The birth of a saviour is equivalent to a great catastrophe, because a new and powerful life springs up just where there had seemed to be no life and no power and no possibility of further development.
It comes streaming out of the unconscious, from that unknown part of the psyche which is treated as nothing by all rationalists.
From this discredited and rejected region comes the new afflux of energy, the renewal of life.
But what is this discredited and rejected source of vitality?
It consists of all those psychic contents that were repressed because of their incompatibility with conscious values—everything hateful, immoral, wrong, unsuitable, useless, etc., which means everything that at one time or another appeared so to the individual concerned.
The danger is that when these things reappear in a new and wonderful guise, they may make such an impact on him that he will forget or repudiate all his former values.
What he once despised now becomes the supreme principle, and what was once truth now becomes error.
This reversal of values amounts to the destruction of the old ones and is similar to the devastation of a country by floods. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 449
