The Archetypes of the Female and the Shadow
in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the
Christ”
Mark
Germine
Psychoscience
mgermine@hotmail.com
Mel Gibson’s
“The Passion of the Christ” appeared in theaters in February, 2004. I saw the movie in a local theater in early
March. The film had raised a great deal
of controversy regarding its accuracy and the way it portrayed the people who
had condemned Christ to death. The
beatings of Jesus and the bloodiness of the portrayal of the events prior to
and during his crucifixion had been reported to me by one previous viewer as
revolting and excessive. I had also
heard that the film had been “approved” by the Pope of the Roman Catholic
Church and that local churches were giving tickets to parishioners to see the
film. Despite its R-rating, I had heard
that church people were encouraging children and adolescents to see the
movie. Some local Christians were
praising the film for its redemptive and evangelical value. At the time of this writing, the film was
already a box-office smash, promising to rank among the top-earning movies in
theater history. What I write here is based on my own sensibilities, and my
subjective response to the movie, as well as some of my interpretations of Jung,
Neumann, and the archetypes of the collective unconscious.
When I first entered the theater I
noticed the usual crowd of people buying popcorn, candy, and sodas. It was a matinee showing. I saw the picture for a second time, again in
a matinee showing, but stayed for the beginning of the evening showing. The evening showing of the film was quite
crowded with children and adolescents, some of whom seemed not to be
accompanied by an adult. In both showings there was a table with Christian literature,
free copies of the New Testament, and a flier entitled “The Passion of Christ”
(Laurie, 2003). An elderly man, with a
large cross hanging from his neck, was standing at the door of the theater
during both showings, handing out this flyer and an invitation to join his
church for a discussion after the movie or on an alternate date. The flyer enjoined moviegoers to accept Jesus
Christ as their Lord and Savior, and lauded the film as “a moving and factual
account of the last words ever spoken by the One whom millions know as
Savior.”
The Passion
depicts the last twelve hours in the life of Christ. It is drawn from the Gospels of the standard Bible,
with considerable additions and elaborations, and is spoken primarily in the
Aramaic language with English subtitles.
In the first scene, we see the full moon, symbol of the archetypal
feminine and the light of wisdom (Neumann, 1972). The moon is also a principle of Mary as the Cosmic
Female, Mother Goddess, or Great Mother (Neumann, 1972). Jesus seemed to be looking up at the full
moon during his prayers, and the moon cast a visible light on the trees and
rocks surrounding him. The symbols of
the earth, the rocks, and the garden again reflect the archetypal female
principal, in its most basic or fundamental, or vegetative form, as the giver
of life and the matrix of birth and rebirth (Neumann, 1972).
In the first scene of the Passion, Jesus and
his disciples had gone to a place that has come to be known in tradition as in
The scene briefly switches to Judas
accepting money from the Jewish authorities for betraying Jesus, and then back
to the garden, where Jesus again goes to pray under the full moon. As he prays, a voice is heard tempting him to
give up his mission. To his right
appears a demonic person with a black hood and cloak, with blue eyes and no
facial hair, of ambiguous gender, with a worm crawling into one of its nostrils. I will henceforth refer to this entity as “the
demon,” as its gender remains unclear.
The demon told Jesus that he could not take on the sins of the world. Jesus resolved to do the will of God. Then a snake, or serpent, if you will,
crawled out from under the demon’s cloak, to the right hand of Jesus, whereupon
Jesus stood up and stepped on the snake, crushing it.
I have read
the gospels many times, and have found in them a great deal of wisdom and
solace. I was certain that there was no
such demon in the garden of the gospels.
I have checked again, and have found no mention of such an entity in the
descriptions of Christ’s prayers in the garden, which occupy brief passages in the
gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In
Luke (22. 43), an angel appeared to Jesus while he was praying, strengthening
him.
Having been
born and raised in the Roman Catholic faith, I am well accustomed to the
statues depicting the Mary or the Madonna with a snake under her foot, so the
image of the snake evoked the archetype of the Madonna or Great Mother. The archetype of the anti-Madonna was evoked
during the Roman brutalization of Christ in the Passion when Jesus was
confronted by the demon holding an infant in his arms. The infant was hideous, with evil eyes, and dark
hair on its body. The infant was reminiscent of the white mutant fetuses I had
seen in preserved in formalin in medical school. The bestial hair on the infant evoked
primitive images of half-human creatures.
The demon and the infant smiled hideously as Jesus was scourged by the
Roman soldiers, who were taking a sadistic glee in the bloody punishment, as if
infected by the demonic presence.
