The Red Book

¥ 
¥ 
" oak" 0 ¥ 
I ung 
SONU SHAMDASANI 

C. G. JUNG is widely recognized as a major figure in modern Western 
thought, and his work continues to spark controversies. He played critical 
roles in the formation ofmodern psychology, psychotherapy, and psychiatry, 
and a large international profession of analytical psychologists worl( 
under his name. His worl( has had its widest impact, however, outside 
professional circles: J ung and Freud are the names that most people first 
thinl( ofin connection with psychology, and their ideas have been widely 
disseminated in the arts, the humanities, films, and popular culture. Jung 
is also widely regarded as one ofthe instigators ofthe New Age movement. 
However, it is startling to realize that the bool( that stands at the center 
of his oeuvre, on which he worked for over sixteen years, is only now 
being published. 
There can be few unpublished works that have already exerted such 
far-reaching effects upon twentieth-century social and intellectual history 
as Jung's Red Book, or Liber Novus (New Book). Nominated by Jung to 
contain the nucleus of his later works, it has long been recognized as 
the l(ey to comprehending their genesis. Yet aside from a few tantalizing 
glimpses, it has remained unavailable for study. 

The following draws, at times directly, on my reconstruction of the formation ofJung's psychology inJung and the Making ofModern Psychology: The Dream ofa Science 

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Jung referred to the work both as Liber Novus and as The Red Book, as it has become generally known. Because there 

are indications that the former is its actual title, I have referred to it as such throughout for consistency 


194 I LIBER NOVUS 

The Cultural Moment 

The first few decades of the twentieth century saw a grpt deal 
of experimentation in literature, psychology; and the visual arts. 

, ~ 

Writers tried to throw off the limitations of representational 
conventions to explore and depict the full range of inner 
experience-dreams, visions, and fantasies. They experimented 
with new forms and utilized old forms in novel ways. From the 
automatic writing of the surrealists to the gothic fantasies of 
Gustav Meyrink writers came into close proximity and collision 
with the researches ofpsychologists, who were engaged in similar 
explorations. Artists and writers collaborated to try out new 
forms of illustration and typography; new configurations of text 
and image. Psychologists sought to overcome the limitations of 
philosophical psychology; and they began to explore the same 
terrain as artists and writers. Clear demarcations among literature, 
art, and psychology had not yet been set; writers and artists 
borrowed from psychologists, and vice versa. A number of 
major psychologists, such as Alfred Binet and Charles Richet, 
wrote dramatic and fictional works, often under assumed names, 
whose themes mirrored those of their "scientific" works.' Gustav 
Fechner, one of the founders of psychophysics and experimental 
psychology; wrote on the soul life of plants and of the earth 
as a blue ange1.3 Meanwhile writers such as Andre Breton and 
Philippe Soupault assiduously read and utilized the works of 
psychical researchers and abnormal psychologists, such as 
Frederick Myers, Theodore Flournoy; and Pierre Janet. W B. 
Yeats utilized spiritualistic automatic writing to compose a 
poetic psycho cosmology in A Vision.4 On all sides, individuals 
were searching for new forms with which to depict the actualities 
of inner experience, in a quest for spiritual and cultural renewal. 
In Berlin, Hugo Ball noted: 

The world and society in 1913 looked like this: life is 
completely confined and shackled. A kind of economic 
fatalism prevails; each individual, whether he resists it 
or not, is assigned a specific role and with it his interests 
and his character. The church is regarded as a "redemption 
factory" of little importance, literature as a safety valve . . . 
The most burning question day and night is: is there anywhere 
a force that is strong enough to put an end to this 
state of affairs? And if not, how can one escape it?S 

Within this cultural crisis Jung conceived of undertaking an 
extended process of self-experimentation, which resulted in Liber 
Novus, a work of psychology in a literary form. 

We stand today on the other side ofa divide between psychology 
and literature. To consider Liber Novus today is to take up a work 
that could have emerged only before these separations had been 
firmly established. Its study helps us understand how the divide 
occurred. But first, we may ask 

Who was C. G. Jung? 

Jung was born in Kesswil, on Lake Constance, in 1875. His family 
moved to Laufen by the Rhine Falls when he was six months 
old. He was the oldest child and had one sister. His father was a 
pastor in the Swiss Reformed Church. Toward the end of his life, 
Jung wrote a memoir entitled "From the Earliest Experiences of 
My Life," which was subsequently included in Memories, Dreams, 
Rifl'ections in a heavily edited form.6 Jung narrated the significant 
events that led to his psychological vocation. The memoir, with 
its focus on significant childhood dreams, visions, and fantasies, 
can be viewed as an introduction to Liber Novus. 

In the first dream, he found himself in a meadow with a 
stone-lined hole in the ground. Finding some stairs, he descended 
into it, and found himself in a chamber. Here there was a golden 
throne with what appeared to be a tree trunk of skin and flesh, 
with an eye on the top. He then heard his mother's voice exclaim 
that this was the "man-eater," He was unsure whether she meant 
that this figure actually devoured children or was identical with 
Christ. This profoundly affected his image of Christ. Years later, 
he realized that this figure was a penis and, later still, that it was 
in fact a ritual phallus, and that the setting was an underground 
temple. He came to see this dream as an initiation "in the secrets 
of the earth."7 

In his childhood, Jung experienced a number of visual 
hallucinations. He also appears to have had the capacity to evoke 
images voluntarily In a seminar in 1935, he recalled a portrait of 
his maternal grandmother which he would look at as a boy until 
he "saw" his grandfather descending the stairs.8 

One sunny day; when Jung was twelve, he was traversing the 
Mtinsterplatz in Basel, admiring the sun shining on the newly 
restored glazed roof tiles of the cathedral. He then felt the 
approach of a terrible, sinful thought, which he pushed away He 
was in a state ofanguish for several days. Finally; after convincing 
himself that it was God who wanted him to think this thought, 
just as it had been God who had wanted Adam and Eve to sin, he 
let himself contemplate it, and saw God on his throne unleashing 
an almighty turd on the cathedral, shattering its new roof and 
smashing the cathedral. With this, Jung felt a sense of bliss and 
relief such as he had never experienced before. He felt that it was 
an experience of the "direct living God, who stands omnipotent 
and free above the Bible and Church."9 He felt alone before God, 
and that his real responsibility commenced then. He realized that 
it was precisely such a direct, immediate experience of the living 
God, who stands outside Church and Bible, that his father lacked. 

This sense of election led to a final disillusionment with the 
Church on the occasion of his First Communion. He had been 
led to believe that this would be a great experience. Instead, 
nothing. He concluded: "For me, it was an absence of God and no 
religion. Church was a place to which I no longer could go. There 
was no life there, but death."'o 

2 See Jacqueline Carroy, Les personnaliUs multiples et doubles: entre science etfiction (Paris: PUF, 1993). 

3 See Gustav Theodor Fechner, The Religion ofaScientist, ed. and tr. Walter Lowrie (New York: Pantheon, 1946). 

4 See Jean Starobinski, "Freud, Breton, Myers," in L'oeuil vivante II: La relation critique (Paris: Gallimard, 1970) and W B. Yeats, A Vision 
(London: Werner Laurie, 1925). Jung possessed a copy ofthe latter. 

5Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, ed. John Elderfield, tr. A. Raimes (Ber~eley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 1. 

6 On how this mistakenly came to be seen as Jung's autobiography; see my Jung Stripped Bare by His Biographers, Even (London, I(arnac, 2004), 
ch. I, '''How to catch the bird': Jung and his first biographers." See also Alan Elms, "The auntification of Jung," 
in Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Alliance ofBiography and Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 

7 Memories, p. 30. 

8 "Fundamental psychological conceptions," CW IS, ¤397 

9 Memories, p. 57á 

IO Ibid., p. n 


INTRODUCTION I 195 

Jung's voracious reading started at this time, and he was 
particularly struck by Goethe's Faust. He was struck by the fact 
that in Mephistopheles, Goethe took the figure of the devil 
seriously In philosophy, he was impressed by Schopenhauer, 
who acknowledged the existence of evil and gave voice to the 
sufferings and miseries of the world. 

Jung also had a sense ofliving in two centuries, and felt a strong 
nostalgia for the eighteenth century His sense ofduality took the 
form of two alternating personalities, which he dubbed NO.1 
and 2. NO.1 was the Basel schoolboy, who read novels, and NO.2 
pursued religious reflections in solitude, in a state ofcommunion 
with nature and the cosmos. He inhabited "God's world." This 
personality felt most real. Personality NO.1 wanted to be free ofthe 
melancholy and isolation ofpersonality NO.2. When personality 
NO.2 entered, it felt as if a long dead yet perpetually present 
spirit had entered the room. NO.2 had no definable character. He 
was connected to history, particularly with the Middle Ages. For 
NO.2, NO. I, with his failings and ineptitudes, was someone to 
be put up with. This interplay ran throughout Jung's life. As he 
saw it, we are all like this-part of us lives in the present and the 
other part is connected to the centuries. 

As the time drew near for him to choose a career, the conflict 
between the two personalities intensified. NO.1 wanted to pursue 
science, NO.2, the humanities. Jung then had two critical 
dreams. In the first, he was walking in a dark wood along the 
Rhine. He came upon a burial mound and began to dig, until 
he discovered the remains of prehistoric animals. This dream 
awakened his desire to learn more about nature. In the second 
dream, he was in a wood and there were watercourses. He 
found a circular pool surrounded by dense undergrowth. In the 
pool, he saw a beautiful creature, a large radiolarian. After these 
dreams, he settled for science. To solve the question of how to 
earn a living, he decided to study medicine. He then had another 
dream. He was in an unknown place, surrounded by fog, making 
slow headway against the wind. He was protecting a small light 
from going out. He saw a large black figure threateningly close. 
He awoke, and realized that the figure was the shadow cast from 
the light. He thought that in the dream, NO.1 was himself bearing 
the light, and NO.2 followed like a shadow. He took this as a sign 
that he should go forward with NO. I, and not look back to the 
world of NO.2. 

In his university days, the interplay between these personalities 
continued. In addition to his medical studies, Jung pursued an 
intensive program of extracurricular reading, in particular the 
works of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Swedenborg, II and writers 
on spiritualism. Nietzsche's Thus Spoke zarathustra made a great 
impression on him. He felt that his own personality NO.2 
corresponded to Zarathustra, and he feared that his personality 
NO.2 was similarly morbid.I2 He participated in a student debating 
society, the Zofingia society, and presented lectures on these 
subjects. Spiritualism particularly interested him, as the spiritualists 
appeared to be attempting to use scientific means to explore the 
supernatural, and prove the immortality of the soul. 

The latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed the 
emergence of modern spiritualism, which spread across Europe 
and America. Through spiritualism, the cultivation of tranceswith 
the attendant phenomena of trance speech, glossolalia, 
automatic writing, and crystal vision-became widespread. The 
phenomena of spiritualism attracted the interest of leading 
scientists such as Crookes, Zollner, and Wallace. It also attracted 
the interest of psychologists, including Freud, Ferenczi, Bleuler, 
James, Myers, Janet, Bergson, Stanley Hall, Schrenck-Notzing, 
Moll, Dessoir, Richet, and Flournoy 

During his university days in Basel, Jung and his fellow students 
took part in seances. In 1896, they engaged in a long series 
of sittings with his cousin Helene Preiswerk, who appeared to 
have mediumistic abilities. Jung found that during the trances, 
she would become different personalities, and that he could call 
up these personalities by suggestion. Dead relatives appeared, 
and she became completely transformed into these figures. She 
unfolded stories of her previous incarnations and articulated a 
mystical cosmology, represented in a mandala.13 Her spiritualistic 
revelations carried on until she was caught attempting to fake 
physical apparitions, and the seances were discontinued. 

On reading Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Text-Book ofPsychiatry 
in 1899, Jung realized that his vocation lay in psychiatry, which 
represented a fusion of the interests of his two personalities. 
He underwent something like a conversion to a natural scientific 
framework. After his medical studies, he took up a post as an 
assistant physician at Burgholzli hospital at the end of 1900. 
The Burgholzli was a progressive university clinic, under the 
directorship of Eugen Bleuler. At the end of the nineteenth 
century, numerous figures attempted to found a new scientific 
psychology It was held that by turning psychology into a science 
through introducing scientific methods, all prior forms ofhuman 
understanding would be revolutionized. The new psychology was 
heralded as promising nothing less than the completion of the 
scientific revolution. Thanks to Bleuler, and his predecessor Auguste 
Forel, psychological research and hypnosis played prominent roles 
at the Burgholzli. 

Jung's medical dissertation focused on the psychogenesis of 
spiritualistic phenomena, in the form ofan analysis ofhis seances 
with Helene Preiswerk.14 While his initial interest inhercase appeared 
to be in the possible veracity of her spiritualistic manifestations, in 
the interim, he had studied the works of Frederic Myers, William 
James, and, in particular, Theodore Flournoy At the end of1899, 
Flournoy had published a study of a medium, whom he called 
Helene Smith, which became a best seller.lsWhat was novel about 
Flournoy's study was that it approached her case purely from 
the psychological angle, as a means of illuminating the study of 
subliminal consciousness. A critical shift had taken place through 
the work of Flournoy, Frederick Myers, and William James. 
They argued that regardless ofwhether the alleged spiritualistic 
experiences were valid, such experiences enabled far-reaching 
insight into the constitution of the subliminal, and hence into 
human psychology as a whole. Through them, mediums became 

II Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a Swedish scientist and Christian mystic. In 1743, he underwent a religious crisis, which is depicted in his}ournal ofDreams. 
In 1745, he had a vision of Christ. He then devoted his life to relating what he had heard and seen in Heaven and Hell and learned from the angels, and in interpreting 
the internal and symbolic meaning ofthe Bible..Swedenborg argued that the Bible had two levels ofmeaning: a physical, literal leveL and an inner, spiritual level. 
These were linked by correspondences. He proclaimed the advent ofa "new church" that represented a new spiritual era. According to Swedenborg, from birth one 
acquired evils from one's parents which are lodged in the natural man, who is diametrically opposed to the spiritual man. Man is destined for Heaven, and he cannot 
reach there without spiritual regeneration and a new birth. The means to this lay in charity and faith. See Eugene Taylor, "Jung on Swedenborg, redivivus," 
lung History, 2, 2 (2007), pp. 27-31. 

12 Memories, p. 120. 

13 See CW I, ¤66, fig. 2. 

14 On the Psychology and Pathology ofSo-called Occult Phenomena: A psychiatric Study, 1902, CW I. 

15 Theodore Flournoy, From India to the Planet Mars: A Case ofMultiple Personality with Imaginary Languages, ed. Sonu Shamdasani, tr. D. Vermilye 
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1900/1994). 


196 I LIBER NOVUS 

important subjects of the new psychology. With this shift, the 
methods used by the mediums-such as automatic writing, 
trance speech, and crystal vision-were appropriated by the 
psychologists, and became prominent experimental research 
tools. In psychotherapy; Pierre Janet and Morton Prince used 
automatic writing and crystal gazing as methods for revealing 
hidden memories and subconscious fixed ideas. Automatic 
writing brought to light subpersonalities, and enabled dialogues 
with them to be held.I6 For Janet and Prince, the goal ofholding 
such practices was to reintegrate the personality. 

Jung was so tal<en by Flournoy's book that he offered to 
translate it into German, but Flournoy already had a translator. 
The impact of these studies is clear in Jung's dissertation, 
where he approaches the case purely from a psychological 
angle. Jung's work was closely modeled on Flournoy's From 
India to the Planet Mars, both in terms of subject matter and in 
its interpretation of the psychogenesis of Helene's spiritualistic 
romances. Jung's dissertation also indicates the manner in 
which he was utilizing automatic writing as a method of 
psychological investigation. 

In 1902, he became engaged to Emma Rauschenbach, whom 
he married and with whom he had five children. Up till this 
point, Jung had kept a diary. In one of the last entries, dated 
May 1902, he wrote: "I am no longer alone with mysel£ and I can 
only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. 
This is the shadow side of the fortune of love."17 For Jung, his 
marriage marked a move away from the solitude to which he had 
been accustomed. 

In his youth, Jung had often visited Basel's art museum and 
was particularly drawn to the works of Holbein and Bocklin, as 
well as to those of the Dutch painters.IS Toward the end of his 
studies, he was much occupied with painting for about a year. His 
paintings from this period were landscapes in a representational 
style, and show highly developed technical skills and fine technical 
proficiency.I 
9 In 1902/3, Jung left his post at the Burgholzli and 
went to Paris to studywith the leading French psychologist Pierre 
Janet, who was lecturing at the College de France. During his 
stay; he devoted much time to pain,ting and visiting museums, 
going frequently to the Louvre. He paid particular attention to 
ancient art, Egyptian antiquities, the works of the Renaissance, 
Fra Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, and Frans Hals. He 
bought paintings and engravings and had paintings copied for 
the furnishing of his new home. He painted in both oil and 
watercolor. In January 1903, he went to London and visited its 
museums, paying particular attention to the Egyptian, Aztec, 
and Inca collections at the British Museun1.20 

After his return, he took up a post that had become vacant 
at the Burgholzi and devoted his research to the analysis of 
linguistic associations, in collaboration with Franz Rildin. 
With co-workers, they conducted an extensive series of 
experiments, which they subjected to statistical analyses. 
The conceptual basis of Jung's early work lay in the work 
of Flournoy and Janet, which he attempted to fuse with the 

research methodology of Wilhelm Wundt and Emil Kraepelin. 

Jung ~nd Riklin utilized the associations experiment, devised 

by Francis Galton and developed in psychology and psychiatry by 

Wundt, Kraepelin, and Gustav Aschaffenburg. The aim of the 

research project, instigated by Bleuler, was to provide a quick 

and reliable means for differential diagnosis. The Burgholzli 

team failed to come up with this, but they were struck by the 

significance ofdisturbances ofreaction and prolonged response 

times. Jung and Rildin argued that these disturbed reactions 

were due to the presence of emotionally stressed complexes, 

and used their experiments to develop a general psychology 

of complexes.21 

This work established Jung's reputation as one of the rising 

stars ofpsychiatry. In 1906, he applied his new theory ofcomplexes 

to study the psychogenesis of dementia praecox (later called 

schizophrenia) and to demonstrate the intelligibility ofdelusional 

formations.22 For Jung, along with a number ofother psychiatrists 

and psychologists at this time, such as Janet and Adolf Meyer, 

insanity was not regarded as something completely set apart 

from sanity; but rather as lying on the extreme end ofa spectrum. 

Two years later, he argued that "Ifwe feel our way into the human 

secrets ofthe sick person, the madness also reveals its system, and 

we recognize in the mental illness merely an exceptional reaction 

to emotional problems which are not strange to US."23 

Jung became increasingly disenchanted by the limitations of 
experimental and statistical methods in psychiatry and psychology: 
In the outpatient clinic at the Burgholzli, he presented hypnotic 
demonstrations. This led to his interest in therapeutics, and to the 
use of the clinical encounter as a method of research. Around 
1904, Bleuler introduced psychoanalysis into the Burgholzli, 
and entered into a correspondence with Freud, asking Freud 
for assistance in his analysis ofhis own dreams.24 In 1906, Jung 
entered into communication with Freud. This relationship 
has been much mythologized. A Freudocentric legend arose, 
which viewed Freud and psychoanalysis as the principal'source 
for Jung's work This has led to the complete mislocation of 
his work in the intellectual history of the twentieth century. 
On numerous occasions, Jung protested. For instance, in an 
unpublished article written in the 1930S, "The schism in the 
Freudian schoo!," he wrote: "I in no way exclusively stem from 
Freud. I had my scientific attitude and the theory of complexes 
before I met Freud. The teachers that influenced me above all 
are Bleuler, Pierre Janet, and Theodore Flournoy."25 Freud and 
Jung clearly came from quite different intellectual traditions, 
and were drawn together by shared interests in the psychogenesis 
of mental disorders and psychotherapy. Their intention was to 
form a scientific psychotherapy based on the new psychology 
and, in turn, to ground psychology in the in-depth clinical 
investigation of individual lives. 

With the lead of Bleuler and Jung, the Burgholzli became 
the center of the psychoanalytic movement. In 1908, the 
] ahrbuch fur psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen 
(Yearbook for Psychoanalytic and Psychopathological Researches) 

I6 Pierre Janet, N evroses et ideesfixes (Paris: Alcan, I898); Morton Prince, Clinical and Experimental Studies in Personality (Cambridge, MA: Sci-Art, I929). 
See my "Automatic writing and the discovery of the unconscious," Spring: AJournal ofArchetype and Culture 54 (I993), pp. IOO-13I. 

I7 Black Book 2, p. I (JFA; all the Black Books are in theJF A). 

18 MP, p. 164. 

19 See Gerhard Wehr, An Illustrated Biography ofJung, tr. M. Kohn (Boston: Shambala, 1989), p. 47; Aniela Jaffe, ed., c. G.Jung: Word and Image 
(Princeton: Princeton University Press/Bollingen Series, 1979), pp. 42-4320 
MP, p. I64, and unpublished letters, JFA. 
21 "Experimental researches on the associations of the healthy," 1904, CW 2. 
22 On the Psychology ofDementia Praecox: An Attempt, CW 3. 
23 "The content of the psychoses," CW 3, ¤339. 
24 Freud archives, Library of Congress. See Ernst Falzeder, "The story ofan ambivalent relationship: Sigmund Freud and Eugen Bleuler," 
Journal ofAnalytical Psychology 52 (2007), pp. 343-68. 

25JA. 


INTRODUCTION I 197 

was established, with Bleuler and Freud editors-in-chiefand Jung 
as managing editor. Due to their advocacy, psychoanalysis gained 
a hearing in the German psychiatric world. In 1909, Jung received 
an honorary degree from Clark University for his association 
researches. The following year, an international psychoanalytic 
association was formed with Jung as the president. During the 
period ofhis collaboration with Freud, he was a principal architect 
of the psychoanalytic movement. For Jung, this was a period of 
intense institutional and political activity. The movement was 
riven by dissent and acrimonious disagreements. 

The Intoxication 
of Mythology 

In 1908, Jung bought some land by the shore of Lake Zurich in 
Kusnacht and had a house built, where he was to live for the rest 
of his life. In 1909, he resigned from the Burgholzli, to devote 
himself to his growing practice and his research interests. His 
retirement from the Burgholzli coincided with' a shift in his 
research interests to the study ofmythology, folklore, and religion, 
and he assembled a vast private library ofscholarly works. These 
researches culminated in Transformatio.ns and Symbols of the Libido, 
published in two installments in I9II and 1912. This work can be 
seen to mark a return to Jung's intellectual roots and to his cultural 
and religious preoccupations. He found the mythological work 
exciting and intoxicating. In 1925 he recalled, "it seemed to me 
I was living in an insane asylum of my own making. I went about 
with all these fantastic figures: centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, gods and 
goddesses, as though they were patients and I was analyzing them. 
I read a Greek or a Negro myth as if a lunatic were telling me 
his anamnesis."26 The end of the nineteenth century had seen 
an explosion of scholarship in the newly founded disciplines 
of comparative religion and ethnopsychology. Primary texts 
were collected and translated for the first time and subjected 
to historical scholarship in collections such as Max Miiller's 
Sacred Books of the Ease7 For many, these works represented an 
important relativization of the Christian worldview. 

In Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido, Jung differentiated 
two kinds ofthinking. Taking his cue from William James, among 
others, Jung contrasted directed thinking and fantasy thinking. 
The former was verbal and logical, while the latter was passive, 
associative, and imagistic. The former was exemplified by science 
and the latter by mythology. Jung claimed that the ancients lacked 
a capacity for directed thinking, which was a modern acquisition. 
Fantasy thinking took place when directed thinking ceased. 
Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido was an extended study of 
fantasy thinking, and of the continued presence of mythological 
themes in the dreams and fantasies ofcontemporary individuals. 
Jung reiterated the anthropological equation of the prehistoric, 
the primitive, and the child. He held that the elucidation of 
current-day fantasy thinking in adults would concurrently shed 
light on the thought ofchildren, savages, and prehistoric peoples.28 

In this work, Jung synthesized nineteenth-century theories of 
memory, heredity, and the unconscious and posited a phylogenetic 
layer to the unconscious that was still present in everyone, consisting 

26 Analytical Psychology, p. 24. 
27 Jung possessed a complete set ofthis. 

ofmythological images. For Jung, myths were symbols ofthe libido 

and they depicted its typical movements. He used the compara


tive method of anthropology to draw together a vast panoply of 

myths, and then subjected them to analytic interpretation. He 

later termed his use of the comparative method "amplification." 

He claimed that there had to be typical myths, which corresponded 

to the ethnopsychological development of complexes. Following 

Jacob Burckhardt, Jung termed such typical myths "primordial 

images" (Urbilder). One particular myth was given a central role: 

that ofthe hero. For Jung, this represented the life ofthe individual, 

attempting to become independent and to free himself from 

the mother. He interpreted the incest motifas an attempt to return 

to the mother to be reborn. He was later to herald this work as 

marking the discovery of the collective unconscious, though the 

term itself came at a later date}9 

In a series of articles from 1912, Jung's friend and colleague 
Alphonse Maeder argued that dreams had a function other than 
that of wish fulfillment, which was a balancing or compensatory 
function. Dreams were attempts to solve the individual's moral 
conflicts. As such, they did not merely point to the past, but 
also prepared the way for the future. Maeder was developing 
Flournoy's views of the subconscious creative imagination. Jung 
was working along similar lines, and adopted Maeder's positions. 
For Jung and Maeder, this alteration of the conception of the 
dream brought with it an alteration of all other phenomena 
associated with the unconscious. 

In his preface to the 1952 revision ofTransformations and Symbols 
ofthe Libido, Jung wrote that the work was written in I9II, when 
he was thirty-six: "The time is a critical one, for it marks the 
beginning of the second half of life, when a metanoia, a mental 
transformation, not infrequently occurs."30 He added that he 
was conscious of the loss of his collaboration with Freud, and 
was indebted to the support of his wife. After completing the 
work, he realized the significance ofwhat it meant to live without 
a myth. One without a myth "is like one uprooted, having no 
true link either with the past, or with the ancestral life which 
continues within him, or yet with contemporary human society."31 
As he further describes it: 

I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: "what is the myth 
you are living?" I found no answer to this question, and had to 
admit that I was not living with a myth, or even in a myth, but 
rather in an uncertain cloud of theoretical possibilities 
which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust ... 
So in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get 
to know "my" myth, and I regarded this as the task of 
tasks-for-so I told myself-how could 1, when treating 
my patients, malce due allowance for the personal factor, 
for my personal equation, which is yet so necessary for a 
knowledge ofthe other person, if I was unconscious ofit?32 

The study ofmyth had revealed to Jung his mythlessness. He then 
undertook to get to know his myth, his "personal equation."33 Thus 
we see that the self-experimentation which Jung undertookwas in 
part a direct response to theoretical questions raised byhis research, 
which had culminated in Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido. 

28 Jung, The Psychology ofthe Unconscious, cw B, ¤36. In his 1952 revision of this text, Jung qualified this (Symbols cifTransformation, cw 5, ¤29). 

29 "Address on the founding of the C. G. Jung Institute, Zurich, 24 April, 1948," CW 18, ¤II3I. 

30 cw 5, p. xxvi. 

3I Ibid., p. xxix. 

32 Ibid. 

33 Cf Analytical Psychology, p. 25. 


198 I LIBER NOVUS 

"My Most Difficult 
Experilllent" 

In 1912, Jung had some significant dreams that he did not 
understand. He gave particular importance to two of these, 
which he felt showed the limitations of Freud's conceptions of 
dreams. The first follows: 

I was in a southern town, on a rising street with narrow half 
landings. It was twelve o'clock midday-bright sunshine. 
An old Austrian customs guard or someone similar passes 
byme, lost in thought. Someone says, "that is one who cannot 
die. He died already 30-40 years ago, but has not yet managed 
to decompose." I was very surprised. Here a striking figure 
came, a knight of powerful build, clad in yellowish armor. 
He looks solid and inscrutable and nothing impresses him. 
On his back he carries a red Maltese cross. He has continued 
to exist from the 12th century and daily between 12 and 1 
o'clock midday he takes the same route. No one marvels at 
these two apparitions, but I was extremely surprised. 

I hold back my interpretive skills. As regards the old Austrian, 
Freud occurred to me; as regards the knight, I myself 
Inside, a voice calls, "It is all empty and disgusting." I 
must bear it.34 

Jung found this dream oppressive and bewildering, and Freud 

was unable to interpret it.35 Around half a year later Jung had 
another dream: 

I dreamt at that time (it was shortly after Christmas 1912), 
that I was sitting with my children in a marvelous and richly 
furnished castle apartment-an open columned hall-we 
were sitting at a round table, whose top was a marvelous 
dark green stone. Suddenly a gull or a dove flew in and 
sprang lightly onto the table. I admonished the children 
to be quiet, so that they would not scare away the beautiful 
white bird. Suddenly this bird turned into a child of eight 
years, a small blond girl, and ran around playing with my 
children in the marvelous columned colonnades. Then the 
child suddenly turned into the gull or dove. She said the 
following to me: "Only in the first hour ofthe night can I become 
human) while the male dove is busy with the twelve dead." With these 
words the bird flew away and I awoke.36 

34 Black Book 2, pp. 25-26. 

In Black Book 2, Jung noted that it was this dream that made 
him decide to embark on a relationship with a woman he had 
met three years earlier (Toni Wolff).37 In 1925, he remarked 
that this dream "was the beginning of a conviction that the 
unconscious did not consist ofinert material only, but that there 
was something living down there."38 He added that he thought 
of the story of the Tabula smaragdina (emerald tablet), the twelve 
apostles, the signs ofthe Zodiac, and so on, but that he "could make 
nothing out of the dream except that there was a tremendous 
animation ofthe unconscious. I knew no technique ofgetting at the 
bottom of this activity; all I could do was just wait, keep on living, 
and watch the fantasies."39 These dreams led him to analyze his 
childhood memories, but this did not resolve anything. He realized 
that he needed to recover the emotional tone of childhood. He 
recalled that as a child, he used to like to build houses arid other 
structures, and he took this up again. 

While he was engaged in this self-analytic activity; he continued 
to develop his theoretical work. At the Munich Psycho-Analytical 
Congress in September 1913, he spoke on psychological types. 
He argued that there were two basic movements of the libido: 
extraversion, in which the subject's interest was oriented toward 
the outer world, and introversion, in which the subject'S interest 
was directed inward. Following from this, he posited two types 
of people, characterized by a predominance of one of these 
tendencies. The psychologies of Freud and Adler were examples 
of the fact that psychologies often took what was true of their 
type as generally valid. Hence what was required was a psychology 
that did justice to both of these types.40 

The following month, on a train journey to Schaffhausen, 
Jung experienced a waking vision of Europe being devastated 
by a catastrophic flood, which was repeated two weeks later, on 
the same journey.41 Commenting on this experience in 1925, he 
remarked: "I could be taken as Switzerland fenced in by mountains 
and the submergence of the world could be the debris of my 
former relationships." This led him to the following diagnosis 
of his condition: "I thought to mysel£ 'If this means anything, 
it means that I am hopelessly off"'42 After this experience, Jung 
feared that he would go mad.43 He recalled that he first thought 
that the images of the vision indicated a revolution, but as he 
could not imagine this, he concluded that he was "menaced with 
a psychosis."44 After this, he had a similar vision: 

In the following winter I was standing at the window one 

night and looked North. I saw a blood-red glow, like the 

35 
In 1925, he gave the following interpretation to this dream: "The meaning of the dream lies in the principle of the ancestral figure: not the Austrian officer-obviously 
he stood for the Freudian theory-but the other, the Crusader, is an archetypal figure, a Christian symbol living from the twelfth century, a symbol that does not really 
live today; but on the other hand is not wholly dead either. It comes out of the times of Meister Eckhart, the time ofthe culture of the Knights, when many ideas blossomed, 
only to be killed again, but they are coming again to life now. However, when I had this dream, I did not know this interpretation" (Analytical Psychology, p. 39). 

36 Black Book 2, pp. 17-18. 

37 Ibid., p. 17


38 Analytical Psychology, p. 40. 

39 
Ibid., pp. 40-41. E. A. Bennet noted Jung's comments on this dream: ''At first he thought the 'twelve dead men' referred to the twelve days before Christmas for that is 
the dark time of the year, when traditionally witches are about. To say 'before Christmas' is to say 'before the sun lives again: for Christmas day is at the turning point 
of the year when the sun's birth was celebrated in the Mithraic religion ... Only much later did he relate the dream to Hermes and the twelve doves" (Meetings with}ung: 
Conversations recorded by E. A. Bennet during the Years 1946-1961 [London: Anchor Press, 1982; ZUrich, Daimon Verlag, 1985], p. 93). In 1951 in "The psychological aspects of 
the Kore," Jung presented some material from Liber Novus (describing them all as part ofa dream series) in an anonymous form ("case Z."), tracing the transformations 
of the anima. He noted that this dream "shows the anima as elflike, i.e., only partially human. She can just as well be a bird, which means that she may belong wholly to 
nature and can vanish (i.e., become unconscious) from the human sphere (i.e., consciousness)" (cw 9, I, ¤371). See also Memories, pp. 195-96. 

40 "On the question of psychological types," CW 6. 

41 See below, p. 231. 

42 Analytical Psychology, pp. 43-44. 

43 
Barbara Hannah recalls that "Jung used to say in later years that his tormenting doubts as to his own sanity should have been allayed by the amount of success he was 
having at the same time in the outer world, especially in America" (c. G.}ung: His Life and Work. A Biographical Memoir [New York: Perigree, 1976], p. 109). 

44 Memories, p. 200. 


INTRODUCTION I 199 

flicker of the sea seen from afar, stretched from East to West 
across the northern horizon. And at that time someone asked 
me what I thought about world events in the near future. I 
said that I had no thoughts, but saw blood, rivers ofblood.45 

In the years directly preceding the outbreak of war, apocalyptic 
imagery was widespread in European arts and literature. For 
example, in 1912, Wassily Kandinsky wrote of a coming universal 
catastrophe. From 1912 to 1914, Ludwig Meidner painted a series 
of works known as the apocalyptic landscapes, with scenes of 
destroyed cities, corpses, and turmoil.46 Prophecy was in the air. 
In 1899, the famous American medium Leonora Piper predicted 
that in the coming century there would be a terrible war in different 
parts of the world that would cleanse the world and reveal the 
truths ofspiritualism. In 1918, Arthur Conan Doyle, the spiritualist 
and author ofthe Sherlock Holmes stories, viewed this as having 
been propheticY 

In Jung's account of the fantasy on the train in Liber Novus, the 
inner voice said that what the fantasy depicted would become 
completely real. Initially, he interpreted this subjectively and 
prospectively, that is, as depicting the imminent destruction of his 
world. His reaction to this experience was to undertake a psychological 
investigation ofhimself In this epoch, self-experimentation 
was used in medicine and psychology: Introspection had been one 
of the main tools ofpsychological research. 

Jung came to realize that Transformations and Symbols oj the 
Libido "could be taken as myself and that an analysis of it leads 
inevitably into an analysis of my own unconscious processes."48 
He had projected his material onto that of Miss Frank Miller, 
whom he had never met. Up to this point, Jung had been an active 
thinker and had been averse to fantasy: "as a form of thinking I 
held it to be altogether impure, a sort of incestuous intercourse, 
thoroughly immoral from an intellectual viewpoint."49 He now 
turned to analyze his fantasies, carefully noting everything, and 
had to overcome considerable resistance in doing this: "Permitting 
fantasy in myself had the same effect as would be produced on a 
man ifhe came into his workshop and found all the tools flying 
about doing things independently of his will. "50 In studying his 
fantasies, Jung realized that he was studying the myth-creating 
function ofthe mind. 

Jung picked up the brown notebook, which he had set aside 
in 1902, and began writing in it.52 He noted his inner states in 
metaphors, such as being in a desert with an unbearably hot sun 
(that is, consciousness). In the 1925 seminar, he recalled that 
it occurred to him that he could write down his reflections 
in a sequence. He was "writing autobiographical material, 
but not as an autobiography."53 From the time of the Platonic 

45 Draft, p. 8. 

dialogues onward, the dialogical form has been a prominent 
genre in Western philosophy. In 387 CE, St. Augustine wrote 
his SoliloqUies, which presented an extended dialogue between 
himself and "Reason," who instructs him. They commenced with 
the following lines: 

When I had been pondering many different things to 
myself for a long time, and had for many days been seeking 
my own self and what my own good was, and what evil was 
to be avoided, there suddenly spoke to me-what was it? I 
myselfor someone else, inside or outside me? (this is the very 
thing I would l"ove to know but don't).54 

While Jung was writing in Black Book 2, 

I said to myself "What is this I am doing, it certainly is 
not science, what is it?" Then a voice said to me, "That is 
art." This made the strangest sort of impression upon me, 
because it was not in any sense my impression that what 
I was writing was art. Then I came to this, "Perhaps my 
unconscious is forming a personality that is not 1, but which 
is insisting on coming through to expression." I don't know 
why exactly, but I knew to a certainty that the voice that 
had said mywriting was art had come from a woman ... Well 
I said very emphatically to this voice that what I was doing 
was not art, and I felt a great resistance grow up within me. 
No voice came" through, however, and I kept on writing. 
This time I caught her and said, "No it is not," and I felt as 
though an argument would ensue.55 

He thought that this voice was "the soul in the prim1t1ve 
sense," which he called the anima (the Latin word for soul).56 
He stated that "In putting down all this material for analysis, I 
was in effect writing letters to my anima, that is part of myself 
with a different viewpoint from my own. I got remarks of a 
new character-I was in analysis with a ghost and a woman."57 
In retrospect, he recalled that this was the voice of a Dutch 
patient whom he knew from 1912 to 1918, who had persuaded 
a psychiatrist colleague that he was a misunderstood artist. The 
woman had thought that the unconscious was art, but Jung had 
maintained that it was nature.58 I have previously argued that the 
woman in question-the only Dutch woman in Jung's circle at 
this time-was Maria Moltzer, and that the psychiatrist in question 
was Jung's friend and colleague Franz Riklin, who increasingly 
forsook analysis for painting. In 1913, he became a student of 
Augusto Giacometti's, the uncle of Alberto Giacometti, and an 
important early abstract painter in his own right.59 

46 Gerda Breuer and Ines Wagemann, Ludwig Meidner: Zeichner, Maler, Literat 1884-1966 (Stuttgart: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1991), vol. 2, pp. 124-49. See Jay Winter, 
Sites ofMemory, Sites ofMourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 145-77. 

