Archetypes: Mercurius
There came a time in the West when began to feel like the aspect of ourselves that guided our maturation had been locked away by the Christian God.
In his essay, “The Spirit Mercurius,” Carl Jung analyzes a Grimm fairy tale about a spirit trapped in a bottle. The spirit is “hermetically sealed” in a bottle beneath an old oak tree. A boy opens the bottle and the spirit vows vengeance against the world. The boy quickly tricks the spirit into reentering the bottle, afraid for his life. Then, the spirit promises him a reward if he releases him. The boy does. Unexpectedly, the spirit remains true to his world and gives the boy a cloth that can heal wounds and turn iron into silver.
The spirit in the bottle is Mercurius, the alchemical version of the ancient Greek god Hermes. Hermes is a psychopomp. He guides souls to the underworld. The underworld is the unconscious, a place where the dead (or repressed) parts of us linger, longing for embodiment. That which is guided into the underworld, in this context, is ego-consciousness. Mercurius guides us into ourselves that we may discover what has ‘died’ and needs to be reborn. Thus, he is a personification of what Jung called the “individuation process.”
Because Mercurius is a personified process, his character must represent all the phases of that process. Thus, he is a “shape shifter.” He is good and evil, high and low. Like bouts of inspiration (read: in-spirit), he is wily or illusive. Thus, he flicks around on his winged Talaria.
However, the brothers Grimm, writing in the 1800s, note that Mercurius had been sealed away. This is to say that the process by which we spiritually develop, i.e. become more conscious and mature, has been ‘arrested.’ Who has sealed it away? A great Master. Taken psychologically, this means that our process of individuation has been interrupted by our socialization. Something within the dominant culture at the time, and the way we raise our children, had demanded the repression of the very aspect of ourselves that allowed us to develop.
Jung states,
if we translate it into psychological language, the fairytale tells us that the mercurial essence, the principium individuationis, would have developed freely under natural conditions, but was robbed of its freedom by deliberate intervention from outside, and was artfully confined and banished like an evil spirit. [i]
Who had the power to seal away an aspect of ourselves on moral grounds? The dominating moral force: Christianity. This is not an indictment of Christianity per se, but a recognition that Christianity had become restrictive enough to inhibit maturation. It implies that Christianity calcified enough that it restricted the very means by which we developed. When it became a rule-set, a paltry stricture of behavior and not practice for developing wisdom, then spiritual development was abandoned as an affront to the rules. Christianity had become Pharisaic. And the spirit Mercurius is a representation of that sealed away process.
When freed, the spirit lashes out. Why? Imagine that you grew up in a household that did not tolerate your anger. Whenever you were angry, even when it was reasonable, you were shut-down, shunned, and displaced. Quickly, you learned to ‘turn off’ your anger. However, this means that you never learned to properly use your anger nor maturely express it. You never integrated it into your life. The ‘modes of force’ necessary for defending your beliefs were castrated, and the grand fires of passion chilled to sad embers. Now, suddenly, you poured gasoline on the embers. In such a state, with your anger suddenly imbued with energy, do you image it would it express itself in a mature way or as you had left it - childish and undisciplined? Obviously, the latter. Thus, the initial contact with repressed contents is dangerous, and the spirit Mercurius is represented so.
Only later, after being contained again, do these contents mature. Then, Mercurius can offer the fruits of integration. In other words, the benefits of mature anger, sexuality, or playfulness may be enjoyed. In the fairytale, these fruits are represented as the rewards Mercurius grants: a cloth that heals wounds and turns base metal into silver. Both of these are manipulations of the material world, be it the body or natural resources. Christianity, especially near its end, became profoundly spiritual. That is fine. However, when spirituality ascends too high, and split from its roots (the day-to-day drudgery of life), it becomes utopian and therefore, tyrannical. Spiritual ascent became a matter of will and goodness. Sin meant one was merely weak willed – the material conditions that compelled the sin be damned. Thus, what Christianity repressed was the material world as such. The fruits of reconnecting with materiality were medicine and wealth. Mercurius, the process whereby we confront what we neglected, granted us these rewards.
The question now is this: What has the anti-Christian age repressed? At this stage in materialism, with its attention economy and suburban sprawl, when the answer to every problem has become a new pill, have we not neglected Mercurius? Have we not arrested our means of spiritually developing? Here’s a fairy tale for our age:
A boy lives in a big city. Its metal obelisks abound. One day, he sees a girl, but he does not know how do approach her. He hopes to see her again, but his schoolwork takes up all his time. And when he isn’t working at school, he is shuffling from one assignment or extracurricular or job to the next.
One night, he comes home late from his responsibilities, and though he is tired, he asks his dad how to talk to a girl. His father doesn’t know. He says, “when I was a boy, we would play in the forest near our house, and the girls would meet us there. I never had to think about approaching a girl, we had a community. I knew your mother from when I was very young, I do not remember having to approach her.”
The next day was a Sunday, and the boy finally had time to spare. So, naively following in his father’s footsteps, he went to the closest forest preserve. There was hardly any room left for trees, which had been encroached upon by concrete and street lights, but in the center of the forest, taller than all the other trees, was a great oak. It captured the boy’s attention and as he approached it, he heard a faint voice. As he approached the tree he could hear it again, muffled beneath the earth. He dug at the tree’s roots and found, beneath the dirt, a glass bottle, perfectly round with a strange golden light inside.
The voice cried, “let me out!” And the boy did. Suddenly, a spirit burst forth! He yelled, “I will have the world for this! I desire everything! I will drink the earth dry!” The boy, frightened and enchanted, quickly shut the bottle and the spirit was drawn back in. However, the boy remained enchanted - he could smell the flowers and feel the cool spring breeze. Slowly, he picked up the bottle to his ear and a voice said, “if you free me, I will grant you a gift.”
The boy cautiously opened the bottle, ready to seal it up again if necessary, and the spirit gently emerged from the bottle. “Thank you,” he said. “I will keep my promise if you will be responsible with my gift.” The boy nodded his head. “Very well. First, I will restore this forest, which I have loved so well.” Suddenly, the trees seemed to expand, and the limits of the forest pushed back the concrete and steel. It was enormous and filled with life. “Second, I will give you a necklace that slows down time whenever you wear it.” The boy put it around his neck and the world felt eternal. “Third, for my last gift I will grant you a community. In one week’s time, return home. If you have kept the necklace on for a whole week, and arrive there with time slowed, your community will begin to blossom.”
The boy, driven by love, listened. For a whole week he wandered the forest and it felt like a lifetime, but he was not bored. He found the forest to be infinitely detailed. It was full of potential and life. The birds chirped and foxes sprang from the brush. Sometimes the followed them and they showed him interesting places. Time felt slower, but the boy noticed far more.
When he arrived home, his dad was happy to see him and made him dinner. The world felt strangely silent to him, but he appreciated everything his dad did in a way he had not before.
Before long, people started coming over. He spent time listening to them and made new friends. He found it easier to talk to people when he wasn’t worried about what he was supposed to say. Over time, the spirit kept its promise and the boy, having a community, grew up, was married, and spent his eternal life enjoying the company of others.
[i]Jung, C.G. (1967) C.W. Volume 13, p. 196.