Hannibal analysis - part 8: Lecter desires to become Mercurius

CATEGORY: MOVIES

One of Lecter's goals is to become Mercurius, whom Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung said, "consists of all conceivable opposites". Lecter's becoming Mercurius is a process which includes 'assimilating' the good (represented by Starling) to complement his evil, and Starling's feminine to complement his masculine. Lecter is, in a sense, trying to 'fuse' Starling to himself.

Here's some information on the nature of Mercurius from Jung's Alchemical Studies:

"The multiple aspects of Mercurius may be summarized as follows:
(1) Mercurius consists of all conceivable opposites. He is thus quite obviously a duality, but is named a unity in spite of the fact that his innumerable inner contradictions can dramatically fly apart into an equal number of disparate and apparently independent figures.
(2) He is both material and spiritual.
(3) He is the process by which the lower and material is transformed into the higher and spiritual, and vice versa.
(4) He is the devil, a redeeming psychopomp, an evasive trickster, and God's reflection in physical nature.
(5) He is also the reflection of a mystical experience of [the alchemist] that coincides with the opus alchymicum.
(6) As such, he represents on the one hand the Self and on the other the individuation process and, because of the limitless number of his names, also the collective unconscious." [a]


a. Jung, C.G. "The Spirit Mercurius" in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 13. Princeton University Press, 1967. p. 237.