3rd page of 6 pages
3. My mind is clearer now
Judas begins his performance with “my mind is clearer now”. He does not say “I think more clearly”, but “my mind is clearer now”. In this phrase resonate unintentionally a myth, the myth of the rising of the sun. It is this mythical unwanted language, with which the rational statement of Judas is assembling into a whole. The rational “mind” expresses patriarchal values and norms, in which Judas develops his analysis, while the vibrating myth revives another dimension, the regularity of life and death, symbols of the Great Mother, which brings in compensatory to the value of the Great Father.
In the analyses words such as God of Judas, Messiah, Fire, Father, Carpenter appear, which are understand as symbols of the sun myth. There are also mythical figures, which belong to the symbols of the Great Mother. And, above all in the 1st scene, the completely unimportant “chest” (box, coffin) is a symbol of the Great Mother. “Chest” is the real goal of his way, the abandonment of his patriarchal standardized ego towards a holistic human being. Because this task is very difficult, Judas projects this threat to Jesus who is going to die the real death.
"My mind" is influenced by Western thought, is identical to "be" according to Descarte's sentence "Cogito, ergo sum!" Further, the possessive pronoun "MY mind" expresses a sense of ownership from mind to Judas and that because "mind" is not identical with Judas. My mind developes in the first scene even an unconscious dynamics that Judas can not control. But waht is the unconscious meaning of "mind"? Mind connects by the symbolic thers the way inward to his unconscious. But Judas realizes the symbolic terms of his speech only as talk of the crowd outside.
3.1. "Mind" etymologically examined
"Mind" is a complexe word. According to "Cassells' Dictionary it means spirit, mind, soul, intention, plan, will, thoughts, opinion, belief, inclination, desire, memory, meaning, respect and attention. Judas means with "my mind" the rational aspect of "mind", but "mind" includes also soul, heart and desire, words on the emotional level, which belongs in the patriarchal conscious to the female part.
If we follow "mind" back to its Latin, Greek and Sanskrit roots, as Erich Neumann did in "the Moon and Consciousness", we find a historical development whose potential is at the modern men's disposal. "Mind" emerged from the Latin mens, mentis and the Greek menos. the root of the Greek menos is the Sanskrit word manas. The Sanskrit word manas includes the Sanskrit root ma or me. From these roots also come words like moon (Attic-Greek men, Ionic-Greek mene), mother (mater, meter, matar) and matter. With matarthe Greek words intelligence and wisdom "metis" are connected but also the smartest of oll Gods the Goddess "Metis". In this maternal domain belongs also methitesthai for meditate, to have in mind or dream. The word menos is translated as intellect, soul, courage, zeal, menoiuan as to remember, meditate, desire, memoua as to have in mind, intend, main(d/s)mai as to think and also to be lost in thought.
The etymological informations show that mind as intellect, consideration, ghost, soul, courage orginally belongs to the circle of the Great Mother and her wisdom. In the maternal wisdom the moon is also included, which frequently played the masculine role of Great Mother. For, often the moon was considered as the divine father of the human children.
In the patriarchal consciousness the combination of moon, mother, wisdom has been felt as prophetic, confusing and mystery in a negative sense. This is expressed in the Greek words as maindmai translated as to go berserk, mania as obsession, frenzy and mantheia as prophecy, but also the word menuo translated as to indicate, to foresee, meno, maneo as to stay, to linger and man (Sanskrit) as to hasitate, to wait and manthano as to learn and memini as to remember and mentiri as to lie.
These are exactly the words which are found by Judas again. When he forcasts the result of his considerations as a future event, he becomes a prophet. But he leaves out his feminine aspect and therefore he becomes a liar. He feels that someting goes wrong. He is torn and at last he is going to betray Jesus to the priests.
Let us observe the Greek and Latin root of mind once more. Menos, menis means wrath, mens/ mentis intention, wrath, thinking, intellect, reflection, disposition, mindset, imagination. To it Jean Gebser wrote in "Consciousness and Culture":
He, the wrath, gives the thoughts a direction; and it is ruthless (in German: rück - sichts - los = no look back), that means, it does not look backwards (in German rück-wärts). He turns the man away from the inclusion of the previous mythical world and is directed forwards like the aiming spear, with which Archill joined the battle. He, the wrath, individualized the man from the world which was valid till then, and enabled the human ego (Translation by Esther Keller).
