Chapter 1: Introduction

This blog is about the ancient story of Cupid and Psyche, historically considered to be a parable of the soul’s quest to attain unity with the spirit, through the purification of both. I will be telling the tale from a Jungian psychological perspective--but not, I think, from the same point of view as the major Jungian commentaries. I will be using artwork to add perspective, and also images from 16th and 17th century alchemical texts. The alchemists were on a similar quest, projected upon the chemical processes they were observing. And the story is a perennial favorite among artists, from the Renaissance to the present day.

The blog is the result of a slide show I presented at the Queen of Heaven Gnostic Church in Portland, Oregon, on April 30, 2006. For that audience, I drew parallels to the myth of Sophia in 2nd century Gnostic Christian writings, written at about the same time that the Cupid and Psyche myth was written in the form that we know it. I have kept these passages in the blog version. The Gnostic stories are visionary creation myths in the style of Plato's Timaeus, but within a Judeo-Christian context. Sophia, Greek for Wisdom, is a personification of the feminine aspect of God in late Judaic sacred writings. In the Gnostic texts her separation from the Godhead results in her striving for reunification, even at the risk of annihilation. She is the longing for the divine which can be satisfied only through arduous trials and with the aid of a Savior who must himself be prepared for the task. This is a theme that was already familiar in the Egyptian cult of Isis and Osiris and which priests of new cults were continuing in different forms

Many books and articles have been written about Psyche and Cupid. Two male Jungians, Erich Neumann and Robert Johnson, each wrote popular books applying the tale to the psychology of women. Marie-Louise von Franz, another Jungian, then wrote an analysis of the tale in terms of the unconscious feminine in men. For all three writers, apparently, the tale mainly applies to the other gender. From the vantage point of 35 years or more, all three books seem riddled with outdated gender stereotypes. Many of the artworks, however, remain as fresh as when they were painted, even though they take a variety of perspectives on the tale.

The art, in fact, provides a way not only to deepen one’s experience of the tale but also to make it one’s own in the same language used by the unconscious, as expressed in dreams, for example. I encourage the viewer not to see the art as mere supplements to the words, but as roads in their own right toward making Psyche’s journey one’s own. In support of that end, I have tried to keep my commentary to a minimum.

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The tale of Cupid and Psyche was originally a Greek folk tale. There are surviving statues of the pair from long before it came to be written down. Its folk status is attested by its recurrence in fairy tales such as Cinderella. In ancient times Cupid was also shown as guiding Psyche: as Plato taught, the guide of the soul in its spiritual quest is love.

Psyche is the Greek word for both soul and a kind of moth--hence Psyche’s small wings in slide 1a, a statue from Roman times.



In slide 1b, Cupid is shown riding a moth. He, too, has wings.



The moth is particularly appropriate because it is known for seeking the light. Psyche's search for love is on another level the search of the soul for illumination from a divine source .

Cupid, also called Amor or Eros, was of course the god of love, son of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, and of Vulcan, blacksmith and all-round artisan for the gods.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the tale survived in only one verison, that by Apuleius, a Roman who lived in what is now Tunisia, in the same 2nd century milieu that produced the Gnostics. It occurs in the middle of a long novel called The Metamorphoses, or more popularly, The Golden Ass. The novel's protagonist is a young man who turns into a donkey until liberated by the Goddess Isis. Like his contemporary Plutarch, Apuleius used the Egyptian cult of Isis and Osiris at the end of the novel to expound his views. Both writers took a very positive view of the divine feminine.

Jung saw alchemical and Gnostic aspects to the tale, as well as the psychological, i.e.soul, aspects picked up on by Neumann and von Franz. For Jung the tale is about the transformation of body and spirit as well as of soul. In alchemy, spirit was sometimes “Sulphurous Spirit” (1c, from the Quinta Essentia of 1599) and given wings like Cupid, but more in the way that the god Mercury had wings, in his cap and shoes.



The alchemists characterized Sulphur as a kind of demonic power in nature, usually up to no good, even a kind of dragon biting its tale (1d, from the Atalanta Fugiens of 1618); yet when tamed or transmuted it can work great good. This characterization is more appropriate to Cupid than to Mercury, when you remember that sexual love was considered a curse rather than a blessing.



