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"... during the known five thousand years of human civilization, it cannot be denied that there has been a notable development of consciousness and its functions. Above all, there has been a tremendous extension of consciousness in the form of knowledge. Not only have the individual functions become differentiated, but to a large extent they have been brought under the control of the ego - in other words, man's will has developed. ...The security of our ego has, in comparison with earlier times, greatly increased .." (CW16 p195, 393)

But "... man does not change so quickly; his psychology at bottom remains the same, and even if his culture varies much from one epoch to another, it does not change the functioning of his mind. The fundamental laws of the mind remain the same, at least during the short historical periods of which we have knowledge;" (Ferrero cited in CW5 p27, 35)

See also Hume in Kramnick, p359. "...there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same in its principles and operations. The same motives always produce the same actions." Re Puer, 5/259/393ff.

"The unconscious bases of dreams and fantasies are only apparently infantile reminiscences. In reality we are concerned with primitive or archaic thought-forms, based on instinct, which naturally emerge more clearly in childhood ... So also the myth, which is likewise based on unconscious fantasy-processes, is, in meaning, substance, and form, far from being infantile ... Just as the body has its evolutionary history, and shows clear traces of the various evolutionary stages, so too does the psyche."(CW5p29, 38 cf CW8p200, 398) cf 5/23/26#

"[Mythology] does not perpetuate accounts of ordinary every-day events in the past, but only those which express the universal and ever-renewed thoughts of mankind. Thus the lives and deeds of the culture-heroes ...are the purest con-densations of typical mythological motifs, behind which the individual figures entirely disappear."(CW5 p31, 42)

"Conscious fantasies therefore illustrate, through the use of mythological material, certain tendancies in the personality which are either not yet recognised or are recognised no longer. ...There must, then, be typical myths which serve to work out our racial and national complexes." (CW5 p32, 45)

The Epic of Gilgamesh seems to be an attempt to come to terms with a new relationship between people and their gods, (i.e. ego and the archetypal images of the collective unconscious,) which was necessitated by the flood of new material into consciousness at the close of the fourth millenium BCE. (Nathan's Flood.) Perhaps one might subtitle it "Not-so-very Modern Man in Search of a Soul." "Conscious mind sees itself isolated in a world of psychic factors ... religious figures show a marked tendancy to appear in the most varied forms, etc" (CW5 p62, 95)

"Egocentricity is a necessary attribute of consciousness and is also its specific sin. But consciousness is confronted by the objective fact of the unconscious, often enough an avenging deluge. Water in all its forms ...is one of the commonest typifications of the unconscious." (CW16 p272, 364)

Jung insists on the psychological accuracy of including the notion of divinity in dealing with the workings of the unconscious contents, thus "... admitting their relatively superior force ...which has at all times constrained men to ponder the inconceivable, and even to impose the greatest sufferings upon themselves in order to give these workings their due. It is a force as real as hunger and the fear of death." (CW7 p239, 403.) Gilgamesh certainly discovered that! In terms of Campbell's hero cycle, it is Enkidu, not Gilgamesh who is the actual hero; but Enkidu can be seen as Spirit Mercurius, and/or, it will be shown, Gilgamesh's eros, whose almost ritualistic death over a period of twelve days seems more an introjection of his qualities into Gilgamesh himself. Prior to that point, he and Gilgamesh were contending opposites: afterwards, Gilgamesh speaks and acts as if Enkidu and he have become one composite person. This is perfectly in accord with the general rule that "Constellated (activated) unconscious contents are always projected; discovered in external objects or said to exist outside one's own psyche." (CW5 p59, 92) It even accords with the duplex nature of the Spirit Mercurius, encompassing all opposites; in which case he would delight in being inside and outside contemporaneously, although the matter is finally reconciled."The self could be characterised as a kind of compensation of the conflict between inside and outside." (CW7 p239, 404)

"The hero symbolises a man's unconscious self, and this manifests itself empirically as the sum total of all archetypes ..." (CW5 p333, 516) [Heroes] are... personifications of the libido ... archetypal figures manifesting themselves as ëà æo îå, as personal agencies.(CW5 p255, 388) cf p137, 197

But "... anima personifies the total unconscious so long as she is not differentiated as a figure from the other archetypes. With further differentiations the figure of the (wise) old man becomes detached from the anima and appears as an archetype of the "spirit."" (CW5 p437, 678)

The conventional view of Gilgamesh as an "an arrogant selfish King" who at death "feels his life has been a failure even though he has started to become an emotionally sound and compassionate human being," is neatly summarised by Tom Absher, Men and the Goddess, (Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 1990) p9. But I disagree with Absher's interpretation almost entirely, for reasons which follow. The text he follows is the "collation" by Sandars,N.K., The Epic of Gilgamesh, (New York: Penguin, 1981) and this writer will follow his convention of giving bracketed page references to that text, except the version now used is her 1972 version, with other versions included when these elucidate specific events.

While the Epic still reflects the dilemma of late twentieth century people, some points about its historical context need noting so that Gilgamesh can be made more relevent to our times without being judged by our political correctness. The major psychological force evolving at this time was the recognition of anima as a power supervening over the previous hegenomy of purely maternal goddesses. In terms of relations between ego and collective unconscious, humanity was entering adolescence after a childhood which reached back to the palaeolithic. The symbol of this new primal power was, and still is Ishtar, who has appeared at all times and in all places ever since, under a myriad names, but always denoting wisdom.

"Alone I compassed the circuit of heaven, and walked in the depth of the abyss. In the waves of the sea, and in all the earth, and in every people and nation, I got a posession." (From Ecclesiasticus in The Apocrypha in the Revised Version. (London: Oxford University Press,1957.) p236.

This differentiation was reflected in Sumer by Ninhursag and Ishtar/Inanna. "...the Goddess of Many Names ... was revered universally as the source of being, not only of all temporal life, but also of life eternal. In Sumer, as Ninhursag, we see her in her first role and, as Inanna, in the second, while in daily life she was to be perceived in every woman." (Campbell, J and MusŠs,C.: In All Her Names. New York. Harper Collins 1991 p66)

Phases of the Epic:-

1. Hard-working ego becomes too one-sided.

2. Unconscious constellates a counter-balance.

3. Blocked libido is set free, and the hero emerges.

4. The hegenomy of father over the unconscious is broken.

5. Relationship with anima is established.

6. Further integration of 'other.'

7. Underground journey by night.

8. Anima differentiated to produce 'spirit' and 'wisdom.'

9. Contact with symbol of 'Self.'

10. Return of enlightened hero.

1. Hard-working ego becomes too one-sided.

Viewed figuratively, the text describes quite vividly the individuation process, provided some points are given their due: in particular, whatever Gilgamesh's heritage might be, he is the king, specifically the shepherd king of Uruk and his fate is that of the people. As late as Shakespeare's time, a monarch was addressed as if he were the personification of his domain. e.g. Henry , Act 5 Scene 2, King Harry says,

and Charles' reply,

"...the reality, the true being, of the king - as of any in-dividual - is not in his character as individual but as archetype. He is the good shepherd, the protector of cows; and the people are his flock, his herd. ...builder of the city, the culture-bringer, the teacher of the arts. And he is the lord of the celestial pastures, the moon, the sun." (Campbell,J.: Primitive Mythology. New York, Penguin Arkana. 1991. p412.)

Moreover, Gilgamesh had obviously taken his job very seriously indeed as the Prologue (usually ignored by his detractors) indicates. He was praised for his wisdom, physical strength and beauty, his building of the walls of Uruk, and particularly the copper-clad (sic) temple of Eanna "the dwelling of Ishtar, our lady of love and war, the like of which no latter-day king, no man alive can equal." (61) So he strengthened the city's security against enemies, and was sufficiently pious (or smart) also to strengthen Uruk's bond with its patron Goddess, who needed to be kept on side for crop fertility and strategic success.

This is not just some useless tyrant. Even in their laments for Gilgamesh's randy bisexual puerile behaviour, the Uruk people seem more perplexed than regicidal. It is as if his behaviour is out of context: "His lust leaves no virgin to her lover ...yet this is the shepherd of the city, wise, comely, and resolute."(62) Did anyone speak as respectfully of Edward when his underlings devastated Scotland and practised droit de seigneur?

The king, the conscientious ego, works and builds until it becomes too one-sided; in Gilgamesh's case, one-sidedness in distorted perception of Ishtar, "Our lady of love and war." He was a successful military commander, but his problems lay in the feeling function; his ability to love was primitive, compulsive and undifferentiated. His abilities in the extraverted world were exemplary, but "There is a psychic reality which is just as pitiless and just as inexorable as the outer world, and just as useful and helpful, provided one knows how to circumvent its dangers and discover its hidden treasures." (CW5 p156, 221) and (CW7 p194, 310) Anima as Ishtar taught him just that.

"The blocking of libido leads to an accumulation of instinctuality and, in consequence, to excesses and aberrations of all kinds. Among them, sexual disturbances are fairly frequent,"(CW5 p169, 249)

Gilgamesh lived about 2,700-2,600 BCE, over four and a half millenia ago. A 'mere' four centuries ago, a story called the Allegoria Merlini was published in Artis auriferae quam chemiam vocant. A king, about to set out on a military attack, ordered water, but when he drank it, he became dropsical, and was treated by two groups of physicians. He was submitted to a number of processes whereby he was dismembered, pulverised, treated and dried. Eventually a rejuvenated king was revived. Jung abstracted several points from this story, and many of them fit Gilgamesh's fate.

