The Origins and History of Consciousness, by Erich Neumann
Tackling Jordan Peterson’s Reading List
In this series I discuss the books on Jordan Peterson’s Great Book List in no particular order. My hope is to help those interested understand what they’re getting into and choose which books they decide to take on.
This particular text is one that should be at the very least understood by all people responsible for educating humans in the liberal arts. Its review of the output of humanity across endless cultures and times presents a rich picture of our psychic evolution that should be considered fundamental.
Much like an archeologist sifts through the levels of Earth’s strata revealing clues of our ancestors’ physical and cultural development, Erich Neumann sifts through ancient symbols produced by the human psyche, revealing signs of psychicevolution. In reviewing this text I found it difficult to parse it down into a summary as there is so much information Neumann reviews in making the case for this view of humanity’s psyche. Almost every page has something revelatory as evidenced by my copy’s numerous dogeared pages and highlights. So I will summarize a portion and leave the rest for the reader to parse through if they so choose.
The Origins and History of Consciousness takes its readers through the history of humanity’s development and differentiation from the rest of the animal kingdom as defined by its unique form of higher consciousness. What I found incredibly interesting is that the whole of that development, each stage, is paralleled in each individual life today just as it is throughout the whole of its evolution.
Every child’s consciousness starts off in the same manner as ancient humans’ and develops through each stage as part of their maturity towards a fully formed individual. This process is generally referred to as “individuation,” and is likely why American feminist academic and social critic, Camille Paglia, has highlighted it along with the rest of Neumann’s work as a counter to current ideological trends.
Neumann’s exposition of humanity’s symbolic history spans thousands of years and multiple cultures across every continent, pointing to the universality of these human tendencies. It serves as a buffet of evidence against ideas of political power being the driving force behind human endeavors. For Neumann, the human collective shares in a universal purpose which requires individual freedom in developing individuated human beings, as opposed to collective groups at their core seeking only power over other collective groups. Central to that differentiation is acknowledging the difference between not only man and woman, but masculine and feminine categories which are seen today by much of academia as socially constructed for the use of power over others.
The first part of the text reviews starts with three stages in creation myths; The Uroboros, The Great Mother, and The Separation of the World Parents: The Principle of Opposites. I’ll summarize the first two.
The Uroboros
Neumann points out that the question answered by creation myths is not necessarily the creation of the objective, material world. They do not aim to explain the physics or literal timeline of the stars or the Earth. Neumann posits that creation myths are a manner of explaining the origin of man as we know ourselves today. And to know ourselves we must be aware of ourselves. Creation myths describe the origins of consciousness.
These stories have universal patterns and symbols consistent across years and cultures, pointing to the commonalities in the questions humans were asking themselves and the common source of those answers.
Important to understand is the manner in which symbols operate when representing an idea or concept. It’s not that any one symbol can encompass these deep principles on their own. Symbols gather around the idea as if describing different aspects of it, never able to encompass the whole concept on their own.
“Only the canon of these symbols congregating about the center in question, the coherent symbol group, can lead to an understanding of what the symbols point to and of what they are trying to express.”
Our earliest symbols aim to capture from whence came the light which represents consciousness- what it was that the light broke through and that which contained the light.
“…in all peoples and in all religions, creation appears as the creation of light. Thus the coming of consciousness, manifesting itself as light in contrast to the darkness of the unconscious, is the real ‘object’ of creation mythology.”
Those early symbols depicting what existed in the beginning through which the light shone are consistently circular, and as a group are referred to as the “uroboros.” This specific type of circle is often depicted as a snake eating its own tale and is similar in concept to the yin & yang which is often also depicted as encircling snakes.
A circle has no beginning nor end. It has borders which envelope, keeping some things in and other things out. But thiscircle contains all that exists, has ever existed, and will ever exist. It is all encompassing. Nothing exists outside of it for it is everything. Everything that comes from it is still contained within it. The light becomes and is contained within it only when a conscious mind becomes aware of it and differentiates it from darkness. But the differentiation does not stop there.
The Great Mother
In order to understand the next step in the evolution of consciousness, it’s important to emphasize that the transition from uroboros to the Great Mother is not a replacement of the uroboros. The uroboros always remains and is always everything. The Great Mother symbolism is a consequence of the further differentiation of the characteristics of the uroboros. Just as light and darkness characterizes all parts of the uroboros, so do the dual aspects of the Great Mother. She has a great and a terrible side as well. Consciousness develops by further defining and differentiating the contents of the uroboros, starting with the largest and most basic categories and moving ever more specific.
The Great Mother is the nurturing bosom of Mother Earth. It is the source of all life and everything new. Simultaneously, it is devouring and death, which is the necessary precursor for rebirth. It is a paradoxical duality and cycle much like the circle within which it is contained. All development of consciousness through culture, art, and religion come from the need to reduce the fear of the unknown aspects of the Great Mother through “concrete expressions” of her description.
Here is where we start to see the separation of the masculine and feminine as consciousness is expressed as masculine, and the unconscious is expressed as feminine. The nature of humanity’s understanding of itself is reflected in our projection onto the description of our world. Ancient man did not understand that sexual intercourse had anything to do with pregnancy and new life. All that was understood is that some unknown force created new life in the bosom of a woman. Everything new came from women and thus everything unknown and all new life came from the feminine. The feminine is primary and the masculine is what comes from her. The Great Mother is a virgin because she can produce life, and always has, without any masculine aspect. (This has been often mistaken for the purity of chastity from sexlessness.) As the ego looked to define itself — as consciousness developed — the masculine pulls away from the feminine, which is everything unknown and to be known, and acts as that which defines and differentiates. The masculine is consciousness.
The snake that shapes the circle starts to appear as a symbol of the phallus who is the Great Mother’s companion. Some of the earliest representations of the Great Mother consist of a mother and child, much like a pieta but with the heads of snakes for both mother and child. She is the uroboros and he is that which comes from her as well as that which will continue to be sacrificed to generate new life. Much of incest mythology comes from this idea but it’s important to not mistake it for incest as we know it today. Mythological incest represents the feminine and masculine as all mothers and all sons, both as individuals and the gendered collective simultaneously.
As the ego develops, it transitions its view of the uroboros into the Great Mother. The ego’s awareness of the uroboros leads it to describe it by defining it as such.
Myth and Personality
The story continues through further differentiation as consciousness develops. The Great Mother is further separated in The World Parents, which concretizes the feminine and masculine into their great and terrible aspects. Consciousness is then challenged to rise above chthonic aspects of its origins and become heroic, slaying both the mother and the father aspects of creation and history. This conquering of the unconscious leads to personal transformation which is then utilized to enrich humanity as a whole. Neumann takes the reader through the historical, symbolic details of how all of these psychic aspects are represented in our developing cultures.
Part two then focuses on personality development with reference to the evolution of consciousness. It ends with some commentary by the author on the modern movement away from individualism and towards recollectivization. For anyone who pays attention to the spirit or ethos of our time, it was interesting to see the whole of his ideas on consciousness placed in a modern context.
“The very anonymity of the individual in the mass intensifies the action of the shadow side.”
I couldn’t help but think of what has happened on social media with anonymity and polarization into groups, along with their actions during protests that have often turned violent.
I hope this short introduction can help you decide if it’s something you too would like to read. If you have read it, let me know what you thought and what kind of ideas it sparked for you.