Four Archetypes (12 page)

245

Moses and his servant soon notice what has happened. Moses had sat down, “worn out” and hungry. Evidently he had a feeling of insufficiency, for which a physiological explanation is given. Fatigue is one of the most regular symptoms of loss of energy or libido. The entire process represents something very typical, namely the
failure to recognize a moment of crucial importance
, a motif which we encounter in a great variety of mythical forms. Moses realizes that he has unconsciously found the source of life and then lost it again, which we might well regard as a remarkable intuition. The fish they had intended to eat is a content of the unconscious, by which the connection with the origin is re-established. He is the reborn one, who has awakened to new life. This came to pass, as the commentaries say, through the contact with the water of life: by slipping back into the sea, the fish once more becomes a content of the unconscious, and its offspring are distinguished by having only one eye and half a head.
¹⁰

246

The alchemists, too, speak of a strange fish in the sea, the “round fish lacking bones and skin,”
¹¹
which symbolizes the “round element,” the germ of the “animate stone,” of the
filius philosophorum
. The water of life has its parallel in the
aqua permanens
of alchemy. This water is extolled as “vivifying,” besides which it has the property of dissolving all solids and coagulating all liquids. The Koran commentaries state that, on the spot where the fish disappeared, the sea was turned to solid ground, whereon the tracks of the fish could still be seen.
¹²
On the island thus formed Khidr was sitting, in the place of the middle. A mystical interpretation says that he was sitting “on a throne consisting of light, between the upper and the lower sea,”
¹³
again in the middle position. The appearance of Khidr seems to be mysteriously connected with the disappearance of the fish. It looks almost as if he himself had been the fish. This conjecture is supported by the fact that the commentaries relegate the source of life to the “place of darkness.”
¹⁴
The depths of the sea are dark (
mare tenebrositatis
). The darkness has its parallel in the alchemical
nigredo
, which occurs after the
coniunctio
, when the female takes the male into herself.”
¹⁵
From the
nigredo
issues the Stone, the symbol of the immortal self; moreover, its first appearance is likened to “fish eyes.”
¹⁶

247

Khidr may well be a symbol of the self. His qualities signalize him as such: he is said to have been born in a cave, i.e., in darkness. He is the “Long-lived One,” who continually renews himself, like Elijah. Like Osiris, he is dismembered at the end of time, by Antichrist, but is able to restore himself to life. He is analogous to the Second Adam, with whom the reanimated fish is identified;
¹⁷
he is a counsellor, a Paraclete, “Brother Khidr.” Anyway Moses accepts him as a higher consciousness and looks up to him for instruction. Then follow those incomprehensible deeds which show how ego-consciousness reacts to the superior guidance of the self through the twists and turns of fate. To the initiate who is capable of transformation it is a comforting tale; to the obedient believer, an exhortation not to murmur against Allah’s incomprehensible omnipotence. Khidr symbolizes not only the higher wisdom but also a way of acting which is in accord with this wisdom and transcends reason.

248

Anyone hearing such a mystery tale will recognize himself in the questing Moses and the forgetful Joshua, and the tale shows him how the immortality-bringing rebirth comes about. Characteristically, it is neither Moses nor Joshua who is transformed, but the forgotten fish. Where the fish disappears, there is the birthplace of Khidr. The immortal being issues from something humble and forgotten, indeed, from a wholly improbable source. This is the familiar motif of the hero’s birth and need not be documented here.
¹⁸
Anyone who knows the Bible will think of Isaiah 53:2ff., where the “servant of God” is described, and of the gospel stories of the Nativity. The nourishing character of the transformative substance or deity is borne out by numerous cult-legends: Christ is the bread, Osiris the wheat,
Mondamin the maize,
¹⁹
etc. These symbols coincide with a psychic fact which obviously, from the point of view of consciousness, has the significance merely of something to be assimilated, but whose real nature is overlooked. The fish symbol shows immediately what this is: it is the “nourishing” influence of unconscious contents, which maintain the vitality of consciousness by a continual influx of energy; for consciousness does not produce its energy by itself. What is capable of transformation is just this root of consciousness, which—inconspicuous and almost invisible (i.e., unconscious) though it is—provides consciousness with all its energy. Since the unconscious gives us the feeling that it is something alien, a non-ego, it is quite natural that it should be symbolized by an alien figure. Thus, on the one hand, it is the most insignificant of things, while on the other, so far as it potentially contains that “round” wholeness which consciousness lacks, it is the most significant of all. This “round” thing is the great treasure that lies hidden in the cave of the unconscious, and its personification is this personal being who represents the higher unity of conscious and unconscious. It is a figure comparable to Hiranyagarbha, Purusha, Atman, and the mystic Buddha. For this reason I have elected to call it the “self,” by which I understand a psychic totality and at the same time a centre, neither of which coincides with the ego but includes it, just as a larger circle encloses a smaller one.

