Carl Jung on Elijah, Salome and The Serpent

I told you last time about the dream concerning the killing of the hero and then the fantasy about Elijah and Salome. Now the killing of the hero is not an indifferent fact, but one that involves typical consequences.

Dissolving an image means that you become that image.

Doing away with the concept of God means that you become that God.

This is so because if you dissolve an image it is always consciously, and then the libido invested in the image goes into the unconscious.

The stronger the image the more you are caught by it in the unconscious, so if you give up the hero in the conscious you are forced into the hero role by the unconscious. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 95.

Besides Elijah and Salome, there was a third factor in the fantasy I began to describe, and that is the huge black snake between them.6 The snake indicates the counterpart of the hero.

Mythology is full of this relationship between the hero and the snake.

A northern myth says the hero has eyes of a snake, and many myths show the hero being worshipped as a snake, having been transformed into it after death.

This is perhaps from the primitive idea that the first animal that creeps out of the grave is the soul of the man who was buried.

The presence of the snake then says it will be again a hero myth.

As to the meaning of the two figures, Salome is an anima figure, blind because, though connecting the con- scious and the unconscious, she does not see the operation of the unconscious.

Elijah is the personification of the cognitional element, Salome of the erotic. Elijah is the figure of the old prophet filled with wisdom.
One could speak of these two figures as personifications of Logos and Eros very specifically shaped.

This is practical for intellectual play, but as Logos and Eros are purely speculative terms, not scientific in any sense, but irrational, it is very much better to leave the figures as they are, namely as events, experiences.

As to the snake, what is its further significance? Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Pages 96-97.

Carl Jung: Fore thinking also comes before thought.

[Note: Dr. Jung was lecturing on The Red Book as early as 1925. Evidence that The Red Book was not the "Secret" and "Hidden" book that is often erroneously asserted]

In layer two of Liber Novus, Jung interpreted the figures of Elijah and Salome respectively in terms of fore thinking and pleasure:

“The powers of my depths are predetermination and pleasure. Predetermination or fore thinking is Prometheus, who, without determined thoughts, brings the chaotic to form and definition, who digs the channels and holds the object before pleasure.

Fore thinking also comes before thought.

But pleasure is the force that desires and destroys forms without form and definition.

It loves the form in itself that it takes hold of, and destroys the forms that it does not take.

The fore-thinker is a seer, but pleasure is blind. It does not foresee, but desires what it touches. Forethinking is not powerful in itself and therefore does not move.

But pleasure is power, and therefore it moves” (p. 247).

In later commentaries written probably sometime in the 1920s, Jung commented on this episode and noted: “This configuration is an image that forever recurs in the human spirit.

The old man represents a spiritual principle that could be designated as Logos, and the maiden represents an unspiritual principle of feeling that could be called Eros” (p. 362). Footnote 8, 1925 Seminar, Page 97

Carl Jung's Systema Munditotius

Systema Munditotius.

In 1955, Jung’s Systema Munditotius was published anonymously in a special issue of Du dedicated to the Eranos conferences. In a letter of February II, 1955, to Walter Corti, Jung explicitly stated that he did not want his name to appear with it.

He added the following comments to it:

"It portrays the antinomies of the microcosm within the macrocosmic world and its antinomies.

At the very top, the figure of the young boy in the winged egg, called Erikapaios or Phanes and thus reminiscent as a spiritual figure of the Orphic Gods. His dark antithesis in the depths is here designated as Abraxas.

He represents the dominus mundi, the lord of the physical world, and is a world-creator of an ambivalent nature.

Sprouting from him we see the tree of life, labeled vita (’life’) while its upper counterpart is a light-tree in the form of a seven-branched candelabra labeled ignis (’fire’) and Eros (,love’).

Its light points to the spiritual world of the divine child.

Art and science also belong to this spiritual realm, the first represented as a winged serpent and the second as a winged mouse (as hole-digging activity!).

The candelabra is based on the principle of the spiritual number three (twice-three flames with one large flame in the middle), while the lower world of Abraxas is characterized by five, the number of natural man (the twice-five rays of his star).

The accompanying animals of the natural world are a devilish monster and a larva.

This signifies death and rebirth. A further division of the mandala is horizontal. To the left we see a circle indicating the body or the blood, and from it rears the serpent, which winds itself around the phallus, as the generative principle.

The serpent is dark and light, signifying the dark realm of the earth, the moon, and the void (therefore called Satanas).

