But Philemon knelt down, touched the earth, and said to the shade: “My master and my brother, praised be your name.

When night fell, Philemon approached me in an earth-colored robe, holding a silver fish: “Look, my son,” he said, “I was fishing and caught this fish; I bring it to you, so that you may be comforted.”

And as I looked at him astonished and questioningly, I saw that a shade stood in darkness at the door, bearing a robe of grandeur. His face was pale and blood had flowed into the furrows of his brow.

But Philemon knelt down, touched the earth, and said to the shade: “My master and my brother, praised be your name.

You did the greatest thing for us: out of animals you made men, you gave your life for men to enable their healing.

Your spirit was with us through an endlessly long time. And men still look to you and still ask you to take pity on them and beg for the mercy of God and the forgiveness of their sins through you.

You do not tire of giving to men. I praise your divine patience. Are not men ungrateful? Does their craving know no limits? Do they still make demands on you?

They have received so much yet still they are beggars.

“Behold, my master and my brother, they do not love me, but they long for you with greed, for they also crave their neighbor’s possessions.

They do not love their neighbor, but they want what is his. If they were faithful to their love, they would not be greedy. But whoever gives, attracts desire. Should they not learn love? Fidelity to love?

Freely willed devotion?

But they demand and desire and beg from you and have learned no lesson from your awe-inspiring life.

They have imitated it, but they have not lived their own lives as you have lived yours.

Your awe-inspiring life shows how everyone would have to take their own life into their own hands, faithful to their own essence and their own love. Have you not forgiven the adulteress?

Did you not sit with whores and tax-collectors? Did you not break the command of the Sabbath?

You lived your own life, but men fail to do so; instead they pray to you and make demands on you and forever remind you that your work is incomplete.

Yet your work would be completed if men managed to live their own lives without imitation.

Men are still childish and forget gratitude, since they cannot say, Thanks be to you, our lord, for the salvation you have brought us.

We have taken it unto ourselves, given it a place in our hearts, and we have learned to carry on your work in ourselves on our own.

Through your help we have grown mature in continuing the work of redemption in us.

Thanks to you, we have embraced your work, we grasped your redemptive teaching, we completed in ourselves what you had begun for us with bloody struggle.

We are not ungrateful children who desire our parents’ possessions.

Thanks to you, our master, we will make the most of your talent and will not bury it in the earth and forever stretch out our hands helplessly and urge you to complete your work in us.

We want to take your troubles and your work upon ourselves so that your work may be completed and so that you may lay your weary tired hands in your lap, like the worker after a long day’s hard burden. Blessed is the dead one, who rests from the completion of his work. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 356.

Carl Jung on “Philemon” in The Red Book – Anthology

Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 183.

While I stood before the bed of the Old Man, I thought and felt: “I am not worthy Lord.” I know Him very well: He was my "guru" more than 30 years ago a real ghostly guru-but that is a long and-I am afraid-exceedingly strange story. It has been since confirmed to me by an old Hindu. You see, something has taken me out of Europe and the Occident and has opened for me the gates of the East as well, so that I should understand something of the human mind. ~Carl Jung on his vision of Philemon, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 490-493.

True joy is simple it comes and exists from itself and is not to be sought here and there. At the risk of encountering black night, you must devote yourself to me and seek no joy. Joy can never ever be prepared, but exists of its own accord or exists not at all. All you must do is fulfill your task nothing else. Joy comes from fulfillment, but not from longing. ~Philemon to Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 341

Joy comes from fulfillment, but not from longing. ~Philemon to Carl Jung; The Red Book, Page 341.

Who exhausts the mystery of love? …
There are those who love men, and those who love the souls of men, and those who love their own soul. Such a one is Philemon, the host of the Gods. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 315.

Your awe-inspiring life shows how everyone would have to take their own life into their own hands, faithful to their own essence and their own love. ~Philemon to the “Shade” [Christ], The Red Book, Page 356.

You may call me death-death that rose with the sun. I come with quiet pain and long peace. I lay the cover of protection on you. In the midst of life begins death. I lay cover upon cover upon you so that your warmth will never cease. ~A Dark Form to Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 355.