249

The intuition of immortality which makes itself felt during the transformation is connected with the peculiar nature of the unconscious. It is, in a sense, non-spatial and non-temporal. The empirical proof of this is the occurrence of so-called telepathic phenomena, which are still denied by hypersceptical critics, although in reality they are much more common than is generally supposed.
²⁰
The feeling of immortality, it seems to me, has its origin in a peculiar feeling of extension in space and time, and I am inclined to regard the deification rites in the mysteries as a projection of this same psychic phenomenon.

250

The character of the self as a personality comes out very
plainly in the Khidr legend. This feature is most strikingly expressed in the non-Koranic stories about Khidr, of which Vollers gives some telling examples. During my trip through Kenya, the headman of our safari was a Somali who had been brought up in the Sufi faith. To him Khidr was in every way a living person, and he assured me that I might at any time meet Khidr, because I was, as he put it, a
M’tu-ya-kitabu
,
²¹
a ‘man of the Book,’ meaning the Koran. He had gathered from our talks that I knew the Koran better than he did himself (which was, by the way, not saying a great deal). For this reason he regarded me as “islamu.” He told me I might meet Khidr in the street in the shape of a man, or he might appear to me during the night as a pure white light, or—he smilingly picked a blade of grass—the Verdant One might even look like that. He said he himself had once been comforted and helped by Khidr, when he could not find a job after the war and was suffering want. One night, while he slept, he dreamt he saw a bright white light near the door and he knew it was Khidr. Quickly leaping to his feet (in the dream), he reverentially saluted him with the words
salem aleikum
, ‘peace be with you,’ and then he knew that his wish would be fulfilled. He added that a few days later he was offered the post as headman of a safari by a firm of outfitters in Nairobi.

251

This shows that, even in our own day, Khidr still lives on in the religion of the people, as friend, adviser, comforter, and teacher of revealed wisdom. The position assigned to him by dogma was, according to my Somali, that of
maleika kwanza-ya-mungu
, ‘First Angel of God’—a sort of “Angel of the Face,” an
angelos
in the true sense of the word, a messenger.

252

Khidr’s character as a friend explains the subsequent part of the Eighteenth Sura, which reads as follows:

They will ask you about Dhulqarnein. Say: “I will give you an account of him.

“We made him mighty in the land and gave him means to achieve all things. He journeyed on a certain road until he reached the West and saw the sun setting in a pool of black mud. Hard by he found a certain people.

“ ‘Dhulqarnein,’ We said, ‘you must either punish them or show them kindness.’

“He replied: ‘The wicked We shall surely punish. Then they shall return to their Lord and be sternly punished by Him. As for those that have faith and do good works, we shall bestow on them a rich reward and deal indulgently with them.’

“He then journeyed along another road until he reached the East and saw the sun rising upon a people whom We had utterly exposed to its flaming rays. So he did; and We had full knowledge of all the forces at his command.

“Then he followed yet another route until he came between the Two Mountains and found a people who could barely understand a word. ‘Dhulqarnein,’ they said, ‘Gog and Magog are ravaging this land. Build us a rampart against them and we will pay you tribute.’

“He replied: ‘The power which my Lord has given me is better than any tribute. Lend me a force of labourers, and I will raise a rampart between you and them. Come, bring me blocks of iron.’