"the king personifies a hypertrophy of the ego which calls for compensation. He is about to commit an act of violence - a sure sign of his defective state. His thirst is due to his boundless concupiscience and egotism. But when he drinks he is overwhelmed by the water, i.e., by the unconscious." (CW14 p272, 365)

"Whenever a more recent system suffers deterioration it is likely to be replaced by a more primitive and therefore obsolete one." CW5 p139, 200 "Regressive reactivation of parental imagos. Also 5/159/226 regression to Mother Earth etc.

"Resistance to loving produces the inability to love, or else that inability acts as a resistance." 5/173/253

One-sidedness and compensation:

"The stronger and more independent our consciousness becomes, and with it the conscious will, the more the unconscious is thrust into the background, and the easier it is for the evolving consciousness to emancipate itself from the un-conscious archetypal pattern ...and finally reaches a condition of instinctual atrophy. [It] can no longer appeal to the authority of the primordial images; it has Promethean freedom, but it also suffers from godless hybris. ...the danger of its sudden collapse is there..." (CW13 p12, 13)

Gilgamesh personified this situation exactly, and somehow a way of re-establishing that lost contact with the archetypal world had to be found. It was; in Enkidu.

2. Unconscious constellates a counter-balance.

"Whenever an instinctive force - i.e. a certain sum of psychic energy - is driven into the background through a one-sided attitude on the part of the conscious mind, it leads to a dissociation of personality. The conscious personality with its one-track tendancy comes up against an invisible opponent, and because this is unconscious it is felt to be a stranger and therefore manifests itself in projected form." (CW16 p229, 438) Similarly,

"Now when there is a marked change in the individual's state of consciousness, the unconscious contents which are thereby constellated will also change. And the further the conscious situation moves away from a certain point of equilibrium, the more forceful and accordingly the more dangerous become the unconscious contents that are struggling to restore the balance. This leads ultimately to a dissociation: on the one hand, ego-consciousness makes convulsive efforts to shake off an invisible opponent [unless projection supervenes] while on the other hand it increasingly falls victim to the tyrannical will of an internal ... subman and superman combined." (CW16 p195, 394) "For an equilibrium does in fact exist between the psychic ego and non-ego, and that equilibrium is a religio, a careful consideration of ever-present unconscious forces which we neglect at our peril." (CW16 p195, 395)

#and all of 8 which follows.

So what, or more specifically who is Enkidu?

He was clearly constellated as a result of Gilgamesh's one-sided thinking."...in split-off complexes there are completely unconscious fantasy-systems that have a marked tendancy to constitute themselves as separate personalities."(CW5 p29, 39)

Struggle,"as if it constellated in the unconscious a wonderful and mysterious image that has not yet forced its way into the light of the upper world. ...has something to do with creation, with the unending battle between affirmation and negation." (CW5 p48, 72)

Absher says "He is a male embodiment of certain parts of the feminine, the anima ..." (op cit p10) [who] "represents emotionality, feelings, companionship, and an awareness of otherness ..." and "the archetype of the Green Man." (op cit p11) who probably "was an alternate version of the tree-sacrificed saviour ..." (Walker p257) "The son of Venus "in his mother's lap" ..." (ibid p463) This becomes vitally important when we consider the exchange between Gilgamesh and Ishtar, for it is Enkidu, not the king who is sacrificed. Enkidu is also described in CW13 p320, 425 as Gilgamesh's shadow, and certainly the dynamics between the two characters reflect the process of recognition of, and incorporation of shadow in (CW16 p239, 452) "the shadow ...is now raised to consciousness and integrated with the ego, which means a move in the direction of wholeness." But the shadow brings "the whole world of the archetypes into direct contact with the conscious mind" and despite all the inherent dangers, ego and shadow are brought together in an "admittedly precarious unity" enhanced by the tendancy of the unconscious to increase the attraction between the parties.

Jung also sees Enkidu as "brilliantly" depicting the anthropoid psyche, which derives "from the sphere of instinct and which expresses itself as instinctuality," (CW5 p328, 505) but this aspect of psyche "resists cultural development to the utmost... striving back to the original state of un-consciousness...[but resulting] in the ever-stronger emergence of the inner, and hitherto hidden,"real" personality. (CW5 p329, 506) The gods did, after all beseech Aruru to create Gilgamesh's "equal; let it be as like him as his own reflection, his second self," (p62) Jung's own No.2 personality reflected the same idea,"...deep in the background, the feeling that something other than myself was involved ...as though a breath of the great world of stars and endless space had touched me ...the spirit of one who had long been dead and yet was perpetually present in timelessness."(#MDR p84)

This view of Enkidu is consistent with,

(a) The circumstances leading to his 'creation.

(b) The manner of his creation.

(c) His way of life before meeting the harlot.

(d) Ninsun's interpretation of Gilgamesh's dream of the meteor:

(a) The circumstances leading to his 'creation.

With apologies to Jung (CW13 p320, 425) Enkidu is not "created by the gods at the behest of the insulted Ishtar" but because of the lament of the people of Uruk (p62). But the cause of their lament is the behaviour of their king, who later shows Shamash the reason for his pathology. "Here in the city man dies oppressed at heart, man perishes with despair in his heart." (p72)"In the context of the myth and in our human dimension, the one who is sent to fight monsters is always a person who is already suffering, discontented, depressed: he is a person who draws no life from the air he breathes in his surroundings because he grasps, if only at the emotional level, all their contradictions." (Carotenuto,A. The Vertical Labyrinth. Shepley J. trans. Toronto Inner City Books, 1985.p73.) And as Enkidu remembers the harlot shortly before his death, he looks back longingly to his life in the country with his wife and seven (maybe planetary?) children. (p91)

(b) The manner of his creation.

The goddess Aruru "conceived an image in her mind, and it was of the stuff of Anu [god of the firmament], [she] pinched off clay, she let it fall in the wilderness, and noble Enkidu was created." (p62)

"divine thought alone is held capable of producing a new material reality" CW5 p46, 67; Jung discusses the unconscious as multiple consciousness, "...we would do well to think of ego-consciousness as being surrounded by a multitude of little luminosities [representing] the quasi-conscious state of unconscious contents, explained by Khunrath as "radii atque scintillae" of the world-soul. "One such spark is the human mind. The arcane substance - the watery earth or earthy water (limus: mud) of the World Essence - is "universally animated" by the "fiery spark of the soul of the world." [which] corresponds to the Platonic Ideas, from which one could equate the scintillae with the archetypes... [which] have about them a certain effulgence or quasi-consciousness, and that numinosity entails luminosity."(CW8 p190, 388) (In n59,p191, synonyms for this mud include Mercurius.)

(c) His way of life before meeting the harlot.

He lived with the wild beasts, was strong and rough, with long matted hair. She instructed him in the ways of civilisation. But psychologically, she constellated him as an integrated personality. "... when the various components separated out from the chaos of the massa confusa were brought back to unity in the albedo and "all become one." Morally this means that the original state of psychic disunity, the inner chaos of conflicting part-souls which Origen likens to herds of animals, becomes the "vir unus," the unified man. (CW14 p286, 388) and "I am thou, and thou art I, and wherever thou art, there I am, and I am scattered in all things, and from wherever thou wilt thou canst gather me, but in gathering me thou gatherest together thyself," and "thou hast within thyself herds of cattle ...flocks of sheep and flocks of goats ...thou thyself art another world in little, and hast within thee the sun and the moon, and also the stars."

(CW14 p8, 6) (Last part of quote is also at CW16 p197, 397)

(d) Ninsun's interpretation of Gilgamesh's dream of the meteor: "I made it for you, a goad and spur," and of the axe:

"... that is the comrade whom I (sic) give you, and he will come in his strength like one of the host of heaven." (p67)

In CW5 p50, 78 and n18, Jung considers the extent and limitations of precognitive dreams. A major limit is our poor ability to "follow the natural currents of the libido;" we can't do it but the unconscious can. So although an occasional dream may appear which "anticipates the subsequent events of [a patient's] life," dreams are more "often anticipations of future alterations of consciousness." (See CW8 p255, 492ff)

Dreams as compensation: 8/253/488

prospective: 8/255/492

reductive: 8/257/496

But Enkidu is more than this.

"something alive, a paradoxical Mercurius ...And he is that on whom nature hath worked but a little, and whom she hath wrought into metallic form [human] yet left unfinished - a natural being, therefore, that longs for integration within the wholeness of a man ...a fragment of primeval psyche into which no consciousness has as yet penetrated to create division and order ...an abyss of ambiguities." (CW16 p191, 386)

"The Mercurius who personifies the unconscious is essentially "duplex," paradoxically dualistic by nature, fiend, monster, beast, and at the same time panacea, "the philosophers' son," sapientia Dei, and donum Spiritus Sancti."(CW16 p192, 389)

also likened by the alchemists to Lucifer ("bringer of light"), God's fallen and most beautiful angel. (same page n47)

Furthermore, there is repeated accentuation of the nature of Gilgamesh's feeling for Enkidu: both the dream, and Ninsun's interpretation accentuate that Gilgamesh would "Love him like a woman."