47 Arthur Conan Doyle, The New Revelation and the Vital Message (London: Psychic Press, 1918), p. 9. 

48 Analytical Psychology, p. 27


49 Ibid. 

50 Ibid. 
51 MP, p. 23. 

52 The subsequent notebooks are black, hence Jung referred to them as the Black Books. 

53 Analytical Psychology, p. 44. 

54 St. Augustine, Soliloquies and Immortality ofthe Soul, ed. and tr. Gerard Watson (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1990), p. 23. Watson notes that Augustine "had been through 
a period of intense strain, close to a nervous breakdown, and the Soliloquies are a form of therapy, an effort to cure himself by talking, or rather, writing" (p. v). 

55 
Ibid., p. 42. In Jung's account here, it seems that this dialogue took place in the autumn of I913, though this is not certain, because the dialogue itself does not occur in 
the Black Books, and no other manuscript has yet come to light. If this dating is followed, and in the absence ofother material, it would appear that the material the voice 
is referring to is the November entries in Black Book 2, and not the subsequent text ofLiber Novus or the paintings. 

56 Ibid., p. 44. 

57 Ibid., p. 46. 

58 MP, p. 171. 

59 Riklin's painting generally followed the style ofAugusto Giacometti: semi-figurative and fully abstract works, with soft floating colors. Private possession, Peter Riklin. 
There is one painting of Riklin's from 19I5/6, Verkandigung, in the Kunsthaus in ZUrich, which was donated by Maria Moltzer in 1945. Giacometti recalled: "Riklin's psychological 
knowledge was extraordinarily interesting and new to me. He was a modern magician. I had the feeling that he could do magic': (Von Stampa bis Florenz: Bliitter der 
Erinnerung [ZUrich: Rascher, 1943], pp. 86-87). 


200 I LIBER NOVUS 

The November entries in Black Book 2 depict Jung's sense ofhis 
return to his soul. He recounted the dreams that led him to opt 
for his scientific career, and the recent dreams that had brought 
him back to his soul. As he recalled in 1925, this first period of 
writing came to an end in November: "Not knowing what would 
come next, I thought perhaps more introspection was needed ... 
I devised such a boring method by fantasizing that I was digging 
a hole, and by accepting this fantasy as perfectly real."60 The first 
such experiment took place on December 12,1913.61 

As indicated, Jung had had extensive experience studying 
mediums in trance states, during which they were encouraged 
to produce waking fantasies and visual hallucinations, and had 
conducted experiments with automatic writing. Practices of 
visualization had also been used in various religious traditions. 
For example, in the fifth of the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius 
of Loyola, individuals are instructed on how to "see with the eyes 
of the imagination the length, breadth and depth of hell," and to 
experience this with full sensory immediacy.62 Swedenborg also 
engaged in "spirit writing." In his spiritual diary; one entry reads: 

26 JAN. 1748.-Spirits, if permitted, could possess those 
who speak with them so utterly, that they would be as 
though they were entirely in the world; and indeed, in a 
manner so manifest, that they could communicate their 
thoughts through their medium, and even by letters; 
for they have sometimes, and indeed often, directed my 
!tand when writing, as though it were quite their own; so 
that they thought it was not I, but themselves writing.63 

From 1909 onward in Vienna, the psychoanalyst Herbert Silberer 
conducted experiments on himself in hypnagogic states. 
Silberer attempted to allow images to appear. These images, 
he maintained, presented symbolic depictions of his previous 
train ofthought. Silberer corresponded with Jung and sent him 
offprints of his articles. 64 

In 1912, Ludwig Staudenmaier (1865-1933), a professor 
of experimental chemistry; published a work entitled Magic 
as an Experimental Science. Staudenmaier had embarked on selfexperimentations 
in 1901, commencing with automatic writing. 
A series of characters appeared, and he found that he no longer 
needed to write to conduct dialogues with them.65 He also induced 
acoustic and visual hallucinations. The aim of his enterprise 
was to use his self-experimentation to provide a scientific 
explanation of magic. He argued that the key to understanding 
magic lay in the concepts of hallucinations and the "under 
consciousness" (Unterbewufltsein), and gave particular importance 

60 Analytical Psychology, p. 46. 

to the role of personifications.66 Thus we see that Jung's procedure 
closely resembled a number of historical and contemporary 
practices with which he was familiar. 

From December 1913 onward, he carried on in the same 
procedure: deliberately evoking a fantasy in a waking state, and 
then entering into it as into a drama. These fantasies may be 
understood as a type of dramatized thinking in pictorial form. In 
reading his fantasies, the impact ofJung's mythological studies is 
clear. Some of the figures and conceptions derive directly from 
his readings, and the form and style bear witness to his fascination 
with the world of myth and epic. In the Black Books, Jung wrote 
down his fantasies in dated entries, together with reflections on 
his state ofmind and his difficulties in comprehending the fantasies. 
The Black Books are not diaries ofevents, and very few dreams are 
noted in them. Rather, they are the records of an experiment. In 
December 1913, he referred to the first ofthe black books as the 
"book of my most difficult experiment."67 

In retrospect, he recalled that his scientific question was to see 
what took place when he switched offconsciousness. The example 
of dreams indicated the existence of background activity, and he 
wanted to give this a possibility of emerging, just as one does 
when taking mescalin.68 

In an entry in his dream book on April 17,1917, Jung noted: 
"since then, frequent exercises in the emptying ofconsciousness."69 
His procedure was clearly intentional-while its aim was to 
allow psychic contents to appear spontaneously. He recalled 
that beneath the threshold of consciousness, everything was 
animated. At times, it was as if he heard something. At other 
times, he realized that he was whispering to himself.70 

From November 1913 to the following July; he remained uncertain 
of the meaning and significance ofhis undertaking, and concerning 
the meaning of his fantasies, which continued to develop. During 
this time, Philemon, who would prove to be an important figure in 
subsequent fantasies, appeared in a dream. Jung recounted: 

There was a blue sky; like the sea, covered not by clouds 
but by flat brown clods of earth. It looked as if the clods 
were breaking apart and the blue water of the sea were 
becoming visible between them. But the water was the blue 
sky. Suddenly there appeared from the right a winged being 
sailing across the sky. I saw that it was an old man with the 
horns of a bull. He held a bunch of four keys, one ofwhich 
he clutched as if he were about to open a lock. He had the 
wings ofthe kingfisher with its characteristic colors. Since I 
did not understand this dream image, I painted it in order 
to impress it upon my memory.71 

61 The vision that ensued is found below in Liber Primus, chapter 5, "Journey into Hell in the Future," p. 24I. 
62 St. Ignatius of Loyola, "The spiritual exercises," in Personal Writings, tr. J. Munitiz and P. Endean (London: Penguin, 1996), p. 298. In 1939/40, Jung presented 
a psychological commentary on the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola at the ETH (philemon Series, forthcoming). 
63 This passage was reproduced by William White in his Swedenborg: His Life and Writings, vol. I (London: Bath, 1867), pp. 293-94. In Jung's copy of this work, he marked 
the second half of this passage with a line in the margin. ' 
64 See Silberer, "Bericht uber dne Methode, gewisse symbolische Halluzinations-Erscheinungen hervorzurufen und zu beobachten,"Jahrbuch fur psychoanalytische und 
psychopathologische Forschungen 2 (1909), pp. 513-25. 

65 Staudenmaier, Die Magie als experimentelle NaturwissenschaJt (Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1912), p. 19. 

66 Jung had a copy of Staudenmaier's book, and marked some passages in it. 

67 Black Book 2, p. 58. 

68MP, p. 38I. 

69 "Dreams," JFA, p. 9á 

70 MP, p. 145. To Margaret Ostrowski-Sachs, Jung said "The technique of active imagination can prove very important in difficult situations-where there is a visitation, 
say. It only makes sense when one has the feeling ofbeing up against a blank wall. I experienced this when I separated from Freud. I did not know what I thought. 
I only felt, 'It is not so.' Then I conceived of 'symbolic thinking' and after two years ofactive imagination so many ideas rushed in on me that I could hardly defend 
myself The same thoughts recurred. I appealed to my hands and began to carve wood-and then my way became clear" (From Conversations with C. G.Jung [Zurich: 
Juris Druck Verlag, 1971], p. 18). 

71 Memories, p. 207. 


INTRODUCTION I 201 

While he was painting this image, he found a dead kingfisher 
(which is very rarely found in the vicinity ofZ urich) in his garden 
by the lake shore?2 

The date of this dream is not dear. The figure of Philemon 
first appears in the Black Books on January 27, 1914, but without 
kingfisher wings. To Jung, Philemon represented superior 
insight, and was like a guru to him. He would converse with 
him in the garden. He recalled that Philemon evolved out of the 
figure of Elijah, who had previously appeared in his fantasies: 

Philemon was a pagan and brought with him an EgyptoHellenic 
atmosphere with a Gnostic coloration ... Itwas he 
who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche. 
Through the conversations with Philemon, the distinction 
was clarified between myself and the object of my thought ... 
Psychologically; Philemon represented superior insight.73 

On April 20, Jung resigned as president of the International 
Psychoanalytical Association. On April 30, he resigned asa lecturer 
in the medical faculty of the University of Zurich. He recalled 
that he felt that he was in an exposed position at the university 
and felt that he had to find a new orientation, as it would otherwise 
be unfair to teach students.74 In June and July; he had a thricerepeated 
dream of being in a foreign land and having to return 
home quicldy by ship, followed by the descent of an icy cold.75 

On July 10, the Zurich Psychoanalytical Society voted by 
15 to I to leave the International Psychoanalytic Association. 
In the minutes, the reason given for the secession was that 
Freud had established an orthodoxy that impeded free and 
independent research.76 The group was renamed the Association 
for Analytical Psychology. Jung was actively involved in this 
association, which met fortnightly. He also maintained a busy 
therapeutic practice. Between 1913 and 1914, he had between 
one and nine consultations per day, five days a week, with an 
average of between five and seven.77 

The minutes of the Association for Analytical Psychology 
offer no indications of the process that Jung was going through. 
He does not refer to his fantasies, and continues to discuss 
theoretical issues in psychology. The same holds true in his 
surviving correspondences during this period.78 Each year, he 
continued his military service duties.79 Thus he maintained his 
professional activities and familial responsibilities during the day; 
and dedicated his evenings to his self-explorations.80 Indications 
are that this partitioning of activities continued during the next 
few years. Jung recalled that during this period his family and 
profession "always remained a joyful reality and a guarantee that 
I was normal and really existed."81 

The question of the different ways of interpreting such 
fantasies was the subject of a talk that he presented on July 24 
before the Psycho-Medical Society in London, "On psychological 

72 Ibid. 
73 Memories, pp. 207-8. 
74 Memories, p. 2I9á 
75 See below, p. 23I. 


76 MZS. 

77 Jung's appointment books,]FA. 

understanding." Here, he contrasted Freud's analytic-reductive 
method, based on causality, with the constructive method of the 
Zurich school. The shortcoming of the former was that through 
tracing things back to antecedent elements, it dealt with only half 
ofthe picture, and failed to grasp the living meaning ofphenomena. 
Someone who attempted to understand Goethe's Faust in such a 
manner would be like someone who tried to understand a Gothic 
cathedral under its mineralogical aspect.82 The living meaning 
"only lives when we experience it in and through ourselves."83 
Inasmuch as life was essentially new, it could not be understood 
merely retrospectively. Hence the constructive standpoint asked, 
"how, out ofthis present psyche, a bridge can be built into its own 
future."84This paper implicitly presents Jung's rationale for not 
embarking on a causal and retrospective analysis of his fantasies, 
and serves as a caution to others who may be tempted to do so. 
Presented as a critique and reformulation ofpsychoanalysis, Jung's 
new mode ofinterpretation links back to the symbolic method of 
Swedenborg's spiritual hermeneutics. 

On July 28, Jung gave a talk on "The importance of the 
unconscious in psychopathology" at a meeting of the British 
Medical Association in Aberdeen.85 He argued that in cases of 
neurosis and psychosis, the unconscious attempted to compensate 
the one-sided conscious attitude. The unbalanced individual 
defends himself against this, and the opposites become more 
polarized. The corrective impulses that present themselves in the 
language of the unconscious should be the beginning of a healing 
process, but the form in which they break through makes them 
unacceptable to consciousness. 

A month earlier, on June 28, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, 
the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was assassinated,by 
Gavrilo Princip, a nineteen-year-old Serb student. On August I, 
war broke out. In 1925 Jung recalled, "I had the feeling that I was 
an over-compensated psychosis, and from this feeling I was not 
released till August 1st 1914."86 Years later, he said to Mircea Eliade: 

As a psychiatrist I became worried, wondering if I was 
not on the way to "doing a schizophrenia," as we said in 
the language of those days ... I was just preparing a lecture 
on schizophrenia to be delivered at a congress in Aberdeen, 
and I kept saying to myself: "I'll be speaking ofmyself! Very 
likely I'll go mad after reading out this paper." The congress 
was to take place in July 1914-exactly the same period 
when I saw myself in my three dreams voyaging on the 
Southern seas. On July 31"r, immediately after my lecture, 
I learned from the newspapers that war had broken out. 
Finally I understood. And when I disembarked in Holland 
on the next day; nobody was happier than 1. Now I was 
sure that no schizophrenia was threatening me. I understood 
that my dreams and my visions came to me from the 
subsoil of the collective unconscious. What remained for 

78 This is based on a comprehensive study ofJung's correspondences in the ETH up to I930 and in other archives and collections. 

79 These were: I9I3, I6 days; I9I4, I4 days; I9I5, 67 days; I9I6, 34 days; I9I7, II7 days (Jung's military service books,]FA). 

80 See below, p. 238. 

81 Memories, p. 2I4. 

82 Jung, "On psychological understanding," cw 3, ¤396. 

83 Ibid., ¤398. 

84 Ibid., ¤399. 

85 CW3. 

86 Analytical Psychology, p. 44. 


202 I LIBER NOVUS 

me to do now was to deepen and validate this discovery. 

And this is what I have been trying to do for forty years.87 

At this moment, Jung considered that his fantasy had depicted 
not what would happen to him, but to Europe. In other words, 
that it was a precognition of a collective event, what he would 
later call a "big" dream.88 After this realization, he attempted to 
see whether and to what extent this was true ofthe other fantasies 
that he experienced, and to understand the meaning of this 
correspondence between private fantasies and public events. 
This effort makes up much of the subject matter of Liber Novus. 
In Scrutinies, he wrote that the outbreak of the war had enabled 
him to understand much ofwhat he had previously experienced, 
and had given him the courage to write the earlier part of Liber 
NOVUS. 89 Thus he took the outbreak of the war as showing him 
that his fear of going mad was misplaced. It is no exaggeration 
to say that had war not been declared, Liber Novus would in 
all likelihood not have been compiled. In 1955/56, while discussing 
active imagination, Jung commented that "the reason why 
the involvement looks very much like a psychosis is that the 
patient is integrating the same fantasy-material to which the 
insane person falls victim because he cannot integrate it but is 
swallowed up by it."90 

It is important to note that there are around twelve separate 
fantasies that Jung may have regarded as precognitive: 

1-2. OCTOBER, 1913 

Repeated vision offlood and death ofthousands, 

and the voice that said that this will become real. 

3. AUTUMN 1913 
Vision of the sea ofblood covering the northern lands. 
4-5. DECEMBER 12, 15, 1913. 
Image ofa dead hero and the slaying of Siegfried in a dream. 
6. DECEMBER 25, 1913 
Image of the foot of a giant stepping on a city; and images 
ofmurder and bloody cruelty. 
7-JANUARY 2,1914 
Image ofa sea ofblood and a procession ofdead multitudes. 
8. JANUARY 22, 1914 
His soul comes up from the depths and asks him ifhe 
will accept war and destruction. She shows him images 
of destruction, military weapons, human remains, sunken 
ships, destroyed states, etc. 
9. MAY 21, 1914 
A voice says that the sacrificed fall left and right. 
10-12. JUNE-JULY 1914 
Thrice-repeated dream 6fbeing in a foreign land and having 
to return quickly by ship, and the descent of the icy cold.91 
Liber Novus 

Jung now commenced wfltlng the draft of Liber Novus. He 
faithfully transcribed most of the fantasies from the Black Books, 
and to each ofthese added a section explaining the significance of 
each episode, combined with a lyrical elaboration. Word-by-word 
comparison indicates that the fantasies were faithfully reproduced, 
with only minor editing and division into chapters. Thus the 
sequence of the fantasies in Liber Novus nearly always exactly 
corresponds to the Black Books. When it is indicated that a 
particular fantasy happened "on the next night," etc., this is 
always accurate, and not a stylistic device. The language and 
content of the material were not altered. Jung maintained 
a "fidelity to the event," and what he was writing was not to 
be mistaken for a fiction. The draft begins with the address to "My 
friends," and this phrase occurs frequently. The main difference 
between the Black Books and Liber Novus is that the former were 
written for Jung's personal use, and can be considered the records 
of an experiment, while the latter is addressed to a public and 
presented in a form to be read by others. 

In November 1914, Jung closely studied Nietzsche's Thus Spoke 
zarathustra, which he had first read in his youth. He later recalled, 
"then suddenly the spirit seized me and carried me to a desert 
country in which I read Zarathustra."92 It strongly shaped the 
structure and style of Liber Novus. Lilce Nietzsche in zarathustra, 
Jung divided the material into a series of books comprised of 
short chapters. But whereas Zarathustra proclaimed the death of 
God, LiberNovus depicts the rebirth of God in the soul. There are 
also indications that he read Dante's Commedia at this time, which 
also informs the structure of the work.93 Liber Novus depicts Jung's 
descent into Hell. But whereas Dante could utilize an established 
cosmology, Liber N ovus is an attempt to shape an individual 
cosmology. The role of Philemon in Jung's work has analogies to 
that of Zarathustra in Nietzsche's work and Virgil in Dante's. 

In the Draft, about 50 percent of the material is drawn directly 
from the Black Books. There are about thirty-five new sections of 
commentary. In these sections, he attempted to derive general 
psychological principles from the fantasies, and to understand to 
what extent the events portrayed in the fantasies presented, in a 
symbolic form, developments that were to occur in the world. In 
1913, Jung had introduced a distinction between interpretation 
on the objective level in which dream objects were treated as 
representations ofreal objects, and interpretation on the subjective 
level in which every element concerns the dreamers themselves.94 
As well as interpreting his fantasies on the subjective level, one 
could characterize his procedure here as an attempt to interpret 
his fantasies on the "collective" level. He does not try to interpret 
his fantasies reductively, but sees them as depicting the functioning 

87 Combat interview (I952), C. G.Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, eds. William McGuire and R.F.C. Hull (Bollingen Series, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 
I977), pp. 233-34á See below; p. 231. 

88 See below; p. 231. 

89 See below; p. 337


90 Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW I4, ¤756. On the myth ofJung's madness, first promoted by Freudians as a means ofinvalidating his work, see my Jung Stripped Bare by His 
Biographers, Even. 

91 See below; pp. I98-9, 23I, 237, 24I, 252, 273, 305, 335. 

92 James Jarrett, ed., Nietzsche's zarathustra: Notes oJthe Seminar Given in 1934-9 (Bollingen Series, Princeton: Princeton University Press, I988), p. 38L..On lung's reading of 
Nietzsche, see Paul Bishop, The Dionysian Self: C. G.Jung's Reception oJNietzsche (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter); Martin Liebscher, "Die 'unheimliche Ahnlichkeit.' Nietzsches 
Hermeneutik der Macht und analytische Interpretation bei Carl Gustav }ung," in Ecce Opus. N ietzsche-Revisionen im 20. Jahrhundert, eds. Rudiger Gomer and Duncan 
Large (London/Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), pp. 37-50; "}ungs Abkehr von Freud im Lichte seiner Nietzsche-Rezeption," in Zeitenwende-Wertewende, 
ed. Renate Reschke (Berlin 200I), pp. 255-260; and Graham Parkes, "Nietzsche and lung: Ambivalent Appreciations," in Nietzsche and Depth Psychology, ed. Jacob 
Golomb, Weaver Santaniello, and Ronald Lehrer (Albany: SUNY Press, I999), p. 69, 2I3. 

93 In Black Book 2, Jung cited certain cantos from "Purgatorio" on December 26, I9I3 (p. I04). See below; note 2I3, p.: 252. 
94 In I9I3 Maeder had referred to Jung's "excellent expression" of the "objective level" and the "subjective leve1." ("Uber das Traumproblem," JahrbuchJur psychoanalytische 
und psychopathologische Forschungen 5, I9I3, pp. 657-8). lung discussed this in the Zurich Psychoanalytical Society on 30 January I9I4, MZS. 


INTRODUCTION I 203 

of general psychological principles in him (such as the relation 
of introversion to extraversion, thinking and pleasure, etc'), and 
as depicting literal or symbolic events that are going to happen. 
Thus the second layer of the Draft represents the first major 
and extended attempt to develop and apply his new constructive 
method. The second layer is itself a hermeneutic experiment. 
In a critical sense, Liber Novus does not require supplemental 
interpretation, for it contains its own interpretation. 

In writing the Draft, Jung did not add scholarly references, 
though unreferenced citations and allusions to works ofphilosophy, 
religion, and literature abound. He had self-consciously chosen to 
leave scholarship to one side. Yet the fantasies and the reflections 
on them in the Red Book are those ofa scholar and, indeed, much 
of the self-experimentation and the composition of Liber N ovus 
took place in his library. It is quite possible that he might have 
added references ifhe had decided to publish the work 

After completing the handwritten Draft, Jung had it typed, 
and edited it. On one manuscript, he made alterations by 
hand (I refer to this manuscript as the Corrected Draft). Judging 
from the annotations, it appears that he gave it to someone (the 
handwriting is not that ofEmma Jung, Toni Wolff, or Maria Moltzer) 
to read, who then commented on Jung's editing, indicating that 
some sections which he had intended to cut should be retained.95 
The first section of the work-untitled, but effectively Liber 
Primus-was composed on parchment. Jung then commissioned a 
large folio volume of over 600 pages, bound in red leather, from 
the bookbinders, Emil Stierli. The spine bears the title, Liber Novus. 
He then inserted the parchment pages into the folio volume, which 
continues with Liber Secundus. The work is organized like a medieval 
illuminated manuscript, with calligraphic writing, headed by a table 
ofabbreviations. Jung titled the first book "The Way ofWhat is to 
Come," and placed beneath this some citations from the book of 
Isaiah and from the gospel according to John. Thus it was presented 
as a prophetic work 

In the Draft, Jung had divided the material into chapters. 
In the course of the transcription into the red leather folio, he 
altered some ofthe titles to the chapters, added others, and edited 
the material once again. The cuts and alterations were predominantly 
to the second layer of interpretation and elaboration, and not to 
the fantasy material itself and mainly consisted in shortening the 
text. It is this second layer that Jung continually reworked. In the 
transcription ofthe text in this edition, this second layer has been 
indicated, so that the chronology and composition are visible. As 
Jung's comments in the second layer sometimes implicitly refer 
forward to fantasies that are found later in the text, it is also 
helpful to read the fantasies straight through in chronological 
sequence, followed by a continuous reading of the second layer. 

Jung then illustrated the text with some paintings, historiated 
initials, ornamental borders, and margins. Initially, the paintings 
refer directly to the text. At a later point, the paintings become 

more symbolic. They are active imaginations in their own right. 
The combination of text and image recalls the illuminated works 
of William Blalce, whose work Jung had some familiarity with.96 

A preparatory draft of one of the images in Liber N ovus has 
survived, which indicates that they were carefully composed, 
starting from pencil sketches that were then elaborated.97 The 
composition ofthe other images likely followed a similar procedure. 
From the paintings of Jung's which have survived, it is strilcing 
that they malce an abrupt leap from the representational landscapes 
of1902/3 to the abstract and semifigurative from 1915 onward. 

Art and the Zurich School 

Jung's library today contains few books on modern art, though 
some books were probably dispersed over the years. He possessed 
a catalogue of the graphic works of Odilon Redon, as well as a 
study ofhim.98 He likely encountered Redon's work when he was 
in Paris. Strong echoes of the symbolist movement appear in the 
paintings in Liber Novus. 

In October of 1910, Jung went on a bicycle tour of northern 
Italy, together with his colleague Hans Schmid. They visited 
Ravenna, and the frescos and mosaics there made a deep impression 
on him. These works seemed to have had an impact on his paintings: 
the use of strong colors, mosaic-like forms, and two-dimensional 
figures without the use ofperspective.99 

In 1913 when he was in New York, he likely attended the 
Armory Show, which was the first major international exhibition 
of modern art in America (the show ran to March 15, and Jung 
left for New York on March 4). He referr~d to Marcel Duchamp's 
painting Nude descending the stairs in his 1925 seminar, which had 
caused a furor there.IOO Here, he also referred to having studied 
the course of Picasso's paintings. Given the lack of evidence of 
extended study, Jung's knowledge of modern art probably derived 
more immediately from direct acquaintance. 

During the First World War, there were contacts between 
the members of the Zurich school and artists. Both were part 
of avant-garde movements and intersecting social circles.IOI In 1913, 
Erika Schlegel came to Jung for analysis. She and her husband, 
Eugen Schlegel, had been friendly with Toni Wolff Erika Schlegel 
was Sophie Taeuber's sister, and became the librarian of the 
Psychological Club. Members of the Psychological Club were 
invited to some of the Dada events. At the celebration of the 
opening of the Gallery Dada on March 29,1917, Hugo Ball notes 
members of the Club in the audience.I02 The program that evening 
included abstract dances by Sophie Taeuber and poems by 
Hugo Ball, Hans Arp, and Tristan Tzara. Sophie Taeuber, who 
had studied with Laban, arranged a dance class for members 
of the Club together with Arp. A masked ball was also held and she 
designed the costumes.I03 In 1918, she presented a marionette play, 
King Deer, in Zurich. It was set in the woods by the Burgholzli. 

95 For example, by page 39 of the Corrected Drqft, "Awesome! Why cut?" is written in the margin. Jung evidently took this advice, and retained the original passages. See 
below, p. 238, right column, third paragraph. 

96 In 1921, he cited from Blake's The Marriage ofHeaven and Hell (CW 6, ¤422n, ¤46o); in Psychology and Alchemy, he refers to two of Blake's paintings (CW 12, figs. 14 and 
19). On November II, 1948, he wrote to Piloo Nanavutty; "I find Blake a tantalizing study, since he has compiled a lot ofhalf-or undigested knowledge in his fantasies. 
According to my idea, they are an artistic production rather than an authentic representation ofunconscious processes" (Letters 2, pp. 513-14). 

97 See below, Appendix A. 
98 Redon, Oeuvre graphique complet (Paris: Secretariat, 1913); Andre Mellerio, Odilon Redon: Peintre, Dessinateur et Graveur (Paris: Henri Floury, 1923). There is also one book on 


modern art, which was harshly critical of it: Max Raphael, Von Monet zu Picasso: Grundzuge einer Asthetik und Entwicklung der Modernen Malerei (Munich: Delphin Verlag, 1913). 
99 In April 1914, Jung visited Ravenna again. 
IOO Analytical Psychology, p. 54. 
IOI See Rainer Zuch, Die Surrealisten und c. G. lung: Studien zur Rezeption der analytischen psychologie im Surrealismus am Beispeil von Max Ernst, Victor Brauner und Hans Arp (Weimar: 

VDG, 2004). 
I02 Flight Out ofTime, p. 102. 
I03 Greta Stroeh, "Biographie," in Sophie Taeuber: 15 Decembre 1989-Mars 1990, Musee d'artmoderne de la ville de Paris (Paris: Paris-musees, 1989), p. 124; Aline Valangin interview, 

Jung biographical archive, Countway Library of Medicine, p. 29. 


204 I LIBER NOVUS 

Freud Analytikus, opposed by Dr. Oedipus Complex, is transformed 
into a parrot by the Ur-Libido, parodic ally talting up themes from 
Jung's Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido and his conflict with 
Freud.104 However, relations between Jung's circle and some ofthe 
Dadaists became more strained. In May 1917, Emmy Hennings 
wrote to Hugo Ball that the "psycho-Club" had now gone away:IOSIn 
1918, Jung criticized the Dada movement in a Swiss review, which 
did not escape the attention of the Dadaists.IOG The critical element 
that separated Jung's pictorial work from that ofthe Dadaists was his 
overriding emphasis on meaning and signification. 

Jung's self-explorations and creative experiments did not 
occur in a vacuum. During this period, there was great interest in art 
and painting within his circle. Alphonse Maeder wrote a monograph 
on Ferdinand HodlerlO7 and had a friendly correspondence 
with him.IOB Around 1916, Maeder had a series of visions or 
waking fantasies, which he published pseudonymously: When he 
told Jung of these events, Jung replied, "What, you toO?"109 Hans 
Schmid also wrote and painted his fantasies in something akin to 
Liber N ovus. Moltzer was keen to increase the artistic activities 
of the Zurich school. She felt that more artists were needed 
in their circle and considered Riklin as a model.110 J. B. Lang, 
who was analyzed byáRiklin, began to paint symbolic paintings. 
Moltzer had a book that she called her Bible, in which she put 
pictures with writings. She recommended that her patient 
Fanny Bowditch Katz do the same thing. III 

In 1919, Riklin exhibited some of his paintings as part of the 
"New Life" at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, described as a group of 
Swiss Expressionists, alongside Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber, 
Francis Picabia, and Augusto Giacometti.II2 With his personal 
connections, Jung could easily have exhibited some of his works 
in such a setting, had he so liked. Thus his refusal to consider 
his works as art occurs in a context where there were quite real 
possibilities for him to have taken this route. 

On some occasions, Jung discussed art with Erika Schlegel. 
She noted the following conversation: 

I wore mypearl medallion (the pearl embroiderythat Sophie 
had made for me) at Jung's yesterday: He liked it very much, 
and itpromptedhim to talk animatedly aboutart-foralmost 
an hour. He discussed Riklin, one ofAugusto Giacometti's 
students, and observed that while his smaller works had a 
certain aesthetic value, his larger ones simply dissolved. 
Indeed, he vanished wholly in his art, rendering him utterly 
intangible. His workwas like a wall over which water rippled. 
He could therefore not analyze, as this required one to be 
pointed and sharp-edged, like a knife. He had fallen into art 

in a manner of speaking. But art and science were no more 
than the servants of the creative spirit, which is what must 
be served. 

As regards my own work, it was also a matter of malting 
out whether it was really art. Fairy tales and pictures had a 
religious meaning at bottom. I, too, know that somehow 
and sometime it must reach people.1I3 

For Jung, Franz Riklin appears to have been something like a 
doppelganger, whose fate he was keen to avoid. This statement 
also indicates Jung's relativization ofthe status ofart and science 
to which he had come through his self-experimentation. 

Thus, the making of Liber Novus was by no means a peculiar 
and idiosyncratic activity, nor the product of a psychosis. Rather, 
it indicates the close intersections between psychological and 
artistic experimentation with which many individuals were 
engaged at this time. 

The Collective Experiment 

In 1915, Jung held a lengthy correspondence with his colleague 
Hans Schmid on the question of the understanding of psychological 
types. This correspondence gives no direct signs ofJung's 
self-experimentation, and indicates that theories he developed 
during this period did not stem solely from his active imaginations, 
but also in part consisted ofconventional psychological theorizing. II4 
On March 5,1915, Jung wrote to Smith Ely Jeliffe: 

I am still with the army in a little town where I have plenty 
of practical work and horseback riding ... Until I had to 
join the army I lived quietly and devoted my time to my 
patients and to my work. I was especially working about 
the two types of psychology and about the synthesis of 
unconscious tendencies. lIS 

During his self-explorations, he experienced states ofturmoil. 
He recalled that he experienced great fear, and sometimes had to 
hold the table to keep himself together,IIG and "I was frequently 
so wrought up that I had to eliminate the emotions through yoga 
practices. But since it was my purpose to learn what was going on 
within mysel£ I would do them only until I had calmed myself 
and could take up again the work with the unconscious."1I7 

He recalled that Toni Wolffhad become drawn into the process 
in which he was involved, and was experiencing a similar stream 
of images. Jung found that he could discuss his experiences with 
her, but she was disorientated and in the same mess. lIB Likewise, his 

104The puppets are in the Bellerive museum, Zurich. See Bruno Mikol, "Sur Ie theatre de marionnettes de Sophie Taeuber-Arp," in Sophie Taeuber: 15 Dicembre 1989Mars 
1990, Musie d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, pp. 59-68. 

105 Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings, Damals in Zurich: Brieje aus denjahren 1915-1917 (Zurich: Die Arche, I978), p. I32. 

106 Jung, "On the unconscious," CW IO, ¤44; Pharmouse, Dada Review 39I (I9I9); Tristan Tzara, Dada, nos. 4-5 (I9I9). 

107 Ferdinand Holder: Eine Skizze seiner seelischen Entwicklung und Bedeutungfur die schweizerisch-nationale Kultur (ZUrich: Rascher, I9I6). 

108 Maeder papers. 

109 Maeder interview, Jung biographical archive, Coun~ay Library of Medicine, p. 9. 

IIO Franz Riklin to Sophie Riklin, May 20, I915, Riklin papers. 

III On August I7, I9I6, Fanny Bowditch Katz, who was in analysis with her at this time, noted in her diary: "Ofher [i.e., Moltzer] book-her Bible-pictures and each with 
writing-which I must also do." According to Katz, Moltzer regarded her paintings as "purely subjective, not works ofart" (July 3I, Countway Library of Medicine). On 
another occasion, Katz notes in her diary that Moltzer "spoke ofArt, real art, being the expression ofreligion" (August 24, I9I6). In I9I6, Moltzer presented psychological 
interpretations ofsome of Riklin's paintings in a talk at the Psychological Club (in my Cult Fictions: j ung and the Founding ofAnalytical Psychology [London: Routledge, I998], 

p. I02). On Lang, see Thomas Feitknecht, ed., "Die dunkle und wilde Seite der Seele": Hermann Hesse. Briifwechsel mit seinem Psychoanalytiker josifLang, 1916-1944 (Frankfurt: 
Suhrkamp£ 2006). 
II2 "Das Neue Leben," Erst Ausstellung, Kunsthaus Zurich. J. B. Lang noted an occasion at Riklin's house at which Jung and Augusto Giacometti were also present 
(Diary, December 3, I9I6, p. 9, Lang papers, Swiss Literary Archives, Berne). 
II3 March II, I92I, Notebooks, Schlegel papers. 
II4 John Beebe and Ernst Falzeder, eds., Philemon Series, forthcoming. 
II5 John Burnham,jelijfe: American Psychoanalyst and physician e1 His Correspondence with Sigmund Freud and c. G.jung, ed. William McGuire 

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, I983), pp. 196-97II6 
MP, p. 174. 
II7 Memories, p. 201. 
II8 MP, p. 174. 


INTRODUCTION I 205 

wife was unable to help him in this regard. Consequently; he noted, 
"that I was able to endure at all was a case ofbrute force."I1 

9 

The Psychological Club had been founded at the beginning 

of I9I6, through a gift of 360,000 Swiss francs from Edith 

Rockefeller McCormick, who had come to Zurich to be analyzed 

by Jung in I9I3. At its inception, it had approximately sixty 

members. For Jung, the aim ofthe Club was to study the relation 

of individuals to the group, and to provide a naturalistic setting for 

psychological observation to overcome the limitations of one-to


one analysis, as well as to provide a venue where patients could 

learn to adapt to social situations. At the same time, a professional 

body of analysts continued to meet together as the Association 

for Analytical Psychology.12o Jung participated fully in both of 

these organizations. 

Jung's self-experimentation also heralded a change in his analytic 

work. He encouraged his patients to embark upon similar processes 

ofself-experimentation. Patients were instructed on how to conduct 

active imagination, to hold inner dialogues, and to paint their 

fantasies. He took his own experiences as paradigmatic. In the 

I925 seminar, he noted: "I drew all my empirical material from my 

patients, but the solution of the problem I drew frDm the inside, 

from my observations ofthe unconscious processes."I2I 

Tina Keller, who was in analysis with Jung from I9I2, recalls 

that Jung "often spoke ofhimself and his own experiences": 

In those early days, when one arrived for the analytic 
hour, the so-called "red book" often stood open on an 
easel. In it Dr. Jung had been painting or had just finished a 
picture. Sometimes he would show me what he had done and 
comment upon it. The careful and precise work he put into 
these pictures and into the illuminated text that accompanied 
them were a testimony to the importance ofthis undertaking. 
The master thus demonstrated to the student that psychic 
development is worth time and effort.I22 

In her analyses with Jung and Toni Wolff, Keller conducted 
active imaginations and also painted. Far from being a solitary 
endeavor, Jung's confrontation with the unconscious was a collective 
one, in which he took his patients along with him. Those around 
Jung formed an avant-garde group engaged in a social experiment 
that they hoped would transform their lives and the lives of 
those around them. 

The Return of the Dead 

Amid the unprecedented carnage of the war, the theme of the 
return ofthe dead was widespread, such as in Abel Gance's film 
Jaccuse. 123 The death toll also led to a revival ofinterest in spiritualism. 
Mter nearly a year, Jung began to write again in the Black Books 
in I9I5, with a further series offantasies. He had already completed 
the handwritten draft of Liber Primus and Liber Secundus. 124 At the 
beginning of I9I6, Jung experienced a striking series ofparapsychological 
events in his house. In I923, he narrated this event to 
Cary de Angulo (later Baynes). She recorded it as follows: 

One night your boy began to rave in his sleep and throw 
himself about saying he couldn't wake up. Finally your 
wife had to call you to get him quiet & this you could 
only do by cold cloths on him-finally he settled down and 
went on sleeping. ,Next morning he woke up remembering 
nothing, but seemed utterly exhausted, so you told him 
not to go to school, he didn't ask why but seemed to take 
it for granted. But quite unexpectedly he asked for paper 
and colored pencils and set to work to make the following 
picture-a man was angling for fishes with hook and 
line in the middle ofthe picture. On the left was the Devil 
saying something to the man, and your son wrote down 
what he said. It was that he had come for the fisherman 
because he was catching his fishes, but on the right was an 
angel who said, "No you can't take this man, he is talcing 
only bad fishes and none of the good ones." Then after 
your son had made that picture he was quite content. The 
same night, two of your daughters thought that they had 
seen spooks in their rooms. The next day you wrote out 
the "Sermons to the Dead," and you knew after that nothing 
more would disturb your family, and nothing did. Of 
course I knew you were the fisherman in your son's picture, 
and you told me so, but the boy didn't know it.125 

In Memories, Jung recounted what followed: 

Around five o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday the front 
doorbell began ringing frantically ... Everyone immediately 
looked to see who was there, but there was no one in sight. 
I was sitting near the doorbell, and not heard it but saw 
it moving. We all simply stared at one another. The atmosphere 
was thick, believe me! Then I knew something had to happen. 
The whole house was as if there was a crowd present, 
crammed full of spirits. They were packed deep right up 
to the door and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible 
to breathe. As for myself, I was all aquiver with the question: 
"For God's sake, what in the world is this?" Then they cried 
out in chorus, "We have come back from Jerusalem where 
we found not what we sought." That is the beginning ofthe 

Septem Sermones. 

