Horus had been seduced by his wicked uncle Seth. Confused and outraged he went to his mother Isis to tell her what had happened. Isis didn’t believe him. In fact she cut off his hands by way of both accusation and punishment, then threw them into the Nile where they sank into its deepest trench.
Fortunately, Ra, the Sun God, had seen all of this from on high. He wondered what he might do for Horus and approached Sobek, the Crocodile God, asking him if he might swim down and retrieve the severed hands. Sobek didn’t fancy the job. Naturally grouchy, he was also reminded of the dangerous Chaos Fish which swam in that region. By now they most probably guarded the hands. They were the one thing Sobek feared. Their speed and ferocity could drive a poor Crocodile God quite mad.
Eventually Ra persuaded Sobek to help by offering him an exquisite gold signet ring. It was so beautiful Sobek agreed. He dived down and down into the deepest part of the Nile, searching about for the hands. Eventually he saw where they lay but just as he was about to retrieve them the Chaos Fish snatched the hands away and led him such a dance he began to feel quite turned around.
Sobek retired to the banks of the Nile to ponder his dilemma. The Chaos Fish would always be one step ahead of him, always be driving him mad. He had to find another way…. something other than strength and speed.
Sobek began to gather up the rushes which grew by the Great River, weaving them this way and that. He worked long into the night. Next day he set out as before and chased the Chaos Fish up and down the Nile. He seemed a little off his game, though secretly he was simply biding his time. When the moment came Sobek sprung the trap he had made, a great net against which the Chaos Fish were helpless. He retrieved Horus’ hands and took them to Ra who gave him the precious signet ring he had promised. For the first time ever, Sobek smiled.
The failure to have abuse acknowledged as such is as damaging as the abuse itself which, having been split off into the unconscious, continues to wreak havoc on self esteem with the belief that the child is somehow responsible for its suffering. The child is pronounced guilty and the authorship of that guilt, the filthy touching things, expunged. The child is compelled to identify with the aggressor and must sacrifice his capacity to engage with and come to grips with the world in order to continue being able to experience Mother as good.
This Wound of the Unseen is, by its very nature, difficult to spot. After all, the cut off hands repair the relationship between the rest of him and Mother, so everything seems peachy. The ‘wicked’ part of him is at the bottom of the river. Nobody really notices the boy’s newfound incompetence, his failure to embrace life, the loss of curiosity and wonder. Aberration catches the attention more easily than absence, loss or separation. He doesn’t bond. He simply exudes a kind of helpless molasses which sticks him to others in lieu of relatedness. No wonder Horus’ legacy is the ‘Eye of Horus’, counterpoint to the coldness and envy of the Evil Eye, a protective amulet symbolizing witness and the concrete reality of the other.
In our story it is Ra’s witnessing and his subsequent intervention on Horus’ behalf which initiates Sobek’s descent into the depths. Horus cannot do this for himself, nor Ra on his own. There is a tendency to think of the hero’s journey as being equivalent to the ego boldly asserting it’s intention and carving a deliberate swath through the undergrowth. It is just as likely to be initiated by helpless despair, which then serves to initiate compensatory activity in the Unconscious symbolized by Ra and Sobek’s private arrangement.
Under [extreme stress] the ego complex ceases to play the important role. It is just one among several complexes which are all equally important, or perhaps even more important than the ego. All these complexes assume a personal character… ‘ Jung CW 3 pp 521
The opening dialogue between Ra and Sobek is a poetic rendering of how autonomous complexes within the Psyche, as different as sky from swamp, come together in response to the split occurring in Consciousness. Ra has to overcome some of his celestial prejudice in order to call upon his scaly cousin, the ‘lower soul’ which transcendence always wants to leap over. Sobek has to overcome his fear of the Chaos Fish. His first smile is the evolution of the God image. He has wider expression by virtue of his involvement with Horus’ hands. ‘Man is a gate through whom the God’s pass.’ [Jung. The Red Book]
The ring which Ra offers to Sobek is a signet ring, a gift which confers recognition, authority and belonging. The signet ring, pressed into sealing wax, makes documents official. It legitimizes the bearer and makes him the right hand of higher power. Sobek’s status is raised in the quest to restore Horus’ integrity. The boy has a chance if something of his instinctual life can be honored.
Sobek may not be very pretty and he lacks bedside manner but he is creative and can be placed in the service of order. The Unconscious contains a great deal more than the repressions of individual experience. It also contains responses to it from ‘the spirit of the depths’….,
“from time immemorial and for all the future possesses a greater power than the spirit of this time [ ie Horus]” p.229. The Red Book
Sobek does not persist in trying to beat the Chaos Fish at their own game. They represent Horus’ defenses which guard the traumatic event and prevent painful memories associated with the disenfranchised abuse from surfacing. They cannot be taken head on. They have to be creatively contained rather than outmatched.
Meantime Horus is paralysed with depression and helplessness. For some reason he just can’t get his act together. He doesn’t seem to be able to seize the day or put his hand to anything. Nor can he co-operate with others very well by way of shaking on a deal.
Fortunately the ego is not the only player in the game. The trauma and its poor reception from Mother have not gone unnoticed. Sobek’s subsequent contribution may well be difficult to detect, being mostly by night or deep in the waters of the Nile. You’d be mistaken for thinking there’s nothing going on. Perhaps that’s what faith is, the idea that something is working on your behalf even in the midst of adversity, a living sense that the implicit order of the Universe will kick into action all kinds of counterbalance when things get out of whack. Perhaps this is also at the heart of the idea that evil destroys itself from within, that it contains the seeds of its own undoing.
This is not to say that one should do nothing or that your own personal efforts are futile by comparison, but rather that for such efforts to be effective they have to be in the service of a greater principle operating below the water’s surface. Moreover, in order to employ Sobek’s services he has to be propitiated with the insignia of office and included in the soul’s caucus.
It is not enough to comprehend. Knowing the facts is only the beginning. They must also be apprehended, from the Latin ‘to lay hold of’, made emotionally one’s own. For that you need a grasp of things, and for that…. you need Sobek.
