International Journal of Jungian Studies

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In the nature of twins: a study of the

archetypal realm of universal duality,
opposition and imitation between the
‘first’ and ‘other’ in creation myths
a b
E. Brodersen
a
IAAP analyst , Germany
b
CPS , University of Essex , Colchester , UK
Published online: 11 Jun 2012.
To cite this article: E. Brodersen (2012) In the nature of twins: a study of the archetypal realm
of universal duality, opposition and imitation between the ‘first’ and ‘other’ in creation myths,
International Journal of Jungian Studies, 4:2, 133-149, DOI: 10.1080/19409052.2012.688845
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19409052.2012.688845
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International Journal of Jungian Studies
Vol. 4, No. 2, September 2012, 133149
In the nature of twins: a study of the archetypal realm of universal

duality, opposition and imitation between the ‘first’ and ‘other’ in
creation myths
E. Brodersena,b*
a
IAAP analyst, Germany; bCPS, University of Essex, Colchester, UK
(Received 7 November 2011; final version received 24 April 2012)
This paper explores the complex, archetypal world of twins through creation
myths. Twins are special cases of ‘two’, in that their relationship is qualitative not
quantitative: they enact the relationship between the ‘first’ and the ‘other’. I
present two early creation myths to explore the primacy of this dyadic relation-
ship before it was superseded by patrilineal primogeniture (c. 3000 BCE), which
designated ethical, fixed gender specificity to one twin over the other. I examine
which gender has been negatively affected and speculate about the reasons behind
the devaluation and disassociation. Analytical psychology, in particular the
individuation process, is relevant to this paper because Jung saw the creative value
of working experientially with the unconscious ‘shadow’ and intra-psychic
contra-sexual twin ‘other’ to help bring taboo, disassociative emotions into
mainstream cultural life.1
Keywords: twins and doubles; creation myths; archetypes; gender specificity;
scapegoat; individuation process; analytical psychology
Introduction
The concept of the ‘first’ and the ‘other’ in creation myths has played an important
role in defining belief systems, including gender specificity. It has allowed the
sacrifice of the ‘other’ because the sacrifice remains relatively undifferentiated. This
paper speculates about such relational aspects to give disenfranchised aspects of the
disinherited ‘other’ a voice.
Historically, the marked preference for the ‘first’ over the ‘other’ developed when
patrilineal inheritance replaced earlier Palaeolithic and Neolithic matrilineal, socio-
economic clan kin forms, as Morgan (1977, pp. 525554), Briffault (1931,
pp. 158178), Engels (1891, p. 95) and Coontz and Henderson (1986, p. 133) have
researched and substantiated.2 The onset of primogeniture, rationalised through the
Genesis myth and first referenced in the OT Bible (Exodus 6, 1426), originated in
the Middle East, as one source, giving the exclusive right to the first-born male heir
to protect property from diminution. I hypothesise that these two laws of inheritance
(matrilineal/patrilineal) are overlapping, developmental, inherited ‘twin’ structures
that still co-exist and compete for primacy: matrilineal (Eros/fusion) as communal/
horizontal; patrilineal (Thanatos/separation) as hierarchical/goal-orientated.
*Email: Liz.Brodersen@web.de
ISSN 1940-9052 print/ISSN 1940-9060 online

# 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19409052.2012.688845
http://www.tandfonline.com
134 E. Brodersen
Jung (1924a, paras. 446) characterises two forms of thinking: the ‘first’ form as
‘indirect’: intuitive, mythological, diffuse, pictorial; the ‘second’ form as ‘direct’:
logical, goal orientated, language orientated. These coincide with the twin develop-
mental structures I have mentioned.
As only first-born males could inherit under creationist primogeniture, dominant
‘masculine’ traits were promoted, such as kingship, physical prowess and tactical
thinking. ‘Femininity’ became defined as domesticity, passivity, subjugation, kinship
and nurture, bound to the earth, losing all ascendant, creative, heritable value. Such
stereotyped gender specificities still prevail regardless of whether they fit the
individual and show evidence of socio-economic expediency.
Why study creation myths?

Creation myths are relevant because they describe the primary, inherited property
between the creator (first being) and others who follow created from her/his
substance. For example, lineage and inheritance implies a descriptive image of some
property of the ‘first’ that is transferred to the offspring as an inherited aspect
belonging to her/him. Such myths vary in content but similar themes can be
discerned: first, the appearance of the ‘first’ as the cosmic egg or another symbolic
representation of an original unity, which appears out of nothing; second,
the splitting and separation of this unity by the appearance and development of
the unexpected ‘other’ and then ‘others’ through fractionation; third, some creation
myths enact a return to the original unity to authenticate regeneration. The night-
time disappearance (death) and daily reappearance (rebirth) of the sun or the
flooding of land and its re-emergence are such cosmogenic events.
Jung (1937, para. 180) defines the creative process between the ‘first’ and the
‘other’ as follows:
One is not a number at all; the first number is two . . . because with it, separation and
multiplication begin . . . With the appearance of the number two, ‘another’ appears
alongside the one, a happening . . . so striking that in many languages the ‘other’ and the
second are expressed by the same word . . . as soon as the number two appears, a unit is
formed out of the original unity . . . the one and the other forming an opposition. One
seeks to hold onto its one and alone existence while the other seeks to be another
opposed to the One. The One will not let go of the other because, if it did, it would lose
its character; the other pushes itself away from the One in order to exist at all.
The unfolding of the ‘one’ into a condition where it can be known to itself is the
basis of all creative twinning processes. If the process does not involve a polarity of
the ‘one’ and the ‘other’, the one, as ‘first’, remains fixed and devoid of self-reflection
or descriptive quality. Thus, one and two contain this basic structure of splitting and
doubling in order to reflect on the ‘other’, twin aspect. This structural dynamic is
seen in creation myths where twins are used as descriptive tools to illustrate how the
‘one’ develops out of the ‘other’ as dissent and difference.
Why study twins in creation myth?

