Showing posts with label Mythology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mythology. Show all posts

Sunday, January 14, 2018

Carl Jung: I was on the way to discovering my own myth




I was on the way to discovering my own myth.

For the building game was only a beginning.

It released a stream of fantasies which I later carefully wrote down.

I went on with my building game after the noon meal every day, whenever the weather permitted.

As soon as I was through eating, I began playing, and continued to do so until the patients arrived; and if I was finished with my work early enough in the evening, I went back to building. In the course of this activity my thoughts clarified, and I was able to grasp the fantasies whose presence in myself I dimly felt.

Naturally, I thought about the significance of what I was doing, and asked myself, "Now, really, what are you about?

You are building a small town, and doing it as if it were a rite!"

I had no answer to my question, only the inner certainty that I

This sort of thing has been consistent with me, and at any time in my later life when I came up against a blank wall, I painted a picture or hewed stone.

Each such experience proved to be a rite d'entree for the ideas and works that followed hard upon it.

Everything that I have written this year and last year, "The Undiscovered Self," "Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth," "A Psychological View of Conscience," has grown out of the
stone sculptures I did after my wife's death.

The close of her life, the end, and what it made me realize, wrenched me violently out of myself.

It cost me a great deal to regain my footing, and contact with stone helped me. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Pages 174-175

Sunday, April 30, 2017

Carl Jung: Symbols are spirit from above, and under those conditions the spirit is above too.




Since the stars have fallen from heaven and our highest symbols have paled, a secret life holds sway in the unconscious.

That is why we have a psychology today, and why we speak of the unconscious.

All this would be quite superfluous in an age or culture that possessed symbols.

Symbols are spirit from above, and under those conditions the spirit is above too.

Therefore it would be a foolish and senseless undertaking for such people to wish to experience or investigate an unconscious that contains nothing but the silent, undisturbed sway of nature.

Our unconscious, on the other hand, hides living water, spirit that has become nature, and that is why it is disturbed.

Heaven has become or us the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair memory of things that once were.

But "the heart glows," and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 50

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Carl Jung on “Mythology” – Anthology




God always speaks mythologically. If he didn't, he would reveal reason and science. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 9-10.

Ideas of God are first of all myths, statements about things that are philosophically and scientifically indeterminable; that is, they are psychological objects which are amenable to discussion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 65-68.

No doubt the archetypes are present everywhere, but there is also a widespread resistance to this "mythology." That is why even the gospel has to be "demythologized." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 83-86.

I should not worry about all this localization talk. It's practically all foolishness, and a remnant of the old brain mythology like the explanation of sleep through the contraction of the ganglia, which is by no means more intelligent than the localization of the psyche in the pituitary gland. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 159-161.

Mythological motifs are facts; they never change; only theories change. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 191-192.

What we need is the development of the inner spiritual man, the unique individual whose treasure is hidden on the one hand in the symbols of our mythological tradition, and on the other hand in man's unconscious psyche. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 201-208

On the other hand "God" is a verbal image, a predicate or mythologem founded on archetypal premises which underlie the structure of the psyche as images of the instincts ("instinctual patterns"). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 254-256.

Mythology as a vital psychic phenomenon is as necessary as it is unavoidable. In this discussion, it seems to me, the gnostic danger of ousting the unknowable and incomprehensible and unutterable God by philosophems and mythologems must be clearly recognized, so that nothing is shoved in between human consciousness and the primordial numinous experience. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 254-256.

If theologians think that whenever they say "God" then God is, they are deifying anthropomorphisms, psychic structures and myths. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

The reason why mythic statements invariably lead to word-magic is that the archetype possesses a numinous autonomy and has a psychic life of its own. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

The archetype is not just the formal condition for mythological statements but an overwhelming force comparable to nothing I know. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

Our psychic foundations are shrouded in such great and inchoate darkness that, as soon as you peer into it, it is instantly compensated by mythic forms. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 327-329.

If, for instance, we were to create a myth, we would say that "God" has two aspects, spiritual and chthonic, or rather: material. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 341-343.

As regards the Incarnation, the idea of God's descent into human nature is a true mythologem. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 341-343.

