The Golden Ass of Apuleius_The Liberation of the Feminine in Man by Marie-Louise von Franz

Author:Marie-Louise von Franz [Franz, Marie-Louise von]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780834840829
Amazon: B07NZVZZXC
Publisher: Shambhala Publications Inc
Published: 1992-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

8

Charite, Tlepolemus, and the Chthonic Shadow

We have come to the end of the Psyche-Eros story, to a happy end in the Beyond. Everything has returned into the collective unconscious from which it came, just as the boy savior in the Apocalypse returned to the Beyond, which implies that a realization in consciousness was not yet possible.

One sees similar things on a minor scale in psychological practice. Very often people have numinous dreams, but they are so far from understanding them that even with an analyst who explains the meaning of the symbolism, it does not reach consciousness. Everything happens in the Beyond without being understood. Yet it exists somewhere; in fact, it even has an invisible positive effect.

In our story the positive effect shows as follows: only after Charite and the ass (Lucius) have heard the old woman tell the tale of Psyche and Eros does Lucius decide to run away, and not before. The story must have therefore vivified him somewhere, given him a hope of life, a will to live, even if only unconsciously. Charite has been equally influenced, for she quickly jumps on the back of the ass, when it runs away, in order to escape with it. When the old hag tries to hold both back Lucius gives her a strong kick, which makes her unconscious and they run away.

All that is an unconscious positive effect of the story, though its essential content has passed unnoticed. Only Voluptas and Beauty affect Lucius’s consciousness, because he listens to the story and says, “What a beautiful story! If only I had a pencil and could write it all down!” There one can see how aestheticism works. Had Lucius wondered what the story meant, he would have got more out of it. But there is this soporific element. However, the vivifying element is also there so he gives a kick to the old woman and runs away, but Charite ruins it all by wanting to go to the right where her parents live, though Lucius knows they will meet the robbers there and will be caught again. He wants to go to the left. But Charite is a mama’s girl; she has been, as the text says, stolen “from her mother’s lap.” It is this sentimental feeling bond with the mother which ruins their common flight, and makes them fall back into the hands of the robbers.

Afterward, an unknown new robber, Haemus (from haima, “blood”; he is the bloody one), appears, and by boasting and shooting his mouth off, he gets accepted by the band as a superrobber. Later we discover that he really is Tlepolemus in disguise, Charite’s bridegroom, who has sneaked in among the robbers to free his bride. After catching Lucius and Charite, the robbers decide to punish the couple by killing the ass and taking out his entrails, then sewing the girl into his belly with only her head out. Then they are both to be exposed to the broiling heat of the sun so that she may slowly perish, sewn up in the stinking carcass of the ass.

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