A recent comparative study of actual twins (Brodersen, 2008) shows that the fixed
binary gender specificity imbued in OT Genesis myth is not innate and mirrors
earlier Palaeolithic and Neolithic creation myths that show interchangeable gender
International Journal of Jungian Studies 135
properties before the Genesis myth rationalised the superiority of the first-born male
heir. In the case of actual twins, one can discern earlier mythological influences at
play that override and overlap rather than fix gender properties, as in primogeniture.
Depending on gender and birth order, whether twins are ‘identical’ (monozygotic;
MZ) or ‘non-identical’ (dizygotic; DZ), a splitting and projective identification
occurs between the ‘first’-born twin and the ‘other’3 making the first-born twin of
either sex gender dominant. For example, a second-born, same-sex twin girl, whether
MZ or DZ or not, tends to develop metaphorically ‘Thanatos/logos’ traits, such as
interest in academia, because the ‘feminine’ is already allocated to her first-born
sister. She is subtly excluded from a matrilineal Eros identification because her active
role is to promote her sister’s prior claim not her own. Similarly, second-born, same-
sex boy twins, whether MZ or DZ, tend to inherit matrilineal/Eros properties
because access to Thanatos/patrilineal traits is already allocated to his first-born
brother. Although through this selection process, one twin (aspect) has been
sacrificed for the legitimate ‘other’, the second born simultaneously widens
access to disenfranchised contra-sexual ‘other’ properties hitherto closed under
primogeniture.
Etymologically, the definition of ‘twin’ denotes both union and separation
(Lash, 1993, p. 8). It was used in the Middle Ages as a transitive verb meaning to
split or divide but also to ‘join’, ‘juxtapose’ or ‘combine’ into one. Later, more
meaning was given to joining together. The word ‘twin’ derives from a common set of
roots such as TWI, ZWI, the Latin B, linking it to ‘twine’ and ‘twilight’. Twine is
twisted thread like DNA, the master chemical directing all processes of life and
death; twilight is that dual, ambiguous state where light intermingles with dark.
Twin-ship thus intimates a wider form of symbolic relationship. In myth, both
types of twins, MZ and DZ, appear, because not all lookalike or double entities are
‘twins’: twins appear as a motif when enough similarity exists for ‘one’ to be
sacrificed or substituted for the ‘other’ (ibid, p. 8). Twins can thus be described as an
idiosyncratic duo bonded by specific activities such as inversion, imitation,
substitution and sacrifice. ‘Twinning’ describes the creative, overlapping, displacing
relationship that not only exists between actual twins but also in non-twins as the
symbolic activity of the unconscious, intra-psychic, contra-sexual twin ‘other’.
Why Eros and Thanatos as archetypal twins?

I have named these two distinct, ‘twin’, ordering patterns at work within creation
myths, actual twins and non-twins as archetypal phenomena: life giving Eros as
primordial desire that fuses; Thanatos which separates and divides. Jung (1938, para.
136) defines archetypes as inherited possibilities, irrepresentable in themselves but
discernible in images and motifs that describe their structural elements. He saw the
task of each generation as being to reinterpret their meaning to avoid cultural sterility
and inertia. I use the terms Eros and Thanatos as twins within that framework.
Eros, Greek god of love, single offspring of Aphrodite, is imagined as an
androgynous cherub holding a bow and arrow personifying a life-giving eroticism
that attracts, draws and fixes.4 He/she encompasses a wide spectrum of properties:
from the desire for fusion and containment, at the one end, to death- like attributes
of entrapment and suffocation at the other. Skeleton-faced, Thanatos, winged Greek
god of death, son of Nix, Greek goddess of night, depicted holding an hourglass with
the sands of time, collects the dead to take them to Hades when their time runs out.
136 E. Brodersen
Sometimes he carries a butterfly in one hand, symbolising his ambivalent,

transformative dual function as carrier of souls. At other times, Thanatos is depicted
as the beloved twin son being held in the arms of his mother, Nix, showing a similar
closeness to mother as Eros to Aphrodite. Thanatos can appear in devilish female
form personifying the complex, ambivalent relationship between sexuality, separa-
tion and dissent.
Thanatos images5 emphasise the ambivalent, transformative role that the death
instinct plays in unconsciously motivating and influencing separation, dissent,
abandonment and sacrifice for the purpose of facilitating autonomy, regeneration
and independent thinking. In Greek mythology, Eros and Thanatos are both depicted
as winged youths beloved by mother, who display similarity as well as intrinsic
differences. Their ability to overlap, influence and displace each other qualifies them as
imaginary symbolic twins. By being personified as descriptive ‘twin’ images, rather
than just meaningful academic ideas (cf. Marcuse, 1955/1987), Eros and Thanatos
become alive to experiential, emotional interplay as well as intellectual discourse.
The separating force of Thanatos has been negatively associated with death and
evil because distance from the safe primal source feels so negative, treacherous and
abandoning (cf. Bowlby, 1973/1998; Holmes, 1993). Such a movement, however, is
essential in establishing reflection and free will. As the separating force, freed from
attachment, Thanatos also attracts the fear and hatred of having to undergo the
necessary sacrifice (symbolic death) in attaining logos. Jung, himself, amplifies logos
as the ‘Luciferian’ principle (1938, pp. 1789; 1951a, p. 230). Eros, on the other hand,
viewed as attachment, personifies all the warmer qualities that fusion and
dependency bring. Creative life can be said to unfold in the space in-between these
two forces as they interact. An unequal twin relationship, that is, too much
interaction or distance, results in Eros becoming too fixated and infantile, while
Thanatos becomes authoritarian and dried out.
Jung’s analysis of Eros combines both ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ relational aspects
(1951b, para. 29). He (1943, paras.19; 3334) also mentions the relationship between
Eros and Freud’s death instinct (Thanatos). Although Freud (1938, pp. 390388)
characterises two classes of instincts (love/Eros; hatred/death) as dualistic, cosmogenic
forces, he emphasises the emotional impact of hatred as the primary counter force,
rather than seeing separation as an innate archetypal force in itself, which attracts
‘hatred’ to it. Freud does not consider separation as an intrinsic drive, perhaps because
this would bring into question the basis of the authoritarian, monistic structure of the
super-ego or ego ideal. He focuses on the need to imitate, jealously covet or usurp that
authority, interpreting aggression or the death drive, literally, as ‘anti-life’, instead of a
symbolic manifestation of a higher purpose, such as individuation. Although Freud’s
id has a rebellious component, it remains structured and personified as an unconscious
‘taboo’, literalised sexual instinct, and is handled as such. Jung’s definition of ‘shadow’
(1951b, paras. 1319; 1948a, paras. 239303; 1954a. paras. 514543; 1954b. paras.
654789) transforms Freud’s concept of id through the individuation process by
questioning the need to submit to that collective authority.
Theoretical framework
Girard (1977/2005, pp. 5970; 2004, pp. 2836) hypothesises that the theoretical
framework behind the ‘first’ and the ‘other’ as twins can be analysed as
intergenerational psychological conflicts that do not feed on differences but on
resemblances, constantly elicited by their identical aims and convergences. Each

