Carl Jung on “God,” “Gods.” - Anthology

For a woman, the typical danger emanating from the unconscious comes from above, from the “spiritual” sphere personified by the animus, whereas for a man it comes from the chthonic realm of the “world and woman,” i.e., the anima projected on to the world. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 559

One of the essential features of the child motif is its futurity.

The child is potential future.

Hence the occurrence of the child motif in the psychology of the individual signifies as a rule an anticipation of future developments, even though at first sight it may seem like a retrospective configuration.

Life is a flux, a flowing into the future, and not a stoppage or a backwash.

It is therefore not surprising that so many of the mythological saviours are child gods.

This agrees exactly with our experience of the psychology of the individual, which shows that the “child” paves the way for a future change of personality.

“Child” means something evolving towards independence.

This it cannot do without detaching itself from its origins: abandonment is therefore a necessary condition, not just a
concomitant symptom. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 287

If we go further and consider the fact that man is also what neither he himself nor other people know of him—an unknown something which can yet be proved to exist —the problem of identity becomes more difficult still.

Indeed, it is quite impossible to define the extent and the ultimate character of psychic existence.

When we now speak of man we mean the indefinable whole of him, an ineffable totality, which can only be formulated symbolically.

I have chosen the term “self” to designate the totality of man, the sum total of his conscious and unconscious
contents.

I have chosen this term in accordance with Eastern philosophy, which for centuries has occupied itself with the problems that arise when even the gods cease to incarnate. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 140

When Nietzsche said “God is dead,” he uttered a truth which is valid for the greater part of Europe.

People were influenced by it not because he said so, but because it stated a widespread psychological fact.

The consequences were not long delayed: after the fog of–isms, the catastrophe.

Nobody thought of drawing the slightest conclusions from Nietzsche’s pronouncement.

Yet it [Nietzche’s “God is Dead”] has, for some ears, the same eerie sound as that ancient cry which came echoing over the sea
to mark the end of the nature gods: “Great Pan is dead.” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 145.

All opposites are of God, therefore man must bend to this burden; and in so doing he finds that God in his “oppositeness” has taken possession of him, incarnated himself in him.

He becomes a vessel filled with divine conflict. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 659

It is quite right, therefore, that fear of God should be considered the beginning of all wisdom.

On the other hand, the much-vaunted goodness, love, and justice of God should not be regarded as mere propitiation, but should be recognized as genuine experience, for God is a coincidentia oppositorum [unity of the opposites].

Both are justified, the fear of God as well as the love of God. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 664.

“unconsciousness” throws a peculiar light on the doctrine of salvation.

Man is not so much delivered from his sins, even if he is baptized in the prescribed manner and thus washed clean,
as delivered from fear of the consequences of sin, that is, from the wrath of God.

Consequently, the work of salvation is intended to save man from the fear of God. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 659.

God has a terrible double aspect: a sea of grace is met by a seething lake of fire, and the light of love glows with a fierce dark heat which it is said, ‘ardet non lucet’—it burns but gives no light.

That is the eternal, as distinct from the temporal, gospel: one can love God but must fear him. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, § 733.

The paradoxical nature of God has a like effect on man: it tears him asunder into opposites and delivers him over to a seemingly insoluble conflict.

What happens in such a condition?

Here we must let psychology speak, for psychology represents the sum of all the observations and insights it has gained from the empirical study of severe states of conflict.

There are, for example, conflicts of duty no one knows how to solve. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 738

Job realizes God’s inner antinomy, and in the light of this realization his knowledge attains a divine numinosity. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 584

We can, of course, hope for the undeserved grace of God, who hears our prayers.

But God, who also does not hear our prayers, wants to become man, and for that purpose he has chosen, through the Holy Ghost, the creaturely man filled with darkness—the natural man who is tainted with original sin and who learnt the divine arts and sciences from the fallen angels. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 746.

Since the Apocalypse we now know again that God is not only to be loved, but also to be feared.

He fills us with evil as well as with good, otherwise he would not need to be feared; and because he wants to become man,
the uniting of his antinomy must take place in man.

This involves man in a new responsibility.

He can no longer wriggle out of it on the plea of his littleness and nothingness, for the dark God has slipped the atom bomb and chemical weapons into his hands and given him the power to empty out the apocalyptic vials of wrath on his fellow creatures.

Since he has been granted an almost godlike power, he can no longer remain blind and unconscious.

He [Man] must know something of God’s nature and of metaphysical processes if he is to understand himself and thereby
achieve gnosis of the Divine. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 747.

One should make clear to oneself what it means when God becomes man.

It means more or less what Creation meant in the beginning, namely an objectivation of God.

At the time of the Creation he [God] revealed himself in Nature; now he wants to be more specific and become man.

It must be admitted, however, that there was a tendency in this direction right from the start.

For, when those other human beings, who had evidently been created before Adam, appeared on the scene along with the higher mammals, Yahweh created on the following day, by a special act of creation, a man who was the image of God.

