Scarab Makes a World

 

April 13, 2023

Vision in liminal space before sleep

"What Is Reality?"

I like to do horizontal meditation flat on my back in bed in the liminal space between sleep and awake. Last night, following an interesting conversation with a philosopher and meditation teacher, I put the question he had put to me, "What is reality?"

The response was immediate - and highly visual. I saw a scarab beetle emerging from a ball of dung and spreading its wings, flying up into the sky. Light on its shell and wings flashed gold. I heard its Egyptian name, Khepri, which has to do with emergence and creation. I saw that the ball of dung was in fact the primal mound, rising from the waters of Nun. Reality is what happens when we rise from the sh-t and make a world.

Drawing: "Scarab Makes a World" by Robert Moss

Learning from the Patient: Jung’s Scarab at the Window

 

We might call the most famous story of synchronicity in Jung’s biography The Scarab at the Window. Jung had virtually despaired in his treatment of a patient who had left two previous therapists when she started telling him a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. At that instant, Jung noticed a green-gold flying beetle at his window. It was a rose chafer, the closest thing to a scarab you will find in Europe. He caught the beetle and presented it to his patient, saying, “Here is your scarab”. This took him and his patient out of their stuck place, and the analysis went forward (Jung, 1973 p. 22). I wrote about the importance of this episode in Jung's practice and theory of synchronicity here. 

We now know the name and background of Jung’s patient, thanks to Vicente de Moura (2014), a curator at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. Her maiden name was Madeleine Quarles van Ufford; her aristocratic family called her Maggy. In Zürich she met her future husband, Adam Reichstein; he was the brother of the Nobel Prize winner Tadeus Reichstein. She was in therapy with Jung for five years in the early 1920s. She stayed in contact withn Jung and his circle after, joining the Psychological Club. Died in 1975.

She spent her infancy in Batavia (modern-day Indonesia) and carried for Jung some of the mystery of the East. We know, from Jung’s lengthy description of her case (without the name) in “The Realities of Practical Psychotherapy”, a paper only published after his death, that she had a vivid dream and fantasy life, and extraordinary psychosomatic symptoms that Jung could not initially understand (Jung, 1985, pp. 327-337).

Jung noted in ‘Concerning Mandala Symbolism’, (1950) where one of Reichstein’s mandalas is published, that she ‘… was born in the Dutch East Indies, where she sucked up the peculiar local demonology with the mother’s milk of her native ayah’.

What analysts call transference and counter-transference seem to have come into play. However something from a deeper order of events is also poking through. Is it possible that in choosing the dream she shared, Jung’s patient had picked up on his own recent reading and archetypal preoccupations? I have experienced and reported cases where my students picked up what I was reading overnight in dreams they shared with me the next morning. On one such occasion three students shared dreams at the breakfast table that matched three key passages in a ethnographic account of the Cayuga Rites of Midwinter that I had been reading between 3 and 4 am.

In the case of Maggy, it seems like the patient was taking the lead, that Jung was following her into mythic territory she already inhabited. Maggy’s dreams drove him East until he discovered Kundalini yoga in The Serpent Power. Only then did he feel he was starting to understand her, “Learning from the Patient”, as in the title of de Moura’s article. In November 1932 Jung gave a series of 4 lectures on Kundalini yoga. These lectures from Jung are known in literature as the Yoga-Kundalini Seminars.

Jung wrote that the case of Maggy and the Scarab at the Window was unique in his experience. of synchronicity. But de Moura observes that "this kind of event, which is an example for what Jung called synchronicity, was by no means the only one in her treatment."

In a letter to Jung probably send in 1930, Maggy described this remarkable sequence, suggesting astral visitations:

I came to you to tell a very impressive dream: I dreamt that I rested in bed and your spirit appeared to me. He bowed down to me and kissed me. In this kiss your spirit from the afterlife holds something very vital for me, which would set in an improvement of my condition.

With this dream I went to see you. As I told you the dream, you said to me what had happened to you. Before I came, you had a patient with you. Suddenly you got without any reason an irresistible urge to send the patient away. As this urge became too powerful, you really sent the patient away. When you were alone, it compelled you to go to the bookshelf, to get any book.