Jean Gebser called this consciousness mental consciousness. The mythical consciousness preceded the mental one. the mythical consciousness included the man in a network of soul pictures. This inclusion Jean Gebser understood as an inclusion in ther maternal safety, out of which the angrily thinking man escaped. Ruthless and striving forward the man tried to let the maternal saftety behind him. But the maternal refuge is not simply away but it existes always subliminal in our consciousness and appears in images.
When changing from the mythical to the mental consciousness it was important too that the mental consciousness has projected maternal symbols onto world, nature, country, people and matter. It means, the mental consciousness has been seeking to understand the Great Mother as a mere manifestation of the earthy world. In the Old Testament for example the people Israel or Judea as Yahweh's wives represented in fact the Great Mother. In our civilization we are accustomed to project the symbols of the Great Mother on the material, on the concrete world and nature. And the modern man deals in a similar way like the creator in the Old Testament and ruler of the world: He shines through every corner and every nook, and by his desire to create his own world better and better, he destroys the natural basics.
Jean Gebser wrote about our civilisation:
The original root ma: me also contain latently and complementarily the female principle. Because the Greek word for moon, men, goes back to those roots. And the secondary root mat booms in ou actual patriarchal world, because we can realise that the man is very controlled by the matter and the materialism. For the early man the moon was the time scale, but for the today's man the material is the spatial scale. (Jean Gebser in "Ursprung und Bewusstsein, I, 131", a free translation of this very complicated sentence by Esther Keller)
Against Jean Gebser I want to point out that the directed wrath was not only important by the ancient Greeks but also by the gods in ancient Near Eastern like Marduk in Babylon, Re-Amon in Egypt and Yahweh in Israel and Judea and later in Ancient Greece, Zeus. To these gods Jean Gebser wrote:
These gods were male, and because of their directed wrath every of these gods was grand and unique.
The fascinosum-tremendum that emanated from these gods, these gods became manifestations of the numinous ideal-ego, with which the human ego identified already in the Ancient Orient. The earliest human identification with these gods we find in the titles of Ancient Orient rulers, for example the king of Hatti was named "Sun" or the Egyptian Pharaoh was the incarnation of the sun god Amun-Re, as son of this god. Jean Gebser thought of rulers with names containing ma-, who appeared at the beginning of the mental consciousness, of the Indian legislator Manu, of the Cretan king Minos, of the first pharaoh Menes: Menes means "weigher" or "measuring man" with the meaning of a legislator:
We may not go wrong to recognize that these three* legendary men, who appeared at nearly the same time and embodied a human principle of mutation, were the earliest manifestation of the mental consciousness system. Because, where the legislator appears und is nessecary, there the old balance (which is a polar-mythical) was disrupted, and this setting and fixing has been started. Only the mental world needs laws, the hold mythical world of polarity does not have laws and does not need them (Jean Gebser, "Ursrpung und Gegenwart, I, 130; free translated by Esther Keller).
* also the Old Testament Moses who brought the divine laws belongs to these legendary men.
Against Jean Gebser I would like to point out that the identification of the ego-consciousness with the numinous overego is ancient and magical for shamans identify with their manifestating god. The shaman represents this deity in front of the clan. In the Bible, which has often magic traits, the identification of a man with god is taboo, but yet the original idea of identification pervades as Exodus 4,15-17 shows: Here Moses is to appear as God at the express behest of Yahweh:
You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs (Ex. 4,15-17).
Why has the Bible magic traits? Already we are to believe in divine words, is magic. But originally magic is energy. Magic is the awareness of energy, mental energy, spiritiual energy, which the intuitive man projects on demons and mythical creatures. C. G. Jung defined introverted perception as knowing the average experience of living beings. And what is the average experience of living? Energy which are illustrated by the intuition with pictures and which are defined as terms by thinking.