In Jungian terms, the snake, the
demon, and the infant evoked the shadow side of the Passion’s portrayal of
Jesus, projected from his own psyche, or, perhaps more accurately, from our own
psyche, in the depths of the collective unconscious. The serpent or snake was likely a reference
to the temptation of Eve by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, in keeping with
the meaning of the scene. In mythology
(Neumann, 1970, 1972), the serpent commonly represents the most primitive and
undifferentiated element of the unconscious, the uroboros. The uroboros is the
symbol of the serpent eating its tail. The uroboros gives
rise to the uroboric mother, who embodies both the male
and female principles. Thus the
ambiguous identity of the demon reflects her identification with the snake. To the ordinary viewer, the demon was the
external evil, perhaps Satan to some Christian viewers.
There was a peculiar correspondence
between the demon following Jesus and Mary, the Mother, also following him as
he endured inhuman torments, which seemed to be evoked by the influence of the
demon. The whipping and beating of Christ continued as Jesus carried the cross
in the passion. Mary -- the Mother, Mary
Magdalene, and John the apostle followed him through the ordeal of bearing the
cross. At one point the camera flashed
back and forth between the Mother and the demon, and while Mary was weeping and
consoling Jesus, she seemed powerless to diminish the brutality, and the
demon’s infectious influence seemed to dominate the events as it appeared in
brief film-bites.
The
scene of the temptation of Christ by the demon set the stage for the rest of
the movie. The demon seemed to cause
mass hysteria and the infliction of bloody wounds on the body of Jesus
throughout most of the film. I do not
claim to be an expert on the Bible, but my reading clearly indicates that the
demon and the snake were introduced by the filmmakers of “The Passion of the
Christ.” They were clearly intended to
be symbols of an external evil. I think
it goes beyond artistic license to substitute a torturing demon for an angel of
mercy in a document that is sacred to millions of people.
The external evil can then be assumed
to be responsible for the brutality inflicted on Jesus in the movie. As a movie-goer, I found the brutality
directed at Jesus offensive, and can find little Biblical evidence to justify
its enormity or graphic basis. In Mark
(15. 15) it states that Jesus was scourged by the Roman soldiers prior to being
delivered over for crucifixion. Having
been brought up in the Roman Catholic Church, I have seen many crucifixes
depicting the body of Christ, and the only marks I recall are from the crown of
thorns and the wounds of the nails and the spear in his side.
The bloody
sacrifice, which is so graphic in the movie dates back, in mythological terms, to
primitive matriarchal cultures and religions.
As Neumann (1970) notes in The Origins and History of Consciousness: “Worshiped from Egypt to India, from Greece
and Asia Minor to darkest Africa, the Great Mother was always regarded as a
goddess of the chase and of war; her rites were bloody, her festivals
orgiastic. All these features are
essentially interconnected…The womb of the earth clamors for fertilization, and
blood sacrifices are the food she likes best.
This is the terrible aspect, the deadly side of the earth’s
character…Slaughter and sacrifice, dismemberment and offering of blood, are
magical guarantees of earthly fertility.” Neumann goes on to write: “Originally the
victim was the male, the fertilizing agent, since fertilization is only
possible through libations of blood in which life is stored. The female earth needs the fertilizing
blood-seed of the male.” Such rituals were co-opted by patriarchal religions, but
their archetypal significance and unconscious meaning remains the same. Although the characters of Mary the Mother
and Mary Magdalene are portrayed throughout the movie as good and caring, they
do soak up the blood in the courtyard with white clothes after the scourging of
Jesus by the Roman soldiers, receiving, in a sense, the blood sacrifice to the Great
Mother. So, once again, we have the
archetype of the Terrible Mother, primitive as it might seem, demanding blood
sacrifice, here is the Third Millennium.
The image of the full moon, in the
context of the first scene of the Passion, reminded me of the archetype of the
Cosmic Female. When I was a child I would often visit my Italian grandmother's
home. Her bedroom was kept dark, with
red candles burning on an alter on the bureau next to
her bed. This was the world of the
collective unconscious that she entered every night during sleep. Behind the alter was
a mirror which had photos of her dead relatives and friends. Above the mirror was a large picture of a
lady dressed in a white gown that was bathed in light, set amidst the blackness
of space. Below her feet was the moon,
and above her head was an arc of twelve stars.
It was the numinous image of the Mother in Heaven.
Goddess religions preceded male
conceptions of God, and occupy the bulk of prehistory and thus of the
collective unconscious process, which recapitulates our ancestral history. Isis (Neumann 1970) and Kali (Harding, 1993) were
foundational to later patriarchal religions.
