Not the power of the flesh, but of love, should be broken for the sake of life, since life stands above love. A man needs his mother until his life has developed. Then he separates from her. And so life needs love until it has developed, then it will cut loose from it. The separation of the child from the mother is difficult, but the separation of life from love is harder. Love seeks to have and to hold, but life wants more.
The beginning of all things is love, but the being of things is life. This distinction is terrible. Why; Oh spirit of the darkest depths, do you force me to say that whoever loves does not live and whoever lives does not love? I always get it backward! Should everything be turned into its opposite? Will there be a sea where DIAHMON’s temple stands? Will his shady island sink into the deepest ground? Into the whirlpool of the withdrawing flood that earlier swallowed all peoples and lands? Will the bottom of the sea be where Ararat arises?
What repulsive words do you mutter, you mute son of the earth? You want to sever my soul’s embrace? You, my son, do you thrust yourself between? Who are you? And who gives you the power? Everything that I strove for, everything I wrested from myself do you want to reverse it again and destroy it? You are the son of the devil, to whom everything holy is inimical. You grow overpowering You frighten me. Let me be happy in the embrace of my soul and do not disturb the peace of the temple.
Off with you, you pierce me with paralyzing force. For I do not want your way. Should I languidly fall at your feet? You devil and son of the devil, speak! Your silence is unbearable, and of awful stupidity. I won my soul, and to what did she give birth for me? You, monster, a son, ha!-a frightful miscreant, a stammerer, a newt’s brain, a primordial lizard!
You want to be king of the earth? You want to banish proud free men, bewitch beautiful women, break up castles, rip open the belly of old cathedrals? Dumb thing, a lazy bug-eyed frog that wears pond weed on his skull’s pate! And you want to call yourself my son? You’re no son of mine, but the spawn of the devil. The father of the devil entered into the womb of my soul and in you has become flesh.
I recognize you, DIAHMON, you most cunning of all fraudsters! You have deceived me. You impregnated my maidenly soul with the terrible worm. DIAHMON, damned charlatan, you aped the mysteries for me, you lay the mantle of the stars on me, you played a Christ-fool’s comedy with me, you hanged me, carefully and ludicrously; in the tree just like Odin, you let me devise runes to enchant Salome-and meanwhile you procreated my soul with the worm, spew of the dust. Deception upon deception! Terrible devil trickery!
You gave me the force of magic, you crowned me, you clad me with the shimmer of power, that let me play a would-be Joseph father to your son. You lodged a puny basilisk in the nest of the dove. My soul, you adulterous whore, you became pregnant with this bastard! I am dishonored; I, laughable father of the Antichrist!
How I mistrusted you! And how poor was my mistrust, that it could not gauge the magnitude of this infamous act! What do you break apart? You broke love and life in twain. From this ghastly sundering, the frog and the son of the frog come forth. Ridiculous-disgusting sight! Irresistible advent! They will sit on the banks of the sweet water and listen to the nocturnal song of frogs, since their God has been born as a son of frogs.
Where is Salome? Where is the unresolvable question of love? No more questions, my gaze turned to the coming things, and Salome is where I am. The woman follows your strongest, not you. Thus she bears you your children, in both a good and a bad way. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 326-327.
Image: Sacred Love Versus Profane Love (1602–03) by Giovanni Baglione
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