generation blocks the ‘other’ in the desire to compete for the same inheritance as
being created ‘first’. Reinterpreting Eros and Thanatos as interlocking, symbolic
twins that affect not only the unconscious behaviour of actual twins but intra-psychic
processes in non-twins is a useful tool in gaining an imaginative access to the hidden,
complex scapegoat mechanism behind the growth in consciousness attached to
creation myths. The age-old intergenerational conflict between desiring unity (Eros/
matrilineal) and willing separation (Thanatos/patrilineal) is personified through the
symbolic activity of ‘twins’ who qualify it.
Desiring to be father/mother while still retaining his/her blessing as the
obedient heir is the main psychological dilemma behind heritability. How can
one usurp the father/mother without diminishing the power invested in his/her
inherited creative position as ‘first’ and be blamed for treachery as it passes
through the generations? I argue that this double bind is symbolically re-enacted
by splitting one twin aspect into ‘good/safe’ and the other into ‘bad/risky’. The sex
and birth order of each twin aspect influences which symbolic twin, Eros or
Thanatos, has primacy.
In this way, one impulse will be disinherited and abandoned according to gender
collective specificity so that the other is forgiven, blessed and worthy of inheritance.
The abandonment of one impulse, in the act of separation from grace, re-establishes
the necessary intergenerational distance and degree so that the other as ‘first’ may
inherit and procreate to ensure the next generation. Twins have been used in creation
myths to highlight and personify this crucial dilemma and they do it so well because
they themselves lack the perceived distance and degree as separate entities. One twin
can be saved, the other damned, without anyone noticing any vital loss or having to
acknowledge the subtle, splitting mechanism at play that decrees the outcome.
Twentieth- and twenty-first-century psychoanalytical (Freudian and post-Freu-
dian) and archetypal (Jungian and post-Jungian) psychologies analyse creation
myths as the nearest morphological approximation of unconscious psychic processes.
Jung (1924b, paras. 351354), for example, uses the Egyptian myth of Osiris, the
incestuous twin sun king, who undergoes death, dismemberment and resurrection, as
analogous with the individuation process, the hazardous journeying into the
unconscious at night (the setting of the sun) and its rebirth the next day. For
Jung, the creative, incestuous twin fusion takes place symbolically, not literally,
between the twins (ego/day; unconscious/night) resulting in a revitalisation of the ego
as the emergent self.
von Franz (1972, pp. 91131) stresses that the frequent appearance in
cosmologies worldwide of twin deities and first-born pairs as a dyadic structure
precedes the monotheistic structure implied in Genesis of a single, male god creator.
The twins are sometimes creator gods and sometimes the first generation of created
human beings, both mixed and same sex. von Franz discusses how ‘one’ twin
personifies ego consciousness and the ‘other’ unconscious ‘shadow’ aspects, showing
how the twins further subdivide and multiply through a process of twinning
fractionation.
Eliade (1969, pp. 127175) emphasises that mythic twins personify the non-
resolving dyad in creative developmental processes, shown in creation myths, hence
their regenerative power: one twin is light, the other dark, continually displacing each
other and generating a perpetual emotional tidal change. Neumann (1970,
pp. 352353) correctly stresses the vitality of the divisive dark twin, as creative
138 E. Brodersen
antagonist, ‘the keeper of the gate’, at the threshold to wholeness. Dark, skeleton-
faced Thanatos is feared because she/he introduces ‘finite’ time as a quickening
impulse to change, which challenges safe, collective norms. Fearful emotions
attached to change are invariably personified by an equally threatening image. By
contrast, Eros, as youthful Cherub remains forever unchanged, protected from
ageing by the ‘infinite’ possibilities of fusion.
Ancient symbolic figurative expressions prefigure the dual structure of DNA, the
double helix, discovered in 1953, as the twinning parenting substance of all organic
life. For example, the Cosmic Giant or Primordial God, dual and androgyne, seen in
the Hindu icon of Shiva-Kali, the Ardhanarishvara, is a twin entity, male on the one
side, female on the other. The combining of both sexes into a single androgynous
form as the first creator before the sexes separate into diverse functions appears in
figurines dating back to Palaeolithic times (Gimbutas, 1989, pp. 161173). For
example, female figurines with wide hips merging into upright phalluses make it
difficult to tell whether these figures are masculine or feminine in form (Joyce, 2008,
pp. 5355). Such ancient representations celebrate the knowledge that the
regenerative power of the cosmos is dyadic, restoring confidence in accessing
hitherto repressed ‘taboo’ aspects of the unconscious contra-sexual ‘other’ as part of
the conscious ego’s legitimate inherited gender specificity.
Walker (2002, pp. 324) sees the key to understanding the Jungian approach to
myth as lying in its unique concept of the archetypal image. By re-emphasising
‘indirect’, mythological, symbolic imaginology over language construction, Jungian
and post-Jungian psychology radically differs from other psychologies (Freudian/
Lacanian) in its interpretative approach (Adams, 2001/2010, pp. 334371). For Jung,
myth represents instinctual, ordering patterns that are culturally re-experienced by
working experientially with their images. Archetypes can be interpreted as living,
inherited dispositions that continually compensate thought, enabling the essential
laws of human nature to manifest as physical phenomena (Jung, 1943, paras. 151,
184; Knox, 2003, pp. 4069). Jung sees a need to apprehend ideas in the form of
dynamic images because an image unites disparities more effectively than intellectual
understanding through language.
Such richness of expression found in creation myths is best reproduced through a
careful expansion not reduction of mythical images into figurative symbols where
none of their complex, emotional meaning is lost (Hillman, 1989, pp. 213231). The
symbolic content of archetypal images is thus not only re-experienced but allows for
an animated, regenerative, experiential, teleological awareness of their value (Jung,
1948b, para. 199). I amplify Eros and Thanatos as overlapping, archetypal twins
