Since My Early Childhood I Have Been Fascinated by Swans, by Their Beauty and Power

DIPLOMA EXAM SYMBOL PAPER

on

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE SWAN

CREATIVITY

“THE UGLY DUCKLING”

by

SUSANNE EBERHARD PETERSEN

SEPTEMBER 2004

Evaluated by

URS MEHLIN Prof. Dr. phil

Swan Fascination and Inspiration

Since my early childhood I have been fascinated by swans, by their beauty and power. My uncle often took me to the local pond to look at the swans and he warned me: “Be careful they are very strong, they can kill a man.” In the winter time they were gone and I would skate on the ice and dream of the gliding elegance of the swan.

A year ago I found the feathers and skeleton of a swan by the fjord where I often walk and enjoy the many swans that live there. The dead swan moved me deeply and I thought I should bury it but I didn’t. Some weeks later I joined a course on shamanism with self –experiential elements, so called shamanistic journeys. In my experience and understanding a shamanistic journey can be similar to the active imagination in Jungian psychology and different as it is more ritualistic. One of the rituals in a shamanistic journey is to find the totem animal that will assist you on your travel into the under or upper world.

My first “travel” took place with another woman who should assist me in finding my totem animal after the introductory drumming and dancing. During her travel she didn’t get an image of an animal but she had the image of a very dark space and at the bottom appeared a white circle. I was puzzled by the image and in a way pleased that her and my psyche created something that didn’t adapt to the prescribed rituals. The following day I had to “travel” on my own and certainly had difficulties in letting my ego go. In my fantasy I went to the fjord where I live to a group of oak trees in the hope to meet an owl. She didn’t turn up. Instead I had the image of a sparrow sitting on the top of my head poking its beak into my scull and saying repeatedly: ”You shall travel in this world.” My ego was pleased but what about my soul?

Later in the day I did my second “travel” and tried to be more open to the idea of meeting my totem animal but still I found it hard to connect concretely to the idea of entering the under world through a hole where a familiar tree meets the surface of the earth. So in my fantasy I soon found myself in the top of tree in my garden asking for a bird to pick me up. I guess the owl was still hoped for but to my surprise a swan passed by and picked me up. Now I flew on the back of a swan like the little boy in “The Magic Travel of Nils Holgerson”[1] flew on the back of the goose. The swan took me to the fjord and left me on the shore under the oak trees and “my” swan was surrounded by 4 other swans dancing in a circle. It was a dark night and the swirling whiteness of the swans was very impressive. They disappeared into the dark fjord still dancing in circles.

This travel experience or active imagination as I prefer to call it echoed something deeply in my soul. I didn’t talk about it but I think it helped me to engage more in the dancing and singing and to open up to the rhythms of the drumming.

The next day I travelled with a young woman. After the initial drumming and dancing she travelled (went into the unconscious) on my behalf and was supposed to meet my totem animal and listen to it. I was lying beside her. We had never met before or talked together. I was impressed when she came back (to consciousness) and told me that she had met a swan suggesting that I should open up my body to more movement. She showed me a swanlike movement: stretching the neck, opening of the breast and spreading of the arms. It felt as a movement that expressed some longings of my soul and body. Afterwards the movement itself and the way I explored it after the shamanistic course (through dancing, singing and drawing) made me more aware of how much we gain when we take the symbols that speaks to us seriously and explore what they have to tell us.

The search for the deeper meaning of the swan symbol emerging in this phase of my life is the background for this paper.

My first association to the swan symbol was spirit, connected to the whiteness, the beauty and the power of the bird. According to Jung[2] the albedo (whiteness) is considered to be the first main goal of the alchemical process, “highly prized by many alchemists as if it was the ultimate goal. It is the silver or moon condition, which still has to be raised to the sun condition. The albedo is, so to speak, the daybreak, but not till the rubedo (the red) is it sunrise.” As sun condition is symbolic of the divine and rarely experienced by humans it becomes understandable that alchemists were satisfied if they could reach the level of the white. But what does it mean within the alchemical context to be on the level of the albedo?

The Alchemical Process and Its Stages

Since the beginning of the Christian era the majority of alchemists have distinguished four stages of the alchemical transformation process. “Although hardly two authors are of the same opinion regarding the exact course of the process and the sequence of its stages.”[3] The four stages are characterised by the following colours: melanosis (blackening), leukosis (whitening), xanthosis (yellowing) and iosis (reddening). About the 15th or the16th century the colours were reduced to three colours: black, white and red. The idea of 4 stages survived in the four elements (earth, water, fire and air) and the four qualities (hot, cold, dry and moist)

of the alchemical process. And it may be reflected in the four stages of the creative process that I shall later describe.

