Authors: J.F. Bierlein
From the Jungian psychological perspective, Dr. M. L. von Franz, writing in
Man and His Symbols
, edited by Jung himself, takes the following psychological view of the significance not only of the serpent motif but also of that of ducks and swans swimming on the primordial sea in the Finnish and North American Indian myths:
Other transcendent symbols of the depths are rodents, lizards, snakes and sometimes, fish. These are intermediate creatures that combine underwater activity and the birdflight with an intermediate terrestrial life. The wild duck or the swan are cases in point. Perhaps the commonest
[sic]
dream symbol of transcendence is the snake, as represented by the therapeutic symbol of the Roman god of medicine Aesculapius, which has survived in modern times as a sign of the medical profession. This was originally a non-poisonous tree-snake; as we see it, coiled around the staff of the healing god, it seems to embody a kind of mediation between heaven and earth.A still more important and widespread symbol of chthonic (underworld) transcendence is the motif of the two entwined serpents. These are the famous Naga serpents of ancient India; and we also find them in Greece on the end of the staff belonging to
the god Hermes. An early Grecian herm (altar to Hermes) is a stone pillar with a bust of the god above. On one side are the entwined serpents and on the other an erect phallus. As the serpents are represented in the act of sexual union and the erect phallus is unequivocally sexual, we can draw certain conclusions about the herm as a symbol of fertility.But we are mistaken if we think this only refers to biological fertility. Hermes is Trickster in a different role as messenger [of the gods], a god of the crossroads and finally the leader of souls to and from the underworld.
The universal symbol of the serpent has a number of aspects, only a few of which were discussed above. However, people have always been intrigued by the reference to the serpent in the Old and New Testaments as “wise.” Certainly this would seem to point to its seemingly miraculous quality of shedding its skin and regeneration. However, it also brings to bear thoughts of ancestral memory. The theory of scientific evolution and, certainly, the Genesis account, place the appearance of the serpent chronologically earlier than that of humans. Perhaps there is an ancestral memory of a time when reptiles, and not humans, were the dominant species on earth.
Another mythic theme is found in both the Greek myth of Eurynome and Ophion and the Genesis account of the Fall. This is the bruising of the serpent’s head with the woman’s heel. This may be seen in a variety of ways as well. One is that there was an early struggle between men and women as a matriarchy gave way to a patriarchy. If one accepts the serpent as phallic symbol, the fact that the woman bruises the serpent’s head may be an early memory of the matriarchy defeating males. In Christian terms, this is considered the first Messianic prophecy: The son of a woman (Christ) eventually defeats the serpent (Satan).
Water
The ancient peoples were aware, as we are today, that water is a necessary precondition for life as we know it. During the Mariner probes of the planet Mars in the 1970s, the search for life was largely a
search for water. Water is certainly an important part of us: Our bodies are two-thirds water by weight. Blood plasma is 90 percent water, and even “solid” muscle tissue is at least 80 percent water. It takes one thousand pounds of water to produce one pound of vegetable food. Thus, it is only natural that water is the perfect place to start in any story of the Creation.
In Jungian psychology, water is a dream symbol manifest in the myths and the unconscious mind and the wisdom contained therein. Thus, our dreams of bathing in or drinking water may be interpreted as symbolic of the quest for wisdom or for communication between the conscious and unconscious mind. Another possible Jungian approach to the water motif in the Creation myths is the dawn of human consciousness.
Judaism and Christianity are rich with metaphors of water. The Bible refers to “drinking of the living waters” of God’s word. Baptism washes away sin and creates a “new being.” The divinity of Christ in the New Testament was revealed as he was baptized by John the Baptist. Converts to Judaism are baptized, and ritual bathing in the
mikvah
, or purification pool, is a ritual requirement for women after menstruation.
Modern scientific theories also begin in the water. A watery chaos is considered the earliest home of life on this planet. Modern scientists speak of life as evolving in a primordial soup that constituted about 10 percent of the world’s waters at one time. This “soup” contained the necessary materials for the creation of life, particularly the carbon compounds and hydrogen, which combine and recombine to form DNA, the basic “building block” of life.
Scientific theory has some fascinating parallels with the myths, including the Genesis account.
The Precambrian Period
The earth is about 4.7 billion years old, according to this theory, and the first life appeared in shallow pools about 2.7 billion years ago. The first fossil evidence of photosynthetic plant life has been dated to about 2.5 billion years ago.
The Cambrian Period
Louis Pasteur hypothesized that the first life on earth was anaerobic (not dependent upon oxygen), and that the first major shift in the development of life took place when the world’s oxygen level reached one one-hundredths of its present state. This level is referred to as the first critical level for the development of life, and it is at this point that the basic life forms shifted from being anaerobic in nature to aerobic (requiring oxygen). This period is believed to have taken place about 600 million years ago and is characterized by a virtual explosion of life-forms in the seas. As per many Creation stories, the land was not yet entirely separate from the water.
The Ordovician Period
About 500 million years ago. Vertebrate life-forms appeared and the land was slowly emerging from the sea.
The Silurian Period
About 425 million years ago. The level of oxygen present in the earth’s atmosphere, due to the action of photosynthetic plants producing oxygen, reached the second critical level of one tenth of today’s level. The continents were increasingly drier—the land was “separated from the waters”—and the first terrestrial plants and animals appeared.
The Devonian Period
About 405 million years ago. The seed plants, bony fishes, and amphibians appeared; the land was still a bit drier and there was glaciation on the earth.
The Mississippian Period
About 355 million years ago. The sharks and amphibians were greatly developed, as were large-scale trees and seed ferns. The climate was warm and humid.
