Romantic Projection on the Path to Know Thyself: A Jungian and Kabbalistic Approach
- caseynickerson
- May 26, 2023
- 16 min read
Updated: May 3, 2024
“To love somebody else in the first place is always an escape which we all hope for, and we all enjoy it when we are capable of it. But in the long run, it comes back. You cannot stay away from yourself forever, you have to return, to know whether you really can love. That is the question-whether you can love yourself, and that will be the test.
-C.G. Jung
Spiritual progression is a series of both inner and outer initiations through which by degrees we embody our Divine Self, the part of us that is God, our Divine essence.
And life is an alchemical laboratory. With the right framing, our experiences (both the good and the bad) may be used as fuel to contact and embody higher aspects of Self. The experience of “falling in love” offers one such possibility.
“Inner growth always involves an experience of a ‘red hot coal stuck in the throat.’ In our development we always come to a problem, an obstacle, that goes so deep that we can’t swallow it and we can’t cough it up. This exactly fits our western experience of romantic love: we can’t live with it and we can’t live without it – we can’t swallow it and we can’t cough it up! This hot coal in our throats alerts us that a tremendous evolutional potential is trying to manifest itself.” (Johnson, 1983)
Infatuation, or romantic projection, is a powerful force outside our conscious control. At times it can feel inescapable and all consuming. Throughout history humans have prayed to the gods to be spared Cupid’s arrow.
“O mater saeva cupidinum, parce, precor, precor! (O cruel mother of passion, spare me, I pray you, I pray you) cries Horace when he sees that at an advanced age, he is on the verge of falling in love with the beautiful Chloë.” (Franz, 1999)
According to both Jungian psychology and Kabbalah, infatuation and the beginning stages of romantic love are instances of psychic projection, in which qualities of our own Divine Self are projected onto an outer person. Like Narcissus, we fall in love with our own reflection.
And though the experience is valuable and necessary, all projections are ultimately illusion. To truly love another person is to be in reality. And God lives in reality, not illusion. But getting to that kind of love is a journey and a sacrifice.
(Note: My previous article explains the basic Jungian principles of the Anima and Animus and is a foundation for this article so that may be a good place to start before continuing)
“Though no one notices at the time, in-loveness obliterates the humanity of the beloved. One does a curious kind of insult to another by falling in love with him, for we are really looking at our own projection of God, not at the other person. If two people are in love, they tread on star dust for a time and live happily ever after—that is so long as this experience of divinity has obliterated time for them. Only when they come down to earth do they have to look at each other realistically and only then does the possibility of mature love exist. If one person is in love and the other not, the cooler one is likely to say, "We would have something better between us if you would look at me rather than at your image of me.” (Johnson, 1993)
Initially I was seeking a formula for discerning the difference between loving the true essence of another person versus loving the projection of my own spirit, or Animus in Jungian terms. But wanting a formula for anything having to do with the Eros principle is a wrong approach. The essence of love and desire do not follow formulas or fit into conceptual boxes. Logos (the mind, the word, discernment) can attempt to understand Eros (love, feeling, relatedness) but it will always fall short - words cannot express the wordless. And so we must take care when trying to understand Eros through the medium of thought.
“The experience itself is the important thing, not its intellectual classification, which proves meaningful and helpful only when the road to original experience is blocked.”C. G. Jung
So then, is there still value in following this track?
Though there can be no formula for dealing with desire, we can build a foundation for wisdom around it by adding to our knowledge. In the Modern Mystery School, we say that the purpose of life is to Know Thyself. To know thy Self is to know God.
So how can the challenge of infatuation and romantic projection help us to know ourselves? Help us to know God? This article is an attempt to integrate that question through the lens of Kabbalah and Jungian psychology.
But it is in no way meant to be a comprehensive view of the subject!
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ -Shakespeare
When we fall in love, often one of the first things we notice is the sheer force of it.
The source of all projections is the personal and collective unconscious, that great ocean of psychic energy that connects all of humanity and is constantly influencing us from beyond our conscious awareness. And whenever this level of force flows into our lives from the unconscious, we can be sure that it has a purpose.