Then it began to flow out of me, and in the course of 
three evenings the thing was written. As soon as I took 
up the pen, the whole ghastly assemblage evaporated. The 
room quieted and the atmosphere cleared. The haunting 

was over. 126 

The dead had appeared in a fantasy on January I7, I9I4, and had 
said that they were about to go to Jerusalem to pray at the holiest 
graves.I27 Their trip had evidently not been successful. The Septem 
Sermones ad Mortuos is a culmination ofthe fantasies ofthis period. 
It is a psychological cosmology cast in the form of a gnostic 
creation myth. In Jung's fantasies, a new God had been born in 
his soul, the God who is the son of the frogs, Abraxas. Jung 
understood this symbolically. He saw this figure as representing 

II9 Memories, p. 201. 
120 On the formation ofthe Club, see my Cult Fictions: C. G.}ung and the Founding ofAnalytical Psychology. 
121 Analytical Psychology, p. 34. 
122 "c. G. Jung: Some memories and reflections," Inward Light 35 (1972), p. II. On Tina Keller, see Wendy Swan, C. G.}ung and Active Imagination (Saarbrucken: VDM, 2007). 
123 See Winter, Sites cifMemory, Sites ofMourning, pp. 18, 69, and 133-44. 
124 There is a note added in Black Book 5 at this point: "In this time the I and I I parts [of the Red Book] were written. Directly after the beginning ofthe war" (p. 86). The 


main script is in Jung's hand, and 'ofthe Red Book' was added by someone else. 

125 CFB. 
126 Memories, pp. 215-16. 
127 See below, p. 294. 



206 I LIBER NOVUS 

the uniting ofthe Christian God with Satan, and hence as depicting 
a transformation of the Western God-image. Not until 1952 in 
Answer to]ob did Jung elaborate on this theme in public. 

Jung had studied the literature on Gnosticism in the course 
of his preparatory reading for Transformations and Symbols of the 
Libido. In January and October 1915, while on military service, 
he studied the works of the Gnostics. After writing the Septem 
Sermones in the Black Books, Jung recopied it in a calligraphic 
script into a separate book, slightly rearranging the sequence. 
He added the following inscription under the title: "The seven 
instructions of the dead. Written by Basilides in Alexandria, 
the city where the East touches the West."I28 He then had this 
privately printed, adding to the inscription: "Translated from 
the Greek original into German." This legend indicates the 
stylistic effects on Jung of late-nineteenth-century classical 
scholarship. He recalled that he wrote it on the occasion of 
the founding of the Psychological Club, and regarded it as a 
gift to Edith Rockefeller McCormick for founding the Club.129 
He gave copies to friends and confidants. Presenting a copy to 
Alphonse Maeder, he wrote: 

I could not presume to put my name to it, but chose instead 
the name ofone ofthose great minds ofthe early Christian era 
which Christianity obliterated. It fell quite unexpectedly into 
mylap like a ripe fruit at a time ofgreat stress and has kindled 
a light ofhope and comfort for me in my bad hours.13o 

On January 16, 1916, Jung drew a mandala in the Black Books 
(see Appendix A). This was the first sketch of the "Systema 
Munditotius." He then proceeded to paint this. On the back of 
it, he wrote in English: "This is the first mandala I constructed 
in the year 1916, wholly unconscious of what it meant." The 
fantasies in the Black Books continued. The Systema Munditotius is 
a pictorial cosmology ofthe Sermones. 

Between June II and October 2, 1917, Jung was on military 
service in Chateau d'Oex, as commander ofthe English prisoners 
of war. Around August, he wrote to Smith Ely Jeliffe that his 
military service had taken him completely away from his work 
and that, on his return, he hoped to finish a long paper about the 
types. He concluded the letter by writing: "With us everything 
is unchanged and quiet. Everything else is swallowed by the war. 
The psychosis is still increasing, going on and on."131 

At this time, he felt that he was still in a state of chaos and 
that it only began to clear toward the end of the war.l32 From the 
beginning of August to the end of September, he drew a series 
of twenty-seven mandalas in pencil in his army notebook, which 
he preserved.133 At first, he did not understand these mandalas, 
but felt that they were very significant. From August 20, he drew 
a mandala on most days. This gave him the feeling that he had 
taken a photograph ofeach day and he observed how these manda


las changed. He recalled that he received a letter from "this Dutch 
woman that got on my nerves terribly."134 In this letter, this woman, 
that is, Moltzer, argued that "the fantasies stemming from the 
unconscious possessed artistic worth and should be considered as 
art."135 Jung found this troubling because it was not stupid, and, 
moreover, modern painters were attempting to make art out of 
the unconscious. This awoke a doubt in him whether his fantasies 
were really spontaneous and natural. On the next day; he drew a 
mandala, and a piece ofit was broken off, leaving the symmetry: 

Only now did I gradually come to what the mandala really 
is: "Formation, transformation, the eternal mind's eternal 
recreation." And that is the self, the wholeness ofthe personality; 
which, when everything is well, is harmonious, but 
which can bear no selfdeception. My mandala images were 
cryptograms on the state of my self, which were delivered 

6

to me each day.13

The mandala in question appears to be the mandala of August 6, 
1917137 The second line is from Goethe's Faust. Mephistopheles is 
addressing Faust, giving him directions to the realm ofthe Mothers: 

MEPHISTOPHELES 

A glowing tripod will finally show you 

that you are in the deepest, most deepest ground. 

By its light you will see the Mothers: 

the one sits, others stand and walk, 

as it may chance. Formation, transformation 

the eternal mind's eternal recreation. 

Covered in images of all creatures, 

they do not see you, since they only see shades. 

Then hold your heart, since the danger is great, 

and go straight to that tripod, 

touch it with the keyP38 

The let~er in question has not come to light. However, in a 
subsequent unpublished letter from November 21,1918, while at 
Chateau d'Oex, Jung wrote that "M. Moltzer has again disturbed 
me with letters."139 He reproduced the mandalas in Liber N ovus. He 
noted that it was during this period that a living idea of the self 
first came to him: "The self, I thought, was like the monad which 
I am, and which is my world. The mandala represents this monad, 
and corresponds to the microcosmic nature ofthe soul."140 At this 
point, he did not know where this process was leading, but he 
began to grasp that the mandala represented the goal of the process: 
"Only when I began to paint the mandalas did I see that all 
the paths I took, all the steps I made, allIed back to the one point, 
that is, to the center. The mandala became the expression of all 
paths."141In the 1920S, Jung's understanding of the significance 
of the mandala deepened. 

128 The historical Basilides was a Gnostic who taught in Alexandria in the second century. See note 81, p. 346. 

129 MP, p. 26. 

130 January 19,1917, Letters I, pp. 33-34. Sending a copy of the Sermones to Jolande Jacobi, Jung described them as "a curiosity from the workshop ofthe unconscious" 
(October 7, 1928, JA). 

131 John C. Burnham,je(tife: American psychoanalyst and physician, p. 199. 

132 MP, P.I72. 

133 See Appendix A. 

134 Memories, p. 220. 

135 Ibid., p. 220. 

136 Ibid., p. 221. 

137 See Appendix A. 

138 Faust, 2, act 1. 6287£ 

139 Unpublished letter,jFA. There also exists an undated painting by Moltzer that appears to be a quadrated mandala, which she described in briefaccompanying notes as 
''A pictorial presentation of Individuation or ofthe Individuation process" (Library; Psychological Club, Zurich). 
140 Memories, p. 221. The immediate sources that Jung drew on for his concept of the self appear to be the Atman/Brahman conception in Hinduism, which he discussed in 
1921 psychological Types, and certain passages in Nietzsche's zarathustra. (See note 29, p. 337). 
141 Ibid. 


INTRODUCTION I 207 

The Draft had contained fantasies from October 1913 to 
February 1914. In the winter of1917, Jung wrote a fresh manuscript 
called Scrutinies, which began where he had left off In this, he 
transcribed fantasies from April 1913 until June 1916. As in the 
first two books ofLiber N ovus, Jung interspersed the fantasies with 
interpretive commentaries.I42 He included the Sermones in this 
material, and now added Philemon's commentaries on each 
sermon. In these, Philemon stressed the compensatory nature 
ofhis teaching: he deliberately stressed precisely those conceptions 
that the dead lacked. Scrutinies effectively forms Liber Tertius of 
Liber N ovus. The complete sequence ofthe text would thus be: 

Liber Primus: The Way of What Is to Come 

Liber Secundus: The Images ofthe Erring 

Liber Tertius: Scrutinies 

During this period, Jung continued transcribing the Draft 
into the calligraphic volume and adding paintings. The fantasies 
in the Black Books became more intermittent. He portrayed his 
realization ofthe significance ofthe sel£ which took place in the 
autumn of 1917, in Scrutinies.I43 This contains Jung's vision of the 
reborn God, culminating in the portrayal ofAbraxas. He realized 
that much ofwhat was given to him in the earlier part ofthe book 
(that is, Liber Primus and Liber secundus) was actually given to him 
by Philemon.I44 He realized that there was a prophetic wise old man 
in him, to whom he was not identical. This represented a critical 
dis identification. On January 17, 1918, Jung wrote to J. B. Lang: 

The work on the unconscious has to happen first and foremost 
for us ourselves. Our patients profit from it indirectly. The 
danger consists in the prophet's delusion which often is the 
result of dealing with the unconscious. It is the devil who 
says: Disdain all reason and science, mankind's highest powers. 
That is never appropriate even though we are forced to 
acknowledge [the existence ofJ the irrational.I45 

Jung's critical task in "working over" his fantasies was to 
differentiate the voices and characters. For example, in the Black 
Books, it is Jung's "I" who speaks the Sermones to the dead. In 
Scrutinies, it is not Jung's "I" but Philemon who speaks them. In 
the Black Books, the main figure with whom Jung has dialogues is 
his soul. In some sections of Liber N ovus, this is changed to the 
serpent and the bird. In one conversation in January 1916, his 
soul explained to him that when the Above and Below are not 
united, she falls into three parts-a serpent, the human soul, 
and the bird or heavenly soul, which visits the Gods. Thus Jung's 
revision here can be seen to reflect his understanding of the 
tripartite nature of his soul.l46 

During this period, Jung continued to work over his material, 
and there is some indication that he discussed it with his colleagues. 
In March 1918 he wrote to J. B. Lang, who had sent him some of 
his own fantasies: 

I would not want to say anything more than telling you 
to continue with this approach because, as you have observed 
correctly yoursel£ it is very important that we experience 
the contents of the unconscious before we form any 
opinions about it. I very much agree with you that we 

have to grapple with the knowledge content of gnosis and 
neo-Platonism, since these are the systems that contain the 
materials which are suited to form the basis of a theory of 
the unconscious spirit. I have already been working on this 
myself for a long time, and also have had ample opportunity 
to compare my experiences at least partially with those of 
others. That's why I was very pleased to hear pretty much 
the same views from you. I am glad that you have discovered 
all on your own this area of work which is ready to be 
tackled. Up to now, I lacked workers. I am happy that you 
want to join forces with me. I consider it very important 
that you extricate your own material uninfluenced from the 
unconscious, as carefully as possible. My material is very 
voluminous, very complicated, and in part very graphic, up 
to almost completely worked through clarifications. But 
what I completely lack is comparative modern material. 
Zarathustra is too strongly consciously formed. Meyrink 
retouches aesthetically; furthermore, I feel he is lacking in 
religious sincerityáI47 

The Content 

Liber N ovus thus presents a series of active imaginations together 
with Jung's attempt to understand their significance. This work of 
understanding encompasses a number of interlinked threads: an 
attempt to understand himself and to integrate and develop the 
various components of his personality; an attempt to understand 
the structure of the human personality in general; an attempt to 
understand the relation of the individual to present-day society 
and to the community of the dead; an attempt to understand the 
psychological and historical effects ofChristianity; and an attempt 
to grasp the future religious development of the West. Jung 
discusses many other themes in the work, including the nature of 
self-knowledge; the nature of the soul; the relations of thinking 
and feeling and the psychological types; the relation of inner 
and outer masculinity and femininity; the uniting of opposites; 
solitude; the value ofscholarship and learning; the status ofscience; 
the significance of symbols and how they are to be understood; 
the meaning ofthe war; madness, divine madness, and psychiatry; 
how the Imitation of Christ is to be understood today; the death 
of God; the historical significance of Nietzsche; and the relation 
of magic and reason. 

The overall theme of the book is how Jung regains his soul 
and overcomes the contemporary malaise of spiritual alienation. 
This is ultimately achieved through enabling the rebirth ofa new 
image of God in his soul and developing a new worldview in the 
form of a psychological and theological cosmology. Liber N ovus 
presents the prototype ofJung's conception of the individuation 
process, which he held to be the universal form of individual 
psychological development. Liber Novus itself can be understood 
on one hand as depicting Jung's individuation process, and on 
the other hand as his elaboration of this concept as a general 
psychological schema. At the beginning ofthe book, Jung refinds 
his soul and then embarks on a sequence of fantasy adventures, 
which form a consecutive narrative. He realized that until then, 
he had served the spirit of the time, characterized by use and 
value. In addition to this, there existed a spirit of the depths, 
which led to the things of the soul. In terms of Jung's later 

142 On page 23 of the manuscript ofScrutinies, a date is indicated: "27JIIjI?," which suggests that they were written in the latter half of1917, and thus after the mandala 
experiences at Chateau D'Oex. 

143 See below, p. 333£ 

144 See below, p. 339. 

145 Private possession, Stephen Martin. The reference is to Mephistopheles' statement in Faust, (!.I85IE) 

146 See below, p. 367


147 Private possession, Stephen Martin. 


208 I LIBER NOVUS 

biographical memoir, the spirit of the times corresponds to 
personality NO.1, and the spirit of the depths corresponds to 
personality NO.2. Thus this period could be seen as a return to 
the values of personality NO.2. The chapters follow a particular 
format: they begin with the exposition of dramatic visual fantasies. 
In them Jung encounters a series of figures in various settings 
and enters into conversation with them. He is confronted 
with unexpected happenings and shocking statements. He then 
attempts to understand what had transpired, and to formulate 
the significance ofthese events and statements into general psychological 
conceptions and maxims. Jung held that the significance 
of these fantasies was due to the fact that they stemmed from the 
mythopoeic imagination which was missing in the present rational 
age. The task of individuation lay in establishing a dialogue with 
the fantasy figures-or contents of the collective unconsciousand 
integrating them into consciousness, hence recovering the 
value of the mythopoeic imagination which had been lost to the 
modern age, and thereby reconciling the spirit of the time with 
the spirit of the depth. This task was to form a leitmotif of his 
subsequent scholarly work. 

''A N ew Spring of Life" 

In 1916, Jung wrote several essays and a short book in which 
he began to attempt to translate some of themes of Liber Novus 
into contemporary psychological language, and to reflect on the 
significance and the generality ofhis activity: Significantly, in these 
works he presented the first outlines of the main components of 
his mature psychology. A full account of these papers is beyond 
-the scope ofthis introduction. The following overview highlights 

elements that link most directly with Liber N ovus. 

In his works between 19II and 1914, he had principally been 
concerned with establishing a structural account of general 
human functioning and of psychopathology. In addition to his 
earlier theory ofcomplexes, we see that he had already formulated 
conceptions of a phylogenetically acquired unconscious peopled 
by mythic images, of a nonsexual psychic energy, of the general 
types of introversion and extraversion, of the compensatory 
and prospective function of dreams, and of the synthetic and 
constructive approach to fantasies. While he continued to expand 
and develop these conceptions in detail, a new project emerges 
here: the attempt to provide a temporal account ofhigher development, 
which he termed the individuation process. This was a 
pivotal theoretical result of his self-experimentation. The full 
elaboration of the individuation process, and its historical and 
cross-cultural comparison, would come to occupy him for the 
rest ofhis life. 

In 1916, he presented a lecture to the association for analytical 
psychology entitled "The structure of the unconscious," which 
was first published in a French translation in Flournoy's Archives 
de Psych0 logie.148 Here, he differentiated two layers of the unconscious. 
The first, the personal unconscious, ~onsisted in elements 
acquired during one's lifetime, together with elements that could 
equally well be conscious.149 The second was the impersonal 
unconscious or collective psyche.150 While consciousness and 
the personal unconscious were developed and acquired in the 
course ofone's lifetime, the collective psyche was inherited.I5I In this 

essay, Jung discussed the curious phenomena that resulted from 

assimilating the unconscious. He noted that when individuals 

annexed the contents ofthe collective psyche and regarded them as 

personal attributes, they experienced extreme states ofsuperiority and 

inferiority: He borrowed the term "godlikeness" from Goethe 

and Alfred Adler to characterize this state, which arose from fusing 

the personal and collective psyche, and was one of the dangers 

ofanalysis. 

Jung wrote that it was a difficult task to differentiate the 
personal and collective psyche. One of the factors one came up 
against was the persona-one's "mask" or "role." This represented 
the segment ofthe collective psyche that one mistakenly regarded 
as individual. When one analyzed this, the personality dissolved 
into the collective psyche, which resulted in the release of a 
stream of fantasies: '~l the treasures of mythological thinking 
and feeling are unlocked."152 The difference between this state 
and insanity lay in the fact that it was intentional. 

Two possibilities arose: one could attempt to regressively 
restore persona and return to the prior state, but it was impossible 
to get rid of the unconscious. Alternatively, one could accept 
the condition of godlikeness. However, there was a third way: 
the hermeneutic treatment of creative fantasies. This resulted 
in a synthesis of the individual with the collective psyche, which 
revealed the individual lifeline. This was the process of individuation. 
In a subsequent undated revision of this paper, Jung 
introduced the notion of the anima, as a counterpart to that of 
the persona. He regarded both of these as "subject-imagoes." 
Here, he defined the anima as "how the subject is seen by the 
collective unconscious."153 

The vivid description of the vicissitudes of the state of 
godlikeness mirror some of Jung's affective states during his 
confrontation with the unconscious. The notion of the differentiation 
ofthe persona and its analysis corresponds to the opening 
section of Liber Novus, where Jung sets himself apart from his 
role and achievements and attempts to reconnect with his soul. 
The release of mythological fantasies is precisely what ensued in his 
case, and the hermeneutic treatment of creative fantasies was what 
he presented in layer two of Liber Novus. The differentiation of 
the personal and impersonal unconscious provided a theoretical 
understanding of Jung's mythological fantasies: it suggests that he 
did not view them as stemming from his personal unconscious 
but from the inherited collective psyche. If so, his fantasies 
stemmed from a layer ofthe psyche that was a collective human 
inheritance, and were not simply idiosyncratic or arbitrary. 

In October of the same year, Jung presented two talks to 
the Psychological Club. The first was titled ''Adaptation.'' This 
took two forms: adaptation to outer and inner conditions. The 
"inner" was understood to designate the unconscious. Adaptation 
to the "inner" led to the demand for individuation, which was 
contrary to adaptation to others. Answering this demand and 
the corresponding break with conformity led to a tragic guilt 
that required expiation and called for a new "collective function," 
because the individual had to produce values that could serve as a 
substitute for his absence from society: These new values enabled 
one to make reparation to the collective. Individuation was for 
the few. Those who were insufficiently creative should rather 
reestablish collective conformity with a society: The individual 

148 After his separation with Freud, Jung found that Flournoy was ofcontinued support to him. See Jung in Flournoy, From India to the Planet Mars, p. ix. 

149 CW 7, ¤¤444-46. 

ISO Ibid., ¤449. 

151 Ibid., ¤459. 

152 Ibid., ¤46S. 

153 Ibid., ¤52I. 

154 CW IS, ¤I09S. 


INTRODUCTION I 209 

had not only to create new values, but also socially recognizable 
ones, as society had a "right to expect realizable values."'54 

Read in terms of Jung's situation, this suggests that his break 
with social conformity to pursue his "individuation" had led him 
to the view that he had to produce socially realizable values as an 
expiation. This led to a dilemma: would the form in which Jung 
embodied these new values in Liber N ovus be socially acceptable 
and recognizable? This commitment to the demands of society 
separated Jung from the anarchism of the Dadaists. 

The second talk was on "Individuation and collectivity." He 
argued that individuation and collectivity were a pair ofopposites 
related by guilt. Society demanded imitation. Through the process 
of imitation, one could gain access to values that were one's own. 
In analysis, "Through imitation the patient learns individuation, 
because it reactivates his own values."155 It is possible to read this 
as a comment on the role of imitation in the analytic treatments 
ofthose ofhis patients whom Jung had now encouraged to embark 
on similar processes of development. The claim that this process 
evoked the patient's preexisting values was a counter to the 
charge ofsuggestion. 

In November, while on military service at Herisau, Jung wrote 
a paper on "The transcendent function," which was published 
only in 1957-There, he depicted the method of eliciting and 
developing fantasies that he later termed active imagination, and 
explained its therapeutic rationale. This paper can be viewed as 
an interim progress report on Jung's self-experimentation, and 
may profitably be considered as a preface to Liber Novus. 

Jung noted that the new attitude gained from analysis became 
obsolete. Unconscious materials were needed to supplement the 
conscious attitude, and to correct its one-sidedness. But because 
energy tension was low in sleep, dreams were inferior expressions 
of unconscious contents. Thus other sources had to be turned 
to, namely; spontaneous fantasies. A recently recovered dream 
book contains a series of dreams from 1917 to 1925.156 A close 
comparison of this book with the Black Books indicates that his 
active imaginations did not derive directly from his dreams, 
and that these two streams were generally independent. 

Jung described his technique for inducing such spontaneous 
fantasies: "The training consists first of all in systematic exercises 
for eliminating critical attention, thus producing a vacuum in 
consciousness."'57 One commenced by concentrating on a particular 
mood, and attempting to become as conscious as possible of all 
fantasies and associations that came up in connection with it. The 
aim was to allow fantasy free play; without departing from the 
initial affect in a free associative process. This led to a concrete 
or symbolic expression of the mood, which had the result of 
bringing the affect nearer to consciousness, hence making it more 
understandable. Doing this could have a vitalizing effect. Individuals 
could draw, paint, or sculpt, depending on their propensities: 

Visual types should concentrate on the expectation that an 

inner image will be produced. As a rule such a fantasy-image 

155 CW 18, ¤noo. 

156JFA. 

157 CW 8, ¤155. 

will actually appear-perhaps hypnagogically-and should 

be carefully noted downin writing. Audio-verbal types usually 

hear inner words, perhaps mere fragments or apparently 

meaningless sentences to begin with ... Others at such times 

simply hear their "other" voice ... Still rarer, but equally 

valuable, is automatic writing, direct or with the planchette.'58 
Once these fantasies had been produced and embodied, two 
approaches were possible: creative formulation and understanding. 
Each needed the other, and both were necessary to produce the 
transcendent function, which arose out of the union ofconscious 
and unconscious contents. 

For some people, Jung noted, it was silnple to note the "other" 
voice in writing and to answer it from the standpoint of the I: "It 
is exactly as if a dialogue were taking place between two human 
beings ... "159 This dialogue led to the creation ofthe transcendent 
function, which resulted in a widening of consciousness. This 
depiction of inner dialogues and the means of evoking fantasies 
in a waldng state represents Jung's own undertaldng in the Black 
Books. The interplay of creative formulation and understanding 
corresponds to Jung's work in Liber Novus. Jung did not publish 
this paper. He later remarked that he never finished his work on 
the transcendent function because he did it only half-heartedly'60 

In 1917, Jung published a short book with a long title: The 
Psychology of the Unconscious Processes: An Overview of the Modern 
Theory and Method of Analytical Psychology. In his preface, dated 
December 1916, he proclaimed the psychological processes that 
accompanied the war had brought the problem of the chaotic 
unconscious to the forefront of attention. However, the psychology 
of the individual corresponded to the psychology of the nation, 
and only the transformation of the attitude of the individual 
could bring about cultural renewal. 161 This articulated the intimate 
interconnection between individual and collective events that was 
at the center of Liber Novus. For Jung, the conjunction between 
his precognitive visions and the outbreak of war had made 
apparent the deep subliminal connections between individual 
fantasies and world events-and hence between the psychology of 
the individual and that ofthe nation. What was now required was 
to work out this connection in more detail. 

Jung noted that after one had analyzed and integrated 
the contents of the personal unconscious, one came up against 
mythological fantasies that stemmed from the phylogenetic layer 
of the unconscious.162 The Psychology of the Unconscious Processes 
provided an exposition of the collective, suprapersonal, absolute 
unconscious-these terms being used interchangeably Jung 
argued that one needed to separate oneselffrom the unconscious 
by presenting it visibly as something separate from one. It was 
vital to differentiate the I from the non-I, namely; the collective 
psyche or absolute unconscious. To do this, "man must necessarily 
stand upon firm Jeet in his I -function; that is, he must fulfil his duty 
toward life completely, so that he may in every respect be a Vitally living 
member ofsociety. "163 Jung had been endeavoring to accomplish these 
tasks during this period. 

158 Ibid., ¤¤170-7I. A planchette is a small wooden board on coasters used to facilitate automatic writing. 

159 Ibid., ¤186. 

160 MP, p. 380. 

161 CW 7, pp. 3-4. 

162 In his 1943 revision of this work, Jung added that the personal unconscious "corresponds to the figure of the shadow so frequently met with in dreams" (CW 7, ¤I03). 
He added the following definition of this figure: "By shadow I understand the 'negative' side of the personality, the sum of all those hidden unpleasant qualities, the 
insufficiently developed functions and the contents of the personal unconscious" (Ibid., ¤103n). Jung described this phase of the individuation process as the 
encounter with the shadow (see CW 9, pt. 2, ¤¤I3-19). 

163 "The psychology of the unconscious processes," in Jung, Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, ed. Constance Long (London: Bailliere, Tindall & Cox, 1917, 2nd ed.), pp. 416-47 


2IO I LIBER NOVUS 

The contents of this unconscious were what Jung in 
Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido had called typical myths or 
primordial images. He described these "dominants" as "the ruling 
powers, the Gods, that is, images ofdominating laws and principles, 
average regularities in the sequence of images, that the brain has 
received from the sequence ofsecular processes."164 One needed to 
pay particular attention to these dominants. Particularly important 
was the "detachment ofthe mythological or collective psychological contents 

from the objects of consCiousness) and their consolidation as psychological 
realities outside the individual psyche. "165 This enabled one to C01ne 
to terms with activated residues of our ancestral history. The 
differentiation of the personal from the nonpersonal resulted in 
a release of energy. 

These comments also mirror his activity: his attempt to 
differentiate the various characters which appeared, and to 
"consolidate them as psychological realities." The notion that these 
figures had a psychological reality in their own right, and were not 
merely subjective figments, was the main lesson that he attributed 
to the fantasy figure of Elijah: psychic objectivity.'66 

Jung argued that the era ofreason and skepticism inaugurated 
by the French Revolution had repressed religion and irrationalism. 
This in turn had serious consequences, leading to the outbreak of 
irrationalism represented by the world war. It was thus a historical 
necessity to acknowledge the irrational as a psychological factor. 
The acceptance of the irrational forms one of the central themes 
ofLiber N ovus. 

In The Psychology ofthe Unconscious Processes, Jung developed his 
conception of the psychological types. He noted that it was a 
common development that the psychological characteristics of 
the types were pushed to extreme~. By what he termed the law 
of enantiodromia, or the reversal into the opposite, the other 
hll1ction entered in, namely; feeling for the introvert, and thinking 
for the extravert. These secondary functions were found in the 
unconscious. The development of the contrary function led to 
individuation. As the contrary function was not acceptable to 
consciousness, a special technique was required to come to terms 
with it, namely the production ofthe transcendent function. The 
unconscious was a danger when one was not at one with it. But 
with the establishment of the transcendent function, the disharmony 
ceased. This rebalancing gave access to the productive and 
beneficent aspects ofthe unconscious. The unconscious contained 
the wisd01n and experience of untold ages, and thus formed an 
unparalleled guide. The development of the contrary function 
appears in the "Mysterium" section ofLiber N OVUS. 167 The attempt to 
gain the wisdom stored in the unconscious is portrayed throughout 
the book, in which Jung asks his soul to tell him what she sees and 
the Ineaning of his fantasies. The unconscious is here viewed as a 
source ofhigher wisdom. He concluded the essay by indicating the 
personal and experiential nature of his new conceptions: "Our age 
is seeking a new spring oflife. I found one and drank of it and the 
water tasted good."'68 

The Way to the Self 

In I9I8, Jung wrote a paper entitled "On the unconscious," where 
he noted that all of us stood between two worlds: the world of 

164 Ibid., p. 432. 
165 Ibid., p. 435. 
166 Analytical Psychology, p. 95. 
167 See below, pp. 245-255. 


external perception and the world ofperception ofthe unconscious. 
This distinction depicts his experience at this time. He wrote 
that Friedrich Schiller had claimed that the approximation of these 
two worlds was through art. By contrast, Jung argued, "I am of 
the opinion that the union of rational and irrational truth is to 
be found not so much in art as in the symbol per se; for it is the 
essence ofthe symbol to contain both the rational and irrational.",G9 
Symbols, he maintained, stemmed from the unconscious, and 
the creation of symbols was the most important function of the 
unconscious. While the compensatory function ofthe unconscious 
was always present, the symbol-creating function was present only 
when we were willing to recognize it. Here, we see him continuing 
to eschew viewing his productions as art. Itwas not art but symbols 
which were of paramount importance here. The recognition and 
recuperation of this symbol-creating power is portrayed in Liber 
N ovus. It depicts Jung's attempt to understand the psychological 
nature of symbolism and to view his fantasies symbolically. He 
concluded that what was unconscious at any given epoch was 
only relative, and changing. What was required now was the 
"remolding of our views in accordance with the active forces of 
the unconscious."I70 Thus the task confronting him was one of 
translating the conceptions gained through his confrontation 
with the unconscious, and expressed in a literary and symbolic 
manner in Liber N ovus, into a language that was compatible with 
the contemporary outlook 

The following year, he presented a paper in England before 
the Society of Psychical Research, of which he was an honorary 
member, on "The psychological foundations of the belief in 
spirits."I71 He differentiated between two situations in which the 
collective unconscious became active. In the first, it became 
activated through a crisis in an individual's life and the collapse 
ofhopes and expectations. In the second, it becalne activated at 
times of great social, political, and religious upheaval. At such 
moments, the factors suppressed by the prevailing attitudes 
accumulate in the collective unconscious. Strongly intuitive 
individuals become aware of these and try to translate them 
into communicable ideas. If they succeeded in translating the 
unconscious into a c01nmunicable language, this had a redeenling 
effect. The contents of the unconscious had a disturbing effect. 
In the first situation, the collective unconscious might replace 
reality; which is pathological. In the second situation, the individual 
may feel disorientated, but the state is not pathological. This 
differentiation suggests that Jung viewed his own experience as 
falling under the second heading-namely; the activation of the 
collective unconscious due to the general cultural upheaval. Thus 
his initial fear of impending insanity in I9I3 lay in his failure to 
realize this distinction. 

In I9I8, he presented a series of seminars to the Psychological 
Club on his work on typology; and was engaged in extensive 
scholarly research 0n this subject at this time. He developed 
and expanded the themes articulated in these papers in I92I 
in psychological Types. As regards the working over of thenles 
of Liber N ovus, the most important section was chapter 5, "The 
type problem in poetry." The basic issue discussed here was how 
the problem of opposites could be resolved through the production 
of the uniting or reconciling symbol. This forms one of the 

168 Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, p. 444. This sentence appeared only in the first edition ofJung's book. 
169 CW IO, ¤24. 
170 CW IO, ¤48. 
171 CW 8. 



INTRODUCTION I 2II 

central themes of Liber N ovus. Jung presented detailed analysis 
of the issue of the resolution of the problem of opposites in 
Hinduism, Taoism, Meister Eckhart, and, in present times, in 
the work of Carl Spitteler. This chapter can also be read in terms 
of a meditation on some of the historical sources that directly 
informed his conceptions in Liber Novus. It also heralded the 
introduction ofan important method. Rather than directly discussing 
the issue of the reconciliation of opposites in Liber Novus, he 
sought out historical analogies and commented upon them. 

In 1921, the "self" emerged as a psychological concept. Jung 
defined it as follows: 

Inasmuch as the I is only the center of my field of 
consciousness, it is not identical with the totality of my 
psyche, being merely a complex among other complexes. 
Hence I discriminate between the I and the self, since the I 
is only the subject of my consciousness, while the self is the 
subject of my totality: hence it also includes the unconscious 
psyche. In this sense the self would be an (ideal) 
greatness which embraces and includes the I. In unconscious 
fantasy the self often appears as the super-ordinated or ideal 
personality, as Faust is in relation to Goethe and Zarathustra 
to Nietzsche.I72 

He equated the Hindu notion of Brahman/Atman with the self 
At the same time, Jung provided a definition ofthe soul. He argued 
that the soul possessed qualities that were complementary to the 
persona, containing those qualities that the conscious attitude 
lacked. This complementary character ofthe soul also affected its 
sexual character, so that a man had a feminine soul, or anima, and 
a woman had a masculine soul, or animus.173 This corresponded to 
the fact that men and women had both masculine and feminine 
traits. He also noted that the soul gave rise to images that were 
assumed to be worthless fronl the rational perspective. There were 
four ways of using them: 

The first possibility of malcing use of them is artistic, if 
one is in anyway gifted in thatdirection; a second isphilosophical 
speculation; a third is quasi;religious, leading to heresy and 
the founding of sects; and a fourth way of employing the 
dynamis of these images is to squander it in every form 
oflicentiousness.174 

From this perspective, the psychological utilization of these 
images would represent a "fifth way:" For it to succeed, psychology 
had to distinguish itself clearly from art, philosophy, and religion. 
This necessity accounts for Jung's rejection of the alternatives. 

In the subsequent Black Books, he continued to elaborate his 
"mythology:" The figures developed and transformed into one 
another. The differentiation of the figures was accompanied 
by their coalescence, as he came to regard them as aspects of 
underlying components of the personality: On January 5,1922, 
he had a conversation with his soul concerning both his vocation 
and Liber Novus: 

[I:J I feel that I must speal( to you. Why do you not let me 
sleep, as I am tired? I feel that the disturbance comes from 
172 psychological Types, CW 6, ¤706. 
173 Ibid., ¤¤804-5. 
174 CW 6, ¤426. 
175 Black Book 7, p. 92C. 


you. What induces you to keep me awal(e? 

[Soul:J Now is no time to sleep, but you should be awake 

and prepare important matters in nocturnal work 

The great work begins. 

[I:J What great work? 
[Soul:J The work that should now be undertal(en. It is a 
great and difficult work There is no time to sleep, ifyou 
find no time during the day to relnain in the work 
[I:] But I had no idea that something ofthis kind was 
talcing place. 
[Soul:J But you could have told by the fact that I have 
been disturbing your sleep for a long time: You have been 
too unconscious for a long time. Now you must go to a 
higher level ofconsciousness. 
[I:] I am ready: What is it? Speald 
[Soul:] You should listen: to no longer be a Christian is 
easy: But what next? For more is yet to come. Everything 
is waiting for you. And you? You remain silent and have 
nothing to say: But you should speak. Why have you 
received the revelation? You should not hide it. You 
concern yourself with the form? Is the form important, 
when it is a matter of revelation? 
[I:J But you are not thinlcing that I should publish what I 
have written? That would be a misfortune. And who would 
understand it? 
[Sou!:J No, listen! You should not breal( up a 
marriage, namely the marriage with me, no person 
should supplant me ... I want to rule alone. 
[I:J SO you want to rule? From whence do you tal(e 
the right for such a presumption? 
[Soul:J This right comes to me because I serve you 
and your calling. I could just as well say, you came first, 
but above all your calling C01nes first. 
[I:J But what is my calling? 
[Sou!:J The new religion and its proclamation. 
[I:J Oh God, how should I do this? 
[Soul:] Do not be ofsuch little faith. No one knows 
it as you do. There is no one who could say it as well 
as you could. 
[I:J But who knows, ifyou are not lying? 
[Sou!:J Ask yourself if I am lying. I speal( the truth.I75 
His soul here pointedly urged him to publish his material, at 
which he balked. Three days later, his soul informed him that 
the new religion "expresses itself only in the transformation of 
human relations. Relations do not let themselves be replaced 
by the deepest knowledge. Moreover a religion does not consist 
only in knowledge, but at its visible kvel in a new ordering of 
human affairs. Therefore expect no further knowledge from me. 
You know everything that is to be known about the manifested 
revelation, but you do not yet live everything that is to be lived 
at this time." Jung's "I" replied, "I can fully understand and accept 
this. However, it is dark to me, how the knowledge could be 
transformed into life. You must teach me this." His soul said, 
"There is not much to say about this. It is not as rational as you 
are inclined to think The way is symbolic."176 

Thus the task confronting Jung was how to realize and embody 

I76 Ibid., p. 95. In a seminar the following year, Jung took up the theme of the relation of individual relations to religion: "No individual can exist without individual 
relationships, and that is how the foundation ofyour Church is laid. Individual relations lay the form ofthe invisible Church" (Notes on the Seminar in Analytical Psychology 
conducted by Dr. C. G.}ung, Polzeath, England, July 14-July 27,1923, arranged by members of the class, p. 82). 


