The Mystery of everything is life, which is water; for water dissolves the body into spirit… (C. G. Jung)
The Red Sea is an ideal symbol… for the elixir or the tincture of transformation. Sea water… is regarded as the baptismal water, which purifies and cleanses, preparing the stage of albedo or whitening.Source
The Red Sea has a unique symbolic value; in contrast with the bitterness and impurity usually associated with the sea, it represents the heating and transforming properties of baptismal waters. The destruction of the Egyptians trying to cross the Red Sea is seen as an allegory of the inability of the unenlightened or unaware to be transformed; more specifically, it is the inability of the incomplete psyche to find wholeness. The resistance of Christian tradition to the acceptance of the “other,” the unconscious and primitive, as part of the order of life, is viewed as a barrier to the very salvation it purports to seek… Allusions are found to a symbolic vehicle which is immersed in the Red Sea and purified; the vessel is commonly characterized as combining the four elements as a reflection of the unity of the world. In psychological terms, the vessel symbolizes the psyche, combining the four functions of consciousness, which goes through a period of introversion leading to the ideal integration of the personality
Jung, C., Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 14. 2nd ed., Princeton University Press, 1970. 702 p. (p. 199-210).