"One is the beginning, the Sun God.
"Two is Eros, for he binds two together and spreads himself out in brightness.
"Three is the Tree of Life, for it fills space with bodies.
"Four is the devil, for he opens all that is closed. He dissolves everything formed and physical; he is the destroyer in whom everything becomes nothing. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, 351.

Good and evil unite in the growth of the tree. In their divinity life and love stand opposed. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 351.

The growing one is the TREE OF LIFE. It greens by heaping up growing living matter. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 351.

The sexuality of man is more earthly, that of woman is more spiritual. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 352.

You are no Christian and no pagan, but a hospitable inhospitable one, a host of the Gods, a survivor, an eternal one, the father of all eternal wisdom. ~Carl Jung to Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 315.

Christ has made men desirous, for ever since they expect gifts from their saviors without any service in return. Giving is as childish as power. He who gives presumes himself powerful. The virtue of giving is the sky-blue mantle of the tyrant. You are wise, Oh Philemon, you do not give. You want your garden to bloom, and for everything to grow from within itself. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 316.

You are blessed, virgin soul, praised be your name. You are the chosen one among women. You are the God-bearer. Praise be to you! Honor and fame be yours in eternity. ~Philemon to Carl Jung’s Soul, Liber Novus, Page 344.

God is not dead. He is as alive as ever. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 348.

God is creation, for he is something definite, and therefore differentiated from the Pleroma. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 348.

God is a quality of the Pleroma, and everything I have said about creation also applies to him. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 348.

Moreover, God is the Pleroma itself, just as each smallest point in the created and uncreated is the Pleroma itself. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 348.

Everything that differentiation takes out of the Pleroma is a pair of opposites, therefore the devil always belongs to God. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 348.

Fullness and emptiness, generation and destruction, are what distinguish God and the devil. Effectiveness is common to both. Effectiveness joins them. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 349.

Effectiveness, therefore, stands above both, and is a God above God, since it unites fullness and emptiness through its effectuality. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 349.

Thus I saw that the lover survives, and that he is the one who unwittingly grants hospitality to the Gods. ~Carl Jung to Philemon, Liber Novus, Page 315

Philemon: Sustain yourself from me, so that life and speech will be yours.

And when she spoke these words, she raised her voice and evoked the dead in my name:

“You dead, I call you.

“You shades of the departed, who have cast off the torment of living, come here.

“My blood, the juice of my life, will be your meal and your drink.

“Sustain yourself from me, so that life and speech will be yours.

“Come, you dark and restless ones, I will refresh you with my blood, the blood of a living one so that you will gain speech and life, in me and through me.

“The God forces me to address this prayer to you so that you come to life. Too long have we left you alone.

“Let us build the bond of community so that the living and the dead image will become one and the past will live on in the present.

“Our desire pulls us to the living world and we are lost in our desire.

“Come drink the living blood, drink your fill so that we will be saved from the inextinguishable and unrelenting power of vivid longing for visible, graspable, and present being.

“Drink from our blood the desire that begets evil, as quarrel, discord, ugliness, violent deed, and famishment.

“Take, eat, this is my body, that lives for you. Take, eat, drink, this is my blood, whose desire flows for you.
“Come, celebrate a Last Supper with me for your redemption and mine.

“I need community with you so that I fall prey neither to the community of the living nor to my desire and yours, whose envy is insatiable and therefore begets evil.

“Help me, so that I do not forget that my desire is a sacrificial
fire for you.

“You are my community. I live what I can live for the living. But the excess of my longing belongs to you, you shades. We need to live with you.

“Be auspicious to us and open our closed spirit so that we become blessed with the redeeming light. May it happen thus!”