within this archetypal, interpretative tradition.
Creation myths reveal a dyadic structure that is influenced by climate and topography
I have chosen two early Neolithic creation myths, from Egypt and Wales, to illustrate
how twins personify overlapping, interchangeable gender traits before land became
the fixed property of one sex, which deprived the ‘other’ of heritable value. Both
myths show that different topographical and climatic conditions influence the
relational qualitative possibilities between the twins. I have not, as yet, found other
sources that interpret myth accordingly.
Egyptian cosmogony
The following early Egyptian creation myth reveals a systemisation of mythological
material that retains the intricacies of an archaic dyadic structure, which is then
replicated and further differentiated in the form of twins (Lamy, 1981/1997, pp. 12
16; Lash, 1993, pp. 1011). Each twin as ‘one’ (Eros/Thanatos) and the ‘other’
(Thanatos/Eros) are gender interchangeable.
This version,6 dating back to c. 3000 BCE and written down in the Pyramid Texts
of Dynasties V and V1 (Lichteim, 1973) but of earlier Neolithic origin, envisages, at
the beginning, a limitless ocean of inert, unstructured water, described as a dual
primeval being called Nun. Nun embodies the all-receiving, congealing aspects of
desire that attract and bind (Eros). Out of Nun springs Atum in a creative act of
separation, incorporating divisive risk-taking aspects (Thanatos). Atum is epigenetic
and self-articulate, standing on a raised mound, an image suggestive of the banks
that re-emerge after the Nile’s seasonal inundation. Neumann (1970, pp. 102127)
depicts the growth of ego consciousness as the creation of an island, which stands
above the unconscious having differentiated and separated itself from its primal
unity.
Atum, as this active, creative principle, gives birth to a mixed sex, twin offspring:
Shu and Tefnut. Wind god, Shu, is interpreted as the mucus of Atum; Tefnut as his/
her spit. Shu, whose name derives from a root indicating to ‘rise’, performs the epic
feat of division by separating heaven from earth. Quirke (2001, p. 32) interprets the
first division in creation between moist and dry rather than cohesion and separation
but to my mind those emotional qualities include the latter description. For her part,
Tefnut personifies moisture, the spit or glue, generating cohesion in keeping with her
inherited binding powers (Eros) from Nun, but in a now differentiated, conscious
form containing aspects of the ‘other’ (Atum). Lioness-headed, Tefnut escapes a too
fixed specificity: despite association with spit/water, binding attributes of Nun,
Tefnut has also inherited access to Atum’s dynamic, divisive, exploratory, ‘double’
lion nature (Thanatos).7
When Shu and Tefnut depart to explore the darkness, Atum creates a right eye,
the sun, from his forehead, which he sends out as a ball of light to guide the twins
back safely. This right eye is personified by the lioness-headed goddess, Sekhmet,
who embodies both breasts and a penis. Atum/Ra gives Sekhmet, as an active
attribute of Thanatos/logos, the role of seeking out injustices and enacting punish-
ment by death on those who transgress and betray Atum/Ra’s authority. Sekhmet’s
powerful image personifies the composite, dual emotional aspects of containment
(breasts) and the fear of separation and punishment imbued in the upright phallus.
In the absence of his right eye, Atum creates a new, second orb from the left side of
his forehead: the cooler, reflective moon, personified by the moon-goddess, Hathor.
Through Atum’s further process of self-fractionation, one could argue that lion-
headed Tefnut is further differentiated as daughter into two further aspects of Atum/
Ra’s twin ‘other’: the fierce consciousness of the day-time sun and the gentler
coolness of the moon’s night-time vision (Pinch, 1994, pp. 2325).
The twins, Shu and Tefnut, then replicate themselves, incestuously, in an
interesting gender reversal as personified by their twin offspring, Geb and Nut,
Earth and Sky. This time, Eros is viewed as ‘masculine’ in the form of Geb, the
supine (Eros) fructifying Earth principle, while his twin sister personifies the
ascendency and separation of the sky, as sky goddess, Nut. Nut’s body stretches
140 E. Brodersen
over Geb to procreate, but having given birth to four children, Osiris, Isis, Seth,
Nephthys, as two sets of twins, Shu separates Geb and Nut further to create space for
Nut’s ascendant function of protecting the sun god on his daily journey across the
firmament.
As Quirke (2001, p. 103) suggests, the sun god Atum/Ra is passively led by an
active Nut across the firmament. One can discern through a process of twinning and
fractionation that the original passivity of Nun has transformed into a dynamic Nut,
a finite, structured form with progressive, descriptive traits through incorporating
Thanatos’ twin aspects. The ornate paintings of Nut in the sarcophagus hall of the
tomb of Ramesses VI (11561148 BC) in the Valley of the Kings, for example, show
her ascendant function as a sky deity, revealing how the sun god, Atum/ Ra, travels
along her arched body (Lamy, 1981/1997, p. 42; Quirke, 2001, pp. 5561). At the end
of each measured, deified 12-hour day, Atum/Ra is swallowed by Nut in the west,
where he travels along her underside to be reborn at dawn in the east. Redness at
dusk and dawn symbolises the death process when the sun ‘dies’ and the blood of
parturition associated with the daily rebirth.
Each of Geb and Nut’s four children acts as a bridge between cosmogony and the
cratogonic transmission of kingship (Assmann, 1984, pp. 119121). Each twin
marries the equivalent contra-sexual ‘other’: Osiris, first-born male heir marries Isis,
first-born female, who were already together in the womb indicating their twin status;
second-born twin, Seth, marries second-born daughter, Nephthys. In keeping with
the ‘first’ and ‘second’, both second-born twins personify ‘shadow’ qualities of the
‘first’, such as disobedience and treachery imbued in separation and autonomy (Seth/
Thanatos) and a devouring, suffocating inertia (Nephthys/Eros) from staying too
long in the womb (cf. Spence, 1915/1990, p. 98; Walker, 1983, p. 454).
Competition between light and darkness is enacted between same-sex male twins,
in this case first-born, Osiris, and second-born, Seth, who questions and challenges
the legitimacy of Osiris as he completes his cycle as Egyptian sun king. Osiris is killed
and overthrown by Seth, the divisive, second-born twin, once Osiris enters the realm
of the dead, ruled by Seth. In other words, the sun king (logos/consciousness) must
