They stood at the tower entrance - Aulden, Janice, Poseidon and The Wind. Aulden knocked on the door and it swung open.

Inside was a woman with, as they expected, hair so long that it flowed over her shoulders and covered the floor of the room like a carpet. Her face, or where there should have been a face, was darkness with stars, like a view of the night sky. She moved up the curving stairs along the tower wall, floating like a spirit. Aulden and his companions followed her.

In the room at the top of the tower, he introduced himself, "My name is Aulden and these are my friends Janice, Poseidon and The Wind. Tell me your name."

She answered, "I can't." Aulden encouraged her, "I'll listen to you. Is it Rapunzel?" She told him, "Would that it were." Aulden again asked, "Please tell me."

With his request so polite, she relented and said, "Hairless Victory."

Aulden was surprised, because that strange name sounded like it could be the solution, and he told her, "I can't call you that." She said, "Just call me Victory."

Although her night-sky face was captivating, Aulden said, "I want to see your human face." She allowed the darkness to disappear and her face looked like someone Aulden knew. The writings of Jung and von Franz warn against allowing an archetypal figure to take on the appearance of a living acquaintance, so Aulden looked away and said, "Not like her."

Victory then adjusted her appearance. The only aspect that Aulden recognized was that she was depressed. He asked her, "Are you sad, Victory?"

She stepped forward and said, "I am sad."

Janice stepped between them when Victory moved toward Aulden, and she said, "Don't let her touch you!"

He stepped back and he watched her cautiously. Aulden's concern was that they hadn't found Victory's paradoxical counterpart, and he asked, "Is there someone who lives with you?"

Victory answered, "I'm all alone here."

These were ominous words, because Aulden knew that the problem would be more difficult to resolve if she was autonomous. He decided to ask another of the four questions, "What is your function here, Victory? What's your function in my life?"

She answered, "I keep the stars up above."

Aulden didn't understand the metaphor, and he shouted the question, "Tell me your function!"

She shouted back, "I am as black as the moon on the dark time of the month!"

Feeling confused by her, he moved to the next question: "What do you need from me?"

She answered, "Climb up my golden locks!"

Aulden felt intensely frustrated with her answers in metaphor, and he repeated the question angrily, shouting slowly, "What do you need from me?"

She hissed, "Your cherished attention."

He felt the answer was there, so he asked the fourth question: "What do you have for me?"

She raised her hand and offered him a little box. He took the box and examined it. On the lid was a stenciled profile of an animal. He opened the box. It was empty. "What is it?" he asked.

She said, "It's a furry little thing!" and she laughed.

Baffled by her answers, Aulden was all the more concerned that there was no paradoxical figure. He'd met several of these autonomous complexes. The books he'd read by von Franz advise to leave them until a counterpart appears. Aulden asked again, "Are you alone?"

Victory answered, "I'll check," and she pulled her head off of her shoulders and looked around the room by holding it high. Placing her head back, she assured him, "We're alone."

Aulden asked her, "Are you two people?"

She stepped closer, and told him, "There's only one of me." Janice stepped aggressively between them to guard Aulden. The Wind responded by changing from human form to the form of air and gusting between them.

Seeing the concern that his friends expressed, Aulden stepped back, trying to understand; to make an assessment. He recalled that he was here because he believed that this complex was causing him to have an obsession. He considered the possibility that her touch might increase the obsession. Contact with archetypal figures has consequences. He pulled out his cell phone and called the King's personal secretary. Within moments the Secretary was on the phone, "Boardroom."

Aulden asked, "Mr. Secretary?" and the voice responded, "Yes?"

"I need you to put out a call for someone to find me: the counterpart of the Sorceress whose name is Hairless Victory. Have the person meet me at her tower."

The Secretary answered, "Very well, sir."

"Thank you, Mr. Secretary," Aulden said to him, and pocketing his cell phone he said, "That's how you fix an autonomous complex." He looked to The Wind and said, "Air," and then to Poseidon, and said, "Water." He didn't expect Victory to respond but she did, saying, "Fire and smoke."

