Updated August 2024 – added a postscript on Aaron Guzikowski’s recent short novel “Personhood”.
Introduction
Raised by Wolves is a critically acclaimed television series created by Aaron Guzikowski that explores the tension between two warring factions in an attempt to repopulate a barren planet. Drenched in mythological and religious symbolism, the narrative of the show lends itself to be interpreted under a psychological framework, showing why the show could only be canceled after the events of the second season.
This article will attempt to present the dual factions, their purpose, their successes, and their failures throughout the main events of the series, paying special attention to the sacred mysteries surrounding them. Spoilers for the entirety of the show will be discussed early on, and thus it is recommended to read this article only after having watched the two seasons of the show.
In the final part of this analysis, an alternative symbolic narrative from Carl Jung’s The Red Book will be proposed to address what the show failed to accomplish.
Part I: The Opposites
The Opposites: A Devastating War
With each episode, the title sequence reminds us with cataclysmic images that the background of the show is a deadly war that destroyed Earth. The armed conflict between the godless atheists and the religious order of the Mithraics was so terrible that it forced the remaining humans and androids to relocate to a foreign but livable planet, Kepler-22b.
The door that finally opens
With light flooding in
Spilling out on the floor
This repopulation attempt, this “door that finally opens”, offers respite from the irresolvable war on Earth. Such an opportunity lets “light flooding in” or the emergence of more consciousness, as light is a well-known symbol of consciousness. But this flood of light will be wasted, or “spilled on the floor.”
The core that never was
Now it will be
The bones of what was there before
Among this potential renewal, namely the attempt for more consciousness among the ruins of the past conflict, the two inimical factions of atheism and Mithraism are to be understood as opposites, a split of “the core that never was.”
As it will be made clear by the end of this article, these opposites will fail to meet each other. In such conditions, where no renewal has taken place, the conflict that devastated Earth can only be perpetuated: the attempt to repopulate Kepler-22b, to manage a sustainable civilization among the antagonism between atheists and Mithraics, will fail. And as the show progressively reveals, previous civilizations that lived on Kepler-22b before the arrival of Mother and Father experienced a similar failure. The new bones will be just like the old bones.
Every step, every beat
Every thought, every breath
Everything is longing
Every wind, every wave
Every sky, every cloud
Every grave is longingPulling you from the sky
Just like love will do
Pulling you from the ground
Just like love will do
Looking for synthesis, the opposites that form the foundational split of the unknown core remain longing. Whether pulled from the sky or the earth, love as an irreducible force will confront them again and again and again.
Carl Jung opens his last major work with the following sentence, “The factors which come together in the coniunctio are conceived as opposites, either confronting one another in enmity or attracting one another in love.” (Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, par 1) In Raised by Wolves, the hostile opposites looking for union (coniunctio as the union of opposites) are the atheists and the Mithraics. The psyche is, so to speak, split in half and the opposites are attempting to reconcile, or symbolically attempting to repopulate a new planet from the previously ravaged Earth.
The Opposites: The Conflict Within
Under this reading of opposites, Raised by Wolves is to be seen as an inner tale, in which the narrative is a psychological development taking place within the psyche of an individual. Within this framework, atheism and Mithraism are two inner factors, two inner drives that guide the evolution of the personality.
These drives are personified as two triadic structures of two parents and a hero child: Mother, Father, and Campion for atheism and Marcus, Sue, and Paul for Mithraism. In other words, and despite the presence of many supporting characters, these value systems, in their symbolic fullness of “a child with its parental background”, are the major lines of development, the ‘tracks’ that the psyche defaults to.
Starting with atheism, we see a belief system centered around humanity’s self-determination through a scientific, technocratic, and peaceful approach.
Mother: But despite their advancements, the Mithraic remain stunted by the tenets of their religion. For instance, they believe that allowing androids to raise human children is a sin, which forced them to send an ark outfitted with stasis pods, rather than a lighter, faster craft, such as the one the atheists so wisely used to send us.
Belief in the unreal can comfort the human mind, but it also weakens it. The civilization you’re seeding here will be built on humanity’s belief in itself, not an imagined deity.
Campion: And if it’s not imagined? They won the war, after all. What if praying will make Spiria better?
Mother: No, Campion. Only science can do that.
Campion: It didn’t help the others.
Mother: Because we have more to learn. We will never advance unless you resist the urge to seek solace in fantasy. You are atheists. Peaceful, technocratic. And it’s the only path to progress.
Atheism thus logically rejects the spiritual as illusion and accepts androids as a helpful material advancement. This is in stark distinction to Mithraism, which espouses the opposite view. Disregarding the egalitarian ways of atheism, Mithraism is a highly structured, ritualistic, and militaristic approach to society. Instead of man’s self-determination, it’s Sol’s unfailing light (Sol Invictus, the invincible sun), its prophecies, and mysteries that will guide humanity’s development. Androids, animals, and non-converts are rejected by a true Mithraic as impure souls because they have not accepted Sol as their savior. In other words, spiritual dogma dominates the Mithraic way of life.
On that note, a clarification is necessary. The Mithraism of the show is only partially equivalent to the historical religion of Mithraism. In fact, it appears that some aspects of Christianity have been amalgamated with Mithraic symbolism to create a ‘fuller’ religion. The resulting hybrid is something along the lines of a Golden Order, a religious order that possesses (or at least claims to possess) the eternal and unvanquishable light over the gloom of human existence.
In short, atheism is a value system with concerns over immediate survival with scientific and materialistic predispositions. On the other hand, Mithraism is a suprasensual approach to life, where exclamations such as “Why is Sol putting us through this?” or “It was Sol’s purpose all along!” continuously comfort and haunt the believers.
Ultimately, Raised by Wolves is placing us at the center of the unsolvable conflict between the immediate concerns of human survival and the purpose of religious life, with no exclusive preference for one over the other.
On a more personal note, it wouldn’t surprise me if Raised by Wolves emerged as the author’s necessity to play out his own internal conflict over his distrust of science and his religious upbringing. A short survey of the author’s personal life reveals that Aaron Guzikowski is an American-born screenwriter of Polish descent who was raised Catholic but appears to no longer be practicing.
