The Panther – In the Jardin des Plantes, Paris
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly—An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
– Rainer Maria Rilke (1907) (Translated by Stephen Mitchell)
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The Jaguar central figure to the underworld myths of Mesoamerica and beyond. In the Mayan tradition, the image of the “Jaguar who eats the Sun” expresses the story of where the sun goes at night, along with its archetypal correlation of where our awareness goes when we enter unconscious territories. In very broad terms, we can call the unconscious the home of everything that influences us, but that we’re not aware of. Being invisible as it were, its contents affect us less through our five senses and more through modes of experience like emotion and instinct. However, from our “conscious” side of the fence, the archetypes of the unconscious take on bodies through the agency of symbolic images that come in myths, dreams, visions, art and essentially all imaginal activity.
Whether the unconscious steps into image of its own accord, or if we “send” images to wrap it in—like a bat reading an invisible terrain through echolocation—we still don’t know. Maybe it’s a little of both? Regardless, after a century of depth psychology, we do know that there is an unconscious, and that we are in perpetual relationship with it. Being attentive to this relationship is arguably the single most important endeavor one can undertake. In rather rare form, Jung once shared his take on the purpose of life as follows: “To kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” Memories Dreams Reflections. In other words, “to make the unconscious conscious.” Such practice has been demonstrated, time and again, to restore depth and wholeness to the psyche in very great measure. On that note, the underworld (in any mythology) is the foundational metaphor for the unconscious. It is the mythological, alchemical and psychological matrix of transformation of the deepest sort.
In his poem The Panther, mystic-poet Rainer Maria Rilke reveals every theme I’ve covered so far through the mediums of art and imagination. His work is therefore far more effective in delivering these messages than are my longhand explications. Don’t worry, I’ll not go into a play-by-play correlation. Suffice it to say that we have an instinctual entity in captivity (perhaps it’s your 9-to-5), and to whom some mysterious image (symbol) plunges through the pupil (the window to the soul) and of course disappears into the (unconscious) roots of the psyche. In reading the poem, we track this movement and feel a tug or longing to go there. For a number of us, it may even feel like “home” in some way.
But before getting into any more of that, let’s get up to speed on the jaguar, per se. It is the third largest cat in the world, second only to lions and tigers. But its bite force is significantly stronger than either of its larger cousins, explaining why it has little trouble crushing through the spines of alligators and whatever other hardy creature it preys upon. Such is the unassailable power of the unconscious. The natural pattern is that the more brute strength a creature possesses the more conspicuous it tends to be (like bears, rhinos, elephants and so on). But not so with jaguars, who are primarily nocturnal, exceptionally agile, and have a knack for staying out of sight. For football fans, they’d be the running backs rather than the linemen. Well, maybe we could include play tight end, too, provided we’re talking about the Gronkowski-type or someone like that.
Anyway, prior to European colonization, this remarkable figure inhabited the southern third of what is now the Southwest of the United States from the coast of California to the eastern border of Texas. In 1963, and in keeping with the patterns of modern humanity’s relationship with nature, the “officially” last jaguar in the U.S. was shot. In recent years, however, a handful of roamers have been spotted in the far-southern parts of Arizona and New Mexico—fluctuating between 1 to 4 individuals. In addition to this ecological victory (however small it may seem) a mythologist may see this as an opportunity to welcome (or re-welcome) a great symbol along with the mythologies and archetypes that it brings. I say “mythologies” because the jaguar registers in the older myths and legends of the original Southwest. Remnants of its presence can still be seen in the petroglyphs of the Anasazi and in the written transcriptions of the Hopi, Navajo and others, where they are referred to as “spotted lions.”
In the case of Rilke’s tragic and powerful poem, we cannot be certain if he was referring to a jaguar or a leopard pacing in its apparently very small cage there in Paris (since these are the only two species of big cats that have spots). Regardless, both species focus as carriers or bearers of consciousness through the underworld in the myths of the Americas along with Asia and Africa. But the distinction is moot because both are archetypal equivalents just as eagles, hawks and falcons are all solar figures. Speaking of archetypes (loosely defined as a universal symbol), we have here a fine example of how they emerge spontaneously across the globe, and in very separate cultures.
For example, the Amduat (which translates to “what happens in the underworld”) is the central myth of Ancient Egypt. And as with the Mayans, it is based on where the sun goes at night, and on the many trials it must overcome to be born anew the next day. Not surprisingly, the leopard appears in the Amduat as an underworld figure as both cultures associate their cats’ spots with the stars of the nightsky. The pattern of renewal that comes from any passage through the underworld is automatic and autonomous. In short, neither encounters with the underworld nor the renewing effects they render can be evaded. And so, the myths possess the natural wisdom of acknowledging and honoring the underworld/unconscious so that their corresponding people can know its ways and laws and accommodate accordingly to this essential formula of healing and renewal.