“The nigrido or blackness (fig. 115) is the initial state, either present from the beginning as a quality of the prima materia, the chaos or massa confusa, or else produced by the separation (solutio, seperatio, divisio, putrefactio) of the elements. If the separated condition is assumed at the start, as sometimes happens, then a union of the opposites is performed under the likeness of a union of male and female (called the coniugium, matrimonium, coniunctio, coitus), followed by the death of the product of the union (mortificatio, calcinatio, putrefactio) and a corresponding nigredo. From this the washing (ablutio, baptisma) either leads directly to the whitening (albedo), or else the soul (anima) released at the”death” is reunited with the dead body and brings about its resurrection, or again the “many colours” (omnes colores), or “peacock’s tail” (cauda pavonis), lead to the one white colour that contains all the colours.”[4]

The Swan in the Alchemical Context

In Jung’s “Alchemy and Psychology” we find a picture of the sequence of stages in the alchemical process, “explained” by Libavius, Alchymia (1606)[5] where the swan appears as an important symbol in the upper part of the picture. It seems to protect the lower levels of the alchemical process and to carry the king and the queen on its back. From the mouth of the swan something flows into the water. Libavius’ comment runs like this: “A swan swimming on the sea, spitting out a milky liquid from his beak. This swan is the white elexir, the white chalk, the arsenic of the philosophers, the thing common to both ferments. He has to support the upper sphere with his back and wings.”[6] Not only the swan is white the liquid flowing from its beak is also white.

At other levels of the alchemical process Libavius mentions the colour white and in one description he juxtaposes the three-headed eagle’s spitting of white water with mercurial fluid[7]. The swan and white liquids seem to be involved in processes of transformation. As mercurial fluid is also a metaphor for the materia prima of the philosopher’s stone it seems as if symbols of white play an essential role in the understanding of psychological transformation. White is also connected to fermentation as mentioned in the quotation on the swan. What white fermentation is about is further developed in the picture of the alchemical process at the stage described as “Eclipse of the moon, which likewise has a rainbow on either side and (also) in the lowest part of the sea, into which the moon must dive. This is the picture of the white fermentation. But both seas should be fairly dark”[8] The moonlight, also white, seems to symbolise, a force that can transform the black sea through a process of fermentation.

Transformation and fermentation seem to be mutually connected according to the alchemists. My hypothesis in this paper shall be that the symbols of fermentation, swans and other white forms and fluids, are ways of expressing creative processes on an archetypal level.

Creativity in the Alchemical Work

As Jung has described it the alchemical work is a way of projecting unconscious, immaterial psychological structures and contents onto material components, like chemical substances and physical forms and phenomena. But it is not only a simple projection. A deeper understanding of creative forces seems to be an essential part of the alchemist’s work. Maybe the description of the alchemical process is essentially a description of the archetypal forces involved in truly creative work.

Jung seem not far from this idea in his writings on “The Religious Ideas in Alchemy”, especially the chapter on “Meditation and Imagination”[9] has inspired this paper. It is indeed very complex writings. Maybe because it is dealing with psychology, creativity and spirituality within the alchemical context, at the same time. I shall try to concentrate on creativity although I agree that it is fascinating how the 3 areas are interrelated. For me a deeper understanding of creative processes is important for my work as an analyst and in order to understand my own and my clients’ individuation process, including the spiritual aspects.

On Meditation

Jung refers to several alchemical texts which share the following definition of meditation: “The word meditatio is used when a man has an inner dialogue with someone unseen. It may be with God, when He is invoked, or with himself, or with his good angel.”[10] And Jung comments that this is not similar to deep thinking but explicitly about “an inner dialogue and hence a living relationship to the answering voice of the “other” in ourselves, i.e. of the unconscious. The use of the term “meditation” in the Hermetic dictum “And as all things proceed from the One through the meditation of the One” must therefore be understood in this alchemical sense as a creative dialogue, by means of which things pass from an unconscious potential state to a manifest one.”[11] In order to translate this Hermetic saying into Jungian terms it might be helpful to bring in the concept of the Self as an interpretation of the One.

Thus a creative process implies a dialogue through the self with the Self. Maybe it makes more sense to describe a creative process as a dialogue between the core of the Self in an individual psyche which can become conscious and the wholeness of the psyche. In another alchemical text Jung found the following way of describing such a creative experience: “to meditate means that through a dialogue with God yet more spirit will be infused into the stone, i.e., it will become still more spiritualized, volatalized, or sublimated”[12]. This indicates that a creative dialogue on the level of the Self is an ongoing process that flows from the core of the Self to the wholeness of the Self and vice versa.