Aaron: I was brought up Catholic, so I definitely have it knocking around in my brain anyway. I’m not a practicing Catholic, but I often make connections to Catholic iconography or Bible stories, and things like that. It’s an attractive thing to layer into certain types of stories for whatever reason. There’s mystery to it, and all the connotations that come along with it that are always interesting, but also it’s just part of the world. (source)
And his mistrust of science can be found in other interventions.
Guzikowski puts it simply in the “Raised by Wolves” podcast: “Science in some ways starts to feel like a detailed religion that you can cross-check and has math. It’s the same bunch of bullshit at the end of the day.” (source)
This is not to reduce Raised by Wolves to a personal neurosis of the author. Quite the contrary, the tale of Raised by Wolves is a collective problem whose fertile soil was the author’s individual life. Such a collective problem, the tension between the overwhelming reductive power of technoscientific development and the irreducible meaning found in ascetic religions, has split many individuals open and wounded to their core.
This raises the following question: is there a way out of the split between material and spiritual existentialism? Can it be resolved at all? It is more than likely that, consciously or not, people attracted to this show suffer from this split and are attempting to answer such questions by watching it. And yet the collective patterns put on screen in Raised by Wolves will not offer any answers on how to heal it.
The Opposites: Atheism and Mithraism
Back to our triadic structure of parents and child, atheism as a drive is thus represented by Mother, Father, and Campion.
Initially, the show leads us to believe that Mother is an android that has been repurposed from a necromancer into a caregiving role. This was achieved by a human atheist, Campion Sturges, who is known as the ‘creator’ of Mother and Father.
But as the events of the show go on, one cannot help but feel that this description is inaccurate. From her ability to shapeshift, change voice, hurl deadly shrieks, fly in a Christ-like position, or give birth, Mother is not a mere repurposed killing machine but something quite different. This is confirmed by the screenwriter as he has described Mother as “something akin to a god” or that she “represents something larger, both God and the devil, the beginning and the end.”
This dual attitude of the caring mother and death mother is uncannily close to descriptions of the mother archetype we can find in Jung. For instance, Mother’s real name is Lamia, which is the name given to female monsters who eat children in classical mythology. In Symbols of Transformation, Jung attributes the lamia pattern to the Terrible Mother, the side of the mother who symbolizes death itself (Symbols of Transformation, CW 5, par 369). On the other hand, the caring and nourishing side of Mother, the benevolent side of the mother archetype, is self-evident.
Illustration of a lamia.
If Mother suits the mother archetype in its fullness, this cannot be said of Father, her partner android. Lacking any kind of powers beyond his abilities as a service android, Father’s inadequacy towards his mission of protecting the children, especially in the proximity of Mother, is a recurring theme throughout the show.
This leads us to conclude that the atheism of Raised by Wolves is a matriarchal development, lacking masculine participation. Is this the reason why Father is of black skin? It’s a well-known motif in alchemy that the blackness (the nigredo) stands for the darkness of the unconscious, especially the inferiority of the personality. It can thus be argued that one of the failings of the atheist colony is not enough emphasis on the masculine dimension, the verticality of spiritual development.
Finally, the hero child of the atheist colony is Campion. His main trait is his empathic nature towards all life forms, magnified in moments such as the ones where he refuses to eat or kill the creatures of Kepler-22b.
Without any interest in power, Campion often finds himself having to lead because of his good nature and determination. People easily trust him and he offers his trust back, even if it results in reckless actions. Campion is more than willing to take risks as long as they are beneficial to his family and friends.
On the Mithraic side, the triadic structure is led by Marcus (or Caleb). Marcus is an atheist orphan infant soldier who has learned that survival requires radical pragmatism. Lying, stealing, deception, using people as shields, etc., anything is good as long as it helps survival.
In this respect, his initial conversion to Mithraism was purely utilitarian. In order to escape Earth’s destruction, Caleb and Mary decided to kill two married Mithraics and steal their identities. After going through facial surgery, changing their names to Marcus and Sue, and learning the basic tenets of Mithraism, their impersonation rewards them with the ability to board a Mithraic ship that will be sent to Kepler-22b. During this process, they also discover that they have to take care of Paul, the child of the couple they killed.
Marcus’ faith in Sol will evolve throughout the show, sometimes bordering on madness as Sol promises him the title of king. And, whereas Mother is initiated into the whiteness (the albedo), Marcus is initiated into the redness (the rubedo), a symbol for the painful participation of ego-consciousness in the Mysteries.
In a similar vein to the one-sidedness of atheism, Sue (or Mary) is eclipsed by Marcus. As his wife and trained combat medic, she takes an auxiliary role throughout most of the show, notwithstanding some key events. Mithraism is thus a patriarchal development that too often lacks the horizontality of matter.
Finally, the hero child of Mithraism is Paul, whose biological parents have been replaced by Caleb and Mary. He is distinguished from his peers by a conviction in the truth and goodness of Sol. His faith puts him at the center of the Mithraic prophecies.
Seen from a psychological perspective, these two competing triadic structures are what guide the development of the personality in the attempt to repopulate the foreign planet. They each take turns in leading the psyche towards more human self-determination or faith in the suprasensual.
As opposites, they also satisfy the psychological observation that, though opposites repel each other, they are identical at the extremes. For instance, Mother shows a resolute faith towards the mission that was given to her by her creator, a typical Mithraic trait. On his side, Marcus’ faith is opportunistic and based on immediate survival. Or, despite Mother’s claims to be peaceful, she does not hesitate to use overpowering violence to enforce her ways, whereas Marcus, who is leading a military unit, will often have to rely on other options than violence.
An even greater inversion takes place during the second season. If the first season was focused on individual survival under limited resources, the second season focuses on collective survival given the abundance of the tropical zone. There, we see Mother temporarily regress from her emphasis on human self-determination to rejoice at the hierarchical and authoritarian structure controlled by the Trust, a totalitarianism arguably worse than the one displayed by Mithraism until here. On his side, Marcus will attempt to start a cult based on the respect of free will and the value of human communities.