This was the first prefiguration of his becoming man.

He took Adam’s descendants, especially the people of Israel, into his personal possession, and from time to time he filled this people’s prophets with his spirit.

All these things were preparatory events and symptoms of a tendency within God to become man.

But in omniscience there had existed from all eternity a knowledge of the human nature of God or of the divine nature of man.

That is why, long before Genesis was written, we find corresponding testimonies in the ancient Egyptian records.

These intimations and prefigurations of the Incarnation must strike one as either completely incomprehensible or superfluous, since all creation ex nihilo [from nothing] is God’s and consists of nothing but God, with the result that man, like the rest of creation, is simply God become concrete.

Prefigurations, however, are not in themselves creative events, but are only stages in the process of becoming conscious.

It was only quite late that we realized (or rather, that we are beginning to realize) that God is Reality itself and therefore—last but not least —man. This realization is a millennial process. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 631.

No one can know what the ultimate things are.

We must therefore take them as we experience them.

And if such experience helps to make life healthier, more beautiful, more complete and more satisfactory to yourself and to those you love, you may safely say: “This was the grace of God.” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 167.


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Carl Jung: One must remember, over the animal is the god; with the god, is the god’s animal.

Another time, discussing animals, he said: “God has His animal, the dove; Jesus had his, the little ram; the apostles all had theirs.

Now the ancients-Mithras-had different orders of initiation.

They would call the god by calling the animal-the raven, the cock-making the sounds with their
mouth, giving the call.

Sometimes they would come.

Call it synchronicity, magic, there it is.

If one can stay in the middle, know one is human, relate to both the god, and the animal of the god, then one is all right.

One must remember, over the animal is the god; with the god, is the god’s animal.”

The last time I saw Dr. Jung was on the occasion of his eightieth birthday.

I had flown in unexpectedly, and at the large hotel reception attended by many visiting dignitaries, I made my way to his big chair enthroned at the center of the room.

He rose to greet me, leaning on his sturdy, silver-headed cane, looking fit and handsome, with his shock of white hair.

And the next day he unexpectedly joined those who were continuing the celebration by a chartered boat ride around the Lake of Zurich.

And there he engaged in animated conversation with visiting doctors.

There are vivid small memories too: of the big empty chair in the club room, waiting for him, when it was known he would be attending a meeting, and the stir that went around when he entered and took the place reserved for him; of the evident enjoyment of the Institute parties which he and Mrs. Jung attended-the costume parties that are so much a part of Swiss life;
of an evening when Mrs.

Jung’s class on the Holy Grail was invited to the Jung home for coffee and discussion and questions and answers; and how inevitably Dr. Jung became head of the circle, and the one to whom the questions
were put.

I remember the look of appreciation in his eyes when I brought long-stemmed floribunda roses, a sheaf of them, to him, on the occasion of my first appointment.

And of how the spirit of anger filled him with a tremendous vitality, once, to be dissipated as soon as he knew the situation.

And of how, to me, his talk, ever kindly and gentle, was like a swift, clear stream on a summer morning.

I heard from Dr. Jung just once, after my return to America, in a letter written December 23, 1959.

I should like to quote the entire letter here, and I think it speaks for itself:

Dear Miss Ainsworth,

I have read your friendly letter with interest.

I have been particularly interested in what you say about the book of Job, i.e., the divine omniscience.

While reading this little book you must be constantly aware of the fact, that whatever I say in it, does not refer to God Himself, but rather to the idea or opinion, man makes of God to himself.

When I use the term “the omniscient God” it means: this is what man says about God and not that God is omniscient.

Man always uses that knowledge, he finds in himself, to characterize his metaphysical figures.

Thus you could make an analogy between the obliviousness of the human being and a similar state of his God.

But this is insofar not permissible as man himself has made the dogmatic statement, that God’s Omniscience is absolute, and not subject to man’s shortcomings.

Thus God’s omniscience means really a perfect presence of mind and then only it becomes a blatant contradiction, that He does not consult it, or seems to be unaware of it.

In this sense ‘God’ is very paradoxical and I call my reader’s attention to such and other contradictions,to wake him up, so that he gets aware of the insufficiency of his representations and indirectly of the need to revise them.

This is the point, which is regularly misunderstood: people assume that I am talking about God Himself.

In reality I am talking about human representations.

So if anybody should talk to you about my job, you better refer him to this passage.

With my best wishes for Christmas and the New Year,

I remain,

Yours sincerely,

C. G. Jung

~ Mary Louise Ainsworth , J.E.T., Pages 111-113

Carl Jung: The Formation of God

The child, that is, the image of the God’s formation, not only bore my human craving, but also enclosed all the primordial and elemental powers that the sons of the sun possess as an inalienable inheritance.

The God needs all this for his genesis.

But when he has been created and hastens away into unending space, we need the gold of the sun. We must regenerate ourselves. But as the creation of a God is a creative act of highest love, the restoration of our human life signifies an act of the Below.