This, too,[UFO’s] is an expression of something that has always claimed my deepest interest and my greatest attention: the manifestation of archetypes, or archetypal forms, in all the phenomena of life: in biology, physics, history, folklore, and art, in theology and mythology, in parapsychology, as well as in the symptoms of insane patients and neurotics, and finally in the dreams and life of every individual man and woman. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 397-398.

The underlying scheme, the quaternio, i.e., the psychological equation of primordial dynamis (prima causa) with gods and their mythology, time and space, is a psychological problem of the first order. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 426-427

Although the assertion of immortality is in itself a fact, it is no more proof of immortality than are any other mythological statements. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 457-458

After thinking all this over I have come to the conclusion that being "made in the likeness" applies not only to man but also to the Creator: he resembles man or is his likeness, which is to say that he is just as unconscious as man or even more unconscious, since according to the myth of the incarnatio he actually felt obliged to become man and offer himself to man as a sacrifice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 493-496

I fully agree with it, only I would ask you to state explicitly that in my psychology the " mythological" aspect means "religious attitude." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468

You will surely have noticed in reading my writings that I do not mince my words and clearly and expressly point out that the regard for mythological parallels is conducive to a religious attitude. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468

It was the Enlightenment which destroyed this bulwark by reducing the unitary view to nothing but mythology. In its modern usage mythology simply means "it is nothing," since myths are unrealistic. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468

But if the believer without religion now thinks that he has got rid of mythology he is deceiving himself: he cannot get by without "myth." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488

Materia is in the end simply a chthonic mother goddess, and the late Pope seems to have had an inkling of this. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488

Clearly the anti-mythological trend is due to the difficulties we have in clinging on to our previous mythological tenets of belief. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488

"Reason" is, notoriously, not necessarily ethical any more than intelligence is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488

It [Myth] gives the ultimately unimaginable religious experience an image, a form in which to express itself, and thus makes community life possible, whereas a merely subjective religious experience lacking the traditional mythic imagery remains inarticulate and asocial, and, if it does anything at all, it fosters a spiritually anchoritic life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488

In the intellectual world in which I grew up, Hegelian thought played no role at all; on the contrary, it was Kant and his epistemology on the one hand, and on the other straight materialism, which I never shared, knowing too much about its ridiculous mythology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 500-502

Nobody seems to have noticed that without a reflecting psyche the world might as well not exist, and that, in consequence, consciousness is a second world-creator, and also that the cosmogonic myths do not describe the absolute beginning of the world but rather the dawning of consciousness as the second Creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488

Myth is pre-eminently a social phenomenon: it is told by the many and heard by the many. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488

The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologems, i.e., the archetypes. In this vision astrology and alchemy, the two classical functionaries of the psychology of the collective unconscious, join hands. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Page 195, Para 392.

I watched the creation of myths going on, and got an insight into the structure of the unconscious, forming thus the concept that plays such a role in the Types. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35

If he is intent only on the outer reality, he must live his myth; if he is turned only towards the inner reality, he must dream his outer, so-called real life. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 280

Besides the obvious personal sources, creative fantasy also draws upon the forgotten and long buried primitive mind with its host of images, which are to be found in the mythologies of all ages and all peoples. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Pages xxiv-xxv

The religious myth is one of man’s greatest and most significant achievements, giving him the security and inner strength not to be crushed by the monstrousness of the universe. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 343

Just as the unconscious world of mythological images speaks indirectly, through the experience of external things, to the man who surrenders wholly to the outside world, so the real world and its demands find their way indirectly to the man who has surrendered wholly to the soul; for no man can escape both realities. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 280

Myth is not fiction: it consists of facts that are continually repeated and can be observed over and over again. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 648.

It [myth] is something that happens to man, and men have mythical fates just as much as the Greek heroes do. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 648.

Myth is not fiction: it consists of facts that are continually repeated and can be observed over and over again. It is something that happens to man, and men have mythical fates just as much as the Greek heroes do. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 648.

I am always profoundly impressed by the riches of Greek mythology, which have hitherto been presented so paltrily. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 376.