But now I have to complicate things because myth is messy—and rarely, if ever, do we find nice tidy categorizations to neatly shelve in our (wishful) organized thinking. Sure, we can call these things archetypes (underworld, jaguars, leopards, etc.), but the so-called “borders” of archetypes are necessarily indistinct—even to the point of harboring exceptions and opposites within them. This point is worth the digression because I’m compelled to urge anyone interested in looking more deeply into myth that they must embrace this incompatibility, this messiness. Otherwise, they’ll likely throw up their hands and walk out before any of the deeper messages can take root in the awareness—can “plunge into the heart and be gone”—or more likely, saturate. But in defense of this frustrating inconsistency to archetype, I ask how effective is any system that aims to understand psyche and life, its patterns and events, when its contexts, mediums and environments are naively over-simplified and organized?
So, all that to say, when I said that the Mayan jaguar who eats the sun becomes its carrier through the underworld, that was only very partial because their jaguar is also the underworld itself. “How can it be both the carrier of the sun and the realm it carries the sun through?” you may ask. Well, that brings us to another major depth psychological theme, being that in this line of work, one must cultivate a conscious attitude that is capable of holding ambiguity, ambivalence and paradox. For in these reside the great gifts which can be had only by placing ourselves (or allowing ourselves to be placed) deep in the frontier between the conscious and the unconscious, the known and the unknown, the mundane and the mystery. And as will shortly be seen, the phenomenon that unites these two sides is the symbol.
In the Popol Vuh of the Mayans, the underworld is called Xibalba (the “x” pronounced sh) and is probably the coolest sounding name I’ve encountered for the underworld in any tradition. The stealth and inconspicuousness of the jaguar reflect those chief underworld attributes: mysteriousness, vagueness, uncertainty (when we find ourselves in it). Our impulse tends to be to get out of it as quickly as possible. However, equipped with mythological, archetypal, and depth-psychological understanding, you may (gratefully) find yourself in less of a hurry to leave. For the price of the underworld-travel is far easier to bear when one knows the rewards it brings.
In the words of Jung: “The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering” Psychology and Religion. Just don’t get tripped up on the word “suffering” because its range is broad—consider the discomfort of doing your heavy set of squats at the gym—most of us come to savor that version of suffering. Obviously there are less savory versions of suffering, oh well. The point is, when you’re pacing in your cage, sure, be vigilant and strategize your escape. But also take advantage of the situation and go inward, go downward, do some inner work while you’re there and deepen the soul. You’ll be all the more empowered when you emerge.
Speaking of which, jaguars—now beginning to show up in the states—both as extraordinary animals in themselves and as archetypal symbols. And in keeping with the dynamics of a symbol, they are forced by nature and necessity to stick to the periphery, gliding through corridors of cover and shadow, admixing (in this case) yet another layer of depth to the already mythic wild west. This recent development is a refreshing distinction from Rilke’s tragic narrative because it puts the symbol back in the wild, precisely where it needs to be. And more important, it puts the “wild” back in the symbol so that it doesn’t merely exist as information, but thrives as experience.
Indeed, this is a far cry from the contexts we impose on otherwise wild animals, having them pace around in cages in Paris or riding around in circles on a tricycle wearing a stupid tutu. Talk about killing a symbol! In short, we’ve converted the unfortunate creature to fit our own human sensibilities. We’ve translated it out of the wild instinctual realm and into our own little personified daylight world. In the eyes of mythology and depth psychology, we have (literally) made a circus of the whole thing, and flattened what could have been our liaison and guide through the unconscious.
In Complex/Archetype/Symbol (which is essential reading to anyone serious about depth psychology) Jolande Jacobi reminds us with exceptional precision that the symbol:
“...is a kind of mediator between the incompatibilities of consciousness and the unconscious, between the hidden and the manifest...this mediating, bridge-building quality of the symbol may be regarded as one of the most ingenious and significant devices of the psychic economy. For it constitutes the only truly natural and health-giving counterweight to the inherent dissociabliltiy of the psyche.”
Likewise, the relatively recent reappearance of the jaguar in the Southwest serves as a mediator among cultures, between humans and nature, and especially, between humans and ourselves—between the egoic need for controlling the environment and the depth psychological work of according the unknown and unknowable its place. This is why a symbol is said to always point to something unknown, to something that can’t be encountered through any other means. We now have an opportunity to welcome these much needed symbols (and beings). So, in place of gunning down our mythic guides, we’d do well to adopt a spirit that accommodates and embraces their presence.
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Take a second to check out the following clip where one modern story’s hero (played by Sean Penn) relinquishes all notions of capturing or possessing and replaces them with the far richer reward that comes with simply sharing presence. On one level it may seem a waste of effort or time, since the character abandons his original goal. But the scene addresses the bigger story which is about individuation and depth of soul. It’s about the richness and quality of experience that comes to those with symbols uncaged.
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For a more direct experience of big cat petroglyphs in the American Southwest region around Sedona, AZ, check out this hike with JadonFury.
