Image: Tacuinum Sanitatis casanatensis (14th century).
Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth it). the winefat?
I have trodden the wine-press alone and no one is with me.
I have trodden myself down in my anger, and trampled upon myself in my fury.
Hence my blood has spattered my clothes, and I have stained my robe.
For I have afforded myself a day of vengeance, and the year to redeem myself has come.
And I looked around, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was no one who stood by me: therefore my own arm must save me, and my fury upheld me.
And I trod myself down in my rage, and made myself drunk in my fury, and spilt my blood on the earth.
For I took my misdeed upon myself so that the God would be healed. Just as Christ said that he did not come to make peace but brought the sword so he in whom Christ becomes complete will not give himself peace, but a sword.
He will rebel against himself and one will be turned against the other in him.
He will also hate that which he loves in himself.
He will be castigated in himself mocked, and given over to the torment of crucifixion, and no one will aid him or soothe his torment.
Just as Christ was crucified between the two thieves, our lowest lies on either side of our way.
And just as one thief went to Hell and the other rose up to Heaven, the lowest in us will be sundered in two halves on the day of our judgment.
The one is destined for damnation and death, and the other will rise up.
But it will take a long time until you see what is destined for death and what is destined for life, since the lowest in you is still unseparated and one, and in a deep sleep.
If I accept the lowest in me, I lower a seed into the ground of Hell.
The seed is invisibly small, but the tree of my life grows from it and conjoins the Below with the Above.
At both ends there is fire and blazing embers.
The Above is fiery and the Below is fiery. Between the unbearable fires grows your life.
You hang between these two poles. In an immeasurably frightening movement the stretched hanging welters up and down.
We thus fear our lowest, since that which one does not possess is forever united with the chaos and takes part in its mysterious ebb and flow.
Insofar as I accept the lowest in me-precisely that red glowing sun of the depths-and thus fall victim to the confusion of chaos, the upper shining sun also rises.
Therefore he who strives for the highest finds the deepest.
To deliver the men of his time from the stretched hanging, Christ effectively took this torment upon himself and taught them: “Be crafty like serpents and guileless like doves.”
For craftiness counsels against chaos, and guilelessness veils its terrible aspect.
Thus men could take the safe middle path, hedged both upward and downward.
But the dead of the Above and the Below mounted, and their demands grew ever louder.
And both the noble and the wicked rose up again and, unaware, broke the law of the mediator.
They flung open doors both above and below.
They drew many after them to higher and lower madness, thereby sowing confusion and preparing the way of what is to come.
But he who goes into the one and not also at the same time into the other by accepting what comes toward him, will simply teach and live the one and turn it into a reality. For he will be its victim.
When you go into the one and hence consider the other approaching you as your enemy, you will fight against the other.
You will do so because you fail to recognize that the other is also in you.
On the contrary, you think that the other comes somehow from without and you think that you also catch sight of it in the views and actions of your fellow men which clash with yours.
You thus fight the other and are completely blinded.
But he who accepts what approaches him because it is also in him, quarrels and wrangles no more, but looks into himself and keeps silent. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 300-301.