Soul, on the other hand was the Anima Mercury, “Mercurial soul” (1e), depicted as a woman with rays radiating out from her womb. (Images 1c and 1e both come from a 17th century edition of the Quinta Essentia of 1579).



As we shall see later, however, sometimes the alchemists imagined soul as masculine and spirit feminine.

In Medieval Islam, corresponding to Psyche and Cupid, there was the tale of Layla and Majnun (1f): Majnun after may trials in the desert disguises himself in a sheepskin so as to elude Layla’s guards.



Here the roles are the reverse of those of Cupid and Psyche, where it is Psyche who has the trials so as to be with Cupid. Another example is Beatrice guiding Dante in the Divine Comedy.

Chapter 2: The New Venus

In a 5th or 6th century version of the story, when Christianity was already the religion of the Roman Empire, Psyche was depicted as the daughter of the sun-god Apollo. Since Christ was seen as the new Apollo (his day of worship, after all is Sunday), Psyche thereby acquires a kind of divinity, like Christ and the various divine children of pagan Rome. On a 1490’s wedding chest from Florence, perhaps following this tradition, the sun shines behind the father at psyche’s conception (2a).



As she matures, she is adored not only as a divine child, but as "a second Venus."
Crowds come to worship her (2b, by Perin del Vaga, a pupil of Raphael's, for Pope Paul II). Meanwhile, Venus's own shrines are neglected.



It is as in the Gnostic myth, in which Sophia's nature divides in two, one half self-contained in the upper realm, and the other full of passionate longing in the Chaos below. This doubling symbolically represents two kinds of love, the divine and the human.

Psyche’s adoration takes away from Venus’s own. Venus is jealous and commands her son Cupid to use his arrows to make her fall in love with some fool and outcast from society, so she will be a laughing-stock (top right of 2b and all of 2c, by Raphael):



But Cupid, as the wedding chest tells it, falls in love with Psyche and wants her for himself (2d).



That Cupid falls in love with her is the artist’s interpretation, not in Apuleius’s tale. Perhaps it is only her body he wants, as beguilingly depicted in 2e, a sketch by the French artist Maurice Denis from around 1900.



In any case, Cupid will shoot his arrows nowhere near Psyche. Even before Cupid’s arrival, no one was proposing marriage to such a goddess-like being. Now it is certain that no flaming arrows will hit either her or those who gaze upon her.

In Wim Wender’s modern film fable "Wings of Desire" (2f, with actor Bruno Ganz), an angel looks down on our world as a bleak gray place filled with suffering:



Among the humans below he spies his own version of Psyche, a trapeze artist in a circus, who wears paper wings as part of her costume (2g, actress Solweig Dommartin with Wenders).



But the angel can woo her only if he becomes mortal by removing his wings, a step that is irreversible. In contrast to traditional views of redemption, this one is matter-centered.

20th century art tends to follow this matter-centered approach. In a 1988 interpretation of the tale (2h, by an unschooled immigrant from Cyprus who worked as a guard in British museums and called himself “Perifimou,” Greek for “the famous one”).



The adored figure is now a projection of an inner figure, inside one’s head, so to speak. The inner figure is the Jungian anima, or soul, for a man, and animus, or spirit, for a woman. Actually, since the anima has an animus and vice versa, both genders have both inner figures. Perifimou’s figures are suitably androgenous.

In love, and desire generaly,, it as though one were looking at oneself in a kind of mirror, in love with one’s own unconscious image, like Narcissus in von Gierke’s 2005 depiction of the scene (2i), done for a 2005 exhibition in Zurich, Switzerland. It is perhaps no coincidence that Zurich is also the home of Jungian psychology.



Yet this image is also of a real human being, as for example the artist’s wife, looking at herself in a mirror tying a red ribbon in her hair (2j), the image von Gierke says on his website was the inspiration for his entire cycle of paintings:



You will notice that the image in the mirror is not a true reflection—-the head and the hand are not right. And a figure perhaps lurks behind the curtain.