Referring to "The painful conflict that begins with the nigredo or tenebrositas," Jung says,"While this extreme form of disiunctio is going on, there is a transformation of that arcanum ...which invariably turns out to be the mysterious Mercurius. In other words, out of the monstrous animal forms there gradually emerges a res simplex, whose nature is one and the same and yet consists of a duality. ... Seldom do we find symbols of the goal whose dual nature is not immediately apparent.[They] are all hermaphroditic. ... The royal marriage ...in alchemy as a symbol of the supreme and ultimate union ... represents the magic-by-analogy which is supposed to bring the work to its final consummation and bind the opposites by love, for "love is stronger than death."" (CW16 p198, 398)

The trapper complains to his father that "He fills in the pits which I dig and tears up my traps set for the game; he helps the beasts to escape and now they slip through my fingers." (p63) But who is the escape expert? (Phanes, The Shining One, the First-Created, the Father of Eros... he has the significance of Priapus; he is bisexual and equated with the Theban Dionysus Lysius." [the loosener.] ( CW5 p137, 198)

Priapus was a Phrygian fertility god, the son of Aphrodite by Dionysos or Hermes. (Tripp,E.: Collins Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Collins. London.1988. p497)

What wild man could learn civilised language so fast as to produce perhaps the most beautiful exhortation to emerging ego consciousness ever written?

"The father of the gods has given you kingship, such is your destiny, everlasting life is not your destiny. Because of this, do not be sad at heart, do not be grieved or oppressed. He has given you power to bind and to loose, to be the darkness and the light of mankind. He has given you unexampled supremacy over the people, victory in battle from which no fugitive returns, in forays and assaults from which there is no going back. But do not abuse this power, deal justly with your servants in the palace, deal justly before Shamash." (p70)

And then there is his name. Is it coincidence that the trickster god is called Enki or Ea? (Enkidu's alternate name in Semitic is Eabani, so the connection seems intentional.) Mercatante gives the meaning of Dumuzi as "true son" so the suffix 'du' must relate the name to the god.

At the end of the story of the forest journey the text says "O Gilgamesh,... glory to him, and from the brave the greater glory is Enki's!" (p84)

The Coming of Enkidu:

Strong as a star from heaven he may have been, but Enkidu, the trapper's bête noir was himself trapped. It's all in the choice of bait, in this case a harlot, probably a qadishtu, a Priestess of Ishtar. Four times it is stated that after he lay with her, the wild beasts would reject him, which they did. In fact, after he had lain with her for six days and seven nights, two things happened;

1. "...when the wild creatures saw him they fled."

2. "...his swiftness was gone...Enkidu was grown weak, for wisdom was in him, and the thoughts of a man were in his heart."

Mrs Patrick Campbell's famous dictum may be relevent here:

"I don't mind where people make love, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses."

Leave aside for a moment the alarming spectacle he must have presented, and the hardly surprising fact that "...his knees gave way when he started to run..." Really, after an orgy that went on for a week, wouldn't that apply to anybody?

Convention is "He gained wisdom at the expense of instinct. (Matthews,C.: Sophia Goddess of Wisdom.Thorsons.London 1992 p36) Her contention that sexual and sacred knowledge had become separated by this time is only partly true, and only a partial explanation. The text says (p91) that Enkidu had a wife and seven children. Now, unless the Sumerians had perfected IVF, Enkidu was hardly a virgin. So how come intercourse with his wife didn't scare the animals, yet with the harlot, it did?

Husain provides the most likely explanation, in that sexuality was one of the me (attributes of civilization) granted to Inanna-Ishtar by Enki who "put it on a par with truth, death and rebirth, in the formula:"To my daughter Inanna I shall give the truth! Descent into the underworld, Ascent from the underworld! The art of lovemaking! The kissing of the phallus!" ...sex was not restricted to procreation, and the verses' mention of the sweet taste of the vulva, and of Dumuzi's face between Inanna's thighs and on her lap, clearly allude to cunnilingus." (Husain op cit p77.)

Let us further note that Enkidu is not true instinctive man. He does not hunt; he plays with the animals. That is great fun, but it isn't instinctual. He eats grass, which may help avoid irritable colon syndrome; but it isn't instinctual. He drinks milk from animals - fine; so did Romulus and Remus: but that again is not instinct. He really isn't primitive: even the harlot tells him he's wise, and his language was never a problem, as shown his mortality speech to Gilgamesh.

He seems to be some Sumerian "noble savage."(p31)

Or Hare: "...he is becoming a socialised being, correcting the instinctual and infantile urges found in the Trickster cycle." (Henderson op cit p105) Not yet a mature human, but founder of human culture - a transformer. (ibid p104) If, as his name suggests, Enkidu is a conscious manifestation of the archetypal Enki, the Hare symbol fits "as representing transformed instinct or spiritual power." (Layard,J.: The Lady of the Hare. Shambhala. Boston & Shaftesbury.1988 p165)

Humankind is prone to kill its instinctive life, "...instinct must not be destroyed but must on the contrary be transformed." (ibid p162) Phallic emblem is a symbol of transformation of sex into spiritual power. 245 Spirit is transformed sex 247

Instinct wants to transform itself to spirit, and will do so if not hampered by false ideology 112 "...the basic truth enshrined in all 'willing sacrifice' that instinct wants to be transformed into spirit."185

But ironically, "Except when motivated by external necessity, the will to suppress or repress the natural instincts, or rather to overcome their predominance (superbia) and lack of co-ordination (concupiscentia), derives from a spiritual source; in other words, the determining factor is the numinous primordial images." (CW5 p157, 223)# Develope this argument.

"...the subject is gripped by [the numinous effect of an archetype] as though by an instinct. What is more, instinct itself can be restrained and even overcome by this power..."(ibid 225)

Turns on its back, symbolising transformation of sex or extraverted intuition into spirit, introverted intuition.247 Drawing on the mythological associations between the hare and the Buddha, he says that "...the hare still has to return to earth...to bring the dreamer to earth to attend to his still unsolved problems." 248 The agency by which such transformed instinct is brought to consciousness is Anima: ""energy of the heavy and the turbid;" ...Its effects are "sensuous desires and impulses to anger."" (CW13 p39, 57)

Gilgamesh's intuition was negatively extraverted. Enkidu reversed this, causing Gilgamesh to develope introverted intuition, which apprehends the archetypes, "the a priori inherited foundations of the unconscious" corresponding to Kant's noumenon, and "which represent the laws governing the course of all experiencable things." (CW6 p400-1, 659-60)

(?of the moral type see p 402)

But to do this to Gilgamesh, Enkidu had to give up his Dionysian world wherein "Liberally the earth proffers her gifts, and the wild beasts from rock and desert draw near peacefully." (CW6 p507, 877) and inspire Gilgamesh to withdraw into the introverted Apollinian world, "...trusting to the principium individuationis, ...in this principle, and the calm security of those whom it has inspired, have found in Apollo their most sublime expression, and one might describe Apollo himself as the glorious divine image of the principle of individuation." (ibid 876) For Apollo, read Shamash.

"The sun,...is the only truly "rational" image of God... from whom all things draw life; he is the fructifier and creator, the source of energy for our world. ...is perfectly suited to represent the visible God of this world, i.e., the creative power of our own soul, which we call libido, and whose nature it is to bring forth the useful and the harmful, the good and the bad." (CW5 p121, 176)

Light in darkness of John was the moon, & Thoth.(Layard 158)

"You are wise Enkidu,and now you have become like a god."

Harlot's work and Eros cf Diotima's description has him as an intermediary between mortals and immortals.(CW5 p166, 242)

Re human and divine love CW5 p66, 101.

Meanwhile back at the ranch (shepherd's tents) Enkidu is being introduced to civilised food, and gets pissed (Quote on p67) CW5 p138, 198 for "What lies enclosed in the intellect comes to birth in the world-soul as Logos, fills it with meaning and makes it drunken. Soul fructified by intellect. Aphrodite and her dove.He became man; hunted lions, caught wolves etc.

Then to Uruk to stop droit du seigneur. "I have come to challenge the old order." But Enkidu is defeated (although in some versions there was a draw.) Whatever the outcome. they then become close friends.

The two bulls motif.

3. Blocked libido is set free, and the hero emerges.

Joseph Henderson, quoting Paul Radin's 1948 study of the 'Hero Cycles of the Winnebago' identified four phases of de-velopment of the hero archetype: Trickster, Hare, Red Horn and Twin cycles.

. Trickster:-

"a figure whose physical appetites dominate his behaviour; he has the mentality of an infant. Lacking any purpose beyond the gratification of his primary needs, he is cruel, cynical, and unfeeling."

. Hare:-

Still theriomorphic at first, but a Transformer, a founder of culture, "...he is becoming a socialised being, correcting the instinctual and infantile urges " of the Trickster, thus becoming a saviour for the people.

. Red Horn:-

Represents an archaic but now human world, in which the "aid of superhuman powers or tutelary gods is needed to ensure man's victory over the evil forces which beset him." Then the hero-god departs, leaving the hero to recognise the true source of dangers - oneself.

. The Twins:-

"said to be the sons of the Sun, they are essentially human and together constitute a single person. Originally united in the mother's womb, they were forced apart at birth. Yet they belong together, and it is necessary - although exceedingly difficult - to reunite them."

They may even represent the introverted reflective, and the extrovert active aspects of the hero. Together they vanquish all, but "How long can human beings be successful without falling victims to their own pride or, in mythological terms, to the jealousy of the gods?"

The only cure for this hybris is death of the hero, although a propitiatory sacrifice might forestall this.

(Henderson,J.L.: Ancient Myths and Modern Man in Man and his Symbols, Jung,C.G.ed: Aldus Books, Picador. London,1964) pp103-7. If phases and are reversed (or mixed together!) this pattern is reflected almost exactly in the relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Gilgamesh's initial behaviour creates havoc like the Trickster, resulting in the saviour-Hare-Enkidu being produced. The two act like twins until Gilgamesh learns how to treat the gods-archetypes after Enkidu's death. Gilgamesh has many qualities of "...the figure of the trickster. He is a forerunner of the saviour, and, like him, God, man, and animal at once. He is both subhuman and super-human, a bestial and divine being, whose chief and most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness." (CW9i p263, 472.)