Kali, in particular, embodies both the aspects of the Good and the
Terrible Mothers (Harding, 1993). Later,
more evolved archetypes of the higher female consciousness or the transcendent
aspect of the feminine include the Taras and the
female saints, Buddhas, and Bodhisattvas. Patriarchal religions have sometimes found it
necessary to revert to the primacy of the Goddess. The Catholic references to Mary as the Mother
of God and as to the Assumption the Mary into Heaven are examples of this
phenomenon.
So what of
the externalized evil, magnified by the enormous brutality of the Passion? The Shroud of Turin, legitimate of not, does
represent an image of the archetype of Christ, and shows no evidence of such
brutal beating. Why would one want to
see one’s Savior beaten in such a gratuitous fashion? Perhaps there is some vicarious satisfaction
to be gained in the primitive sacrifice of blood. Certainly
there is an increased need for retribution against those who represent the
external evil, the shadow of our own collective selves. We see this, in the Passion, in the little
children morphing into demonic creatures as they taunt Judas to commit suicide,
in the graphic depiction of the suicide of Judas, and, most markedly, in the black
bird pecking out the eyes of the mocking non-believer on the cross to the right
of Jesus. The latter is most certainly
not in the Gospels. The psychological
torture of Judas by the demonic children seems to involve the pervasive
influence of the demon, but the distinction seems to be blurred with the wrath
of God. There is a brief flash to the
demon, with its demonic smile, as the children are chasing Judas to the site of
his suicide. The pecking out of the eyes
of the man on cross seems to be more clearly portrayed as an act of God, but
has a very primitive quality. The bird
is, archetypically, reminiscent of the Egyptian hawk-god Horus,
son of Isis (Neumann, 1973). The black
bird is yet another expression of the shadow side of the Jesus of the Passion.
In The
Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Jung, 1969), first published in
1934 and published in revised form in 1954, Carl Jung speaks directly regarding
the collective unconscious of the theater: “The mass is swayed by a participation mystique, which is nothing
other than an unconscious identity.
Supposing, for example, you go to the theatre: glance meets glance,
everybody observes everybody else, so that all those who are present are caught
up in an invisible web of mutual unconscious relationship.” Jung goes on to state: “Since this is such an
easy and convenient way of raising one’s personality to an exalted rank,
mankind has always formed groups which made collective experiences of
transformation – often of an ecstatic nature – possible.” The participation
mystique is a phenomenon first described by anthropologist Levy-Bruhl in his study of the rituals of primitive peoples, but
has also been used to describe the relation of infant to its mother. Levy-Bruhl used this term to describe the primitive experience
of human thought processes happening in nature itself. So Jung goes on to state: “The regressive identification with lower
and more primitive states of consciousness is invariably accompanied by a
heightened sense of life; hence the quickening effect of regressive
identifications with half-animal ancestors in the Stone Age.” The bestial nature of the infant is thus an
example of the regressive identification which sometimes characterizes the participation mystique.
The
audiences’ reactions during the two matinee showings I attended seemed to be
mostly silent -- glued to the screen, as it were. One woman, who was alone, was crying almost
continuously during the torment of Jesus, while another, who was with a male
companion, was crying at intervals and saying “Oh, God,” and “Oh, no,” during
some of the more brutal moments in the torment of Christ. One man was stroking his mustache throughout
most of the torment. The children and
adolescents I observed during the initial period of the evening showing seemed
to be having a good time.
The
archetypes of the shadow are prevalent in the Passion, and seem to be in
control over the events occurring during the last twelve hours in the life of
Christ. Throughout his work Jung warned
of the dangers the externalization of the shadow side of the mass psyche. Continuing in the same passage from Jung quoted
earlier (1969): “The inevitable psychological regression within the group is
partially counteracted by ritual…But if there is no relation to a centre which
expresses the unconscious through its symbolism, the mass psyche inevitably
becomes the hypnotic focus of fascination, drawing everyone under its
spell. That is why masses are always
breeding-grounds of psychic epidemics, the events in
The
mother-complex is described by Jung (1969) as inclusive of the mother, as the
matrix of all experience, and the father, which is the “dynamism of the
archetype, for the archetype consists of both – form and energy,” and is
epitomized by the Great Mother, or grandmother.
The “negative side” of the mother archetype, the androgynous Bad Mother
or Terrible Mother, is symbolized by the demon in “The Passion of the
Christ.” The demon’s influence over the
events of the movie is infectious, and may also be unconsciously infectious to
the audience, through the processes of the participation
mystique and projective identification.