When the dead one had ended this prayer, she turned to me again and said:

“Great is the need of the dead. But the God needs no sacrificial prayer. He has neither goodwill nor ill will. He is kind and fearful, though not actually so, but only seems to you thus. But the dead hear your prayers since they are still of human nature and not free of goodwill and ill will. Do you not understand? The history of humanity is older and wiser than you. Was there a time when there were no dead? Vain deception! Only recently have men begun to forget the dead and to think that they have now begun the real life, sending them into a frenzy.”
.
{5} When the dead one had uttered all these words, she disappeared. I sank into gloominess and dull confusion. When I looked up again, I saw my soul in the upper realms, hovering irradiated by the distant brilliance that streamed from the Godhead. And I called out:

“You know what has taken place. You see that it surpasses the power and understanding of a man. But I accept it for your sake and mine. To be crucified on the tree of life, Oh bitterness! Oh painful silence! If it weren’t you, my soul, who touched the fiery Heaven and the eternal fullness, how could I?

“I cast myself before human animals-Oh most unmanly torment! I must let my virtues, my best ability be torn apart, because they are still thorns in the side of the human animal. Not death for the sake of the best, but befouling and rending of the most beautiful for the sake of life.

”Alas, is there nowhere a salutary deception to protect me from having the Last Supper with my carcass? The dead want to live from me.

“Why did you see me as the one to drink the cess of humanity that poured out of Christendom? Haven’t you had enough of beholding the fiery fullness, my soul? Do you still want to fly entire into the glaring white light of the Godhead? Into what shades of horror are you plunging me? Is the devil’s pool so deep that its mud sullies even your glowing robe?

“Where do you get the right to do me such a foul deed? Let the beaker of disgusting filth pass from me.62 But if this be not your will, then climb past fiery Heaven and lodge your charges and topple the throne of God, the dreadful, proclaim the right of men also before the Gods and take revenge on them for the infamous deed of humanity; since only Gods are able to spur on the human worm63 to acts of colossal atrocity. Let my fate suffice and let men manage human destiny

“Oh my mother humanity; thrust the terrible worm of God, the strangler of men, from you. Do not venerate him for the sake of his terrible poison-a drop suffices-and what is a drop to him-who at the same time is all emptiness and all fullness?”

As I proclaimed these words, I noticed that DIAHMON stood behind me and had given them to me. He came alongside me invisibly, and I felt the presence of the good and the beautiful. And he spoke to me with a soft deep voice:

“Remove, Oh man, the divine, too, from your soul, as far as you can manage. What a devilish farce she carries on with you, as long as she still arrogates divine power over you! She’s an unruly child and a bloodthirsty daimon at the same time, a tormentor of humans without equal, precisely because she has divinity. Why?

Where from? Because you venerate her. The dead too want the same thing. Why don’t they stay quiet? Because they have not crossed over to the other side. Why do they want sacrifice? So they can live. But why do they still want to live with men? Because they want to rule. They have not come to an end with their craving for power, since they died still lusting for power. A child, an old man, an evil woman, a spirit of the dead, and a devil are beings who need to be humored. Fear the soul, despise her, love her, just like the Gods. May they be far from us!

But above all never lose them! Because when lost they are as malicious as the serpent, as bloodthirsty as the tiger that pounces on the unsuspecting from behind. A man who goes astray becomes an animal, a lost soul becomes a devil. Cling to the soul with love, fear, contempt, and hate, and don’t let her out of your sight. She is a hellish-divine treasure to be kept behind walls of iron and in the deepest vault. She always wants to get out and scatter glittering beauty.

Beware, because you have already been betrayed! You’ll never find a more disloyal, more cunning and heinous woman than your soul. How should I praise the miracle of her beauty and perfection? Does she not stand in the brilliance of immortal youth? Is her love not intoxicating wine and her wisdom the
primordial cleverness of serpents?

“Shield men from her, and her from men. Listen to what she wails and sings in prison but don’t let her escape, as she will immediately turn whore. As her husband you are blessed through her, and therefore cursed. She belongs to the daimonic race of the Tom Thumbs and giants, and is only distantly related to humankind.

If you seek to grasp her in human terms you will be beside yourself The excess of your rage, your doubt, and your love belong to her, but only the excess. If you give her this excess, humanity will be saved from the nightmare. For if you do not see your soul, you see her in fellow men and this will drive you mad, since this devilish mystery and hellish spook can hardly be seen through.

