates—not the lover—but only goatskins. Lucius attacks them bravely in the night, since, in the darkness, he believes that they are robbers intent on entering the house, and thus is ridiculed in front of everyone in the city.

  So twice Photis makes, absolutely involuntarily—with her left hand, so to speak—a little mistake which gets Lucius into trouble. If a woman does that, then she is not happy. Somewhere Photis is not satisfied with her lover, otherwise she would not play those two involuntary tricks. Obviously, something is not right between the two. He is cold, and she takes her revenge by playing these little witch tricks. She is somewhere a bit on the side of the witch, her mistress, so she too is cold somewhere. When a woman plays witch’s tricks it means she does not love; there is a little left-handed calculation which happens behind her back. So, despite this first positive scene, where one has the feeling that Lucius gets into the secrets of life and is happy, and that by a love affair with Photis he can protect himself against the tricks of Pamphile, there is something wrong in a subtle way. Perhaps with that is also connected the abaissement du niveau mental which befalls him after his first visit to the house of Milo and Pamphile.

  Invasions of the unconscious such as are described at the beginning of the chapter always come when one fails to have a normal reaction in some area. An intermittent lack of normal reaction in consciousness makes a hole where the unconscious breaks through. If one does not want to be invaded by the unconscious, one must pick up all the little details, such as laziness, feeling mistakes, and omissions of adaption to reality, because though they look absolutely unimportant they are the open door for invasion. As Jung said once in a seminar: concupiscentia, uncontrolled desire, is the open door to psychosis. And in cases I have seen of psychosis, this was so. So these little omissions are very dangerous, which is why I am pointing out something which the reader may scarcely notice: this secret unsatisfactory human relationship between Lucius and Photis, which then leads to Lucius’s sinking slowly into the unconscious and into daydreaming, so that he is not quite sure what reality is any longer.

  In the marketplace, “by chance,” he meets Byrrhena, who is his mother’s sister. She was not a real sister, but was taken into the house and educated with his mother, and the
refore he calls her “Aunt.” It seems strange that he did not go to stay at her house, instead of Milo’s. They happen to meet, and she invites him to her house, a very pompous building. There is a description of an impressive bas-relief in its atrium representing the mother goddess Diana, about to take her bath in the woods, and of Actaeon, who tried to get a glimpse of her but was turned into a stag and torn to pieces by his own hounds. The moment when the dogs are preparing to tear the stag to pieces is the scene represented in the bas-relief. In this description given by Apuleius-Lucius we recognize the typical features of Hellenistic art with its sentimental and realistic traits. This bas-relief represents a very meaningful motif,2 so that one can treat its content like an inserted story. For it anticipates in a symbolic form the whole future fate of Lucius: for he too sinned against the law of chastity in his affair with Photis, and he too is torn by the dark passions of the underworld and will be transformed into an animal—an ass instead of a stag. At an early stage of the story his own problem is brought right before his eyes in this bas-relief.

  Artemis, and her Latin analogy, Diana, were the goddesses who unite within themselves a number of opposites. Artemis protected the chastity of boys and girls, and delighted in wild beasts. She was also the goddess of childbirth and the chthonic mother and the virgin. On the other hand, like Apollo, her brother, she was the goddess of death, for she could send out invisible arrows which bring death. Later she became connected with the moon and was goddess of the underworld (as Hecate), for in late antiquity the various types of gods and goddesses were syncretized and merged.