“The appearance of a romantic love in the west began a momentous chapter in this cosmic drama of evolution. Romantic love is the mask behind which a powerful array of new possibilities hides, waiting to be integrated into consciousness. But what has begun as a huge collective surge of psychic energy must be perfected at the individual level. It is always the rule of individuals to complete the task, to bring the divine process to fruition within the microcosm of our own souls. It is up to us, as individuals, to take this raw unconscious energy of romantic love, this confusing array of impulses and possibilities, and transform it into awareness and relatedness.” (Johnson, 1983)
When I first began my investigation into all this, I stumbled upon a relationship between the romantic projection of the Anima/Animus and the 28th path on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.
What is Kabbalah?
“The [Kabbalah] opens up access to the occult, to the mysteries: it enables us to read sealed epistles and books and likewise the inner nature of man.” -Paracelsus
“The word ‘occult’ means hidden and is often used synonymously with the word ‘esoteric’ for the few. And they are both used in conjunction with what is often called ‘the Mystery Teaching.’ […] The teachings of the Mysteries, many of which are religious truths, are beyond the rational mind.” (Knight, 2001)
When a teaching is beyond the rational mind, then we are not able to access it by simply reading a book. Kabbalah is the method by which we may access Mysteries beyond the rational mind.
I discovered Universal Hermetic Ray Kabbalah through the Modern Mystery School, where I experienced immense healing. I gained not only the theory, but the actual experience of energetically ascending the Tree of Life. I recommend checking out their calendar. There are Kabbalah ascensions happening all over the world: https://www.modernmysteryschoolint.com/class/universal-kabbalah/
The glyph of the Tree of Life shows the path of God or man from pure Spirit at the top of the tree in Kether, down through the ten sephiroth or spheres into physical manifestation at the bottom of the tree in Malkuth. There are 22 Paths which connect these spheres, each with their own meaning.
The ten spheres or Sephiroth are considered to be objective states, while the Paths are the “subjective experiences one undergoes in transferring consciousness from one Sephirah, or state, to another.” (Knight, 2001)
In other words, the Paths help us to frame life experience so that we may use those experiences for alchemical growth and inner initiation.
The 28th Path connects Netzach and Yesod and is called the path of Natural Intelligence.
“The power of this Path could be said, symbolically, to be a result of the tremendous polarity between the Beautiful Naked Woman of Netzach and the Beautiful Naked Man of Yesod. In Netzach is the image of the Individuality shining direct into the subconscious mind of the Personality and attracting and influencing it as a fisherman plays a fish-hence the Hebrew letter of the Path, Tzaddi, a Fish-hook. The correct discernment of this force within the Personality, and intelligent co-operation with it, leads to the perfectly natural process of spiritual growth as the term, Natural Intelligence, implies.”
“There is great ramification of meaning in the 28th Path, ranging from sexual polarity, the contact with non-human kingdoms, to the forming of a vessel within consciousness for the image of the higher aspects of the soul. This latter pertains to the Quest of the Holy Grail, for the Grail occurs at a junction point between planes of consciousness and really means the making of oneself into a cup or chalice for the entry of higher forces.” (Knight, 2001)
In my previous article “The Alchemy of the Animus,” I outlined the Jungian process of creating an alchemical container for the transformation of the Anima and Animus into a bridge to God or the Self, which aligns with what Gareth Knight describes as “making oneself into a cup or chalice for the entry of higher forces.” Knight goes on to say, “Whether Jung realised it or not, and it is possible he suspected more than he cared to admit, the archetypes of the unconscious, particularly the contra-sexual image [the Anima and Animus], are images of the Individuality [or Divine Self].”
As we progress spiritually, we come into contact with new aspects of our Divine Self and often those new aspects get projected onto an outer person. We fall in love. And so one of the subjective experiences associated with the 28th Path is the romantic projection of the Anima/Animus, within which we may encounter all the possibility of growth and transcendence, as well as obsession and unbalanced force.