“Look at man, the weal( one in his wretchedness and torment, whom the Gods have singled out as their quarry-tear to pieces the bloody veil that the lost soul has woven around man, the cruel nets woven by the death-bringing, and take hold of the divine whore who still cannot recover from her fall from grace and craves filth and power in raving blindness. Lock her up like a lecherous bitch who would like to mingle her blood with every dirty cur. Capture her, may enough at last be enough. Let her for once taste your torment so that she will get to feel man and his hammer, which he has wrested from the Gods.

“May man rule in the human world. May his laws be valid. But treat the souls, daimons, and Gods in their way; offering what is demanded. But burden no man, demand and expect nothing from him, with what your devil-souls and God-souls lead you to believe, but endure and remain silent and do piously what befits
your kind. You should act not on the other but on yoursel£ unless the other asks for your help or opinion. Do you understand what the other does? Never-how should you? Does the other understand what you do?

Whence do you take the right to think about the other and act on him? You have neglected yourself your garden is full of weeds, and you want to teach your neighbor about order and provide evidence for his shortcomings.

“Why should you keep silent about the others? Because there would be plenty to discuss concerning your own daimons. But if you act on and think about the other without him soliciting your opinion or advice, you do so because you cannot distinguish yourself from your soul. Therefore you fall victim to her presumption and help her into whoring. Or do you believe that you must lend your human power to the soul or the Gods, or even that it will be useful and pious work if you want to bring the Gods to bear on others?

Blinded one, that is Christian presumptuousness. The Gods don’t need your help, you laughable idolater, who seem to yourself like a God and want to form, improve, rebuke, educate, and create men. Are you perfect yourself?-therefore remain silent, mind your business, and behold your inadequacy every day.

You are most in need of your own help; you should keep your opinions and good advice ready for yourself and not run to others like a whore with understanding and the desire to help. You don’t need to play God. What are daimons, who don’t act out of themselves? So let them go to work, but not through you, or else you yourself will become a daimon to others; leave them to themselves and don’t pre-empt them with awkward love, concern, care, advice, and other presumptions. Otherwise you would be doing the work of the daimons; you yourself would become a daimon and therefore go into a frenzy. But the daimons are pleased at the raving of helpless men advising and striving to help others.

So stay quiet, fulfill the cursed work of redemption on yourself for then the daimons must torment themselves and in the same way all your fellow men, who do not distinguish themselves from their souls and let themselves be mocked by daimons. Is it cruel to leave your blinded fellow human beings to their own devices?

It would be cruel if you could open their eyes. But you could open their eyes only if they solicited your opinion and help. Yet if they do not, they do not need your help. If you force your help on them nonetheless, you become their daimon and increase their blindness, since you set a bad example. Draw the coat of patience and silence over your head, sit down, and leave the daimon to accomplish his work. If he brings something about, he will work wonders. Thus will you sit under fruit-bearing trees.

“Know that the daimons would like to inflame you to embrace their work, which is not yours. And, you fool, you believe that it is you and that it is your work. Why? Because you can’t distinguish yourself from your soul. But you are distinct from her, and you should not pursue whoring with other souls as if you yourself were a soul, but instead you are a powerless man who needs all his force for his own completion.

Why do you look to the other? What you see in him lies neglected in yourself You should be the guard before the prison of your soul. You are your soul’s eunuch, who protects her from Gods and men, or protects the Gods and men from her. Power is given to the weak man, a poison that paralyzes even the Gods, like a poison sting bestowed upon the little bee whose force is far inferior to yours.

Your soul could seize this poison and thereby endanger even the Gods. So put the soul under wraps, distinguish yourself from her, since not only your fellow men but also the Gods must live.” ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 342-343

Philemon: I want to emboss you like a coin

From there on the voices of the depths remained silent for a whole year.

Again in summer, when I was out on the water alone, I saw an osprey plunge down not far from me; he seized a large fish and rose up into the skies again clutching it.

I heard the voice of my soul, and she spoke: “That is a sign that what is below is borne upward.”

Soon after this on an autumn night I heard the voice of an old man (and this time I knew that it was Philemon.

He said: I want to turn you around.

I want to master you.

I want to emboss you like a coin.