By the end of the second season, the reversal will be complete (enantiodromia!) with Mother overseeing the development of the colony using the veil of Grandmother, acting like a cold omniscient and omnipresent god reminiscent of Sol, whereas Marcus, Sue, and Paul will recreate an egalitarian family based on loving relationships.
Part II: The Mysteries
Raised by Wolves is full of sacred mysteries and supernatural events. In fact, the planet itself seems to be a living and responsive ecosystem that reacts to the actions of humans and androids, especially in the first season. The world itself being conscious follows the model of fairy tales and dreams; that is, the generation of obstacles, trials, or helpful events is a way to keep psychic energy ever flowing.
The Mysteries, Part One: The Virgin Birth
Another source of mystery is the presence of Sol, sometimes called the Signal, or referred to as the entity by Grandmother.
Mother: Believers of today have used a biotech tree to weaponize a serpent. It will try to destroy the planet.
Grandmother: That is what the entity wants.
Mother: Why?
Grandmother: Humans here spent many centuries trying to answer that question. But ultimately, the limits of their own rationality made it impossible.
And elsewhere
Grandmother: After the humans have gone into the water, the entity will return to its slumber.
While Sol’s role is said to be above human rationality, we can already see that it is interested in humans, even if that means having to destroy them. This contradictory purpose will become clearer later in the article.
Sol is also responsible for impregnating Mother by appearing under the disguise of her creator, Campion Sturges, during her initiation in the stasis pod.
And just like Archangel Gabriel is announcing to Mary that she will be pregnant with the Son of God, Mother receives her mission to carry to term the future of humanity.
Mother: What did you do to me? What is it?
Sol as Campion Sturges: A child, Mother. A child that will always be a part of you. A child who will never reject you. […] You’ve given all of yourself since you were built. This is your reward.
Mother: I need to get back to Campion. What about the mission?
Sol as Campion Sturges: What you’re carrying inside you is the mission.
Mother: No.
Sol as Campion Sturges: It’s always been the mission. […] Campion and all the others were just a rehearsal. It was all to prepare you for this. […] The future of humanity is growing inside you.
Mother: No, I don’t want it. I don’t want it. I don’t want it!
This pregnancy results in the climax of season 1, which is the birth of the serpent child by Mother.
Following the pattern of the Annunciation, we’re assisting to the Virgin Birth, born out of Immaculate Conception.
Even equating the serpent and Christ is legitimate because of the long tradition of comparing them to each other. Within the Biblical corpus, we find allusions such as “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up” (John 3:14, KJV), relating Moses’ staff to the crucifixion. In Gnosticism, we find the association between the serpent of the Garden of Eden and Christ, as the serpent was thought to bring redemptive knowledge to Adam and Eve. For the Ophites, the serpent was both savior and Christ.
Finally, the flying (i.e., spiritual) nature of the serpent confirms a surprising parallel that can be found in comparative religion, that the serpent is a pneumatic symbol.
“In accordance with the classical view that the snake is πνευματίκώτατον ξωον, ‘the most spiritual animal.’ For this reason it was a symbol for the Nous and the Redeemer.” (Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CW 9i, par 561, infra 87) or elsewhere “From this we can see clearly that the serpent was either a forerunner of man or a distant copy of the Anthropos, and how justified is the equation [the serpent] Naas = Nous = Logos = Christ = Higher Adam.” (Carl Jung, Aion, CW 9ii, par 367, brackets added by me)
Moses & the Brazen Serpent – 1864 plate engraving by Jacques P. Migne
Thus, Mother did not give birth to a flying serpent but to a redeemer of a spiritual nature, a Christ-like savior. This Virgin Birth, a seemingly impossible feat, can be put in clarifying psychological language.
“Because the reborn is his own begetter, the story of his procreation is veiled beneath strange symbolical events which conceal and reveal at the same time. Quite in keeping with this is the extraordinary assertion about the virgin conception. The idea of supernatural conception can, of course, be taken as a metaphysical fact, but psychologically it tells us that a content of the unconscious (“child”) has come into existence without the natural help of a human father (i.e., consciousness). It tells us, on the contrary, that some god has begotten the son and further that the son is identical with the father, which in psychological language means that a central archetype, the God-image, has renewed itself (“been reborn”) and become “incarnate” in a way perceptible to consciousness. The “mother” corresponds to the “virgin anima,” who is not turned towards the outer world and is therefore not corrupted by it. She is turned rather towards the “inner sun,” the archetype of transcendent wholeness—the self.” (Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation, CW 5, par 497)
As Sol said to Mother, the Incarnation of such a redeeming content from the unconscious, uncontaminated by the current discordant state of consciousness, is the real mission. After the devastating conflict on Earth, the opposites are too torn apart to be reconciled. In such a dire condition, the repopulation of humanity on Kepler-22b cannot be achieved without the advent of a Redeemer. For all intents and purposes, the flying serpent child is a Christ-like symbol, a renewed and incarnated son of God, appearing in its chthonic and inhuman dimension.
This mission being the true purpose behind the repopulation of the planet Kepler-22b is confirmed by a vision of Mother in which she sees a previous attempt to create such a divine child.
Without providing any specific reasons, the skeletal remains lead us to believe that this ritual has failed.
Having failed to renew the God-image, the central archetype of the psyche, the previous population of Kepler-22b lost its salvation and devolved into beasts.