Chapter 3: Apollo

Distraught because there are no suitors, Psyche’s father consults the oracle of Apollo (3a, by Perin del Vaga, 1520's).



It is one father asking the other, the godfather, whom Psyche should marry. The wording of the oracle’s response is clever, because it fits Cupid, although the parents decide it’s a monster:

On some high mountain’s craggy summit place
The virgin, decked for deadly nuptial rites,
Nor hope a son-in-law of mortal birth
But a dire mischief, viperous and fierce,
Who flies through aether and with fire and sword
Tires and debilitates all things that are;
Terrific to the powers that reign on high,
Great Jupiter himself fears this winged pest
And streams and Stygian shades his power abhor.

What they understand is that Psyche is to be married to a dragon—the traditional sacrificial virgin to appease the dragon, which alchemy knows, too (3b, from the Atalanta Fugiens of 1618).



Thus a marriage procession proceeds up the mountain, more funereal than marital (3c-d, by the English pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones in the 1870’s).





Psyche is a willing sacrifice. The oracle must be obeyed.

Thus Psyche leaves her protective family. Spiritually, it is the outgrowing of childish faith. In Gnostic myth this step corresponds to Sophia emanating in the upper world from the Godhead, not yet joined to her consort. Psyche is fearful indeed (3e-f, by the Art Nouveau German artist Max Klinger, an 1880's book engraving).

Chapter 4: Cupid’s Palace

Aiding his friend Cupid, the West Wind, Zephyr, comes and carries Psyche off. She is understandably fearaful (4a, a 16th century fresco by the Italian artist Giulio Romano, a pupil of Raphael’s, in the Palazio Te in Mantua; we are looking up at the ceiling).



When she is not hurtled down but rather borne aloft, she rather enjoys the experience (4b, by Proudon, 1808). The painting suggests the anticipation of first sexual experience, once she trusts the one initiating her.



Zephyr sets her down next to a magnificent palace, with gardens (4c, by Burne-Jones) and elegant rooms.



Invisible hands bathe her (4d, at Ecouen Castle, near Paris, 1540’s).



In alchemy this would be the container for the alchemical work, as in 4e, Emblem One of the 1558 Rosarium Philosophorum, Rose Garden of the Philosophers.



Then invisible voices reassure her and sing while other hands serve her delectable foods (4f, also from Ecouen Castle)



This is the girlish fantasy of being totally cared for, or of a return to divine childhood. It is also how to seduce a girl: take her for a ride in your private airplane, then wine and dine her in luxurious surroundings.

Yet contrary to the stained glass images, Psyche is visually alone. The hands and voices are like ghosts in a long occupied house now vacant. Psyche is so wrapped up in her fantasy that she does not see the creepiness. But some of that appears in von Gierke’s depiction of this setting in contemporary terms. First comes a painting entitled “Versprochene Hochzeit,” i.e. “promised marriage”(4g):



This one is followed by another, entitled “Stillleben mit Ausblick," Still life with View (4h):



Again, there is one entitled “Interieur mit Stuhl,” Interior with Chair (4i):



and 4j, entitled “Interieur mit Kleid,” Interior with Dress (4k)



In this last, what do her feet rest on? There is an atmosphere that is hard to describe in these paintings --something like illusory grandeur and real emptiness. The works are very post-modern in their combination of exactitude and elusiveness.

Chapter 5: The First Night

Night falls and the invisble servants lead her to her bed, where she soon falls asleep. Then there is the rustle of wings in the darkness; Cupid is arriving (5a-b, by Klinger, who makes his Cupid somewhat older and more sophisticated).





Then comes the first kiss, tender yet unseen, it is so dark (5c, Francois Gerard, 1789).



Soon they are making love (5d, a 16th century fresco in Genoa by Perin del Vaga). Her chastity is preserved, the voices assure her later, as she is his bride-—yet there have been none of the customary ceremonies.



In alchemy this is known as the first coniunctio (5e, Emblem 5 of the Rosarium series).