‘But,’ C.G. went on to tell us, ‘here was a living myth, for the mountain lit by the sun is said to be the wife of Vishnu; and the myth gives the story and the experience meaning. That is what myths are.’ ~E.A. Bennet, Meetings with Jung, Page 284

So far as mythology goes the interesting thing is that the myths are repeated, that is a fact and a very important one. ~Carl Jung, Meetings with Jung, Page 304

Myth is the revelation of divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth; rather it speaks to us as a Word of God. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 340.

No science Myth will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science. For it is not that "God" is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 340.

It is not we who invent myth; rather it speaks to us as a Word of God. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 340.

The mythological motifs have never yet been classified, as their name is legion. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 66-67

As you have observed, I am also well aware of the difference between myth and revelation, having concerned myself solely with myths and never with revealed truths. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 123-124

Psychology, as one of the many expressions of psychic life, operates with ideas which in their turn are derived from archetypal structures and thus generate a somewhat more abstract kind of myth. Psychology therefore translates the archaic speech of myth into a modern mythologem not yet, of course, recognized as such—which constitutes one element of the myth "science." ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 302

Myths are miracle tales and treat of all those things which, very often, are also objects of belief. In the everyday world of consciousness such things hardly exist; that is to say, until 1933 only lunatics would have been found in possession of living fragments of mythology. After this date the world of heroes and monsters spread like a devastating fire over whole nations, proving that the strange world of myth had suffered no loss of vitality during the centuries of reason and enlightenment. If metaphysical ideas no longer have such a fascinating effect as before, this is certainly not due to any lack of primitivity in the European psyche, but simply and solely to the fact that the erstwhile symbols no longer express what is now welling up from the unconscious as the end-result of the development of Christian consciousness through the centuries. This end result is a true antimimon pneuma, a false spirit of arrogance, hysteria, woolly-mindedness, criminal amorality, and doctrinaire fanaticism, a purveyor of shoddy spiritual goods, spurious art, philosophical stutterings, and Utopian humbug, fit only to be fed wholesale to the mass man of today. That is what the post-Christian spirit looks like. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 66

Has mankind ever really got away from myths? Everyone who has his eyes and wits about him can see that the world is dead, cold, and unending. Never yet has he beheld a God, or been compelled to require the existence of such a God from the evidence of his senses. On the contrary, it needed the strongest inner compulsion, which can only be explained by the irrational force of instinct, for man to invent those religious beliefs whose absurdity was long since pointed out by Tertullian. In the same way one can withhold the material content of primitive myths from a child but not take from him the need for mythology, and still less his ability to manufacture it for himself. One could almost say that if all the world's traditions were cut off at a single blow, the whole of mythology and the whole history of religion would start all over again with the next generation. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 30

Has mankind ever really got away from myths? Everyone who has his eyes and wits about him can see that the world is dead, cold, and unending. Never yet has he beheld a God, or been compelled to require the existence of such a God from the evidence of his senses. On the contrary, it needed the strongest inner compulsion, which can only be explained by the irrational force of instinct, for man to invent those religious beliefs whose absurdity was long since pointed out by Tertullian.

In the same way one can withhold the material content of primitive myths from a child but not take from him the need for mythology, and still less his ability to manufacture it for himself. One could almost say that if all the world's traditions were cut off at a single blow, the whole of mythology and the whole history of religion would start all over again with the next generation. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 30

Life is a flux, a flowing into the future, and not a stoppage or a backwash. It is therefore not surprising that so many of the mythological saviours are child gods. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 278

The myth of the hero ... is first and foremost a self-representation of the longing of the unconscious, of its unquenched and unquenchable desire for the light of consciousness. But consciousness, continually in danger of being led astray by its own light and of becoming a rootless will o'the wisp, longs for the healing power of nature, for the deep wells of being and for unconscious communion with life in all its countless forms. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 299

Just as the unconscious world of mythological images speaks indirectly, through the experience of external things, to the man who surrenders himself wholly to the outer world, so the real world and its demands find their way indirectly to the man who has surrendered himself wholly to the soul; for no man can escape both realities. If he is intent only on the outer reality, he must live his myth; if he is turned only towards the inner reality, he must dream his outer, so-called real life. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 280