"What we seek in visible human form is not man, but the superman, the hero or god, that quasi-human being who symbolises the ideas, forms, and forces which grip and mould the soul... the archetypal contents of the (collective) unconscious..." (CW5 p178, 259)

In The Lady of the Hare, John Layard describes the sacrifice of the hare as a reflection symbolic of the fact "that instinct wants to be transformed into spirit." (p185) and canvasses evidence for a link between the hare and introverted intuition (ibid p111).

4. The hegenomy of father over the unconscious is broken.

Activation of the hero archetype.

Father represents spirit, whose archetypal role and function is to oppose pure instinctuality, no matter what sort of man he is, even one who causes his son neurotic fears. "Accordingly, the monster to be overcome by the son frequently appears as a giant who guards the treasure. An excellent example of this is the giant Humbaba in the Gilgamesh Epic, who guards the garden of Ishtar. Gilgamesh conquers the giant and wins Ishtar,..." (CW5 p261, 396)

The nature of the call to individuation is illustrated by Gilgamesh's speech to Shamash. "Here in the city, man dies oppressed at heart... tallest among men cannot reach heavens, and the greatest cannot encompass the earth... If this enterprise is not to be accomplished, why did you move me, Shamash, with the restless desire to perform it?"(72) "Spiritual vocation thrust upon him by the unconscious, and pneumatic God-image" (CW5 p65, 99) Shamash appointed the winds in caves to help. "The meaning of the "ministering wind" is probably the same as the procreative pneuma, which streams from the sun-god into the soul and fructifies it." (CW 9(i) p 52 Para 107)

"The power of fate makes itself felt unpleasantly only when everything goes against our will, that is to say, when we are no longer in harmony with ourselves. The ancients, accordingly, brought î æà æî into relation with the "primal light" or "primal fire" ...the ultimate cause, or all-pervading warmth which produced everything and is therefore fate. ...this warmth ...is a libido image. ...Another conception of Ananke (Necessity) ...is air, which in the form of wind is again connected with the fertilizing agent." (CW5 p67n51)

Why is it desirable to individuate? Jung feels it is more than this: it is absolutely necessary. Undifferentiated unconscious contents produce compulsions to act contrary to our true nature. That neurotic disharmony is the state from which we strive to rise, to "... distinguish ourselves from the unconscious contents ...[which] are the cause of blinding illusions which falsify ourselves and our relations to our fellow men, making both unreal." CW7 p225, 373. He evn sees individuation as "an ineluctable psychological necessity," CW7 p279, 462 and further sees that "...it is imperative to make a clear distinction between the personal unconscious and the contents of the collective psyche..." from which it arose, and which overshadows it. (ibid)

Approach to the collective unconscious.

Humbaba has curious relationships with two 'people': Enlil and Enkidu. Enlil was at the time an equivalent to Yahweh or Allah later in human history - certainly he has much in common with Zeus as storm-god and Saturn/Kronos as a forbidding, form-giving god (with Anu as the equivalent of Ouranos.) He broods over the whole segment while Shamash actively involves himself with the heroes' fate (resulting later in a dispute between the two deities when Enkidu's death is being discussed.) Enkidu's insistence that Humbaba be killed when Gilgamesh is considering mercy, his previous history and his knowledge of Humbaba raise the question of just whose father complex (or father) is being depotentiated. Moreover, it is Enkidu, not Gilgamesh who expresses fear and weakness, until just before the final con-frontation, when Gilgamesh goes to sleep.

The vulnerable child aspect of the personality often fears "disowned instinctual energies that have become demonic" because "it either fears abandonment or envisions some cata-strophic retaliation." A woman patient "disowned her anger so totally that when she was deeply irritated ... she experienced not anger but overwhelming desire to go to sleep." (Stone,H. & Winkelman,S.:Dialogue with the Demonic Self in Meeting the Shadow, Zweig,C. and Abrams,J. eds., New York. Putnam's Sons, 1991. p285-6) This phase of the epic describes not only overcoming the father imago, but how to do it. Even in Gilgamesh's time, the need to differentiate the imago from the biological father was apparently understood, (even though passing respect was accorded to Freud's phallic preoccupations by the description of Humbaba as "the battering-ram.") Concordant with the advice offered him by the counsellors of Uruk, Gilgamesh invoked the name of his own father, and even had dreams of him as aids to success against Humbaba. Enkidu is, like Humbaba, a lord of the animals (instincts), so the text seems to suggest that the emerging ego must tread a fine line between incorporating the power of the instincts (Enkidu) without being overwhelmed by them (Humbaba). This is further illustrated by Sandars' assertion that the 'Evil' Humbaba is an old North-Syrian, Anatolian or Elamite god (32) and Campbell (Occ.#Myth) identifies Enkidu as an old moon-god predating Sin. Enkidu's insistence on Humbaba's death may even reflect an earlier inter-god rivalry.

But in essence, the true guardian resisting the hero's entry to the unconscious is fear. Once its paralysing and weakening effect is overcome, the products of the unconscious (in this specific example cedar trees,) are available for the hero's use.

"The spirit of evil is fear, negation, the adversary who opposes life in its struggle for eternal duration and thwarts every great deed, who infuses into the body the poison of weakness and age through the treacherous bite of the serpent; he is the spirit of regression, who threatens us with bondage to the mother and with dissolution and extinction in the unconscious. For the hero, fear is a challenge and a task, because only boldness can deliver from fear. And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is somehow violated, and the whole future is condemned to hopeless staleness, to a drab grey lit only by will-o'-the-wisps." (CW5 p354, 551)

Humbaba and the Cedars

Enlil; said by Shamash to have instigated this episode, is finally critical and angry at Humbaba's death.

"There is no doubt that the above description refers to the realm of the Terrible Mother, represented in this case by the magician, a negative father-figure, or by a masculine principle in the mother herself ... the animus of the Terrible Mother"

(CW5 p351, 543)

"... the magician is the personification of the water of death, which in its turn stands for the devouring mother. This great deed ..., when he conquers the Terrible Mother and death-bringing daemon in the guise of the negative father, is followed by his marriage ... He can only turn to his human side after he has fulfilled his heroic destiny: firstly the transformation of the daemon from an uncontrolled force of nature into a power that is his to command; secondly the final deliverance of ego-consciousness from the deadly threat of the unconscious in the form of the negative parents. The first task signifies the creation of will-power, the second, the free use of it." (CW5 p353, 548)

Also re hero and Mother:

Paras 551 & 553.

Ishtar & Gilg: Death of Enkidu

5. Relationship with anima is established.

(CW5 pp429-30, 669-70 re Sacrifice and a/ts)

"Love for ... Sophia ... is in fact that "other," equally natural instinct to cleave to the realities of the soul. ... These are facts and figures which can fill a man with passion and enchantment, and turn his head as easily as the creatures of this world." (CW5 p396, 615)

"An invasion from the unconscious is very dangerous for the conscious mind when the latter is not in a position to understand and integrate the contents that have irrupted into it." (CW5 p 397, 616)

There is a political and religious aspect to Ishtar's offer to Gilgamesh. ""As queen of the land and its fertility, she bestows kingship on the mortal chosen to be shepherd of the people, and welcomes him to her bed and throne (made of a world tree which Gilgamesh cut down from her garden). To her consort she gives throne, scepter, staff, crook, and crown, as well as the promise of good harvest and the joys of her bed." (Brinton Perera,S.:Descent to the Goddess. Toronto. Inner City Books.1981. p17)

In this context, there are two important points:

(a) Gilgamesh is descended from Dumuzi (Tammuz), the dying, born-again shepherd god and consort of Ishtar.

(b) Gilgamesh's father was Lugulbanda, from whom he inherited mortality.(21) He is described as 'lill–', which may mean a 'fool' or a demon of the vampire kind [and] high-priest." and one even more important point - Gilgamesh knew his heritage. Campbell showed in lucid detail the fate of sixteen royal courts, from 2,500-2,350 B.C. all completely exterminated at 8-year intervals, apparently because of observations of the cycles of the planet Venus. (Campbell, J.: Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Vol : The Way of the Seeded Earth. Part : The Sacrifice. New York. Harper & Row. 1988) p80. and his report from Leonard Woolley in Prim. Myth.#

However, he points out that "...the Goddess "who needs [human] blood to create anew" is a later and degerated form of the earliest religion in which life, not death, lay at the core of things. ...the cruel and ignorant cults of blood sacrifice - human or not - are always later degerations of an earlier and much higher doctrine." (Campbell,J. & MusŠs,C. eds.: In All Her Names: Explorations of the Feminine in Divinity Harper, San Francisco.1991.) p48

Gilgamesh could hardly know what was going to happen to royal courts several hundred years later, but his speech clearly indicates that marriage to Ishtar has a big down side. His own ancestor Tammuz/Dummuzi showed that.

"On the one hand, when we touch archetypal material directly, we are always in danger" Hanna, B.: Active Imag. p107. He is usually castigated for arrogance at this point, but in his response, "it is fear, O little hunter; it is fear." This man is not just meeting a pretty lady, and to suggest as much indicates a total misunderstanding of Ishtar. She is at least as powerful as Job's Yahweh three millenia later, and if Dione Fortune's translation of Elohim Shabaoth (God of Hosts) is correct, that is Ishtar. ("... according to Mathers, Elohim, that curious Divine Name which is a feminine noun with a masculine plural attached to it." Fortune, D.: The Mystical Qabalah Aquarian Press Welling-borough, Northants. 1987 p60) Her power was perceived by the Greeks as sufficiently immense to justify her 'division' into three goddesses, Hera, Athene and Aphrodite, each of whom was magnificent in her own right. This man is confronted with the power he met in the dream of the mountain crushing him; she moves mountains. This is the archetype of Self, just as much as Yaweh, Allah, or Zeus could ever be: this man is confronting the tremendum.