2I2 I LIBER NOVUS 

what he had learned through his self-investigation into life. 
During this period the themes of the psychology of religion 
and the relation of religion to psychology became increasingly 
prominent in his work, starting from his seminar in Polzeath 
in Cornwall in 1923. He attempted to develop a psychology of 
the religious-making process. Rather than proclaiming a new 
prophetic revelation, his interest lay in the psychology ofreligious 
experiences. The task was to depict the translation and transposition 
of the numinous experience ofindividuals into symbols, and 
eventually into the dogmas and creeds of organized religions, 
and, finally, to study the psychological function ofsuch symbols. 
For such a psychology of the religion-making process to succeed, 
it was essential that analytical psychology, while providing an 
affirmation ofthe religious attitude, did not succumb to becoming 
a creed.I77 

In 1922, Jung wrote a paper on "The relation of analytical 
psychology to poetic art works." He differentiated two types of 
work: the first, which sprang entirely from the author's intention, 
and the second, which seized the author. Examples of such 
symbolic works were the second part of Goethe's Faust and 
Nietzsche's zarathustra. He held that these works stemmed 
from the collective unconscious. In such instances, the creative 
process consisted in the unconscious activation of an archetypal 
image. The archetypes released in us a voice that was stronger 
than our own: 

Whoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand 
voices; he enthrals and overpowers ... he transmutes our 
personal destiny into the destiny of mankind, and evokes 
in us all those beneficent forces that ever and anon have 
enabled humanity to find a refuge from every peril and to 
outlive the longest night. 178 

The artist who produced such works educated the spirit of 
the age, and compensated the one-sidedness of the present. In 
describing the genesis of such symbolic works, Jung seemingly had 
his own activities in mind. Thus while Jung refused to regard 
Liber Novus as "art," his reflections on its composition were 
nevertheless a critical source of his subsequent conceptions and 
theories of art. The implicit question that this paper raised was 
whether psychology could now serve this function of educating 
the spirit of the age and compensating the one-sidedness of the 
present. From this period onward, he came to conceive ofthe task 
ofhis psychology in precisely such a manner. 179 

Publication Deliberations 

From 1922 onward, in addition to discussions with Emma 
Jung and Toni Wolff, Jung had extensive discussions with Cary 
Baynes and Wolfgang Stockmayer concerning what to do with 
Liber N ovus, and around its potential publication. Because these 
discussions took place when he was still working on it, they are 

critically important. Cary Fink was born in 1883. She studied 
at Vassar College, where she was taught by Kristine Mann, 
who became one of Jung's earliest followers in the United 
States. In 1910, she married Jaime de Angulo, and completed her 
medical training at Johns Hopkins in 19II. In 1921, she left him, 
and went to Zurich with Kristine Mann. She entered analysis with 
Jung. She never practiced analysis, and Jung highly respected her 
critical intelligence. In 1927, she married Peter Baynes. They 
were subsequently divorced in 1931. Jung asked her to make 
a fresh transcription of Liber N ovus, because he had added a lot 
of material since the previous transcription. She undertook this 
in 1924 and 1925, when Jung was in Africa. Her typewritecwas 
heavy, so she first copied it by hand and then typed it out. 

These notes recount her discussions with Jung and are written 
in the form ofletters to him, but were not sent. 

OCTOBER 2,1922 
In another book of Meyrink's the "White Dominican," 
you said he made use of exactly the same symbolism that 
had come to you in the first vision that revealed to your 
unconscious. Furthermore you said, he had spoken of a 
"Red Book" which contained certain mysteries and the 
book that you are writing about the unconscious, you have 
called the "Red Book".180 Then you said you were in doubt 
as to what to do about that book. Meyrink you said could 
throw his into novel form and it was all right, but you could 
only command the scientific and philosophical method 
and that stuff you couldn't cast into that mold. I said you 
could use the Zarathustra form and you said that was true, 
but you were sick of that. I am too. Then you said you had 
thought of making an autobiography out of it. That would 
seem to me by far the best, because then you would tend 
to write as you spoke which was in a very colorful way. But 
apart from any difficulty with the form, you said you dreaded 
making it public because it was like selling your house. 
But I jumped upon you with both feet there and said it 
wasn't a bit like that because you and the book stood for 
a constellation of the Universe, and that to talce the book 
as being purely personal was to identify yourself with it 
which was something you would not think ofpermitting to 
your patients ...Then we laughed over my having caught 
you red-handed as it were. Goethe had been caught in the 
same difficulty in the 2 nd part of Faust in which he had 
gotten into the unconscious and found it so difficult to 
get the right form that he had finally died leaving the 
Mss. as such in his drawer. So much of what you had 
experienced you said, would be counted as sheer lunacy 
that ifit were published you would lose out altogether not 
only as a scientist, but as a human being, but not I said if 
you went at it from the Dichtung und Wahrheit [Poetry 
and Truth] angle, then people could make their own 
selection as to which was which. 181 You objected to pre


177 On Jung's psychology ofreligion, see James Heisig, Imago Dei: A Study ofjung's Psychology ofReligion (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1979), and Ann Lammers, 
In God's Shadow: The Collaboration between Victor White and c. G.jung (New York: Paulist Press, 1994). See also my" 'In Statu Nascendi,'" journal ofAnalytical Psychology 44 
(1999), pp. 539-545á 

17S CW 15, ¤130. 

179 In 1930, Jung expanded upon this theme, and described the first type ofwork as "psychological," and the latter as "visionary" "Psychology and poetry," CW 15. 

ISO 
See Meyrink, The White Dominican, tr. M. Mitchell (1921/1994), ch. 7-The "founding father" informs the hero ofthe novel, Christopher, that "whoever possesses the 
Cinnabar-red Book, the plant ofimmortality; the awakening ofthe spiritual breath, and the secret ofbringing the right hand to life, will dissolve with the corpse ... 
It is called the Cinnabar book because, according to ancient belief in China, that red is the colour ofthe garments ofthose who have reached the highest stage ofperfection 
and stayed behind on earth for the salvation ofmankind" (p. 91). Jung was particularly interested in Meyrink's novels. In 1921, when referring to the transcendent function 
and unconscious fantasies, he noted that examples where such material had been subjected to aesthetic elaboration could be found in literature, and that "I would single 
out two works of Meyrink for special attention: The Golem and The Green Face," psychological Types, CW 6, ¤205. He regarded Meyrink as a "visionary" artist ("Psychology 
und poetry" [1930], CW 15, ¤142) and was also interested in Meyrink's alchemical experiments (Psychology and Alchemy [1944], CW 12, ¤341n). 

lSI The reference is to Goethe's autobiography; From My Life: Poetry and Truth, tr. R. Heitner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 


INTRODUCTION I 213 

senting any of it as Dichtung when it was all Wahrheit, but 
it does not seem to me falseness to make use of that much 
of a mask in order to protect yourself from Philistia-and 
after all, as I said Philistia has its rights, confronted with the 
choice ofyou as a lunatic, and themselves as inexperienced 
fools they have to choose the former alternative, but if 
they can place you as a poet, their faces are saved. Much 
of your material you said has come to you as runes & the 
explanation ofthose runes sounds like the veriest nonsense, 
but that does not matter if the end product is sense. In 
your case I said, apparently you have become conscious of 
more of the steps of creation than ever anyone before. In 
most cases the mind evidently drops out of the irrelevant 
stuffautomatically and delivers the end product, whereas 
you bring along the whole business, matrix process and 
product. Naturally it is frightfully more difficult to handle. 
Then my hour was up. 

JANUARY 1923 
What you told me some time ago set me thinking, and 
suddenly the other day while I was reading the "Vorspiel 
auf dem Theater" [prelude in the theater]'182 it came to 
me that you too ought to malce use of that principle which 
Goethe has handled so beautifully all through Faust, namely; 
the placing in opposition of the creative and eternal with 
the negative and transient. You may not see right away what 
this has to do with the Red Book but I will explain. As I 
understand it in this book you are going to challenge men 
to a new way of looking at their souls, at any rate there is 
going to be in it a good deal that will be out ofthe grasp of 
the ordinary man, just as at one period ofyour own life you 
would scarcely have understood it. In a way it is a "jewel" 
you are giving to the world is it not? My idea is that it needs 
a sort ofprotection in order not to be thrown into the gutter 
and finally made away with by a strangely clad Jew. 

The best protection you could devise, it seems to me, 
would be to put in incorporate the book itself an exposition 
of the forces that will attempt to destroy it. It is one of 
your great gifts strength of seeing the black as well as the 
white of every given situation, so you will know better 
than most of the people who attack the book what it is 
that they want to destroy Could you not take the wind out 
of their sails by writing their criticism for them? Perhaps 
that is the very thing you have done in the introduction. 
Perhaps you would rather assume towards the public the 
attitude of"Talce or leave it, and be blessed or be damned 
whichever you prefer." That would be all right, whatever 
there is of truth in it is going to survive in any case. But I 
would like to see you do the other thing if it did not call 
for too much effort. 

JANUARY 26,1924 
You had the night before had a dream in which I appeared 
in a disguise and was to do work on the Red Book and 
you had been thinking about it all that day and during Dr. 
Wharton's hour preceding mine especially (pleasant for her 
I must say) ... As you had said you had made up your mind to 

turn over to me all ofyour unconscious material represented 
by the Red Book etc. to see what I as a stranger and impartial 
observer would say about it. You thought I had a good critique 
and an impartial one. Toni you said was deeply interwoven 
with it and besides did not take any interest in the thing 
in itself nor in getting it into usable form. She is lost in 
"bird fluttering" you said. For yourself you said you had 
always known what to do with your ideas, but here you were 
baffled. When you approached them you became enmeshed 
as it were and could no longer be sure of anything. You 
were certain s~me of them had great importance, but you 
could not find the appropriate form-as they were now you 
said they might come out of a madhouse. So then you said 
I was to copy down the contents of the Red Book-once 
before you had had it copied, but you had since then added 
a great deal of material, so you wanted it done again and 
you would explain things to me as I went along, for you 
understood nearly everything in it you said. In this way we 
could come to discuss many things which never came up 
in my analysis and I could understand your ideas from the 
foundation. You told me thenásomething more ofyour own 
attitude toward the "Red Book" You said some of it hurt 
your sense of the fitness of things terribly; and that you 
had shrunk from putting it down as it came to you, but that 
you had started on the principle of "voluntariness" that is of 
making no corrections and so you had stuck to that. Some of 
the pictures were absolutely infantile, but were intended 
so to be. There were various figures speaking, Elias, Father 
Philemon, etc. but all appeared to be phases of what you 
thought ought to be called "the master." You were sure that 
this latter was the same who inspired Buddha, Mani, Christ, 
Mahomet-all those who maybe said to have communed with 
God.183 But the others had identified with him. You absolutely 
refused to. It could not be for you, you said, you had 
to remain the psychologist-the person who understood the 
process. I said then that the thing to be done was to enable the 
world to understand the process also without their getting the 
notion that they had the Master caged as it were at their 
beck & call. They had to think ofhim as a pillar offire perpetually 
moving on and forever out of human grasp. Yes, 
you said itwas somethinglike that. Perhaps it cannotyet be 
done. As you talked I grew more and more aware of the 
immeasurability of the ideas which are filling you. You said 
they had the shadow of eternity upon them and I could 
feel the truth of it.184 

On January 30, she noted that Jung said of a dream which she 
had told him: 

That it was a preparation for the Red Book because the Red 
Book told ofthe battle between the world ofreality and the 
world of the spirit. You said in that battle you had been very 
nearly torn asunder but that you had managed to keep your 
feet on the earth & malce an effect on reality That you said 
for you was the test ofany idea, and that you had no respect 
for any ideas however winged that had to exist off in space 
and were unable to malce an impression on realityl85 

182 The reference is to the beginning ofFaust: a dialogue among the director, poet, and a merry person. 
183 In reference to this, see the inscription to Image 154 below, p. 317


184 CFB. 

185 Ibid. 


214 I LIBER NOVUS 

There is an undated fragment of a letter draft to an unidentified 
person inwhich Cary Baynes expresses herviewofthe significance 
ofLiber N ovus, and the necessity of its publication: 

I am absolutely thunderstruck for example, as I read the 
Red Book, and see all that is told there for the Right Way 
for us oftoday; to find how Toni has kept it out ofher systetTI. 
She wouldn't have an unconscious spot in her psyche had 
she digested even as much ofthe Red Book as I have read & 
that I should think was not a third or a fourth. And another 
difficult thing to understand is why she has no interest in 
seeing him publish it. There are people in my country who 
would read it from cover to cover without stopping to 
breathe scarcely; so does it re-envisage and clarify the things 
that are today; staggering everyone who is trying to find the 
clue to life ... he has put into it all the vigor and color ofhis 
speech, all the directness and simplicity that come when as 
at Cornwall the fire burns in him.186 

Ofcourse it may be that as he says, ifhe published it as 
it is, he would forever be hors du combat in the world of 
rational science, but then there must be some way around 
that, some way of protecting himself against stupidity; in 
order that the people who would want the book need not 
go without for the time it will take the majority to get 
ready for it. I always knew he must be able to write the 
fire that he can speal(-and here it is. His published books 
are doctored up for the world at large, or rather they are 
written out of his head & this out of his heart.I87 

These discussions vividly portray the depth of Jung's 
deliberations concerning the publication of Liber N ovus, his 
sense of its centrality in comprehending the genesis of.his 
work and his fear that the work would be misunderstood. 
The impression that the style of the work would mal(e on an 
unsuspecting public strongly concerned Jung. He.later recalled 
to Aniela Jaffe that the work still needed a suitable form in 
which it could be brought into the world because it sounded like 
prophecy, which was not to his taste.188 

There appears to have been some discussion concerning these 
issues in Jung's circle. On May 29, 1924, Cary Baynes noted a 
discussion with Peter Baynes in which he argued that Liber Novus 
could be understood only by someone who had lmown Jung. By 
contrast, she thought that the book 

was the record ofthe passage ofthe universe through the soul 
ofa man, and just as a person stands by the sea and listens to 
that very strange and awful music and cannot explain why his 
heart aches, or why a cry ofexaltation wants to leap from his 
throat, so I thought it would be with the Red Book, and that 
a man would be perforce lifted out ofhimself by the majesty 
ofit, and swung to heights he had never been before.I89 

There are further signs that Jung circulated copies ofLiber Novus 
to confidantes, and that the material was discussed together 

186The reference is to the Polzeath seminar. 

with the possibilities of its publication. Oneá such colleague 
was Wolfgang Stockmayer. Jung met Stockmayer in 1907-In his 
unpublished obituary; Jung nominated him as the first German 
to be interested in his work. He recalled that Stockmayer was 
a true friend. They traveled together in Italy and Switzerland, 
and there was seldom a year in which they did not meet. 
Jung commented: 

He distinguished himself through his great interest and 
equally great understanding for pathological psychic 
processes. I also found with him a sympathetic reception 
for my broader viewpoint, which became of importance 
for my later comparative psychological works. 190 

Stockmayer accompanied Jung in "the valuable penetration 
ofour psychology" into classical Chinese philosophy; the mystical 
speculations of India and Tantric yoga.191 

On December 22,1924, Stockmayer wrote to Jung: 

I often long for the Red Book, and I would like to have a 
transcript o~what is available; I failed to do so when I had 
it, as things go. I recently fantasized about a kind of journal 
of "Documents" in a loose form for materials from the 
"forge of the unconscious," with words and colors.192 

It appearsá that Jung sent some material to him. On April 30, 
1925, Stockmayer wrote to Jung: 

In the meantime we have gone through "Scrutinies," and 
it is the same impression as with the great wandering.I93 
A selected collective milieu for such from the Red Book 
is certainly worth trying out, although your commentary 
would be quite desired. Since a certain adjacent center of 
yours lies here, ample access to sources is ofgreat significance, 
consciously and unconsciously. And I obviously fantasize 
about "facsimiles," which you will understand: you need 
not fear extraversion magic from me. Painting also has 
great appeal. 194 

Jung's tTIanuscript "Commentaries" (see Appendix B) was possibly 
connected with these discussions. 

Thus figures in Jung's circle held differing views concerning 
the significance ofLiber N ovus and whether it should be published, 
which may have had bearings on Jung's eventual decisions. Cary 
Baynes did not complete the transcription, getting as far as the 
first twenty-seven pages of Scrutinies. For the next few years, 
her time was taken up with the translation of Jung's essays into 
English, followed by the translation of the I Ching. 

At some stage, which I estimate to be in the mid-twenties, 
Jung went back to the Draft and edited it again, deleting and 
adding material on approximately 250 pages. His revisions 
served to modernize the language and terminology.195 He also 

187 I suspect that this may have been written to her ex-husband, Jaime de Angulo. On July 10, 1924, he wrote to her: "1 daresay you have been as busy as I have, with that 
material ofJung's ... I read your letter, the one in which you announced it, and you warned me not to tell anyone, and you added that you ought not to tell me, but you 
knew I would feel so proud ofyou" (CFB). 

188 MP, p. 169. 
189 CFB. 

190 "Stockmayer obituary," JA. 
191 Ibid. 
192JA. Jung's letters to Stockmayer have not come to light. 
193 The reference is to Liber Secundus ofLiber Novus; see note 4, p. 259 below. 
194JA. 


195 E.g., substituting "Zeitgeist" for "Geist der Zeit" (spirit ofthe times), "Idee" (Idea) for "Vordenken" (Forethinking). 



INTRODUCTION I 215 

revised sotne of the material that he had already transcribed those people to read Liber N ovus whom he fully trusted and whom 
into the calligraphic volume of Liber Novus, as well as some he felt had a full grasp ofhis ideas. ~itea number ofhis students 
material that was left out. It is hard to see why he undertook did not fit into this category. 
this unless he was seriously considering publishing it. 


In 1925, Jung presented his seminars on analytical psychology 

The T ransfortnation

to the Psychological Club. Here, he discussed some of the 
important fantasies in Liber N ovus. He described how they 

of Psychotherapy

unfolded and indicated how they formed the basis of the ideas 
in psychological Types and the key to understanding its genesis. Liber Novus is ofcritical significance for grasping the emergence of 
The seminar was transcribed and edited by Cary Baynes. That Jung's new model of psychotherapy. In 1912, in Transformation and 
same year, Peter Baynes prepared an English translation of the Symbols ofthe Libido, he considered the presence of mythological 
Septem Sermones ad Mortuos, which was privately published. 196 Jung fantasies-such as are present in Liber Novus-to be the signs of 
gave copies to some of his English-speaking students. In a a loosening of the phylogenetic layers of the unconscious, and 
letter that is presumably a reply to one from Henry Murray indicative of schizophrenia. Through his self-experimentation, 
thanking him for a copy, Jung wrote: he radically revised this position: what he now considered critical 

was not the presence of any particular content, but the attitude 
I am deeply convinced, that those ideas that came to me, of the individual toward it and, in particular, whether an indiare 
really quite wonderful things. I can easily say that vidual could accommodate such material in their worldview. This 
(without blushing), because I know, how resistant and explains why he commented in his afterword to Liber N ovus that to 
how foolishly obstinate I was, when they first visited me the superficial observer, the work would seem like madness,. and 
and what a trouble it was, until I could read this symbolic could have become so, ifhe had failed to contain and comprehend 
language, so much superior to my dull conscious mind.197 the experiences.201 In Liber secundus, chapter 15, he presents a 

critique of contemporary psychiatry, highlighting its incapacity 

It is possible that Jung may have considered the publication to differentiate religious experience or divine madness from 
of the Sermones as a trial for the publication of Liber N ovus. psychopathology. If the content of visions or fantasies had no 
Barbara Hannah claims that he regretted publishing it and that diagnostic value, he held that it was nevertheless critical to view 
"he felt strongly that it should only have been written in the them carefully.202 
Red Book"198 Out of his experiences, he developed new conceptions of the 

At some point, Jung wrote a manuscript entitled aims and methods of psychotherapy. Since its inception at the 
"Commentaries," which provided a commentary on chapters 9, end ofthe nineteenth century, modern psychotherapy had been 
10, and II of Liber Primus (see Appendix B). He had discussed primarily concerned with the treatment of functional nervous 
some of these fantasies in his 1925 seminar, and he goes into disorders, or neuroses, as they came to be known. From the time 
more detail here. From the style and conceptions, I would ' of the First World War onward, Jung reformulated the pracestimate 
that this text was written in the mid-twenties. He may tice of psychotherapy. No longer solely preoccupied with the 
have written-or intended to write-further "commentaries" treatment of psychopathology, it became a practice to enable 
for other chapters, but these have not come to light. This manuthe 
higher development of the individual through fostering the 
script indicates the amount of work he put into understanding individuation process. This was to have far-reaching consequences 
each and every detail of his fantasies. not only for the developtnent of analytical psychology but also 

Jung gave a number of people copies of Liber Novus: Cary for psychotherapy as a whole. 
Baynes, Peter Baynes, Aniela Jaffe, Wolfgang Stockmayer, and To demonstrate the validityofthe conceptions that he derived in 
Toni Wolff. Copies may also have been given to others. In 1937, Liber Novus, Jung attetnpted to show that the processes depicted 
a fire destroyed Peter Baynes's house, and damaged his copy of within it were not unique and that the conceptions which he 
Liber N ovus. A few years later, he wrote to Jung asking ifby chance developed in it were applicable to others. To study the productions 
he had another copy, and offered to translate it.199 Jung replied: "I ofhis patients, he built up an extensive collection oftheir paintings. 
will try whether I can procure another copy of the Red Book. So that his patients were not separated from their images, he 
Please don't worry about translations. I am sure there are 2 or 3 would generally ask them to malce copies for him.20 

3 

translations already. But I don't know of what and by whom."2oo During this period, he continued to instruct his patients as 
This supposition was presumably based on the number of copies to how to induce visions in a walting state. In 1926, Christiana 
of the work in circulation. Morgan came to Jung for analysis. She had been drawn to his ideas 

Jung let the following individuals read and/or look at Liber on reading psychological Types, and turned to him for assistance 
Novus: Richard Hull, Tina Keller, James Kirsch, Ximena Roelli with her problems with relationships and her depressions. In a 
de Angulo (as a child), and Kurt Wolff Aniela Jaffe read the session in 1926, Morgan noted Jung's advice to her on how to 
Black Books, and Tina Keller was also allowed to read sections of produce visions: 
the Black Books. Jung most likely showed the book to other close 
associates, such as Emil Medtner, Franz Rilclin Sr., Erika Schlegel, Well, you see these are too vague for me to be able to say 
Hans Triib, and Marie-Louise von Franz. It appears that he allowed much about them. They are only the beginning. You only 

196 London: Stuart and Watkins, 1925. 
197 May 2,1925, Murray papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University; original in English. Michael Fordham recalled being given a copy by Peter Baynes 


when he had reached a suitably "advanced" stage in his analysis, and being sworn to secrecy about it (personal communication, 1991). 
198 C. G.jung: His Life and work. A Biographical Memoir, p. 12I. 
199 November 23, I94I,jA. 
200 January 22,1942, C. G.jung Letters I, p. 312. 
201 See below, p. 360. 
202 C£ Jung's comments after a talk on Swedenborg at the Psychological Club, Jaffe papers, ETH. 
203 These paintings are available for study at the picture archive at the C. G. Jung Institute, Kiisnacht. 


216 I LIBER NOVUS 

use the retina of the eye at first in order to objectify: Then 
instead ofkeeping on trying to force the image out you just 
want to look in. Now when you see these images you want 
to hold them and see where they take you-how they change. 
And you want to try to get into the picture yourself-to 
become one of the actors. When I first began to do this I 
saw landscapes. Then I learned how to put myself into the 
landscape, and the figures would talk to me and I would 
answer them ... People said he has an artistic temperament. 
But it was only that my unconscious was swaying me. Now 
I learn to act its drama as well as the drama ofthe outer life 
& so nothing can hurt me now. I have written 1000 pages 
ofmaterial from the unconscious (Told the vision ofa giant 
who turned into an egg).204 

He described his own experiments in detail to his patients, and 
instructed them to follow suit. His role was one of supervising 
them in experimenting with their own stream ofimages. Morgan 
noted Jung saying: 

Now I feel as though I ought to say something to you 
about these phantasies ... The phantasies now seem to 
be rather thin and full of repetitions of the same motives. 
There isn't enough fire and heat in them. They ought to 
be more burning ... You must be in them more, that is you 
must be your own conscious critical selfin them-imposing 
your own judgments and criticisms ... I can explain what I 
mean by telling you of my own experience. I was writing 
in my book and suddenly saw a man standing watch over 
my shoulder. One of the gold dots from my book flew 
up and hit him in the eye. He asked me if I would talce 
it out. I said no-not unless he told me who he was. He 
said he wouldn't. You see I knew that. If I had done what 
he asked then he would have sunk into the unconscious 
and I would have missed the point of it ie.: why he had 
appeared from the unconscious at all. finally he told me 
that he would tell me the meaning of certain hieroglyphs 
which I had had a few days previous. This he did and I 
took the thing out ofhis eye and he vanished.205 

Jung went so far as to suggest that his patients prepare their own 
Red Books. Morgan recalled him saying: 

I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you 
can-in some beautifully bound book. It will seem as ifyou 
were malcing the visions banal-but then' you need to do 
that-then you are freed from the power of them. If you 
do that with these eyes for instance they will cease to draw 
you. You should never try to make the visions come again. 
Thinlc of it in your imagination and try to paint it. Then 
when these things are in some precious book you can go 
to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your 
church-your cathedral-the silent places of your spirit 
where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is 
morbid or neurotic and you listen to them-then you will 
lose your soul-for in that book is your soul.206 

In a letter to J. A. Gilbert in 1929, he commented on his procedure: 

I found sometimes, that it is ofgreat help in handling such 
a case, to encourage them, to express their peculiar contents 
either in the form of writing or of drawing and painting. 
There are so many incomprehensible intuitions in such cases, 
phantasy fragments that rise from the unconscious, for which 
there is almost no suitable language. I let my patients find 
their own symbolic expressions, their "mythology"207 

Philemon's Sanctuary 

In the 1920S, Jung's interest increasingly shifted from the 
transcription ofLiber N ovus and the elaboration ofhis mythology 
in the Black Books to working on his tower in Bollingen. In 1920, 
he purchased some land on the upper shores of Lake Zurich in 
Bollingen. Prior to this, he and his family sometimes spent holidays 
camping around Lalce Zurich. He felt the need to represent his 
innermost thoughts in stone and to build a completely primitive 
dwelling: "Words and paper, however, did not seem real enough 
to me; something more was needed."208 He had to make a confession 
in stone. The tower was a "representation ofindividuation." Over 
the years, he painted murals and made carvings on the walls. The 
tower may be regarded as a three-dimensional continuation of 
Liber Novus: its "Liber OJ!:artus." At the end of Liber Secundus, Jung 
wrote: "I must catch up with a piece ofthe Middle Ages-within 
myself We have only finished the Middle Ages of-others. I 
must begin early; in that period when the hermits died out."209 
Significantly; the tower was deliberately built as a structure from 
the Middle Ages, with no modern amenities. The tower was an 
ongoing, evolving work. He carved this inscription on its wall: 
"Philemonis sacrum-Fausti poenitentia" (Philemon's ShrineFaust's 
Repentance) (One ofthe murals in the tower is a portrait 
of Philemon') On April 6, 1929, Jung wrote to Richard Wilhelm: 
"Why are there no worldly cloisters for men, who should live 
outside the times!"2IO 

On January 9, 1923, Jung's mother died. On December 23/24, 
December, 1923, he had the following dream: 

I am on military service. Marching with a battalion. In a wood 
by Ossingen I come across excavations at a crossroads: 1 
meter high stone figure of a frog or a toad with a head. 
Behind this sits a boy with a toad's head. Then the bust ofa 
man with an anchor hammered into the region ofhis heart, 
Roman. A second bust from around 1640, the same motif 
Then mummified corpses. finally there comes a barouche in 
the style of the seventeenth century. In it sits someone who 
is dead, but still alive. She turns her head, when I address her 
as "Miss;" I am aware that "Miss" is a title ofnobility:21l 

A few years later, he grasped the significance of this dream. 
He noted on December 4,1926: 

Only now do I see for that the dream of 23/24 December 
1923 means the death of the anima ("She does not know 
that she is dead"). This coincides with the death of my 


204 July 8, 1926, analysis notebooks, Countway Library of Medicine. The vision referred to at the end is found in Libel' Secundus, ch. II, p. 283 below. 

205 Ibid., October 12,1926. The episode referred to here is the appearance ofmagician "Ha." See below, p. 291, note ISS. 

206 Ibid., July 12, 1926. 

207 December 20, I929,JA (original in English). 

208 Memories, p. 250. 

209 See below, p. 330. 

2IOJP. 

2II Black Boo]{ 7, p. 120. 



INTRODUCTION I 2I7 

mother ... Since the death of my mother, the A. [Anima] 
has fallen silent. Meaningfu1!212 

A few years later, he had a few further dialogues with his soul, 
but his confrontation with the anima had effectively reached 
a closure at this point. On January 2, I927, he had a dream set 
in Liverpool: 

Several young Swiss and I are down by the docks in 
Liverpool. It is a dark rainy night, with smoke and clouds. 
We walk up to the upper part oftown, which lies on a plateau. 
We come to a small circular lake in a centrally located garden. 
In the middle of this there is an island. The men speak ofa 
Swiss who lives here in such a sooty, dark dirty city But I 
see that on the island stands a magnolia tree covered with 
red flowers illuminated by an eternal sun, and think, "Now 
I know, why this Swiss fellow lives here. He apparently also 
knows why." I see a city map: [PlateJ.213 

Jung then painted a mandala based upon this map.214 He attached 
great significance to this dream, commenting later: 

This dream represented my situation at the time. I can 
still see the grayish-yellowish raincoats, glistening with the 
wetness of the rain. Everything was extremely unpleasant, 
black and opaque, just as I felt then. But I had had a vision 
of unearthly beauty, and that was why I was able to live 
at all . . . I saw that here the goal had been reached. One 
could not go beyond the center. The center is the goal, 
and everything is directed toward that center. Through this 
dream I understood that the self is the principle and archetype 
oforientation and meaning.215 

Jung added that he himself was the one Swiss. The "I" was 
not the sel£ but from there one could see the divine miracle. The 
small light resembled the great light. Henceforth, he stopped 
painting mandalas. The dream had expressed the unconscious 
developmental process, which was not linear, and he found it 
completely satisfying. He felt utterly alone at that time, preoccupied 
with something great that others didn't understand. In the 
dream, only he saw the tree. While they stood in the darkness, 
the tree appeared radiantly. Had he not had such a vision, his life 
would have lost meaning.216 

The realization was that the self is the goal of individuation 
and that the process ofindividuation was not linear, but consisted 
in a circumambulation of the self This realization gave him 
strength, for otherwise the experience would have driven him 
or those around him crazy.217 He felt that the mandala drawings 
showed him the self "in its saving function" and that this was 
his salvation. The task now was one ofconsolidating these insights 
into his life and science. 

In his I926 revision ofThe Psychology ofthe Unconscious Processes, 
he highlighted the significance of the midlife transition. He 
argued that the first half of life could be characterized as the 
natural phase, in which the prime aim was establishing oneself 
in the world, gaining an income, and raising a family. The second 

2I2 Ibid., p. 121. 
2I3 Ibid., p. 124. For the illustration, see Appendix A. 
2I4 Image 159. 
2I5 Memories, p. 224 
2I6 MP, pp. 159-60 
217 Ibid., p. 173. 
2I8 CW 7, ¤¤1I4-172I9 
Ibid., ¤386. 
220 Ibid., ¤323. 
22I Ibid., ¤353. 


half of life could be characterized as the cultural phase, which 

involved a revaluation of earlier values. The goal in this period 

was one of conserving previous values together with the recog


nition of their opposites. This meant that individuals had 

to develop the undeveloped and neglected aspects of their 

personality218 The individuation process was now conceived 

as the general pattern of human development. He argued that 

there was a lack of guidance for this transition in contemporary 

society, and he saw his psychology as filling this lacuna. Outside 

of analytical psychology, Jung's formulations have had an 

impact on the field of adult developmental psychology. Clearly, 

his crisis experience formed the template for this conception of 

the requirements' of the two halves of life. Liber N ovus depicts 

Jung's reappraisal of his previous values, and his attempt to 

develop the neglected aspects of his personality. Thus it formed 

the basis ofhis understanding ofhow the midlife transition could 

be successfully navigated. 

In I928 he published a small book, The Relations between the I and 
the Unconscious, which was an expansion of his I9I6 paper "The 
structure ofthe unconscious." Here, he expanded upon the "interior 
drama" of the transformation process, adding a section dealing in 
detail with the process of individuation. He noted that after one 
had dealt with the fantasies from the personal sphere, one met 
with fantasies from the impersonal sphere. These were not simply 
arbitrary, but converged upon a goal. Hence these later fantasies 
could be described as processes ofinitiation, which provided their 
nearest analogy. For this process to take place, active participation 
was required: "When the conscious mind participates actively 
and experiences each stage ofthe process ... then the next image 
always starts off on the higher level that has been won, and 
purposiveness develops."219 

After the assimilation of the personal unconscious, the 
differentiation of the persona, and the overcoming of the state 
of godlikeness, the next stage that followed was the integration 
of the anima for men and ofthe animus for women. Jung argued 
that just as it was essential for a man to distinguish between what 
he was and how he appeared to others, it was equally essential to 
become conscious of "his invisible relations to the unconscious" 
and hence to differentiate himself from the anima. He noted 
that when the anima was unconscious, it was projected. For a 
child, the first bearer of the. soul-image was the mother, and 
thereafter, the women who aroused a man's feelings. One needed 
to objectify the anima and to pose questions to her, by the 
method of inner dialogue or active imagination. Everyone, he 
claimed, had this ability to hold dialogues with him-or herself 
Active imagination would thus be one form of inner dialogue, a 
type of dramatized thinking. It was critical to disidentify from 
the thoughts that arose, and to overcome the assumption that 
one had produced them oneself22o What was most essential was 
not interpreting or understanding the fantasies, but experiencing 
them. This represented a shift from his emphasis on creative 
formulation and understanding in his paper on the transcendent 
function. He argued that one should treat the fantasies completely 
literally while one was engaged in them, but symbolically 
when one interpreted them.221 This was a direct description of 
Jung's procedure in the Black Books. The task of such discussions 


2I8 I LIBER NOVUS 

was to objectify the effects of the anima and to become conscious 
of the contents that underlay these, thereby integrating these into 
consciousness. When one had become familiar with the unconscious 
processes reflected in the anima, the anima then became a function 
ofthe relationship between consciousness and the unconscious, as 
opposed to an autonomous complex. Again, this process of the 
integration of the anima was the subject of Liber N ovus and the 
Black Books. (It also highlights the fact that the fantasies in Liber 
N ovus should be read symbolically and not literally. To talce 
statements from them out of context and to cite them literally 
would represent a serious misunderstanding.) Jung noted, that 
this process had three effects: 

The first effect is that the range of consciousness is 
increased by the inclusion of a great number and variety of 
unconscious contents. The second is a gradual diminution 
of the dominating influence of the unconscious. The third 
is an alteration in the personality.222 

After one had achieved the integration of the anima, one 
was confronted with another figure, namely the "mana personality." 
Jung argued that when the anima lost her "mana" or power, the 
man who assimilated it must have acquired this, and so became 
a "manapersonality," a being ofsuperior will andwisdom. However, 
this figure was "a dominant of the collective unconscious, the 
recognized archetype of the powerful man in the form of hero, 
chief, magician, medicine man, and saint, the lord of men and 
spirits, the friend of Gods."223 Thus in integrating the anima, and 
attaining her power, one inevitably identified with the figure of 
the magician, and one faced the task of differentiating oneself 
from this. He added that for women, the corresponding figure 
was that of the Great Mother. Ifone gave up the claim to victory 
over the anima, possession by the figure of the magician ceased, 
and one realized that the mana truly belonged to the "mid-point 
ofthe personality," namely, the self The assill1ilation ofthe contents 
of the mana personality led to the self Jung's description of the 
encounter with the mana personality, both the identification and 
subsequent disidentification with it, corresponds to his encounter 
with Philemon in Liber Novus. Ofthe self, Jung wrote: "It might 
as well be called 'God in us.' The beginnings ofour whole psychic 
life seem to be inextricably rooted to this point, and all our 
highest and deepest purposes seem to be striving toward it."224 
Jung's description of the self conveys the significance of his 
realization following his Liverpool dream: 

The selfcould be characterized as a kind ofcompensation 
for the conflict between inner and outer ... the selfis also 
the goal oflife, because it is the most complete expression 
of that fateful combination we call individuality ... With 
the experiencing of the self as something irrational, as an 
indefinable being to which the I is neither opposed nor 
subjected, but in a relation of dependence, and around 

222 Ibid., ¤358. 
223 Ibid., ¤377. 
224 Ibid., ¤399. 
225 Ibid., ¤405. 
226 See below, p. 360. 
227 Memories, pp. 222-23. 
228 See below, p. 320, note 307


229JA. 

which it revolves, very much as the earth revolves about the 

sun-then the goal of individuation has been reached.225 

The Confrontation 
with the World 

Why did Jung stop working on Libel' N ovus? In his afterword, 
written in I959, he wrote: 

My acquaintance with alchemy in I930 took me away 
from it. The beginning of the end came in I928, when 
[Richard] Wilhelm sent me the text ofthe "Golden flower," 
an alchemical treatise. There the contents ofthis book found 
their way into actuality and I could no longer continue 
working on it.226 

There is one more completed painting in Libel' N ovus. In 
I928, Jung painted a mandala of a golden castle (Page I63). 
After painting it, it struck him that the mandala had something 
Chinese about it. Shortly afterward, Richard Wilhelm sent him 
the text of The Secret ofthe Golden Flower, asking him to write a 
commentary on it. Jung was struck by it and the timing: 

The text gave me an undreamed-of confirmation of my 
ideas about the mandala and the circumambulation ofthe 
center. This was the first event which broke through my 
isolation. I became aware ofan affinity; I could establish ties 
with someone and something.227 

The significance of this confirmation is indicated in the lines 
that he wrote beneath the painting of the Yellow Castle.228 Jung 
was struck by the correspondences between the imagery and 
conceptions of this text and his own paintings and fantasies. On 
May 25, I929, he wrote to Wilhelm: "Fate appears to have given 
us the role of two bridge pillars which carry the bridge between 
East and West."229 Only later did he realize that the alchemical 
nature of the text was important.230 He worked on his commentary 
during I929. On September IO, I929, he wrote to Wilhelm: "I am 
thrilled by this text, which stands so close to our unconscious."23! 

Jung's comlnentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower was a 
turning point. Itwas his first public discussion ofthe significance 
of the Inandala. For the first time, Jung anonymously presented 
three of his own paintings from Liber N ovus as examples of 
European mandalas, and commented on them.232 To Wilhelm, he 
wrote on October 28, I929, concerning the mandalas in the volume: 
"the images amplify one another precisely through their diversity. 
They give an excellent image of the effort of the unconscious 
European spirit to grasp Eastern eschatology."233 This connection 
between the "European unconscious spirit" and Eastern eschatology 
became one of the major themes in Jung's work in the 
I930S, which he explored through further collaborations with the 

230 Foreword to the second German edition, "Commentary to 'The Secret of the Golden Flower," CW 13, p. 4. 
23I Wilhelm appreciated Jung's commentary. On October 24,1929, he wrote to him: "I am again struck most deeply by your comments" (JA). 
232 See images 105, 159, and 163. These pictures, together withtwo more, were again anonymously reproduced in 1950 in Jung, ed., Gestaltungen des Unbewussten: 


psychologischen Abhandlungen, vol. 7 [Forms ofthe Unconscious: Psychological Treatises] (Zurich: Rascher, 1950). 
233JA. 


