The negative anima as whore or snake

By Anne on 30 September 2022

Lilith as negative anima (by John Collier, detail, source: Wikepdia)

Lilith by John Collier (1892; source: Wikipedia) as negative anima

The negative anima as whore or serpent: female power

The negative anima is an archetype for femininity, which lives power and pursues its own interests instead of surrendering. Her symbols are the WHORE and the SNAKE. She pulls everything into a spiritualized or virtual world of illusions.

Basics for this article:
Animus and Anima
The Anima - Inspiration and Motivation (Soul)

The negative and the positive anima

If the positive anima is represented by the goddess of love and the virgin represented as potential, the negative anima represents the dark side and shadow of the feminine, which lives power through seduction and delusion and thus steers people away from true life towards illusions. Her archetype is Lilith.

[S. I am Lilith.]

The negative anima - power in the realm of the mind

As a female spirit, the negative anima represents a spiritual magnitude that captivates both women and men. Men allow themselves to be dazzled and seduced by its dazzling light, women, in identification with the negative anima, exercise power through seduction.

Power through seduction and delusion

In its negative form, the anima seduces through eroticism or slogans and inflated ideals. In doing so, she presents her blinding charisma through glitz and glamour, pomp and glory, or in a flawless virtual world. It is beautiful, but disconnected from lived reality and without true inherent life, for its domain is the world of images and imaginings (s. White magic).

The negative anima ice-coldly seduces men and people away from real, warm life and real relationships into a rigid world of illusions or into a lifeless virtual world.

An example of the negative anima as a cold, lifeless beauty can be found in the fairy tale The Snow Queen by H.C. Andersen.

Anima as man's inner woman (coffee advertisement in Venice)

The negative anima and the fallen creation

As old as culture itself, the negative anima as an archetype is a global quantity that affects all people. She is already represented in the first traditions by LILITH, the dark virgin, represented.

The reason for negativity: dead love as "original sin"

The reason for the negativity that permeates all existence is a human primordial trauma (also called "Original sin" or "Fall of man"), which brought separation from the eternal, larger context and thus death. The great traditions agree that the cause lies in the love that died.

Commonalities in the traditions: a rupture in existence

Love Died and the Human Collective in Negativity and Death

Thus already the first traditions tell about a rupture, which is the basis of the existence. The Sumerian mythology speaks of the fact that "the heavens are carried away and the great mother, the life itself, got into the underworld, the realm of the shadows and the death.
The Babylonian mythology tells of the Creation of the world from the murdered mother dragon, the Jewish tradition tells of the fall of man, which was instigated by the serpent, and of the loss of paradise.

The theme of dead or fainting love is also used in fairy tales such as Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are taken up. In these, the negative anima or dark maiden is replaced by the thirteenth fairy respectively the poisoned apple who is at the mercy of unconsciousness and death in the "underworld".

The love that has died is the reason for the negativity of the feminine and therefore of the anima or great goddess. She has been hurt and betrayed, full of pain, anger and feelings of revenge.

[S. Power and abuse, curse and redemption in lore.]

The negative anima for the collective feminine - all people

This reality affects all people, which as a collective, can be called "female".

The feminine includes: the woman, the people, the earth ...

Receiving and living reality giving birth to matter

The great feminine includes:

The woman, all women: They can take up seed and give birth to new life.
The human body: It receives impulses from the consciousness ("male") and translates them into words, deeds and new reality.
The collective (group, people, the whole of humanity): It reacts to impulses (for example in the form of information such as news) with moods and actions. It also takes up the instructions of the ruler and shapes new reality according to them (carries out instructions, such as building roads).
The earth: It can take up seeds and give growth. In addition, it also reacts to various impulses ("spirit"), for example from the cosmos (such as solar activity) or to human behavior with global phenomena such as climate warming or volcanism and cooling. (Thereby the "cosmos" means in the traditions more than the universe. To it the element of the fire is ascribed and therefore also divine-spiritual and initiating strength, see. The four elements, meaning.)
Thewhole of creation: it is given over to transience and thus in the "underworld" (s. The Great Feminine in the Underworld).

[S. Female wholeness, living matter - potential, reality and destiny..]

The female as living matter can absorb impulses of consciousness ("seed") and give birth to new reality and therefore belongs by definition to the unconscious (s. The conscious and the unconscious and Male and female, the two primordial forces of creation).

The negative anima as WHORE and SNAKE

The archetypes of the WHORE or SNAKE, which often stand for negative femininity, can be assigned to the anima in its negative form.

As a WHORE she seduces to lust and as a SNAKE she seduces to cunning.

Thus, as a WHORE, she sells the illusion of love and fulfillment, thus binding her victim to physicality and the urges, thus denying him access to the spirit and wholeness.

As a SNAKE, it symbolizes refined and scheming femininity, which is used strategically to gain power. (An example of this is false advisor to the king called "Serpent's Tongue" in The Lord of the Rings and also The snake in the head - our ancient reptilian brain.

In detail:

The Whore: Love as a Consumer Good and Seduction to Lust

A whore, by definition, sells love to make a profit for herself. For this purpose she uses her body, but from which she has withdrawn her inner life, so that it is only an empty shell. Men who look to love and life go away empty and are left even more addicted.

