To Emma Jung (Zollikon-Zurich) 11 Oct. 1950
Dear Frau Professor,
In my work on Kepler, I once again came across the archetype of the lower chthonic Trinity (cf. the downward-reflected triangle with Fludd, which I projected at the time), which is familiar to me from old and recent dreams (in the form of the playing card the ace of clubs and in the form of three simple planks).
Ever since then, it has always aroused great interest whenever it crops up anywhere.
This summer I read the French reprint of the “Romans de la Table Ronde,” which Mr. Fierz showed me in Paris last spring.
My attention was immediately captured by the three wooden spindles (trois fusedux de bois) that appear in Merlin's story (i.e. p. 65).
This story (pp. 56--78) is an interesting myth in itself. The spindles, one of which is white, one red, and one green, are found on a mysterious revolving island.
The section on this island begins with the four elements, like so many alchemical treatises.
The spindles are then taken back to a tree that stems from a branch that Eve was allowed to take to Earth from the Tree of Paradise.
This earthly double of the Tree of Paradise was first white, then red, then green.
According to the myth, Solomon's wife had the spindles made from it and added them to David's sword.
The sword and the spindles travel for centuries by boat until they are finally found on this island.
To support the argument that the spindles are the archetype of the chthonic Trinity-which in this way, albeit in a special form, would be brought into relation with the Grail story-the following points can be put forward: The number 3 in the book quoted is often directly associated with the Trinity (see, e.g., p. 78), and the ship bearing the spindles and the sword is later (p. 364) claimed to be the Church.
The spindles have a chthonic origin (tree) and (as Mr. Fierz emphasized) are specifically feminine tools.
So they relate to the boat as the Trinity does to the Church.
What is new to me, however, is that this archetype is not represented here by three ordinary planks but by 3 spindles.
Spindles are not complete without spinners, but in the myth they are absent.
These absent spinners can probably be identified with the Fates (in the lexicon the Fates are mentioned under the word "fuseaux).
One has the feeling that in the myth these spinners have become the victims of a sort of Christian "censorship”;
when I say "censorship" I do not necessarily mean some external authority but a tendency on the part of the original narrator of the Grail story to suppress any heathen motif as not assimilable.
(Yet with Diana they have not gone very far in other places.)
This fits in with the fact that in the later story the spindles have no plausible purpose.
All it says is that Galahad sleeps with the 3 spindles in his bed before he sees the secret of the Grail and dies (see p. 379f.).
But Mr. Fierz pointed out to me that the revolving island also appears in Plato, at the end of "the State," where the 3 Fates sit round the "spindle of necessity."
Through this (albeit unstated) connection with the Fates, the fateful aspect of the archetype is emphasized.
As you have worked on the Grail legend in depth, whereas I have only read this one book, I should like to ask you whether and how the three spindles appear in other versions of the Grail legend.
I would of course be most interested to hear whether my attempt to interpret the spindles as the archetype of the 'lower Three" strikes you as plausible and supported by the material.
Thanking you in advance and with best wishes to Prof. Jung,
Yours sincerely,
[W PAULI] ~Wolfgang Pauli, Atom and Archetype, Pages 47-48