The primitive mentality does not invent myths, it experiences them. Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings, and anything but allegories of physical processes. Such allegories would be an idle amusement for an unscientific intellect. Myths, on the contrary, have a vital meaning. Not merely do they represent, they are the mental life of the primitive tribe, which immediately falls to pieces and decays when it loses its mythological heritage, like a man who has lost his soul. A tribe's mythology is its living religion, whose loss is always and everywhere, even among the civilized, a moral catastrophe.
But religion is a vital link with psychic processes independent of and beyond consciousness, in the dark hinterland of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 261

What is the use of a religion without a mythos, since religion means, if anything at all, precisely that function which links us back to the eternal myth? ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 647

The fact that the life of Christ is largely myth does absolutely nothing to disprove its factual truth—quite the contrary. I would even go so far as to say that the mythical character of a life is just what expresses its universal human validity. It is perfectly possible, psychologically, for the unconscious or an archetype to take complete possession of a man and to determine his fate down to the smallest detail. At the same time objective, non-psychic parallel phenomena can occur which also represent the archetype. It not only seems so, it simply is so, that the archetype fulfils itself not only psychically in the individual, but objectively outside the individual. My own conjecture is that Christ was such a personality. The life of Christ is just what it had to be if it is the life of a god and a man at the same time. It is a symbolum, a bringing together of heterogeneous natures, rather as if Job and Yahweh were combined in a single personality. Yahweh's intention to become man, which resulted from his collision with Job, is fulfilled in Christ's life and suffering. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 648

The protean mythologeme and the shimmering symbol express the processes of the psyche far more trenchantly and, in the end, far more clearly than the clearest concept; for the symbol not only conveys a visualization of the process but—and this is perhaps just as important—it also brings a re-experiencing of it, of that twilight which we can learn to understand only through inoffensive empathy, but which too much clarity only dispels. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 199

Just as the unconscious world of mythological images speaks indirectly, through the experience of external things, to the man who surrenders himself wholly to the outer world, so the real world and its demands find their way indirectly to the man who has surrendered himself wholly to the soul; for no man can escape both realities. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 280

If he is intent only on the outer reality, he must live his myth; if he is turned only towards the inner reality, he must dream his outer, so-called real life. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 280

One could almost say that if all the world's traditions were cut off at a single blow, the whole of mythology and the whole history of religion would start all over again with the next generation. ~Carl Jung , CW 4, Para 30

The pain of this loneliness is the vengeance of the gods, for never again can he return to mankind. He is, as the myth says, chained to the lonely cliffs of the Caucasus, forsaken of God and man. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 243

The old myth, which always holds within it something yet older and more aboriginal, remains the same, this being an essential quality of all forms of religion; it only undergoes a new interpretation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488

My whole endeavour has been to show that myth is something very real because it connects us with the instinctive bases of our existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468

One has to be extremely careful in using the word "mythology" as it brings you into head-on collision with the all-pervading infantile arguments of the Enlightenment. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 468

To be sure "Christ" gave the myth a new meaning for the man of antiquity. But when we still go on stressing the newness 2000 years later, we must point out what exactly is the news for us, which we haven't yet heard and understood. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 83-86.

Myth is the revelation of divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth; rather it speaks to us as a Word of God. No science will ever replace myth, and a myth cannot be made out of any science. For it is not that "God" is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of a divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth; rather it speaks to us as a Word of God. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 340.

Two figures-the old sage and the young maiden-step into the field of vision, unexpectedly for consciousness, but characteristic of the mythological spirit upon which consciousness rests. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.

The very numbers you use in counting are more than you take them for. They are at the same time mythological entities (for the Pythagoreans they were even divine), but you are certainly unaware of this when you use numbers for a practical purpose. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 461

...the figures in the unconscious could be explained by a long-lasting primeval matriarchy if only we knew for certain that it ever existed, just as the flood myths could be explained by the myth of Atlantis if only we knew that there ever was an Atlantis. Equally, the contents of the unconscious could be explained by reincarnation if we knew that there is reincarnation. ~ Carl Jung to Baroness Tinti, Letters Volume 1, Pages 208-209.

The universal hero myth always refers to a powerful man or god-man who vanquishes evil in the form of dragons, serpents, monsters, demons, and so on, and who liberates his people from destruction and death. The narration or ritual repetition of sacred texts and ceremonies, and the worship of such a figure with dances, music, hymns, prayers, and sacrifices, grip the audience with numinous emotions and exalt the individual to an identification with the hero. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 68.