I want to do business with you. One should buy and sell you.

You should pass from hand to hand. Self-willing is not for you.

You are the will of the whole. Gold is no master out of its own will and yet it rules the whole, despised and greedily demanded, an inexorable ruler: it lies and waits.

He who sees it longs for it.

It does not follow one around, but lies silently, with a brightly gleaming countenance, self-sufficient, a king that needs no proof of its power.

Everyone seeks after it, few find it, but even the smallest piece is highly esteemed.

It neither gives nor squanders itself Everyone takes it where he finds it, and anxiously ensures that he doesn’t lose the smallest part of it.

Everyone denies that he depends on it, and yet he secretly stretches out his hand longingly toward it. Must gold prove its necessity?

It is proven through the longing of men.

Ask it: who takes me? He who takes it, has it. Gold does not stir.

It sleeps and shines. Its brilliance confuses the senses.

Without a word, it promises everything that men deem desirable.

It ruins those to be ruined and helps those on the rise to ascend.

A blazing hoard is piled up, it awaits the taker.

What tribulations do men not take upon themselves for the sake of gold?

It waits and does not shorten their tribulations-the greater the tribulations, the greater the trouble, the more esteemed it is.

It grows from underground, from the molten lava.

It slowly exudes, hidden in veins and rocks. Man exerts all cunning to dig it out, to raise it.”

But I called out dismayed: “What ambiguous speech, Oh Philmon!”

But DIAHMON continued: “Not only to teach, but also to disavow, or why then did I teach?

If I do not teach, I do not have to disavow.

But if I have taught, I must disavow thereafter.

For if I teach, I must give others what they should have taken.

What he acquires is good, but the gift that was not acquired is bad.

To waste oneself means: to want to suppress many.

Deceitfulness surrounds the giver because his own enterprise is deceitful.

He is forced to revoke his gift and to deny his virtue.

The burden of silence is not greater than the burden of my self that I would like to load onto you.

Therefore I speak and I teach.

May the listener defend himself against my ruse, by means of which I burden him.

The best truth is also such a skillful deception that I also entangle myself in it as long as I do not realize the worth of a successful ruse.”

And I was startled again and cried: “Oh Philemon, men have deceived themselves about you, therefore you deceive them.

But he who fathoms you, fathoms himself”

But DIAHMON fell silent and retired into the shimmering cloud of uncertainty.

He left me to my thoughts.

And it occurred to me that high barriers would still need to be erected between men, less to protect them against mutual burdens than against mutual virtues.

It seemed to me as if the so-called Christian morality of our time made for mutual enchantment.

How can anyone bear the burden of the other, if it is still the highest that one can expect from a man, that he at least bears his own burden. But sin probably resides in enchantment.

If I accept self forgetting virtue, I make myself the selfish tyrant of the other, and I am thus also forced to surrender myself again in order to make another my master, which always leaves me with a bad impression and is not to the other’s advantage.

Admittedly, this interplay underpins society, but the soul of the individual becomes damaged since man thus learns always to live from the other instead of from himself It appears to me that, if one is capable, one should not surrender oneself as that induces, indeed even forces, the other to do likewise.

But what happens if everyone surrenders themselves?

That would be folly Not that it would be a beautiful or a pleasant thing to live with one’s self but it serves the redemption of the self Incidentally, can one give oneself up?

With this one becomes one’s own slave.

That is the opposite of accepting oneself If one becomes one’s own slave-and this happens to everyone who surrenders himself-one is lived by the self One does not live one’s self; it lives itself.

The self-forgetting virtue is an unnatural alienation from one’s own essence, which is thus deprived of development.

It is a sin to deliberately alienate the other from his self by means of one’s own virtuousness, for example, through saddling oneself with his burden.

This sin rebounds on us.

It is submission enough, amply enough, if we subjugate ourselves to our self The work of redemption is always first to be done on ourselves, if one dare utter such a great word. This work cannot be done without love for ourselves.

Must it be done at all? Certainly not, if one can endure their given condition and does not feel in need of redemption.

The tiresome feeling of needing redemption can finally become too much for one.

