Kinky Venus Part 3

The Trials of Psyche

The fact that Psyche, in her despair, turns to Venus is interesting and might point to the fact that her rescue is found in connection with the mother archetype.

At this point in the myth, only the malevolent, as symbolized by Venus, is constellated. It should be noted that, according to Jungian theory, archetypes are innate in everyone’s psyche but are only fully activated when they are mirrored in the outside world.

A woman who is working through the schizoid position has likely lacked sufficient mirroring from her biological mother and therefore needs to search for a substitute in the inside or the outside world.

The first trial: Sorting the grains

In her despair to find Eros she ultimately turns to Aphrodite who gives her three supposedly impossible trials.

I’m now going to put your merit to the test myself. Sort out this random heap of seeds, and let me see the work completed this evening, with each kind of grain properly arranged and separated.’ And leaving her with the enormous heap of grains, Venus went off to a wedding dinner. Psyche did not attempt to touch the disordered and unmanageable mass, but stood in silent stupefaction, stunned by this monstrous command. Then there appeared an ant, one of those miniature farmers; grasping the size of the problem, pitying the plight of the great god’s bedfellow and execrating her mother-in-law’s cruelty, it rushed round eagerly to summon and convene the whole assembly of the local ants. ‘Have pity,’ it cried, ‘nimble children of Earth the all-mother, have pity and run with all speed to the aid of the sweet girl-wife of Eros in her peril.’ In wave after wave the six-footed tribes poured in to the rescue, and working at top speed they sorted out the whole heap grain by grain, separated and distributed the seed by kinds, and vanished swiftly from view.

The mountain of mixed grains reflects the inner chaos that follows the collapse of unconscious love.

Psyche stands before a psychic landscape no longer organized by certainty, but by contradiction: What is truly mine? What belongs to projection? Do I long for closeness, or do I fear it? Do I want to merge, or disappear?

This is the depressive position: the painful awakening into complexity after the simplicity of fantasy dissolves.

The task is not solved through force or rational analysis. The ego cannot think its way out of this kind of suffering. Instead, help arrives through the ants, tiny instinctive forces of the unconscious, humble servants of the Great Mother.

They symbolize the deeper organizing intelligence of the psyche, the quiet wisdom beneath conscious control. Psyche’s work is not to escape the confusion, but to remain within it long enough for something deeper to begin sorting itself.

Jung wrote that we do not solve psychological problems so much as outgrow them. Like climbing higher up a mountain, the storm below does not disappear, but perspective changes. The psyche gradually reorganizes around a wider consciousness.

To endure this stage requires an almost sacred patience:to stay with the feeling, to inhabit the uncertainty, to let grief, longing, rage, and tenderness move through the body without rushing to resolve them. Slowly, what once appeared hopelessly tangled begins to separate itself naturally. The unconscious, given enough silence and containment, knows how to sort the grains.

The second trial: The rams with the golden wool

Psyche has completed her first task, is given some bread and allowed to sleep under the roof of Aphrodite.

At the same time, Eros is strictly guarded in the back of the house “partly to stop him from aggravating his wound through his impetuous passion, partly to stop him from seeing his beloved.” They are both still caught up in the negative mother complex when Venus gives Psyche her next task:

‘You see that wood which stretches along the banks of the river and the bushes at its edge, which look down on the nearby spring? Sheep that shine with fleece of real gold wander and graze there unguarded. Of that precious wool, l see that you get a tuft by hook or by crook and bring it. Psyche set out, not expecting to fulfill her task, but intending to end her sufferings by throwing herself from a rock into the river. But from the river a green reed, source of sweet music, divinely inspired by the soft breeze, prophesied: ‘Psyche, tried by much suffering, do not pollute my waters with your death. Do not approach the fearsome sheep while they are heated by the sun and maddened with rage; their horns are sharp, their foreheads hard as stone, and they kill men with poisonous bites. Wait until the midday heat abates and they are quieted by the breeze. Then, from beneath the tall plane tree, shake the nearby branches you will find golden wool caught in the stems.’ The reed in its humanity showed Psyche the way to safety. She listened, followed the instructions, and returned with an armful of golden fleece.

In the second trial, Psyche is forced to confront the very instinctual energy she has long kept split off from herself: aggression, desire, power, and the untamed masculine force within the psyche.

Faced with the violent golden rams, she recoils in terror. Rather than approaching the instinct consciously, she moves toward self-destruction.

This is the nature of shame and despair when they overwhelm the personality. The psyche becomes engulfed by the conflict. It is no longer: “I made a mistake.”

but: "I am the mistake.”

The entire self collapses beneath the weight of its own shadow.

Yet just as Psyche prepares to throw herself into the river, the reed appears, stirred gently by the divine breeze.

