This Friday, we will explore “The Magic Horse” from Volume 3 of the Collected Works of Marie-Louise Von Franz: Archetypal Symbols in Fairytales, The Maiden’s Quest (pp. 307-315). Still more multifaceted is the problem of the battle between the destructive and the helpful animus, with its half-divine, half-animal nature that even has feminine qualities. This is portrayed in the epic Uzbek tale “The Magic Horse”.
Once a month, Society members and other lovers of the power of story and the Jungian approach to understanding and developing ourselves, meet for Fairy Tale Fridays. In each story we find shadow, complexes, anima, animus, soul, ego, alchemy, and the numinous, all guiding us on a journey toward selfhood. In these group discussions we start to understand how to interpret the story, as well as the task of translating the fairy tale into a psychological language.
Suggested reading: The Interpretation of Fairy Tales by Marie Louise Von Franz. Marie Louise quoted Jung as saying, “…that to be in a situation where there is no way out or to be in conflict where there is no solution is the classical beginning of the process of individuation.”