[Note: Dr. Jung was lecturing on The Red Book as early as 1925. Evidence that The Red Book was not the "Secret" and "Hidden" book that is often erroneously asserted]
In layer two of Liber Novus, Jung interpreted the figures of Elijah and Salome respectively in terms of fore thinking and pleasure:
“The powers of my depths are predetermination and pleasure. Predetermination or fore thinking is Prometheus, who, without determined thoughts, brings the chaotic to form and definition, who digs the channels and holds the object before pleasure.
Fore thinking also comes before thought.
But pleasure is the force that desires and destroys forms without form and definition.
It loves the form in itself that it takes hold of, and destroys the forms that it does not take.
The fore-thinker is a seer, but pleasure is blind. It does not foresee, but desires what it touches. Forethinking is not powerful in itself and therefore does not move.
But pleasure is power, and therefore it moves” (p. 247).
In later commentaries written probably sometime in the 1920s, Jung commented on this episode and noted: “This configuration is an image that forever recurs in the human spirit.
The old man represents a spiritual principle that could be designated as Logos, and the maiden represents an unspiritual principle of feeling that could be called Eros” (p. 362). Footnote 8, 1925 Seminar, Page 97
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