"But there is another side to her beauty which is a manifestation of her victorious energy, seen as Warrioress. ...the very illusions she has allowed to be created are routed and destroyed by her own viaticum, [lit. saving eucharistic grace and power] ... Earliest cult statues of Aphrodite show her armed and accompanied by a lion. ... Athena and Aphrodite were still closely related in Mycenaean times [and] were worshiped jointly. ...The most enduring form of both in synthesis is to be found in the Sumerian Dingir ("Deity," here "Goddess") Inanna, later addressed by the Babylonians as Ishtar. Presiding over the sacred marriage at the beginning of the New Year, she rode the Lioness of Time through the whole cycle of the year, finally regaining the next sacred marriage and resurrection of Tammuz. Inanna was worshiped from Anatolia to India from the fifth to the third millenium, with Mesopotamia providing the central temple nexus of her cult." (MusŠs in Campbell & MusŠs op cit p167)

So Gilgamesh must have known that the only salvator microcosmii in 2,800 BCE was Ishtar herself, by her descent to Ereshkigal, and her return.

He is up against the only Redeemer hitherto known. Fear, and an abysmally undifferentiated feeling function have got him in his vulnerable spot; and "... a central fear of the narcissistic character: that allowing the unconscious to react with conscious personality inevitably leads to death and nothing more." (Schwartz-Salant, N.: Narcissism and Character Transformation. Toronto. Inner City Books.1982.)p65.

"The belief is that entering the unconscious, losing one's usual structure and attitudes, leads to absolutely nothing; there is no regeneration, no rebirth, just death." (ibid) p66. At this stage of the Epic, that seems to be the limit of his understanding. His attitude to Ishtar as an anima image is quite appropriate, however. She is welcome to anything he can give her, but not to marriage. There is some irony in the fact that he knew better than to become enthralled by "La Belle Dame sans Mer‡i" but after Enkidu's death became just like Keats' "Knight at arms, alone and palely loitering."

He will wine her and dine her to her heart's content, but while his state of psychological development is not yet brilliant, he has learned something, he has started to differentiate, and he does know the fate of his ancestors.

"Marriage with the anima is the psychological equivalent of absolute identity between conscious and unconscious. But since such a condition is possible only in the complete absence of psychological self-knowledge, it must be more or less primitive..." (CW16 p225, 433)

Understandably, he is wary of Ishtar's treatment of her former lovers. To enumerate:

Tammuz: His reaction to Ishtar on her return from the under-world was that of an equal, due to his status as her consort, by which he embodied a transpersonal force to match her own, thus ending the demonic force of her return. "His capacity to confront [Ishtar's demons] relieves the people of the land, for he stands as their champion and king, himself receiving the brunt of the fury, himself their scapegoat, their peace offering." (Brinton Perera op cit p83)

"He is strong enough - or sufficiently unconscious of his human frailty to stand as favoured consort and king, to stand as a god-man, not as a child begging for pity from the mother... He faces her down as an equal, does not placate. So she does not have to care. She can cut through the unequal goddess-mortal, queen-servant, parent-child bondings; she can find the space in which to test him and to embody more of herself in the conscious world. From him she gains the profound respect of confrontation." (ibid p82)

The Roller. Gilgamesh accused Ishtar of breaking this bird's wing, as a result of which it moved around awkwardly, plaintively calling "kapi-kapi, my wing, my wing."

This beautiful insectivorous bird is also called the Shepherd bird, but whether that is because of some link with Dumuzi/Tammuz (Ishtar's shepherd consort) or whether its name derives from its habit of staying near herds of animals to eat insects nearby, is not yet clear.

It does have a surprisingly croaky call, which does sound like kapi-kapi, which may lead to some clarification of Gilgamesh's story. Whatever the story, the bird's colours certainly earn it an association with a rainbow Goddess with a taste for lapis lazuli.

The Lion. "Her companion animal is the lion, and seven of them pull her chariot." (Brinton Perera op cit p17) "Originally the seven stars were the seven great Babylonian gods," (CW12 p197, 298) As a war-goddess, Ishtar was called Labbatu (lioness) and a Sumerian poem addresses her with the words,"Like an awesome lion you annihalated with your venom the hostile and disobedient." (Husain op cit p114) "Because Ishtar was the queen of heaven, she ruled the stars and planets that, in turn, governed human behaviour. As a result, Ishtar was also giver of the law, which in ancient times was closely associated with magic." [Then as now!](ibid p115)

"The old world-picture, with the earth as the centre of the universe, consisted of various "heavens" - spherical layers or spheres - arranged concentrically ...and named after the planets. The outermost planetary sphere or archon was Saturn. Outside this would be the sphere of fixed stars ...the eighth sphere was called Achamoth (Sophia, Sapientia) and was of feminine nature." "Ialdabaoth ... supreme archon, the first and seventh ...is lion-headed or lion-like... Ialdabaoth means "child of chaos"; thus he is the first-born of a new order that supersedes the original state of chaos." "...and they say that the star Saturn is in sympathy with the lion-like archon." (CW14 pp402-3, 576 and n124)

"...the 'Hermaphrodite of nature,' the Philosophic Man, and to Saturn, the tempter and oppressor, who, as Ialdabaoth and the highest archon, is correlated with the lion. All these figures are synonyms for Mercurius." and "the demiurge and king of all things who was created by Achamoth was called the "Father-Mother" - an hermaphrodite." (CW14 p338, 476 &n)

The individuation process was seen by the alchemists as "... ascent through the seven planetary spheres, where the soul blots out the imprints formerly received at the hands of the seven planetary gods, ...[then] the reborn and sublimated soul is exalted to the heavenly sphere and embedded in the 'starry sky' (Caelum Stellatum) (Fabricius,J.: Alchemy. Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, Northants. 1989 p15)

The 'seven pits you dug for him, and seven' thus seem to re-present the seven stages of ascent and descent from heaven, the unconscious, to earth, consciousness; just as Ishtar herself went through seven doors on her way from the great above to the great below. i.e. Anima rules access between these parts of our minds whereby unconscious material is given form.

Illustrates this very process in the role of anima forcing a son to separate from his mother; again seven (leagues) and the water he drinks is muddied, by "...the moral disruption of every life adventure." (CW9ii p12, 22) Anima insists on this growth with unrelenting force. In another version,"Ishtar "chastised the horse with goad and whip and tortured him to death."" Jensen, Gilgamesh-Epos p 18. Cited in CW5 p369n

"... libido directed towards the mother actually symbolises her as a horse." (CW5 p275, 421)

After all what does a healthy anima do to the immature man's mother complex other than torture it to death?

See also 658 linking horse with libido directed towards mother. On p249, 370 the etymology of horse is discussed in the context of nightmares and lamias. Husain's "The Goddess" at p78 shows Ereshkigal standing on a 'couchant' horse.

"The separation of the son from the mother signifies man's leave-taking from animal unconsciousness. It was only the power of the "incest prohibition" that created the self-conscious individual, ...and it was only then that the idea of the final death of the individual became possible. ... Certainly the struggle for expression ...through the centuries cannot be motivated by... "incest." We ought rather to conceive the law that expresses itself first and last in the "incest prohibition" as the impulse to domestication, and regard the religious systems as institutions which take up the instinctual forces of man's animal nature, organise them, and gradually make them available for higher cultural purposes." (CW5 p271, 415) In this context, it is vital to realise that the worship of Ishtar was, and still is, a religious system of the same degree, type and importance as Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism: perhaps even more important, in that it broke the power of the mother-lover fixation to a degree the other religions could not, and set humanity a new task; the same task as Ishtar set for Gilgamesh; true individuation.

The shepherd/wolf. Given Gilgamesh's behaviour prior to the arrival of Enkidu, this 'shepherd of the people' was hardly in a position to criticise Ishtar for turning a shepherd into a wolf. In fact, Gilgamesh's behaviour at the outset typifies that of a person with no understanding of, or relationship to the forces personified by Ishtar herself. Rape is about violence, not sexuality. If someone hits you over the head with a shovel, do we call that gardening?

Anima will not tolerate attachment to Mother, and this example illustrates the fact more explicitly perhaps than all the others. When Ishtar offered this gardener of her father's palm-grove something approximating to the 'geniality' proffered by Lady Chatterley to hers, all he could come up with was,"My mother has baked and I have eaten; why should I come to such as you for food that is tainted and rotten?" (p87) At least he was turned into a mole, which has front teeth. Any male so stupid as to treat a willing lady like that would probably, and deservedly, find his incisors in intimate contact with his tonsils!

Jung is rather a fence-sitter in CW7 p234, 392 about reactions of the unconscious to such effrontery. "... when I speak of "provoking" the unconscious I do not mean that it is offended and - like the gods of old - rises up to smite the offender in jealous anger or revenge." After making an awkward and (he admits, unpoetical) attempt at a gastric comparison, he finally reverts to the admission that "it would be more fitting to speak of the wrath of the offended gods."

Rudyard Kipling is more forthright.

"She is wedded to convictions - in default of grosser ties;

Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies

He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot wild,

Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

And Man knows it! Knows moreover that the Woman that God gave him

Must command but may not govern - shall enthrall but not enslave him.