The light realm of rich fullness lies to the right, where from the bright circle [cold, or the love of God] the dove of the Holy Ghost takes wing, and wisdom (Sophia) pours from a double beaker to left and right.

This feminine sphere is that of heaven. The large sphere characterized by zigzag lines or rays represents an in- ner sun; within this sphere the macrocosm is repeated, but with the upper and lower regions reversed as in a mirror.

These repetitions should be conceived of as endless in number, growing even smaller until the innermost core, the actual microcosm, is reached" Copyright © The Foundation of the works of C. G. Jung reproduced with the permission of the Foundation and Robert Hinshaw

The spirit of this time ~Carl Jung

If I speak in the spirit of this time, I must say:

no one and nothing can justify what I must proclaim to you.

Justification is superfluous to me, since I have no choice, but I must. I have learned that in addition to the spirit of this time there is still another spirit at work, namely that which rules the depths of everything contemporary:

The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning.

Filled with human pride and blinded by the presumptuous spirit of the times, I long sought to hold that other spirit away from me. But I did not consider that the spirit of the depths from time immemorial and for all the future possesses a greater power than the spirit of this time, who changes with the generations.

The spirit of the depths has subjugated all pride and arrogance to the power of judgment. He took away my belief in science, he robbed me of the joy of explaining and ordering things, and he let devotion to the ideals of this time die out in me.

He forced me down to the last and simplest things.

The spirit of the depths took my understanding and all my knowledge and placed them at the service of the inexplicable and the paradoxical.

He robbed me of speech and writing for everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme meaning.

But the supreme meaning is the path) the way and the bridge to what is to come.

That is the God yet to come. It is not the coming God himself but his image which appears in the supreme meaning.

God is an image and those who worship him must worship him in the images of the supreme meaning.

The supreme meaning is not a meaning and not an absurdity, it is image and force in one, magnificence and force together.

The supreme meaning is the beginning and the end. It is the bridge of going across and fulfillment.

The other Gods died of their temporality, yet the supreme meaning never dies, it turns into meaning and then into absurdity, and out of the fire and blood of their collision the supreme meaning rises up rejuvenated anew.

The image of God has a shadow. The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actual and corporeal and have no shadow?

The shadow is nonsense. It lacks force and has no continued existence through itself. But nonsense is the inseparable and undying brother of the supreme meaning.

Like plants, so men also grow, some in the light, others in the shadows.

There are many who need the shadows and not the light.

The image of God throws a shadow that is just as great as itself.

The supreme meaning is great and small it is as wide as the space of the starry Heaven and as narrow as the cell of the living body.

The spirit of this time in me wanted to recognize the greatness and extent of the supreme meaning, but not its littleness.

The spirit of the depths, however, conquered this arrogance, and I had to swallow the small as a means of healing the immortal in me. It completely burnt up my innards since it was inglorious and unheroic. It was even ridiculous and revolting. But the pliers of the spirit of the depths held me, and I had to drink the bitterest of all draughts.

The spirit of this time tempted me with the thought that all this belongs to the shadowiness of the God-image.

This would be pernicious deception, since the shadow is nonsense. But the small, narrow, and banal is not nonsense, but one of both of the essences of the Godhead.

I resisted recognizing that the everyday belongs to the image of the Godhead. I fled this thought, I hid myself behind the highest and coldest stars.

But the spirit of the depths caught up with me, and forced the bitter drink between my lips.

The spirit of this time whispered to me:

"This supreme meaning, this image of God, this melting together of the hot and the cold, that is you and only you."

But the spirit of the depths spoke to me:

"You are an image of the unending world, all the last mysteries of becoming and passing away live in you. If you did not possess all this, how could you know?"

For the sake of my human weakness, the spirit of the depths gave me this word. Yet this word is also superfluous, since I do not speak it freely; but because I must. I speak because the spirit robs me of joy and life if I do not speak.

I am the serf who brings it and does not know what he carries in his hand. It would burn his hands if he did not place it where his master orders him to lay it.

The spirit of our time spoke to me and said: "What dire urgency could be forcing you to speak all this?"

This was an awful temptation. I wanted to ponder what inner or outer bind could force me into this, and because I found nothing that I could grasp, I was near to making one up.

But with this the spirit of our time had almost brought it about that instead of speaking, I was thinking again about reasons and explanations.