INTRODUCTION I 2 19 

Indologists Wilhelm Hauer and Heinrich Zimmer.234 At the same 

time, the form ofthe workwas crucial: rather than revealing the full 

details ofhis own experiment, or those ofhis patients, Jung used 

the parallels with the Chinese text as an indirect way of speaking 

about it, much as he had begun to do in chapter 5 of psychological 

Types. This allegorical method now became his preferred form. 

Rather than write directly of his experiences, he commented on 

analogous developments in esoteric practices, and most of all 

in medieval alchemy. 

Shortly afterward, Jung abruptly left off working on Liber 
N ovus. The last full-page image was left unfinished, and he 
stopped transcribing the text. He later recalled that when he 
reached this central point, or Tao, his confrontation with the 
world commenced, and he began to give many lectures.235 Thus 
the "confrontation with the unconscious" drew to a close, and 
the "confrontation with the world" began. Jung added that he 
saw these activities as a form of compensation for the years of 
inner preoccupation.236 

The Comparative Study 
ofthe Individuation Process 

Jung had been familiar with alchemical texts from around 1910. 
In 1912, Theodore Flournoy had presented a psychQlogical 
interpretation of alchemy in his lectures at the University of 
Geneva and, in 1914, Herbert Silberer published an extensive 
work on the subject.237 Jung's approach to alchemy followed 
the work of Flournoy and Silberer, in regarding alchemy from 
a psychological perspective. His understanding of it was based 
on two main theses: first, that in meditating on the texts and 
materials in their laboratories, the alchemists were actually 
practicing a form of active imagination. Second, that the 
symbolism in the alchemical texts corresponded to that of the 
individuation process with which Jung and his patients had 
been engaged. 

In the 1930S, Jung's activity shifted from working on his 
fantasies in the Black Books to his alchemy copy books. In these, he 
presented an encyclopedic collection ofexcerpts from alchemical 
literature and related works, which he indexed according to key 
words and subjects. These copy books formed the basis of his 
writings on the psychology of alchemy. 

After 1930, Jung put Liber Novus to one side. While he had 
stopped working directly on it, it still remained at the center 
of his activity. In his therapeutic work, he continued to attempt 
to foster similar devefbpments in his patients, and to establish 
which aspects of his own experience were singular, and which 
had some generality and applicability to others. In his symbolic 
researches, Jung was interested in parallels to the imagery and 
conceptions ofLiber N ovus. The question that he pursued was the 
following: was something alan to the individuation process to be 
found in all cultures? Ifso, what were the common and differential 

elements? In this perspective, Jung's work after 1930 could be 
considered as an extended amplification of the contents of Liber 
Novus, and an attempt to translate its contents into a form acceptable 
to the contemporary outlook. Some of the statelnents made 
in Liber N ovus closely correspond to positions that Jung would 
later articulate in his published works, and represent their first 
formulations.238 On the other hand, much did not directly find 
its way into the Collected works, or was presented in a schematic 
form, or through allegory and indirect allusion. Thus Liber N ovus 
enables a hitherto unsuspected clarification ofthe most difficult 
aspects ofJung's Collected Works. One is simply not in a position to 
comprehend the genesis of Jung's late work, nor to fully understand 
what he was attempting to achieve, without studying Liber 
Novus. At the same time, the Collected Works can in part be 
considered an indirect commentary on Liber N ovus. Each mutually 
explicates the other. 

Jung saw his "confrontation with the unconscious" as the source 
of his later work He recalled that all his work and everything 
that he subsequently achieved came from these imaginings. He 
had expressed things as well as he was able, in clumsy, handicapped 
language. He often felt as if "gigantic blocks of stone 
were tumbling down upon [him]. One thunderstorm followed 
another." He was amazed it hadn't broken him as it had done 
others, such as Schreber.239 

When asked by Kurt Wolff in 1957 on the relation between 
his scholarly works and his biographical notes of dreams and 
fantasies, Jung replied: 

That was the primal stuff that compelled me to work on it, 
and my work is a more or less successful attempt to incorporate 
this incandescent matter into the worldview of my time. 
The first imaginings and dreams were like fiery, molten 
basalt, from which the stone crystallized, upon which I 
could work24o 

He added that "it has cost me 45 years so to speak, to bring the 
things that I once experienced and wrote down into the vessel of 
my scientific work"24

1 

In Jung's own terms, Liber Novus could be considered to 
contain, among other things, an account of stages of his process 
of individuation. In subsequent works, he tried to point out 
the general schematic common elements to which he could find 
parallels in his patients and in comparative research. The later 
works thus present a skeletal outline, a basic sketch, but left out 
the main body of detail. In retrospect, he described the Red Book 
as an attempt to formulate things in terms ofrevelation. He had 
hope that this would free him, but found that it didn't. He then 
realized that he had to return to the human side and to science. He 
had to draw conclusions from the insights. The elaboration of 
the material in the Red Book was vital, but he also had to understand 
the ethical obligations. In doing so, he had paid with his 
life and his science.242 

234 On this issue, see The Psychology ofKttndalini Yoga: Notes cifthe Seminar Given in 1932 by C. G.lttng, ed. Sonu Shamdasani (Bollingen Series, Princeton: Princeton University 
Press, 1996). 

235 MP, p. 15á 

236 On February 8, 1923, Cary Baynes noted a discussion with Jung in the previous spring which has bearings on this: "You Uung] said that no matter how mal"ked offfrom 
the crowd an individual might be with special gifts, he yet had not fulfilled all his duties, psychologically speaking, unless he could function successfully in collectivity By 
functioning in collectivity we both meant what is commonly called 'mixing' with people in a social way, not professional or business relationships. Your point was that if 
an individual kept away from these collective relationships, he lost something he could not afford to lose" (CFB). 

237 Problems ofMysticism and Its Symbolism, tr. S. E. Jeliffe (New York: Moffat Yard, 1917). 

238 These are indicated in the footnotes to the text. 

239 Memories, p. 201, MP, p. 144. 

240 Erinnerttngen, Tritttme, Gedanken von C. G.lttng, ed. Aniela Jaffe (Olten: Walter Verlag, 1988), p. 201. 

241 Ibid. 

242 MP, p. 148. 


220 I LIBER NOVUS 


In 1930, he commenced a series of seminars on the fantasy 
visions ofChristiana Morgan at the Psychological Club in Zurich, 
which can in part be regarded as an indirect commentary on 
Liber N ovus. To demonstrate the empir~~al validity of the conceptions 
that he derived in the latter, he had to show that processes 
depicted within it were not unique. 

With his seminars on Kundalini Yoga in 1932, Jung commenced 
a comparative study ofesoteric practices, focusing on the spiritual 
exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, Patanjali's Yoga sutras, Buddhist 
meditational practices, and medieval alchemy; which he presented 
in an extensive series of lectures at the Swiss Federal Institute 
of Technology (ETH).243 The critical insight that enabled these 
linkages and comparisons was Jung's realization that these 
practices were all based on different forms of active imagination-
and that they all had as their goal the transformation of 
the personality-which Jung understood as the process of 
individuation. Thus Jung's ETH lectures provide a comparative 
history of active imagination, the practice that formed the basis 
ofLiber Novus. 

In 1934, he published his first extended case description of 
the: individuation process, which was that of Kristine Mann, 
who had painted an extensive series of mandalas. He referred 
to his own undertalcing: 

I have naturally used this method on myself too and can 
affirm that one can paint very complicated pictures without 
having the least idea of their real meaning. While painting 
them, the picture seems to develop out of itself and often 
in opposition to one's conscious intentions.244 

_ 
He noted that the present work filled a gap in his description 
of his therapeutic methods, as he had written little about active 
imagination. He had used this method since 1916, but only 
sketched it in The Relations ofthe I to the Unconscious in 1928, and 
first mentioned the mandala in 1929, in his commentary on The 
Secret ofthe Golden Flower: 

For at least thirteen years I kept quiet about the results 
ofthese methods in order to avoid any suggestion. I wanted 
to assure myself that these things-mandalas especiallyreally 
are produced spontaneously and were not suggested 
to the patient by my own fantasy245 

Through his historical studies, he convinced himself that mandalas 
had been produced in all times and places. He also noted that 
they were produced by patients of psychotherapists who were 
not his students. This also indicates one consideration that may 
have led him not to publish Liber N ovuS: to convince himself and 
his critics, that the developments of his patients and especially 
their mandala images were not simply due to suggestion. He 
held that the mandala represented one of the best examples of 
the universality of an archetype. In 1936, he also noted that he 
himself had used the method of active imagination over a long 
period of time, and observed many symbols that he had been 
able to verify only years later in texts that had been unknown 
to him.246 However, from an evidential standpoint, given the 
breadth of his learning, Jung's own material would not have 

been a particularly convincing example ofhis thesis that images 

from the collective unconscious spontaneously emerged without 

prior acquaintance. 

In Liber N ovus, Jung articulated his understanding of the 
historical transformations of Christianity; and the historicity 
ofsymbolic formations. He took up this theme in his writings on 
the psychology of alchemy and on the psychology of Christian 
dogmas, and most of all in Answer tOJob. As we have seen, it was 
Jung's view that his prewar visions were prophetic that led to 
the composition of Liber Novus. In 1952, through his collaboration 
with the Nobel prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, 
Jung argued that there existed a principle ofacausal orderedness 
that underlay such "meaningful coincidences," which he called 
synchronicity247 He claimed that under certain circumstances, 
the constellation of an archetype led to a relativization of time 
and space, which explained how such events could happen. 
This was an attempt to expand scientific understanding to 
accommodate events such as his visions of 1913 and 1914. 

It is important to note that the relation of Liber N ovus to 
Jung's scholarly writings did not follow a straight point-bypoint 
translation and elaboration. As early as 1916, Jung sought to 
convey some of the results of his experiments in a scholarly 
language, while continuing with the elaboration of his fantasies. 
One would do best to regard Liber N ovus and the Black Books as 
representing a private opus that ran parallel to and alongside 
his public scholarly opus; whilst the latter was nourished by 
and drew from the former, they remained distinct. After ceasing 
to work on Liber N ovus, he continued to elaborate his private 
opus-his own mythology-in his work on the tower, and in 
his stone carvings and paintings. Here, Liber N ovus functioned 
as a generating center, and a number of his paintings and 
carvings relate to it. In psychotherapy; Jung sought to enable 
his patients to recover a sense of meaning in life through 
facilitating and supervising their own self-experimentation and 
symbol creation. At the same time, he attempted to elaborate a 
general scientific psychology 

The Publication 
ofLiber N ovus 

While Jung had stopped working directly on Liber Novus, the 
question of what to do with it remained, and the issue of its 
eventual publication remained open. On April 10, 1942, Jung 
replied to Mary Mellon concerning a printing of the Sermones: 
"Concerning the printing of the 'Seven Sermones' I should 
wish you to wait for a while. I had in mind to add certain material, 
but I have hesitated for years to do it. But at such an occasion 
one might risk it."248 In 1944, he had a major heart attack and 
did not see this plan through. 

In 1952, Lucy Heyer put forward a project for a biography of 
Jung. At Olga Froebe's suggestion and on Jung's insistence, 
Cary Baynes began collaborating with Lucy Heyer on this project. 
Cary Baynes considered writing a biography ofJung based on Liber 
NOVUS. 249 To Jung's disappointment, she withdrew from the project. 
After several years ofinterviews with Lucy Heyer, Jung terminated 
her biographical project in 1955, because he was dissatisfied with 

243 These lectures are currently beinglprepared for publication. For further details, see www.philemonfoundation.org. 
244 '~ study in the process ofindividuation," CW 9, I, ¤622. 
245 Ibid., ¤623. 
246 "On the psychological aspects of the Kore figure," CW 9, I, ¤334. 
247 See C. A. Meier, ed., Atom and Archetype: The paulijJung Letters, with a preface by Beverley Zabriskie, tr. D. Roscoe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 200I). 
248JP. It is likely that Jung had Philemon's commentaries in mind-see below, pp. 348-354. 
249 Olga Froebe-Kapteyn to Jack Barrett, January 6, 1953, Bollingen archives, Library of Congress. 



INTRODUCTION I 221 

her progress. In 1956, Kurt Wolff proposed another biographical 

project, which became Memories, Dreams, Rejfections. At some stage, 

Jung gave Aniela Jaffe a copy of the draft ofLiber Novus, which had 

been made by Toni Wolff Jung authorized Jaffe to cite from Liber 

Novus and the Black Books in Memories, Dreams, Rejfections.25o In his 

interviews with Aniela Jaffe, Jung discussed Liber Novus and his 

self-experimentation. Unfortunately, she did not reproduce all 

his comments. 

On October 31, 1957, she wrote to Jack Barrett ofthe Bollingen 

Foundation concerning Liber N ovus, and informed him that Jung 

had suggested that it and the Black Books be given to the library of 

the University of Basel with a restriction of 50 years, 80 years, or 

longer, as "he hates the idea that anybody should read this material 

without knowing the relations to his life, etc." She added that she had 

decided not to use much ofthis material in Memories. 25 
! In one early 

manuscript of Memories, Jaffe had included a transcription of 

the draft typescript of most ofLiber Primus.252 But it was omitted 

from the final manuscript, and she did not cite from Liber N ovus 

or the Black Books. In the German edition of Memories, Jaffe 

included Jung's epilogue to Liber Novus as an appendix. Jung's 

flexible date stipulations concerning access to Liber N ovus were 

similar to that which he gave around the same time concerning 

the publication of his correspondence with Freud.253 

On October 12, 1957, Jung told Jaffe that he had never finished 
the Red Book.254 According to Jaffe, in the spring of the year 1959 
Jung, after a time oflengthy ill-health, took up Liber Novus again, to 
complete the last remaining unfinished image. Once again, he 
took up the transcription of the manuscript into the calligraphic 
volume. Jaffe notes, "However, he still could not or would not 
, complete it. He told me that it had to do with death."255 The calligraphic 
transcription breaks off midsentence, and Jung added 
an afterword, which also broke off midsentence. The postscript 
and Jung's discussions of its donation to an archive suggest that 
Jung was aware that the work would eventually be studied at 
some stage. After Jung's death, Liber Novus remained with his 

family, in accordance with his will. 

In her 1971 Eranos lecture, "The creative phases in Jung's life," 

Jaffe cited two passages from the draft ofLiber Novus, noting that 

"Jung placed a copy ofthe manuscript at my disposalwith permission 

to quote from it as occasion arose."256 This was the only time she did 

so. Pictures from Liber N ovus were also shown in a BBe documen


tary on Jung narrated by Laurens van der Post in 1972. These 

created widespread interest in it. In 1975, after the much acclaimed 

publication ofrhe Freud/}ung Letters, William McGuire, representing 

Princeton University Press, wrote to the lawyer ofthe Jung estate, 
Hans Karrer, with a publication proposal for Liber N ovus and a 
collection of photographs of Jung's stone carvings, paintings, 
and the tower. He proposed a facsimile edition, possibly without 
the text. He wrote that "we are uninformed of the, number 
of its pages, the relative amount of text and pictures, and the 
content and interest of the text."257 No one in the press had 
actually seen or read the work or knew much about it. This 
request was denied. 

In 1975, some reproductions from the calligraphic volume 
of Liber N ovus we~e displayed at an exhibition commemorating 
Jung's centenary in Zurich. In 1977, nine paintings from Liber 
Novus were published by Jaffe in C. G. lung: Word and Image and 
in 1989 a few other related paintings w~re published by Gerhard 
Wehr in his illustrated biography ofJung.258 

In 1984, Liber Novus was professionally photographed, and 
five facsimile editions were prepared. These were given to the five 
families directly descendent from Jung. In 1992, Jung's family, 
who had supported the publication of Jung's Collected Works 
in German (completed in 1995), commenced an examination 
of Jung's unpublished materials. As a result of my researches, 
I found one transcription and a partial transcription of Liber 
Novus and presented them to the Jung heirs in 1997-Around the 
same time, another transcription was presented to the heirs 
by Marie-Louise von Franz. I was invited to present reports 
on the subject and its suitability for publication, and made a 
presentation on the subject. On the basis of these reports and 
discussions, the heirs decided in May 2000 to release the work 
for publication. 

The work on Liber Novus was at the center of Jung's 
self-experimentation. It is nothing less than the central book in 
his oeuvre. With its publication, one is now in a position to study 
what took place there on the basis of primary documentation as 
opposed to the fantasy, gossip, and speculation that makes up 
too much of what is written on Jung, and to grasp the genesis 
and constitution of Jung's later work. For nearly a century, such 
a reading has simply not been possible, and the vast literature on 
Jung's life and work that has arisen has lacked access to the single 
most important documentary source. This publication marks 
a caesura, and opens the possibility of a new era in the understanding 
of Jung's work. It provides a unique window into how 
he recovered his soul and, in so doing, constituted a psychology 
Thus this introduction does not end with a conclusion, but with 
the promise of a new beginning. 

250 Jung to Jaffe, October 27, 1957, Bollingen archives, Library of Congress. 

251 
Bollingen archives, Library of Congress. Jaffe gave a similar account to Kurt Wolff, mentioning 30,50, or 80 years as the possible restriction (undated; received 
October 30,1957), Kurt Wolff papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University. On reading the first sections of the protocols ofAniela Jaffe's interviews with Jung, Cary 
Baynes wrote to Jung on January 8,1958, that "it is the right introduction to the Red Book, and so I can die in peace on that score!" (CFB) 

252 Kurt Wolff papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University. The prologue was omitted, and it was given the title ofthe first chapter, "Der Wiederfindung der Seele" (the recovery of 
the soul). Another copy of this section was heavily edited by an unidentified hand, which may have been part ofpreparing this for publication at this time (JFA). 

253 One may note that the publication of the Freud/jung Letters, crucial as this was in its own right, while Liber Novus and the bulk ofJung's other correspondences remained 
unpublished, regrettably heightened the mistaken Freudocentric view ofJung: as we see, in Liber Novus, Jung is moving in a universe that is as far away from psychoanalysis 
as could be imagined. 

254 MP, p. 169. 

255 Jung/Jaffe, Erinnerungen, Tritume, Gedanken von C. G.jung (Olten: Walter Verlag, 1988), p. 387-Jaffe's other comments here are inaccurate. 

256 Jaffe, "The creative phases in Jung's life," Spring: An Annual ofArchetypal Psychology andjungian Thought, 1972, p. 174. 

257 McGuire papers, Library of Congress. In 1961, Aniela Jaffe had shown Liber Novus to Richard Hull, Jung's translator, and he had written his impressions to McGuire: 
"She [An showed us the famous Red Book, full of real mad drawings with commentaries in monkish script; I'm not surprised Jung keeps it under lock and key! When 
he came in and saw it lying-fortunately closed-on the table, he snapped at her: 'Das soIl nicht hier sein. Nehmen Sie's weg!' (That should not be here. Take i't away!), 
although she had written me earlier that he had given permission for me to see it. I recognized several of the mandalas that are included in On Mandala Symbolism. Itwould 
make a marvellous facsimile edition, but I didn't feel it wise to raise the subject, or to suggest the inclusion of drawings in the autobiography (which Mrs. Jaffe urged me 
to do). It really should form part, sometime, ofhis opus: just as the autobiography is an essential supplement to his other writings, so is the Red Book to the autobiography. 
The Red Book made a profound impression on me; there can be no doubt that Jung has gone through everything that an insane person goes through, and more. 
Talk of Freud's self-analysis: Jung is a walking asylum in himself! The only difference between him and a regular inmate is his astounding capacity to stand off from 
the terrifying reality ofhis visions, to observe and tmderstand what was happening, and to hammer out ofhis experience a system oftherapy that works. But for this unique 
achievement he'd be as mad as a hatter. The raw material ofhis experience is Schreber's world over again; only by his powers ofobservation and detachment, and his drive 
to understand, can it be said ofhim what Coleridge said in his Notebooks ofa great metaphysician (and what a motto it would make for the autobiography!): He looked at 
his own Soul with Telescope / What seemed all irregular, he saw & shewed to be beautiful Constellations & he added to the Consciousness hidden worlds within worlds / 
(March 17, I96I, Bollingen archives, Library of Congress). The citation from Coleridge was indeed used as a motto for Memories, Dreams, Rejfections. 

258 Aniela Jaffe, ed., c. G. jung: Word and Image, figures 52-57, 77-79, together with a related image, fig. 59; Gerhard Wehr, An Illustrated Biography ofjung, pp. 40, 140-41. 


T ranslatars' Nate 

MARK KYBURZ, JOHN PECK, AND SONU SHAMDASANI 
At the outset ofLiher N ovus, Jung experiences a crisis oflanguage. 
The spirit of the depths, who immediately challenges Jung's use 
of language along with the spirit of the time, informs Jung that 
on the terrain of his soul his achieved language will no longer 
serve. His own powers of knowing and spealcing can no longer 
account for why he utters what he says or under what compulsion 
he spealcs. All such attempts become arbitrary in the depth realm, 
even murderous. He is made to understand that what he might 
say on these occasions is both "madness" and, instructively, what 
is.I Indeed, in a broader perspective, the language that he will find 
for his') inner experience would compose a vast Commedia: "Do 
you believe, man ofthis time, that laughter is lower than worship? 
Where is your measure, false measurer? The sum oflife decides in 
laughter and in worship, not your judgment."2 
In translating this accumulated record of Jung's imaginal 
encounters with his inner figures, from a sixteen-year period 
beginning just before the First World War, we have let Jung 
remain a man who was pulled loose from his lTIoorings but also 
caught up in the maelstrom that has gone by the name ofliterary 
modernism. We have tried neither to further modernize nor to 
render more archaic the language and forms in which he couched 
his personal record. 
The language in Liher Novus pursues three main stylistic 
registers, and each poses distinct difficulties for a translator. One 
of them faithfully reports the fantasies and inner dialogues ofJung's 
imaginal encounters, while a second remains firmly and discerningly 
conceptual. Still a third writes in a mantic and prophetic, or 
Romantic and dithyrambic, mode. The relation between these 
reportorial, reflective, and Romantic aspects of Jung's language 
remains conledic in a manner that Dante or Goethe would have 
recognized. That is, within each chapter the descriptive, conceptual, 
and mantic registers consistently rub against each other, while 
at the same time no single register is affected by its partners. 
All three stylistic registers serve psychic promptings, and each 
chapter shares a polyphonic mode with the others. In the 
Scrutinies section from 1917 this polyphony matures, its voices 
commingling in various ratios. 
A reader will quicldy infer that this design was not premeditated, 
but rather grew from the experiment to which Jung arduously 
submitted. The "Editorial Note" diagrams the textual evolution 

of this composition. Here we need only observe that Jung each 
time sets down an initial protocol layer of narrative encounter, 
usually with dialogue, and then, in the "sec~nd layer," a lyrical 

elaboration ofand commentary on that encounter. The first layer 
avoids an elevated tone, whereas the second welcomes elevation 
and modulates into sermonic, mantic-prophetic reflections on the 
episode's meaning, which in turn unpack events discursively. This 
mode of composition-which is unique in Jung's works-was no 
temperamental arrangement. Instead, as the episodes accumulated 
and their stakes mounted, it grew into an experiment that was 
as much literary as it was psychological and spiritual. In Jung's 
extensive published and unpublished corpus, there is no other 
text that was subjected to such careful and continual linguistic 
revision as Liher Novus. 

These three linguistic registers already present themselves as 

virtual models for a possible translation. Our practice has been 

to let them cohabit within the exploratory frameworks alive in 

Jung's own day. The task before him was to find a language rather 

than use one ready at hand. The mantic and conceptual registers 

can themselves be considered as translations of the descriptive 

register. That is, these registers move from a literal level to symbolic 

ones that amplify it, in a modern analogue to Dante's "modi diversi" 

in his letter to Can Grande della Scala.3 In a very real sense, Liher 

Novus was composed through intertextual translation. The book's 

rhetoric, its manner of address, emerges from this interanimating 

structure ofinternal translation or transvaluation. A critical task for 

any translation ofthe work, therefore, is conveying this compositional 

texture intact. 

The fact that painted images of an accomplished and hybrid 
kind illuminate the medieval format of a folio in scribal hand 
compounds any reflections on the linguistic task The novel language 
required a renewed ancient script. A polyphonic style couches itself 
multimedia fashion within a symbolic throwback-yet-forward 
movement, medieval and anticipatory, into retrievals of psychic 
reality. Verbal and visual images press in on Jung from the root 
past and present while aiming toward the beyond: a layered 
medium emerges, whose polyphonic style mirrors within its 
language that same composite layering. 

Faced with the task of translating a text composed nearly a 
hundred years ago, translators usually have the benefit of prior 
models to consult, as well as decades ofscholarly commentary and 
criticism. Without such exemplars at hand, we were left to imagine 
how the work nlight have been translated in previous decades. 
Consequently, our translation sidesteps several unpublished or 
hypothetical models for rendering Liher N ovus into English. There 
is Peter Baynes' strilcingly archaizing Septem Sermones of 1925, 
which draws largely upon a Victorian idiom. Or the conceptually 
rationalizing version that R.F.C. Hull might have attempted 
had he been allowed to translate it alongside his other volumes 
in the Bollingen Series of Jung's Collected Works;4 or the elegant 
literaryrendering from the hand ofSOlTIeOne like R. J. Hollingdale. 
Our version therefore occupies an actual position in a largely 
virtual sequence. Consideration of these virtual models highlighted 
questions of how to pitch the language within historical shifts 
in English prose, how to convey the myriad convergences and 
divergences between the language of Liher Novus and Jung's 
Collected works, and how to render in English a work simultaneously 
echoing Luther's German and Nietzsche's parody of the same in 
Thus Spoke zarathustra. Because our version talces this position, 
accordingly when we have cited Jung's Collected works we have 
freshly rendered or discreetly modified the published translations. 

Liher N ovus was coeval with the literary ferment that Mikhail 
Balchtin called the dialogical prose imagination.5 The Anglo-Welsh 
writer and artist David Jones, author of In Parenthesis and The 
Anathemata, referred to the rupture of the First World War, and 
its effects on the historical sense ofwriters, artists, and thinkers, 
simply as "The Break."6 In concert with other experimental writing 
from these decades, Liher N ovus excavates archaeological layers of 
literary adventure, with hard-won consciousness as both shovel and 
precious shard. While Jung actively considered publishing Liher 
N ovus for many years, he chose not to make a name for himself in 

See below, p. 230. 
2 See below, p. 230. 

3 See the translation and discussion of this letter in Lucia Boldrini,}oyce, Dante, and the Poetics ofLiterary Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 30-35. 
4 On the issue of Hull's translations ofJung. see Shamdasani,}ung Stripped Bare by His Biographers, Even, pp. 47-51. 
5 See The DialogiC Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist. tr. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). 
6 David Jones. Dai Greatcoat: A Selj:Portrait ofDavid}ones in his Letters. ed. Rene Hague (London: Faber & Faber. 1980, pp.41ff) 



TRANSLATORS' NOTE I 223 

this literary manner-as much for style as for content-byreleasing it. 

By I92I with psychological Types he already found that his sanctum 

could furnish him his main themes, through translation into a 

scholarly idiom. 

Jung enunciates the tension among his three stylistic registers, 
already addressing a future readership-which shifts from an 
inner circle of friends to a wider public between different layers 
of the text. This is graphically apparent in the frequent pronomial 
shifts between the versions, which show the manner in which 
he was constantly reimagining the potential readers of the text. 
Jung coherently adopted this dialogical stance-polyphonic in 
Balchtin's later terms-once again mindful of a hypothetical 
future audience yet also aloof from the question of audience 
altogether, not from pride but simply in view of the aims to be 
served. Paintings and fantasies from this private treasury entered 
anonymously as crypted intertexts into Jung's later work, nestling 
as hermetic clues to the undisclosed whole ofhis effort. 

Indeed, we can imagine Jung laughing when he wrote of 
"3. Case Z" in the last section of his essay on "The Psychological 
Aspects of the Kore" (I94I).7 There he summarizes as anonymous 
twelve episodes from encounters with his own soul in Liber Novus, 
calling them "a dream-series." The comments he appends to 
these propel the adventurer he had been, and the subject he 
became in that adventure, into the discourse ofa would-be science. 
The comedy is both spacious and exquisite: this respectful host 
to the anima also wields the diagnostic pointer in all seriousness. 
His language flexibly straddled both contexts, but also kept 
certain veils in place while doing so. This linguistic strategy 
mirrored Jung's larger aims in remaining fruitfully dual and 
contextual. Declaring his mysteries to be particular, not to be 
aped in any way, he nonetheless also offered them as a template 
of formative spiritual process, and, in so doing, attempted to 
develop an idiom that could be taken up by others to articulate 
their experiences. 

This is one way of paraphrasing the considerable anomaly of 
the language that Jung had to find through sleepless nights from 
I9I3 onward. That language shifted its shape, altered its scale, 
and weighed both megrims and tons. Therefore it comes as 
no surprise that in his more elevated passages Jung relied on 
the resonance of the Luther Bible, itself a translation that had 
achieved rocklike stability within German culture. Ein Jeste Burg, 
"a mighty fortress:" thus our own reliance here on the King James 
Version of the Bible (KJV) for comparable tonalities in English. 
Yet a paradox rises immediately: what Jung counted on in that 
resonance had transplanted an alien spirit into the Germanic 
Heimat or home, as one may likewise say of the Kjv'S deep embedding 
ofthe same implant inAnglo-Saxon culture. Franz Rosenzweig, 
translating parts of the Old Testament with Martin Buber in the 
mid-I920s, identified Luther's Bible as the great space-maker 
within Germanic spirit, precisely through Luther's close-in moves 

7 CW 9,1. 

toward his source: "For the comfort of our souls, we must retain 
such words, must put up with them, and so give the Hebrew 
some room where it does better than German can."8 Thus our 
own practice of not smoothing out Jung's several modes, or 
malcing them run more fluently than need be, or even regularizing 
his punctuation. Think of Dante's "shaggy" diction, or of still 
another maxim from Luther in Rosenzweig's notes: "The mud 
will cling to the wheel."9 

Yet even these profound allowances for archaic and original 
speech across abysses of Ineaning fail to approximate the 
destabilizing experience, in and through language, to which Jung 
testifies. His late~ comments in the published memoir, on his 
reservations about high-flown style/o in effect cover his tracks in 
Liber Novus. The original experience sent speech into a spin that 
animates the book's initiatic dimension. Language too undergoes 
a descent into hell and the realm of the dead, which divests one 
of speech even as it renews the capacity for utterance. 

The following instances give some idea of this factor's range, 
mapping the stresses in any sincere ventriloquism such as Jung 
risked by undertalcing a controlled seance with himself and 'his 
ground, with pen in hand. H6lderlin's hair-breadth space warps 
and Isaiah's tongue-borne burning coal both move in this league, 
along with Plato on "right frenzy" or divine Inadness: (I)"My soul 
spoke to me in a whisper, urgently and alarmingly: 'Words, words, 
do not make too many words. Be silent and listen: have you 
recognized your madness, and do you admit it? Have you noticed 
that all your foundations are all completely mired in madness?' "11 

(2) Jung's soul: "There are hellish webs of words, only words ... 
Be tentative with words, value them ... for you are the first who 
gets snared in them. For words have meanings. 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 the God."I2 (3) "But if the word is a 
symbol, it means everything. When the way enters death and 
we are surrounded by rot and horror, the way rises in the darkness 
and leaves the mouth as the saving symbol, the word."I3 (4) 
The dead woman: "Let me have the word-oh, that you cannot 
hearl How difficult-give me the wordl"I4 It then materializes in 
Jung's hand as HAP, the phallus. (5) Jung's soul: "You possess the 
word that should not be allowed to remain concealed."I5 (6) Jung: 
"What is myword? Itis the stammering ofa minor ..." Soul: "They 
do not see the fire, they do not believe your words, but they see 
your mark and unknowingly suspect you to be the messenger of 
the burning agony ...You stutter, you stammer."I6 In the protocols 
for his memoir, Jung recalls bringing to the original experiences 
in Liber N ovus only a "highly clumsy speech."I7 Yet one instance 
(7) strongly belies that later emphasis: "I knew that Philemon 
had intoxicated me and given me a language that was foreign to 
me and of a different sensitivity. All of this faded when the God 
arose and only Philemon kept that language."I8 
8 Martin Bubel' and Franz Rosenzweig, Scripture and Translation, tr. Lawrence Rosenwald with Everett Fox (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 

p. 49, citing Luther's Preface to his German Psalter. 
9 Ibid., p. 69. 
IO See above, p. 214. 
II See below, p. 298. 
I2 See below, p. 299. 
I3 See below, p. 310. 
I4 See below, p. 339. 
IS See below, p. 346. 
I6 See below, p. 346. 
I7 See below, MP, p. 148. 
I8 See below, p. 339. 

224 I 

This last instance indicates that Jung later attributed the 
mantic, dithyrambic speech oflayer two in everything before the 
Scrutinies section to Philemon. The literal intoxication described 
here is linguistic, a dramatized, ventriloquial version of Platonic 
divine madness. It therefore underscores our attempt to faithfully 
render the stylistic registers of Liber N ovus so as to present a 
vital aspect of Jung's literary experiment, as he grapples with 
attempting to find the most fitting idiom in which to cast the 
transformations of inner experience. Jung's search for the soul, 
then, stands at one with the search for appropriately dialogical 
and differentiated language. 

These instances in all their oscillations affect a reading of 
Jung's Collected works, and counsel caution with applying its 
conceptual tools to the task of reading and understanding Liber 
N ovus. To take but one example, one begins to see that it is too 
neat to equate the opposed yet related depths of Logos and Eros 
with the conceptual and lyrical-~antic registers found in Liber 
Novus. Jung's "Commentary" on the Elijah-Salome relationship 
included here shows that relationship to be developmental, a 
mystery play of "the formative process" that kindles love for the 
lowest in US.19 The modal span for language in Liber N ovus thus 
animates that mystery play but does not correspond directly to 
opposed psychological functions. 

19 See Appendix B. 
20 MP, p. 183. 

This complex respect for language instructs translators of 
Liber Novus in navigating the underworld/redemptive tensions 
spanned byits rhetoric. The great force behind the mantic tension in 
that rhetoric occupied Jung in the brief Epilogue he inscribed 
in the calligraphic volume in 1959, two years before his death. 
Once again plying the seas ofthose illuminated pages, he seems to 
have found any further summing-up to be unnecessary. Brealang 
offin midsentence, he left the book to stand on its own, as one strand 
of discourse within his whole effort. That counterpoint required 
no comment, any more than did the three registers of language 
within the book itself Ordeal was Commedia after all, calling for no 
retrospective theoretical justification. Liber N ovus would survive 
the gropings and peltings of reception. Jung had remarked in 
1957 to Aniela Jaffe that so much rubbish had been said about 
him, that any more didn't disturb him.20 That lifted pen therefore 
confidently consigned the book to its depth trajectory, steeply 
expanding into the quarry it had become, with both his Collected 
Works and the lakeside tower at Bollingen as its final extractions. 

In this note we have attempted to convey only the general 
principles that have guided this translation. A full discussion of 
the choices that confronted us and a justification ofthe decisions 
talcen would fill a volume as ample as this one. 


EDITORIAL NOTE I 225 


Editorial Note 

SONU SHAMDASANI 

Liber N ovus is an unfinished manuscript corpus, and it is not 
completely clear how Jung intended to complete it, or how he 
would have published it, had he decided to do so. We have a 
series of manuscripts, of which no single version can be taken 
as final. Consequently; the text could be presented in a variety of 
ways. This note indicates the editorial rationale behind the present 
edition. 

The following is the sequence of extant manuscripts for Liber 
Primus and Liber Secundus: 

Black Books 2-5 (November I9I3-April 1914) 

Handwritten Draft (Sumn1er 1914-1915) 

Typed Draft (circa 1915) 

Corrected Draft (with one layer of changes circa 1915; 

one layer of changes circa mid-I920S) 

Calligraphic Volume (1915-1930, resumed in 1959, 

left incomplete) 

Cary Baynes's transcription (1924-1925) 

Yale Manuscript. Liber Primus, minus the prologue 

(identical with Typed Draft) 

Copy-Edited Draft ofLiber Primus minus the prologue, 

with corrections in unknown hands (circa late I950S; 

edited version of the Typed Draft) 

For Scrutinies, we have: 

Black Books 5-6 (April I9I4-June 1916) 

Calligraphic Septem Sermones (1916) 

Printed Septem Sermones (1916) 

Handwritten Draft (circa 1917) 

Typed Draft (circa 1918) 

Cary Baynes's transcription (1925) (27 pages, incomplete) 

The arrangement presented here starts with a revision of Cary 
Baynes's transcription and a fresh transcription of the remaining 
material in the calligraphic volume together with the Typed 
Draft of Scrutinies, with line-by-line comparisons with all extant 
versions. The last thirty pages are completed from the Draft. The 
main variations between the different manuscripts concern the 
"second layer" ofthe text. These changes represent Jung's continued 
work of comprehending the psychological significance of the 
fantasies. As Jung considered Liber Novus to be an "attempt at an 
elaboration in terms of the revelation," the changes between the 
different versions present this "attempt at an elaboration," and 
therefore are an important part of the work itself. Thus the 
notes indicate significant changes between the different versions, 
and they present material that clarifies the meaning or 
context of a particular section. Each manuscript layer is important 
and interesting, and a publication of all of them-which 
would run to several thousand pages-would be a task for the 
future.! 

The criterion for including passages from the earlier 
manuscripts has been simply the question: does this inclusion 
help the reader comprehend what is talcing place? Aside from 
the intrinsic importance of these changes, noting them in the 
footnotes serves a second purpose-it shows how carefully Jung 
worked at continually revising the text. 

The Corrected Draft has two layers of corrections by Jung. The 

first set of corrections appears to have been done after the Draft 

was typed and before the transcription into the calligraphic 

volume, as it appears that it was this 1TIanuscript that Jung 

transcribed.2 A further set of corrections on approxi1TIately 

200 pages of the typescript appears to have been made after 

the calligraphic volume, and I would estimate that these were 

done sometime in the mid-I920s.These corrections 1TIodernize 

the language, and bring the terminology into relation with Jung's 

terminology from the period of psychological Types. Additional 

clarifications are also added. Jung even corrected material in 

the Draft that was deleted in the calligraphic volume. I have 

presented some of the significant changes in the footnotes. 

