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.

Carl Jung on “Magic” – Anthology.

The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 314.

The word becomes your God, since it protects you from the countless possibilities of interpretation. The word is protective magic against the daimons of the unending, which tear at your soul and want to scatter you to the winds. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 270.

The serpent represents magical power, which also appears where animal drives are aroused imperceptibly in us. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 366.

Magic is the working of men on men, but your magic action does not affect your neighbor; it affects you first, and only if you withstand it does an invisible effect pass from you to your neighbor. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 308.

Where reason abides one needs no magic. Hence our time no longer needs magic. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 314.
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. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 314.

The ancients devised magic to compel fate. They needed it to determine outer fate. We need it to determine inner fate and to find the way that we are unable to conceive. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 311.

Our psyche can function as though space did not exist. The psyche can thus be independent of space, of time, and of causality. This explains the possibility of magic. ~C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff - A Collection of Remembrances; Pages 51-70.

Paradise, here, means the new impersonal attitude that is needed. The white magician cannot find the keys, because the way that seemed to be the wrong way led into the right way; for they needed the completion of things. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 26.

Analysts and mathematicians both consider themselves infallible; they live with invisible magic cloaks around them. They are both concerned with archetypes . Archetypes are living powers; they are the "thoughts of God." ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 59.

The primitives I observed in East Africa took it for granted that "big" dreams are dreamed only by "big" men - medicine-men, magicians, chiefs, etc. This may be true on a primitive level. But with us these dreams are dreamed also by simple people, more particularly when they have got themselves, mentally or spiritually, in a fix. ~Carl Jung. CW 10, Page 324.

An idol is a petrified symbol used stereotypically for "magical" effects. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.

The magical word is one that lets "a primordial word resound behind it"'; magical action releases primordial action. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.

Do not forget that the original meaning of all letters and numbers was a magical one! Hence the "perils of the soul." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 528-529.

Divine grace is not, so to speak, conjured up, the priest does not make a sort of magic incantation in the prayer of consecration to compel the intervention of divine grace; but the Mass itself is a divine intervention, of which man should become aware. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 110.

Eternal is the Golden Flower only, which grows out of inner liberation from all bondage to things. A man who reaches this stage transposes his ego; he is no longer limited to the monad, but penetrates the magic circle of the polar duality of all phenomena and returns to the undivided One, Tao. ~Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 18.

We constantly hear of Mahatmas and Rishis living away in the mountains of Tibet who are capable of all kinds of magical practices and in India this is also taken for granted; but when Shri Rama Krishna became interested in the question and tried to discover if such people existed, he did not find a single one. Usually it is the invisible or psychic reality which is meant. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 103.

A mandala is a technical term for a magic circle which is used for meditation, but it is also used in a lower form for purpose of witchcraft; the witches' circle was well known in the Middle Ages.
The Dharma Kaya = the world of absolute truth.
The Sambhoga Kaya = the world of subtle bodies.
The Nirmana Kaya = the world of created things.
One could also call these three: Self, anima and body. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 2Dec1938, Page 35.

We are very much afraid of the word magic, it has a bad name, for its meaning has degenerated and it has a purely superstitious sound in our ears. But magical was originally simply psychical, the ancients did not know of the existence of the psyche, so not being able to call anything psychic they used the word magic. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.

Apotropaic: Descriptive of "magical thinking," based on the desire to depotentiate the influence of an object or person. Apotropaic actions are characteristic of introversion as a mode of psychological orientation. I have seen an introverted child who made his first attempts to walk only after he had learned the names of all the objects in the room he might touch. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, par. 897.

"Magic," he says, is "the preceptor and teacher of the physician," who derives his knowledge from the lumen naturae. ~Carl Jung citing Paracelsus, CW 13, Par 148.

The serpent represents magical power, which also appears where animal drives are aroused imperceptibly in us. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 366.

Up until the last moment Jung still seemed to be searching. Perhaps his was the road of the Magician who, unlike the Saint, did not yearn for fusion or for the peace of God, but preferred the eternal highway with all its unhappiness. But I cannot be certain of that. ~Michael Serrano, Two Friendships, Page 112.

When a theologian says "God," then God has to be, and be just as the magician wants, without the latter feeling in any way impelled to make clear to himself and his public exactly which concept he is using. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 147.

In the two Christian churches, the importance and the psychological significance of rites are not generally appreciated; to some people they are acts of faith or of habit; to others, acts of magic. But in reality there is a third aspect: the aspect of the rite as a symbolic act, giving expression to the archetypal expectation of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 208-210.

The proper kind of rite is not magically but psychologically efficacious. That is why a well-conducted Mass produces a powerful effect, particularly when the meaning of the ceremony can be followed. But once lost, lost forever! That is the tragedy of Protestantism. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 208-210.

All statements about and beyond the "ultimate" are anthropomorphisms and, if anyone should think that when he says "God" he has also predicated God, he is endowing his words with magical power. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

I am not a word-magician or word-fetishist who thinks he can posit or call up a metaphysical reality with his incantations. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

The reason why mythic statements invariably lead to word-magic is that the archetype possesses a numinous autonomy and has a psychic life of its own. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 257-264.