But the spirit of the depths spoke to me and said:

"To understand a thing is a bridge and possibility of returning to the path. But to explain a matter is arbitrary and sometimes even murder. Have you counted the murderers
among the scholars?"

But the spirit of this time stepped up to me and laid before me huge volumes which contained all my knowledge. Their pages were made of ore, and a steel stylus had engraved inexorable words in them, and he pointed to these inexorable words and spoke to me, and said: "What you speak, that is madness."

It is true, it is true, what I speak is the greatness and intoxication and ugliness of madness.

But the spirit of the depths stepped up to me and said:

"What you speak is. The greatness is, the intoxication is, the undignified, sick, paltry dailiness is. It runs in all the streets, lives in all the houses, and rules the day of all humanity. Even the eternal stars are commonplace. It is the great mistress and the one essence of God. One laughs about it, and laughter, too, is. Do you believe, man of this time, that laughter is lower than worship? Where is your measure, false measurer? The sum of life decides in laughter and in worship, not your judgment."

I must also speak the ridiculous. You coming men! You will recognize the supreme meaning by the fact that he is laughter and worship, a bloody laughter and a bloody worship.

A sacrificial blood binds the poles. Those who know this laugh and worship in the same breath.

After this, however, my humanity approached me and said:

"What solitude, what coldness of desolation you lay upon me when you speak such! Reflect on the destruction of being and the streams of blood from the terrible sacrifice that the depths demand."

But the spirit of the depths said:

"No one can or should halt sacrifice. Sacrifice is not destruction, sacrifice is the foundation stone of what is to come. Have you not had monasteries? Have not countless thousands gone into the desert? You should carry the monastery in yourself The desert is within you. The desert calls you and draws you back, and if you were fettered to the
world of this time with iron, the call of the desert would break all chains. Truly; I prepare you for solitude."

After this, my humanity remained silent. Something happened to my spirit, however, which I must call mercy:

My speech is imperfect. Not because I want to shine with words, but out of the impossibility of finding those words, I speak in images. With nothing else can I express the words from the depths.

The mercy which happened to me gave me belief hope, and sufficient daring, not to resist further the spirit of the depths, but to utter his word. But before I could pull myself together to really do it, I needed a visible sign that would show me that the spirit of the depths in me was at the same time the ruler of the depths of world affairs.

Thus it happened in October of the year 1913 as I was leaving alone for a journey; that during the day I was suddenly overcome in broad daylight by a vision: I saw a terrible flood that covered all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. It reached from England up to Russia, and from the coast of the North Sea right up to the Alps.

I saw yellow waves, swimming rubble, and the death of countless thousands.

This vision lasted for two hours, it confused me and made me ill. I was not able to interpret it. Two weeks passed then the vision returned, still more violent than before, and an inner voice spoke:

"look at it, it is completely real, and it will come to pass. You cannot doubt this." I wrestled again for two hours with this vision, but it held me fast. It left me exhausted and confused. And I thought my mind had gone crazy.

From then on the anxiety toward the terrible event that stood directly before us kept coming back. Once I also saw a sea of blood over the northern lands.

In the year 1914 in the month of June, at the beginning and end of the month, and at the beginning of July; I had the same dream three times: I was in a foreign land, and suddenly; overnight and right in the middle of summer, a terrible cold descended from space.

All seas and rivers were locked in ice, every green living thing had frozen.

The second dream was thoroughly similar to this. But the third dream at the beginning of July went as follows:

I was in a remote English land. It was necessary that I return to my homeland with a fast ship as speedily as possible.

I reached home quickly. In my homeland I found that in the middle of summer a terrible cold had fallen from space, which had turned every living thing into ice. There stood a leaf-bearing but fruitless tree, whose leaves had turned into sweet grapes full of healing juice through the working of the frost. So I picked some grapes and gave them to a great waiting throng.

In reality; now, it was so: At the time when the great war broke out between the peoples of Europe, I found myself in Scotland, compelled by the war to choose the fastest ship and the shortest route home. I encountered the colossal cold that froze everything, I met up with the flood, the sea of blood, and found my barren tree whose leaves the frost had transformed into a remedy. And I plucked the ripe fruit and gave it to you and I do not know what I poured out for you, what bitter-sweet intoxicating drink, which left on your tongues an aftertaste of blood.

Believe me: It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On what basis should I presume to teach your I give you news of the way of this man, but not of your own way. My path is not your path therefore I / cannot teach you. The way is within us, but not in Gods, nor in teachings, nor in laws. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life.