On Imagination

Again Jung refers to Ruland’s alchemical lexicon for a definition:”Imagination is the star in man, the celestial or supercelestial body.”In jungian terms this old wisdom could be formulated like this: an experience of deep creativity is an experience of the core of the Self and the wholeness of the Self. In other words true creativity is about self – knowledge. This implies in terms of Jungian psychology as a prerequisite that the ego – personality can manage to come to terms with its shadow. The shadow usually presents a fundamental contrast to the conscious personality. Without it the necessary tension and psychic energy would be lacking and thus the basis for self – knowledge and creativity would be lacking too. To bear the tension of the ideals of the ego and the realities of the shadow often manifest as feelings of doubts about the creativity of the person involved and the worth of the creative process. This is where the alchemical and the creative work has to start. It is the stage of nigrido, blackness and chaos which is close to the modern mind’s depressive mood.

As this stage is an imperative early in the creative work process it isn’t difficult to understand why most of us try to avoid it and that our defences against it can be very inventive and “creative”. It is easy for the ego to fantasise and to make the decision to enter on some new project and to make the preparations and the planning on the ego level, although it can involve some hard work. This is probably why creativity is a fashion word today and why artists are so highly respected among the elite of politicians and businessmen. But I am afraid that there is little understanding of the hard work it requires to be truly creative, and therefore quite a lot of distress in the first stages of the creative process; and probably a lot of maybe unrecognised frustration when one has to face as a group or as an individual that one cannot go through it, on a level where something new is really achieved.

I do think, however, that it is very positive that the Zeitgeist is in favour of creativity, and therefore I would like to examine what we can learn from Alchemy, Jungian psychology and artists on the creative process and how to overcome the difficulties it implies. In order to limit myself I will try to illustrate some of the archetypal patterns and moods that are involved in creative work through an interpretation of “The Ugly Duckling” by H.C. Andersen.

The Ugly Duckling

The most popular interpretation of “The ugly Duckling” is that it is the story about the life of H.C. Andersen and how much he had to suffer before he became a recognized artist. His sufferings are assigned to the poor and uncultivated circumstances he came from and the struggles he had to go through in order to get access to the cultural elite. In a traditional Jungian interpretation the artistic fairytale about the sufferings of the ugly duckling could be interpreted as the archetypal journey of the hero, in the shape of a dumpling who turns out to be a true hero. A true hero in the sense that he has the right attitude to face and overcome all the inhumane obstacles he meets on his way to his true home. Or an analytical interpretation could emphasise the psychodynamic conflicts in the ugly duckling and interpret the story as description of the emotions and experiences of the abandoned child. For sure the fate of the swan duckling is comparable to the child who didn’t experience good enough mothering from the very start of life. The (duck) mother cannot give enough mirroring and the mother child relation is disturbed to a degree where a false self is beginning to develop in the (swan) child. He seeks to compensate this disturbance by adapting too much to the demands of others (mother, siblings, geese, cat, hen and old lady) without being able to care for his own needs. So the child or the grown up individual with these inner dynamics may end up with a depression, with feelings similar to the duckling’s, especially as they are described in his loneliness in the autumn and hard winter time. Traits of a personality disturbance could also be argued to be the case in the scenario in the peasant family after the duckling has been saved by the peasant. The children want to play with the duckling but he misinterprets it as teasing him, so he gets scared and the whole situation gets out of control. The duckling’s response is a displacement, his reactions are not adequate in the actual situation, but it is a response to his previous experience of rejection.

Through the nourishment of the sun and spring, symbols of the emerging true self, the (swan) child begins to heal. Some protective mothering takes place, too, poetically described in the symbol of the moor, etymologically close to “mor” in Danish and mother in English. And finally the ugly duckling can feel his own strength and worth, symbolically expressed as a conscious recognition of the power of his wings, by means of which he manages to find his true companions, his soul mates. A union with his true self takes place and the fragile ego, developed from the early wounding, is restored.

“It matters not to have been born in a duckyard, if one has been hatched from a swan’s egg.” This typical H.C. Andersen comment in the end does emphasise that something deeper is at work in the human psyche, which make it possible for us to survive a difficult environment, even early wounding, if we are capable to go all the way. This means ultimately to be ready to die, as the duckling is prepared to, when he decides consciously, in spite of his fear that it will be his death, to approach his mates. Psychologically dying means to be able to go through the process of working with the symbols and images from the personal unconscious, referring to the individual’s life history and complexes, and to let go of their destructive energies.