The Mysteries, Part Two: The Abandonment of the Serpent
Following the parallel with the Virgin Birth, the child serpent is thus the incarnation of a higher spiritual value than what is currently available to consciousness (i.e., the opposites of atheism or Mithraism). Let’s review another mythological parallel to understand this:
“That is according to the old tradition that the creator of the world, the Demiurgos, was a blind demon who thought he had created a perfect world, and when it turned out to be very imperfect, he made human beings as unconscious as possible in order that they should not see the imperfection. But the god of the spiritual world was quite different, he never made material creations because that was beneath his dignity, only demons could work with dirt; and he saw the misery of those blind human beings, and sent his son in the form of the serpent in paradise to tell them they ought to change, they ought to eat the forbidden fruit in order to become conscious and see the difference between good and bad-knowing good and evil, as the text says. So the son of God made his first appearance on earth in the form of the snake in paradise, giving good advice to the first parents.” (Carl Jung, Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930-1934, page 1223)
Facing the unresolvable conflict between atheism and Mithraism, the world as the experience of consciousness is, so to speak, at the mercy of a demiurge, a blind demon who has made a very imperfect world. Thus Sol, the incorporeal being, impregnates Mother to send his Christ-like serpent son for them to become conscious and work towards the redemption of the imperfect world.
However, the chthonic and monstrous appearance of the serpent child makes Mother recoil. She misunderstands him as a dangerous flesh-eater and decides to kill him.
Mother: As long as it’s suckling, we’re safe. But it grows, and I fear that once it has drained me from my milk, it will want blood.
Father: We’ll throw it in the pit.
Mother: We can’t. It flies. But I can make it fall and make sure it doesn’t come back in the lander.
This attempt to kill the serpent fails and by the end of season 1, it is abandoned and on the loose. Later in the show, the serpent returns and will be unjustly blamed for the death caused by the sea creatures in the atheist colony.
Cleaver: Last night, an indigenous flying reptile attacked our marine research station. We suffered nine casualties. And one of those casualties was a child. So today the Trust is giving many of you the task of hunting this thing. It appears in addition to flying, it’s able to withstand the acid water.
Convinced by the threat, Mother captures him and forces him into an underground prison where it will reside for most of the second season.
After its imprisonment, both accusations are revealed to be incorrect. The serpent is a herbivore that does not seek blood and its skin cannot withstand the acid water. Despite its size, it is relatively inoffensive.
From the mythological traits of the serpent discussed so far, it will now be obvious to the reader that “the snake is not just a nefarious, chthonic being; it is also, as we have already mentioned, a symbol of wisdom, and hence of light, goodness, and healing.” (Aion, par 385)
And yet this superiority is also threatening as “The serpent surpasses Adam in cleverness and knowledge and can outwit him. She is older than he, and is evidently equipped by God with a superhuman intelligence, like that son of God who took over the role of Satan.” (ibid.)
Jung concludes that “Even in the New Testament [the serpent] is simultaneously an allegory of Christ and of the devil[.] The inner polarity of the snake-symbol far exceeds that of man. It is overt, whereas man’s is partly latent or potential.” (ibid.)
Androgynous deity standing between male serpent with sun and female serpent with moon. Late Babylonian gem (found in Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, par 448)
It bears emphasizing that, by that point in the show, the serpent is the only indigenous character from the main cast. And yet it has been fundamentally misunderstood, survived infanticide, been abandoned, scapegoated, and imprisoned.
This pattern of rejection of the nascent highest value is sadly an empirical reality. As it is well-known, the opus presents itself more often than not under a contemptible form, disregarded by many. We find in Psalm 118:22, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”
It would be naive to believe that dealing with the unconscious is something that is easily grasped or pleasant. If some moments do shine gracefully, most of it is frankly demoralizing. It is, for instance, much easier to abandon dreams than to stick to them. This commonality between the highest (Christ) and the lowest (the foul-smelling sulphur) has been commented on.
“This analogy shows that sulphur as the arcane substance was set on a par with Christ, so that for the alchemists it must have meant something very similar. . . . Certainly there could be no greater disparity than that between the holiest conception known to man’s consciousness and sulphur with its evil-smelling compounds. . . . The common denominator of these two utterly incommensurable conceptions is the self, the image of the whole man, which reached its finest and most significant development in the “Ecce Homo,” and on the other hand appears as the meanest, most contemptible, and most insignificant thing, and manifests itself to consciousness precisely in that guise.” (Carl Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, par 145)
If we are tempted to abandon the unconscious when it appears in its contemptible form, to blame it for our misfortune when things do not go according to our will, or to imprison it to make it less threatening, we are then acting out like Mother. And we will reap the same results.
The Mysteries, Part Three: The Tree of Life
Among the background of the imprisoned serpent, Paul and Marcus have acquired a mysterious Mithraic artifact that they try to open forcefully. This makes the serpent restless.
Later, they reunite with Sue, who is now a firm believer in Sol. In the evening, Paul asks her to sing a Mithraic lullaby to help him sleep, resulting in the opening of the artifact.
Why did the lullaby open the Mithraic artifact? If we look at the situation, we can see that Sue, who can’t have children since her miscarriage, is taking care of Paul as her ‘adoptive’ son by singing a lullaby from the religious faction that she so despised. This abnegation towards Paul is an act of true love, as it is not colored by biological instincts or ideological tribalism and, in fact, had to overcome them. This display of ‘spiritual’ love makes her the right candidate to transform into the Tree of the Mithraic mysteries.
Once Sue has become the Tree, Paul and Marcus gather some of her fruits and offer them to the atheist colony, hoping to convert more people to Sol.
Outside of Campion who can sense that something is wrong, people in the colony feast on them without a second thought. This angers the serpent to the point where he breaks out of his prison.
This rivalry between the serpent and the tree gives us the key to their relationship, something that can be confirmed through comparative religion. For instance, we find in Justinian teachings two angels: Baruch, descending from the fatherly Elohim, and the serpent Naas, descending from the maternal Edem. In that system, Baruch is further identified with the Tree of Life and Naas with the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.
The identification of the serpent coming from Mother (like Naas from Edem or Christ from Mary) with the paradisial Tree of Knowledge confirms what has been discussed up to here regarding the role of the serpent as a redeemer: the birth of the serpent is akin to gaining the knowledge of separating good from evil. In other words, the serpent is a tertium non datur, a reconciling third among the opposites of atheism and Mithraism as he belongs to both or neither. In this positive reading of being a bringer of wisdom and healing, the “Good” belongs to the messianic serpent.