Then one seeks to rid oneself of it and thus enters into the work of redemption.

It appears to me that we benefit in particular from removing every sense of beauty from the thought of redemption, and even need to do so, or else we will deceive ourselves again because we like the word and because a beautiful shimmer spreads out over the thing through the great word.

But one can at least doubt whether the work of redemption is in itself a beautiful thing.

The Romans did not find the hanged Jew exactly tasteful, and the gloomy excessive enthusiasm for catacombs around which cheap, barbaric symbols gathered probably lacked a pleasant shimmer in their eyes, given that their perverse curiosity for everything barbaric and subterranean had already been aroused.

I think it would be most correct and most decent to say that one blunders into the work of redemption unintentionally; so to speak, if one wants to avoid what appears to be the unbearable evil of an insurmountable feeling of needing redemption.

This step into the work of redemption is neither beautiful nor pleasant nor does it divulge an inviting appearance.

And the thing itself is so difficult and full of torment that one should count oneself as one of the sick and not as one of the over healthy who seek to impart their abundance to others.

Consequently we should also not use the other for our own supposed redemption.

The other is no stepping stone for our feet.

It is far better that we remain with ourselves.

The need for redemption rather expresses itself through an increased need for love with which we think we can make the other happy.

But meanwhile we are brimming with longing and desire to alter our own condition.

And we love others to this end.

If we had already achieved our purpose, the other would leave us cold.

But it is true that we also need the other for our own redemption.

Perhaps he will lend us his help voluntarily; since we are in a state of sickness and helplessness. Our love for him is, and should not be, selfless. That would be a lie.

For its goal is our own redemption.

Selfless love is true only as long as the demand of the self can be pushed to one side.

But someday comes the turn of the self Who would want to lend himself to such a self for love?

Certainly only one who does not yet know what excess of bitterness, injustice, and poison the self of a man harbors who has forgotten his self and made a virtue of it. In terms of the self selfless love is a veritable sin.

We must presumably often go to ourselves to re-establish the connection with the self since it is torn apart all too often, not only by our vices but also by our virtues.

For vices as well as virtues always want to live outside. But through constant outer life we forget the self and through this we also become secretly selfish in our best endeavors.What we neglect in ourselves blends itself secretly into our actions toward others.

Through uniting with the self we reach the God.

I must say this, not with reference to the opinions of the ancients or this or that authority; but because I have experienced it.

It has happened thus in me.

And it certainly happened in a way that I neither expected nor wished for.

The experience of the God in this form was unexpected and unwanted.

I wish I could say it was a deception and only too willingly would I disown this experience.

But I cannot deny that it has seized me beyond all measure and steadily goes on working in me.

So if it is a deception, then deception is my God.

Moreover, the God is in the deception. And if this were already the greatest bitterness that could happen to me, I would have to confess to this experience and recognize the God in it.

No insight or objection is so strong that it could surpass the strength of this experience.

And even if the God had revealed himself in a meaningless abomination, I could only avow that I have experienced the God in it.

I even know that it is not too difficult to cite a theory that would sufficiently explain my experience and join it to the already known.

I could furnish this theory myself and be satisfied in intellectual terms, and yet this theory would be unable to remove even the smallest part of the knowledge that I have experienced the God.

I recognize the God by the unshakeableness of the experience.

I cannot help but recognize him by the experience.

I do not want to believe it, I do not need to believe it, nor could I believe it.

How can one believe such? My mind would need to be totally confused to believe such things. Given their nature, they are most improbable.

Not only improbable but also impossible for our understanding.

Only a sick brain could produce such deceptions.

I am like those sick persons who have been overcome by delusion and sensory deception.

But I must say that the God makes us sick.

I experience the God in sickness.

A living God afflicts our reason like a sickness. He fills the soul with intoxication.

He :fills us with reeling chaos.

How many will the God break?

The God appears to us in a certain state of the soul.

Therefore we reach the God through the self Not the self is God, although we reach the God through the self.

The God is behind the self above the self the self itsel£ when he appears.

But he appears as our sickness, from which we must heal ourselves.

We must heal ourselves from the God, since he is also our heaviest wound.

