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A novel by C. S. Lewis retelling the romance of Cupid and Psyche. The story is told from the perspective of Psyche’s logically-minded sister Orual, as “an accusation against the gods.” This may be where the novel’s original title, “Bareface,” came from, in the sense of Cupid’s invisibility, Orual’s deformed face and Psyche’s beauty, and possibly from what Orual perceives to be the gods’ “bare-faced lie.”
Cupid and Psyche
One of the most shamelessly romantic Greek stories may be an allegory. In the 5th century, Martianus Capella described the story as an allegory about “the fall of the human soul.” In The Golden Ass, Psyche receives immortality “as a reward for commitment to sexual love. To Martianus, Psyche is lured into the material world by sex, and becomes vulnerable to death: “Cupid takes Psyche from Virtue and shackles her,” in other words, sexual love takes the soul away from virtue.
Hieros Gamos
Greek for “holy marriage”, Hierogamy is a ritual that is supposed to represent a marriage between and god and goddess, with humans representing the husband and wife. It’s present not just in Greek mythology, where it was used to symbolically unify Zeus and Hera, but also in Hinduism where girls may marry their deity to show devotion, the Ancient Near East where Sumerian kings and high priestesses took part in the practice, and in Tantric Buddhism, where it is part of a ritual of a male deity and female consort. Sometimes mentioned in Jungian analytical psychology.
Analytical Psychology
Originating from the ideas of Carl Jung, analytical psychology is form of non-psychology that emphasizes the “personal quest for wholeness” of the individual psyche. Symbolism, archetypes, and the unconscious are important elements of analytical psychology. The ideas in Jungian psychology aren’t legitimate psychological ideas anymore, but can be used in literary analysis, among other things.
Image: The Abduction of Psyche by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Web Source.
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