Carl Jung: I wonder which devil Karl Barth (with his absolute God) worships in practice.

To Albert Oeri

Dear It, 14 January 1929

Heartiest thanks for your letter!

It was a great joy.

I applaud your idea that occasionally there are individuals who, like "accumulators" or condensers, precipitate upon themselves and embody the expectations of the people and thus fulfil them.

I am entirely of this opinion.

Joffre and Hindenburg are probably such figures, without significance under normal conditions, heroes under exceptional ones.

Generally they are almost peasant-like by nature, attached to the soil, profoundly unconscious, somehow deeply rooted in their collectivity.

Their strength is ten thousand-fold, as it flows to them invisibly from the masses.

I don't know if one can speak of telepathy.

So far as I can grasp the nature of the collective unconscious, it seems to me like an omnipresent continuum, an unextended Everywhere.

That is to say, when something happens here at point A which touches upon or affects the collective unconscious, it has happened everywhere hence the strange parallelism of the Chinese and European periods of style, which Wilhelm recently demonstrated to me at the China Institute, or the unfathomable simultaneity of the Christ and Krishna myth.

As we know from the Yezidis, it is characteristic of most primitive religions that they have an extremely nebulous, remote kind of Trinity or some other highly spiritual principle that plays no role at all in actual religious practice, which is pre-eminently magical.

I wonder which devil Karl Barth (with his absolute God) worships in practice.

It's very likely one of them has him by the collar.

Cordially,

Your Barrel


~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 57-58

Carl Jung across the web:

Blog: http: http://carljungdepthpsychology.blogspot.com/

Google+: https://plus.google.com/102529939687199578205/posts

Facebook: Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/56536297291/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=4861719&sort=recent&trk=my_groups-tile-flipgrp

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Carl-Jung-326016020781946/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/purrington104/

Red Book: https://www.facebook.com/groups/792124710867966/

Scoop.It: http://www.scoop.it/u/maxwell-purrington

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaxwellPurringt

WordPress: https://carljungdepthpsychology.wordpress.com/

Great Sites to visit:

1. Jenna Lilla's Path of the Soul http://jennalilla.org/

2. Steve Jung-Hearted Parker's Jung Currents http://jungcurrents.com/


3. Frith Luton's Jungian Dream Analysis and Psychotherapy: http://frithluton.com/articles/