. . . inner motives spring from a deep source that is not made by consciousness and is not under its control. In the mythology of earlier times, these forces were called mana, or spirits, demons, and gods. They are as active today as ever. If they go against us, then we say that it is just bad luck, or that certain people are against us. The one thing we refuse to admit is that we are dependent upon "powers" that are beyond our control. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 71.

At the Reformation two things happened which upset the absolute attitude of that day: (a) Crucifixes were found in Mexico, which undermined the belief in the uniqueness of the Christian religion where the crucifixion was the central teaching, (b) The rediscovery of Gnosticism, the Dionysian myth and so forth, which showed that teachings similar to Christianity had been prevalent before the birth of Christ. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 15.

These fantasy-images undoubtedly have their closest analogues in mythological types. We must therefore assume that they correspond to certain collective (and not personal) structural elements of the human psyche…. These cases are so numerous that we are obliged to assume the existence of a collective psychic substratum. I have called this the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 9I, para. 262.

Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings… But religion is a vital link with psychic processes independent of and beyond consciousness, in the dark hinterland of the psyche. ~Carl Jung CW 9i, para. 261.

I do not know for what reason the universe has come into being, and shall never know. Therefore I must drop this question as a scientific or intellectual problem. But if an idea about it is offered to me - in dreams or in mythic traditions - I ought to take note of it. I even ought to build up a conception on the basis of such hints, even though it will forever remain a hypothesis that I know cannot be proved. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Pages 301-302.

In the dream, … there are numberless inter-connections to which one can find parallels only in mythological associations of ideas (or perhaps in certain poetic creations which are often characterized by a borrowing, not always conscious, from myths. ~Carl Jung; CW 9I; para. 259.

The Catholic Church is liberal enough to look upon the Osiris-Horus-Isis myth, or at any rate suitable portions of it, as a prefiguration of the Christian legend of salvation. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Paragraph 178.

We must constantly bear in mind that what we mean by "archetype" is in itself irrepresentable, but has effects which make visualizations of it possible, namely, the archetypal images and ideas. We meet with a similar situation in physics: there the smallest particles are themselves irrepresentable but have effects from the nature of which we can build up a model. The archetypal image, the motif or mythologem, is a construction of this kind. ~Carl Jung; CW 8, Page 417.

Numerous mythological and philosophical attempts have been made to formulate and visualize the creative force which man knows only by subjective experience. To give but a few examples, I would remind the reader of the cosmogonic significance of Eros in Hesiod, and also of the Orphic figure of Phanes, the ‘Shining One,’ the first-born, the ‘Father of Eros.’ In Orphic terms, Phanes also denotes Priapos, a god of love, androgynous, and equal to the Theban Dionysus Lysios. The Orphic meaning of Phanes is the same as that of the Indian Kama, the God of love, which is also a cosmogonic principle. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, para. 198.

the Creator God [takes] on an astromythological, or rather an astrological, character. He has become the sun, and thus finds a natural expression that transcends his moral division into a Heavenly Father and his counterpart the devil. ~Carl Jung; CW 5, Para 176.

The conscious fantasy may be woven of mythological or any other material; it should not be taken literally, but must be interpreted according to its meaning. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 44.

The strong and natural love that binds the child to the father turns away, during the years when the child is outgrowing the family circle, to the higher forms of the father, to authority, to the “Fathers” of the Church and to the father-god visibly represented by them. Nevertheless, mythology is not lacking in consolations. Did not the Word become flesh? And did not the divine pneuma enter into the Virgin’s womb? The whirlwind of Anaxagoras was that same divine nous that produced the world out of itself. Why do we cherish the image of the Immaculate Mother even to this day?” ~Carl Jung; CW 8, para. 76.

The primordial image, or archetype, is a figure--be it a daemon, a human being, or a process--that constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed. Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure. . . . In each of these images there is a little piece of human psychology and human fate, a remnant of the joys and sorrows that have been repeated countless times in our ancestral history. . . . ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Page 127.

It is commonly assumed that on some given occasion in prehistoric times, the basic mythological ideas were "invented" by a clever old philosopher or prophet, and ever afterward "believed" by a credulous and uncritical people. But the very word "invent" is derived from the Latin invenire, and means "to find" and hence to find something by "seeking" it. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 69.

