A Transformative Symbol You Need to Know (Nietzsche/Jung)

The Self

In the last chapter of the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On the Gift-Giving Virtue,” a mysterious symbol appears, one that holds essential meaning for the path of our personal transformation. Our article today will focus on that symbol.

The chapter begins this way:

“When Zarathustra had taken leave of the city that he loved so much, and whose name is ‘the Motley Cow,’ many people followed him and called themselves his disciples. There Zarathustra told them that from that moment on, he wanted to go on alone, for he was a friend of solitude. His disciples gave him, as a farewell gift, a staff whose golden handle bore a serpent coiled around a sun. Zarathustra was pleased with the staff and leaned on it.”¹

Jung explains this curious symbol and interprets it as a representation of the Self:

“The self seems to be a valuable idea. The golden ball is the sun as well as a divine symbol—what the sun used to be when it was the central god in ancient cults, the source of warmth and life. Therefore, it must be an idea that holds the same virtue, the same value that, in fact—whether we believe it or not—the sun holds for us, as the source of warmth and life. So it is a reconciling symbol, the symbol that resolves conflicts, that overcomes the opposites that characterize our lives, a symbol that brings about peace and integration.”²

As many might sense, this staff that Zarathustra accepts with joy and on which he leans is not just a practical object, but a symbol. Nietzsche himself, as a philosopher-poet, charges this object with archetypal meaning, even if he doesn’t express it in Jung’s psychological language.

This symbol represents the path, the inner journey. It is that upon which the traveler leans, but also that which represents his direction and steadfastness. The golden sun on the handle symbolizes the source of life, of meaning, of wholeness—the power of the sky. The serpent, the hidden wisdom in our nature, the power of transformation, the power of the earth.

It is the symbol of the Self because sun and serpent represent a unity of opposites: the spiritual (solar) and the instinctive (serpent), the conscious and the unconscious, the above and the below.

It is a symbol that resolves conflicts because it is the harmonization between heaven and earth. It is the elevated mind supported by the instinctive, or the instinctive working in alliance with consciousness.

The image of the serpent coiled around the sun tells us that we cannot reach wholeness by rejecting the shadow or instincts, but by integrating them into a greater unity. If we truly want to transform, we must descend into the underworld of our passions, traumas, fears, and desires, bring that energy into consciousness, and put it in the service of a higher purpose—our inner purpose.

If You Are an Individualist, There Will Be No Transformation

Detail of an initial in the Office for the Dead, from the Hours of Dionora of Urbino, Central Italy, c. 1480–1520, Yates Thompson MS 7, f. 174r

In this way we delve once again into the symbolism of the Self, which we must not only understand intellectually, but also experience within ourselves. For this, the following words of Jung will be useful:

“In reality, the self cannot exist unless it is in relation to something. The self and individualism exclude each other. The self is the relationship. Only when the self is reflected in various mirrors does it exist—it has roots. We will never reach our self by building a meditation hut on the summit of Everest; only our ghosts will visit us, which does not mean individuation: you are alone with yourself and the self does not exist. The self only exists to the extent that you show up. Not what you are, but what you do is the self. The self appears in our actions, and actions imply relationship; an action is something you produce, something that is practically outside of you, between yourself and your environment, between subject and object: there the self is visible.”³

Individuation is not individualism because our consciousness needs to contemplate itself through the face and the experience of others.

That is why we must contemplate thousands of faces, even the most terrible and wicked, because in this way we can see and live as a cell in the network to which we belong and which we call humanity.

To isolate ourselves is to ignore the limitation of our consciousness and inflate our ego; it is to act as if we had created ourselves, when in reality we are a small fragment of something much greater that has brought us into being.

That is why one of the spiritual experiences we must have is to experience that we are a creation, and our greatest achievement as a creation might be the ability to contemplate ourselves as one. If we manage to see ourselves in this way, we can begin to understand what role and place our consciousness should play to bring about something much greater.

Although it is true that in some chapters we speak of the value of solitude, we never refer to isolation, but rather to the courage of experiencing being alone with ourselves.

So for all these reasons, Jung points out that the Self is not found “inside,” nor is it something we can only find through introspection, but rather it is between you and the other. That is, in the tension between ourselves and others—or the world in general—because within that tension we can distinguish what resonates with our center and what does not.

How to Know Our Self to Transform Ourselves

It would also be good to add other words Jung once expressed about the Self:

“The self is a strange unity in our existence, a center of the personality, a center of gravity that does not coincide with the ego. It is as if it were something external. On the other hand, it is not about this individual, but about a relationship with individuals. One could say that the self is the one and only—and yet it is the many. It has a paradoxical existence that we cannot define or limit with any particular definition. It is a metaphysical concept. Yet we have to create this concept in order to express the psychological fact that one can feel like the subject and also like the object: namely, I can feel that I am doing this and that, and also feel that I am made to do it, that I am the instrument for it.”⁴

With these words from Jung, we understand why the Self cannot be contained by linear logical thought. We also understand that the Self is a unity, a whole—but not in the way the ego understands it. It is a unity that does not always feel like our own, it is not under our conscious control (like our instincts and impulses), and for that reason, it feels strange.

This strangeness indicates that we cannot appropriate the Self as if it were an object. Rather, we are drawn by it—as if it possesses us.

The ego is always magnetically attracted to the Self, and so the Self always acts upon it.

The Self does not coincide with the ego, and in that difference lies the key to finding our development and transformation:
Our ego can only be transformed by entering into relationship with that deeper center.

It also comes from outside, because the interpretation of the external and of others comes from ourselves—that is, from that center. That is how projections work.

So, the Self is known by living it, feeling it, embodying it—just as one knows true love, deep pain, or a mystical experience.

Likewise, we can say that the Self is not a concept, but an experience that passes through you, transforms you, puts you in contact with the deepest parts of yourself. It is that which decentrers the ego, confronts you with your shadow, drives you toward transformation, and connects you with meaning—and for that reason, we must distinguish that center and learn to live through it.

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Remember: I’ve committed myself to deeply studying all of Jung’s work and also to freely sharing what I learn, so my content will always be free. But if you’d like to support my project, I’d gladly accept a coffee:

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I also recommend that you read my following publications:

• The meaning behind our death, according to Jung and Nietzsche

• Jung and Nietzsche: The Secret and Wisdom of Your Inner Serpent

• How to Free Yourself from the Possession of Your Anima/Animus?

Sources:

1. Chapter 22 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part One, “On the Gift-Giving Virtue.”

2, 3. Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Volume 2, Session II, January 29, 1936, Carl Jung, commentary on Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

4. Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Volume 2, Session I, January 22, 1936, Carl Jung, commentary on Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.