Unicorn

Because it blends the image of the horse with that of the virgin, and the outstanding single horn, it suggests purity with animal or basic sexuality. The message is therefore that sexuality can be directed in a new way with single mindedness. The mythology of the unicorn suggests it can only be tamed by a pure woman. The image of the woman suggests that if a man can meet his own femininity, or if he can be with a woman without letting the energy of desire flow into physical sex or ejaculation, then the energy of sexuality transforms into something else, a wider awareness for instance.

The following dream illustrates something of this. Nicolas dream seems to depict powerful opposites in her nature. The tiger is her powerful possibilities of aggression and desire, and the unicorn depicts the possibility of transforming these. The opposites are often shown in such a confrontation.

I am in a house with a girl in a wheelchair. Bored I go for a walk. The girl said it would be dangerous. I am on a shoreline. The ocean is in front of me like a wall. To my right is a calm sea and a tiger. To my left is a rough sea with a unicorn. As the tiger runs at me the unicorn charges and butts it. Nicola

In another dream Anthony meets a similar situation. He describes his dream as follows:

A massive force underlying the basement of my house was threatening to emerge. It had already torn down part of the ceiling of the basement. This force was in the shape of a woman and a serpent. But when it did emerge the figure of Christ also came into the room and the two seemed to change each other. When I explored the dream I felt the woman represented my own natural and unrestrained desires and needs, and Christ was the power of social pressure to conform. In releasing them, both my natural urges and social needs could be expressed in creative acts – such as a singer might do in performances. They might therefore be acceptable, though still containing the socially dangerous natural impulses.

Carl Jung writes of this saying:

Christ himself symbolically appears as the Lamb of God or the Fish, but he is also the serpent exalted on the cross, the lion, and in rarer cases the unicorn. These animal attributes of Christ indicate that even the Son of God (the supreme personification of man) can no more dispense with his animal nature than with his higher, spiritual nature.

So the unicorn and the pure female represent this transformation or raw animal urges into creative human action and awareness.