This is a great and dark mystery. Man cannot accomplish this act solely by himself but is assisted by evil, which does it instead of man. But man must recognize his complicity in the act of evil.

He must bear witness to this recognition by eating from the bloody sacrificial flesh. Through this act he testifies that he is a man, that he recognizes good as well as evil, and that he destroys the image of the God’s formation through withdrawing his life force, with which he also dissociates himself from the God.

This occurs for the salvation of the soul, which is the true mother of the divine child.

When it bore and gave birth to the God, my soul was of human nature throughout; it possessed the primordial powers since time immemorial, but only in a dormant condition. They flowed into forming the God without my help.

But through the sacrificial murder, I redeemed the primordial powers and added them to my soul.

Since they became part of a living pattern, they are no longer dormant, but awake and active and irradiate my soul with their divine working.

Through this it receives a divine attribute.

Hence the eating of the sacrificial flesh aided its healing. The ancients have also indicated this to us, in that they taught us to drink the blood and eat the flesh of the savior. The ancients believed that this brought healing to the soul.!

There are not many truths, there are only a few.

Their meaning is too deep to grasp other than in symbols.! ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 291.

Carl Jung: God and Singleness

We think that there is singleness within us, and communality outside us. Outside of us is the communal in relation to the external, while singleness refers to us.

We are single if we are in ourselves, but communal in relation to what is outside us. But if we are outside of ourselves, then we are single and selfish in the communal.

Our self suffers privation if we are outside ourselves, and thus it satisfies its needs with communality Consequently; communality is distorted into singleness.

If we are in ourselves, we fulfill the need of the self.


we prosper, and through this we become aware of the needs of the communal and can fulfill them.

If we set a God outside of ourselves, he tears us loose from the self since the God is more powerful than we are. Our self falls into privation.

But if the God moves into the self he snatches us from what is outside us. We arrive at singleness in ourselves.

So the God becomes communal in reference to what is outside us, but single in relation to us. No one has my God, but my God has everyone, including myself.

The Gods of all individual men always have all other men, including myself So it is always only the one God despite his multiplicity You arrive at him in yourself and only through your self seizing you.

It seizes you in the advancement of your life.

The hero must fall for the sake of our redemption, since he is the model and demands imitation. But the measure of imitation is fulfilled.

We should become reconciled to solitude in ourselves and to the God outside of us. If we enter into this solitude then the life of the God begins.

If we are in ourselves, then the space around us is free, but filled by the God. Our relations to men go through this empty space and also through the God.

But earlier it went through selfishness since we were outside ourselves. Therefore the spirit foretold to me that the cold of outer space will spread across the earth.

With this he showed me in an image that the God will step between men and drive every individual with the whip of icy cold to the warmth of his own monastic hearth. Because people were beside themselves, going into raptures like madmen. [Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 245.]

The Sprout of the Wondrous God~Carl Jung

I have received your sprout, you who are to come!

I have received it in deepest need and lowliness.

I covered it in shabby patchwork and bedded down on poor words.

And mockery worshiped it, your child, your wondrous child, the child of one who is to come, who should announce the father, a fruit that is older than the tree on which it grew.

In pain will you conceive and joyful is your birth.

Fear is your herald, doubt stands to your right, disappointment to your left.

We passed by in our ridiculousness and senselessness when we caught sight of you.

Our eyes were blinded and our knowledge foll silent when we received your radiance.

You new spark of an eternal fire, into which night were you born?’

You will wring truthful prayers from your believers, and they must speak of your glory in tongues that are atrocious to them.

You will come over them in the hour of their disgrace, and will become known to them in what they hate, fear, and abhor. Your voice, the rarest pleasing sound, will be heard amid the stammerings of wretches, rejects, and those condemned as worthless.

Your realm will be touched by the hands of those who also worshiped before the most profound lowliness, and whose longing drove them through
the mud tide of evil.

You will give your gifts to those who pray to you in terror and doubt, and your light will shine upon those whose knees must bend before you unwillingly and who are filled with resentment.

Your life is with he who has overcome himself I and who has disowned his self-overcoming.

I also know that the salvation of mercy is given only to those who believe in the highest and faithlessly betray themselves for thirty pieces
of silver.

Those who will dirty their pure hands and cheat on their best knowledge against error and take their virtues from a murderer’s grave are invited to your great banquet.

The constellation of your birth is an ill and changing star.

These, oh child of what is to come, are the wonders that will bear testimony that you are a veritable God.” ~Red Book Page 243.

Carl Jung: "If the God grows old..."

If the God grows old, he becomes shadow, nonsense, and he goes down.

The greatest truth becomes the greatest lie, the brightest day becomes darkest night.

As day requires night and night requires day, so meaning requires absurdity and absurdity requires meaning.

Day does not exist through itself, night does not exist through itself.

The reality that exists through itself is day and night.

So the reality is meaning and absurdity.

Noon is a moment, midnight is a moment, morning comes from night, evening turns into night, but evening comes from the day and morning turns
into day. [The Red Book; Page 242]