“He dammed up the valley between the Two Mountains, and said: ‘Ply your bellows.’ And when the iron blocks were red with heat, he said: ‘Bring me molten brass to pour on them.’

“Gog and Magog could not scale it, nor could they dig their way through it. He said: ‘This is a blessing from my Lord. But when my Lord’s promise is fulfilled, He will level it to dust. The promise of my Lord is true.’ ”

On that day We will let them come in tumultuous throngs. The Trumpet shall be sounded and We will gather them all together.

On that day Hell shall be laid bare before the unbelievers, who have turned a blind eye to My admonition and a deaf ear to My warning.

253

We see here another instance of that lack of coherence which is not uncommon in the Koran. How are we to account for this apparently abrupt transition to Dhulqarnein, the Two-horned One, that is to say, Alexander the Great? Apart from the unheard-of anachronism (Mohammed’s chronology in general leaves much to be desired), one does not quite understand why Alexander is brought in here at all. But it has to be borne in mind that Khidr and Dhulqarnein are
the
great pair of friends, altogether comparable to the Dioscuri, as Vollers rightly emphasizes. The psychological connection may therefore be presumed to be as follows: Moses has had a profoundly moving experience of the self, which brought unconscious processes before his eyes
with overwhelming clarity. Afterwards, when he comes to his people, the Jews, who are counted among the infidels, and wants to tell them about his experience, he prefers to use the form of a mystery legend. Instead of speaking about himself, he speaks about the Two-horned One. Since Moses himself is also “horned,” the substitution of Dhulqarnein appears plausible. Then he has to relate the history of this friendship and describe how Khidr helped his friend. Dhulqarnein makes his way to the setting of the sun and then to its rising. That is, he describes the way of the renewal of the sun, through death and darkness to a new resurrection. All this again indicates that it is Khidr who not only stands by man in his bodily needs but also helps him to attain rebirth.
²²
The Koran, it is true, makes no distinction in this narrative between Allah, who is speaking in the first person plural, and Khidr. But it is clear that this section is simply a continuation of the helpful actions described previously, from which it is evident that Khidr is a symbolization or “incarnation” of Allah. The friendship between Khidr and Alexander plays an especially prominent part in the commentaries, as does also the connection with the prophet Elijah. Vollers does not hesitate to extend the comparison to that other pair of friends, Gilgamesh and Enkidu.
²³

254

To sum up, then: Moses has to recount the deeds of the two friends to his people in the manner of an impersonal mystery legend. Psychologically this means that the transformation has to be described or felt as happening to the “other.” Although it is Moses himself who, in his experience with Khidr, stands in Dhulqarnein’s place, he has to name the latter instead of himself in telling the story. This can hardly be accidental, for the great psychic danger which is always connected with individuation, or the development of the self, lies in the identification of ego-consciousness with the self. This produces an inflation which threatens consciousness with dissolution. All the more primitive or older cultures show a fine sense for the “perils of the soul” and for the dangerousness and general
unreliability of the gods. That is, they have not yet lost their psychic instinct for the barely perceptible and yet vital processes going on in the background, which can hardly be said of our modern culture. To be sure, we have before our eyes as a warning just such a pair of friends distorted by inflation—Nietzsche and Zarathustra—but the warning has not been heeded. And what are we to make of Faust and Mephistopheles? The Faustian hybris is already the first step towards madness. The fact that the unimpressive beginning of the transformation in
Faust
is a dog and not an edible fish, and that the transformed figure is the devil and not a wise friend, “endowed with Our grace and Our wisdom,” might, I am inclined to think, offer a key to our understanding of the highly enigmatic Germanic soul.

255

Without entering into other details of the text, I would like to draw attention to one more point: the building of the rampart against Gog and Magog (also known as Yajuj and Majuj). This motif is a repetition of Khidr’s last deed in the previous episode, the rebuilding of the town wall. But this time the wall is to be a strong defence against Gog and Magog. The passage may possibly refer to Revelation 20:7f. (AV):