Jung (1969) notes that as the separation of the unconscious from the
unconscious increases, the polarity of good and evil in the archetypes of the
collective unconscious also increases, and the danger of mass hysteria and
violence increases. The polarity between
the conscious good and the unconscious evil, projected largely as the demon,
are quite striking in the Passion. It is
frankly alarming that this movie may represent and further influence the
spiritual psyche of its viewing audience.
The Great Mother in the Passion is
represented, in her various aspects, by the Mary the mother of Christ, Mary Magdalene,
and the demon. The demon’s presence in
the Passion is at times almost subliminal, as if it were meant to cause some
kind of unconscious infection. As Jung
(1969) notes: “On the negative side the mother archetype may connote anything
secret, hidden, dark; the abyss, the world of the dead, anything that devours,
seduces and poisons, that is terrifying and inescapable like fate.” Jung goes further to specifically address the
dual nature of the Madonna archetype: “Perhaps the historical example of the
dual nature of the mother most familiar to us is the Virgin Mary, who is not
only the Lord’s mother, but also, according to medieval allegories, his
cross. In
In the Gospels of the Bible it is
written that Jesus said that, to enter the kingdom of heaven, we must again
become as little children. For this
reason, I find the demonizing of the infant and the children in the Passion
disturbing, and frankly anti-Christian. The
sayings of Jesus might be better reflected in The Gospel of Thomas (Lambdin, 1990) which is a part of the texts recovered on
the Egyptian desert in 1945, than in the standard Biblical gospels. Some scholars believe that The Gospel of
Thomas, not to be confused with its apocryphal counterpart, is the most
accurate reflection of the teachings of Jesus.
Helmut Koestler (1990) writes: “If one
considers the form and the wording of the individual sayings in comparison with
the form in which they are preserved in the New Testament, The Gospel of
Thomas almost always appears to have preserved a more original form of the
traditional sayings…or present versions which are independently based on more
original forms.” It is written in The Gospel
of Thomas (verse 22): “Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, ‘These infants
being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom.’” Later in the same verse Jesus’ disciples ask
him: “Shall we then, as children, enter the kingdom?” Jesus answers “When you make the two one, and
when your make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and
the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the
same… then will you enter [the kingdom].”
Elsewhere in the Gospel of Thomas, which I have in another translation,
Jesus is reported to have said that the kingdom is spread out over the whole
earth, but people do not see it.
Although the Passion may be an “evangelical tool,” it is unlikely to
bring about the perception of heaven on earth with its dark and brutal images.
In the Passion we see Jesus portrayed
as the embodiment of the apotheosis of the ego. Apotheosis of the ego is its assumption of the
status of God, and is inferred by the presence of the demonic shadow of the
ego-persona in the garden, which was inserted by the filmmakers in the place of
the Biblical angel. In a subtle way, what Mel Gibson is delivering
to us is a kind of “Passion of the Anti-Christ,” a Christ whose ego has been
identified as God. He is therefore haunted
and tormented by his own demonic shadow, which is externalized as the numinous
images of the demon and demonic infant.
Demonic images are, sadly, the most prominent numinous images in the
film, and are thus those that possess the power of the archetypes and of the participation mystique. The Passion fails to present Jesus as one who
has transcended ego-consciousness and realized the True Self that is Universal
in all of us. It fails to portray the
beauty and numinosity of Christ, as exemplified by
the depictions of Christ in many great works of art, such as Michelangelo’s
Pieta (Figure). Instead, it gives us the image of a man that
is literally bloodied and wounded over every inch or his body. The religious images of the film are
primitive, pitting the good Christ against an externalized evil. Because if its violence and demonic themes,
the film could cause psychological harm to some individuals, particularly
children and adolescents. In terms of
the collective spirituality, the film is regressive and potentially damaging.
Figure:
Michelangelo’s Pieta
References
·
Koestler, H (1990) Introduction to The Gospel of Thomas. In The Nag Hammadi Library. J. M. Robinson, Ed., Harper:
·
Laurie, G. (200s) The
Passion of the Christ. Icon Distribution, Inc. 5p.
·
Neumann, E. (1970/1954) The
Origins and History of Consciousness. Translated by R. F. C. Hull.
·
Neumann, E. (1972/1955) The
Great Mother: An Analysis of an Archetype. Translated by R. Manhiem.
·
Lambdin, T. O., Translator (1990) The Gospel of Thomas. In The Nag Hammadi Library. J. M. Robinson, Ed., Harper:
·
Harding, E. U. (1993) Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar. Nicholas-Hayes, Inc.:
·
Jung, C. J. (1969/1954) The
Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. In Four
Archetypes: Mother/Rebirth/Spirit/Trickster.