From them, it is possible for a reader to see how Jung would 

have revised the whole text, had he c01TIpleted this layer of cor


rections. 

Subdivisions have been added in Liber Secundus, chapter 21, 

"The Magician," and in Scrutinies for ease of reference. These are 

indicated by numbers in scrolled brackets: { }. Where possible, 

the date ofeach fantasy has been given from the Black Bool~s. The 

second layer added in the draft is indicated by [2], and the 

manuscript reverts to the sequence of the fantasies in the Blacl~ 

Books at the beginning of the following chapter. In the pas


sages where subdivisions have been added, the reversion to the 

sequence of the Black Books is indicated by [I]. 

The various manuscripts have different systems of 

paragraphing. In the Draft, paragraphs often consist of one or 

two sentences, and the text is presented like a prose poem. 

At the other extreme, in the calligraphic volume, there are 

lengthy passages of text with )10 paragraph breaks. The most 

logical paragraphing appears in Cary Baynes's transcription. 

She frequently took her cue for paragraph breaks from the 

presence of colored initials. Because it is unlikely that she 

would have reparagraphed the text without Jung's approval, her 

layout has formed the point ofdeparture for this edition. In some 

instances, the paragraphing has been brought closer into line 

with the Draft and the calligraphic volume. In the second half 

of her transcription, Cary Baynes transcribed the Draft, because 

the calligraphic volume had not been completed. Here, I have 

paragraphed the text in the same manner as established before. 

I believe that this presents the text in the clearest and easiest


to-follow form. 

In the calligraphic volume, Jung illustrated certain initials 
and wrote some in red and blue, and s01TIetimes increased the 
font of the text. The layout here attempts to follow these 
conventions. Because the initials in question aren't always the 
same in English and German, the choice of which initial to set 
in red in the English has been governed by its corresponding 
. location in the text. The bolding and increase of font size has 
been rendered by italics. The remainder of the text beyond that 
which Jung transcribed in the calligraphic volume has been set 
following the same conventions, to maintain consistency In the 
case of the Septem Sermones, the font coloring has followed Jung's 

printed version of1916. 

The decision to include Scrutinies in sequence with and as 

part of Liber N ovus is based on the following editorial rationale: 

The material in the Blacl~ Books commences in Nove1TIber 1913. 

Liber Secundus closes with material from April 19, 1914, and 

Scrutinies commences with material fr01TI the same day. The Black 

Books run consecutively until July 21,1914, and recommence on 

Interested readers may compare this edition with the sections from the Draft in the Kurt Wolff papers at Yale University and with Cary Baynes's transcription 
at the Contemporary Medical Archives at the Wellcome Collection, London. It is quite possible that other manuscripts may yet come to light. 

2 There are also some paint marks on this manuscript. 


226 I LIBER NOVUS 

June 3, 1915. In the hiatus, Jung wrote the: Handwritten Draft. 

When Cary Baynes transcribed Liber Novus between 1924 

and 1925, the first half ofher transcription followed Liber Novus 

itselfto the point reached by Jung in his own transcription into 

the calligraphic volume. It continues by following the draft, and 

then proceeds 27 pages into Scrutinies, ending midsentence. 

At the end of Liber Secundus, Jung's soul has ascended 
to Heaven following the reborn God. Jung now thinks that 
Philemon is a charlatan, and comes to his "I," whom he must live 
with and educate. Scrutinies continues directly from this point 
with a confrontation with his "I." The ascent of the reborn 
God is referred to, and his soul returns and explains why she 
had disappeared. Philemon reappears, and instructs Jung on 
how to establish the right relation to his soul, the dead, the 
Gods, and the daimons. In Scrutinies Philemon fully emerges and 
takes on the significance that Jung attached to him both in 
the 1925 seminar and in Memories. Only in Scrutinies do certain 
episodes in Liber Primus and Liber Secundus become clear. By the 
same token, the narrative in Scrutinies makes no sense if one has 
not read Liber Primus and Liber Secundus. 

At two places in Scrutinies, Liber Primus and Liber Secundus are 
mentioned in a way that strongly suggests that they are all part of 
the same work: 

And then the War broke out'. This opened my eyes about 
what I had experienced before and it also gave me the 
courage to say all that I havy written in the earlier part of 
this book3 

Since the God has ascended to the upper realms, <l>IAHMnN 
has also become different. He first appeared to me as a 
magician who lived in a distant land, but then I felt his 
nearness and, since the God has ascended, I knew that 

3 See below, p. 336. 
4 See below, p, 339. 

sJA. 
6JA, 

<l>IAHMnN had intoxicated me and given me a language 
that was foreign to me and of a different sensitivity. All of 
this faded when the God arose and only <l>IAHMQN kept 
that language. But I felt that he went on other ways than I 
did. Probably the greater part ofwhat I have written in the 
earlier part of this book was given to me by <l>IAHMQN.4 

These references to the "earlier part of this book" suggest that 
all of this indeed constitutes one book, and that Scrutinies was 
considered by Jung to be part ofLiber Novus. 

This view is supported by the number ofinternal connections 
between the texts. One example is the fact that the mandalas in 
Liber N ovus are closely connected to the experience ofthe selfand 
the realization ofits centrality depicted only in Scrutinies. Another 
example occurs in Liber Secundus, chapter 15; when Ezechiel and 
his fellow Anabaptists arrive, they tell Jung that they are going 
to Jerusalem's holy places because they are not at peace, not 
having fully finished with life. In Scrutinies, the dead reappear, 
telling Jung that they have been to Jerusalem, but did not find 
what they sought there. At that point, Philemon appears and 
the Septem Sermones begin. Perhaps Jung intended to transcribe 
Scrutinies into the calligraphic volume and illustrate it; there are 
ample blank pages. 

On January 8, 1958, Cary Baynes asked Jung: "Do you remember 
that you had me copy quite a bit of the Red Book itself while 
you were in Africa? I got as far as the beginning of the Prufungen 
[Scrutinies]. This goes beyond what Frau Jaffe put at K. W's [Kurt 
Wolff] disposal and he would like to read it. Is that OK?"S Jung 
replied on January 24, "I have no objections against your lending 
your notes ofthe 'Red Book' to Mr. Wolff"6 Here Cary Baynes, too, 
seems to have regarded Scrutinies as part ofLiber Novus. 

In citations in the notes, ellipses have been indicated by three 
periods. No emphases have been added. 


¥ 



THE WAY OF WHAT IS TO COME I 229 

[fo1. i(r)]I 
[Isaiah said: The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad 
for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.


The Way ofWhat is to Come 

It shall blossom 'abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and 
Isaias dixit: quis credidit auditui nostro et brachium Domini cui revelatum singing . . . Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the 
estr et ascendet sicut virgultum coram eo et sicut radix de terra sitienti non est ears ofthe deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap 
species ei neque decor et vidimus eum et non erat aspectus et desideravimus eum: as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness 
despectum et novissimum virorum virum dolorum et scientem infirmitatem shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched 
et quasi absconditus vultus eius et despectus unde nec reputavimus eum. vere ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs ofwater: 
languores nostros ipse tulit et dolores nostros ipse portavit et nos putavimus in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with 
eum quasi leprosum et percussum a Deo et humiliatum. Cap. liii/i~iv. reeds and rushes. And an highway shall be there, and a way, and 

it shall be called ~he way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass 
parvulus enim natus est nobis filius datus est nobis et factus est principatus over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, 
super umerum eius et vocabitur nomen eius Admirabilis consiliarius Deus shall not err therein. (Isaiah 35:1-8).]4 
fortis Paterfuturi saeculi princeps pacis. caput ix/vi. 

manu propria scriptum a C. G. lung anno Domini mcmxv in domu sua 
[Isaiah said: Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the Kusnach Turicense 
arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a 
tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form [Written by C. G. Jung with his own hand in his house in 
nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty Kiisnacht/Ziirich in the year 1915.] 
that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; 
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it / [HI i(v)] [2] If I speak in the spirit of this time,S I lnust say: fo1. i(l) / i(v) 
were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him no one and nothing can justify what I must proclaim to you. 
not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: Justification is superfluous to me, since I have no choice, but I 
yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. must. I have learned that in addition to the spirit of this time 
(Isaiah 53: 1-4)]2 there is still another spirit at work, namely that which rules the 

depths ofeverything contemporary:6 The spirit ofthis tilne would 
[For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my 
government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be humanity still thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me 
called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning. 
Father, The Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)]3 Filled with human pride and blinded by the presumptuous spirit 

of the times, I long sought to hold that other spirit away from 
Ioannes dixit: et Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis et vidimus me. But I did not consider that the spirit of the depths from 
gloriam eius gloriam quasi unigeniti a Patre plenum gratiae et veritatis. time immemorial and for all the future possesses a greater power 
Ioann. Cap. i/xiiii. than the spirit of this time, who changes with the generations. 

The spirit of the depths has subjugated all pride and arrogance to 
Dohn said: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us the power of judgment. He took away my belief in science, he 
(and we beheld his glory; the glory as of the only begotten of the robbed me ofthe joy ofexplaining and ordering things, and he let 
Father), full ofgrace and truth. (John 1:14).] devotion to the ideals of this time die out in me. He forced me 

down to the last and simplest things. 
Isaias dixit: laetabitur deserta et invia et exultabit solitudo et jforebit quasi The spirit of the depths took my understanding and all my 
lilium. germinans germinabit et exultabit laetabunda et laudans. tunc knowledge and placed them at the service of the inexplicable 
aperientur oculi caecorum et aures sordorum patebunt. tunc saliet sicut and the paradoxical. He robbed me of speech and writing for 
cervus claudus aperta erit lingua mutorum: quia scissae sunt in deserto aquae et everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together 
torrentes in solitudine et quae erat arida in stagnum et sitiens in fontes of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme meaning. 
aquarum. in cubilibus in quibus prius dracones habitabant orietur viror But the supreme meaning is the path) the way and the bridge to what is to 
calami et iunci. et erit ibi semita et via sancta vocabitur. non transibit per come. That is the God yet to come. It is not the coming God himself but his 
eam pollutus et haec erit vobis directa via ita ut stulti non errent per eam. image which appears in the supreme meaning. 7 God .is an image) and those 
Cap. xxxv. who worship him must worship him in the images ofthe supreme meaning. 

1 Medieval manuscripts were numbered by folios instead of pages. The front side of the folio is the recto (the right-hand page of an open book), and the back is the verso 
(the left-hand of an open book). In Liber Primus, Jung followed this practice. He reverted to contemporary pagination in Liber Secundus. 
2 In 1921, Jung cited the first three verses of this passage (from Luther's Bible), noting: "The birth of the Savior, the development of the redeeming symbol, takes place 
where one does not expect it, and from precisely where a solution is most improbable" (psyc1tological Types, CW 6, ¤439). 

3 In 1921, Jung cited this passage, noting: "The nature of the redeeming symbol is that ofa child, that is the childlikeness or presuppositionlessness ofthe attitude belongs 
to the symbol and its function. This 'childlike' attitude necessarily brings with it another guiding principle in place ofself-will and rational intentions, whose 'godlikeness' 
is synonymous with 'superiority.' Since it is ofan irrational nature, the guiding principle appears in a miraculous form. Isaiah expresses his connection very well (9:5) ...These 
honorific titles reproduce the essential qualities of the redeeming symbol. The criterion of 'godlike' effect is the irresistible power of the unconscious impulses" 
(psychological Types, cw 6, ¤442-43). 

4 In 1955/56, Jung noted that the union ofthe opposites of the destructive and constructive powers ofthe unconscious paralleled the Messianic state of fulfillment depicted 
in this passage (Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, ¤258). 
5 In Goethe's Faust, Faust says to Wagner: "What you call the spirit of the times / is fundamentally the gentleman's own mind, / in which the times are reflected" 
(Faust I, lines 577-79). 
6 The Draft continues: '~nd then one whom I did not know, but who evidently had such knowledge, said to me: 'What a strange task you have! You must disclose your 
innermost and lowermost.' / This I resisted since I hated nothing more than that which seemed to me unchaste and insolent" (p. I). 
7 In Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (1912), Jung interpreted God as a symbol of the libido (CW B, ¤III). In his subsequent work, Jung laid great emphasis on the 
distinction between the God image and the metaphysical existence of God (cf passages added to the revised retitled 1952 edition, Symbols ofTraniformation, CW 5, ¤95). 


230 I LIBER PRIMUS fo1. iCv) / iiCr) 

The supreme meaning is not a meaning and not an absurdity, it is image 
andforce in one, magnificence andforce together. 
The supreme meaning is the beginning and the end. It is the bridge ofgoing 
across andfulfillment. 8 

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

The image ofGod has ashadow. 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 ofGod throws ashadow that is just as great as itself. 

The supreme meaning is great and sman it is as wide as the space ofthe 
starry Heaven and as narrow as the cell ofthe 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 ofthe depths, however, conquered this arrogance, and 
I had to swallow the small as a means ofhealing the immortal in 
me. It completely burnt up my innards since itwas 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.9 

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 ofthe depths caught up with me, and forced the 
bitter drink between my lips.IO 

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

For the sal<e of my human weakness, the spirit of the depths 
gave me this word. Yet this word is also superfluous, since I 
do not speal< it freely; but because I must. I speak because the 
spirit robs me of joy and life if I do not spealcl2 I am the serfwho 
brings it and does not know what he carries in his hand. It would 
burn his hands ifhe 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." 

Itis 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?13 The sum oflife decides in laughter 
and in worship, not your judgment." 

I must also speal< 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."I4 

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 ofthis time with iron, the call ofthe desert would breal< 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 ofthe 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 

8 The terms hinubergehen (going across), Obergang (going-across), Untergang (down-going), and Brucke (bridge) feature in Nietzsche's zarathustra in relation to the 
passage from man to the Obermensch (superman). For example, "What is great in man is that he is a ~and not a mill: what can be loved in man is that he is a gQillg::. 
across and a~./ I love those who do not know how to live except their lives be a down-going, for they are those who are going over" (tr. R. Hollingdale 
[Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984], p. 44, tr. mod; words are as underlined in Jung's copy). 

9 Jung seems to be referring to episodes that occur later in the text: the healing of Izdubar (Liber Secundus, ch. 9), and the drinking of the bitter drink prepared by the 
solitary (Libel' Secundus, ch. 20). 
10 The Draft continues: "Who drinks this drink will never again thirst for this world nor for the afterlife since he drank crossing and completion. He drank the hot melting 

river oflife which congeals to hard ore in his soul and awaits new melting and mixture" (p. 4). 
II The calligraphic volume has: "this-supreme meaning." 
I2 The Drqft continues: "He who knows understands me and sees that I am not lying. May each one inquire ofhis own depth whether he needs what I say" (P.4). 
I3 Lit. Vermessener. This also carries the connotation ofthe adjective vermessen, that is, a lack or loss ofmeasure, and thus implies overconfidence, presumptuousness. 
14 A reference to the vision that follows. 


REFINDING THE SOUL I 231 

the depths in me was at the same time the ruler of the depths of what basis should I presume to teach your I give you news of the way of 
world affairs. this man, but not ofyour own way. My path is not your path therefore I 


ISIt happened in October ofthe year 1913 as I was leaving alone / cannot teach you. 24 The way is within us, but not in Gods, nor in teachings, fo1. i(v) / ii(r) 
for a journey; that during the day I was suddenly overcome in nor in laws. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life. 
broad daylight by a vision: I saw a terrible flood that covered all Woe betide those who live by way ofexamples! Life is not with them. If 
the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the you live according to an example, you thus live the life ofthat example, but 
Alps. It reached from England up to Russia, and from the coast of who should live your own life ifnot yourselfr So live yourselves. 25 
the North Sea right up to the Alps. I saw yellow waves, swimming The signposts havefallen, unblazed trails lie before US. 26 Do not be greedy 
rubble, and the death of countless thousands. to gobble up the fruits offoreign fields. Do you not know that you yourselves 

This vision lasted for two hours, it confused me and made me are thefirtile acre which bears everything that avails your 
ill. I was not able to interpret it. Two weeks passed then the vision Yet who today knows thisr who knows the way to the eternally fruitful 
returned, still more violent than before, and an inner voice spoke: climes ofthe soulr You seek the way through mere appearances, you study 
"look at it, it is completely real, and it will come to pass. You cannot books and give ear to all kinds ofopinion. What good is all thatr 
doubt this." I wrestled again for two hours with this vision, but it There is only one way and that is your way. 27 
held me fast. It left me exhausted and confused. And I thought my You seek the pathr I warn you away from my own. It can also be the 
mind had gone crazy.I6 wrong wayfor you. 


From then on the anxiety toward the terrible event that stood May each go his own way. 
directly before us kept coming back. Once I also saw a sea ofblood I will be no savior, no lawgiver, no master teacher unto you. You are no 
over the northern lands. longer little children. 28 


In the year 1914 in the month ofJune, at the beginning and end of Giving laws, wanting improvements, making things easier, has all become 
the month, and at the beginning ofJuly; I had the same dream three wrong and evil. May each one seek out his own way. The way leads to 
times: I was in a foreign land, and suddenly; overnight and right in mutual love in community. Men will come to see and fiel the similarity and 
the middle ofsummer, a terrible cold descended from space. All seas commonality oftheir ways. 
and rivers were locked in ice, every green living thing had frozen. Laws and teachings held in common compel people to solitude, so that 

The second dream was thoroughly similar to this. But the third they may escape the pressure ofundesirable contact, but solitude makes people 
dream at the beginning ofJuly went as follows: hostile and venomous. 

I was in a remote English land.I7 It was necessary that I return Therefore give people dignity and let each ofthem stand apart, so that each 
to my homeland with a fast ship as speedily as possible.I8 I reached mayfind his own fillowship and love it. 
home quicldy.I In my homeland I found that in the middle of Power stands against power, contempt against contempt, love against love.

9 

summer a terrible cold had fallen from space, which had turned Give humanity dignity, and trust that life willfind the better way. 
every living thing into ice. There stood a leaf-bearing but fruitThe 
one eye ofthe Godhead is blind, the one.ear ofthe Godhead is deaf, 
less tree, whose leaves had turned into sweet grapes full ofhealing the order ofits being is crossed by chaos. So be patient with the crippledness of 
juice through the working of the frost.2o I picked some grapes the world and do not overvalue its consummate beauty. 29 
and gave them to a great waiting throng.2I 

In reality; now, it was so: At the time when the great war 

Re-finding the Soul

broke out between the peoples of Europe, I found myself in 
Scotland,22 compelled by the war to choose the fastest ship and [HI ii(r)]30 
the shortest route home. I encountered the colossal cold that Cap i.3! 
froze everything, I met up with the flood, the sea of blood, and 
found my barren tree whose leaves the frost had transformed into [2] When I h~d the vision ofthe flood in October of the year 
a remedy. And I plucked the ripe fruit and gave it to you and I do 1913, it happened at a time that was significant for me as a lnan. 
not knowwhat I poured out for you, what bitter-sweet intoxicating At that time, in the fortieth year ofmy life, I had achieved everything 
drink, which left on your tongues an aftertaste ofblood. that I had wished for myself I had achieved honor, power, wealth, 

Believe me:23 It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On knowledge, and every human happiness. Then my desire for the 

IS The Corrected Drqft has: "I Beginning" (p. 7). 

16 Jung discussed this vision on several occasions, stressing different details: in his 1925 seminar Analytical Psychology (p. 41f), to Mircea Eliade (see above, p. 201), and in 
Memories (pp. 199-200). Jung was on the way to Schaffhausen, where his mother-in-law lived; her fifty-seventh birthday was on October 17-The journey by train takes 
about one hour. 

17 The Drqft continues: "with a friend (whose lack offarsightedness and whose improvidence I had in reality often noted)" (p. 8). 
18 The Drqft continues: "my friend, however, wanted to return on a small and slower ship, which I considered stupid and imprudent" (p. 8). 
19 The Drqft continues: "and there I found, strangely enough, my friend, who had evidently talcen the same faster ship without my noticing" (pp. 8-9). 
20 Ice wine is made by leaving grapes on the vine until they are frozen by frost. They are then pressed, and the ice is removed, leading to a highly concentrated delectable 


sweet wine. 
21 The Drqft continues: "This was my dream. All my efforts to understand it were in vain. I labored for days. Its impression, however, was powerful" (p. 9). Jung also 

recounted this dream in Memories (p. 200). 
22 See introduction, p. 20I. 
23 In the Drqft, this is addressed to "my friends" (p. 9). 
24 Cf the contrast to John 14:6: "Jesus said unto him, I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." 
25 The Drqft continues: "This is not a law, but notice of the fact that the time of example and law, and of the straight line drawn in advance has become overripe" (p. IO). 
26 The Drqft continues: "My tongue shall wither if I serve up laws, if I prattle to you about teachings. Those who seek such will leave my table hungry" (p. 10). 
27 The Drqft continues: "only one law exists, and that is your law. Only one truth exists, and that is your truth" (p. IO). 
28 The Drqft continues: "One should not turn people into sheep, but sheep into people. The spirit of the depth demands this, who is beyond present and past. Speak and 

write for those who want to listen and read. But do not run after men, so that you do not soil the dignity ofhumanity-it is a rare good. A sad deniise in dignity is better 
than an undignified healing. Whoever wants to be a doctor of the soul sees people as being sick. He offends human dignity. It is presumptuous to say that man is sick. 
Whoever wants to be the soul's shepherd treats people like sheep. He violates human dignity. It is insolent to say that people are like sheep. Who gives you the right to 
say that man is sick and a sheep? Give him human dignity so he may find his ascendancy or downfall, his way" (p. II). 


29 The Drqft continues: "This is all, my dear friends, that I can tell you about the grounds and aims ofmy message, which I am burdened with like the patient donlcey with 

a heavy load. He is glad to put it down" (p. 12). 
30 In the text, Jung identifies the white bird as his soul. For Jung's discussion of the dove in alchemy, see Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955/56) (CW 14, ¤81). 
31 The Corrected Drqft has: "First Nights" (p. 13). 


232 I LIBER PRIMUS fol. ii(r) / ii(v) 

increase of these trappings ceased, the desire ebbed from me 
and horror came over me.32 The vision of the flood seized me 
and I felt the spirit of th~ depths, but I did not understand 
him.33 Yet he drove me on with unbearable inner longing and 
I said: 

[1]34 "My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call 
you-are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have 
shaken the dust of all the lands frOln my feet, and I have come 
to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I 
have come to you again. Should I tell you everything I have 
seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear 
about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you 
must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live 
this life. 

This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the 
unfatholnable, which we call divine.35 There is no other way, 
all other ways are false paths. I found the right way, it led me to 
you, to my soul. I return, tempered and purified. Do you still 
know me? Howlong the separation lasted! Everything has become 
so different. And how did I find you? How strange my journey 
was! What words should I use to tell you on what twisted paths 
a good star has guided me to you? Give me your hand, my almost 
forgotten soul. How warm the joy at seeing you again, you long 
disavowed soul. Life has led me back to you. Let us thank the 
life I have lived for all the happy and all the sad hours, for every 
joy, for every sadness. My soul, my journey should continue with 
you. I will wander with you and ascend to my solitude."36 

[2] The spirit of the depths forced me to say this and at the 
same time to undergo it against mysel£ since I had not expected 
it then. I still labored misguidedly under the spirit of this time, 
and thought differently about the human soul. I thought and 
spoke much of the soul. I knew Inany learned words for her, I 
had judged her and turned her into a scientific object.3i I did 
not consider that my soul cannot be the object of my judgment 
and knowledge; much more are my judgment and knowledge the 
objects ofmy soul.38 Therefore the spirit of the depths forced me 
to speal( to my soul, to call upon her as a living and self-existing 
being. I had to become aware that I had lost my soul. 

From this we learn how the spirit of the depths considers the 
soul: he sees her as a living and self-existing being, and with this 
he contradicts the spirit of this time for whom the soul is a thing 
dependent on man, which lets herself be judged and arranged, 
and whose circumference we can grasp. I had to accept that what 
I had previously called my soul was not at all my soul, but a 
dead system.39 Hence I had to speal( to my soul as to something 
far offand unknown, which did not exist through me, but through 
whom I existed. 

He whose desire turns away from outer things, reaches the 
place of the soul.40 If he does not find the soul, the horror of 
emptiness will overcome him, and fear will drive him with a whip 
lashing time and again in a desperate endeavor and a blind desire 
for the hollow things of the world. He becOlnes a fool through 
his endless desire, and forgets the way of his soul, never to find 
her again. He will run after all things, and will seize hold of 
them, but he will not find his soul, since he would find her only 
in himself Truly his soul lies in things and men, but the blind 
one seizes things and men, yet not his soul in things and Inen. He 
has no knowledge of his soul. How could he tell her apart from 
things and men? He could find his soul in desire itsel£ but not 
in the objects ofdesire. Ifhe possessed his desire, and his desire 
did not possess him, he would lay a hand on his soul, since his 
desire is the image and expression of his soul. 41 

Ifwe possess the image of a thing, we possess half the thing. 

The image of the world is half the world. He who possesses 
the world but not its image' possesses only half the world, since 
his soul is poor and has nothing. The wealth of the soul exists in 
imagesY He who possesses the image of the world, possesses half 
the world, even if his humanity is poor and owns nothingY But 
hunger mal(es the soul into a beast that devours the unbearable 
and is poisoned by it. My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, 
otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart.44 

32 The Handwritten Draft has: "Dear Friends!" (p. I). The Draft has "Dear Friends!" (p. I). In his lecture at the ETH on June 14, 1935, Jung noted: "A point exists at about 
the thirty-fifth year when things begin to change, it is the first moment of the shadow side oflife, of the going down to death. It is clear that Dante found this point and 
those who have read zarathustra will know that Nietzsche also discovered it. When this turning point comes people meet it in several ways: some turn away from it; others 
plunge into it; and something important happens to yet others from the outside. Ifwe do not see a thing Fate does it to us" (Barbara Hannah, ed., Modern Psychology 
Vol. 1 and 2: Notes on Lectures given at the Eidgen6ssiche Technische Hochschule, zarich, by Prof Dr. C. G. jung, October 1933-july 1935, 2nd ed. [ZUrich: privately printed, 1959], p. 
223). 

33 On October 27,1913, Jung wrote to Freud breaking off relations with him and resigning as editor of thejahrbuchfar Psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen 
(William McGuire, ed., The Freud/jung Letters, tr. R. Mannheim and R.F.c. Hull [Princeton: Princeton University Press/Bollingen Series, 1974], p. 550). 

34 November 12, 1913. After "longing," the Drift has "at the beginning of the following month, I seized my pen and began writing this" (p. 13). 

35 This affirmation occurs a number of times in Jung's later writings-see for example, Jane Pratt, "Notes on a talk given by C. G. Jung: 'Is analytical psychology a religion?' " 
Springjournal ofArchetypal Psychology andjungian Thought (1972), p. 148. 
36 Jung later described his personal transformation at this time as an example of the beginning of the second half oflife, which frequently marked a return to the soul, 
after the goals and ambitions of the first halfoflife had ~een achieved (Symbols ofTraniformation [1952], CW 5, p. xxvi); see also "The turning point oflife" (1930, CW 8). 
37 Jung is referring here to his earlier work. For example, he had written in 1905, "Through the associations experiment we are at least given the means to pave the way for 
the experimental research ofthe mysteries ofthe,sick soul" ("The psychopathological meaning of the associations experiment," CW 2, ¤897). 
38 In psychological Types (1921) Jung noted that in psychology, conceptions are "a product ofthe subjective psychological constellation of the researcher" (CW 6, ¤9). This 
reflexivity formed an important theme in his later work (see my jung and the Making ofModem Psychology: The Dream ofa Science, ¤I). 

39 The Drift continues: "a deaq. system that I had contrived, assembled from so-called experiences and judgments" (p. 16). 

40 In 1913, Jung called this process the introversion of the libido ("On the question ofpsychological types," CW 6). 

4I 
In 1912, Jung had written, "It is a common error to judge longing in terms ofthe quality ofthe object. .. Nature is only beautiful on account of the longing and love accorded to it 
by man. The aesthetic attributes emanating therefrom apply first and foremost to the libido, which alone accounts for the beauty ofnature" (Traniformations and Symbols 
ofthe Libido, CW B, ¤147). 

42 In psychological Types, Jung articulated this primacy of the image through his notion ofesse in anima (CW 6, ¤66ff, ¤7IIff). In her diary notes, Cary Baynes commented 
on this passage: "What struck me especially was what you said about the "Bild" [image] being half the world. That is the thing that mal<es humanity so dull. They 
have missed understanding that thing. The world, that is the thing that holds them rapt. 'Das Bild', they have never seriously considered unless they have been poets" 
(February 8,1924, CFB). 

43 The Drift continues: "He who strives only for things will sink into poverty as outer wealth increases, and his soul will be afflicted by protracted illness" (p. 17). 

44 The Draft continues: "This parable about refinding the soul, my friends, is meant to show you that you have only seen me as halfa man, since my soul had lost me. 
I am certain that you did not notice this; because how many are with their souls today? Yet without the soul, there is no path that leads beyond these times" (p. 17). 
In her diary notes Cary Baynes commented on this passage: "February 8th [1924]. I came to your conversation with your soul. All that you say is said in the right way 
and is sincere. It is no cry of the yOlU1g man awakening into life but that ofthe mature man who has lived fully and richly in ways of the world and yet knows almost 
abruptly one night, say, that he has missed the essence. The vision came at the height ofyour powel~ when you could have gone on just as you were with perfect worldly 
success. I do not know how you were strong enough to give it heed. I am really for everything you say and understand it. Everyone who has lost the connection with his 
soul or has known how to give it life ought to have a chance to see this book. Every word so far lives for me and strengthens me just where I feel weak, but as you say 
the world is very far away from it in mood today. That does not matter too much, a book can swing even a whole world ifit is written in fire and blood" (CFB). 


SOUL AND GOD I 233 

found it again where I would never have foreseen it. You upheld

Soul and God 

my belief when I was alone and near despair. At every decisive 
[HI ii(r)2]45 moment you let Ine believe in myself" 
Cap. ii. 

[2] Like a tired wanderer who had sought nothing in the world 
On the second night I called out to my soul:46 apart from her, shall I come closer to my soul. I shall learn that 
"I am weary, my soul, my wandering has lasted too long, my my soul finally lies behind everything, and if I cross the world, 
search for myself outside of myself Now I have gone through I am ultimately doing this to find my soul. Even the dearest are 
events and find you behind all of them. For I made discoveries thelnselves not the goal and end of the l()ve that goes on seeking, 
on Iny erring through events, humanity, and the world. I found they are symbols of their own souls. 
men. And you, my soul, I found again, first in images within men My friends, do you guess to what solitude we ascend? 
and then you yourself I found you where I least expected you. I must learn that the dregs of my thought, my dreaIns, are the 
You cliInbed out of a dark shaft. You announced yourself to me speech ofmy soul. I must carry them in my heart, and go back and 
in advance in dreamsY They burned in my heart and drove me to forth over them in my mind, lil(e the words of the person dearest 
all the boldest acts of daring, and forced me to rise above myself to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I 
You let me see truths ofwhich I had no previous inlding. You let henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling ilnages 
me undertake journeys, whose endless length would have scared into objects ofmy daily consideration? You think that the dream is 
me, if the knowledge of them had not been secure in you. foolish and ungainly. What is beautiful? What is ungainly? What 

I wandered for many years, so long that I forgot that I is clever? What is foolish? The spirit ofthis time is your measure, 
possessed a soul.48 Where were you all this time? Which Beyond but the spirit of the depths surpasses it at both ends. Only the 
sheltered you and gave you sanctuary? Oh, that you must speal( spirit of this time knows the difference between large and small. 
through me, that my speech and I are your symbol and expression! But this difference is invalid, like the spirit which recognizes it. / fol. ii(r) / ii(v) 
How should I decipher you? 

Who are you, child? My dreams have represented you as a The spirit ofthe depths even taught me to consider Inyaction 
child and as a maiden.49 I am ignorant ofyour mystery.50 Forgive and my decision as dependent on dreams. Dreams pave the way 
me if I speal( as in a dream, like a drunkard-are you God? Is God for life, and they determine you without you understanding their 
a child, a maiden?51 Forgive me if I babble. No one else hears me. languageY One would like to learn this language, but who can 
I speak to you quietly, and you know that I am neither a drunkard teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a 
nor someone deranged, and that my heart twists in pain from the knowledge ofthe heart that gives deeper insight.54 The knowledge 
wound, whose darkness delivers speeches full of mockery: "You of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth 
are lying to yourself! You spoke so as to deceive others and make of any teacher, but grows out ofyou like the green seed from the 
them believe in you. You want to be a prophet and chase after dark earth. Scholarliness belong~ to the spirit of this time, but 
your ambition." The wound still bleeds, and I am far from being this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere 
able to pretend that I do not hear the mockery. that scholarly knowledge is not. 

How strange it sounds to me to call you a child, you who still But how can I attain the knowledge of the heart? You can 
hold the all-without-end in your hand.52 I went on the way ofthe attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full. You 
day, and you went invisibly with me, putting the pieces together live your life fully if you also live what you have never yet lived, 
meaningfully, and letting me see the whole in each part. but have left for others to live or to think.55 You will say: "But I 

You took away where I thought to take hold, and you gave me cannot live or think everything that others live or thinlc" But 
where I did not expect anything and time and again you brought you should say: "The life that I could still live, I should live, and 
about fate from new and unexpected quarters. Where I sowed, the thoughts that I could still thinl(, I should thinl(." It appears 
you robbed me of the harvest, and where I did not sow, you give as though you want to flee from yourself so as not to have to 
me fruit a hundredfold. And time and again I lost the path and live what remains unlived until now.56 But you cannot flee from 

45 In 1945, Jung commented on the symbolism of the bird and serpent in connection with the tree, "The philosophical tree" (ch. 12, CW 13). 
46 November 14, 1913. 
47 The Draft continues: "which were dark to me, and which I sought to grasp in my own inadequate way" (p. 18). 
48 The Drqft continues: "I belonged to men and things. I did not belong to myself" In Black Book 2, Jung states that he wandered for eleven years (p. 19). He had stopped 


writing in this book in 1902, taking it up again in the autumn of 1913. 
49 Blacle Book 2 continues: ''And I found you again only through the soul ofthe woman" (p. 8). 
50 Blacle Book 2 continues: "Look, I bear a wound that is as yet not healed: my ambition to malce an impression" (p. 8). 
51 Black Book 2 continues: "I must tell myself most clearly: does He use the image ofa child that lives in every man's' soul? Were Horus, Tages, and Christ not children? 

Dionysus and Heracles were also divine children. Did Christ, the God ofman, not call himself the son ofman? What was his innermost thought in doing so? Should the 
daughter ofman be God's name?" (p. 9). 


52 The Drqft continues: "How thick the earlier darkness was! How impetuous and how egotistic my passion was, subjugated by all the daimonsofambition, the desire for 
glory, greed, uncharitableness, and zeal! How ignorant I was at the time! Life tore me away, and I deliberately moved away from you and I have done so for all these 
years. I recognize how good all ofthis was. But I thought that you were lost, even though I sometimes thought that I was lost. But you were not lost. I went on the way 
of the day. You went invisibly with me and guided me step by step, putting the pieces together meaningfully" (pp. 20-21). 

53 
In 1912, Jung endorsed Maeder's notion ofthe prospective fi.mction ofthe dream (''An attempt at an account ofpsychoanalytic theory," CW 4, ¤452). In a discussion in 
the ZUrich Psychoanalytical Society on January 31,1913, Jlmg said: "The dream is not only the fulfillment ofinfatltile desires, but also symbolizes the future ... The dream 
provides the answer through the symbol, which one must understand" (MZS, p. 5). On the development ofJung's dream theory, see my]ung and the Making ofModern 
Psychology: The Dream ofaScience, ¤2. 

54 This echoes Blaise Pascal's famous statement, "The heart has its reasons ofwhich reason knows nothing" (yensees, 423 [London: Penguin, 1660/1995]' p. 127). Jung's 
copy of Pascal's work contains a number of marginal marks. 

55 
In 1912, Jung argued that scholarliness was insufficient ifone wanted to become a "knower of the human soul." To do this, one had to "hang up exact science and put 
away the scholar's gown, to say farewell to his study and wander with human heart through the world, through the horror ofprisons, mad houses and hospitals, through 
drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling dens, through the salons ofelegant society, the stock exchanges, the socialist meetings, the churches, the revivals and 
ecstasies of the sects, to experience love, hate and passion in every form in one's body" ("New paths of psychology," cw 7, ¤409). 

56 In 1931, Jung commented on the pathogenic consequences of the unlived life ofparents upon their children: "What usually has the strongest psychic effect on the child 
is the life which the parents ... have not lived. This statement would be rather too perfunctory and superficial ifwe did not add by way ofqualification: that part of 
their lives which might have been lived had not certain somewhat threadbare excuses prevented the parents from doing so" ("Introduction to Frances Wickes, 'Analyse 
der Kinderseele: " CW 17, ¤87). 


234 , LIBER PRIMUS fol. ii(v) / iii(r) 

yourself It is with you all the time and demands fulfillment. 
If you pretend to be blind and dumb to this demand, you feign 
being blind and deaf to yourself This way you will never reach 
the knowledge of the heart. 

The knowledge ofyour heart is how your heart is. 

From a cunning heart you will know cunning. 

From a good heart you will know goodness. 

So that your understanding becomes perfect, consider that your 
heart is both good and evil. You ask, "What? Should I also live evil?" 

The spirit ofthe depths demands: "The life that you could still 
live, you should live. Well-being decides, not your well-being, not 
the well-being of the others, but only well-being." 

Well-being is between me and others, in society. I, too, livedwhich 
I had not done before, and which I could still do. I lived 
into the depths, and the depths began to speal(. The depths taught 
me the other truth. It thus united 'sense and nonsense in me. 

I had to recognize that I am only the expression and symbol of 
the soul. In the sense of the spirit of the depths, I am as I am in 
this visible world a symbol ofmy soul, and I am thoroughly a ser£ 
completely subjugated, utterly obedient. The spirit of the depths 
taught me to say: "I am the servant ofa child." Through this dictum 
I learn above all the most extreme humility, as what I most need. 

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. 57 

Ifyou are boys, your God is awoman. 

