going to the place of the Mothers

Any man embarking on this symbolic quest must understand that he will be swept into one enthusiasm after another. Such enthusiasms soon wane and are forgotten. These senseless enthusiasms can be discounted but for the fact that they provide the energy for the mystic vision.

Faust makes the extraordinary demand to see Helen of Troy, he has the intelligence and perspective to ask for a vision of beauty and femininity, which she symbolises … transformation from a time-and-space-bound consciousness to the next level, which we often describe as holy, redeemed, enlightened, eternal, or visionary. Go to the depths, the place of the Mothers, (the maternal depths) and place the key in the tripod - Mephistopheles’ most concise instruction for making your way out of the three-dimensional world when you are ready to move on to mature spirituality … the third level of consciousness may be turned into the fourth by adding the key to the tripod …

Going to the depths indicates that the experience is profoundly inward and solitary, journey requires extreme introversion, an inward turning, forty days and nights in the desert.

… is (psychologically incestuous) act of regression … Returning to your origins and generating or regenerating yourself is the act of creating consciousness. The place of the Mothers is where consciousness and cultural and spiritual power originate. An old alchemical saying proclaims: “I find myself, I mate with myself, I generate myself, I gestate myself, I give birth to myself, I am myself.”

linked mentions for "going to the place of the Mothers":

1. holding onto helen’s garment
   It is the universal experience of one on the path to grasp at the tools of genius when he encounters these sublime realms. Pain often compels us to
   
2. tempering of one by the other
   … the only redemption for either of a pair of opposites is the tempering of one by the other. Faust is redeemed by the love of Gretchen;