Separation of the World Parents

The separation of the World Parents is, in Neumann’s schema, the decisive mythological act by which consciousness emerges from the uroboros. The undifferentiated serpent divides into a pair of opposites — heaven and earth, masculine and feminine — and the ego, the “son,” is born into the space between them.

“Once the uroboros has divided into a pair of opposites, namely the World Parents, and the ‘son’ has placed himself between them, thereby establishing his masculinity, the first stage of his emancipation is successfully accomplished. The ego, standing in the center between the World Parents, has challenged both sides of the uroboros, and by this hostile act has ranged both the upper and lower principles against him” (Neumann 2019, par. 62). What follows is the dragon-fight — the militant struggle through which the ego tests whether its emancipation will hold.

The separation is simultaneously what fragments the neumann-great-mother archetype into its positive and negative series: “This original bivalence of the archetype with its juxtaposed opposites is torn asunder when consciousness separates the World Parents” (Neumann 2019, par. 123). Ego-formation and the splitting of the mother-archetype are one and the same act read from different angles.

Relationships

Primary sources

neumann-origins-history-consciousness (Neumann 1949)