According to Emma Jung,
“The animus is first experienced by projecting it onto a man in the outside world, such as a father, husband, [lover], or friend, who becomes her guide and intermediary. Projection is “not only the transference of an image to another person, but also of the activities that go with it, so that a man to whom the animus image has been transferred is expected to take over all the functions that have remained undeveloped in the woman in question, whether the thinking function, or the power to act, or responsibility toward the outside world.” With this in mind, the archetype will never match the individuality of any man onto whom it is projected as it is an image created within the psyche. When a woman does begin to see the differences between the man and the archetypal animus image, she becomes disappointed, confused and disorientated; for this is not who she perceived the man to be.” (Ricketts, 2000)
This is why “new relationship energy” never lasts. There comes a point in every relationship where each person is confronted with the reality of the other, and illusion can no longer survive. There is a feeling as if we’ve been tricked. How dare they be ... not who we thought they were! Sadly, it is actually we who trick ourselves by using our partner as a canvas for our own projections.
So then the question becomes, do we break up or work through it? It is here that we have the potential to transition from being “in love” to truly loving the unique essence of another person. But first we must withdraw our projection, and that is a painful experience.
“It is imperative for a woman's psychic health to withdraw the projection of the Animus and claim the authority she gives to men for herself, that is, to recognize the intellectual, powerful, and oratory elements as part of her own masculine [energy]. By doing this, the Animus becomes a creative power, a servant, a teacher, and a guide that can help women "gain knowledge and a more impersonal and reasonable way of looking at things" initiating the soul’s transformation. Also of importance is the need for women to understand and accept that the feminine element is in no way inferior to the masculine.” (Ricketts, 2000)
The same also applies to men, in that they must withdraw the romantic projection of their Anima and develop a mature relationship with their own feminine energy before they can experience an evolved relationship with a flesh and blood woman. For example, a man with a healthy relationship to his feminine energy/Anima would embody these qualities:
“Self soothing, self nurturing and self loving. Access to creative inspiration. Strong centre and contained inner life. Capable of empathy. Able to make value judgements beyond the realm of pure rationality. Access to feeling life. Good relatedness. Happy.” (Farah, 2023)
By embodying and integrating the qualities of our Anima/Animus, we free our partners to live their reality, rather than a role we have assigned them.
Vertical vs Horizontal Polarity
“When we’re in love, we put our gold -our expectations- on the other person and this obliterates her.” -Robert A Johnson
When we are able to withdraw the projection of our Anima/Animus from our beloved (which is an extraordinary feat!) we become once again anchored and polarized with our own Divinity or Self: we become vertically polarized, sovereign. “Only God above is my God.”
If we are unable to withdraw the projection and remain stuck in infatuation, then we are horizontally polarized.
Most of our famous romances idealize horizontal polarity. As a society we have come to worship horizontal polarity which is essentially emotional attachment, and “escapism, a denial of life-as-it-is-in-Earth.” (Knight, 2001)
Horizontal polarity is seeking God in the external world, rather than within, and this is what we have come to idolize in our movies and love songs. This is what society tells us we should be looking for.
“It is only in comparatively recent times that romantic passion has been considered an ennobling thing and this attitude is erroneous. The great romances of Western literature, Lancelot and Guinevere, Romeo and Juliet, Heloise and Abelard (an actual case), and so on, are all examples of an abuse or lack of control of sexual, or horizontal, polarity. This kind of situation may be caused by a restimulation of factors in past lives when the vertical polarity (i.e. devotion to the god-head) of such cults as those of Ishtar or Astarte was abused by confusing it with horizontal (i.e. sexual) polarity. In such cases the Temple sexual sacrament became divorced from its sacramental aspect through confusion of the goddess with the priestess and/or all mankind with the priest or male worshipper.” (Knight, 2001)
Twelfth century lovers Heloise and Abelard are a real-life example of the peril of remaining stuck in horizontal polarity. The more intense the mutual projection and polarity, the higher the potential for the alchemical evolution of the soul.