This love, the first union of soul and spirit, innocent and passionate, is of the moment and so very unstable. In life, it often occurs in adolescence: a bliss that is momentary, and not necessarily with another person (football and ballet come to mind), and which one from then on wants to get back once it slips away.

Rodin captures the experience eloquently in his 1885 sculpture “Cupid and Psyche Embracing” (5f).



Cupid instructs her that he must never see his face. If she does, he will leave her forever, he says. Then before it gets light, he leaves. Jacques-Louis David’s 1817 painting, "Cupid leaving sleeping Psyche" (5g), gives a self-satisfied smug air to Cupid, as though he were adding a prized butterfly to his collection. This painting received a storm of protest in early 19th century France.



Picot’s version of about the same time (5h) set things right, in society's eyes, keeping the idealized image of the story.



In 2005 the artist Frances Luke did a feminist take on David’s painting (5i); now it is Psyche who is alert and smug, Cupid the one lying there passively looking beautiful. (Compare the position of the arms and you will see how the work is a take-off on David).



Days and weeks go by like that. Cupid views her in the garden when she is asleep (5j, by John William Waterhouse, another pre-Raphaelite, 1903-4), in an image not in Apuleius. What is interesting here is how the artist portays the pair as virtual twins: Cupid is Psyche's divine twin.



A 1949 painting by an artist named Rakopzi also portrays their similarity (5k).



Indeed, the likeness was evident even in the first image of this presentation (1a), from ancient Rome, of the two parallel winged figures kissing.

And every night the pair makes passionate love (5l, by Wendy W. Lee, 1997):

Chapter 6: Sisterly Advice

Despite the wonderful nights, Psyche grows bored during her long days with the invisible servants. She wants to tell her family she is OK, and even invite her sisters to visit. Little by little Cupid relents, but warns her that they may try to get her to see him; he cautions her to say nothing about her actual experience with him. The sisters do visit (6a, by Burne-Jones), borne from the mountain by Zephyr, and they size up her surroundings with all the skillful envy of Victorian gentlewomen.



The sisters worm out of Psyche the admission that she has never seen her husband. Her ignorance is their opportunity. They assure her that he is a dragon or a snake, as the oracle said, hardly the husband for a princess. She must kill him with a knife while he is asleep, and then they will find her a proper husband. She is to be like the modern Japanese-style Anime-Psyche painted by Carla Spandafora in 2003 (6b).



But really, shouldn’t she know whom she is sleeping with every night? Perhaps he isn’t even a he, as in Jacqueline Morreau’s 1986 take called “Cupid Disclosed” (6c).



Or maybe he is a gangster, or a closet homosexual. It’s important to know one’s lover.

And will he be aloof like that forever? This is the puer or puella aeternis, the eternal boy or girl who wishes to avoid entanglement and keep “free.” Moreover, Cupid is afraid his mother will find out. The puer’s imaginal connection to mother may be part of what holds him back; he has to remain true to her image of him, as he imagines it, regardless of dark facts. The sisters’ idea threatens his neat little holding of the contradictions. And so they leave, mission accomplished (6d, Burne-Jones).



Von Gierke’s corresponidng painting (6e), "Venus Selbstritt," Venus Looking at Herself, refers to Venus in its title. However for him Psyche doubles Venus. Occurring where it does in his series, I see the painting as applying more to Psyche:



There is a second painting of the same scene, having the same title, but with the model facing away from us. We shall look at that one in Chapter 7 (7d). I put it later because I identify it with Venus, depicting a parallel situation later, between Venus and her aunts, to the one now with Psyche and her sisters. Taking the reflections in 6e to be Psyche’s sisters, they are then mirrors of one’s unconscious soul, showing what is already there but not attended to by the subject. Again, the reflections in the painting are not exact images; they have their own reality and agenda--not that the subject would notice, so wrapped up is she in her stereotyped preoccupations.

Von Gierke puts a mysterious cup in his painting, a kind of jewelry box for her pearls and ribbon. In his close-up of the box (6f, "Stilleben," Still-life), the reflections in its surface are mysterious: lipstick, or perhaps a candle? But certainly phallic:



Seeing Cupid is the forbidden act. Christian commentators compared Psyche's transgression to Eve’s disobedience. In the Sophia story, what corresponds is her hybris, overweening pride, in trying to know the Godhead. In a Freudian reading, it is the forbidden viewing of the phallus.

