Sirens & Anima

Have you ever wondered why the Sirens are often associated with the notion of the Femme Fatale?

I found a fascinating explanation in Carl Jung’s famous book “Man and His Symbols.” Here is a summary: The female elements of a male psyche are called the anima.  We can view the anima as the gateway to the unconscious of a man’s psyche.  The anima’s negative or positive aspects depend on the individual’s relationship with his mother.  Therefore, if the person perceives his relationship with his mother as negatively influencing him, the anima will be personified with dangerous aspects.  And this is, in my view, a very plausible explanation of how the traits of wisdom and secret knowledge that the Sirens possess were forgotten and substituted with lethal temptation and desire.

Recently, I read the article Listening to the Sirens by Prof. Richard Hunter of Cambridge University where he writes the following:

“Almost no Homeric scene appealed in fact to the Church Fathers as much as did Odysseus and the Sirens.  The scene offered not just a potent image of how men should avoid the temptations of earthly and corrupting pleasures, but also, in Odysseus, a model of one man who did just that on his way to his ‘real home.’  For Christians, Odysseus could prefigure the search through the voyage of life of the Christian soul for its heavenly home”.

We can all probably guess what type of relationship Second Century Church Father Clement of Alexandria had with his mother from his description of the island of the Sirens:

“It is an island of wickedness heaped up with bones and corpses; on it sings a beautiful harlot, pleasure, who delights herself with vulgar music.”–Protrepticus

Each of us must decipher the myth of the Sirens because our interpretation is linked to our personalities.  Is it about sinful pleasure?  Lethal temptation?  Forbidden knowledge?  Manipulation?  There is no right or wrong answer, only own answer.

Feel free to comment on this topic.

I will be happy to read your responses.