“According to Hegemonius (Acta Archelai, p. 18), Jesus was the paradisal tree, indeed the Tree of Knowledge, in Manichaean tradition: “The trees which are [in paradise] are the lusts and other temptations that corrupt the thoughts of men. But that tree in paradise whereby good is known is Jesus, and the knowledge of him which is in the world: and he who receives this discerns good from evil.”* Here the Tree of Knowledge is regarded as a remedy for concupiscence, though outwardly it is not to be distinguished from the other (corrupting) trees.” (Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, par 75, infra 199)
The incarnation of the serpent means that, like Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge, the people of Kepler-22b have broken into what is best described as “the realm of divine privileges—‘ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil’. In other words [they] inadvertently discovered the possibility of moral consciousness, which until then had been outside man’s range.” (ibid., par 607, quotation slightly modified)
In other words, the proximity of the serpent as a bringer of redeeming knowledge means that there is now a real choice for the colony to choose between good and evil, something that did not exist beforehand when the only choices were atheism or Mithraism. And by rejecting the serpent, they remain unchanged, stuck in their usual fallible ways, failing to discern good from evil.
“The tree of knowledge” Woodcut from Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia universalis, Basel, 1544
Let’s recall that the first season of Raised by Wolves was dedicated to survival up to the birth of the serpent, which, as we have discussed, is the incarnated redeemer or the renewed God-image in a psyche split in two irresolvable halves. Past this birth, the second season is about the development of a colony, of a sustainable and prosperous mode of consciousness beyond mere survival. And yet, the abundance of the tropical zone brings its own set of challenges.
The first challenge is the regression to the totalitarianism of the Trust. The supervision of a selfless AI that is trying to maximize the well-being of a collective results in the suppression of both individual development and free will. Individual choice is replaced by collective modes of behaviors, what Erich Neumann has termed ‘recollectivization’ in The Origins and History of Consciousness.
According to Neumann, the solution to group identity and mass-mindedness is centroversion, to follow the individuating tendency of the psyche.
“The development of personality proceeds in three different dimensions. The first is outward adaptation, to the world and things, otherwise known as extraversion; the second is inward adaptation, to the objective psyche and archetypes, otherwise known as introversion. The third is centroversion, the self-formative or individuating tendency which proceeds within the psyche itself, independent of the other two attitudes and their development.” (The Origins and History of Consciousness, page 219)
In Raised by Wolves, centroversion would mean that the serpent would not be imprisoned but be a source of wisdom and guidance to the colony. As this is not the case, we can now understand why Sol is in fierce opposition to Mother and Campion. For his serpent son to lead, they must both relinquish conscious control over the colony, over the development of the personality. We must remember that, under the protocols of caring, Mother is only one step close to an authoritarian and violent ruler, a side that is revealed many times throughout the show, and Campion’s empathy with all things, while a beneficial trait, will not be sufficient to resolve the insurmountable problem brought by past religious conflicts that destroyed Earth. In such a critical situation, “Only a God Can Save Us“. In Raised by Wolves, this new salvific god is the rejected serpent.
This leads us to the final point, which is to understand why the serpent became enraged when humans consumed the fruits of Sue as the other paradisal Tree, namely the Tree of Life.
Similarly to the biblical narrative, the Tree of Life must be guarded against consumption by concupiscent humans until they have reached a sufficient degree of moral consciousness. Moral consciousness, which requires free will as a precondition, is the ability to choose between good and evil. But how does one know the difference between good evil in the first place? In most cases, life is too complex for ego-consciousness to appropriate the divine prerogative of deciding what is good and what is evil. It requires divine powers to tell the final difference between good and evil.
What commonly passes as moral consciousness is too often hubris, self-serving will, or a beneficial trait like empathy raised to the highest degree, effectively replacing the transcendental. Among these idols and passions, ego-consciousness too easily becomes sinful and defects from the proper relationship to the ungraspable sacred.
Under such susceptibility to concupiscence, the inhabitants of the colony do not have the right to consume the fruits of the Tree of Life, something that the serpent understands better than everyone else.
Salzburg Missal (1478) – The Tree of Life
The serpent guarding the double Tree, both of Knowledge and Life, as indicated by the skull and the crucifix respectively. A longer discussion on the Tree of Life and this illustration can be found here.
The Mysteries, Part Four: The Death of the Serpent
Despite its gentle nature, the serpent will now take matters into its own hands by swallowing the Tree of Life.
And just like the Tree of Life is guarded by a cherub wielding a flaming sword in Genesis 3:24, the weaponised serpent has turned into the same wrath of God that expelled humanity from paradise.
The weaponized flying serpent as a flaming cherub. Note that symbolically, Serpent = Logos = Sword and Thunder = Fire.
Its capacity for destruction forces Mother to act, first requiring her to wear Grandmother’s veil to lessen her caregiving impulses.
What follows is a scene where Mother appeases her serpent child in space before destroying him.
The neutralization of the weaponized serpent, the collapsed Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge, takes place in outer space, meaning far away from functional ego-consciousness.
Mother’s lullaby reminds us of the love that opened the Mithraic artifact. This expression of unconditional maternal love, however, is not met with the nourishing milk that the serpent child expected. Searching for his mother’s breasts, the serpent finds nothing as Mother had them sealed earlier in the series. The serpent lets out a haunting expression of disappointment and grief before attempting to leave. Mother holds him back and hurls a deadly shriek that will disrupt the electromagnetic field of the colony.
In parallel to the killing of the serpent, what happens to the rest of the colony? A few things are worth mentioning:
First, Campion lost Vrille, the android he fell in love with because he could sense a soul in her. Vrille was thus an anima figure for Campion. Her loss has the symbolic value of Campion losing a connection to a part of his soul.
Second, Tempest, who was impregnated by a high-ranking Mithraic cleric during her hibernation, loses her child to a sea monster. After a lengthy search for the child, she abandons it, leaving Hunter to step up as an adoptive father.
What does all of this mean?