And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,

That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the male."

She produces the Bull of Heaven: after a little gentle pursuasion on Grand-pa (Anu) - like threatening to smash open the doors to the underworld/unconscious to let anyone out who wants, (i.e. psychosis.)

The Bull, as Anu tells her, means seven years of drought; of wasteland. She knows - she won't let the people starve, but "Fill Gilgamesh with arrogance to his own destruction."

"There are psychic goals that lie beyond the conscious goals; in fact, they may even be inimical to them. But we find that the unconscious has an inimical or ruthless bearing towards the conscious only when the latter adopts a false or pretentious attitude." (CW7 p215, 346)

If Ishtar still held the power to open the unconscious and let all that material out, but chose instead to petition for use of the Bull of Heaven, one must ask why she made such a choice. For all else we might say about her, stupid she is not; in fact she is the quintessence of Wisdom, and strategy. She knows Gilgamesh well enough to realise that he and Enkidu are hardly going to sit back while their city is devastated by several tons of raging pot-roast.

She leads the bull by halter down to Uruk; reminiscent of a priestess taking an animal to sacrifice; and in fact it is dispatched in the ritualistic manner of later Cretan bull-jumping games, Gilgamesh even offering its heart to Shamash, and Ishtar's formal lamentation for the bull's death.

Bull sacrifice: "...the bull symbolises the living hero, whereas the snake symbolises the dead, buried, chthonic hero. ...killing of the bull is a sacrifice to the Terrible Mother, to the unconscious, which spontaneously attracts energy from the conscious mind because it has strayed too far from its roots, forgetting the power of the gods, without whom all life withers or ends catastrophically in a welter of perversity. In the act of sacrifice the consciousness gives up its power and posess-ions in the interests of the unconscious [making] possible a union of opposites resulting in a release of energy [i.e.] a fertilisation of the mother [as] the hero regenerates himself by his self-sacrifice." (CW5 p431-2, 671.)

But this is no ordinary bull. Perera (op cit p51) states that when Inanna/Ishtar went to the underworld, it was to witness the funeral rites for Gugallanna, which means "great bull of heaven" and is "the repressed shadow of the sky god -... Enlil [who] was [a] rapist and banished to the underworld..." "... bull-sacrifice is a divine sacrifice. But the animal is, as it were, only a part of the hero; he sacrifices only his animal attribute, and thus symbolically gives up his instinctuality." CW5 p427, 665.

It can thus be contended that:

a. Ishtar's response to Gilgamesh's refusal was a fairly typical animus reaction; tears and threats.

b. Being a wise tactician, she chose an adversary which reflected an aspect of Gilgamesh himself.

c. She thus forced Gilgamesh to sacrifice something of himself in order to develop.

d. The sacrifice was two-fold, the first part symbolised by death of the bull, and the second by that of Enkidu. If the bull was an aspect of Enlil, one would reasonably expect to find some symbol of this in the underworld, and in fact of all the beings seen there by Enkidu, there is only one male deity; Samuqan, god of cattle.

"The offered beast is a captured quantum of divine power, which, through its sacrifice, is integrated with the giver [who] climbs, so to say, on the rungs of his sacrifice." (Prim Mythology p450)

In Anatolia and the Taurus mountains "the figure of the bull in association with the naked goddess first appears about 4,500 BC, on the painted pottery of the Halaf style; and then, with an even stronger stress on the values and anxieties of the male ego,....the wielders of the square-cut axe broke away in third millennium BC, to reshape the world." (Prim Myth 451)

Enkidu's blasphemy may express that ego fear. But his fatal contempt expresses a vulgar sexual attitude.

"Lash the entrails to your side." (Walker p281 - courage, balls, guts. Intestines, lit. testes within.)

"Saying goodbye to a neurotic attitude is a very sad business ...for unfortunately a neurosis is a lovable condition and one resents being separated from it. So when one reaches the final stage, where once and for all it is necessary to say goodbye to some kind of infantility or animus opinion or so on, there is always some kind of crisis ...it is a last outbreak of darkness against something already so powerful that though newly born it cannot be suppressed any more." (Franz, Marie-Louise von, Alchemy. Inner City Books. Toronto. 1980 p 227) "...due to the historical stratification of the unconscious, ... when an impression is denied conscious recognition it reverts to an earlier form of relationship."(CW5 p44, 62)

Or was it "The elusive deceptive contents that posesses the patient like a demon ... sometimes impish and teasing, sometimes really diabolical. Hermes. CW16 p188, 384.

Enkidu's blasphemy and his subsequent fate can also be seen as part of his rise and fall. "...every psychic development, whether individual or collective, posesses an optimum which, when exceeded, produces an enantiodromia, that is, turns into its opposite." (CW13 p245, 294.) Enkidu has almost completed his external civilising influence on Gilgamesh, but the Hare gives up its life to enable further spititual development.

The conscious part of Gilgamesh is content merely to treat the bull's death as pure sacrifice, but the Mercurial part (as Enkidu) has to make a vulgar sexual gesture, which portends a new dynamic equilibrium wherein ultimately there will be an heiros gamos between Mercurius and Ishtar, (later stated to be Aphrodite for political and survival reasons.)

"... Mercurius as the arcane substance had a more or less secret connection with the goddess of love. In the "Book of Krates" ... Aphrodite appears with a vessel from the mouth of which pours a ceaseless stream of quicksilver, and in the Chymical Wedding ...the central mystery is his visit to the secret chamber of the sleeping Venus." (CW13 p216, 265)

Campbell provides material which may explain why it was the bull's thigh which Enkidu threw. Zimbabwean kings were ritually strangled after four years, by their first wife, with cord from foot-sinew of a bull. ( Prim. Mythol. p420)

Ishtar ignored it, and went on with her ritualistic mourning. Gilgamesh and Enkidu went off to the adulation of the crowd.

6. Further integration of 'other.'

"If only the fascinating Chiwantopel could be got out of the way, then there would at least be some hope of her interest turning again to the earth and its greenness, the other way being barred by the death of her lover." (CW5 p 397, 616)

"...not only Mercurius but also what happens to him is a projection of the collective unconscious. This ...is the pro-jection of the individuation process, which, being a natural psychic occurence, goes on even without the participation of consciousness. But if consciousness participates with some measure of understanding, then the process is accompanied by all the emotions of a religious experience or revelation. As a result of this, Mercurius was identified with Sapientia ..." (CW13 p229, 277)

Enkidu dreams of his death being discussed among the gods, (significantly the male ones.) "Anu pronounces impartially, as is fitting in so lofty and remote a person:'One of the two must die.'"(p35) In saying so, he is merely stating an objective psychic fact. Gilgamesh and Enkidu were becoming so close to being Siamese twins that one was sooner or later going to incorporate the other.

Shamash states to Enlil "Your command they killed the Bull and Humbaba, Enkidu is innocent." This is difficult to reconcile with Enlil's rage (p84) at Humbaba's death. Is this consciousness (the sun) demonstrating by Enlil's in-consistency, the coexistence of opposites within the un-conscious? Enkidu did not take his death 'lying down,' but in the best tradition of Dylan Thomas:

"Do not go gentle into that good night,...

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Enkidu's lament and curses:

1. The wood of the gate.

2. The Trapper.

3. The Harlot.

Shamash only corrected him on the Harlot. Why? Is this a favour for his sister, whom the qadishtu served?

Enkidu's dream of death:

Heavens and earth rumbled, reflecting conflict between conscious and unconscious. He dreamt of being taken by a grotesque man-bird - with components of three of the four creatures of the apocalypse. Gilgamesh's father was described as demon, vampire and high-priest (p21) providing the vampire component, "his hand was an eagle's talon," and one foot is leonine, as befits Ershkigal's younger sister; but there's a foot missing, and it should be bovine by coincidence. Bull/Ox = Element of Earth = Sensation = Cold and Dry, as is the Palace of Irkalla, Queen of Darkness.

Enkidu's vision is described as a Babylonian view of the after-life; it contained priests, kings, princes, but also Etana, a King carried to heaven by an eagle. (Sandars says this could be political: there had been debate & mild warfare between Kish & Uruk. p 17) but it hints at two fates for dead people. Ereshkigal, Queen of Underworld, (also known as Irkalla,) and Belit-Sheri - keeper of the book of death receive most, but Enkidu's dream of Etana's fate seems to presage that of Ganymede, which gives a clue as to where his own 'death' fits into Gilgamesh's process of individuation.

Fabricius (op cit p150) refers to "...the citrine symbols of separation, mortification, burial and putrefaction."

The 'hermaphroditic' (adolescent) Ganymede was abducted to 'Heaven' (Olympos) by Zeus' eagle. In the 14th woodcut of the Rosarium, (entitled Fixatio) the hermaphrodite's 'spirit' ascends to heaven, but the engraved variant is more explicit, showing an eagle about to sieze it. This signifies the transition from the minor to the major opus, which Jung com-pared to incorporation of shadow (minor opus) while incorporation of anima was the major work. At this stage, Enkidu ceases to exist as any pretence at an independent person, and now becomes fully integrated into Gilgamesh's own mind, a process accentuated by the twelve-day (possibly zodiacal) period over which he died. But even more so by Gilgamesh soon after, admitting for the first time his own fear of death, which fear motivates him for the rest of the story.