enter the dark (chaos/unconscious) in an act first of separation from the known and
second of assimilation to be daily reborn. The ‘first’ can only keep her/his creative
position by interacting and mixing together with the underworld ‘other’. Out of the
overlapping, widening of their spheres, creativity is regenerated.
This intense interplay between light and dark (first and second) is amplified in the
Egyptian Book of the Dead (Quirke, 2001, pp. 4753; Taylor, 2010, pp. 146147)
where each of the 12 hours of the sun’s underworld travel is minutely depicted. Seth
himself personifies the Lord of the Underworld/Thanatos, who challenges survival of
the sun king as ‘first’. Without this warring interplay and the courageous, divisive
questioning of authority of the king as ‘first’ in the frightening form of Seth/
Thanatos, there is no psychic renewal. Each of Seth’s minions as animal ‘twin’
manifestations (rams, baboons, lions, snakes, hawks) both embodies and simulta-
neously absorbs the intense fear of the ego when confronted with unconscious
‘shadow’ twin content.
Creative intervention appears in the form of Isis, as protective mother and
overseer of the sun, who regenerates Osiris. Isis and Nephthys, first and second born
twin daughters of Nut, combine forces to mitigate the power of darkness/chaos
personified by Seth. As Seth’s wife, Nephthys unexpectedly mourns the loss of the
sun, revealing an unconscious intra-psychic aspect of Seth, personified by his wife
(Eros), in its important ambivalent, transformative aspect. The two women gather
together the dead parts of Osiris/Ra so that Isis can incestuously mate with Osiris to
create a new sun/son, Horus/Ra. With the help of Isis and Nephthys, as ‘first/ego’
and ‘second/shadow’ same sex twin personifications, Horus arises out of the
underworld, having defeated the forces of ‘death’ personified by Seth, as the second
born ‘shadow’ male twin.
Interestingly, although Seth has been cheated out of victory, as the last endurance
test before sunrise, Horus/Ra must travel through ‘death’ in the form of a snake
(symbol of sexuality and separation) to be reborn within that knowledge (Lamy,
1981/1997, pp. 6263; Spence, 1915, pp. 116118; Taylor, 2010, pp. 186187), light
and dark forces recombining to create a new dawn. The battle for primacy between
the ‘first’ and ‘second’ twins continues in Egyptian cosmology as a non-resolving
‘twin’ dynamic as Seth continues to challenge the sun king, reborn as Horus, with the
argument that he has a superior claim as brother of the old king and, therefore,
Horus’s kin elder!8 Such prior matrilineal, intergenerational claims by an uncle
(brother of the dead queen/king) over the king’s first born son primogeniture rights
are imaginatively represented in plays such as Sophocles’ Antigone (King Creon) and
Shakespeare’s Hamlet (King Claudius).
The above-mentioned creation myth shows an intense, symbolic preoccupation
and investment in the sun-god, particularly with his abandonment at night. Each of
the 12 hours of his disappearance is imaginatively monitored so carefully that he
never really goes out of sight. This creation myth developed out of topography where
the river Nile and its delta is the single main source of water. The Nile has no
tributaries. Its single, annual, cyclical inundation of the land has influenced and
stylised Egyptian cultural consciousness, so when the sun sinks in the west, it sinks
into a dry, western mountainous terrain. Little rain in predominately desert
landscape does little to mitigate the sun’s intense power. With the establishment of
patrilineal inheritance, the ‘feminine’ loses her original, static ‘earthy’ power invested
in Nun and ascends into the sky as inspirational muse and protective mother (Nut/
Isis) as well as a fierce proponent of punishment/justice (Sekhmet).
von Franz (1972, pp. 7480) specifically asks why Egyptian cosmogony features a
sky goddess instead of a sky god as in other cultures and suggests that the Egyptians
were more preoccupied with their symbolic existence as star gods in the after-life
than with their earthly existence. To become a Ba, an immortal sky star, they needed
safe passage into the ‘netherland’ and re-birth facilitated by mother Isis as sky
goddess. I would also suggest that the unconscious, fertile, earthiness of the contra-
sexual twin ‘other’ is relatively limited in Egypt due to the lack of water. The original,
inert, gluey nature of Nun as Eros, even when differentiated and transformed into
Isis, is easily displaced by the king as strong (hot), as the Egyptian sun god and his
same sex, second-born twin brother as they battle it out for primacy. One could argue
that Isis merely adjudicates this battle for inheritability; she makes no direct claim
herself, as reflected by her stylised, mediatory role as sky goddess, not as an earthy,
messy mother ‘nature’ emotionally attached to and personally involved in the
physical well-being of the land.
Welsh cosmogony
The following Welsh/Cymric orally transmitted creation myth originates c. 6000
BCE. Thought to be collected, written down and translated into English in
142 E. Brodersen
The Mabinogion during the twelfth century (Gantz,1976), it reveals how open sea, a
moist, temperate, maritime climate on the north-western seaboard influences the
relationship between ‘first’ twin and ‘other’ as inherited gender impulses. This early
Welsh/Cymric creation myth, still part of current, oral folklore tradition in South
Wales, features Ceridwen, nature moon goddess of creation and of the Gulf Stream,
who, in the form of an old white sow (Hen Wen) swims around Wales giving form to
its landscape as she passes by (Danes, 2002, p. 113; Stewart & Williamson, 1996,
p. 42).
In this Welsh creation myth, Ceridwen, as Hen Wen, swims out of the sea in the
morning of the world. She swims ashore at Gwyneth in South Wales and whisks from
her ear a grain of wheat so this part of Wales called Gwent today is the finest for
wheat growing. Hen Wen then swims around Dyfed and takes from her ear a grain of
barley and a bee, so that honey and beer are produced there. Hen Wen swims north
and lands in Caernarfon. There, she shakes from her ear a wolf cub and an eagle
chick in order to reflect upon its craggy, mountainous terrain. Hen Wen, swims
further north past Mon, Island of Angelsey (Mon Mam Cymru, mother of Wales)
where she shakes out a kitten into the sea. It becomes a whirlpool, Palwg’s cat.
Ceridwen’s Cauldron is thought to exist under this whirlpool deep in the sea in
Annwn, Welsh for the ‘Otherworld’.