Ifyou are women, your God is a boy. 

Ifyou are men, your God is amaiden. 

The God is where you are not. 

So: it is wise that one has aGod; this servesfor your peifection. 

A maiden is the pregnantfuture. 

A boy is the engenderingfuture. 

A woman is: havinggiven birth. 

A man is: having engendered. 

So: ifyou are childlike beings now, your God will descendfrom the height 
ofripeness to age and death. 

But ifyou are developed beings, having engendered or given birth, in body 
or in soul, so your God risesfrom the radiant cradle, to the incalculable height 
ofthe future, to the maturity andfullness ofthe coming time. 

He who still has his life before him is a child. 

He who lives life in the present is developed. 

Ifyou thus live all that you can live, you are developed. 

He who is a child in this time, his Goldies. 

He who is developed in this time, his God continues to live. 

The spirit ofthe depths teaches this mystery. 

Prosperous and woeful are those whose God is developed! 

Prosperous and woeful are those whose God is a child! 

What is better, that man has life ahead ofhim, or that God does? 

I know no answer. Live; the unavoidable decides. 

The spirit ofthe depths taught me that my life is encompassed by the divine 
child. 58 From his hand everything unexpected came to me, everything living. 
This child is what I feel as an eternally springing youth in me. 59 
I n childish men you feel the hopeless transience. All that you saw passing 

is yet to comefor him. His future isfull oftransience. 
But the transience ofthe things coming toward you has never yet experi~ 
enced ahuman meaning. 
Your continuing to live is a living onward. You engender and give birth 
to what is to come, you arefecund, you live onward. 
The childish is unfruitful, what is to come to him is what already has 'been 
engendered and already withered. It does not live onward. 60 

My God is a child, so wonder not that the spirit of this time in 
me is incensed to mockery and scorn. There will be no one who 
will laugh at me as I laughed at myself 

Your God should not be a man ofmockery, rather you yourself 
will be the man of mockery. You should mock yourself and rise 
above this. If you have still not learned this from the old holy 
books, then go there, drink the blood and eat the flesh ofhim who 
was mocked61 and tormented for the sake of our sins, so that you 
totally become his nature, deny his being-apart-from-you; you 
should be he himsel£ not Christians but Christ, otherwise you 
will be of no use to the coming God. 

Is there anyone among you who believes he can be spared the 
way? Can he swindle his way past the pain of Christ? I say: "Such 
a one deceives himself to his own detriment. He beds down on 
thorns and fire. No one can be spared the way ofChrist, since this 
way leads to what is to come. You should all become Christs.62 

You do not overcome the old teaching through doing less, but 
through doing more. Every step closer to my soul excites the scornful 
laughter ofmy devils, those cowardlyear-whisperers and poison-mixers. 
Itwas easy for them to laugh, since I had to do strange things. 

On the Service of the Soul 

[HI ii(v)] 
Cap. iii. 

630n the following night I had to write down all the dreams 
that I could recollect, true to their wording.64 The meaning 
of this act was dark to m~. Why all this? Forgive the fuss that 
rises in me. Yet you want me to do this. What strange things 
are happening to me? I know too much not to see on what 

57 In the 1925 seminar, Jtmg explained his thoughts at this time: "These ideas about the anima and animus led me ever further afield into metaphysical problems, and more things 
crept up for reexamination. At that time I was on the Kantian basis that there were things that could never be solved and that therefore should not be speculated about, but 
it seemed to me that if I could find such definite ideas about the anima, it was quite worthwhile to try to formulate a conception of God. But I could arrive at nothing 
satisfactory and thought for a time that perhaps the anima figure was the deity I said to myself that perhaps men had had a female God originally, but growing tired of 
being governed by women, they had then overthrown this God. I practically threw the whole metaphysical problem into the anima and conceived ofit as the dominating 
spirit of psyche. In this way I got into a psychological argument with myself about the problem of God" (Analytical Psychology, p. 46). 

58 
In 1940, Jung presented a study of the motif of the divine child, in a collaborative volume with the Hungarian classicist Karl Kerenyi (see "On the psychology of the 
child archetype," cw 9, I). Jung wrote that the child motif occurs frequently in the individuation process. It does not represent one's literal childhood, as is emphasized 
by its mythological nature. It compensates the onesidedness ofconsciousness and paves the way for the future development of the personality In certain conditions of 
conflict, the unconscious psyche produces a symbol that tmites the opposites. The child is such a symbol. It anticipates the sel£ which is produced through the synthesis 
of the conscious and unconscious elements of the personality The typical fates that befall the child indicate the kind of psychic events accompanying the genesis of the 
self The wonderful birth of the child indicates that this happens psychically as opposed to physically. 

59 In 1940, Jtmg wrote: "an essential aspect ofthe child motifis its futural character. The child is potential future" ("On the psychology of the child archetype," cw9, I, ¤278). 

60 The Draft continues: "My friends, as you can see, mercy is granted to the developed, not the childish. I thank my God for this message. Do not let the teachings of 
Christianity deceive you! Its teachings are good for the most mature minds ofbygone time. Today, it serves immature minds. Christianity no longer promises us grace, 
and yet we still need mercy. That which I tell you is the way ofwhat is to come, my way to mercy" (p. 27). 

61 I.e., Christ. C£ Jtmg, "Transformation symbolism in the mass" (1942, CW II). 

62 In Answer to]ob Jung noted: "Through the indwelling of the third divine person in man, namely the Holy Ghost, a christification of the many arises" (1952, CW II, ¤758). 

63 November IS, 1913. 

64 In Black Book 2, Jung wrote down here the two pivotal dreams he had when he was nineteen years old which led him to turn to natural science (p. I3f); they are described 
in Memories, p. 105£ 


THE DESERT I 235 

swaying bridges I go. Where are you leading me? Forgive my You dread the depths; it should horrify you, since the way ofwhat is to 
excessive apprehension, brimful of knowledge. My foot hesitates come leads through it. You must endure the temptation offtar and doubt, 
to follow you. Into what mist and darkness does your path lead? and at the same time acknowledge to the bone that your ftar is justified and 
Must I also learn to do without meaning? If this is what you your doubt is reasonable. How otherwise / could it be a true temptation and a fo1. ii(v) / iii(r) 
demand, then so be it. This hour belongs to you. What is there, true overcomingi' 
where there is no meaning? Only nonsense, or madness, it seems Christ totally overcomes the temptation ofthe devil, but not the temptation 
to me. Is there also a supreme meaning? Is that your meaning, ofGod to good and reason. 67 Christ thus succumbs to cursing. 68 
my soul? I limp after you on crutches of understanding. I am You still have to learn this, to succumb to no temptation, but to do every~ 
a man and you stride like a God. What torture! I must return thing ofyour own will; then you will be free and beyond christianity. 
to mysel£ to my smallest things. I saw the things of my soul as I have had to recognize that I must submit to what I ftar; yes, even more, 
small, pitiably small. You force me to see them as large, to malce that I must even love what horrifies me. We must learn such yom that saint 
them large. Is that your aim? I follow, but it terrifies me. Hear who was disgusted by the plague inftctions; she drank the pus cifplague boils and 
my doubts, otherwise I cannot follow, since your meaning is a became aware that it smelled like roses. The acts cifthe saint were not in vain. 69 
supreme meaning, and your steps are the steps of a God. I n everything regarding your salvation and the attainment ofmercy, you 

I understand, I must not think either; should thought, too, no are dependent on your soul. Thus no sacrifice can be too(greatfor you. Ifyour 
longer be? I should give myself completely into your hands-but virtues hinder you yom salvation, discard them, since they have become evil 
who are you? I do not trust you. Not once to trust, is that my love to you. The slave to virtuefinds the way as little as the slave to vices. 70 
for you, my joy in you? Do I not trust every valiant man, and not Ifyou believe that you are the master ofyour soul, then become her ser~ 
you, my soul? Your hand lies heavy on me, but I will, I will. Have vant. Ifyou were her servant, make yourselfher master, since she needs to be 
I not sought to love men and trust them, and should I not do this ruled. These should be yourfirst steps. 
with you? Forget my doubts, I know it is ignoble to doubt you. 
You know how difficult it is for me to set aside the beggar's pride During six further nights, the spirit of the depths was silent in 
I talce in my own thought. I forgot that you are also one of my me, since I swayed between fear, defiance, and nausea, and was 
friends, and have the first right to my trust. Should what I give wholly the prey of my passion. I could not and did not want to 
them not belong to you? I recognize my injustice. It seems to me listen to the depths. But on the seventh night, the spirit of the 
that I despised you. My joy at finding you again was not genuine. depths spoke to me: "Look into your depths, pray to your depths, 
I also recognize that the scornful laughter in me was right. waken the dead."7! 

I must learn to love yoU.65 Should I also set aside self-judgment? But I stood helpless and did not know what I could do. I 
I am afraid. Then the soul spoke to me and said: "This fear looked into mysel£ and the only thing I found within was the 
testifies against me!" It is true, it testifies against you. It kills the memory of earlier dreams, all of which I wrote down without 
holy trust between you and me. knowing what good this would do. I wanted to throw everything 

[2] How hard isfate! Ifyou take astep toward your soul, you will atfirst away and return to the light ofday. But the spirit stopped me and 
miss the meaning. You will believe that you have sunk into meaninglessness, forced me back into myself 
into eternal disorder. You will be right! Nothing will deliver youyom disorder 
and meaninglessness, since this is the other halfofthe world. 
Your God is a child, so long as you are not childlike. Is the child order, The Desert 
meaningi' Or disorder, capricei' Disorder and meaninglessness are the mother [HI iii(r)] 
oforder and meaning. Order and meaning are things that have become and Cap. iv. 
are no longer becoming. 

You open the gates ofthe soul to let the dark ffood ofchaosffow into your 72 Sixth night. My soul leads me into the desert, into the desert 
order and meaning. If you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the of my own self I did not think that my soul is a desert, a barren, 
divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness. hot desert, dusty and without drink. The journey leads through 

You are aftaid to open the doori' I too was ayaid, since we hadforgotten hot sand, slowly wading without a visible goal to hope for? How 
that God is terrible. Christ taught: God is love. 66 But you should know that eerie is this wasteland. It seems to me that the way leads so far 
love is also terrible. away from mankind. I take my way step by step, and do not know 

I spoke to a loving soul and as I drew nearer to her, I was overcome by how long my journey will last. 
horror, and I heaped up a wall ofdoubt, and did not anticipate that I thus Why is my self a desert? Have I lived too much outside ofmyself 
wanted to protect myselfyom myftaiful soul. in men and events? Why did I avoid my self? Was I not dear to 

65 
In Black Book 2, Jung noted here: "Here, someone stands beside me and whispers terrible things into my ear: 'You write to be printed and circulated among people. You want 
to cause a stir through the unusual. Nietzsche did this better than you. You are imitating Saint Augustine' " (p. 20). The reference is to Augustine's Confessions (400 
CE), a devotional work written when he was forty-:five years old, in which he narrates his conversion to Christianity in an autobiographical form (Corifessions, tr. H. Chadwick 
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991]). The Confessions are addressed to God, and recount the years ofhis wandering from God and the manner ofhis return. Echoing this 
in the opening sections ofLiber N ovus, Jung addresses his soul and recounts the years ofhis wandering away from her, and the manner ofhis return. In his published works, 
Jung frequently cited Augustine, and refe1'1'ed to his Corifessions several times in Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido. 

66 The :first letter ofJohn: "God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him" (I John 4:16). 
67 Christ was tempted by the devil for forty days in the desert (Lul<.e 4:1-13). 
68 Matthew 21:18-20 : "Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a :fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, 


but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the :fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, 
saying, How soon is the:fig tree withered away!" In 1944 Jung wrote: "The Christian-my Christian-knows no curse formulas; indeed he does not even sanction the 
cursing of the innocent :fig-tree by the rabbi Jesus" ("Why I have not adopted the 'Catholic truth'?" CW 18, ¤1468). 


69 The Draft continues: "They may serve for your redemption" (p. 34). 

70 In Thus Spoke zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote: 'Md even when one has all the virtues, there is still one thing to remember: to send even these virtues to sleep at the proper 
time" ("Of the chairs ofvirtue," p. 56). In 1939 Jung commented on the Eastern notion ofliberation from virtues and vices ("Commentary to the 'Tibetan Book of Great 
Liberation," CW II, ¤826). 

71 November 22,1913. In Black Book 2, this sentence reads "says a voice" (p. 22). On November 21 Jung had given a presentation to the Ziirich Psychoanalytical Society on 
"Formulations on the psychology of the unconscious." 
72 November 28, 1913. 


236 I LIBER PRIMUS fol. iii(r) / iii (v) 

myself? But I have avoided the place ofmy soul. I was my thoughts, 
after I was no longer events and other men. But I was not my 
self, confronted with my thoughts. I should also rise up above my 
thoughts to my own self My journey goes there, and that is why it 
leads away from men and events into solitude. Is it solitude, to be 
with oneself? Solitude is true only when the self is a desert.73 Should 
I also mal<e a garden out of the desert? Should I people a desolate 
land? Should I open the airy magic garden ofthe wilderness? What 
leads me into the desert, and what am I to do there? Is it a deception 
that I can no longer trust my thoughts? Only life is true, and only 
life leads me into the desert, truly not my thinlcing, that would like to 
return to thoughts, to men and events, since it feels uncanny in the 
desert. My soul, what am I to do here? But my soul spoke to me and 
said, "Wait." I heard the cruel word. Torment belongs to the desert.74 

Through giving my soul all I could give, I came to the place of 
the soul and found that this place was a hot desert, desolate and 
unfruitful. No culture of the mind is enough to make a garden 
out ofyour soul. I had cultivated my spirit, the spirit of this time 
in me, but not that spirit of the depths that turns to the things 
of the soul, the world of the soul. The soul has its own peculiar 
world. Only the self enters in there, or the man who has completely 
become his self, he who is neither in everits, nor in men, nor in 
his thoughts. Through the turning of my desire from things and 
men, I turned my' self away from things and men, but that is 
precisely how I became the secure prey of my thoughts, yes, I 
wholly became my thoughts. 

(2] I also had to detach myself from my thoughts through turning 
my desire away from them. And at once, I noticed that my self 
became a desert, where only the sun of unquiet desire burned. I 
was overwhelmed by the endless infertility of this desert. Even if 
something could have thrived there, the creative power of desire 
was still absent. Wherever the creative power of desire is, there 
springs the soil's own seed. But do not forget to wait. Did you not 
see that when your creative force turned to the world, how the 
dead things moved under it and through it, how they grew and 
prospered, and how your thoughts flowed in rich rivers? Ifyour 
creative force now turns to the place ofthe soul, you will see how 
your soul becomes green and how its field bears wonderful fruit. 

Nobody can spare themselves the waiting and most will be 
unable to bear this torment, but will throw themselves with greed 
back at men, things, and thoughts, whose slaves they will become 
from then on. Since then it will have been clearly proved that this 
man is in,capable of enduring beyond things, men, and thoughts, 
and they will hence become his master and he will become their 
fool, since he cannot be without them, not until even his soul 
has become a fruitful field. Also he whose soul is a garden, needs 
things, men, and thoughts, but he is their friend and not their 
slave and fool. 

Everything to come was already in images: to find their soul, 
the ancients went into the desert.75 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. There they found 

the abundance ofvisions, the fruits of the desert, the wondrous 
flowers of the soul. Think diligently about the images that the 
ancients have left behind. They show the way ofwhat is to come. 
look back at the collapse ofempires, ofgrowth 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? 

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.76 Consider this and think upon it. 

The words that oscillate between nonsense and supreme 
meaning are the oldest and truest. 

Experiences in the Desert 

[HI iii(r) 2] 

77After a hard struggle I have come a piece ofthe way nearer to 
you. How hard this struggle was! I had fallen into an undergrowth 
of doubt, confusion, and scorn. I recognize that I must be alone 
with my soul. I come with empty hands to you, my soul. What 
do you want to hear? But my soul spoke to me and said, "Ifyou 
come to a friend, do you come to tal<e?" I knew that this should 
not be so, but it seems to me that I am poor and empty. I would 
like to sit down near you and at least feel the breath of your 
animating presence. My way is hot sand. All day long, sandy, dusty 
paths. My patience is sometimes weak, and once I despaired of 
myself, as you know. 

My soul answered and said, "You speal< to me as ifyou were a 
child complaining to its mother. I am not your mother." I do not 
want to complain, but let me say to you that mine is a long and 
dusty road. You are to me like a shady tree in the wilderness. I 
would like to enjoy your shade. But my soul answered, "You are 
pleasure-seelcing. Where is your patience? Your time has not yet 
run its course. Have you forgotten why you went into the desert?" 

My faith is weal<, my face is blind from all that shimmering 
blaze of the desert sun. The heat lies on me like lead. Thirst 
torments me, I dare not thinl< how unendingly long my way is, 
and above all, I see nothing in front ofme. But the soul answered, 
"You speak as ifyou have still learned nothing. Can you not wait? 
Should everything fall into your lap ripe and finished? You are 
full, yes, you teem with intentions and desirousness!-Do you 
still not know that the way to truth stands open only to those 
without intentions?" 

I know that everything you say, Oh my soul, is also my thought. 
But I hardly live according to it. The soul said, "How; tell me, do 
you then believe that your thoughts should help you?" I would 
always like to refer to the fact that I am a human being, just a 
human being who is weak and sometimes does not do his best. 
But the soul said, "Is this what you think it means to be human?" 
You are hard, my soul, but you are right. How little we still commit 
ourselves to living. We should grow like a tree that likewise 
does not know its law. We tie ourselves up with intentions, 
not mindful of the fact that intention is the limitation, yes, the 

73 Black Book 2 continues: "I hear the words: 'An anchorite in his own desert.' The monks in the Syrian desert occur to me" (P.33). 

74 Black Book 2 continues: "I think of Christianity in the desert. Physically, those ancients went into the desert. Did they also enter into the desert of their own self? Or was 
their self not as barren and desolate as mine? There they wrestled with the devil. I wrestle with waiting. It seems to me not less since it is truly a hot hell" (p. 35). 

75 Around 285, St. Anthony went to live as a hermit in the Egyptian desert, and other hermits followed, whom he and Pachomius organized into a community. This formed 
the basis of Christian monasticism, which spread to the Palestinian and Syrian deserts. In the fourth century, there were thousands ofmonks in the Egyptian desert. 

76 John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." 

77 December II, 19I3



DESCENT INTO HELL IN THE FUTURE I 237 

exclusion of life. We believe that we can illuminate the darkness Against this the scorn ofmy cleverness rose Up.80 Many will laugh at my 
with an intention, and in that way aim past the light.78How can foolishness. But no one will laugh more than I laughed at myself. 
we presume to want to know in advance, from where the light will So I overcame scorn. But when I had overcome it, I was near to my soul, 
come to us? and she could speak to me, and I was soon to see the desert becoming green. 

Let me bring only one complaint before you: I suffer from 
scorn, my own scorn. But my soul said to me, "Do you think 


Descent into Hell

little ofyourself?" I do not believe so. My soul answered, "Then 
listen, do you think little of me? Do you still not know that 


in the Future

you are not writing a book to feed your vanity, but that you 
are speaking with me? How can you suffer from scorn if you [HI iii(v)] 
address me with those words that I give you? Do you know, Cap. v. 
then, who I am? Have you grasped me, defined me, and made 
me into a dead formula? Have you measured the depths of my 8IIn the following night, the air was filled with many voices. 
chasms, and explored all the ways down which I am yet going to A loud voice called, "I am falling." Others cried out confused and 
lead you? Scorn cannot challenge you ifyou are not vain to the excited during this: "Where to? What do you want?" Should I 
marrow ofyour bones." Your truth is hard. I want to lay down entrust myselfto this confusion? I shuddered. It is a dreadful deep. 
my vanity before you, since it blinds me. See, that is why I also Do you want me to leave myself to chance, to the madness of my 
believed my hands were empty when I came to you today. I did own darkness? Wither? Wither? You fall, and I want to fall with 
not consider that it is you who fills empty hands ifonly they want you, whoever you are. 
to stretch out, yet they do not want to. I did not know that I am The spirit ofthe depths opened my eyes and I caught a glimpse 
your vessel, empty without you but brimming over with you. of the inner things, the world of my soul, the many-formed and 

[2] This was my twenty-fifth night in the desert. This is how changing. [Image iii (v) r] 
long it took my soul to awalcen from a shadowy being to her own 
life, until she could approach me as a free-standing being sepaI 
see a gray rock face along which I sink into great depths.82 
rate from me. And I received hard but salutary words from her. I I stand in black dirt up to my anldes in a dark cave. Shadows 
needed that talcing in hand, since I could not overcome the scorn sweep over me. I am seized by fear, but I know I must go in. 
within me. I crawl through a narrow crack in the rock and reach an inner 
The spirit of this time considers itself extremely clever, like every such cave whose bottom is covered with black water. But beyond this I 
spirit ofthe time. But wisdom is simpleminded, not just simple. Because of catch a glimpse ofa luminous red stone which I must reach. I wade 
this, the clever person mocks wisdom, since mockery is his weapon. He uses through the muddy water. The cave is full of the frightful noise 
the pointed, poisonous weapon, because he is struck by naive wisdom. If he ofshrieking voices.83 I take the stone, it covers a dark opening in the 
were not struck, he would not need the weapon. Only in the desert do we rock. I hold the stone in my hand, peering around inquiringly. I do 
become aware ofour terrible simplemindedness, but we are aftaid ofadmitting not want to listen to the voices, they keep me away84 But I want to 

)1. iii(r) / iii (v) 
it. {(That is why we are scornful. But mockery / does not attain simpleminded~ knOw. Here something wants to be uttered. I place my ear to the 
ness. The mockery falls on the mocker, and in the desert where no one hears opening. I hear the flow ofunderground waters. I see the bloody 
and answers, he sufficatesfrom his own scorn. head of a man on the dark stream. Someone wounded, someone 

The cleverer you are, the morefoolish your simplemindedness. The totally slain floats there. I talce in this image for a long time, shuddering. 
clever are total fools in their simplemindedness. We cannot save ourselves I see a large black scarab floating past on the dark stream. 
from the cleverness ofthe spirit ofthis time through increasing our cleverness, In the deepest reach of the stream shines a red sun, radiating 
but through accepting what our cleverness hates most, namely simpleminded~ through the dark water. There I see-and a terror seizes me-small 
ness. Yet we also do not want to be artificial fools because we have fallen serpents on the dark rock walls, striving toward the depths, 
into simplemindedness, rather we will be cleverfools. That leads to the supreme where the sun shines. A thousand serpents crowd around, veiling 
meaning. Cleverness couples itself with intention. Simplemindedness knows the sun. Deep night falls. A red stream of blood, thick red blood 
no intention. Cleverness conquers the world, but simplemindedness, the soul. springs up, surging for a long time, then ebbing. I am seized by 
So take on the vow ofpoverty ofspirit in order to partake ofthe soul. 79 fear. What did I see?85 [Image iii(v) 2] 

78 In "Commentary on 'The Secret ofthe Golden Flower' "(I929), Jung criticized the Western tendency to turn everything into methods and intentions. The cardinal 
lesson, as presented by the Chinese texts and by Meister Eckhart, was that ofallowing psychic events to happen of their own accord: "Letting things happen, the action 
through non-action, the 'letting go ofoneself' of Meister Eckhart, became the key for me that succeeded in opening the door to the way: One must be able to psychically 
let things happen" (CW I3, ¤20). .. 

79 Christ preached: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom ofheaven" (Matthew 5:3). In a number of Christian communities, members talce a vow ofpoverty. 
In I934, Jung wrote: "Just as in Christianity the vow ofworldly poverty turned the mind away from the riches ofthis earth, so spiritual poverty seeks to renounce the 
false riches ofthe spirit in order to withdraw not only from the sorry remnants-which today call themselves the protestant 'churches'-ofa great past, but also from all 
the allurements ofexotic aromas; in order, finally; to turn back to itself, where, in the cold light ofconsciousness, the blank barrenness of the world reaches to the very 
stars" ("On the archetypes of the collective unconscious," CW 9, I, ¤29). 

80 The Drcift continues: "This, too, is an image ofthe ancients, that they lived in things symbolically: they renounced wealth in order to have a share ofthe voluntary poverty 
oftheir souls. Therefore I had to grant my soul my most extreme poverty and need. And the scorn ofmy cleverness rose up against this" (P.47). 

81 
December 12 I9I3. The Corrected Drqfi has: !!j-v-rhe-My~Nightf! (p. 34). Black Book 2 continues: "The battle oflate was the battle with scorn. A vision that caused me 
three sleepless nights and tlu-ee days oftorment has likened me to G. Keller's druggist ofChamounix (from start to finish). I know and acknowledge this style. I have learned 
that one must give one's heart to men, but one's intellect to the spirit ofhumaruty; God. Then His work can be beyond vanity; since there is no more hypocritical whore than the 
intellect when it replaces the heart" (p. 4I). Gottfried Keller (I8I9-I890) was a Swiss writer. See "Der Apotheker von Chamow1ix: Ein Buch Romanzen," in Gottfried Keller, 
Gesammelte Gedichte: Erzahlttngen atts lem Nachlass (ZUrich: Artemis Verlag, I984), pp. 35I-4I7


82 The Draft continues: ''A dwarf clad entirely in leather stood before it, minding the entrance" (P.48). 

83 The Corrected Drcift continues: "The stone must be conquered, it is the stone of-the-torment, of the red light" (p. 35). The Corrected Drcift has: "It is a six-sided crystal that 
gives off a cold, reddish light" (p. 35). Albrecht Dieterich refers to the representation ofthe underworld in Aristophanes' The Frogs (which he understood to be of Orphic 
origin) as having a large lalce and a place with serpents (Nekyia: Beitrage zttr Erklarttng der nettemdeckten Petrttsapokalypse [Leipzig: Teubner, I893], p. 7I). Jung underlined 
these motifs in his copy. Dieterich referred to his description again on page 83, which Jung marked by the margin, and underlined "Darkness and Mud." Dieterich also 
referred to an Orphic representation ofa stream ofmud in the underworld (p. 8I). In his list ofreferences in the back ofhis copy; Jung noted, "8I Mud." 

84 Black Book 2 continues: "This dark hole-I want to lmow where it leads and what it says? An oracle? Is it the place of Pythia?" (P.43). 

85 Jung narrated this episode in his I925 seminar, stressing different details. He commented: "When I came out of the fantasy; I realized that my mechanism had worked 
wonderfully well, but I was in great confusion as to the meaning ofall those things I had seen. The light in the cave from the crystal was, I thought, like the stone of 
wisdom. The secret murder of the hero I could not understand at all. The beetle ofcourse I knew to be an ancient sun symbol, and the setting sun, the luminous red 


238 I LIBER PRIMUS fo1. iii(v) / iv(r) 

Heal the wounds that doubt inflicts on me, my soul. That too 
is to be overcome, so that I can recognize your supreme meaning. 
How far away everything is, and how I have turned back! My 
spirit is a spirit of torment, it tears asunder my contemplation, it 
would dismantle everything and rip it apart. I am still a victim of 
my thinking. When can I order my thinking to be quiet, so that 
my thoughts, those unruly hounds, will crawl to my feet? How 
can I ever hope to hear your voice louder, to see your face clearer, 
when all my thoughts howl? 

I am stunned, but I want to be stunned, since I have sworn to 
you, my soul, to trust you even ifyou lead me through madness. 
How shall I ever walk under your sun if I do not drink the bitter 
draught of slumber to the lees? Help me so that I do not choke 
on my own knowledge. The fullness of my knowledge threatens 
to fall in on me. My knowledge has a thousand voices, an army 
roaring like lions; the air trembles when they speak, and I am 
their defenseless sacrifice. Keep it far from me, science that clever 
knower,86 that bad prison master who binds the soul and imprisons 
it in a lightless cell. But above all protect me from the serpent of 
judgment, which onlyappears to be a healing serpent, yet in your 
depths is infernal p~ison and agonizing death. I want to go down 
cleansed into your depths with white garments and not rush in 
like some thie{ seizing whatever I can and fleeing breathlessly. 
Let me persist in divine87 astonishment, so that I am ready to 
behold your wonders. Let me lay my head on a stone before your 
door, so that I am prepared to receive your light. 

[2] When the desert begins to bloom, it brings forth strange 
plants. You will consider yourself mad, and in a certain sense you 
will in fact be mad.88 To the extent that the Christianity of this 
time lacks madness, it lacks divine life. Tal<e note of what the 
ancients taught us in images: madness is divine.89 But because 
the ancients lived this image concretely in events, it became a 
deception for us, since we became masters of the reality of the 
world. It is unquestionable: if you enter into the world of the 
soul, you are like a madman, and a doctor would consider you to 
be sick. What I say here can be seen as sickness, but no one can 
see it as sickness more than I do. 
This is how I overcame madness. Ifyou do not know what divine 
madness is, suspend judgment and wait for the fruits.90 But know 
that there is a divine madness which is nothing other than the 
overpowering of the spirit of this time through the spirit of the 
depths. Speal< then ofsick delusion when the spirit of the depths 
can no longer stay down and forces a man to speak in tongues 
instead of in human speech, and makes him believe that he 
himselfis the spirit of the depths. But also speal< ofsick delusion 
when the spirit of this time does not leave a man and forces him 
to see only the surface, to deny the spirit of the depths and to 
take himself for the spirit of the times. The spirit of this time is 
ungodly; the spirit of the depths is ungodly; balance is godly. 

Because I was caught up in the spirit of this time, precisely 
what happened to me on this night had to happen to me, namely 
that the spirit of the depths erupted with force, and swept away 
the spirit ofthis time with a powerful wave. But the spirit of the 
depths had gained this power, because I had spoken to my soul 
during 25 nights in the desert and I had given her all my love 
and submission. But during the 25 days, I gave all my love and 
submission to things, to men, and to the thoughts of this time. 
I went into the desert only at night. 

Thus can you differentiate sick and divine delusion. Whoever 
does the one and does without the other you may call sick since 
he is out ofbalance. 

But who can withstand fear when the divine intoxication 
and madness comes to him? Love, soul, and God are beautiful 
and terrible. The ancients brought over some of the beauty of 
God into this world, and this world became so beautiful that it 
appeared to the spirit of the time to be fulfillment, and better 
than the bosom of the Godhead. The frightfulness and cruelty 
of the world lay under wraps and in the depths of our hearts. If 
the spirit of the depths seizes you, you will feel the cruelty and 
cry out in torment. The spirit ofthe depths is pregnant with ice, 
fire, and death. You are right to fear the spirit of the depths, as 
he is full ofhorror. 

You see in these days what the spirit of the depths bore. You 
did not believe it, but you would have known it ifyou had taken 
counsel with your fear.91 

disk, was archetypal. The serpents I thought might have been connected with Egyptian material. I could not then realize that it was all so archetypal, I need not seek 
connections. I was able to link the picture up with the sea ofblood I had previously fantasized about. / Though I could not then grasp the significance ofthe hero 
killed, soon after I had a dream in which Siegfried was killed by myself It was a case of destroying the hero ideal ofmy efficiency. This has to be sacrificed in order 
that a new adaptation can be made; in short, it is connected with the sacrifice of the superior function in order to get at the libido necessary to activate the inferior 
functions" (Analytical Psychology, p. 48). (The killing of Siegfried occurs below in ch. 7-) Jung also anonymously cited and discussed this fantasy in his ETH lecture on 
June 14, 1935 (Modern Psychology, vols. 1. and 2, p. 223). 

86 In the Corrected Draft, "Science" is deleted (p. 37). 

87 In the Corrected Draft, "more blessed" is substituted (p. 38). 

88 In the Corrected Draft, this sentence is substituted by: "Madness grows" (p. 38). 

89 The theme ofdivine madness has a long history. Its 10c1..\s classicus was Socrates's discussion ofit in the Phaedrus: madness, "provided it comes as a gift ofheaven, is the 
channel by which we receive the greatest blessings" (Plato, Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII, tr. W Hamilton [London: Penguin, 1986], p. 46, line 244). Socrates distinguished 
four types ofdivine madness: (I) inspired divination, such as by the prophetess at Delphi; (2) instances in which individuals, when ancient sins have given rise 
to troubles, have prophesied and incited to prayer and worship; (3) possession by the Muses, since the technically skilled untouched by the madness of the Muses will 
never be a good poet; and (4) the lover. In the Renaissance, the theme ofdivine madness was talcen up by the Neoplatonists such as Ecino and by humanists such as 
Erasmus. Erasmus's discussion is particularly important, as it fuses the classical Platonic conception with Christianity. For Erasmus, Christianity was the highest type 
of inspired madness. Like Plato, Erasmus differentiated between two types ofmadness: "Thus as long as the soul uses its bodily organs aright, a man is called sane; but 
truly, when it bursts its chains and tries to be free, practising running away from its prison, then one calls it insanity. If this happens through disease or a defect of the 
organs, then by common consent it is, plainly, insanity. And yet men of this kind, too, we find foretelling things to come, knowing tongues and writings which they 
ha.d never studied beforehand-altogether showing forth something divine" (In Praise ofFolly, tr. M. A. Screech [London: Penguin, 1988], pp. 128-29). He adds that if 
insanity "happens through divine fervor, it may not be the same kind ofinsanity, but it is so like it that most people malce no distinction." For lay people, the two forms 
ofinsanity appeared the same. The happiness that Christians sought was "nothing other than a certain kind ofmadness." Those who experience this "experience something 
which is very like madness. They spealc incoherently and unnaturally, utter sound without sense, and their faces suddenly change expression ... in fact they are 
truly beside themselves" (ibid., pp. 129-33). In 1815, the philosopher F.WJ. Schelling discussed divine madness in a manner that has a certain proximity to Jung's discussion, 
noting that "The ancients did not speak in vain ofa divine and holy madness." Schelling related this to the "inner self-laceration of nature." He held that "nothing 
great can be accomplished without a constant solicitation ofmadness, which should always be overcome, but should never be entirely lacking." On the one hand, there 
were sober spirits in whom there was no trace ofmadness, together with men ofunderstanding who produced cold intellectual works. On the other, "there is one kind of 
person that governs madness and precisely in this overwhelming shows the highest force ofthe intellect. The other kind ofperson is governed by madness and is someone 
who is really mad" (The Ages ofthe World, tr. J. Wirth [Albany: SUNY Press, 2000], pp. 102-4). 

90 An application of William James's notion of the pragmatic rule. Jung read James's Pragmatism in 1912, and it had a strong impact on his thinking. In his foreword to his 
Fordham University lectures, Jung stated that he had taken James's pragmatic rule as his guiding principle (CW 4, p. 86). See myJung and the Making ofModern Psychology: 
The Dream ofaScience, pp. 57-6r. 

91 The Draft continues: "The spirit ofthe depths was so alien to me that it took me twenty-five nights to comprehend him. And even then he was still so alien that I 
could neither see nor ask. He had to come to me as a stranger from far away and from an unheard-of side. He had to call me. I could not address him, knowing him and 


DESCENT INTO HELL IN THE FUTURE I 239 

Blood shone at me from the red light ofthe crystal, and when You all have a share in the murder.94 In you the reborn one will 
I picked it up to discover its mystery; there lay the horror uncovcome 
to be, and the sun of the depths will rise, and a thousand 
ered before me: in the depths of what is to come lay murder. serpents will develop from your dead matter and fallon the sun 
The blond hero lay slain. The black beetle is the death that is to choke it. Your blood will stream forth. The peoples demonstrate 
necessary for renewal; and so thereafter, a new sun glowed, the this at the present time in unforgettable acts, that will be written 
sun of the depths, full of riddles, a sun of the night. And as the with blood in unforgettable books for eternal memory:95 
rising sun of spring quickens the dead earth, so the sun of the But I ask you, when do men fallon their brothers with mighty 
depths quickened the dead, and thus began the terrible struggle weapons and bloody acts? They do such ifthey do not know that 
between light and darkness. Out of that burst the powerful and their brother is themselves. They themselves are sacrificers, but 
ever unvanquished source of blood. This was what was to come, they mutually do the service of sacrifice. They must all sacrifice 
which you now experience in your life, and it is even more than each other, since t.he time has not yet come when man puts the 
that. (I had this vision on the night of 12 December 1913.) bloody knife into himsel£ in order to sacrifice the one he kills in 

Depths and surface should mix so that new life can develop. his brother. But whom do people kill? They kill the noble, the 
Yet the new life does not develop outside of us, but within brave, the heroes. They take aim at these and do not know that 
us. What happens outside us in these days is the image that the with these they mean themselves. They should sacrifice the hero 
peoples live in events, to bequeath this image immemorially to in themselves, and because they do not know this, they kill their 
far-off times so that they might learn from it for their own way; just courageous brother. 
as we learned from the images that the ancients had lived before The time is still not ripe. But through this blood sacrifice, 
us in events. it should ripen. So long as it is possible to murder the brother 

Life does not come from events, but from us. Everything that instead ofonesel£ the time is not ripe. Frightful things must happen 
happens outside has already been. until men grow ripe. But anything else will not ripen humanity. 

Therefore whoever considers the eventfrom outside always sees only that Hence all this that talces place in these days ;must also be, so that 
it already was, and that it is always the same. But whoever looksfrom inside, the renewal can come. Since the source ofblood that follows the 
knows that everything is new. The events that happen are always the same. shrouding ofthe sun is also the source of the new life.96 
But the creative depths ofman are not always the same. Events signify nothAs 
the fate of the peoples is represented to you in events, 
ing, they signify only in us. We create the meaning ofevents. The meaning is so will it happen in your heart. If the hero in you is slain, then 
and always was artijicial. We make it. the sun of the depths rises in you, glowing from afar, and from 

Because ofthis we seek in ourselves the meaning ofevents, so that the way a dreadful place. But all the same, everything that up till now 
)1. iii(v) / iv(r) of/ what is to come becomes apparent and our life canpow again. seemed to be dead in you will come to life, and will change into 
That which you need comes from yourself, namely the meaning of the poisonous serpents that will cover the sun, and you will fall into 
event. The meaning ofevents is not their particular meaning. This meaning night and confusion. Your blood also will stream from many 
exists in learned books. Events have no meaning. wounds in this frightful struggle. Your shock and doubt will be 
The meaning ofevents is the way ofsalvation that you create. The meaning great, but from such torment the new life will be born. Birth is 
ofevents comes from the pOSSibility oflife in this world that you create. It is blood and torment. Your darkness, which you did not suspect 
the mastery ofthis world and the assertion ofyour soul in this world. since it was dead, will come to life and you will feel the crush of 

This meaning of events is the supreme meaning, that is not in events, total evil and the conflicts of life that still now lie buried in 
and not in the soul, but is the God standing between events and the soul, the the matter of your body. But the serpents are dreadful evil 
mediator oflife, the way, the bridge and the going across. 92 thoughts and feelings. 

