Carl Jung: If I had not become like the serpent,....

The devil is the sum of the darkness of human nature. He who lives in the light strives toward being the image
of God; he who lives in the dark strives toward being the image of the devil.

Because I wanted to live in the light, the sun went out or me when I touched the depths. It was dark and serpent-like. I united myself with it and did not overpower it. I took my part of the humiliation and subjugation upon myself, in that I took
on the nature of the serpent.

If I had / not become like the serpent, the devil, the quintessence of everything serpent-like, would have held this bit of power over me.

This would have given the devil a grip and he would have forced me to make a pact with him just as he also cunningly deceived Faust. But I forestalled him by uniting myself with the serpent, just as a man unites with a woman

So I took away from the devil the possibility of influence, which only ever passes through one’s own serpent-hood, which one commonly assigns to the devil instead of oneself Mephistopheles is Satan, taken with my serpent-hood.

Satan himself is the quintessence of evil, naked and therefore without seduction, not even clever, but pure negation without convincing force. Thus I resisted his destructive influence and grasped him and fettered him firmly. His descendants served me and I sacrificed them with the sword.

Thus I built a firm structure. Through this I myself gained stability and duration and could withstand the fluctuations of the personal. Therefore the immortal in me is saved.

Through drawing the darkness from my beyond over into the day, I emptied my beyond. Therefore the demands of the dead disappeared, as they were satisfied.

1 I am no longer threatened by the dead, since I accepted their demands though accepting the serpent. But through this I have also taken over something of the dead into my day. Yet it was necessary, since death is the most enduring of all things, that which can never be canceled out. Death gives me durability and solidity.

So long as I wanted to satisfy only my own demands, I was personal and therefore living in the sense of the world. But when I recognized the demands of the dead in me and satisfied them, I gave up my earlier personal striving and the world had to take me for a dead man.

For a great cold comes over whoever in the excess of his personal striving has recognized the demands of the dead and seeks to satisfy them.

While he feels as if a mysterious poison has paralyzed the living quality of his personal relations, the voices of the dead remain silent in his beyond; the threat, the fear, and the restlessness cease. For everything that previously lurked hungrily in him no longer lives with him in his day. His life is beautiful and rich, since he is himself

But whoever always wants only the fortune of others is ugly, since he 1 cripples himself A murderer is one who wants to force others to blessedness, since he kills his own growth. A fool is one who exterminates his love for the sake of love.

Such a one is personal to the other. His beyond is gray and impersonal. He forces himself upon others; therefore he is cursed into forcing himself upon himself in a cold nothingness. He who has recognized the demands of the dead has banished his ugliness to the beyond. He no longer greedily forces himself upon others, but lives alone in beauty and speaks with the dead.

But there comes the day when the demands of the dead also are satisfied. If one then still perseveres in solitude, beauty fades into the beyond and the wasteland comes over onto this side. A black stage comes after the white, and Heaven and Hell are forever there. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 432.