You read inside the book the story of an ill man, to whom the spirit of his beloved appeared. Beside her was the phantom of a man, who would have the mission to conduct the woman from the afterlife to the ill man. The similarities of my dream with the story were clear enough. (de Moura 2014, pp. 404-405)

 

References 

de Moura, V. (2014). Learning from the patient: The East, synchronicity and transference in the history of an unknown case of C.G. Jung. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 59, 391-409.

Jung, C. G. (1973). Memories, dreams, reflections. Pantheon Books.

Jung, C. G. (1985). The Practice of Psychotherapy (2nd Ed.). Princeton University Press.

Illustration: Egyptian scarab amulet with bird wings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Yor City.

 

 

Dream interpretation by mating birds

 

Jung was a master of navigating by synchronicity. His practice in this field is, to my mind, far more impressibve and instructive than his theory. He practiced pattern recognition, noticing what was going on in his field of perception as he wrestled with an idea or tended to a patient, following the wind and waves on the lake, the rustle of leaves and the cries of animals and birds in the woods near his house. 

I came upon a choice example of how he used coincidence to get a second opinion on dreams - and sometimes to get a point across to a dreamer who seemed to be missing the point.

A patient whose dreams seemed to Jung to be full of strong sexual imagery declined to look at this aspect of her dream life, drifting off into associations that seemed to Jung to be far removed from what the dreams contained. His efforts to get her to look at the possible sexual content did not prosper until, on the day of the woman's next appointment, a pair of sparrows fluttered to the ground at her feet and "performed the act" right in front of her.-

This incident, recorded in the notebooks of Jungian analyst Esther Harding, recalls the famous epiphany of the scarab that Jung recorded in Memories, Dreams, Reflections. He felt stuck in his analysis of another female patient until the session in which she recounted a dream of a scarab, vitally important to the Egyptians as a symbol of rebirth. At that instant, Jung heard something scraping at the window of his consulting room. He opened the window and caught in his hands a flying beetle known as a rose-chafer, the closest thing to the Egyptian scarab that was likely to be found in Switzerland. He presented the golden-green beetle to the woman, saying, "Here is your scarab" , and noted this as the breakthrough point in her analysis.-

These episodes are fine examples of how (to borrow from Richard Tarnas in Cosmos and Psyche) "spontaneous archetypal resonance" can act as "a healing solvent on the hardened polarities - between self and world, subject and object conscious and unconscious - of the person experiencing the synchronicity."

Attend to synchronicity, as Jung did every day,and you may become a magnet for it.

The Scarab and the Fox: How Jung Navigated by Synchronicity

Jung’s life practice of paying attention to coincidence and symbolic popups in the world around us is a model of how to navigate by synchronicity.

    In his work with patients, he paid close attention to the interplay of dreams and signs from the world. He was encouraged to do this by his celebrated breakthrough work with a female patient who had been seriously blocked until she dreamed of a scarab, the dung beetle of the Nile Valley. Despite its lowly origins, the scarab was one of the most important Egyptian symbols of rebirth and transformation; it had been deified as Khepri and was placed over the heart of the soul traveler to guide journeys beyond the body and beyond death.
    As the woman discussed her dream with Jung, a flying beetle known as a rose chafer appeared at the window. It was the nearest match for the Egyptian scarab you could hope to find in Europe. Jung caught it and presented it to his patient, saying, "Here is your scarab." Her eyes widened in recognition. She experienced a sense of confirmation of her dream and the work she was doing with Jung that carried her to deep healing.

     When he saw patients in his house at Küsnacht, on Lake Zurich,, he liked to sit so that they both faced the garden, the poplars at the edge of the lake, and the water beyond, noticing what the world was saying.  He found significance in every shift in the environment — a sudden wind whipping up the lake water, the shape of a cloud, the cry of a bird.

