The basic drama a person experiences in the collective psyche is the separating and synthesis of psychic opposites. In every war, a political faction is an expression of conuinctio energies. When we fall into identification with one of the pairs of warring opposites or being a carrier of opposites, one will locate the enemy on the outside. The mass man, ever the ready victim of some unrelated “Ism”, identifies with one of the opposites, with an unbalanced ego unable to hold the tension between them and can’t perceive both together. The more one is highly charged within the collective conscious, the more the ego forfeits its practical importance. As we desperately try to make our guilt conscious, we are forced into shadow projections with fractional identification, signs of an immature ego.
The factors that come together in the conuinctio are conceived as opposites, either confronting each other in hostility or attracting one another in love. Individuals with insight into their own actions have experienced conuinctio, are carriers of opposites, and can carry their burden of darkness. If the individual is not truly regenerated in spirit, society cannot be either, as a society is the sum of individuals in need of redemption. The death of the ego, or the ego experiencing itself as dying, is the prelude to the birth of awareness of the self and a defeat for the ego.
The original unity is split into two, facing each other, where a confrontation takes place under a third element, the dove. The dove symbolises the holy ghost and aphrodite, the set-off of the ardent desire, and the messenger from the star indicates the transpersonal or cosmic self. The dove represents the activation of the libido, either negative or positive, the attraction or hatred. One’s clothing is removed, mutually held by two flowers, as the man must start to be born to his burden and become a vessel ready for divine peace. Left-handed consciousness has ceased, as the urge to make the unconscious surface becomes a conscious decision. Both opposites have shared their personas in a relationship, now experiencing each other with the “Naked Truth.”Psychological intimacy is beginning, as two opposing factions have revealed their real attitudes ad identity towards each other, where inner war escalates. Nakedness in dreams means psychological honesty, where all pretence is stripped away and proceed in earnest.

The next stage is the six-fold basin (6-fold nature) filled with water united by flowers and the medium of water, the mutual solutio. The baptism and rejuvenation through the process of dissolution, through the ordeal of water (the unconscious ). The descent into the abyss dissolves the ego’s solid, ordered structure. The solutio is the return of differentiated matter to its original state, the Prima Materia. Return to the eater of the womb for rebirth. All this depends on the level of ego development.
- Immature Ego – the opportunity to rid itself of having a separate existence can be blissful, loss of a discriminated state and the ecstasy of oblivion.
- Mature Ego – Being aware of precarious things is to have an autonomous existence. An ego of significant development and one that values their separate existence or will face their terror. Wholeness resides in the pain and scared marriage.
To figures submerged entirely underwater, with the sun and moon still present, the sacred Heiros Gamos, a union derived from the death and rebirth of Dionysus. We need only glimpse the opposites, as we don’t want to break down in total shock and disorientation completely. The war or love affair is on, where we seek an early form of justice during combat. Any dream with intercourse images represents the ego and anima/animus being intimate; the illicit affair promotes the transformation of the conuinctio into a conscious experience. Some sex images may also indicate the ego and shadow need integration.

A mortuary slab with a dead body is ejected from the life process as the shock is like a psychological death. It’s a level of insight that can literally kill a person, the standpoint beyond opposites and a profound, possibly fatal wound inflicted upon the ego. The dynamo of the ego is broken, where the opposites have cancelled each other out. The mortification theme of marriage and death, the death of the ego, upon the encounter with the self. When the ego is thoroughly identified with one side of the pair of opposites, it will share the death experiences of the opposite pair. The missing aspects of life must be located and rediscovered from within, not through external objects or activities. Any dreams containing death, poisoning or mutilation indicate severe injuries to the ego.
All living things die and decay, and then regain life with a new nature transmuted into a higher form.
The purification brings about sweet and soft sanity from the foul stenches of decay of the ego`s demise. The war between the two factions is over, and both are exhausted, one in victory and one in defeat. The experience of this defeat must occur in the collective for images to appear. When a sizeable identification or projection breaks down, a piece of the psyche separates from the concrete corporeal container, and we remain dead until the missing part of the psyche is recovered.
- 1st stage – the union of soul and spirit, which takes place simultaneously with segments of the body and soul, a mental union between soul and spirit.
- 2nd stage – the union of soul, spirit, and body
- 3rd Stage – one unites with the world

To bring about the reunion, the mind must be separate from the body, where only separate things can unite—discrimination and dissolution of the opposites, where the body’s activity influences the mind. Here we can objectify affects and instincts and confront consciousness with them. The divine child is born out of the death of the body, the death of the concrete level of human existence. The dew descends and purifies, revives the dead body. The body undergoes the purification of the dead ego by the will of the divine dew and decontaminating the unconscious. The soul is now safe to return to the body as it has been purified, and the body is about to be revitalised—the united body, alive and erect, signifying the transformation of consciousness.
Edinger, E.F,(1994) The Mystery of the Coniunctio: Alchemical Image of Individuation (Studies in Jungian Psychology By Jungian Analysts)