A remarkable instance of this can be found in the Eleusinian mysteries, which were finally suppressed in the beginning of the seventh century of the Christian era. They expressed, together with the Delphic oracle, the essence and spirit of ancient Greece. On a much greater scale, the Christian era itself owes its name and significance to the antique mystery of the god-man, which has its roots in the archetypal Osiris-Horus myth of ancient Egypt. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 68.

Myths go back to the primitive storyteller and his dreams, to men moved by the stirring of their fantasies. These people were not very different from those whom later generations called poets or philosophers. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 78

. . . So, in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get to know “my” myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks. . . . I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me, from what rhizome I sprang. ~Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation, xxiv–xxv.

The myth of the necessary incarnation of God . . . can be understood as man's creative confrontation with the opposites and their synthesis in the self, the wholeness of his personality. . . . That is the goal . . . which fits man meaningfully into the scheme of creation and at the same time confers meaning upon it. –Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Page 338.

Myths which day has forgotten continue to be told by night, and powerful figures which consciousness has reduced to banality and ridiculous triviality are recognized again by poets and prophetically revived; therefore they can also be recognized "in changed form" by the thoughtful person. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 282.

Like any archetype, the essential nature of the self is unknowable, but its manifestations are the content of myth and legend. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 790.

The fear is not of myself but of the myth in you. ~Carl Jung to Walter Corte, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 69-70.

I think we must give it time to infiltrate into people from many centers, to revivify among intellectuals a feeling for symbol and myth, ever so gently to transform Christ back into the soothsaying god of the vine, which he was, and in this way absorb those ecstatic instinctual forces of Christianity for the one purpose of making the cult and the sacred myth what they once were a drunken feast of joy where man regained the ethos and holiness of an animal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 17-19.

The dreams of early childhood contain mythological motifs which the children could not possibly know of. These archetypal images are the primeval knowledge of mankind; we are born with this inheritance, though this fact is not obvious and only becomes visible in indirect ways. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIV, Page 119.

In early childhood we become acquainted with fairy tales and we learn mythology in school and in our later reading, we forget most of it in consciousness, but in the depths it is all carefully treasured. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 22Feb1935, Pages 192.

Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche . . . . Many of these unconscious processes may be indirectly occasioned by consciousness, but never by conscious choice. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Par 261.

Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings, and anything but allegories of physical processes. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 261.

The primitive mentality does not invent myths, it experiences them. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 261.

The ancients always thought of coming events as having shadows cast in front of them. Here we have an animal killed, a mythological animal in fact—that is, instinct. ~Carl Jung, Introduction to Analytical Psychology, Page 153.

The archetypes. . . are not intellectually invented. They are always there and they produce certain processes in the unconscious one could best compare with myths. That's the origin of mythology. Mythology is a dramatization of a series of images that formulate the life of the archetypes. ~C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 348.

Mythology is a pronouncing of a series of images that formulate the life of archetypes. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 16.

In fact, it is unhygienic, because if you wipe out the mythology of a man, his entire historical sequence, he becomes a statistical average, a number; that is, he becomes nothing. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 36.

We think that we are born today tabula rasa without a history, but man has always lived in the myth. To think that man is born without a history within himself— that is a disease. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 36.

The mandala is an archetypal image whose occurrence is attested throughout the ages. It signifies the wholeness of the Self. This circular image represents the wholeness of the psychic ground or, to put it in mythic terms, the divinity incarnate in man. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 334-335.

The collective unconscious…appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Par. 325.

What we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to be sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science. Science works with concepts of averages which are far too general to do justice to the subjective variety of an individual life. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 3.

An ethical fraternity, with its mythical Nothing, not infused by any archaic-infantile driving force, is a pure vacuum and can never evoke in man the slightest trace of that age-old animal power which drives the migrating bird across the sea. . . .~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Page 294.

Only a mythical being has a range greater than man's. How then can man form any definite opinions about himself? ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 4.

Myths are miracle tales . . . In the everyday world of consciousness such things hardly exist; that is to say, until 1933. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Page 66.

Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 311.

Atlantis: a mythical phantasm. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 4-5.