Let us have a look at the above-described chart of the symbol Yin and Yang, 
so perception and intuition are opposite. "Black" means introversion, the
direction of the consciousness is inwards, white means extraversion, the
direction of the consciousness is outwards. Both forms of consciousness have
as well introverted parts as extraverted parts. The energy which is
perceived by the perception, is projected to the outside by the pictures of
the intuition. And because the introverted intuition is more unconscious to
the thinker, the projection of the images are unconscious.
In the next chapter, I want to show at the example of Metis and Zeus, how the wisdom of the Great Mother is repressed and taken over by the patriarchal ruler.
3.2. Metis and Zeus
From the previous paragraph we know the goddess Metis ("wise counsel") as the goddess of wisdom and intelligence. Among the gods and men, she has the most knowledge (5). She could hide from Zeus' lust for a long time, but at the end, he impregnated her. But now, Zeus was afraid of his born descendants who could challenge his claim of lordship as he once did to Kronos and that's way Zeus swallowed the pregnant Metis to a tricky way. With the help of Hephaestus, Zeus gave birth in this unnatural way to two children, to the bright-eyed war-goddess Athene and her brother Ares. By Hephaistos struck with his axe the head of Zeus and both of the children set off.
In the tragedy of Aeschylos Orestes I-III (6), Agamemnon sacrified his daughter Iphigenia. The girl's mother, Clytemnestra, killed her father for it. Then the son Orestes killed the mother in revenge for his father. Now, a dispute broke out, whether the murder of the mother or the murder of the father was the worsest crime. Up to now, the matricide was a felony, but Apollo and Athena considered in the parricide the worser delict. Apollon and Athene acquitted the mother's morder, because he avenged the parricide. They justified:
APOLLO
I'll speak to that, as well. Make sure you note
how right my answer is. That word mother—
we give it to the one who bears the child.
However, she's no parent, just a nurse
to that new life embedded in her.
The parent is the one who plants the seed,
the father. Like a stranger for a stranger,
she preserves the growing life, unless
god injures it. And I can offer proof
for what I say—a man can have a child
without a mother. Here's our witness,
here—Athena, child of Olympian Zeus.
(Translated by Ian Johnston, 2003)
And ATHENE followed his brother
It's now my task to give my final verdict.
And I award my ballot to Orestes.
No mother gave me birth—that's why
in everything but marriage I support
the man with all my heart, a true child
of my father Zeus. Thus, that woman's death
I won't consider more significant.
She killed her husband, guardian of their home.
If the votes are equal, Orestes wins.
Now, members of the jury, do your job.
Shake the ballots from the urns—and quickly.
(Translated by Ian Johnston, 2003)
Apollo and Athena had forgotten that Metis gave birth tho them first in the belly of Zeus before they set off from their father's head. The violence of the second birth proofs the artificiality of this event. As a myth, on which the mental awareness based, the second birth indicates to the enormous destructive power which is inherent in the mental consciousness, too.
In today's psychology is only discussed the devouring aspect of the Great Mother. But the motif of Zeus, who swallowed Metis, shows the devouring aspect of the Great Father. That the Great Father devours his sons and daughters, is well known by the Greek mythology, by Kronos and by his youngest son Zeus. But the biggest effort of the Great Father is to swallow and to destroy the Great Mother as a independent archetype. This joins like a blind spot theology and religion, but also our individual life, we destroy the world, the nature, the matter for our benefit.
Our example demonstrates, if Zeus swallows Metis, he looks for the pregnancy but also he wants to acquire Metis' wisdom. And he does it in a primitive condition of cannibalism. By eating Metis he tries to appropriate her feminine qualities. And with it he accepts too the superiority of the devoured goddess. And the answer to the question how does a patriarchal God respond to female superiority, is? - With violence!
In Zeus' belly Metis embodies the past, the ancient time. And because this past, this ancient time is waiting of its resurrection as a part splitted off in the collective unconscious, Metis also represents the future, the not-yet-seen before. Because the past, which must be integrated in the mental awareness again, is something new.
Text and Design: Esther Keller-Stocker, March 2010
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