Dismemberment

Dismemberment is division, which alludes to (positively) differentiation or (negatively) dissociation; but it may also refer to death, sacrifice, and suffering (this is a collection of related symbols; compare also Slaughter).

Shamanism

Maiming is a typical initiation symbol in shamanism. In many traditions, the helping animal maims the shaman, symbolizing the dissolution of the individual, followed by resurrection as a new person, perhaps on a new level. Maiming, as a symbol, thus shares certain similarities with death and in dreams can indicate a change in the ego’s attitude, etc. (See also Flaying.)

Sacrifice

Sacrifice is part of the shaman’s initiation into the mystery, as well as initiations in a broader sense (since maiming and sacrifice are, so to speak, sibling symbols). To achieve something, one must sacrifice something (such as part of one’s body) – one must be willing to give up something one carry with oneself to enable change.

Rebirth

Maiming is therefore associated with rebirth. In Dionysian mystery cults, the god is the sacrifice, who is dismembered, boiled, and eaten. Dionysus was called “the undivided and the divided spirit.” Osiris, too, was famously dismembered, and his body parts were hidden in various places around the world before being returned and reassembled by Isis – that is, dismembered (differentiated, see below), reassembled, and reborn. This image reappears in alchemy, which often referred to “the maimed god par excellence,” Osiris.

Alchemy

In alchemy, for example, suffering, wounding, and maiming were expressions of necessary sacrifice. In this mystical tradition, fragmentation is an allegory for the opus, where prima materia is first unified, then fragmented, and finally reassembled (the developmental stage of separatio is sometimes depicted as a maimed corpse), which is sometimes described as coniunctio, union.

Differentiation

Psychologically, fragmentation corresponds to becoming conscious through differentiation (separatio, but solutio also belongs to this process), or, more simply put, an analysis of unconscious content. The Greek word analusis roughly means “to divide” in order to make it manageable. “This is part of every greater complex or unconscious content’s transformation,” points out Edinger, “it must be dismembered—analytically fragmented with subsequent reconstruction on a conscious level.” (1995, p. 178.)

Through separatio, the unconscious, the mixed chaos (or prima materia), is differentiated into its individual parts, which are then reassembled with the help of consciousness into a larger whole that consists of both the conscious and the unconscious (lapis, according to the alchemists). In Tractatus aureus Hermetis it says: “Divide your stone into the four elements, rectify and unite them into One, and you will have the complete masterpiece.” (CW 9ii, par. 377; here, lapis is used as both the prima materia and the goal.)

If something is severed in a dream, it could allude to this symbol—the possibility of distinguishing parts in order to examine them.

When Jesus says he “came to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother,” etc. (Matthew 10:35), he refers to his differentiating sword (10:24)—increased awareness—that “maims” the participation mystique that characterizes the family.

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