Woe betide those who live by way of examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your own life if not yourself. So live yourselves.

The signposts have fallen, unblazed trails lie before us.

Do not be greedy to gobble up the fruits of foreign fields. Do you not know that you yourselves are the fertile acre which bears everything that avails you.

Yet who today knows this? Who knows the way to the eternally fruitful climes of the soul? You seek the way through mere appearances, you study books and give ear to all kinds of opinion. What good is all that? There is only one way and that is your way.

You seek the path. I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong way for you.

May each go his own way. I will be no savior, no lawgiver, no master teacher unto you. You are no longer little children.

Giving laws, wanting improvements, making things easier, has all become wrong and evil. May each one seek out his own way. The way leads to mutual love in community.

Men will come to see and feel the similarity and commonality of their ways.

Laws and teachings held in common compel people to solitude, so that they may escape the pressure of undesirable contact, but solitude makes people hostile and venomous.

Therefore give people dignity and let each of them stand apart, so that each may find his own fellowship and love it.

Power stands against power, contempt against contempt, love against love.

Give humanity dignity, and trust that life will find the better way.

The one eye of the Godhead is blind, the one ear of the Godhead is deaf, the order of its being is crossed by chaos.

So be patient with the crippledness of the world and do not overvalue its consummate beauty. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, The Way of What is to Come, Pages 229-231.

Carl Jung: While I was there I sketched every morning in a notebook a small circular drawing, a mandala

I had painted the first mandala in 1916 after writing the Septem Sermones; naturally I had not, then, understood it.

In 1918-19 I was in CMteau d'Oex as Commandant de la Region Anglaise des Internes de Guerre.

While I was there I sketched every morning in a notebook a small circular drawing, a mandala, which seemed to correspond to my inner situation at the time.

With the help of these drawings I could observe my psychic transformations from day to day.

One day, for example, I received a letter from that esthetic lady in which she again stubbornly maintained that the fantasies arising from my unconscious had artistic value and should be considered art. The letter got on my nerves.

It was far from stupid, and therefore dangerously persuasive.

The modern artist, after all, seeks to create art out of the unconscious.

The utilitarianism and self-importance concealed behind this thesis touched a doubt in myself, namely, my uncertainty as to whether the fantasies I was producing were really spontaneous and natural, and not ultimately my own arbitrary inventions.

I was by no means free from the bigotry and hubris of consciousness which wants to believe that any halfway decent inspiration is due to one's own merit, whereas inferior reactions come merely by chance, or even derive from alien sources.

Out of this irritation and disharmony within myself there proceeded, the following day, a
changed mandala: part of the periphery had burst open and the symmetry was destroyed.

Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is:"Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind's eternal recreation.'

And that is the self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious, but which cannot tolerate self-deceptions.~Carl Jung, MDR, Pages 195-196

Carl Jung: Man is a gateway, through which you pass from the outer world of Gods

"Man is a gateway, through which you pass from the outer world of Gods, daimons, and souls into the inner world, out of the greater. into the smaller world. Small and inane is man, already he is behind you, and once again you find yourselves in endless space, in the smaller or inner infinity.

"At immeasurable distance a lonely star stands in the zenith.

"This is the one God of this one man, this is his world, his Pleroma, his divinity.

"In this world, man is Abraxas, the creator and destroyer of his own world.

"This star is the God and the goal of man.

This is his lone guiding God, in him man goes to his rest, toward him goes the long journey of the soul after death, in him everything that man withdraws from the greater world shines resplendently.

"To this one God man shall pray. Prayer increases the light of the star; it throws a bridge across death, it prepares life for the smaller world, and assuages the hopeless desires of the greater.

"When the greater world turns cold, the star shines.

"Nothing stands between man and his one God, so long as man can turn away his eyes from the flaming spectacle of Abraxas.

"Man here, God there.

"Weakness and nothingness here, eternally creative power there.

"Here nothing but darkness and clammy cold there total sun." ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Page 354.

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The spirit of this time ~Carl Jung

If I speak in the spirit of this time, I must say:

no one and nothing can justify what I must proclaim to you.

Justification is superfluous to me, since I have no choice, but I must. I have learned that in addition to the spirit of this time there is still another spirit at work, namely that which rules the depths of everything contemporary:

The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning.

