Synopsis: A tale is told of a young girl that long ago ignored her fear of the dark and her elders to bring the stars to the night sky.
There are so many mythological themes – the Hero’s Journey and creation myth, to name two, as well as depth psychological concepts running through this episode. But all of them relate to the idea of the union of opposites.
In “The Girl Who Made the Stars,” a young Michael Burnham wakes up in the middle of the night frightened by a lightning storm in space. To ease her fears, her father tells her the story of a girl, who when she was about her same age, a thousand centuries ago, changed the universe. At this time, the First People worshipped the sun and were afraid of the night beast, so never went out in the dark. This kept them from traveling anywhere where they could not return by sunset. One night, the girl set out on her own, defying the wisdom of the elders, and came across a light. Although she was scared, the young girl approached it, and discovered a brave warrior. The warrior gave her a gift to return to the First People, so that they would no longer be afraid of the night. The girl did as the brave warrior told her and eventually grew up to become a queen.
In this episode, when the young girl goes out into the night in spite of the warnings of the elders, this can be compared to how the conscious ego decides to, or is forced to, acknowledge bits of unconscious material and integrate them into itself. Carl (C.G.) Jung called this the union of opposites, which is part of individuation, which is how he described the process by which a human psyche evolves or grows. The union of opposites also appears in many creation myths as a way of explaining how the natural world came to be in various societies and belief systems. And in the cultures in which the union of opposites is valued, it reminds us that life is not black and white, but an ongoing embracement of gray.
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