Ceridwen does not personify the original, passively inert metaphorically
‘feminine’ aspect of the Egyptian Eros, Nun, or in its abstracted, cultivated form
personified by Isis. Ceridwen has a certain similarity to the Egyptian sky goddess,
Nut, but in a much earthier, less abstracted form. The Egyptian and Welsh creation
myths both depict their creation goddesses as sows to stress the fecundity and
nurturing elements of the moon goddess who eats up the stars and re-cycles them as
food (Chevalier & Gheerbrandt, 1982) but Ceridwen is forceful in herself. Unlike the
OT Genesis myth, Egyptian and Welsh myths use female animals as matrilineal
functions.
Wales, as peninsula, surrounded by open sea, composed of rivers, tributaries and
lakes, has a very different topography from Egypt’s desert terrain and was far
removed geographically from the influence of the Middle East, which enhanced
primogeniture around 3000 BCE. Creativity is perceived as ‘matrilineal’ emerging
from an open, active, choppy, watery terrain rather than a passive, gluey container
and embodies, therefore, that character. Separation (Thanatos) from the original
container takes the form of an active, autonomous, ‘self same’ feminine force in
contrast to the Egyptian creation myth where the separating force, Atum, is
perceived as ‘masculine’. Embodied as Hen Wen, the feminine intuitively ‘hears’ what
it needs, producing it accordingly.
The relationship of the sun god, Hu, and nature goddess, Ceridwen, as
personified in Welsh creation myth, is one of primal equality and cooperation.
Both impulses seem to have existed equally and separately as ‘first’ from the
beginning in their individual roles of dispelling darkness (Ford, 1977; Graves, 1948/
1997). As Hu’s presence is bright but temperate, Ceridwen takes an active role in
dispelling darkness herself. Hu’s power is mitigated by all-year-round rain and wind,
which act as shields to protect the earth from too much of his influence. The earth,
therefore, yields new growth more easily than in countries that suffer hotter summers
or colder winters where the earth is either scorched or ice bound for half the year.
This cooperative, twinning, democratic relationship has led to more imaginative
‘in-between’ possibilities.
The sun god Hu’s imaginative sovereign representative in ancient Britain is never
historically as absolute a ‘first’ as in Egypt. His strength and influence are tempered
by his ‘shadow’ chief advisor and shaman, the druid, who has access to tribal
memories in the collective unconscious. As personifications of light (logos) and dark
(shadow) these twin manifestations work well together to cultivate and transform the
landscape by honouring both aspects (Dames, 2002). The druid is able to accompany
the red sun as it/he sinks because, as a personification of mercury, he/she can
withstand the sun’s intense heat without drying up. As Jung (1952, paras. 8890)
points out, the personification of mercury as Mercurius with his/her quicksilver
qualities is a suitable symbol for the fluid, mobile intellect required for creativity as
both ‘spirit’ and ‘water’.
Hu’s earthly symbolic representation takes the form of the dragon’s head
(Pendragon) as it sinks into the open sea in the west. The Welsh King, therefore,
carries the flag of Pendragon, the image of the red dragon breathing fire as it sinks
and arises the next day. In oral history, King Arthur as representative of the sinking
sun god travels with his ‘shadow’ twin counterpart, the Druid Merlin, in a glass ship,
symbolising both sun and water, through the Otherworld to dialogue with the
ancestors. Unlike warring, competitive Osiris and Seth as ‘first’ and ‘second’
Egyptian twin sons, these two personifications of light and dark have a cooperative
relationship. Their goal is not to facilitate the personal aggrandisement of ‘one’ over
the ‘other’ but to enhance the courage of dissent through renewed contact with their
ancestral spirits who speak to them through special portals during specific daily/
seasonal time-framed, regenerative cycles.
Mythological King Arthur and Druid Merlin, thought to have existed in fifth
century AD Britain during the Saxon invasion, have much earlier Neolithic symbolic
roots as twin (light and dark) representations of the sun when it sinks at night into
Annwn. Annwn, Welsh for Otherworld, is imagined as containing crystal fortresses,
rotating portals and glass ships, giving images of a restless watery expanse of sunken
treasure, difficult to access in a moving, churning twilight of tidal currents and deep,
swirling caverns (Spence, 1945/1999, pp. 129133). It has significant imaginative
differences from the Egyptian underworld. It is not a dark, judgemental place but a
twilight zone of mediation where the living sun (light) dialogues with the ancestral
dead (darkness) in a mixing of the two that promotes inspirational thinking and the
renewal of the cultural landscape (Spence, Ibid, pp. 129131). This brew is found in
Ceridwen’s cauldron not just as the dragon’s head that talks prophesy and gives
advice but as inspirational liquid that creates new ideas by connecting consciousness
(light) with the presence of the ancestors (dark) who, having symbolically ‘lived
through’ death, engender active courage, psychic roots and tribal wisdom.
Ceridwen brews the potion in her cauldron that transforms darkness into wisdom
(Ford, 1977, pp. 159181). Grigsby (2002, pp. 177189) speculates that the later
medieval version of the wounded fisher king and the search for the missing grail, also
connected with Arthurian legend, attempts to re-establish the creative link to earlier,
disassociated, Neolithic matrilineal kin care structures.9 Darkness is, therefore,
personified by Ceridwen’s son, Affagdu, whom she describes as the ‘ugliest boy in the
world’. She gives a servant boy, Gwion Bach, the onerous task of stirring this potion
for one year and a day, who accidentally spills three drops of the hot potion onto his
thumb. He sucks his thumb and gains the immediate knowledge and wisdom meant
for Affagdu. In her rage, Ceridwen pursues Gwion; both shape-shift, undergoing
transformations that result in Gwion becoming reborn as Taliesen, the enlightened
144 E. Brodersen
bard and druid. The druid, therefore, is not only the son of Ceridwen but also of the
sun god, because he is swallowed by Ceridwen at Lugsassad. This particular Celtic
fire festival honours and imitates the power of the sun god, Hu, at his most potent
when the sun symbolically mates with the earth at mid-summer, the longest day.
This myth illustrates how the three drops from Ceridwen’s cauldron becomes