Filled with human pride and blinded by the presumptuous spirit of the times, I long sought to hold that other spirit away from me. But I did not consider that the spirit of the depths from time immemorial and for all the future possesses a greater power than the spirit of this time, who changes with the generations.

The spirit of the depths has subjugated all pride and arrogance to the power of judgment. He took away my belief in science, he robbed me of the joy of explaining and ordering things, and he let devotion to the ideals of this time die out in me.

He forced me down to the last and simplest things.

The spirit of the depths took my understanding and all my knowledge and placed them at the service of the inexplicable and the paradoxical.

He robbed me of speech and writing for everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme meaning.

But the supreme meaning is the path) the way and the bridge to what is to come.

That is the God yet to come. It is not the coming God himself but his image which appears in the supreme meaning.

God is an image and those who worship him must worship him in the images of the supreme meaning.

The supreme meaning is not a meaning and not an absurdity, it is image and force in one, magnificence and force together.

The supreme meaning is the beginning and the end. It is the bridge of going across and fulfillment.

The other Gods died of their temporality, yet the supreme meaning never dies, it turns into meaning and then into absurdity, and out of the fire and blood of their collision the supreme meaning rises up rejuvenated anew.

The image of God has a shadow. The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actual and corporeal and have no shadow?

The shadow is nonsense. It lacks force and has no continued existence through itself. But nonsense is the inseparable and undying brother of the supreme meaning.

Like plants, so men also grow, some in the light, others in the shadows.

There are many who need the shadows and not the light.

The image of God throws a shadow that is just as great as itself.

The supreme meaning is great and small it is as wide as the space of the starry Heaven and as narrow as the cell of the living body.

The spirit of this time in me wanted to recognize the greatness and extent of the supreme meaning, but not its littleness.

The spirit of the depths, however, conquered this arrogance, and I had to swallow the small as a means of healing the immortal in me. It completely burnt up my innards since it was inglorious and unheroic. It was even ridiculous and revolting. But the pliers of the spirit of the depths held me, and I had to drink the bitterest of all draughts.

The spirit of this time tempted me with the thought that all this belongs to the shadowiness of the God-image.

This would be pernicious deception, since the shadow is nonsense. But the small, narrow, and banal is not nonsense, but one of both of the essences of the Godhead.

I resisted recognizing that the everyday belongs to the image of the Godhead. I fled this thought, I hid myself behind the highest and coldest stars.

But the spirit of the depths caught up with me, and forced the bitter drink between my lips.

The spirit of this time whispered to me:

"This supreme meaning, this image of God, this melting together of the hot and the cold, that is you and only you."

But the spirit of the depths spoke to me:

"You are an image of the unending world, all the last mysteries of becoming and passing away live in you. If you did not possess all this, how could you know?"

For the sake of my human weakness, the spirit of the depths gave me this word. Yet this word is also superfluous, since I do not speak it freely; but because I must. I speak because the spirit robs me of joy and life if I do not speak.

I am the serf who brings it and does not know what he carries in his hand. It would burn his hands if he did not place it where his master orders him to lay it.

The spirit of our time spoke to me and said: "What dire urgency could be forcing you to speak all this?"

This was an awful temptation. I wanted to ponder what inner or outer bind could force me into this, and because I found nothing that I could grasp, I was near to making one up.

But with this the spirit of our time had almost brought it about that instead of speaking, I was thinking again about reasons and explanations.

But the spirit of the depths spoke to me and said:

"To understand a thing is a bridge and possibility of returning to the path. But to explain a matter is arbitrary and sometimes even murder. Have you counted the murderers
among the scholars?"

But the spirit of this time stepped up to me and laid before me huge volumes which contained all my knowledge. Their pages were made of ore, and a steel stylus had engraved inexorable words in them, and he pointed to these inexorable words and spoke to me, and said: "What you speak, that is madness."

It is true, it is true, what I speak is the greatness and intoxication and ugliness of madness.

But the spirit of the depths stepped up to me and said:

"What you speak is. The greatness is, the intoxication is, the undignified, sick, paltry dailiness is. It runs in all the streets, lives in all the houses, and rules the day of all humanity. Even the eternal stars are commonplace. It is the great mistress and the one essence of God. One laughs about it, and laughter, too, is. Do you believe, man of this time, that laughter is lower than worship? Where is your measure, false measurer? The sum of life decides in laughter and in worship, not your judgment."

I must also speak the ridiculous. You coming men! You will recognize the supreme meaning by the fact that he is laughter and worship, a bloody laughter and a bloody worship.