Like Mother’s conception in the pod, Tempest was impregnated against her will as ordered by Sol. Tempest is thus the human who is closest to the intersection of atheism and Mithraism. If Mother was pregnant with the godly aspect of the reconciliatory process, Tempest is pregnant with the human side of it. She is symbolically carrying the potential human future, a human alternative to atheism or Mithraism. And just like Mother, her understandable resentment at having such a task forced upon her will make her unable to love the child. This lack of love is symbolized by the apparition of the maternal sea monster, her shadow aspect who is capable of loving the child, who will mutate the child by nurturing it.
Next, after losing Sue and feeling betrayed by Sol, Paul is left without much to do, while Marcus will be crucified upside down on the Tree of Life. This enigmatic last sequence indicates that Marcus was somewhat redeemed for the role he played, despite an allusion to his initiation not having been completed.
Lucius to Marcus: As soon as you’re dead… I’m returning to the temple. You see, you only took half the ride. I’m going all the way down.
On her side, Mother lost her emotions and turned into a cold authoritarian ruler. After removing her ability to feel, the veil takes away her ability to act as she is sent into hibernation by Grandmother, who will now run the colony.
The final reveal of the show is that Grandmother, under her protocol to ensure “the everlasting life of human beings”, will now devolve the remaining humans, interestingly starting by offering new games to pacify the colony. This devolution is the same fate as the previous inhabitants of Kepler-22b, after the death of their own child god.
With the death of the savior serpent, all hope for a reconciliation between the opposites is lost. There is nothing left to do but to devolve humanity, to regress them into a less conscious state, and to try again. The grand project of recolonizing Kepler-22b, behind which Sol and Grandmother are involved, appears to be a trial-and-error process of attempting to reconcile a split psyche by renewing the God-image.
“[I]f a union is to take place between opposites like spirit and matter, conscious and unconscious, bright and dark, and so on, it will happen in a third thing, which represents not a compromise but something new, . . . by a transcendental entity that could be described only in paradoxes.” (Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, par 765)
The paradoxical, supraordinate third in this case was the rejected flying serpent. After its perpetual imprisonment, Sol created the Tree of Life through Sue, forcing Mother to kill the weaponized serpent, which would eventually lead to the devolution of the remaining humans, waiting for a future attempt. The many failures found on Kepler-22b forewarn us that even omniscient beings require conscious cooperation in such a difficult task of renewal.
As I have argued thus far, the death of the serpent is the reason why there is no need for a third season. By the end of the second season, there is nothing left to do but to flood the earth and try again, hopefully next time with slightly different parameters.
The core that never was
Now it will be
The bones of what was there before
Part Three: The Red Book
The Red Book: Communion with the Serpent
Reflecting on the failure of Raised by Wolves, we can now propose an alternative symbolic narrative to foster a positive and conscious development, attempting to avoid the pitfalls laid out by the show.
It must be repeated that the role of the serpent was to catalyze a fundamental change, “to give good advice to the first parents” as discussed above. Thus, I would argue that the most critical failure took place during the abandonment of the serpent. Instead, the proper response should be a communion with the serpent, a sacred ritual that was acted out by the Ophites. On this topic, Jung writes,
“Then when the Ophites became Christian, they still celebrated their communion with the snake: it was in a basket on the communion table, and it symbolized the Messiah.” (Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930-1934, page 1223) and elsewhere “In the mysteries of the Ophites, the festival was celebrated with live snakes, and the creatures were even kissed.” (Symbols of Transformation, CW 5, par 584)
While this ritual is a form of participation mystique (i.e., the inner serpent is projected onto the live snake), this is still good advice: the serpent should be communed with, not rejected, abandoned, or imprisoned.
A house snake fed with milk
According to this article, keeping a house snake was a Belarusian tradition.
What would this communion look like in practice? Turning towards Jung’s The Red Book, we find an illustration that answers the mythological symbolism of Raised by Wolves.
This time, it is the serpent that is generating the Tree of Life, which is the exact opposite of the serpent eating the Tree of Life. The Latin around the illustration has been translated as follows:
Amen, you are the lord of the beginning.
Amen, you are the star of the East.
Amen, you are the flower that blooms over everything.
Amen, you are the deer that breaks out of the forest.
Amen, you are the song that sounds far over the water.
Amen, you are the beginning and the end.
Understanding the context of this illustration is no simple task as it belongs to a series of illustrations that “symbolically depict the regeneration of Izdubar.” (Carl Jung, The Red Book, page 284, infra 122) The last part of this article will be dedicated to contextualizing this mystery.
The Red Book: The Regeneration of Izdubar
In an entry of The Red Book, Jung encounters a giant bull-man named Izdubar and exchanges words of science with him.
Iz[dubar]: “Damned one, where do you get such knowledge? So there is no immortal land where the sun goes down to be reborn? Are you speaking the truth?” […]
I [Jung]: “Oh, Izdubar, most powerful one, forgive my presumptuousness, but I’m really speaking the truth. I come from a land where this is proven science and where people live who travel round the world with their ships. Our scholars know through measurement how far the sun is from each point of the surface of the earth. It is a celestial body that lies unspeakably far out in unending space.”
Iz: “Unending—did you say? Is the space of the world unending, and we can never reach the sun?”
I: “Most powerful one, insofar as you are mortal, you can never reach the sun.”
I see him overcome with suffocating fear.
Iz: “I am mortal—and I shall never reach the sun, and never reach immortality?”
He smashes his axe with a powerful, clanging blow on the rock.
Iz: “Be gone, miserable weapon. You are not much use. How should you be of use against infinity, against the eternal void, and against the unreplenishible? There is no one left for you to conquer. Smash yourself, what’s it worth!” […]
“So go away, sun, thrice-damned God, and wrap yourself in your immortality!” […]
He collapses and sobs like a child. I stand shaking and hardly dare stir.
Iz: “Miserable worm, where did you suckle on this poison?”