The shock and horror of Enkidu's death has blasted Gilgamesh's tough heroic persona. No longer is he regal: but now a hunter-gatherer dressed in animal skins, bearing few if any trappings of civilisation, and very much at the mercy of the elements and the gods. Jung points out that because the persona is identified with a typical (ie collective) attitude dominated by a single function, its removal is an essential component of the individuation process,"...in which conscious intention is excluded and is supplanted by a process of development that seems to us irrational....[whose] product is individuality ... particular and universal at once."(CW7 p297, 505)

He also shows that if ego identifies with persona,

a. The subject is unconscious.

b. Anima is projected outwards. (ibid 508-9)

7. Underground journey by night.

Gilgamesh's wanderings may be based on the story of Lugulbanda and Mount Hurrum. (19) Jung points out "The heroes are usually wanderers [n67 to this says,"Like Gilgamesh, Dioysus, Heracles, Mithras, etc."] and wandering is a symbol of longing, of the restless urge which never finds its object, of nostalgia for the lost mother."(CW5 p205, 299.) The wandering bit seems reasonable, but Gilgamesh seems more concerned with immortality at this stage, rather than his mother: she's sitting back in Uruk, and not lost at all.

The Lions in the Mountain Pass:

Invoking the moon god Sin for protection, Gilgamesh attacked the lions in the mountain pass "glorying in life" using his solar sword and axe. Sandars says "It is not surprising that we have no clue now to the real significance of this lion combat," although she admits that iconography indicates it was important. In fact we do have strong clues. Her "...hint of some special connection between the lions and the Moon God" (37) provides that clue. Gilgamesh, having 'lost' Enkidu, his link with the archetypal world, is driven to distraction, trying to find some solution in the mundane world, governed by the Lion of Time, the form-giving, left-brained linear Kronos. He can never find his goal until he passes into the inner Lunar world governed by Kairos, but to do this must destroy or go beyond the concept of time portrayed by the Lions. Quoting Macrobius, Jung says,"Souls coming into this [lunar] region begin to be subject to the numbering of days and time." and "The moon ...is also the demarcation between the divine and the mortal." (CW14 p145, 173 & n271) Gilgamesh is of course, going in the opposite direction, so kills the kronos lions.

In addition, Jung explains the picture of the lion in Reussner's Pandora by pointing out a phase of development wherein the unconscious must be seen as an enemy (or rather a contender) "Unless thy stone shall be an enemy, thou wilt not attain to thy desire. This enemy appears in alchemy in the guise of the poisonous or fire-spitting dragon and also as the lion. The lion's paws must be cut off,..." (CW13 p321, 426) Confrontation as an inevitable aspect of the process, might appear counter-productive so why did Gilgamesh have to overcome this fearful aspect of the unconscious, with the help of moon-god Sin? Layard (op cit p157) links Thoth, Hermes and Mercury as a moon-personality with the invention of writing. Quoting John 1:4-5, he points out the self-evident fact that the "light [that] shines in the darkness" is the moon,"...credited with the invention of picture-writing, that is to say, of symbolic thought." i.e. To enter this world, Gilgamesh must master the art of symbolic thought.

And as soon as he does, he enters that very world of Heimarmene, seen by the Sumerians as astrologically ruled, and is confronted immediately by paradoxical phenomena. He meets the Scorpion Men who guard the gate to the Mashu Mountains, which in turn guard the rising and setting sun; which are at once "...the wall of heaven and the gate of hell."(37)i.e. unconscious.

In CW5 p201, 295 and n57, Jung points out that from 4300 to 2150 B.C., Scorpio and Taurus were equinoctal signs. (Larousse Encyclopaedia of Archeology at p171 shows a man-scorpion with birds' wings and feet, part of the gate-post for the 9th century palace of Kaparu, Tell Halaf.) The Bull has already appeared so the scorpions further reflect the solar nature of Gilgamesh's journey. The Scorpions are also described as half man, half dragon, but with bright haloes and a death-dealing stare. Jung describes a picture in Pandora of a melusine spearing Christ and states that "Melusina...represents the feminine aspect of Mercurius..." (CW13 p321, 427) and "anima figure ... expressing the monstrous double nature of Mercurius, the redemption [of which] was depicted as the assumption and coronation of the Virgin Mary."(ibid p144 180) cf 19th woodcut of the Rosarium.

Not only ancient art, but also "Dreams are full of these theriomorphic representations of libido ...the lower (animal) half in particular is represented theriomorphically. The libido so represented is the "animal" instinct that has got repressed. ...unconscious manifestations of libido." (CW5 p179, 261) After noting that "Repression ...is not directed solely against sexuality, but against the instincts in general..."( 263) he states that a child will confuse its own instincts with parental influences, and thus symbolise attributes of the parents in animal form ( 263) but if regression goes back further, archetypal images appear, "...images of "divine" beings, part animal, part human. The guise in which these figures appear depends on the attitude of the conscious mind... if positive, they appear as the "helpful animals"..." ( 264)

There is a change in style from this meeting onwards, with repetitious use of ritualistic language. This can not be attributed to separate sources of the epic, because this phase is described in three sets of tablets.(126-8) Rather, it reflects a different world, that of Introverted Intuition.

The twin scorpion-men guarding the gate greet 'The man Gilgamesh, the child of the gods' 'Two thirds is god but one third is man.' p98, who replies "Since he [Enkidu] went, my life is nothing," and now I 'must' go through 12 (astrological?) leagues of darkness to meet Utnapishtim who has found everlasting life. (Is this Nigredo? "...there is no light,but the heart is oppressed with darkness."

Followed sun's road to its rising.(Shamash and his beloved)

"A number of variant images are given of the voyage of the dead to their happy land. According to one, the soul entering the cave is immediately blocked by the guardian spirit Le-hev-hev, to whom the boar-offering is presented to be consumed in lieu of soul itself; and the voyager, then allowed to pass, goes through the cave and emerges on the coast, along which he walks to a certain rocky place, well known, where he lights a fire to summon the ferryman." (Prim Myth 451) The archetypal nature of this part of Gilgamesh's journey is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that this quote from Campbell describes a myth of the Malekula people of Vanuatu. When it is considered that the Epic was lost in the seventh century BC and not rediscovered until the mid-nineteenth, it is rather difficult to use cultural diffusion as a basis for the remarkable similarity of the Malekulan version.

When he reached the jewelled garden beside the sea, he is warned by Shamash of the futility of searching for ever-lasting life: but his reply betrays a glimmer of dawning realisation that his search is more than a literal quest for immortality. "Although I am no better than a dead man, still let me see the light of the sun." #

8. Anima differentiated to produce 'spirit' and 'wisdom.'

"This garden of the gods is not the heavenly abode, but rather an earthly paradise ...on this side of the waters of death"(37)

Siduri Sabitu

Having "followed the sun's road to his rising" Gilgamesh now meets a lady whose essential identity is hinted at by Ishtar's statement to Neti, gatekeeper of the nether world, "I am the queen of heaven, the place where the sun rises."

(Campbell Prim Myth. p414.)

"In a house by the sea [Gilgamesh] finds the woman Siduri with her vineyards and wine-vats. She is also called Sabit which once meant 'barmaid'..."(Sandars: op cit p38)

Of relevence to Ishtar as Siduri-Sabitu is the "Latin calcare,'to tread,' in the reiterative sense of "treading" the grape." "...philosophic wine ...is...an apt synonym [for the quintessence of human life] because wine in the form of a liquid represents the body, but as alcohol it represents spirit, which would seem to correspond with the "heavenl;y virtue." This, although divided up among individuals, is universal; it is one, and when "freed from its fetters in the things of sense" it returns to its original state of unity." (CW14 p478, 681)

Saw Gilgamesh looking travelled, in skins, the flesh of gods in his body. Thought he was a felon and shut her gate. Campbell says she is an aspect of Ishtar (Hero p185) but if so, she's a rather anaemic one. Ishtar kicks gates down; she doesn't shut them; Won't ask why "wandering over pastures in search of the wind." (cf Wind in Caves of Shamash; spirit in matter!) He tells her why. Ritualistic nature of this: first he says he did these things, then that Enkidu had, from which one may reasonably deduce that Enkidu's 'death' resulted in him being integrated into Gilgamesh's own psyche.

"Young woman, maker of wine, since I have seen your face, do not let me see the face of death which I dread so much."

(She's veiled!?) But, if she is connected with wine, with the sea, and with the Bull of Heaven, and Gilg has been hunting 'Panthers' (not Leopards - they were Aphrodite's animals,) she has all the attributes to lay claim to the emerging A/T which would surface 2,000 years later; as Dionysos.

Siduri's reply, superficially a call to hedonism, actually constitutes what Campbell calls an initiatory test, not the moral philosophy of ancient Babylon. Student asking re secret of immortal life, is put off; must persist Hero185n

Walker points out that the same advice is given in Ecc.9:7-9

Step two is to warn him of the enormous difficulties of emulating the sun by crossing the 'waters of death.'But he has already done so in his underground journey.

Finally she directs him to Urshanabi, Utnapishtim's ferry-man."Look at him well, and if it is possible, perhaps you will cross. If not, you must go back." But "with him are the holy things, the things of stone" (p102) which Campbell describes as "a group of attendants (they were called 'those who rejoice to live,''those of stone') (Hero 186)

Gilg "fell on them like a javelin." and despite Urshanabi "beat[ing] his head, for Gilg. had shattered the tackle of the boat in his rage" he courteously enquired why Gilg was so despairing, then pointed out that Gilg. had destroyed his chances of crossing, because he had destroyed the boat's tackle and hence its safety. "Their property is to carry me over the water, to prevent the waters of death from touching me... but you have destroyed them and the urnu snakes with them."