A sacrificial blood binds the poles. Those who know this laugh and worship in the same breath.

After this, however, my humanity approached me and said:

"What solitude, what coldness of desolation you lay upon me when you speak such! Reflect on the destruction of being and the streams of blood from the terrible sacrifice that the depths demand."

But the spirit of the depths said:

"No one can or should halt sacrifice. Sacrifice is not destruction, sacrifice is the foundation stone of what is to come. Have you not had monasteries? Have not countless thousands gone into the desert? You should carry the monastery in yourself The desert is within you. The desert calls you and draws you back, and if you were fettered to the
world of this time with iron, the call of the desert would break all chains. Truly; I prepare you for solitude."

After this, my humanity remained silent. Something happened to my spirit, however, which I must call mercy:

My speech is imperfect. Not because I want to shine with words, but out of the impossibility of finding those words, I speak in images. With nothing else can I express the words from the depths.

The mercy which happened to me gave me belief hope, and sufficient daring, not to resist further the spirit of the depths, but to utter his word. But before I could pull myself together to really do it, I needed a visible sign that would show me that the spirit of the depths in me was at the same time the ruler of the depths of world affairs.

Thus it happened in October of the year 1913 as I was leaving alone for a journey; that during the day I was suddenly overcome in broad daylight by a vision: I saw a terrible flood that covered all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. It reached from England up to Russia, and from the coast of the North Sea right up to the Alps.

I saw yellow waves, swimming rubble, and the death of countless thousands.

This vision lasted for two hours, it confused me and made me ill. I was not able to interpret it. Two weeks passed then the vision returned, still more violent than before, and an inner voice spoke:

"look at it, it is completely real, and it will come to pass. You cannot doubt this." I wrestled again for two hours with this vision, but it held me fast. It left me exhausted and confused. And I thought my mind had gone crazy.

From then on the anxiety toward the terrible event that stood directly before us kept coming back. Once I also saw a sea of blood over the northern lands.

In the year 1914 in the month of June, at the beginning and end of the month, and at the beginning of July; I had the same dream three times: I was in a foreign land, and suddenly; overnight and right in the middle of summer, a terrible cold descended from space.

All seas and rivers were locked in ice, every green living thing had frozen.

The second dream was thoroughly similar to this. But the third dream at the beginning of July went as follows:

I was in a remote English land. It was necessary that I return to my homeland with a fast ship as speedily as possible.

I reached home quickly. In my homeland I found that in the middle of summer a terrible cold had fallen from space, which had turned every living thing into ice. There stood a leaf-bearing but fruitless tree, whose leaves had turned into sweet grapes full of healing juice through the working of the frost. So I picked some grapes and gave them to a great waiting throng.

In reality; now, it was so: At the time when the great war broke out between the peoples of Europe, I found myself in Scotland, compelled by the war to choose the fastest ship and the shortest route home. I encountered the colossal cold that froze everything, I met up with the flood, the sea of blood, and found my barren tree whose leaves the frost had transformed into a remedy. And I plucked the ripe fruit and gave it to you and I do not know what I poured out for you, what bitter-sweet intoxicating drink, which left on your tongues an aftertaste of blood.

Believe me: It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On what basis should I presume to teach your I give you news of the way of this man, but not of your own way. My path is not your path therefore I / cannot teach you. The way is within us, but not in Gods, nor in teachings, nor in laws. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life.

Woe betide those who live by way of examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your own life if not yourself. So live yourselves.

The signposts have fallen, unblazed trails lie before us.

Do not be greedy to gobble up the fruits of foreign fields. Do you not know that you yourselves are the fertile acre which bears everything that avails you.

Yet who today knows this? Who knows the way to the eternally fruitful climes of the soul? You seek the way through mere appearances, you study books and give ear to all kinds of opinion. What good is all that? There is only one way and that is your way.

You seek the path. I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong way for you.

May each go his own way. I will be no savior, no lawgiver, no master teacher unto you. You are no longer little children.

Giving laws, wanting improvements, making things easier, has all become wrong and evil. May each one seek out his own way. The way leads to mutual love in community.

Men will come to see and feel the similarity and commonality of their ways.

Laws and teachings held in common compel people to solitude, so that they may escape the pressure of undesirable contact, but solitude makes people hostile and venomous.

Therefore give people dignity and let each of them stand apart, so that each may find his own fellowship and love it.