Awen (Stewart & Williamson, ibid., p. 33). Awen represents the first inspirational
three rays of sun at the beginning of February, the Cymric/Welsh New Year, which
has the power to transform darkness, even unintentionally, bringing forth rebirth and
consciousness. Taliesin is another image for the rebirth of the druid, Merlin/Emrys.
He combines both light/dark and young/old forces, transcending the ‘good’ and ‘bad’
twin opposites. Druids, as shamanic ‘initiates’, embody the wisdom of their ancestors
as their ‘living dead’ because they enter the Otherworld, mediate with the dead,
recollect the lost treasure (soul aspects) and bring them into consciousness for the
benefit of the collective (Merchant, 2011, pp. 822). In depth psychology, this
imaginative work is analogous to working with the unconscious ‘inferior’ function,
often devalued and gender specific (von Franz, 1971/1998, pp. 812). Dialoguing
with such ‘taboo’ content can legitimise, for example, ‘thinking’ for women and
‘feeling’ for men, reprioritising the ego’s ‘superior’ inherited claim.
Eliade (1996, p. 188) suggests that water symbolises the ‘primal substance which
exists at the beginning and returns at the end of each cosmic or historic cycle’. In
countries where the sun sinks into the open sea at night rather than into fixed,
enclosed terrain, one could speculate, people may experience greater long-term
transformative possibilities. For maritime peoples on the western seaboard, following
the sun’s passage in boats as it sank in the west encouraged not only to the discovery
of new lands on the horizon but promoted the questioning of received knowledge.
Their ontological pre-occupations differed from cultures that did not venture into
that unknown territory (Sharkey, 1975, pp. 1820). Following the sun as it sank
pushed the limit between the known (life/logos) and unknown (death/chaos),
opening up new spaces on the edge of existence. Ancient Britons developed an
intense, ontological pre-occupation with these ‘in between’ realms involved with
pushing back old boundaries, overstepping them and establishing new ones.
Evaluation
When comparing these two creation myths, I notice, first, that both myths stress
matrilineal kin structures in evolutionary animal form as ascendant forces and
challenge Neumann’s (1970, p. 125) creationist assumption that the separating/
ascendant function is uniquely ‘masculine/patrilineal’ in nature. Until the recent past,
seeing women ‘first’ as elemental, inspirational muses/mothers (matrilineal/Eros)
excluded them from ‘secondary’ ascendant, divisive qualities, such as independent
thinking and a separate will (patrilineal/Thanatos).
Second, due to the different typography and climate, the Welsh mythological
feminine is more open, active and autonomous in creating the landscape. Ceridwen
does not personify the passive, binding function of the Egyptian Nun or the over-
idealised maternal function of Isis. Instead, she personifies both intra-psychic
creative ‘twin’ aspects of the container/womb (Eros) and the muscles to actively push
forward, separate and give new life (Thanatos), essential for rebirth. Without such
muscles, creative life stagnates, suffocates and dies (Shearer, 1996, p. 272).
Third, the relationship between the ‘first’ and ‘other’ same-sex male twins in
Egyptian cosmogony reveals an essentially antagonistic power play between the first
(Osiris/Horus/Eros) and second born twin (Seth/Thanatos), one personifying the
‘good’, visible aspects of creativity, the other the hidden fear of death attached to
separation into unknown territory. Such fear has led to the domination of the ‘first’
as light/consciousness over the ‘second’ as the feared ‘other’, resulting in an over-
evaluation of the sun king’s safe, containing authority as rational (logos) and a gross
devaluation of the earth (‘feminine’) as transient and irrational, needing ‘over-
coming’. Neumann (1970, p. 158) uncritically asserts: ‘mother, womb, the pit and hell
are all identical’.
Welsh cosmogony, by contrast, depicts a paradise on earth without the need to
ascend into heaven or descend into hell. The Other World of their living dead is a
tangible, benign force. The inherited relationship between the ‘first’ and the ‘other’
twin is cooperative and does not lead to despotism of one over the other. Authority is
tempered and influenced by a democratic dark-twin force esteemed in equal measure
(Stewart, 1986, p. 162). Fear of separation and loss and the courageous, imaginative
overcoming of it can transform a culture into one capable of challenging authority
without the need to scapegoat one twin as ‘damned’.
As archetypal twins, Eros and Thanatos, through creation myth, re-enact the age-
old, conflictual, developmental inter-play between containment and separation, both
overlapping and possessing earth/matrilineal and sky/sun/patrilineal elements. Eros,
androgynous cherub, Aphrodite’s offspring, is messenger between both realms. He/
she personifies earthy aspects of an innocent, nubile youth, fused to mother before
separation, but also possesses the infinite, everlasting, safe qualities of the sky god,
untouched by death and time. Thanatos, on the other hand, personifies risky
separation punishable by death, but also embodies the close relationship with the
night as the cooling ‘other’ symbolic container, in the absence of heated emotions. As
Nix’s offspring, Thanatos transforms absence into an accompanying courage and
insurrection. As the ‘twin’ adviser and adversary of the sun god, Thanatos also
embraces the ‘shadow’ twin message of separation and abandonment and resists its
death like grip, transforming fear into courage, action and change. Evoking
Thanatos as the divisive twin ‘other’ amplifies the success of and the fear behind
the sun’s tyrannical power without succumbing to it, but, instead, calling his/her
bluff.
Conclusion
Through using the concept of archetypal ‘twins’, interpersonally and intra-
psychically, these two creation myths offer a unique opportunity to hypothesise
how the ‘first’ and the ‘other’ came into being and how the sexes inherited specific
developmental gender qualities to personify two basic ordering impulses: Eros/fusion
and Thanatos/separation. Re-examining their initial relationship frees-up too fixed
patrilineal gender specificities into flexible matrilineal kin forms available to the ego.
How these archetypal energies concretise is influenced by climate and topography.
Such myths show how ‘twins’ are used imaginatively to expand consciousness
through a dialectical process of incest/fusion, then splitting and projective