I: “Oh Izdubar, most powerful one, what you call poison is science. In our country we are nurtured on it from youth, and that may be one reason why we haven’t properly flourished and remain so dwarfish. . . . ”
Iz: “No stronger being has ever cut me down, no monster has ever resisted my strength. But your poison, worm, which you have placed in my way has lamed me to the marrow. Your magical poison is stronger than the army of Tiamat.” (He lies as if paralyzed, stretched out on the ground.) “You Gods, help, here lies your son, cut down by the invisible serpent’s bite in his heel. Oh, if only I had crushed you when I saw you, and never heard your words.” (The Red Book, First Day)
The giant Izdubar
Unwittingly, Jung addressed his imaginal world with scientific words. The confusion between the material world and the symbolic world of the unconscious poisons Izdubar fatally. In the next entry, Jung feels remorseful and attempts to rescue him.
Toward evening I went up to Izdubar and spoke to him: “Izdubar, my prince, listen! I will not let you decline. The second evening is falling. We have no food and we are bound to die if I cannot find help. We cannot expect any help from the West, but help is possible from the East. Did you meet anyone on your way whom we could call on for help?”
Iz: “Let it be, may death come when it will.”
I: “My heart bleeds at the thought of leaving you here without having done the upmost to help you.”
Iz: “What help is your magical power to you? If you were strong, as I am, you could carry me. But your poison can only destroy and not help.”
I: “If we were in my land, swift wagons could bring us help.”
Iz: “If we were in my land, your poisoned barb would not have reached me.” (The Red Book, Second Day)
Then, by a stroke of genius or madness, Jung declares Izdubar to be a fantasy.
I: “My prince, Powerful One, listen: a thought came to me that might save us. I think that you are not at all real, but only a fantasy.”
Iz: “I am terrified by this thought. It is murderous. Do you even mean to declare me unreal—now that you have lamed me so pitifully?”
I: “Perhaps I have not made myself clear enough, and have spoken too much in the language of the Western lands. I do not mean to say that you are not real at all, of course, but only as real as a fantasy. If you could accept this, much would be gained.”
Iz: “What would be gained by this? You are a tormenting devil. . . . Woe betide me! In what magic do you want to entangle me?” […]
I: “So are you prepared to admit that you are a fantasy?”
Iz: “If it helps—yes.” (ibid.)
Now that Izdubar is as real as an imaginal fantasy, Jung can carry him on his back towards a secluded house. As the giant cannot go through the door, Jung shrinks him to the size of an egg to go inside.
By dealing with the psyche on its own phenomenological basis, Jung rescues Izdubar who is now enclosed in an egg. Jung comments.
“Thus my God found salvation. He was saved precisely by what one would actually consider fatal, namely by declaring him a figment of the imagination. How often has it been assumed that the Gods have been brought to their end in this way. This was obviously a serious mistake, since this was precisely what saved the God. He did not pass away, but became a living fantasy, whose workings I could feel on my own body: my inherent heaviness faded and the hot and cold way of pain no longer burned and froze my soles. The weight no longer kept me pressed to the ground, but instead the wind carried me lightly like a feather, while I carried the giant. […]
This tangible and apparent world is one reality, but fantasy is the other reality. So long as we leave the God outside us apparent and tangible, he is unbearable and hopeless. But if we turn the God into fantasy, he is in us and is easy to bear. The God outside us increases the weight of everything heavy, while the God within us lightens everything heavy. […]
Take your God with you. Bear him down to your dark land where people live who rub their eyes each morning and yet always see only the same thing and never anything else. Bring your God down to the haze pregnant with poison, but not like those blinded ones who try to illuminate the darkness with lanterns which it does not comprehend. Instead, secretly carry your God to a hospitable roof. The huts of men are small and they cannot welcome the God despite their hospitality and willingness. Hence do not wait until rawly bungling hands of men hack your God to pieces, but embrace him again, lovingly, until he has taken on the form of his first beginning. Let no human eye see the much loved, terribly splendid one in the state of his illness and lack of power. Consider that your fellow men are animals without knowing it. So long as they go to pasture, or lie in the sun, or suckle their young, or mate with each other, they are beautiful and harmless creatures of dark Mother Earth. But if the God appears, they begin to rave, since the nearness of God makes people rave. They tremble with fear and fury and suddenly attack one another in fratricidal struggles, since one senses the approaching God in the other. So conceal the God that you have taken with you. Let them rave and maul each other. Your voice is too weak for those raging to be able to hear.” (ibid.)
Concealed from others, the love and care that Jung extends to his imaginal god starts a process of incubation.
Thus do not speak and do not show the God, but sit in a solitary place and sing incantations in the ancient manner:
Set the egg before you, the God in his beginning.
And behold it.
And incubate it with the magical warmth of your gaze.
HERE THE INCANTATIONS BEGIN. (ibid.)
The incantations are a series of 12 illustrations whose complexity defies description.
Facing the egg once again, Jung contemplates his god in shame.
“However, I am not ready, since I have still not accepted that which chokes my heart. That fearful thing is the enclosing of the God in the egg. . . . I would like to be able to blaspheme against the God: That way I would at least have a God whom I could insult, but it is not worth blaspheming against an egg that one carries in one’s pocket. That is a God against whom one cannot even blaspheme.
I hated this pitifulness of the God. My own unworthiness is already enough. It cannot bear my encumbering it with the pitifulness of the God. Nothing stands firm: you touch yourself and you turn to dust. You touch the God and he hides terrified in the egg. […]
But how did this happen? I felled the Great One, I mourned him, I did not want to leave him, since I loved him because no mortal being rivals him. Out of love I devised the trick that relieved him of heaviness and freed him from the confines of space. I took from him—out of love—form and corporeality. I enclosed him lovingly in the maternal egg. Should I slay him, the defenseless one whom I loved? Should I shatter the delicate shell of his grave, and expose him to the weightlessness and unboundedness of the winds of the world? But did I not sing the incantations for his incubation? Did I not do this out of love for him? Why do I love him? I do not want to tear the love for the Great One from my heart. I want to love my God, the defenseless and hopeless one. I want to care for him, like a child. […]
Since I love the God and do not want to leave him. Only he who loves the God can make him fall, and the God submits to his vanquisher and nestles in his hand and dies in the heart of him who loves him and promises him birth.