Their surviving letters portray their passion for one another as a sort of burning torture, suffering many situational tragedies which ultimately resulted in their both committing themselves to abstinence and the church. Abelard became a monk after being brutally castrated under the order of Heloise’s uncle. Unable to bear the idea of another man having Heloise when he no longer could, he convinced her to join a convent. She required little convincing, however. So fully devoted to him, she saw no point to life without him.
In one of her letters she says to him,
“How did I deceive myself with hopes that you would be wholly mine when I took the veil, and engaged myself to live forever under your laws? For in being professed I vowed no more than to be yours only, and I forced myself voluntarily to a confinement which you desired for me. Death only then can make me leave the cloister where you have placed me; and then my ashes shall rest here and wait for yours in order to show to the very last my obedience and devotion to you.” (The Letters of Abelard and Heloise)
They lived out the rest of their lives apart but enslaved to one another, unable to transform or transmute their passion.
“Heloise and Abelard […] should have helped each other towards the vertical polarity of mystical consciousness as symbolized by the astrological sign of the Path, Aquarius. Their relationship became obsessive and exaggerated however, and so they became two people forcibly tied together by a horizontal link as symbolized by the sign of Pisces- two poor fish indeed. He, in fact, was castrated, a strange karmic effect which may point back to some sin against an ancient Temple of Isis, where, in some cults, the priests castrated themselves in their fervour.” (Knight, 2001)
If one would rather give up on life than let go of a romantic projection, if the idea of losing a partner makes life lose all meaning then romance has been placed above God. We are so conditioned in our culture to idolize this kind of romance that we are blinded to its harm and evils.
That’s right Michael Bolton, you did lie. That isn’t love you feel inside lol.
Going back to the 28th path on the Tree of Life, Gareth Knight explains that if we could but recognize and accept the reality of what infatuation is, it could become an opportunity to reach new spiritual heights. The romantic projection functions like a fishhook, to hook the Lower Self and link it up to the Higher Self. It requires becoming aware of the qualities that we are projecting onto the outer person so that they may be withdrawn and developed into our own selves.
“For example, a woman who ‘falls in love' with a man at first sight, beholding him as her 'Knight in Shining Armour,' is really observing the positive aspect of her own Animus. The Animus constitutes the traditional masculine qualities of assertiveness, strength, corporate success, and provider.” Carl Jung
To reclaim and integrate those qualities, she would need to learn to save and protect herself and be less naïve. To stop living in victimhood. There is great sacrifice here, and a death of the Lower Self, which is what makes it very difficult. Owning and living the qualities that you have projected is giving your own life’s blood so to speak. It requires living outside the comfort zone in the uncomfortable and exciting place where all Magick happens. And that is what Kabbalah is all about.
It may be tempting at this point, with all this knowledge, to classify romantic projection as sheer illusion and glamour, as something negative and to be avoided. But this is where the mystery lies. This is where Logos falls short.
In trying to avoid or outsmart these forces, we would in a sense, be attempting to place ourselves above nature. There is a slippery slope between avoidance and transcendence. Desire may originate in the Lower Self, but there are also desires issued from the Divine Self which would be harmful to ignore.
Dion Fortune explains the danger of placing oneself above natural law, from which these forces flow:
“People who have read esoteric literature and have realized that there are other bonds between souls than those of sexual attraction, may be tempted to despise these simple but most potent forces, and to refuse a union which they fear may be commonplace […] Herein lies one of the dangers of the divulgence of secret occult doctrines. Had such a one known nothing of occultism he might have made a happy union according to Nature’s laws; but, knowing enough to reject the guidance of his instincts, and insufficient to differentiate between fantasies arising from subconscious wishes and the promptings of the Individuality, he may throw away the lower without gaining the higher.” (Fortune, 2000)
In fact, according to M. Esther Harding, Jungian analyst and student of Carl Jung, the presence of attraction and desire between two people is actually a gift and a blessing from the Goddess. She demonstrates this concept through the myth of Goddess Inanna’s descent into the underworld:
“When the Lady was away in the underworld, a time of despair and terrible depression fell upon the earth. For during her absence nothing could be conceived. Neither man nor beast nor plants nor trees could propagate, and worse than ever they could not even want to propagate […] It was only after her return to earth that the power of fertility, and indeed of sexual desire as well, could operate once more.