(Utnapishtim later describes the boat as having no tackle or mast; and "the sacred stones destroyed.") CW5 p153, 217 says

"With iron you can make cold people out of stone."

i.e. Apparently senseless destruction, which Urshanabi tolerates. Another version states that Gilgamesh became lost while searching for Urshanabi, and found a boat which he damaged in his frustration. Only later did this turn out to be Urshanabi's. (Roberts, T.R.: Ancient Civilisations. New York. Friedman Fairfax. 1997.) p27. This still does not explain the "things of stone" which Sandars says are still a mystery; nor does it throw light on the nature of the urnu snakes. Some clue to their meaning is provided by Layard's discussion of the Ancient Egyptian words Unn and Unnu (which he shows are similar to the Semitic) which mean rising or leaping. (op cit p152)

But somehow the problem can be circumvented by Gilgamesh cutting sixty x 2 poles, each 60 cubits long, fitting ferrules and painting them with bitumen. Three days into the 1« month journey, he has to take each pole and punt the boat without touching the water. Then use his clothing as a sail, with him as mast. They reach Utnapishtim, the Faraway, the only immortal man,at Dilmun, east of the mountain, place of sun's transit.

After the usual ritual question and answer, Gilgamesh tells him he has lived by hunting, then asks for instructions to find [eternal] life, to which Utnapishtim says "There is no permanence," but "I will reveal a mystery, a secret of the gods."

Story of the Flood

9. Contact with symbol of 'Self.'

Utnapishtim the Faraway:

Of the wise old man archetype, Jung says, "He is, like the anima, an immortal daemon that pierces the chaotic darkness of brute life with the light of meaning. He is the enlightener, the master and teacher ..."(CW9i p37, 77)

The Story of the Flood:

Shurrupak on the Euphrates was so noisy the gods couldn't sleep so agreed to exterminate humans. But Ea warned Utnapishtim and told him to build a boat, (actually a seven-decked 120cubit square mandala, with each deck having 9 sections.)

His cover story advised by Ea, was that he was escaping Enlil's wrath, but that the people would receive mana from the storm-god. I plied the builders with wine etc. Boat finished in 7 days. Problems with ballast until 2/3 submerged. Loaded her with all my gold, family, animals and craftsmen.

Then handed tiller to Puzur-Amurri.

The "weather was terrible," so bad that even the gods were frightened, Ishtar regretted the idea re her people. The gods wept. Weather was bad for a week, then stuck on Mt Nisir for a week. Sent dove, then swallow then raven; raven didn't return, so opened the boat, and made sacrifices.

But Ishtar still receives a bad press, even from the translator. In her introduction to 'Gilgamesh' N.K. Sandars under-rates Ishtar's care for humanity. Comparing her unfavourably with Yahweh and the covenant of the rainbow after the Biblical flood, she (Sandars) says,"Instead of the rainbow pledge, there is only Ishtar fingering her necklace and exclaiming that she will not 'forget these days'." (N.K. Sandars, Trans.: The Epic of Gilgamesh, Penguin Books, London. 1972. p 42) But the actual text says,"Then at last, Ishtar also came, she lifted her necklace with the jewels of heaven that once Anu had made to please her. "O you gods here present, ...I shall remember these days as I remember the jewels of my throat; these last days I shall not forget. Let all the gods gather round the sacrifice, except Enlil. He shall not approach this offering, for without reflection he brought the flood; he consigned my people to destruction." (ibid p 112)

"Ishtar of Mesopotamia wore a rainbow necklace, which she could use as a bridge to heaven for the faithful, or as an uncrossable barrier. After the sky god sent a flood against humanity, she punished him by placing a rainbow before his altars, so that he could not receive offerings or sacrifices." (Shahrukh Husain. The Goddess.Duncan Baird.London.1997. p68)

or to put it in Barbara Walker's more acerbic terms,

"The Goddess Ishtar was angry at the god who caused the flood because he had killed so many of her people. She set her rainbow in heaven to block him from feeding on the offerings placed on earth's altars, just like a mother sending a naughty child to bed without his supper." (Walker, Barbara G., The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, Harper & Row. San Francisco. 1988. p 350., citing Walker,Barbara G., The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Pandora.London.1983.p 315.)

Enlil was annoyed that any humans had survived, but Ea reproved him and stated 'the wise man learned it in a dream." Enlil finally granted his blessing, and that is how 'I' got to live here, 'in the distance' at the mouth of the rivers.

In describing relations between ego and unconscious, Jung identified steps.

. Totally objectified god-concept.

. Progressive subjectifisation of the god.

. Consequential splitting into sects, and ultimately the cult of individualism.

. Re-submersion in the unconscious dynamis, i.e. instinct.

. Compensatory need for form and order.

"Diving down into the maelstrom, the soul must create the symbol that captures and expresses this dynamism."(CW6 p258, 433)

Utnapishtim tested Gilgamesh's determination for immortality by inviting him to stay awake for six days and seven nights. Gilg. fell asleep, then when woken, claimed to have hardly slept. But Utnapishtim's wife had baked a loaf each day and they showed him the seven loaves.

Gilgamesh bewailed the ever-present death.

Utnapishtim told Urshanabi to take the malodourous Gilgamesh for a thorough bath, then gave him clothes which would seem as new until he returned home.

As they left, Utnapishtim's wife took pity and asked Utnap to give him something to go home with, so Utnapishtim told him of a prickly underwater plant that restores lost youth.

The Herb of Renewed Youth:

There are suggestions that this plant was Cassia (cinnamon - an attribute of the Sun in Crowley.)

"...the nature of this jewel, or symbol of renewed life [is] that it contains possibilities for a new release of energy, for freeing the libido bound in the unconscious... release from bondage and world-weariness. The libido that is freed from the unconscious by means of the symbol appears as a re-juvenated god..." (CW6 p259, 435)

Significantly, when Utnapishtim told him of the plant, Gilgamesh "opened the sluices so that a sweet-water current might carry him out to the deepest channel;..." These are not the waters of death across which he travelled with Urshanabi but sweet, and the god "whose particular element was the sweet waters bringing life to the land" was Enki/Ea(26) [who]"like so many exponents of primitive wisdom, ..enjoyed tricks and subterfuges ..." A snake smelt the plant, ate it, shed its skin and went back into the well.

"Mercurius ... changeable and deceitful... versipellis (changing his skin, shifty)." (CW13 p217, 267) After all, the serpent who stole the herb did come from a pool of Enki's water. But he may also come from Enki's grand-daughter: Wolkstein mentions (at p161,n31) "Inanna gives birth to Lulal, the water scorpion, the water snake, whose cry is the cry of the Flood." Diotima on Eros again: "All he wins forever slipping away from him" Symposium p42.

That was the final straw for Gilg. He just wept. "Was it for this that I toiled with my hands, is it for this I have wrung out my heart's blood?" ("Ars requirit totum hominem" Hoghelande, in CW16 p199, 400) "The goal is important only as an idea; the essential thing is the opus which leads to the goal: that is the goal of a lifetime. In its attainment "left and right" are united, and conscious and unconscious work in harmony." (CW16 p200, 400)

10. Return of enlightened hero."On the return journey he is accompanied by an immortal mariner, who, banished by the curse of Utnapishtim, has been forbidden to return to the land of the blessed." and

"Because of the loss of the magic herb, Gilgamesh's journey has been in vain; instead he comes back in the company of an immortal, ... the prototype of Ahasuerus" (CW5 p200, 293)

and he goes on to argue that man consists of a mortal and an immortal part, i.e. "there is something immortal in us... the sun comparison tells us... that the dynamic of the gods is psychic energy. This is our immortality, the link... with the continuity of all life." (CW5 p202, 296) Somehow the return was more by land than water, although the same length (six weeks, covered in three days). Perhaps this symbolises more consciousness in Gilgamesh. He had, after all, learned quite a lot.

The Death of Gilgamesh

This is actually an obituary. The text itself gives no just-ification for the frequently expressed assumption that death followed soon after Gilgamesh's return to Uruk. In fact, when he is about to set out to kill Humbaba, the counsellors of Uruk describe him as 'young'(p73) and the introduction gives him a reign of 126 years (p20); whatever that might mean can hardly include immediate demise after returning from his journey.

Gilgamesh's destiny was fulfilled. Now he is equated with light shining in darkness. None will leave a monument like this.

Enkidu's interpretation of Gilgamesh's dream is repeated.

The people lament. Namtar is heavy upon him.

His "dear wife (sic!), his son, his concubine" etc. weighed out their ritual offerings to the gods "for Gilgamesh the son of Ninsun, the heart of Uruk. ... the king, peerless, without an equal among men, who did not neglect Enlil his master."

"Sensing the self as something irrational, existent, to which the ego is neither opposed nor subjected, but merely attached, and about which it revolves very much as the earth revolves around the sun - thus we come to the goal of individuation. ...The individuated ego senses itself as the object of an unknown and supraordinate subject." CW7 p240, 405. "We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."

(Little Gidding,5; T.S.Eliot.)

"Is there anything more fundamental than the realiz-ation,"This is what I am"? It reveals a unity which never-theless is - or was- a diversity." (CW16 p199, 400)

"The "high heart" (cor altum; also "deep heart") is the mandala divided into four, the imago Dei, or self." (CW13 p249,n16.) Here is no 'two thirds god, one third man' - this is a four-square highly individuated human being. "According to Pythagoras the soul is a square." (CW12 p336,n47)

And the last words spoken in the Epic by Gilgamesh, the king and "heart of Uruk" were,

"One third of the whole is city, one third is garden, and one third is field, with the precinct of the goddess Ishtar. These parts and the precinct are all Uruk."

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