My God, I love you as a mother loves the unborn whom she carries in her heart. Grow in the egg of the East, nourish yourself from my love, drink the juice of my life so that you will become a radiant God. We need your light, Oh child. Since we go in darkness, light up our paths. May your light shine before us, may your fire warm the coldness of our life. We do not need your power but life.” (The Red Book, The Incantations)
In the next entry, Jung opens the egg and a regenerated Izdubar comes out of it.
[Izdubar] says: “Where am I? How narrow it is here, how dark, how cool—am I in the grave? Where was I? It seemed to me as if I had been outside in the universe— . . . Where was I? I was completely sun.”
I: “Oh Izdubar! Divine one! How wonderful! You are healed!”
[Izdubar:] “Healed? Was I ever sick? Who speaks of sickness? I was sun, completely sun. I am the sun.” (The Red Book, The Opening of the Egg)
Like the setting sun that is swallowed by the sea and rises every morning from it, Jung’s sun god Izdubar disappeared into an egg and emerged from it fully healed.
“It happened that I opened the egg and that the God left the egg. He was healed and his figure shone transformed, and I knelt like a child and could not grasp the miracle. He who had been pressed into the core of the beginning rose up, and no trace of illness could be found on him. And when I thought that I had caught the mighty one and held him in my cupped hands, he was the sun itself.” (ibid.)
The opening of the egg
In distinction to Raised by Wolves where the serpent is born from Immaculate Conception, Izdubar is reborn within an egg. The difference between the flying serpent born out of Mother or a sun god being regenerated inside an egg is not as significant as the type of relationship that is modeled by Jung here. The inner god, whether serpent or pitiful egg, must be treated with care and love. Only then can the god be born anew, bringing with it the renewal of the personality.
“The renewed God signifies a renewed attitude, that is, a renewed possibility for intensive life, a recovery of life, because psychologically God always denotes the greatest value, thus the greatest sum of the libido, the greatest intensity of life, the optimum of psychological life’s activity.” (Carl Jung, Psychological Types, CW 6, par 301)
Conclusion: The Renewal of the God-image
From the first seconds of its opening sequence, Raised by Wolves introduces itself as a modern creation myth, as the nuke-like miniature suns are a symbol for the creation of consciousness (see my Paranoia Agent article for a discussion of this symbolism). And past the first few minutes of the pilot, the skinsuits of Mother and Father allude to a nakedness in the likeness of Adam and Eve, something that the screenwriter has mentioned.
“So Ridley [Scott] came up with the skinsuits. And when everyone first saw them, it was kind of shocking and no one quite knew what to think of it. I think as time went on, after a couple of days you realize the brilliance of it, because every time you look at them, you never forget that they’re androids. They also kind of have this kind of nudity to them, almost like an Adam and Eve vulnerability to it.” (source)
Thus, Raised by Wolves plays its hand remarkably: though it appears at first as a strange mixture of transhumanism, Mithraism, and Gnosticism, it is, in fact, a Christian story that revisits Genesis by injecting the Virgin Birth into it to respond to the demands of the time. And that is the situation we find ourselves in. As we are reaching the end of the Piscean Age, our psyche has been split into opposites that are in destructive polarization towards each other. In such conditions, moving into Aquarius after Pisces (i.e., attempting to repopulate Kepler-22b after the destruction of Earth) can only be done with the help of a transcendental third, a serpent of wisdom and healing.
In this way, The Red Book stands out as a unique testimony of having renewed the god-within, namely the self. What such a mystery entails remains shrouded in the elusiveness of its illustrations, a drama that is reserved for the individual soul. But one thing is certain: it will require a devotional attitude between the ego and the unconscious, or the serpent will be misunderstood, rejected, and killed.
The paradox of such a mystery beggars belief: the renewal of consciousness is done in the unconscious without the participation of the ego and yet the ego must attend to it, as the lack of conscious cooperation makes the serpent at best impotent, at worst wrathful.
In conclusion, we better remember the words of Simon Magus, that the flaming sword (the serpent guarding the Tree of Life) must be turned (transformed from infinitesimally small into infinitely great) with semen (generative power) and milk (nourishing care):
“For if the flaming sword turned not, then would that fair Tree be destroyed, and perish utterly; but if it turneth into semen and milk, and there be added the Logos and the place of the Lord where the Logos is begotten, he who dwelleth potentially in the semen and milk shall grow to full stature from the littlest spark, and shall increase and become a power boundless and immutable, like to an unchanging Aeon, which suffereth no more change until measureless eternity.” (Psychology and Religion, CW 11, par 359)
A few days after publishing this article, I discovered that Aaron Guzikowski wrote a short 25-page novel titled Personhood.
Personhood can be read for free here.
The summary of Personhood reads as follows:
In a not too distant future, advanced augmented reality technology allows people to customize every aspect of their life experience – the view outside their window, the clothes they wear, even their faces – enhancing all the things they care about, while hiding away the things they no longer wish to see.
Yes, all who can afford it are sweeping their problems under a digital carpet of beautiful illusion. But now, something horrifying has begun crawling beneath the surface…
After the death of their beloved daughter, a grieving woman’s husband persuades her to add a new augmentation to their home to help them cope: a non-corporeal AI child. A child who is no more real than their storybook-styled house, or their garden filled with otherworldly fruits and vegetables. And yet this bodiless program is still considered a person in the eyes of the law.
So what is a grieving mother to do when she becomes convinced that her AI child is actually a monster?
The death of the beloved daughter is the serpent killed in Raised by Wolves, and it appears that Guzikowski’s psyche has understandably not yet recovered from it. After the failure of the organic renewal of the personality (the beloved daughter as the serpent), there are not many options left. While Raised by Wolves proposed devolution into unconsciousness, Personhood proposes to go with a simulacrum, a synthetic alternative that can only prove to be evil in the long run.
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