identification. One twin personifies the positive, ‘safe’ aspects of creation, the other
its negative, ‘divisive’ aspects. Through this process of fractionation between ‘good’
and ‘bad’ twins, original unity splits and expands, acquiring finite shapes and content
146 E. Brodersen
that qualify and reflect upon other aspects as different, descriptive entities. The unit
of two expands and differentiates consciousness into further units of twos by using
multiple sets of twins as I show in the Egyptian creation myth.
Creation myths illustrate how ethical shading between twins belongs to more
advanced cultures that developed punitive property laws, such as primogeniture, but
they also show that democracy depends on whether ‘unacceptable’, projected twin
differences can also be dialogued with consciously, not split off and scape-goated as
the devilish, matrilineal ‘other’. Creation myths offer invaluable information in
explaining why the ‘other’ is sacrificed. Such information leads to questioning of our
own unfair societal practices of displacing our differences onto ‘others’.
Notes
1. This paper is part of a chapter in condensed form on creation myths from my current PhD
research thesis on twins.
2. All these scholars delineate evidence of a changeover from earlier egalitarian Paleolithic,
Neolithic matrilineal-subsistence, socio-economic kin-clan forms to property ownership
that became fixed hierarchically under patrilineal primogeniture. Despite Morgan’s
unfortunate nineteenth century labeling of ‘savages’ and ‘barbarians’ to delineate
Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures, his work on inheritance structures during those periods
is non-pejorative.
3. The term ‘identical’ twin is misleading because MZ twins do not possess the same genotype,
as was previously believed. Segal (1999, pp. 2135) lists several intrauterine influences that
result in some MZ twins of different appearance, even sex. MZ twins, in fact, do not possess
the same genotype as a result of epigenesis, that is, genetic modifications occurring after
initial chromosome formation (cf. Gringras & Chen, 2001, pp 10511). Joseph (2004,
pp. 1466) summaries twin research methodologies to date that have largely ignored
environmental influences.
4. Images of Eros include:
i) Lambert Sustris (c.1560) Eros and Aphrodite Louvre, Paris, shows the close relationship
of Eros to his mother.
ii) Parmigianino (c. 15331535) Cupid Making His Arch, Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna
iii) Juraij Subic (18551890) Flying Cupid, detail of the ceiling in the Numismatic Museum
Athens.
iv) The image of Winged Eros Thanatos with reversed torch and crossed legs c. 300AD at
the Ancient Agora museum in Athens intimates the overlapping, substituting relationship
between Eros and Thanatos.
5. Thanatos already has a twin brother, Hypnos, and is used to sharing mother’s attention.
He/she passes that relational quality to Eros, Aphrodite’s single offspring. Images of
Thanatos include:
i) Thanatos as a winged and sword girt youth, sculptured marble column drum, from the
temple of Artemis at Ephesos, c. 325300 BCE.
ii) Elna Borsch (1912) Death and the Maiden NY Carlsberg Glyptetek, Copenhagen shows
the skeleton face of Thanatos.
iii) Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (17901791) Nix and her Children (Die Nacht mit
Ihren Kindern, Schlaf und Tod) Landesmuseum Oldenburg, das Schloß, Germany illustrates
the close, containing relationship between Thanatos and his mother, Nix, similar to that of
Eros and Aphrodite.
iv) Pausanias Description of Greece, 5.18.1 (1918) references an image on the chest of
Kypselos at Olympia of Nix holding Thanatos, as the ‘black’ twin on her left arm, and the
‘other’ as the ‘white’ twin on her right arm, illustrating a splitting and projective
identification between the twins: one dark, the other light.
6. An alternative account to the Heliopolis Egyptian cosmogony I have used is found in the
Hermopolis Ogdoad of the Pyramid text 446 hieroglyphs.
7. Lehner (2001, p. 179) associates Atum with primeval sovereignty in lion form and suggests
that Atum first appeared as a lion, which, I suggest, is an image of heated, sun-like,
fierceness. He also speculates about the relationship between Atum and Ruti, the double
lion god, who begins to divide before separation has occurred. This could point to an
important developmental difference between androgyny and twin-ship: the one remains
merged in a pre-conscious unity while the other has separated.
8. Quirke (2001, pp. 8283) suggests that the rivalry between Horus and Seth may be
historical references of two competing ruling claims for Upper and Lower Egypt. Assmann
(2001, p. 139), however, interprets their warring relationship as primarily archetypal rather
than as concrete manifestations of unity/separation/ reunification, although one inter-
pretation need not preclude the other.
9. Representations of Arthur as the wounded Fisher or Grail King are later medieval
personifications of patrilineal sovereignty (cf. Thomas Malory (1947) Le Morte D’ Arthur,
vol. 1) who have lost touch with earlier Neolithic communal kin roots as the shadow twin
‘other’ (Merlin/Mercurius) and the dynamic contra-sexual ‘other’ (Ceridwen). Such losses
result in the ego as ‘wasteland’, that is, dried out, until a reconnection with such
unconscious ‘other(s)’ is established (cf. Jung & von Franz, 1970, pp. 196, 390399; Schenk,
2001, pp. 126137).
Notes on contributor
Liz Brodersen. B.A., MsC, a member of AGAP, is an IAAP Jungian analyst in private practice
in Germany. She is an accredited analyst of the C.G. Jung Institute, Küsnacht, Zürich, and a
PhD candidate at the University of Essex, Colchester, UK. She is currently a member of the
executive committee of the International Association of Jungian Studies.
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This article was downloaded by: [George Mason University]

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International Journal of Jungian

In the nature of twins: a study of the

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19409052.2012.688845

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In the nature of twins: a study of the archetypal realm of universal

ISSN 1940-9052 print/ISSN 1940-9060 online

Why study creation myths?

Why study twins in creation myth?

Why Eros and Thanatos as archetypal twins?

Sometimes he carries a butterfly in one hand, symbolising his ambivalent,

resemblances, constantly elicited by their identical aims and convergences. Each

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