He repeated, "Air and water."

Victory screamed a high pitch screech, and with a wave of her arm a shield of starry darkness appeared between her and them.

Aulden felt himself beginning to panic, He attempted to bring his mind into focus, breathing steadily until he felt centered. He said to Victory, "Here's what I want: I want to love you. I want us to become friends. Tell me why your name is Hairless Victory?"

She spoke with a mocking tone, "That's for you to find out. You think my hair is impeding your victory? Is that what you think?"

"You said you need me to climb your golden locks," Aulden reminded her. "How do I do that?"

She said, "I throw them out the window and you climb up to meet me and we make love."

Aulden repeated a question, "What is your function in my life?"

"To open the mystery," she explained, and the darkness and stars between them grew closer to Aulden.

"What do you need from me?" Aulden asked her. She walked out of the darkness and moved slowly toward the stairs, asking, "Why would I need anything from you?"

He whispered to his companions, "Block the exit," and he said to Victory, "Tell me!"

At this point, Aulden ended his morning meditation. He could return to the same place in the evening. Between those times, he worked at his job delivering mail. Throughout the day she, Victory, was on his mind. While he worked, he thought on these things:

"Hair? What is the meaning of hair? The Apostle Paul wrote, hair is a woman's glory, or in some translations her pride. Vanity? She wants me to climb up her hair. She wants my 'cherished attention.' What about that box? She called it a 'furry little thing.' The sexual innuendo is so obvious. Is it primitive instinct? She said her function is to open the mystery.

"I should be pissed off at her for putting me through these months of obsession. This is hell! It's my own fault for not paying attention to her, whatever she is."

Paying attention to her - that's the same thing the vampires he met some months before needed. As von Franz wrote, "Their lust for blood is the craving or impulse of the unconscious contents to break into consciousness. If they are denied they begin to drain energy from consciousness, leaving the individual fatigued and listless. This story indicates an attempt on the part of unconscious contents to attract the attention of consciousness, to obtain recognition of their reality and their needs and to impart something to consciousness."

When Aulden returned that night, he said to Victory, "I think when you say cherished attention you mean I need to cherish you. I haven't done that. That's why my marriage ended. Tell me how to do it. Tell me how to give you cherished attention."

She took Aulden's hand and they walked to the balcony. Her hair followed her, pulled in a mazelike pattern from the floor as she walked. She gathered a cloth in her hands and gently wrapped it around Aulden's waist. The cloth was a dress. She was putting a dress on him! He stepped back and threw it to the floor, shouting, "Good God! Woman, what are you doing? You don't put a dress on a man! You tell me! What is 'cherished attention'? I won't feed your vanity! Tell me about this box! Is it just a sexual image? What is it?"

She spoke calmly, asking, "Don't you know?"

He studied the box: small enough for a ring; empty; animal image on the lid; she called it a furry little thing. Aulden said, "I can't see anything but a sexual reference. Tell me what I'm missing."

She stood back with her arms spread wide, and said, "I am mystery."

Aulden couldn't continue. He ended the meditation. At work again the next day he thought about Rapunzel. "Long hair is one thing, but to have it that long reveals an inflated ego: the golden stair to heaven, as if she's God. In the Grimm's version the prince gets his eyes ripped out. So that shows he was projecting the image onto her and feeding her inflation. She had to have her hair cut off and he had to get his eyes ripped out or else they couldn't have stayed together." The things postal workers think about. Aulden decided, "I need to cut her hair off. But what if I'm wrong? Do I cut myself off from learning about mystery?"

While he delivered mail, he made a mistake: He imagined how the scenario would play out. He even imagined the dialogue between himself and the other archetypal figures. Doing this, he infected the process. Jung would call that kind of fantasizing "passive imagination," which is different than the dreamlike work of "active imagination." The archetypal figures would point this out to him later.

When he returned to his meditation that evening, He said to his companions, "I don't think her counterpart is going to show up. I really hate dealing with autonomous complexes. I think we're going to have to cut off her hair."

The Wind smiled and asked, "Is this the part where I say, 'She put you through so much'?"

