Nixies

Whoever looks into the water sees his own image, but behind it living creatures soon loom up; fishes, presumably, harmless dwellers of the deepharmless, if only the lake were not haunted:

They are water-beings of a peculiar sort. Sometimes a nixie gets into the fisherman's net, a female, half-human fish CW9.1 ¶ 52

Nixies are entrancing creatures: CW9.1 ¶ 52

Half drew she him, Half sank he down, And nevermore was seen CW9.1 ¶ 52

The nixie is an even more instinctive version of a magical feminine being whom I call the anima. She can also be a siren, melusina (mermaid), wood-nymph, Grace, or Erlking's daughter, or a lamia or succubus, who infatuates young men and sucks the life out of them CW9.1 ¶ 53

Moralizing critics will say that these figures are projections of soulful emotional states and are nothing but worthless fantasies. One must admit that there is a certain amount of truth in this. But is it the whole truth? CW9.1 ¶ 53

Is the nixie really nothing but a product of moral laxity? Were there not such beings long ago, in an age when dawning human consciousness was still wholly bound to nature? Surely there were spirits of forest, field, and stream long before the question of moral conscience ever existed. What is more, these beings were as much dreaded as adored, so that their rather peculiar erotic charms were only one of their characteristics CW9.1 ¶ 53

`EROTIC FANTASY'

An alluring nixie from the dim bygone is today called an “erotic fantasy,” and she may complicate our psychic life in a most painful way. She comes upon us just as a nixie might; she sits on top of us like a succubus; she changes into all sorts of shapes like a witch, and in general displays an unbearable independence that does not seem at all proper in a psychic content CW9.1 ¶ 54

STATES OF FASCINATION

Occasionally she causes states of fascination that rival the best bewitchment, or unleashes terrors in us not to be outdone by any manifestation of the devil CW9.1 ¶ 54

MISCHIEVOUS BEING

WHO CROSSES OUR PATH

She is a mischievous being who crosses our path in numerous transformations and disguises, playing all kinds of tricks on us, causing happy and unhappy delusions, depressions and ecstasies, outbursts of affect, etc. CW9.1 ¶ 54

WITCH MIXES HER VILE

POTIONS OF LOVE AND DEATH

Even in a state of reasonable introjection the nixie has not laid aside her roguery. The witch has not ceased to mix her vile potions of love and death; her magic poison has been refined into intrigue and self-deception, unseen though none the less dangerous for that CW9.1 ¶ 54

NIXIE AS THE `ANIMA'

But how do we dare to call this elfin being the “anima”? Anima means soul and should designate something very wonderful and immortal. Yet this was not always so. We should not forget that this kind of soul is a dogmatic conception whose purpose it is to pin down and capture something uncannily alive and active. The German word Seele is closely related, via the Gothic form saiwalô, to the Greek word,which means `quick-moving,' `changeful of hue', `twinkling,' something like a butterflyin Greekwhich reels drunkenly from flower to flower and lives on honey and love. In Gnostic typology the`psychic man,' is inferior to the`spiritual man,' and finally there are wicked souls who must roast in hell for all eternity. Even the quite innocent soul of the unbaptized newborn babe is deprived of the contemplation of God CW9.1 ¶ 55

Among primitives, the soul is the magic breath of life (hence the term “anima”), or a flame CW9.1 ¶ 55