     He was especially intrigued by how animals or birds sometimes seemed to participate in a human exchange.  On one occasion, he walked in his garden with a woman patient. As they wandered beyond the garden into light woods, she was talking about the first dream of her life that had major impact on her; she said it made an “everlasting” impression. “I am in my childhood home,” she recalled, “and a spectral fox is coming down the stairs.” She paused and put her hand on Jung’s arm, because at this moment a real fox trotted out of the trees, less than forty yards in front of them. The fox padded softly along the path in front of them for several minutes.  Jung noted that "the animal behaved as if it were a partner in the human situation.”

     Jung’s willingness to trust an unexpected incident — and accept it immediately as guidance for action — was evident in a meeting he had with Henry Fierz, who visited him in hopes of persuading him to support the publication of a manuscript by a recently deceased scientist. Jung had reservations about the book and opposed publication. The conversation became increasingly strained, and Jung looked at his watch, evidently getting ready to tell his guest he was out of time. Jung frowned when he saw the time.

     “What time did you come?” he demanded of his visitor.

     “At five o’clock, as agreed.”

     Jung’s frown deepened. He explained that his watch had just been repaired, and should be keeping impeccable time. But it showed 5:05, and surely Fierz had been with him for much longer. “What time do you have?”

    “Five thirty-five,” his visitor told him.

    “Since you have the right time and I have the wrong time,” Jung allowed, “I must think again.”

     He then changed his mind and supported publication of the book.

The Scarab and the Fox: How Jung Navigated by Synchronicity

Jung’s life practice of paying attention to coincidence and symbolic popups in the world around us is a model of how to navigate by synchronicity.

    In his work with patients, he paid close attention to the interplay of dreams and signs from the world. He was encouraged to do this by his celebrated breakthrough work with a female patient who had been seriously blocked until she dreamed of a scarab, the dung beetle of the Nile Valley. Despite its lowly origins, the scarab was one of the most important Egyptian symbols of rebirth and transformation; it had been deified as Khepri and was placed over the heart of the soul traveler to guide journeys beyond the body and beyond death.
    As the woman discussed her dream with Jung, a flying beetle known as a rose chafer appeared at the window. It was the nearest match for the Egyptian scarab you could hope to find in Europe, and as the patient’s eyes widened in recognition, she experienced a sense of confirmation of her dream and the work she was doing with Jung that carried her to deep healing.

     When he saw patients in his house at Küsnacht, on Lake Zurich,, he liked to sit so that they both faced the garden, the poplars at the edge of the lake, and the water beyond, noticing what the world was saying.  He found significance in every shift in the environment — a sudden wind whipping up the lake water, the shape of a cloud, the cry of a bird.

     He was especially intrigued by how animals or birds sometimes seemed to participate in a human exchange.  On one occasion, he walked in his garden with a woman patient. As they wandered beyond the garden into light woods, she was talking about the first dream of her life that had major impact on her; she said it made an “everlasting” impression. “I am in my childhood home,” she recalled, “and a spectral fox is coming down the stairs.” She paused and put her hand on Jung’s arm, because at this moment a real fox trotted out of the trees, less than forty yards in front of them. The fox padded softly along the path in front of them for several minutes.  Jung noted that "the animal behaved as if it were a partner in the human situation.”

     Jung’s willingness to trust an unexpected incident — and accept it immediately as guidance for action — was evident in a meeting he had with Henry Fierz, who visited him in hopes of persuading him to support the publication of a manuscript by a recently deceased scientist. Jung had reservations about the book and opposed publication. The conversation became increasingly strained, and Jung looked at his watch, evidently getting ready to tell his guest he was out of time. Jung frowned when he saw the time.

     “What time did you come?” he demanded of his visitor.

     “At five o’clock, as agreed.”

     Jung’s frown deepened. He explained that his watch had just been repaired, and should be keeping impeccable time. But it showed 5:05, and surely Fierz had been with him for much longer. “What time do you have?”

    “Five thirty-five,” his visitor told him.

    “Since you have the right time and I have the wrong time,” Jung allowed, “I must think again.”

     He then changed his mind and supported publication of the book.