Aulden knew what The Wind was getting at, and he answered, "Not yet. Stick with the script, They laughed and Aulden said, "I messed things up thinking about it didn't I?" but he returned to what he'd planned to say, "I've never done anything violent to an archetypal image."

Janice spoke as if she was reciting lines melodramatically, "She used you! She used people around you!"

Poseidon did the same, repeating lines like an over-the-top actor, "But it's all because you weren't paying attention to her! You weren't looking inside yourself!"

They laughed - all of them. Even Aulden had to laugh at himself for putting words in their mouths.

The mood suddenly changed, because Victory didn't stick with the script. She said, unexpectedly, "I know what you're planning to do!"

Poseidon changed his tone, and asked, "How are you going to stop us?"

Victory transformed from her human appearance into fire. Even her hair all across the floor began to rise as flames.

Poseidon said, "Oh please, I could see that coming." He transformed into water and filled the room up to everyone's necks, extinguishing her.

Victory returned to her human form, splashing in the water and gasping for breath. Poseidon also returned to his human form. With everyone standing on the dry floor again, Victory ran for the balcony. Before they could stop her she jumped over the handrail. She would have escaped but Janice and Poseidon acted quickly, grabbing her hair from the floor and pulling her back up.

Aulden and The Wind ran to the balcony. Victory was hanging, alive and unharmed, by her hair. He needed shears, and Aulden didn't know how they appeared in his hands but he suddenly had a set of shears and he cut Victory's hair off in one big snip. The Wind took hold of her arm and lifted her back onto the balcony.

Victory's hair stood an inch long on top and hung unevenly longer around the sides of her head. Poseidon, in a conciliatory attempt, said, "Well, that should clean up alright."

Is it enough to cut off an archetypal figure's hair? Possibly, if it's the source of her godlike vanity.

Aulden confronted her, saying, "Now listen to me! I want to give you attention. I don't want to project you onto other women! I want to have mystery! I don't want a furry little thing from someone I project you onto! I want the mystery that you can show me! Do you understand?"

Janice had scissors and began giving Victory a proper, very short haircut. Aulden continued, "I'll ask you the four questions again. Tell me your name."

She answered, submissively, "Victory."

"What is your function in my life?"

"To show you mystery," she reconfirmed.

"What do you need from me?"

"Your attention"

"What do you have for me?"

Victory whispered and lowered her head in sadness and defeat, saying, "I had this box."

Aulden asked, "What do you have now?"

She repeated, "This box."

Here Aulden was uncertain, and asked, "What can you tell me about this box?"

She answered, "You put something into it."

Aulden felt surprised and disappointed in himself. He should have seen that earlier. An empty box: What goes inside? He asked, "What do you put into it?"

She said, "Your heart and soul."

This confused Aulden, and he told her, "You're not making sense."

She responded, "Your penis."

Aulden insisted, "Tell me the truth."

Victory groaned, "You don't understand."

Aulden guessed, "Are you saying my fortune, my fate? Cast my fate? My seed? My… the fertility of my fortune?"

While Aulden still felt uncertain, Victory answered, "All in this furry little box."

Aulden asked, "Why is it furry?" and she answered, "You know." He said, "But I need you to tell me."

Victory informed him, "Animal instinct."

"How does this related to mystery?" Aulden inquired.

Victory said, "Put your fate and fortune into this box. Trust your instinct, every step, and I can show you mystery. Give me your attention."

Aulden understood, and said, "Come with us, Victory, and stay with us for a while so we can learn from you."

She refused, saying, "This is my home, here," and looking around the floor at her hair, she had a question for him: "What's to become of me?"

Aulden answered, "You work with us instead of lording over us."

"Okay," she agreed, "Now let's clean up all this hair."

They gathered her hair and stuffed it into large plastic bags. As they worked, Victory studied herself in a mirror, and she said, "I think I might like having short hair."

That's how Aulden befriended Sorceress Victory. They left her at her tower and returned to the Church at the Center of Consciousness. Aulden knew they would see her again, because even as they left he felt as if something was unfinished.