I hope you will find time to commit your plant counterparts to the earth and tend their growth, for the earth always wants children-houses, trees, flowers-to grow out of her and celebrate the marriage of the human psyche with the Great Mother, the best counter-magic against rootless extraversion! ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 320

I myself recently dreamed that a UFO came speeding towards me which turned out to be the lens of a magic lantern whose projected image was myself; this suggested to me that I was the figure, himself deep in meditation, who is produced by a meditating yogi. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 476-477

The fear the introvert feels rests on the unconscious assumption that the object is too much animated, and this is a part of the ancient belief in magic. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 65

Of course it is quite useful to us to have the idea that our thoughts are free expressions of our intentional thinking, otherwise we would never be free from the magic circle of nature. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 82

A man may, as I have said, know the real woman also as lightness and darkness, but when he sees in a woman the magical quality that is the essence of She, he at once begins tremendous projections of the unconscious upon her. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 120

The deposit of man’s whole ancestral experience—so rich in emotional imagery—of father, mother, child, husband and wife, of the magic personality, of dangers to body and soul, has exalted this group of archetypes into the supreme regulating principles of religious and even of political life, in unconscious recognition of their tremendous psychic power. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 337

The attainment of consciousness was the most precious fruit of the tree of knowledge, the magical weapon which gave man victory over the earth, and which we hope will give him a still greater victory over himself. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 289

I do not believe in magic made by man, magic as made in Germany or in Great Britain or in America; it does not work. But I firmly believe in the natural magic of facts. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1205

A symbol loses its magical or, if you prefer, its redeeming power as soon as its liability to dissolve is recognized. To be effective, a symbol must be by its very nature unassailable. It must be the best possible expression of the prevailing worldview, an unsurpassed container of meaning; it must also be sufficiently remote from comprehension to resist all attempts of the critical intellect to break it down; and finally, its aesthetic form must appeal so convincingly to our feelings that no arguments can be raised against it on that score. ~Carl Jung CW 6, Para 401

Mankind has never lacked powerful images to lend magical aid against all the uncanny things that live in the depths of the psyche. Always the figures of the unconscious were expressed in protecting and healing images and in this way were expelled from the psyche into cosmic space. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 2121

And yet the attainment of consciousness was the most precious fruit of the tree of knowledge, the magical weapon which gave m.an victory over the earth, and which we hope will give him a still greater victory over himself, ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 289

I do not underestimate the psyche in any respect whatsoever, nor do I imagine for a moment that psychic happenings vanish into thin air by being explained. Psychologism represents a still primitive mode of magical thinking, with the help of which one hopes to conjure the reality of the soul out of existence, after the manner of the "Proktophantasmist" in Faust: Are you still there? Nay, it's a thing unheard. Vanish at once! We've said the enlightening word. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 750

Magic is the science of the jungle. ~Carl Jung, Civilization in Transition, Page 63.

And yet the attainment of consciousness was the most precious fruit of the tree of knowledge, the magical weapon which gave m.an victory over the earth, and which we hope will give him a still greater victory over himself, ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 289

And this is also the reason why the psyche is forgotten so often and so long, and why the intellect makes such frequent use of magical, apotropaic words like "occult" and "mystic," in the hope that even intelligent people will think these mutterings really mean something. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para119

Carl Jung: Your experience with the Eastern magic method is not uncommon.

To Ronald W. Weddell 6 December 1960

Your experience with the Eastern magic method is not uncommon.

People in the West are peculiarly severed from their unconscious, so that the latter cannot participate any more in conscious life and causes a state of dissociation.

The East on the other hand is not dissociated in the same way and to the same extent as the West.

The connection is maintained and the East has developed a number of methods to restore this connection when it has been severed.

Subud is such a method.

Thus you are filled with a new power of life when you can respond to such a method.

It is something like hypnotism which can also heal certain dissociations through the intervention of the hypnotist.

In such a case healing comes to you like a gift.

A door is opened and you do not know how, and something comes in and you do not know what.

The danger is naturally that someday something walks in through the door which is less welcome.

Our Western endeavour therefore is to learn about the thing we are dealing with. We try to know what that open door means and what is waiting behind it.

Thus we learn how to deal with and how to control the powers we invite.

This is a much needed safeguard against the unknown contents and powers of the unconscious which might overwhelm consciousness.

These Eastern methods don’t enrich consciousness and they don’t increase our real knowledge and our self- criticism, and that is the thing we need, namely a consciousness with a wider horizon and a better understanding.

That at least is what I am trying to do for the patient: to make him independent and conscious of the influ- ences of the unconscious.

Just as we, in the West, are separated too much from the unconscious, the East is apt to be too much identi- cal with it.

Therefore most of the Eastern methods are invented to fetter and suppress the unconscious powers, which are too strong for them.

One certainly has a better chance to control things when you know them than when you simply open a door to them.

What you have read in The Secret of the Golden Flower gives you a glimpse of such methods.

Sincerely yours,

C.G. Jung Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 613-614