>>10217231Enter the dragon. The man who has conquered fear, integrated his anima, and undergone a spiritual transmutation is now primed to reenter the material world and embark on the next phase of his journey. This phase is best represented archetypically as the slaying of the dragon, which in turn wins the hero the love of a princess. Perhaps the most foundational myth of this type is that of Perseus and Andromeda. Perseus, having slain the serpentine Medusa (the embodiment of his fear), releases the winged Pegasus from her neck, is given winged sandals by Hermes. Perseus flies to Ethiopia to kill the sea monster guarding the princess and ultimately marries her. Andromeda – to Perseus, the collective consciousness, and the field of astronomy itself – represents fundamentally something that is “more than meets the eye”, a continuously unfolding revelation. Just as Perseus discovers she is not merely just a princess, but in fact the key to both of their spiritual enlightenment and immortality, the world discovered that the constellation of Andromeda of 12 stars actually contains within it an entire galaxy of more than 1 trillion stars (more than twice the number of our own Milky Way galaxy).
Spiritual liberation can thus be seen as a four step, sequential, duality-bridging process. The female aspect first liberates the male spiritually (integration of the anima), the male liberates the female materially (the slaying of the dragon), the female liberates the male materially (the holy marriage), the male liberates the female spiritually (the integration of the animus) – this final step is hinted at by Andromeda’s very name, which means “to be mindful of man.” In Jungian terms, the result is a quaternio hieros gamos – a holy marriage between the four aspects of the two individuals.
