THE DARK SIDE OF THE CONIUNCTIO

Alchemists recorded their theories about the prima materia not as developmental constructs but as depictions of myth. The core dynamics of the prima materia are embodied in the ancient and enduring myth of Attis and Cybele. The tormenting fusion depicted in the Attis-Cybele myth leads to the nigredo that follows the coniunctio, and this nigredo can be extremely dangerous. The Attis-Cybele myth is always a shadow side of the coniunctio, and dealing with this fused and frightening form of the union state is the sine qua non for the eventual acceptance of and confrontation with passion in the rubedo stage of the alchemical opus. The myth of Attis and Cybele is part of a thread running throughout Western culture, and the myth represents a state of mind and body that has never been adequately addressed. The alchemical approach is the most detailed and serious attempt in the last 2,000 years to integrate the forces this myth presents.

Cybele is the Great Mother of the gods and of men, and Attis is both her son and her lover. Their intensely fused and passionate relationship is characterized not only by deep love and jealousy but also by revenge, betrayal, and madness. Cybele and Attis are bound together by a fierce and passionate love for each other. An equally strong force, however, also pulls them apart, a force that expresses itself in the various ways by which Attis attempts to break free of his bond with his mother/lover. In the many variations of this story, Attis usually dies—needlessly, it seems, unlike other dying gods such as Dionysos—and no resolution of the elemental struggle enacted by Cybele and Attis ever emerges. Attis is sometimes killed in a hunt, sometimes hanged from a tree, and sometimes driven mad. And Attis, or someone associated with him, is usually castrated.

Castration sacrifices, in fact, were once the mark of the ecstatic festivities dedicated to Cybele in ancient times.

The dynamics of the mother-son myth in its various awesome enactments have been particularly identified by Jung as portraying the qualities of the prima materia in alchemy. While the myth can be seen as addressing the vicissitudes of adolescence, like the prima materia itself, it is more fundamentally a portrayal of the most compelling and distressing interpersonal problems we deal with throughout our lives. Most specifically, the Attis-Cybele myth explores the qualities of the prima materia, and the myth involves the nature of relationships in their vital and turbulent aspects when energies are on the move (Attis) in the midst of strong, binding counter-forces (Cybele). The myth addresses the issues we all face individually in our interactions with others while, at the same time, it essentially documents the developmental level of consciousness which humanity has struggled with to date.

In this myth, the son represents the expansive, explorative, and separating nature of the psyche that is held tight in the magnetic sphere of unconscious forces represented by the mother. The myth is a statement of an impossible passion—a love that can neither exist

nor not exist. The myth presents a picture of tragic and failed separations and equally tragic states of fusion or bonding. Whether in a man or a woman, these dynamics are a central feature of the alchemical prima materia.

A man or a woman never separates from the Great Goddess without integration of his or her ‘shadow side.’ But this shadow, especially when it is imbedded within narcissistic character issues of rage and sadism—automatically emerging at any affront—can be used to suppress rather than to integrate her wisdom and chthonic life. Alchemy addressed the mystery and importance of chthonic life, not by heroically overcoming it but by relating to the central mystery of union. Accordingly, an understanding of the Attis-Cybele myth plays a vital role in addressing this central mystery of union. For as the alchemists knew, any union state is followed by a death, the nigredo. The great wisdom that alchemy embodies is that the sequences of union and death are the process by which the prima materia is refined into an embodied self, the lapis.

In one Attis story, Attis is born in a miraculous way. In a passion of love, Jupiter approaches Mount Agdus which appears in the likeness of Rhea (Cybele). But she rejects him, and in the ensuing struggle Jupiter spills some of his sperm on the mountain. The mountain conceives from the divine semen, and a terribly wild and androgynous creature called Agdistis is born. This hermaphrodite constitutes a danger to both gods and humans because it can multiply without the aid of others; so the gods must take action. They reject an openly murderous assault and instead invoke the cooperation of Dionysos. They know where Agdistis bathes, so they ask Dionysos to mix the spring-water with wine.

While the brute is sleeping himself sober Dionysos steals up to him and with a stout cord ties Agdistis’ genitals to a tree. On awaking, Agdistis ‘deprives himself of that which made him a man.’

(Vermaseren 1977, 91) From his blood, a tree shoots up. When the king’s daughter Nana walks past, she is astonished by the beauty of the tree’s fruit. She picks some and puts them in her lap.

Suddenly, one of the fruits appears to have vanished, and Nana finds herself pregnant.

Her father, Sangarios (which also happens to be the name of a Phrygian river), wants to kill his daughter to avoid disgrace. But the goddess intervenes and arranges the premature birth of Attis. The child is abandoned, kept alive by a goat, and raised by shepherds. He grows up to become a highly attractive shepherd whom even the mighty Mother of the Gods finds herself unable to resist.