The image is deeply symbolic: a soft, feminine intelligence intervening at the edge of annihilation.

The reed represents the reflective feminine principle: not force, not domination, but attunement, patience, intuition and wise restraint. It is the inner maternal voice capable of holding instinct without being possessed by it.

The reed tells Psyche not to approach the rams directly while they rage beneath the burning sun. She must wait until midday has passed, until the intensity subsides and full consciousness can emerge. Psychologically, this is profound. The task is not to destroy instinct, nor to repress aggression, sexuality, or desire. The task is to approach these forces only when the psyche is conscious enough not to be consumed by them.

Only then can she gather the golden wool.

The golden wool symbolizes instinct transformed through awareness: raw psychic energy refined into something luminous, integrated, numinous and life-giving

Psyche learns that consciousness does not emerge through overpowering instinct, but through learning how to remain in relationship with it without losing herself.

The test teaches her not to engage directly when gripped by instinct, nor be overwhelmed by the complexity of the task, but to reflect, wait, and regulate. It teaches her not to charge directly, a standard mechanism in people with schizoid defence structure, who tend to confront emotional intensity head-on or dissociate.

The third trial: The cup from the river Styx

Venus, consumed by jealousy and still unconvinced that Psyche, a mere mortal, was truly worthy of her divine son Eros’s love, devised yet another impossible task for the young woman. Her beauty, which had incited the goddess’s wrath in the first place, was now to be the instrument of her torment, as Venus sought to break Psyche’s spirit and prove her unworthiness. This new challenge was designed to be even more arduous and humiliating than the previous trials, each one intended to push Psyche to the brink of despair.

‘Now,’ said Aphrodite, ‘I shall test your courage and wit. On that steep mountain from which a black spring flows to feed the waters of Styx and Cocytus, draw me some of its ice-cold water in this crystal jar.’ She handed Psyche the urn with harsh threats. Psyche hurried to the mountain, hoping at least for an end to her misery. But upon reaching the summit, she saw the impossibility of the task: a vast, jagged rock poured forth a deadly stream guarded by fierce, sleepless serpents whose hissing voices warned her away “Be off! Fly! You’ll die!” Frozen in terror, Psyche stood senseless, unable even to weep.Then Providence took pity. From the heights descended Jove’s eagle, remembering his debt to Eros. Addressing her kindly, he said, “Do you, inexperienced as you are, think to touch the sacred waters of Styx, which even the gods fear to swear by?” Taking the urn, he flew between the serpents’ fiery jaws, feigning obedience to Aphrodite, and filled it with the forbidden waters before safely returning it to Psyche.

Jove’s eagle (or the "bird of Jove") is the sacred eagle associated with the Roman god Jupiter (Jove), acting as his messenger, symbol of power, and bearer of his thunderbolts. As a Gene Keys guide this also stands out becaise the order of the Golden Path - you Gene Keys awakening journey is Venus Sequence then Pear Sequence where the transformed materal healed in the Venus Sequence takes you to Jupiter in you chart to descover how to then apply your healed inner child in service to the collective.

Book your Golden Path Journey with Sarah

The river represents the opposing tendencies of human nature, love and strive, immortal love with all its possibilities and its destructive tendencies. Which is forever floating and is impossible to grasp, articulated beautifully in the words of Kahlil Gibran:

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiveri n the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, Into the season less world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Anyone familiar with the emotional numbness associated with the 1st Gene Key and the survival instinct’s tendency to shut us down in order to protect us from overwhelm will recognize this pattern.

Guided by the eagle, representing a higher perspective, she can now integrate her capacity for both ambition and affection. From this detached viewpoint, she acknowledges her own potential for anger and destruction, alongside her capacity for love and connection, within her own psyche and that of others, and avoids projecting these aspects outward or oscillate between them.

We can then make a parallel with Goethe’s Faust in which Faust is pulled between two opposing forces innate in human nature. The souls longing for the spiritual, and the eternal and the soul that clings to connection and earthly desires. The serpents then represent a sort of Mephisto (Devil), an internal saboteur that prevents us from integrating, and keeps the two souls in antagonism rather than in dialogue.

It is the force that pushes to either extreme of those two drives, moral perfection or nihilistic hedonism. The cup then represents our capacity to hold those two opposing forces in tension for something new to arise. Love then is not something that is out there but something that is uncovered in the process of the relationship. Not through flaky compromise but through holding the tension of the opposites. The good and evil in ourselves and in the other.

The cup then represents our capacity to hold those two opposing forces in tension for something new to arise. In Oracle Body we call this teaching Containment. Love then is not something that is out there but something that is uncovered in the process of the relationship.

Not through flaky compromise but through holding the tension of the opposites.

The good and evil in ourselves and in the other.

You can Read Part 4 HERE