The inner woman as SNAKE: Seduction through cunning

As a reptile, the snake belongs to the element of water and thus to the feminine. As this it symbolizes on the one hand life (see Life and the Snake: Ascent and Descent), on the other hand the drive. Both are part of the unconscious, which also belongs to the feminine(water, female).

In addition, the snake also symbolizes cold and calculating cunning, which takes possession of the consciousness (see The Snake in the Head - the Reptilian Brain.

The SNAKE, which paralyzes its victim with its poison before it eats it, stands for refined and scheming femininity. Thus she seduces the man as an inner snake to devious and "cunning" behavior to achieve his goal.

[S. The Bible's account of the Fall and the mystery of the serpent.]

The Harlot and the Serpent in Traditions

The WHORE and the SNAKE as archetypes of the anima already play an important role in the oldest traditions:

Thus, in the Sumerian tradition the unfaithful husband lets himself be transformed into a snake (s. The Galla).
In the Egyptian Isis mythology the poison of a snake paralyzes the sun god Ra.
In the Babylonian tradition insults Gilgamesh the goddess of love as a whore, and the immortality herb, which he has won, is stolen from him by the serpent.
Judeo-Christian tradition has all evil begin with the serpent in paradise (see The Fall of Man account and The Curse: negative couple dynamics).
And in the end-time vision of Revelation, "the whore Babylon" plays an important role (s. The whore and the beast).

Burney relief (the queen of the night, edited)

The Queen of the Night(Burney Relief, ca. 1800 BC)

The negative anima in the couple relationship

The negative anima as the inner woman of the man

The inner female image of the woman as a WHORE is the "magic" that awakens the man's lust and drive so that he loses control over his actions.
In addition, the anima as a SNAKE helps men to use cunning and manipulative strategy to pursue their interests (especially to get women to have sexual intercourse; see Negative Couple Dynamics as well as Animus and Anima in the Couple Relationship).

[S. The Anima as the inner woman of man.]

Power of the woman through identification with the negative anima

In identification with the negative anima as a whore, on the other hand, women can exercise power over men and rise to be their "goddess". This happens by awakening the "animal" in him.

The Angel in the Veil from Robbie William's "Angels" Video Clip

The negative anima - collective aspect

The Serpent, the Dragon, the Harlot and the "Woman"

From snake to dragon

If the serpent was still the snare for the harmless man in paradise, the dragon is the full-grown reptile which controls all three areas: the water, the earth and the air. He is an archetype for immeasurable greed and cold cruelty (see The dragon, the old serpent, and its overcoming).

"Over the peak" by Christina Krüsi, 2016

The Serpent in Paradise

The crazy thing in this context is that the serpent in paradise has been wrongly associated with the woman! Because it symbolizes the drive and the negative anima of the man (see The Fall of Man Report and the Mystery of the Serpent).

Enmity between the "Woman" and the "Serpent" in the Fall Account

In the later account of the Fall of Man in the Bible, "the woman" is also mentioned and contrasted with the serpent. While the curse on the woman is that the man will dominate her, the curse on the serpent includes that she will "eat dust.

Moreover, enmity and struggle between the "woman" and the "serpent" and her offspring ("seed") is prophesied. The offspring of this gentle and devoted "woman" is the man who also gives himself (to the feminine) (in identification with Christ / the Messiah; Fig.: The pregnant Virgin of Remedios).

The woman, the whore and the dragon

The Revelation of the Bible

So the "woman" is also mentioned in the revelation of John, chapter 12(the twelve as a reference to the paradise). She has given birth to a child and is pursued by the DRAGON (the old SNAKE), but is preserved by Heaven. The woman represents positive femininity that gives herself out of love and makes possible new reality, symbolized by the child.

The Harlot and the Beast in Revelation

Here "the woman" stands in contrast to the "other woman", the great whore(Revelation, chapter 17), who rides the "ANIMAL" dressed in pageantry and feasts on the spilled blood of the saints. This corresponds to the negative Anima in its collective form, which signifies worldly power through seduction and delusion(White Magic). She rides on the beast, which means state power through oppression, terror and wars (Black magic).

Together they have ten "horns of power" (which correspond to the corners of the two pentagrams, see fig. right).

[S. The Whore and the Beast.]

The victory over the dragon (the old serpent), the virgin and the kingdom (of God)

The happy ending

Such prophetic images and scenarios may be frightening or terrifying, but they are always accompanied by a good message. Thus, the revelation of the Bible, as well as all significant myths, legends and fairy tales, consistently hold to the statement that love will ultimately triumph. For it overcomes even death.

Not without a fight!

In the struggle for this love (symbolized by the virgin), it is necessary to overcome the ego and the urges (symbolized by the snake and the dragon) in order to find wholeness and eternal life. This is manifested on the one hand through kingship in one's own life, and on the other hand also in the global reality of a new creation of love.

[S. Curse and Redemption in Lore; The Dragon, the Ancient Serpent, and Overcoming It; and The Hero's Path, the Way of Love].

The negative anima as whore or snake￼