The tree that called my name: on the significance of encountering the constellated symbol in the natural, other-than-human, world.

Abstract

In this paper I explore what it means to encounter the symbol as a meaningful object, or process, within the environment of the other-than-human. Using Jung's account in 'The spirit mercurius' of an enlisted Indigenous soldier who attempts to desert his barracks on hearing a native Oji tree calling him, I compare the evolving stages of consciousness theorised by Jung to explain this phenomenon with the progression discussed by him in his commentary on Dorn's coniunctio. My aim is to clarify Jung's understanding of the symbolically constellated and 'undifferentiated' worldview of what Jung calls the 'primitive'. I also draw on the work of Spitzform, Searles, Roszak, Fisher, Chalquist, Prentice and Rust in relation to the emerging field of ecopsychology, where consideration of a fundamental link between psychological and material existence - between psyche and ecos - has been proposed as an essential component of psychological theory, and in which our alienation from our natural surroundings has been identified as pathological. I include observations from my own experience of working therapeutically with clients in outdoor settings and I ask how a more ecosystemically integrated sense of self might be sought for a psyche that encounters symbolic material within its containing environment.