Carl Jung: Magic is a Way of Life

Image: “Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses” by John William Waterhouse

Magic is a way of living. If one has done one’s best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place.

One cannot say what the effect of magic will be, since no one can know it in advance because the magical is the lawless, which occurs without rules and by chance, so to speak

But the condition is that one totally accepts it and does not reject it, in order to transfer everything to the growth of the tree.

Stupidity too is part of this, which everyone has a great deal of, and also tastelessness, which is possibly the greatest nuisance.

Thus a certain solitude and isolation are inescapable conditions of life for the well-being of oneself and of the other, otherwise one cannot / sufficiently be oneself A certain slowness of life, which is like a standstill, will be unavoidable.

The uncertainty of such a life will most probably be its greatest burden, but still I must unite the two conflicting powers of my soul and keep them together in a true marriage until the end of my life, since the magician is called Philemon and his wife Baucis.

I hold together what Christ has kept apart in himself and through his example in others, since the more the one half of my being strives toward the good, the more the other half journeys to Hell.

When the month of the Twins had ended, the men said to their shadows: “You are I,” since they had previously had their spirit around them as a second person.

Thus the two became one, and this collision the formidable broke out, precisely that spring of consciousness that one calls culture and which through lasted until the time of Christ.

But the fish indicated the moment when what was united split, according to the eternal law of contrasts, into an underworld and upper world.

If the power of growth begins to cease, then the united falls into its opposites.

Christ sent what is beneath to Hell, since it strives toward the good.

That had to be. But the separated cannot remain separated forever.

It will be united again and the month of the fish will soon be over.

We suspect and understand that growth needs both, and hence we keep good and evil close together.

Because we know that too far into the good means the same as too far into evil, we keep them both together.

But we thus lose direction and things no longer flow from the mountain to the valley, but grow quietly from the valley to the mountain.

That which we can no longer prevent or hide is our fruit.

The flowing stream becomes a lake and an ocean / that has no outlet, unless its water rises to the sky as steam and falls from the clouds as rain.

While the sea is a death, it is also the place of rising.

Such is Philemon, who tends his garden.

Our hands have been tied, and each must sit quietly in his place.

He rises invisibly and falls as rain on distant lands.

The water on the ground is no cloud, which should rain.

Only pregnant women can give birth, not those who have yet to conceive. Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 314-315.