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psyche
Given the immediate experience of life would be essentially
along the circle of elements, everything the psyche does and
experiences, like thinking and feeling, would also essentially
be along that circle. In other words, life as personal experience
(psyche) would essentially happen along that circle.
In the model of elemental transformations in the zodiac
from the star signs section, all star signs transform from
outer to inner elements (except for the desired element).
Inside is where one might suspect the psyche to be.
[image]
Could the argument be reversed, would an assumption
that the psyche is inside imply the transitions of the zodiac ?
At least they are general in the sense that for each element
they select the transition from the outer adjacent element
via the element itself to the inner adjacent element.
So all transformations in life would be about learning in
the broadest sense, end up inside, but with hopes also for
outside, maybe even often as offspring, new life.
And the psyche would be closely related to e5.
Was the prehistoric psyche of people maybe not much able, yet,
to separate the two active elements from each other, what
the individual can move outside (emo) from the thoughts
related to that (eri), and labelled both as a single experience
of everyday life as fire/red, leaving black/dark for the largely
given state of things outside (ero) and white/ bright for the
largely given flow of things inside (emi) ?
[image]
Thus first just three proto-elements, of which ‘red’ fire
later split into yellow fire plus red air ? And before learning
to preserve and later to create fire, a more passive psyche
of mostly just ‘black and white’, with fire/light essentially
as a given phenomenon outside and inside ? And maybe
black for outside, because it is dark at night without the
fire of the sun or also in a cave without a campfire, while
inside the mind it can be bright anytime ? And before that
black and white mixed into one in perpetual change, as in
yin-yang ☯ or in some of Heraclitus’ fragments ?
leads
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The four tasks of Psyche in Apuleius’ The Golden Ass are
about elemental transformations of nominally the psyche.
The four tasks are in the middle of the book, nested threefold
into the outer story of Lucius as an ass, the fairy tale of Cupid
and Psyche, and Psyche’s visits to different deities for help,
until she ends up at Venus who poses the four tasks to her.
While the two outmost stories are based in part on well-known
older myths and folk tales, and the ancient gods reflect their
well-known natures, this appears not to be the case for Psyche’s
tasks. Instead it is more likely that Apuleius devised
them himself or at least that they emerged around his time,
as a way to convey certain new ideas.
Only few of Apuleius’ works have survived. One is On Plato and his Doctrine,
a biography of Plato plus an outline of part
of Plato’s philosophy, another one is On the God of Socrates.
He also translated Plato’s Phaedo from Greek to Latin, where
Socrates argues for the immortality of the soul on the evening before
his death by hemlock.
The word that Plato used for soul is psychê, literally ancient
Greek for a butterfly, that mystical short-lived creature.
[image]
A butterfly is often seen as either resting on a flower or else
fluttering on to the next one, which reminds of the psyche,
which often dwells a while on a topic, then “flutters” on to
the next, often also in a rather random looking way.
Apuleius lived in a very fruitful time in which many symbolic
systems found a form to stay in for many centuries by melting
Greek and Egyptian/African views into something new: Star
signs got their attributed elements; in Stoicism the highest,
lightest form of pneuma was called psychê; in alchemy the
transition towards the philosopher’s stone black-white-yellow-red
is the same order of elements as apparently in Psyche’s
tasks; a mummy reminds of the chrysalis into which a caterpillar
weaves itself and later emerges as a butterfly, a cocoon
as sort of a vessel towards a higher life; leading back in time
to silkworms, the changing colors of a mulberry and the great
goddess, or forward to then upcoming religions like Christianity
that feature the idea of an immortal soul, and so on.
The original title of the book was Metamorphoseon Libri XI,
which is likely why Apuleius might have devised the tasks of
Psyche as elemental transformations of the soul and placed
them at the very center of his masterpiece.
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Myths may have carved out the cycle of elements more closely
and in a more streamlined way than most other stories, as
in myths originally only what felt ultimately important was
worth the effort of remembering it by heart during life and
transmitting it orally from one generation to the next. Myths
around star signs, in particular, might even more specifically
reflect only certain segments of the cycle of elements.
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Observing something that happens outside (emo) can lead to
insights into the workings of the world (eri), so the psyche
would have operated along the circle of elements, emo → eri.
Natural sciences would be a lot about this part of the cycle,
relating essentially experiment (emo) and theory (eri).
You could, for example, not learn much of what a cube is,
unless it moves (emo) or if you move yourself and look at it
from various angles or turn it in your hand (eri → emo). Just
looking at a cube from a single perspective (ero) would not
allow to learn much about a cube as a physical object with
specific properties and symmetries, but could still change your
mood (emi). Such a mood might still allow to learn something
in the sense of later being able to recognize a cube
if you encounter another one from a similar angle, but not
much in a consciously analytical way, and arguably recognition
might rather come indirectly from a transition emi → eri,
from learning inside from different moods.
Even though in the model of the star signs, transitions would
in the end tend to go inside, in practice things would often
involve both ways, for example, when looking at a cube from
different sides, both moving it, eri → emo, and learning from
its movements, emo → eri, in a close feedback loop.
At emi much more may already be going on unconsciously
than is obvious, there may already be a lot of comparing
of different experiences (ero) happening in the background,
which then eri could analyze by observing emi inside similarly
to emo outside. And what eri would postulate, would again
create an emotional reaction, and so on, to be ruminated.
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How would the maybe more subtle view of dual female and
male elements in the I Ching fit here ? And generally into the
astrological model of transformations in the Western zodiac ?
What about the Chinese zodiac, which probably emerged
roughly around the year zero like similar systems in the West ?
Does it also mirror elemental transitions of the psyche ? Or
maybe something else ? What about other zodiacs ?
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Is it true that the psyche is inside, that all would travel inside
during life, or is that more of a Western view, not ultimately
true ? But maybe part of the truth if adding similar transitions
“the other way” to balance it, or in some other ways ?
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I switched the fire colors in the illustration of the archaic
circle so that the darker color (red) is closer to black and the
lighter color (yellow) closer to white, actually as in alchemy.
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Before agriculture, people essentially had to follow nature.
Where to stay, where to find something to eat, was beyond
human control. Similarly, the flow of feelings, dreams, visions
was not something people could approach analytically at first.
That probably came in time by telling stories, with mythology
and other stories. Abstract concepts like love were first
personified as deities like Aphrodite/Venus, only later things
became more abstract, as in Greek philosophy.
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Reading a text silently was apparently not usually done in
antiquity. Texts were rather recited aloud, hence also texts
often in rhymes to give them rhythm and melody. Thus in
and out of what the psyche actively did were still somewhat
mixed up into one: no thinking without speaking or acting.
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New Testament Recovery Version, 1 Th 5:23, footnote 5c:
“The spirit as our inmost part is the inner organ, possessing
God-consciousness, that we may contact God (John 4:24;
Rom. 1:9). The soul is our very self (cf. Matt. 16:26; Luke
9:25), a medium between our spirit and our body, possessing
self-consciousness, that we may have our personality. The
body as our external part is the outer organ, possessing
world-consciousness, that we may contact the material world.”
Hence from inside to outside this could be seen as the colors
of the ripening mulberry, spirit-water-white, soul-air|fire-red,
body-earth-black; part of the cycle emi-eri|emo-ero; inside
and outside the passive elements, in-between the active ones.
Note, however, that the footnote might be more of a modern
interpretation/insight than explicit or implicit ancient views;
spirit-soul-body were pneuma-psyche-soma in Greek.
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The circle reminds of the Lakota “Medicine Wheel”, as well
as of other similar circles, including the Chinese one.
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