Power stands against power, contempt against contempt, love against love.

Give humanity dignity, and trust that life will find the better way.

The one eye of the Godhead is blind, the one ear of the Godhead is deaf, the order of its being is crossed by chaos.

So be patient with the crippledness of the world and do not overvalue its consummate beauty. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, The Way of What is to Come, Pages 229-231.

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

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 sel£ 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 itself. 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 dissolution.

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 just 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, Liber Novus, Pages 337-338


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Carl Jung: Christ sent what is beneath to Hell, since it strives toward the good. That had to be.

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 through this collision the formidable broke out, precisely that spring of consciousness that one calls culture and which 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.


Because we know that too far into the good means the same as too far into evil, we keep them both together. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages314-315.

The Supreme Meaning ~Carl Jung

But the supreme meaning is the path) the way and the bridge to what is to come.

That is the God yet to come.

It is not the coming God himself but his image which appears in the supreme meaning.

God .is an image) and those who worship him must worship him in the images of the supreme meaning.

The supreme meaning is not a meaning and not an absurdity, it is image and force in one, magnificence and force together.

The supreme meaning is the beginning and the end. It is the bridge of going across and fulfillment.

The other Gods died of their temporality, yet the supreme meaning never dies, it turns into meaning and then into absurdity, and out of the fire and blood of their collision the supreme meaning rises up rejuvenated anew.

The image of God has a shadow.

The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actual and corporeal and have no shadow?

The shadow is nonsense.

It lacks force and has no continued existence through itself.

But nonsense is the inseparable and undying brother of the supreme meaning.

Like plants, so men also grow, some in the light, others in the shadows.

There are many who need the shadows and not the light.

The image of God throws a shadow that is just as great as itself.

The supreme meaning is great and small, it is as wide as the space of the starry Heaven and as narrow as the cell of the living body. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Pages 229-230.

Carl Jung and the swaying of Chaos

But for him who has seen the chaos, there.is no more hiding, because he knows that the bottom sways and knows what this swaying means.

He has seen the order and the disorder of the endless, he knows the unlawful laws. He knows the sea and can never forget it.

The chaos is terrible: days full of lead, nights full of horror. Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 299.

The spirit of this time sways between yes and no like a drunkard ["since he is the uncertainty of the present general consciousness"].

¥on ["One," throughout] can only overcome the old God through becoming him yourself and experiencing his suffering and dying yourself You overcome him and become yourself as one who seeks himself and no longer imitates heroes.

You free yourself when you free yourself from the old God and his model.

When you have become the model, then you no longer need his. Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Footnote 238, Pages 254-255.

Carl Jung on “Images” in The Red Book. - Anthology

And you, my soul, I found again, first in images within men and then you yourself I found you where I least expected you. You climbed out of a dark shaft. You announced yourself to me in advance in dreams. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 233.

But the supreme meaning is the path the way and the bridge to what is to come. That is the God yet to come. It is not the coming God himself but his image which appears in the supreme meaning. God is an image, and those who worship him must worship him in the images of the supreme meaning. The supreme meaning is not a meaning and not an absurdity, it is image and force in one, magnificence and force together. The supreme meaning is the beginning and the end. It is the bridge of going across and fulfillment. Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 229-230.

Notice what the ancients said in images: the word is a creative act. The ancients said: in the beginning was the Word. Consider this and think upon it. The words that oscillate between nonsense and supreme meaning are the oldest and truest. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 236.

Everything to come was already in images: to find their soul, the ancients went into the desert. This is an image. The ancients lived their symbols, since the world had not yet become real for them. Thus they went into the solitude of the desert to teach us that the place of the soul is a lonely desert. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 236.

On the night when I considered the essence of the God, I became aware of an image: I lay in a dark depth. An old man stood before me. He looked like one of the old prophets. A black serpent lay at his feet. Some distance away I saw a house with columns. A beautiful maiden steps out of the door. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 245.

As I look into its reflection, the images of Eve, the tree, and the serpent appear to me. After this I catch sight of Odysseus and his journey on the high seas. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 245.

His [Christ’s] own way led him to the cross for humanity's own way leads to the cross. My way also leads to the cross, but not to that of Christ, but to mine, which is the image of the sacrifice and of life. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 298, Footnote 164.

After death on the cross Christ went into the underworld and became Hell. So he took on the form of the Antichrist, the dragon. The image of the Antichrist, which has come down to us from the ancients, announces the new God, whose coming the ancients had foreseen. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 242.