In this story, unbridled passion in the form of Jupiter leads to a destructive self-structure, the hermaphrodite Agdistis who is actually a form of Cybele. In other words, passion leads right to the destructive aspect of the goddess, total fusion, and the impossibility of any object relations. A positive hermaphrodite is a representation of a union of opposites, a conjunction, or ‘third thing.’ But in the story of Jupiter’s unbridled passion, the hermaphrodite is the result of a forced union, rape, or incest, and thus is a monstrosity. In the negative hermaphrodite, the opposites do not conjoin into a third, but remain in a bizarre condition, a fusion state that denies meaning and furthers concretization of affects. Passion in the form of Agdistis leads to withdrawal and the denial of Eros. In the story, spiritual gods intervene. In the same way, psychologically,

anyone encountering the intense energies of passion must mount a mental-spiritual effort of restraint to avoid the destructive reactions that assuredly emerge when passion is enacted in a driven, compulsive way. This restraint includes recognizing and submitting to the power and value of one’s own madness, and it requires knowing the extent to which one is limited by this sector, as did the ancient Greeks when they celebrated the god Dionysos. And from this restraint, a new cycle emerges: Attis is born.

Psychologically, it is possible to use this myth as a guide to one’s experiences in relating to others. A person can recognize the Agdistis aspects in his or her unrelatedness and insensitivity to others. Jupiter’s passion can be recognized in undisciplined or undiscriminated feelings that clamor for fulfillment, and the Attis aspect of a person is that part that strives to find a self-identity within his or her love for others. Internally, one suffers the dynamics portrayed in the Attis—Cybele myth, and in the process, consciousness and a spiritual attitude towards the prima materia can emerge. As a result, the alchemical way teaches that one can acquire an internal sense and structure which can lead to experiencing both creative restraint and the creativity of passion with full awareness of its potentially destructive nature.

Attis’s death always follows upon a marriage: the goddess either kills his loved one, and he dies through his own self-mutilation, or else he is killed while hunting a boar, symbolic of the very dark side of the goddess. In alchemical language, this death is the nigredo, the dark suffering that always follows the experience of the coniunctio.

Another version of the myth presented by Ovid in his Fasti shows Cybele in love with the handsome shepherd boy who must pledge eternal fidelity to her. When he falls under the irresistible spell of a nymph, the avenging hand of the goddess strikes: the nymph Sangaritis (daughter of the river Sangarios) is killed and Attis goes insane. Obsessed with delusions and believing that he is persecuted by the Erinyes, he deprives himself of those parts of his body which were the cause of his infidelity. Flowers spring from his blood, and he himself is changed into a pine tree (Vermaseren 1977, 91–92).

The connection between the myth and madness proves central to any development that achieves a separation and respect for the goddess. Symbolically speaking, one has to die to develop in a way that can deal with the passion of union and the potentially devastating reactions that follow. Just as Narcissus—the arch-opponent of suffering and change—

dies and becomes a flower, which in turn leads to the redemption mysteries of Eleusis, so Attis’s death leads to a ritual of transformation. This mystery of the nigredo is very far from our patriarchal consciousness that values solidity, stability, constancy, and strength.

For most people, it is a long and arduous path even to begin to appreciate the wisdom of this ‘other’ way, the way of union and death.

Cybele’s vengeance when Attis betrays her by relating to another woman is a recurring theme in the myth. The festivities created in his honor consist of Tristia, the commemoration of the sorrows, and of Hillaria, the feasts of joy for his—often partial—

resurrection. Following his example, the priests of Attis dedicated themselves entirely to the goddess, submitting to her power and majesty. When one entered her cult, one was initiated into being a sacred slave without any hope of freedom. In exchange, the goddess was believed to stretch out her hands protectively over her slaves (Vermaseren 1977, 92).

This incredibly regressive way of dealing with the power of Cybele represents a strong psychological drive. Men and women still psychologically castrate themselves, albeit in

seemingly small ways, in order to avoid the attack they fear is inevitable should they take their power and authority. Generally speaking, the notion of being wounded by the complex interplay of union states, or attempts at union, and the resulting attacks of disorder and despair plays a central role in alchemy. The healing that the alchemists discovered for one’s castrated being is brought about through a substance called

‘balsam’ (Jung 1963, 14: paragraph 663). This healing medication, which purifies fusion drives of incest and acting out tendencies, is created through the conscious suffering of numerous coniunctio—nigredo cycles. But always, the Attis—Cybele myth represents a dark, shadow side of the union experience, and the myth forms the archetypal structure which molds the many facets of the nigredo following the coniunctio experience.

Ovid’s telling of the Attis-Cybele myth explains the rite of castration of the priests of Cybele. But the myth contains the main issue of the ‘impossible passion’ that is never resolved. In Ovid’s Fasti, Attis breaks his vow, and Cybele takes vengeance, killing the nymph Sangarios. And in the midst of his self-mutilation, he cries out as one whose guilt is overbearing: ‘I have deserved it! With my blood I pay the penalty that is my due’ (Frazer 1989, 205–06).

The guilt and madness depicted in the Attis-Cybele myth are states of mind deeply hidden within the psychic life of most people. But these states and the associated pattern that excludes possibilities of creatively experiencing states of fusion and separation can also be a quality of an interactive field. Two people experiencing the field can lead to each person’s awareness of an impossible fusion state and to its transformation into less destructive and more creative forms of union.

THE DYNAMICS OF FUSION AND SEPARATION WITHIN THE