For in the first instance the God’s power resides entirely in the self since the self is completely in the God, because we were not with the self We must draw the self to our side. Therefore we must wrestle with the God for the self Since the God is an unfathomable powerful movement that sweeps away the self into the boundless, into issolution. Hence when the God appears to us we are at first powerless, captivated, divided, sick, poisoned with the strongest poison, but drunk with the highest health.

Yet we cannot remain in this state, since all the powers of our body are consumed like fat in the flames.

Hence we must strive to free the self from the God, so that we can live.

It is certainly possible and even quite easy for our reason to deny the God and to speak only of sickness.

Thus we accept the sick.part and can also heal it.

But it will be a healing with loss. We lose a part of life. We go on living, but as ones lamed by the God. Where the fire blazed dead ashes lie.

I believe that we have the choice: I preferred the living wonders of the God.

I daily weigh up my whole life and I continue to regard the fiery brilliance of the God as a higher and fuller life than the ashes of rationality.

The ashes are suicide to me.

I could perhaps put out the fire but I cannot deny to myself the experience of the God.

Nor can I cut myself off from this experience.

I also do not want to, since I want to live. My life wants itself whole.

Therefore I must serve my self I must win it in this way. But I must win it so that my life will become whole.

For it seems to me to be sinful to deform life where there is yet the possibility to live it fully.

The service of the self is therefore divine service and the service of mankind.

If I carry myself I relieve mankind of myself and heal my self from the God.

I must free my self from the God, since the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 337-339

Carl Jung: Philemon's Sixth Sermon to the Dead

But when Philemon saw that the dead remained silent and waited, he continued (and this is the sixth sermon to the dead):

“The daimon of sexuality approaches our soul as a serpent. She is half human soul and is called thoughtdesire.

“The daimon of spirituality descends into our soul as the white bird. He is half human soul and is called desire-thought.

The serpent is an earthly soul, half daimonic, a spirit, and akin to the spirits of the dead. Thus too, like these she swarms around in the things of earth, making us fear them or else having them arouse our craving.

The serpent has a female nature, forever seeking the company of those dead who are spellbound by the earth, and who did not find a way across to singleness. The serpent is a whore.

She courts the devil and evil spirits; she is a mischievous tyrant and tormentor, forever inveigling the most evil company: The white bird is a half-celestial soul of man. He abides with the mother, descending from time to time.

The bird is manlike, and is effective thought.

He is chaste and solitary, a messenger of the mother.

He flies high above the earth. He commands singleness.

He brings knowledge from the distant ones, who have departed before and attained perfection.

He bears our word up to the mother. She intercedes, she warns, but she is powerless against the Gods.

She is a vessel of the sun.

The serpent descends and cunningly lames the phallic daimon, or else goads him on. She bears up the too-crafty thoughts of the earthly, those thoughts that creep through every hole and cleave to all things with craving. Although the serpent does not want to, she must be of use to us.

She flees our grasp, thus showing us the way, which our human wits could not find.”

When Philemon had finished, the dead looked on with . contempt and said, “Cease this talk of Gods and daimons and souls.

We have known this for a long time.”

But Philemon smiled and replied, “You poor souls, poor in flesh and rich in spirit, the meat was fat and the spirit thin. But how do you reach the eternal light? You mock my stupidity, which you too possess: you mock yourselves. Knowledge frees one from danger. But mockery is the other side of your belief Is black less than white? You rejected faith and retained mockery: Are you thus saved from faith? No, you bound yourselves to mockery and hence again to faith. And therefore you are miserable.”

But the dead were outraged and cried, “We are not miserable, we are clever; our thinking and feeling is as pure as clear water. We praise our reason. We mock superstition. Do you believe that your old folly reaches us? A childish delusion has overcome you, old one, what good is it to us?”