Look back at the collapse of empires, of growth and death, of the desert and monasteries, they are the images of what is to come. Everything has been foretold. But who knows how to interpret it? ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 236.

My soul is my supreme meaning, my image of God, neither God himself nor the supreme meaning. God becomes apparent in the supreme meaning of the human community. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Footnote 92, Page 240.

But the serpent is also life. In the image furnished by the ancients, the serpent put an end to the childlike magnificence of paradise; they even said that Christ himself had been a serpent. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Footnote 136, Page 243.

The mystery showed me in images what I should afterward live. I did not possess any of those boons that the mystery showed me, for I still had to earn all of them. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 254.

The image of God has a shadow. The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actual and corporeal and have no shadow? ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 230.

Like plants, so men also grow, some in the light, others in the shadows. There are many who need the shadows and not the light. The image of God throws a shadow that is just as great as itself. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 230.

I resisted recognizing that the everyday belongs to the image of the Godhead. I fled this thought, I hid myself behind the highest and coldest stars. But the spirit of the depths caught up with me, and forced the bitter drink between my lips. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 230.

And thus the image of the ancients is fulfilled: I pursued my soul to kill the child in it. For I am also the worst enemy of my God. But I also recognized that my enmity is decided upon in the God. He is mockery and hate and anger, since this is also a way of life. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 244.

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. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 245.

I see in splendor the mother of God with the child. Peter stands in front of her in admiration-then Peter alone with the key-the Pope with a triple crown-a Buddha sitting rigidly in a circle of fire-a many-armed bloody Goddess-it is Salome desperately wringing her hands-it takes hold of me, she is my own soul, and now I see Elijah in the image of the stone. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 248.

The image of the mother of God with the child that I foresee, indicates to me the mystery of the transformation. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 250.

my womanly pleasure, my own other, the tormented tormentor, that which is to be tormented. I have interpreted these images, as best I can, with poor words. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 250.

There is nothing the emptiness can sacrifice, since it always suffers lack Only fullness can sacrifice, since it has fullness. Emptiness cannot sacrifice its hunger for fullness, since it cannot deny its own essence. Therefore we also need evil. But I can sacrifice my will to evil, because I previously received fullness. All strength flows back to me again, since the evil one has destroyed the image I had of the formation of the God. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 289.

But the image of the God's formation in me was not yet destroyed. I dread this destruction, since it is terrible, an unprecedented desecration of temples. Everything in me strives against this abysmal abomination. For I still did not know what it means to give birth to a God. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 289.

The sacrifice has been accomplished: the divine child, the image of the God's formation, is slain, and I have eaten from the sacrificial flesh. 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. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 291.

The sacrifice has been accomplished: the divine child, the image of the God's formation, is slain, and I have eaten from the sacrificial flesh. 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. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 291.

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. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 291.

With words you pull up the underworld. Word, the paltriest and the mightiest. In words the emptiness and the fullness flow together. Hence the word is an image of God. The word is the greatest and the smallest that man created, just as what is created through man is the greatest and the smallest. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 299.

The devil is the sum of the darkness of human nature. He who lives in the light strives toward being the image of God; he who lives in the dark strives toward being the image of the devil. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 322.

The images of the "Mystery play," on the other hand, personify principles accessible to thinking and intellectual understanding, and their allegorical manner accordingly also invites such an attempt at explanation. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.

The symbol becomes my lord and unfailing commander. It will fortify its reign and change itself into a starry and riddling image, whose meaning turns completely inward, and whose pleasure radiates outward like blazing fire, a Buddha in the flames. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 249.

To the extent that the Christianity of this time lacks madness, it lacks divine life. Take note of what the ancients taught us in images: madness is divine. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 238.

When you say that the place of the soul is not, then it is not. But if you say that it is, then it is. Notice what the ancients said in images: the word is a creative act. The ancients said: in the beginning was the Word. Consider this and think upon it. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 236.

The spirit of this time of course allowed me to believe in my reason. He let me see myself in the image of a leader with ripe thoughts. But the spirit of the depths teaches me that I am a servant, in fact the servant of a child: This dictum was repugnant to me and I hated it. But I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child and that my God in my soul is a child. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 234.

The outer opposition is an image of my inner opposition. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 279.

My speech is imperfect. Not because I want to shine with words, but out of the impossibility of finding those words, I speak in images. With nothing else can I express the words from the depths. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 230.