The Pennsylvanian Period
About 310 million years ago. Reptiles appeared, but amphibians were the dominant animal life-form. The appearance of gymnosperm plants, vast forests, and swamps was characteristic of this period. This was also the period of the great formations of coal and petroleum deposits.
The Permian Period
This is the period, some 280 million years before the present, when the earth cooled and the land became much drier. With this change in temperature, many species became extinct.
The Triassic Period
Some 220 million years ago. The dinosaurs and gymnosperm plants became the dominant life-forms on earth. There was also a large-scale extinction of the tree ferns.
The Jurassic Period
Some 181 million years ago. The birds and mammals first appeared. The great period of the dinosaurs.
The Cretaceous Period
Some 135 million years ago. The monocotyledonous plants appeared, as did the first modern mammals. At the end of this period there was a widespread extinction of the dinosaurs.
The Paleocene Epoch
Some 65 million years ago. The first placental mammals appeared.
The Eocene Epoch
About 54 million years ago. The hoofed animals and the carnivores appeared.
The Oligocene Epoch
Some 36 million years ago. The climate became warmer and most modern species of animals appeared.
The Miocene Epoch
About 25 million years ago. The anthropoid (humanlike) apes were established; most mammals took forms that would be recognizable today.
The Pliocene Epoch
Man was evolving, some 11 million years ago, forests giving way to spreading grasslands.
The Pleistocene Epoch
About 1 million years ago. The first distinctly human social life appeared amid glaciation and significant extinction of many forms of life.
The Recent Epoch
The earth witnessed the dawn of the first truly “civilized” human societies about eleven thousand years ago. This is an interesting number, considering that the Hindu and Persian myths believe the present world to have begun at about that time.
* * *
My purpose here is not to participate in the Evolution-versus-Creationism battle, but rather to show that science and the great myths share striking similarities and demonstrate very similar speculations on the origin of life that cannot be ignored. The “how” of science and the “why” of myth converge at this point.
The Tree
The tree naturally lends itself to rich mythological symbolism. Its roots reach deep into the earth, the “mother” of many myths; its branches reach high to touch “father” sky. Unlike any other living thing, the tree continues to grow throughout its lifetime and has a life span of hundreds and even thousands of years. This makes the tree a potent symbol of immortality.
So it is little wonder that we find the tree so commonly in the myths. To the Norse, Sioux, Algonquins, and Persians, it is from the tree that man is created. As these trees become human beings, there is a powerful metaphor of “the Fall” in that, prior to becoming human, the trees were rooted and could touch the sky; as humans, they are rootless and cannot reach heaven.
The tree is a symbol of wisdom as well. Ancient poets must have looked at great trees and reflected on how many individual lives had passed during the life of the tree. It is beneath such a tree, the bo or bodhi tree, that Buddha was said to have achieved enlightenment. In Christianity, the tree is the vehicle by which sin came into the world and also represents redemption, as Jesus was crucified on a cross made from a tree, the cross actually referred to as a tree by Saint Paul.
Carl Sagan reflects on the crucial role that trees may have played in the development of human intelligence, and speculates on how their place in our ancestors’ lives may continue to affect our own lives:
For their surface area, insects weigh very little. A beetle, falling from a high altitude, quickly achieves terminal velocity; air resistance
prevents it from falling very fast, and, after alighting on the ground it will walk away, apparently none the worse for the experience. The same is true of small mammals—squirrels, say. A mouse can be dropped down a thousand-foot mine shaft and, if the ground is soft, will arrive dazed but essentially unhurt. In contrast, human beings are characteristically maimed or killed by any fall of more than a few dozen feet: because of our size, we weigh too much for our surface area. Therefore our arboreal ancestors had to pay attention. Any error in brachiating from branch to branch could be fatal. Every leap was an opportunity for evolution. Powerful selective forces were at work to evolve organisms with grace and agility, accurate binocular vision, versatile manipulative abilities, superb hand-eye coordination, and an intuitive grasp of Newtonian gravitation. But each of these skills required significant advances in the evolution of the brains and particularly the neo-cortices of our ancestors. Human intelligence is fundamentally indebted to the millions of years our ancestors spent in the trees.And after we returned to the savannahs and abandoned the trees, did one long for those great graceful leaps and ecstatic moments of weightlessness in the shafts of sunlight of the forest roof? Is the startle reflex of human infants today to prevent falling from the treetops? Are our nighttime dreams of flying and our daytime passion for flight as exemplified in the lives of Leonardo da Vinci and Konstantin Tsiolkovski, nostalgic reminiscences of those days gone by in the branches of the high forest?
In the Jungian school of psychology, the prominence of the tree in both dreams and myths is attributed to the continuous growth of the tree, serving as a model for the positive process of human spiritual growth through experience:
Gradually a wider and more mature personality emerges and by degrees becomes effective and even visible to others. The fact that we often speak of “arrested development” shows that we assume that such a process of growth and maturation is possible with every individual. Since this psychic growth cannot be brought about by a conscious effort of will power, but happens involuntarily and naturally, it is in dreams frequently symbolized
by the tree, whose slow, powerful involuntary growth fulfills a definite pattern.
Joseph Campbell recognizes the tree as part of the powerful collection of symbols of immortality:
So that again, we recognize the usual symbols of the mythic garden of life, where the serpent, the tree, the world axis, sun eternal, and ever living waters radiate grace to all quarters—and toward which the mortal individual is guided, by one divine manifestation, or another, to the knowledge of his own immortality.
Herein lies the spiritual beauty of the Christmas tree. While it may be true that the Christmas tree is a vestige of an earlier Teutonic pagan custom, the evergreen tree, alive in the dead of winter, remains a symbol of immortality. The message attached is that, through the birth of Christ—heaven touching earth, as a tree appears to do—immortality comes to human beings.