Philemon replied: “What can do you any good? I free you from what still holds you to the shadow of life. Take this wisdom with you, add this folly to your cleverness, this unreason to your reason, and you will find yourselves. If you were men, you would then begin your life and your life’s way between reason and unreason and live onward to the eternal light, whose shadow you lived in advance. But since you are dead, this knowledge frees you from life and strips you of your greed for men and it also frees your self from the shrouds that the light and the shadow lay on you, compassion with men will overcome you and from the stream you will reach solid ground, you will step forth from the eternal whirl onto the unmoving stone of rest, the circle that breaks flowing duration, and the flame will die down. “I have fanned a’ glowing fire, I have given the murderer a knife, I have torn open healed-over wounds, I have quickened all movement, I have given the madman more intoxicating drink, I have made the cold colder, the heat hotter, falseness even falser, goodness even better, weakness even weaker. “This knowledge is the axe of the sacrificer.”

But the dead cried, “Your wisdom is foolishness and a curse. You want to turn the wheel back? It will tear you apart, blinded one!”

Philemon replied, “So this is what happened. The earth became green and fruitful again from the blood of the sacrifice, flowers sprouted, the waves crash into the sand, a silver cloud lies at the foot of the mountain, a bird of the soul came to men, the hoe sounds in the fields and the axe in the forests, a wind rushes through the trees and the sun shimmers in the dew of the risen morning, the planets behold the birth, out of the earth climbed the many-armed, the stones speak and the grass whispers. Man found himsel£ and the Gods wander through Heaven, the fullness gives birth to the golden drop, the golden seed, plumed and hovering.”

The dead now fell silent and stared at Philemon and slowly crept away: But Philemon bent down to the ground and said: “It is accomplished, but not fulfilled. Fruit of the earth, sprout, rise up-and Heaven, pour out the water of life.”

Then Philemon disappeared.

°1 was probably very confused when Philemon approached me the following night, since I called to him saying, “What did you do, Oh Philemon? What fires have you kindled? What have you broken asunder? Does the wheel of creations stand still?”

But he answered and said, “Everything is running its usual course. Nothing has happened, and yet a sweet and indescribable mystery has taken place: I stepped out of the whirling circle.”

“What’s that?” I exclaimed, “Your words move my lips, your voice sounds from my ears, my eyes see you from within me. Truly, you are a magician! You stepped out of the whirling circle? What confusion! Are you I, am I you? Did I not feel as if the wheel of creation was standing still? And yet you say that you have stepped out of the whirling circle? I am truly bound to the wheel-I feel the rushing swaying of it-and yet the wheel of creation also stands still for me. What did you do, father, teach me!”

Then Philemon said, “I stepped onto what is solid and took it with me and saved it from the wave surge, from the cycle of births, and from the revolving wheel of endless happening. It has been stilled. The dead have received the folly of the teaching, they have been blinded by truth and see by mistake. They have recognized, felt, and regretted it; they will come again and will humbly inquire. Since what they rejected will be most valuable to them.”

I wanted to question Philemon, since the riddle distressed me. But he had already touched the earth and disappeared. And the darkness of the night was silent and did not answer me. And my soul stood silently, shaking her head, and did not know what to say about the mystery that Philemon had indicated and not given away.

Carl Jung, The Red Book, Scrutinies, Pages 352-353

Carl Jung and the first appearance of Philemon

A critical figure in Jung’s fantasies during this period was that of Philemon.

In Memories, Jung recalled that Philemon first appeared to him in a dream.

In this, Jung saw a sea blue sky, covered by brown clods of earth which appeared to be breaking apart.

Out of the blue, he saw an old man with kingfisher wings and the horns of a bull flying across the sky, carrying a bunch of keys. After the dream, Jung painted the image, as he did not understand it.

While he was doing this, he was struck to find a dead kingfisher at the bottom of his garden by the lakeshore, as kingfishers are rare around Zürich. Thereafter, Philemon played an important role in Jung’s fantasies.

To Jung, he represented superior insight, and was like a guru to him. Jung would often converse with Philemon as he strolled in the garden of his home in Küsnacht.

To Aniela Jaffé, he recalled, “He was simply a superior knowledge, and he taught me psychological objectivity and the actuality of the soul . . .

He formulated and expressed everything which I had never thought.”

Jung’s fantasy figure was based on the figure of Philemon who had appeared in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and in Goethe’s Faust. Page 62