And so Psyche carries out her plan, a lamp in one hand and a knife in the other. What she sees is not a monster but a beautiful young man whom she recognizes at once to be Cupid (6g, a 16th century fresco by Giulio Romano).



She is lost in wonder (6h-j, by Burne-Jones and Klinger).







She also feels regret and remorse; tears swell up and fall on Cupid’s body, along with drops of hot oil from the now-forgotten lamp (6k, by Lon Holdread, 2004). He awakens and feels the pain.



Immediately one hand slams down onto her hand holding the knife, while with the other he rips off his burning night shirt. The oil burns in back of him (6l, Jacqueline Morreau 1986-1993):



He flies away (6m, by Bartholomaeus Spangler, Prague, c. 1600). She grabs his right leg:



In medieval iconography, the right leg is intellect, the left is lust. Cupid is escaping from Psyche’s gaze, which threatened to reduce him to an object; ultimately it is the gaze of the Mother, a gaze that penetrates and kills like the knife.

Jung in Alchemical Studies saw an echo in the Gnostic tale of Sophia, Christ’s coming down to Sophia and then leaving without being known. In Jung’s anaysis, the man in Jung’s analysisis fleeing hot feminine emotions for cool detachment. It is another form of the puer’s escape from mother.

Psyche loses hold of the leg and falls to the ground. In some versions, Psyche just grasps in a futile gesture and sadly watches him go (6n, by Burne-Jones, and 6o, by Raphael).






In alchemy, this is the extractio (6p, Emblem 7 of the Rosarium), the spirit leaving the dead soul which has become pregnant.



The title attached to this emblem says this is the soul leaving the body—-thus the soul is represented as masculine. But where spirit is masculine, the picture could just as well be spirit leaving soul. Note that the body is now a hermaphrodite: reading the body as soul, that would mean that Psyche is not just herself anymore, but also has Cupid as part of her very being.

In Apuleius, Psyche does hold onto the leg briefly but then falls to the ground. Cupid turns and faces her angrily (6q, from a website about constructing video games; she is “Sister Psyche” as an action figure):



Cupid tells her that she listened to her foolish sisters against his warning and even sought to kill him at their instigation. So now Cupid must leave forever. Psyche despairs (6r, by Pietro Tenarani, 1816-17, and 6s, by Raphael, 1518).





Raphael’s sketch above is not explicitly of Psyche. Cavvicchioli, in her book on Cupid and Psyche, tells us that the identification is something generally agreed upon among art historians. The sketch was for a fresco never actually executed, although it is suggested in a fresco where Venus seems to be pointing to her.

Psyche’s pose in the sketch is that known as “Venus Pudica,” Venus Ashamed, or Modest. The term “Pudica” as an epithet of Venus is of interest to us. It has the same root as the Latin pudenda, genitalia. There was likewise a Venus Caelestis, Celestial Venus, and an Aphrodite Porne, Greek for Venus the Harlot. Similarly, the Gnostics called the lower Sophia, as opposed to the upper one, Sophia Prunicus, Sophia the Harlot. Thus Psyche is like the Gnostic Lower Sophia, expelled from the higher world for unlawfully trying to see the Father of All, separated from her divinity yet with a longing for the divine, thanks to the Christ’s brief visit to her in the Chaos.

Renaissance Christian interpreters compared Psyche to Eve expelled from Eden. Such a comparison also seems implied in Raphael’s sketch, in which Psyche’s “Venus Pudica” pose is similar to a famous Eve done by the Florentine master Masaccio a hundred years earlier (6t).



Psyche still has her palace, but it is no longer what it was. In von Gierke’s image, she is perhaps starting to see the empty place for what it is, a house built of illusions, as one wall seems to merge with the landscape outside, and her image itself is only a painting hanging on another wall (6u, entitled “Interieur/Tuer,” Interior/Door)