In a hymn she says: ‘I turn the male to the female; I am she who adorneth the male for the female, I am she who adorneth the female for the male.’ She was the awakener of the sexual impulse […] If we remember that the gods are projections of the unrealized forces of the unconscious, we can say it is as if the power of attraction between man and woman were a gift of the goddess, which is operative when she is present […] but utterly unattainable when she is absent.For certainly everyone will agree that more enters into the relation between a man and a woman than can be explained on a purely materialistic grounds […] Some essential factor comes and goes without the conscious volition of those most concerned.” (Harding, 1990)
And that is the paradox. On the one hand we may understand romance and desire as psychic projection, as an illusion to be dispelled. And on the other hand, as a gift from the Goddess, and an opportunity to become “virgin” or whole, and closer to God.
“It is the hardest thing in the world for anyone, for a woman especially, to acknowledge and accept her love for another human being if it is not reciprocated. It is far easier to reject the love, to say, “I don’t care for him either,’ or ‘he is not worth breaking one’s heart over,’ or even to repress the love altogether and keep oneself entirely unaware that anything more than the surface has been ruffled. But the woman who is virgin, and who has performed the sacred marriage in the temple of the goddess, will not act so. She, realizing that the love aroused in her is a manifestation of the goddess of love,will recognize it and the suffering it brings as part of her experience of the feminine principle. Indeed it may be that the recognition of her own love, unreturned on the human plane, may itself be of the nature of the hieros gamos, the marriage with God that makes women virgin.” (Harding, 1990)
People we admire act as placeholders for our alchemical gold. We need them to hold our gold for us until we can grow strong enough to hold it ourselves, until we are able to embody and live those same qualities. If we are lucky, our hero or beloved gives back our gold and celebrates our success and we are able to begin a new type of relationship based on freedom and sovereignty. A relationship where we are not asking our partner to fill a God-shaped hole in our soul, because we are filling that God-shaped hole with our own Divine Self.
“This stage has to do with the experience of the Self, the inner wholeness that cannot be understood intellectually, but only through love.
This love is not transference and it is no ordinary friendship or sympathy. It is more primitive, more primeval and more spiritual than anything we can describe.
In this realm, it is no longer two individuals relating with each other on the personal level, but the 'many, including yourself and anybody whose heart you touch.' There, 'there is no distance, but immediate presence. It is an eternal secret.” Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I
Our love stories need new endings, ones that go beyond the relationship itself as the ultimate goal. Ones that show the divine potential of romance to help us achieve reciprocal spiritual freedom, and the inner marriage of our Personality to our Divine Individuality. Achieving wholeness together.
Citations
Abelard, P., & Heloise. (2018). The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Naxos Audiobooks.
Farah, S. (2023, February 2). The archetypes of the anima and animus. Appliedjung. https://appliedjung.com/the-archetypes-of-the-anima-and-animus/
Fortune, D. (2000). The Esoteric philosophy of love and marriage. Samuel Weiser Inc.
Franz, M.-L. von. (1999). Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche. Shambhala.
Harding, M. E. (1990). Woman’s Mysteries: Ancient and modern. Shambhala.
Johnson, R. A. (1983). We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love. Harper & Roe.
Johnson, R. A. (1993). Owning your own shadow: Understanding the dark side of the psyche. HarperSanFrancisco.
Johnson, R. A. (2016). Inner gold: Understanding Psychological Projection. Koa Books.
Jung, C. G., Adler, G., & Jaffé, A. (2014). Selected letters of C.G. Jung, 1909-1961. Princeton University Press.
Knight, G. (2001). A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism. WeiserBooks.
Ricketts, T. L. (2000). The Animus : A Jungian Perspective on the Films of Jane Campion. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses_hons/869