I would not have been able to see what was to come if I could You thought you knew that abyss? Oh you clever people! 
not have seen it in myself It is another thing to experience it. Everything will happen to 

Therefore I talce part in that murder; the sun of the depths you. Think of all the frightful and devilish things that men have 
also shines in me after the murder has been accomplished; the inflicted on their brothers. That should happen to you in your 
thousand serpents that want to devour the sun are also in me. I heart. Suffer it yourself through your own hand, and know that it 
myself am a murderer and murdered, sacrificer and sacrificed.93 is your own heinous and devilish hand that inflicts the suffering 
The upwelling blood streams out of me. on you, but not your brother, who wrestles with his own devils.97 

his nature. He announced himselfwith a loud voice, as in a warlike turmoil with the manifold clamoring of the voices ofthis time. The spirit of this time arose in me 
against this stranger, and uttered a battle cry together with his many serfs. I heard the noise ofthis battle in the air. Then the spirit ofthe depths burst forth and led me 
to the site ofthe innermost. But he had reduced the spirit ofthis time to a dwarfwho was clever and bustling, yet was a dwarf And the vision showed me the spirit of 
this time as made ofleather, that is, pressed together, sere and lifeless. He could not prevent me from entering the dark undenyorld ofthe spirit ofthe depths. To my 
astonishment I realized that my feet sank into the black muddy water of the river ofdeath. [The Corrected Draft adds: "for that is where death is", p. 41] The mystery of 
the shining red crystal was my next destination" (pp. 54-55). 

92 The Draft continues: "My soul is my supreme meaning, my image of God, neither God himselfnor the supreme meaning. God becomes apparent in the supreme 
meaning ofthe human community" (p. 58). 

93 In "Transformation symbolism in the mass," (1942), Jung commented on the motif ofthe identity ofthe sacrificer and the sacrificed, with particular reference to the 
visions of Zosimos of Panapolis, a natural philosopher and alchemist of the third century. Jung noted: "What I sacrifice is my egotistical claim, and by doing this I give 
up myself Every sacrifice is therefore, to a greater or lesser degree, a self-sacrifice" (CW II, ¤397). Cf also the Katha Upanishad, ch. 2, verse 19. Jung cited the next two 
verses ofthe Katha Upanishad on the nature ofthe selfin 1921 (CW 6, ¤329). There is a line in the margin ofJung's copy by these verses in the Sacred Books ofthe East, 
vol. Xv, pt. 2, p. II. In "Dreams," Jung noted in connection with a dream "My intensive unconscious relation to India in the Red Book" (p. 9). 

94 Jung elaborated the theme ofcollective guilt in '~fter the catastrophe" (1945, CW ro). 
95 The reference is to the events ofWorld War 1. The autumn of1914 (when Jung wrote this section of"layer two") saw the battle ofthe Marne and the first battle ofYpres. 
96 In his lecture at the ETH on June 14, 1935, Jung commented (partially in reference to this fantasy, which he referred to anonymously): "The sun motifappears in many 


places and times and the meaning is always the same-that a new consciousness has been born. It is the light ofillumination which is projected into space. This is a 
psychological event; the medical term "hallucination" makes no sense in psychology: / The Katabasis plays a very important role in the Middle Ages and the old masters 
conceived of the rising sun in this Katabasis as ofa new light, the lux moderna, the jewel, the lapis" (Modern Psychology, p. 231). 

97 The Draft continues: "My friends, I know that I speak in riddles. But the spirit ofthe depths has granted me a view ofmany things in order to help my weak comprehension. 
I want to tell you more about my visions so that you better understand which things the spirit ofthe depths would like you to see. May those be well who can see these 
things! Those who cannot must live them as blind fate, in images" (p. 61). 


240 I LIBER PRIMUS fol. iv(r) / iv(v) 

I would like you to see what the murdered hero means. 
Those nameless men who in our day have murdered a prince 
are blind prophets who demonstrate in events what then is valid 
only for the soul.98 Through the murder of princes we will learn 
that the prince in us, the hero, is threatened.99 Whether this 
should be seen as a good or a bad sign need not concern us. What 
is awful today is good in a hundred years, and in two hundred 
years is bad again. But we must recognize what is happening: 
there are nameless ones in you who threaten your prince, the 
hereditary ruler. 

But our ruler is the spirit of this time, which rules and 
leads in us all. It is the general spirit in which we think and act 
today. He is of frightful power, since he has brought immeasurable 
good to this world and fascinated men with unbelievable 
pleasure. He is bejewelled with the most beautiful heroic virtue, 
and wants to drive men up to the brightest solar heights, in 
everlasting ascent.IOO 

The hero wants to open up everything he can. But the 
nameless spirit of the depths evokes everything that man cannot. 
Incapacity prevents further ascent. Greater height requires greater 
virtue. We do not possess it. We must first create it by learning to 
live with our incapacity. We must give it life. For how else shall it 
develop into ability? 

We cannot slay our incapacity and rise above it. But that 
is precisely what we wanted. Incapacity will overcome us and 
demand its share of life. Our ability will desert us, and we will 
believe, in the sense of the spirit of this time, that it is a loss. 
Yet it is no loss but a gain, not for outer trappings, however, but 
for inner capability. 

The one who learns to live with his incapacity has learned a 
great deal. This will lead us to the valuation ofthe smallest things, 
and to wise limitation, which the greater height demands. If all 
heroism is erased, we fall back into the misery of humanity and 
into evert worse. Our foundations will be caught up in excitement 
since our highest tension, which concerns what lies outside us, 
will stir them up. We 'Yill fall into the cesspool ofour underworld, 

I

among the rubble of all the centuries in US.IO

The heroic in you is the fact that you are ruled by the 
thought that this or that is good, that this or that performance 
is indispensable, this or that cause is objectionable, this or that 
goal must be attained in headlong striving work, this or that 
pleasure should be ruthlessly repressed at all costs. Consequently 
you sin against incapacity. But incapacity exists. No one should 
deny it, find fault with it, or shout it down.I02 

Splitting of the Spirit 

[HI iv(r)] 

Cap. vi. 

But on the fourth night I cried, "To journey to Hell means to 
become Hell oneselfI03 It is all frightfully muddled and interwoven. 
On this desert path there is not just glowing sand, but also horrible 
tangled invisible beings who live in the desert. I didn't lmow this. 
The way is only apparently clear, the desert is only apparently 
empty. It seems inhabited by magical beings who murderously 
attach themselves to me and daimonically change my form. I have 
evidently taken on a completely monstrous fonn in which I can no 
longer recognize myself It seems to me that I have become a 
monstrous animal form for which I have exchanged my humanity. 
This way is surrounded by hellish magic, invisible nooses have 
been thrown over me and ensnare nle." 

But the spirit of the depths approached me and said, "Clilnb 
down into your depths, sink!" 
But I was indignant at him and said, "How can I sink? I am 
unable to do this myself" 
Then the spirit spoke words to me that appeared ridiculous, 
and he said, "Sit yourself down, be calm." 

But I cried out indignantly: "How frightful, it sounds like 
nonsense, do you also demand this ofme? You overthrew the mighty 
Gods who mean the most to us. My soul, where are you? Have I 
entrusted myself to a stupid animal, do I stagger like a drunkard 
to the grave, do I stalnmer stupidities like a lunatic? Is this your 
way; my soul? The blood boils in me and I would strangle you if I 
could seize you. You weave the thickest darlmesses and I aln like 
a madman caught in your net. But I yearn, teach me." 

But my soul spoke to me saying, "My path is light." 
Yet I indignantly answered, "Do you call light what we men 
call the worst darkness? Do you call day night?" 
To this my soul spoke a word that roused my anger: "My light 
is not of this world." 

I cried, "I lmow of no other world." 

The soul answered, "Should it not exist because you lmow 
nothing of it?" I: "But our lmowledge? Does our knowledge also 
not hold good for you? What is it going to be, if not lmowledge? 
Where is security? Where is solid ground? Where is light? Your 
darlmess is not only darker than night, but bottomless as well. If 
it's not going to be knowledge, then perhaps it will do without 
speech and words too?" 

98 In The Relations between the I and the Unconscious (1927), Jung refers to the destructive and anarchic aspects that are constellated in societies being enacted by prophetically 
inclined individuals though spectacular crimes such as regicide (CW 7, ¤240). 

99 Political assassinations were frequent at the beginning of the twentieth century: The particular event referred to here is the assassination ofArchduke Franz Ferdinand. 
Martin Gilbert describes this event, which played a critical role in the events that led to the outbrealc of the First World War, as "a turning point in the history of the 
twentieth century" (A History cifthe Twentieth Century: Volume One: 1900-1933 [London: William Morrow, 1977], p. 308). 

IOO The Drift continues: "When I was aspiring to my highest worldly power, the spirit of the depths sent me nameless thoughts and visions, that wiped out the heroic 

aspiration in me as our time understands it" (p. 62). ' 
IOI The Drift continues: "Everything that we have forgotten will be revived, each human and divine passion, the black serpents and the reddish sun of the depths" (p. 64). 
I02 On June 9, 1917, there was a discussion on the psychology of the world war in the Association for Analytical Psychology following a presentation by Jules Vodoz on the 

SongcifRoland. Jung argued that "Hypothetically, the World War can be raised to the subjective level. In detail, the authoritarian principle (tiling action on the basis of 
principles) clashes with the emotional principle. The collective unconscious enters into allegiance with the emotional." Concerning the hero, he said: "The hero-the 
beloved figure of the people, should fall. All heroes bring themselves down by carrying the heroic attitude beyond a certain limit, and hence lose their footing" (MAP, 
vol. 2, p. 10). The psychological interpretation of the First World War on the subjective level describes what is developed in this chapter. The connection between individual 
and collective psychology which he articulates here forms one of the leitmotifs ofhis later work (cf Present and Future [1957], CW 10). 

I03 
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche wrote: '~nyone who fights with monsters should talce care that he does not in the process become a monster. And ifyou gaze for long 
into an abyss, the abyss gazes back into you" (tr. Marion Faber [Oxford: Oxford University Press], 1998, ¤146, p. 68). 


MURDER OF THE HERO I 241 

My soul: "No words." I felt myself transformed into a rapacious beast. My heart 

I: "Forgive me, perhaps I'm hard of hearing, perhaps I glowered in rage against the high and beloved, against my prince 
misinterpret you, perhaps I ensnare myself in áself-deceit and and hero, just as the nameless one of the people, driven by greed 
monkey business, and I am a rascal grinning at myselfin a mirror, a for murder, lunged at his dear prince. Because I carried the 
fool in my own madhouse. Perhaps you stumble over my folly?" murder in me, I foresaw it.106 
My soul: "You delude yourself you do not deceive me. Your Because I carried the war in me, I foresaw it. I felt betrayed and 
words are lies to you, not me." lied to by my king. Why did I feel this way? He was not as I had 

I: "But could I wallow in raging nonsense, and hatch absurdity wished him to be. He was other than I expected. He should be the 
and perverse monotony?" king in my sense, not in his sense. He should be what I called ideal. 
My soul: "Who gives you thoughts and words? Do you malce My soul appeared to me hollow, tasteless and meaningless. But in 
them? Are you not my serf a recipient who lies at my door and reality what I thought ofher was valid for my ideal. 
picks up my alms? And you dare think that what you devise and It was a / visio"n of the desert, I struggled with mirror images fo1. iv(r) / iv(v) 
spealc could be nonsense? Don't you know yet that it comes from of myself It was civil war in me. I myself was the murderer and 
me and belongs to me?" the murdered. The deadly arrow was stuck in my heart, and I did 

So I cried full of anger, "But then my indignation must also not know what it meant. My thoughts were murder and the fear 
come from you, and in me you are indignant against yourself" My of death, which spread like poison everywhere in my body. 
soul then spoke the ambiguous words: "That is civil war."104 And thus was the fate of the people: The murder of one was 

I was afflicted with pain and rage, and I answered back, the poisonous arrow that :flew into the hearts of men, and 
"How painful, my soul, to hear you use hollow words; I feel sick. kindled the fiercest war. This murder is the indignation of 
Comedy and drivel-but I yearn. I can also crawl through mud incapacity against will, a Judas betrayal that one would like 
and the most despised banality. I can also eat dust; that is part someone else to have committed.107 We are still seeking the goat 
of Hell. I do not yield, I am defiant. You can go on devising that should bear our sin.108 
torments, spider-legged monsters, ridiculous, hideous, frightful Everything that becomes too old becomes evil, the same is true oj your 
theatrical spectacles. Come close, I am ready. Ready, my soul, you highest. Learnfrom the suffering ojthe crucified God that one can also betray 
who are a devil, to wrestle with you too. You donned the mask of and crucify a God, namely the God ofthe old year. Ifa God ceases being the 
a God, and I worshiped you. Now you wear the mask ofa devil, a way oJliJe, he mustfall secretly. 109 
frightful one, the mask of the banal, of eternal mediocrity! Only The God becomes sick ifhe oversteps the height ofthe zenith. That is why the 
one favor! Give me a moment to step back and consider! Is the spirit ofthe depths took me when the spirit ofthis time had led me to the summit. 110 
struggle with this mask worthwhile? Was the mask of God worth 
worshiping? I cannot do it, the lust for battle burns in my limbs. 

Murder of the Hero

No, I cannot leave the battlefield defeated. I want to seize you, crush 
you, monkey, buffoon. Woe if the struggle is unequal, my hands [HI iv(v)]1II 
grab at air. But your blows are also air, and I perceive trickery." Cap. vii. 

I find myself again on the desert path. It was a desert vision, a On the following night, however, I had a vision:1I2 I was with 
vision of the solitary who has wandered down long roads. There a youth in high mountains. It was before daybreak, the Eastern 
lurk invisible robbers and assassins and shooters of poison darts. sky was already light. Then Siegfried's horn resounded over the 
Suppose the murderous arrow is sticking in my heart? mountains with a jubilant sound. 113 We knew that our mortal 

enemy was coming. We were armed and lurked beside a narrow 

[2] As the first vision had predicted to me, the assassin appeared rocky path to murder him. Then we saw him coming high across 
from the depths, and came to me just as in the fate ofthe peoples the mountains on a chariot made of the bones of the dead. He 
of this time a nameless one appeared and leveled the murder drove boldly and magnificently over the steep rocks and arrived at 
weapon at the prince.lOS the narrow path where we waited in hiding. As he came around 
104 Black Book 2 continues: ''Are you neurotic? Are we neurotic?" (p. 53). 
105 See note 99, p. 240. 
106 The Drqft continues: "My friends, ifyou knew what depths of the future you carry inside you! Those who look into their own depths, look at what is to come" (p. 70). 
107 The Drqft continues: "But just as Judas is a necessary link in the chain of the work of redemption, so is our Judas betrayal of the hero also a necessary passageway to 


redemption" (p. 71). In Traniformations and Symbols oJthe Libido (1912), Jung discussed the view of the Abbe Oegger, in Anatole France's story Lejardin d'Epicure, who 
maintained that God had chosen Judas as an instrument to complete Christ's work of redemption (CW B, ¤52). 


108 Cf Leviticus 16:7-10: ''And he shall take the two goats, and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots 
upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord's lot fell, and offer him for a sin 
offering. But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an,atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat 
into the wilderness." 

109 The Drqft continues: "this is what the ancients taught us" (p. 72).' 
IIO The Drqft continues: "Those who wander in the desert experience everything that belongs to the desert. The ancients have described this to us. From them we can learn. 


Open the ancient books and learn what will come to you in solitude. Everything will be given to you and you will be spared nothing, the mercy and the torment" (p. 72). 
III This refers to the mourning for the death of the hero. 
II2 December 18, 1913. Black Book 2 has: "The following night was terrible. I soon awoke from a frightful dream" (p. 56). The Draft has: "a mighty dream vision rose from 

the depths" (p. 73). 

II3 Siegfried was a heroic prince who appears in old German and Norse epics. In the twelfth-century Niebelunglied, he is described as follows: ''And in what magnificent 
style Siegfried rode! He bore a great spear, stout of shaft and broad ofhead; his handsome sword reached down to his spurs; and the fine horn which this lord carried 
was of the reddest gold" (tr. A. Hatto [London: Penguin, 2004], p. 129). His wife, Brunhild, is tricked into revealing the only place where he could be wounded 
and killed. Wagner reworked these epics in The Ring oJthe Niebelung. In 1912, in Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido, Jung presented a psychological interpretation of 
Siegfried as a symbol of the libido, principally citing Wagner's libretto ofSiegfried (CW B, ¤568f). 


242 I LIBER PRIMUS fol. iv(v) /v(r) 

the turn ahead of us, we fired at the same time and he fell slain. 
Thereupon I turned to flee, and a terrible rain swept down. 
But after thisII4 I went through a torment unto death and I felt 
certain that I must kill mysel£ if I could not solve the riddle of 
the murder of the hero.lIS 

Then the spirit ofthe depths came to me and spoke these words: 

"The highest truth is one and theá same with the absurd." This 
statement saved me, and like rain after a long hot spell, it swept 
away everything in me which was too highly tensed. 

Then I had a second vision:II6 I saw a merry garden, in which 
forms walked clad in white silk, all covered in colored light, some 
reddish, the others blueish and greenish.II7 [Image iv(v)] 

I know, I have stridden across the depths. Through guilt I have 
become a newborn. IlB 

[2] We also . live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. 
Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams.Il9 
In that night my life was threatened since I had to kill my lord 
and God, not in single combat, since who among mortals could 
kill a God in a duel? You can reach your God only as an assassin,I2O 
ifyou want to overcome him. 

But this is the bitterest for mortal men: our Gods want to be 
overcome, since they require renewal. If men kill their princes, 
they do so because they cannot kill their Gods, and because they 
do not know that they should kill their Gods in themselves. 

Ifthe God grows old, he becomes shadow, nonsense, and he goes down. The 
greatest truth becomes the greatest lie, the brightest day becomes darkest night. 

As day requires night and night requires day, so meaning requires absurdity 
and absurdity requires meaning. 

Day does not exist through itself, night does not exist through itself. 

The reality that exists through itselfis day and night. 

So the reality is meaning and absurdity. 

Noon is a moment, midnight is a moment, morning comes from night, 
evening turns into night, but evening comesfrom the day and morning turns 
into day. 

So meaning is a moment and a transition from absurdity to 
absurdity, and absurdity only a moment and a transition from 
meaning to meaning.121 

Oh that Siegfried, blond and blue-eyed, the German hero, 
had to fall by my hand, the most loyal and courageous! He had 
everything in himself that I treasured as the greater and more 
beautiful; he was my power, my boldness, my pride. I would have 
gone under in the same battle, and so only assassination was 
left to me. If I wanted to go on living, it could only be through 
trickery and cunning. 

Judge not! Think of the blond savage of the German forests, 
who had to betray the hammer-brandishing thunder to the pale 
Near-Eastern God who was nailed to the wood like a chicken 
marten. The courageous were overcome by a certain contempt 
for themselves. But their life force bade them to go on living, 
and they betrayed their beautiful wild Gods, their holy trees 
and their awe of the German forests. 122 

What does Siegfried mean for the Germans! What does it 
tell us that the Germans suffer Siegfried's death! That is why 
I almost preferred to kill myself in order to spare him. But I 
wanted to go on living with a new God.123 

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. 

Gods are unavoidable. The more you flee from the God, the 
more surely you fall into his hand. 

The rain is the great stream of tears that will come over the 
peoples, the tearful flood ofreleased tension after the constriction 
of death had encumbered the peoples with horrific force. It 
is the mourning of the dead in me, which precedes burial and 
rebirth. The rain is the fructifying of the earth, it begets the 
new wheat, the young, germinating God.124 

The Conception of the God 

[HI iv(v) 2] 
Cap. viii. 

On the second night thereafter, I spoke to my soul and said, 
"This new world appears wealc and artificial to me. Artificial is a 

II4 The Draft continues: '~fter this dream vision" (p. 73). 

II5 In Black Book 2, Jung noted: "I strode light-footedly up an incredibly steep path and later helped my wife, who followed me at a slower pace, to ascend. Some people 
mocked us, but I didn't mind, since this showed that they didn't know that I had murdered the hero" (p. 57). Jung recounted this dream in the 1925 seminar, stressing 
different details. He preceded it with the following remarks: "Siegfried was not an especially sympathetic figure to me, and I don't know why my unconscious got 
engrossed in him. Wagner's Siegfried, especially, is exaggeratedly extraverted and at times actually ridiculous. I never liked him. Nevertheless the dream showed him to 
be my hero. I could not understand the strong emotion I had with the dream." After narrating the dream, Jung concluded: "I felt an enormous pity for him [Siegfried], 
as though I myself had been shot. I must then have had a hero I did not appreciate, and it was my ideal offorce and efficiency I had killed. I had killed my intellect, 
helped on to the deed by a personification ofthe collective unconscious, the little brown man with me. In other words, I deposed my superior function ... The rain 
that fell is a symbol of the release of tension; that is, theáforces of the unconscious are loosed. When this happens, the feeling ofrelief is engendered. The crime is 
expiated because, as soon as the main function is deposed, there is a chance for other sides of the personality to be born into life" (Analytical Psychology, pp. 56-57). In 
Black Book 2, and in his later remarks about this dream in Memories (p. 204), Jung said that he felt that he would have to kill himselfifhe could not solve this riddle. 

II6 The Draft continues: "and I fell asleep again. A second dream vision rose in me" (pp. 73-74). 

II7 The Draft continues: "These lights pervaded my mind and senses. And once again I fell asleep like a convalescent" (p. 74). Jung recounted this dream to Aniela Jaffe, 
and commented that after he had been confronted with the shadow, as in the Siegfried dream, this dream expressed the idea that he was one thing and something else 
at the same time. The unconscious reached beyond one, like a saint's halo. The shadow was like the light-colored sphere that surrounded the people. He thought this 
was a vision of the beyond, where men are complete. (MP, p. 170). 

II8 The Draft continues: "The world in-between is a world of the simplest things. It is not a world ofintention and imperatives, but a perchance-world with indefinite 
possibilities. Here the next ways are all small, no broad, straight highroads, no Heaven above them, no Hell beneath" (p. 74). In October of1916, Jung gave some talles to 
the Psychological Club, 'Adaptation, individuation, and collectivity," in which he commented on the importance ofguilt: "the first step in individuation is tragic guilt. 
The accumulation ofguilt demands expiation" (CW IS, ¤I094). 

II9 The Draft has here, in addition: 'Are you smiling? The spirit of this time would want to make you believe that the depths are no world and no reality" (p. 74). 

120 The Draft continues: "a Judas" (p. 75). 

121 The Draft continues: "My dream vision showed me that I was not alone when I committed the deed. I was helped by a youth, that is, one who was younger than me; 
a rejuvenated version ofmyself" (p. 76). 

122 The Draft continues: "Siegfried had to die, just like Wotan" (p. 76). In 1915, Jung wrote of the effects of the introduction of Christianity into Germany: "Christianity 
split the Germanic barbarian into his upper and lower halves and enabled him, by repressing the dark side, to domesticate the brighter half and fit it for culture. But 
the lower, darker halfstill awaits redemption and a second domestication. Until then, it will remain associated with vestiges of prehistory, with the collective unconscious, 
which must indicate a peculiar and increasing activation ofthe collective unconscious. ("On the unconscious," CW IO, ¤17). He expanded on this situation in 
"Wotan" (1936, CW IO). 

123 In the Draft, this sentence reads: "We want to continue living with a new God, a hero beyond Christ" (p. 76). To Aniela Jaffe, he recounted that he had thought of 
himself as an overcoming hero, but the dream indicated that the hero had to be killed. This exaggeration of the will was represented by the Germans at that time, such 
as by the Siegfried line. A voice within him said, "Ifyou do not understand the dream, you must shoot yourself!" (MP, p. 9S, Memories, p. 204). The original Siegfried 
line was a defensive line established by the Germans in northern France in 1917 (this was actually a subsection of the Hindenburg Line). 

124 The theme of the dying and resurrecting God features prominently in James Frazer's The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (London: Macmillan, 19II-15), 
which Jung drew upon in Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (1912). 


THE CONCEPTION OF THE GOD I 243 

bad word, but the mustard seed that grew into a tree, the word [2] When my prince had fallen, the spirit ofthe depths opened 
that was conceived in the womb of a virgin, became a God to my vision and let me become aware of the birth ofthe new God. 
whom the earth was subject."125 The divine child approached me out of the terrible ambiguity, 

As I spoke thus, the spirit of the depths suddenly erupted. the hateful-beautiful, the evil-good, the laughable-serious, the 
He filled me with intoxication and mist and spoke these words sick-healthy, the inhuman-human and the ungodly-godly.129 
with a powerful voice: [0B iv (v)] (1 have received your sprout, you who I understood that the Godl3o whom we seek in the absolute 
are to come! was not to be found in absolute beauty, goodness, seriousness, 

I have received it in deepest need and lowliness. elevation, humanity or even in godliness. Once the God was there. 
I covered it in shabby patchwork and bedded down on poor words. I understood that the new God would be in the relative. 
And mockery worshiped it, your child, your wondrous child, the child of If the God is absolute beauty and goodness, how should he 
one who is to come, who should announce thefather, a fruit that is older than encompass the f~llness of life, which is beautiful and hateful, 

the tree on which itgrew. good and evil, laughable and serious, human and inhuman? 
I n pain will you conceive and joyful is your birth. How can man live in the womb of the God if the Godhead 
Fear is your herald, doubt stands to your right, disappointment to your left. himself attends only to one-half of him?131 
We passed by in our ridiculousness and senselessness when we caught If we have risen near the heights of good and evil, then our 

sight ofyou. badness and hatefulness lie in the most extreme torment. Man's 
Our eyes were blinded and our knowledge foll silent when we received torment is so great and the air ofthe heights so wealc that he can 

your radiance. hardly live anymore. The good and the beautiful freeze to the 
You new spark ofan eternalfire, into which night were you born?' ice of the absolute idea/32 and the bad and hateful become mud 
You will wring truthful prayersfrom your believers, and they must speak puddles full ofcrazy life. 

ofyour glory in tongues that are atrocious to them. Therefore after his death Christ had to journey to Hell, 
You will come over them in the hour oftheir disgrace, and will become otherwise the ascent to Heaven would have become imposknown 
to them in what they hate, foar, and abhor. 126 sible for him. Christ first had to become his Antichrist, his 

Your voice, the rarest pleasing sound, will be heard amid the stammerings underworldly brother. 
ofwretches, rejects, and those condemned as worthless. No one knows what happened during the three days Christ 

Your realm will be touched by the hands of those who also worshiped was in Hell. I have experienced it.133 The men ofyore said that he 
before the most profound lowliness, and whose longing drove them through had preached there to the deceased.134 What they say is true, but 
the mud tide ofevil. do you know how this happened? 

You will give your gifts to those who pray to you in terror and doubt, and It was folly and monkey business, an atrocious Hell's 
your light will shine upon those whose knees must bend before you unwillingly masquerade ofthe holiest mysteries. How else could Christ have 
and who arefilled with resentment. saved his Antichrist? Read the unknown books of the ancients, 

61. iv(v) Iv(r) Your life is with he who has overcome himself I [OB vCr)] and who has and you will learn much from them. Notice that Christ did not 
disowned his selfovercoming. 127 remain in Hell, but rose to the heights in the beyond.135 
I also know that the salvation of mercy is given only to those who Our conviction of the value of the good and beautiful has 
believe in the highest and faithlessly betray themselves for thirty pieces become strong and unshakable, that is why life can extend 
ofsilver. 128 beyond this and still fulfil everything that lay bound and yearning. 
Those who will dirty their pure hands and cheat on their best knowledge But the bound and yearning is also the,hateful and bad. Are you 
against error and take their virtues from a murderer's grave are invited to again indignant about the hateful and the bad? 
your great banquet. Through this you can recognize h()w great are their force 

The constellation ofyour birth is an ill and changing star. and value for life. Do you think that it is dead in you? But 
These, oh child of what is to come, are the wonders that will bear this dead can also change into serpents.136 These serpents will 
testimony that you are a veritable God." extinguish the prince ofyour days. 

I25 A reference to Christ's parable ofthe mustard seed. Matthew 13:31-32: "The kingdom ofheaven is like to a grain ofmustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his 
field: Which indeed is the least ofall seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree" (Cf Luke 13:18-20, Mark 4:30-32). 
I26 In Mark 16:17, Christ stated that those who believe shall speak with new tongues. The issue ofspeaking in tongues is discussed in I Corinthians 14, and is central in the 
Pentecostal movement. 

I27 The theme ofself-overcoming is an important one in the work of Nietzsche. In Thus Spoke zarathustra, Nietzsche writes: "I teach you the Superman. Man is something 
that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All creatures hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and do you want to be the ebb 
~reattide, and return to the animals rather than overcome man? ("Zarathustra's prologue 3," p. 41; underlined as in Jung's copy). For Jung's discussion of this 
theme in Nietzsche, see Nietzsche's zarathustra: Notes ofthe Seminar Given in 1934-9, vol. 2, ed. James Jarrett (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, pp. 1502-08). 

I28 Judas betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver (Matthew 26:14-16). 

I29 See note 58, p. 234. 

I30 This conception of the encompassing nature ofthe new God is fully developed further ahead in Scrutinies (Sermon 2, p. 349f). 

I3I The theme of the integration ofevil into the Godhead played an important role in Jung's works; see Aion (1951, CW 9, 2, ch. 5), and Answer to}ob (1952, cw II). 

I32 The conception ofthe absolute idea was developed by Hegel. He understood it as the culmination and the self-differentiating unity ofthe dialectical sequence that 

gives rise to the cosmos. Cf Hegel's Logic (tr. W Wallace [London: Thames and Hudson, 1975]). Jung refers to this in 1921 in psychological Types (CW 6, ¤735). 

I33 This sentence is cut in the Corrected Drift and replaced with "but this can be guessed:" (p. 68). 

I34 I Peter 4:6 states: "For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to 

God in the spirit." 

I35 The theme of Christ's descent into Hell features in several apocryphal gospels. In the ''Apostles Creed," it is stated that "He descended into Hell. The third day He 
arose again from the dead." Jung commented on the appearance ofthis motifin medieval alchemy (Psychology and Alchemy, 1944, CW 12, ¤61n, 440, 451; Mysterium 
Coniunctionis, 1955/56, CW 14,475). One ofthe sources which Jung referred to (CW 12, ¤61n) was Albrecht Dieterich's Nekyia: Beitriige zur Erkliirung der 1teuentdeckten 
Petrusapokalypse, which commented on an apocalyptic fragment from the Gospel ofSt. Peter, in which Christ gives a detailed description of Hell. Jung's copy ofthis 
work has numerous markings in the margins, and in the rear are two additional pieces ofpaper with a list of page references and remarks. In 1951 he gave the following 
psychological interpretation ofthe motif of Christ's descent into Hell: "The scope ofthe integration is suggested by the 'descensus ad infernos,' the descent of Christ's 
soul to Hell, whose work of redemption also encompasses the dead. The psychological equivalent ofthis forms the integration of the collective unconscious which 
represents an essential part of the individuation process" (Aion, CW 9,2, ¤72). In 1938 he noted: "The three days descent into Hell during death describes the sinking 
of the vanished value into the unconscious, where, by conquering the power ofdarkness, it establishes a new order, and then rises up to heaven again, that is, attains 
supreme clarity ofconsciousness" ("Psychology and religion," CW II, ¤149). The "unknown books ofthe ancients" refer to the apocryphal gospels. 

I36 The Drift continues: "But the serpent is also life. In the image furnished by the ancients, the serpent put an end to the childlike magnificence ofparadise; they even 
said that Christ himselfhad been a serpent" (p. 83). Jung commented on this motif in 1950 in Aion, CW 9, 2, ¤29I. 


244 I LIBER PRIMUS fol. vCr) IvCv) 

.Do you see what beauty and joy came over men when the depths is also brutal, that everything good is also bad, that everything 
unleashed this greatest war? And yet it was a frightful beginning.137 high is also low, and that everything pleasant is also shameful. 

If we do not have the depths, how do we have the heights? But the deepest Hell is when you realize that Hell is also no 
Yet you fear the depths, and do not want to confess that you are Hell, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this 
afraid of them. It is good, though, that you fear yourselves; say respect a Heaven, and in that respect a Hell. 
it out loud that you are afraid of yourselves. It is wisdom to fear That is the ambiguity of the God: he is born from a dark 
oneself Only the heroes say that they are fearless. But you know ambiguity and rises to a bright ambiguity. Unequivocalness is 
what happens to the hero. simplicity and leads to death.141 But ambiguity is the way of life.142 

With fear and trembling, looking around yourselves with If the left foot does not move, then the right one does, and you 
mistrust, go thus into the depths, but do not do this alone; two move. The God wills this.143 
or more is greater security since the depths are full ofmurder. Also You say: the Christian God is unequivocal, he is 10ve.l44 But 
secure yourselves the way of retreat. Go cautiously as ifyou were what is more ambiguous than love? Love is the way of life, but 
cowards, so that you pre-empt the soul murderers.138 The depths your love is only on the way oflife ifyou have a left and a right. 
would like to devour you whole and choke you in mud. Nothing is easier than to play at ambiguity and nothing is 

He who journeys to Hell also becomes Hell; therefore do not more difficult than living ambiguity. He who plays is a child; his 
forget from whence you come. The depths are stronger than us; God is old and dies. He who lives is awakened; his God is young 
so do not be heroes, be clever and drop the heroics, since nothing is and goes on. He who plays hides from the inner death. He who 
more dangerous than to play the hero. The depths want to keep lives feels the going onward and immortality. So leave the play 
you; they have not returned very many up to now, and therefore to the players. Let fall what wants to fall; if you stop it, it will 
men fled. from the depths and attacked them. sweep you away. There is a true love that does not concern itself 

What if the depths, due to the assault, now change themselves with neighbors.145 
into death? But the depths indeed have changed themselves When the hero was slain and the meaning recognized in 
into death; therefore when they awoke they inflicted a thousandthe 
absurdity; when all tension came rushing down from gravid 
fold death.139 We cannot slay death, as we have already taken all clouds, when everything had become cowardly and looked to its 
life from it. If we still want to overcome death, then we must own rescue, I became aware of the birth of the God.146 Opposing 
enliven it. me, the God sank into my heart when I was confused by mockery 

Therefore on your journey be sure to take golden cups full ofthe and worship, by grief and laughter, by yes and no. 
sweet drink oflife, red wine, and give it to dead matter, so that it can The one arose from the melting together of the two. He was 
win life back The dead matter will change into black serpents. born as a child from my own human soul, which had conceived him 
Do not be frightened, the serpents will immediately put out the with resistance like a virgin. Thus it corresponds to the image that 
sun of your days, and a night with wonderful will-o'-the-wisps the ancients have given to US.147 But when the mother, my soul, was 

140

will come over YOU.pregnant with the God, I did not know it. It even seemed to me as 
48

Take pains to waken the dead. Dig deep mines and throw in ifmy soul herself was the God, although he lived only in her body.1sacrificial gifts, so that they reach the dead. Reflect in good heart And thus the image of the ancients is fulfilled: I pursued my 
upon evil, this is the way to the ascent. But before the ascent, soul to kill the child in it. For I am also the worst enemy of my 
everything is night and Hell. God.149 But I also recognized that my enmity is decided upon in 

. What do you think of the essence of Hell? Hell is when the the God. He is mockery and hate and anger, since this is also a 
depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet way oflife. 
capable of Hell is when you can no longer attain what you could I must say that the God could not come into being before the 
attain. Hell is when you must thinlc and feel and do everything hero had been slain. The hero as we understand him has become an 
that you know you do not want. Hell is when you know that your enemy ofthe God, since the hero is perfection. The Gods envy the 
having to is also a wanting to, and that you yourself are responsible perfection ofman, because perfection has no need ofthe Gods. But 
for it. Hell is when you know that everything serious that you since no one is perfect, we need the Gods. The Gods love perfection 
have planned with yourself is also laughable, that everything fine because it is the total way of life. But the Gods are not with him 

137 The Corrected Drqft has: "a beginning of Hell" (p. 70). áIn 1933 Jung recalled: "At the outbreak ofwar I was in Inverness, and I returned through Holland and Germany 
I came right through the armies going west, and I had the feeling that it was what one would call in German a Hochzeitsstimmung, a feast oflove allover the country 
Everything was decorated with flowers, it was an outburst oflove, they all loved each other and everything was beautiful. Yes, the war was important, a big affair, but 
the main thing was the brotherly love allover the country, everybody was everybody else's brother, one could have everything anyone possessed, it did not matter. The 
peasants threw open their cellars and handed out what they had. That happened even in the restaurant and buffet at the railroad station. I was very hungry, I had had 
nothing to eat for about twenty-four hours, and they had some sandwiches left, and when I asked what they cost, they said, "Oh nothing, just take them!" And when I 
first crossed the border into Germany, we were led into an enormous tent full of beer and sausages and bread and cheese, and we paid nothing, it was one great feast of 
love. I was absolutely bewildered" (Visions Seminars '2, ed. Claire Douglas [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997], pp. 974-75). 

138 The phrase "Soul murderer" had been used by Luther and Zwingli, and more recently by Daniel Paul Schreber in his 1903 Memoirs ofmy Nervous Illness, eds. and tr. Ida 
Macalpine and Richard Hunter (Folkestone: William Dawson, 1955). Jung discussed this work in 1907 in "On the psychology of dementia praecox" (CW 3), and drew 
Freud's attention to it. In discussions concerning Schreber in the Association for Analytical Psychology on July 9 and 16 of 1915 following presentations by Schneiter, 
Jlmg drew attention to Gnostic parallels to Schreber's imagery (MAP, vol. I., p. 88f). 

139 The reference is to the carnage of World War 1. 
140 This refers back to the vision in chapter 5, "Descent into Hell in the Future." In 1940 Jung wrote: "the threat to one's inmostself from dragons and serpents points to the 


danger of the newly acquired consciousness being swallowed up again by the instinctive soul, tlle unconscious" ("On the psychology ofthe child archetype," cw 9,1, ¤282). 
141 The Corrected Draft has instead "to an end" (P.73). 
142 In 1952, Jung wrote to Zwi Werblowsky concerning the intentional ambiguity ofhis writings: "The language I speak must be equivocal, that is, ambiguous, to do justice 

to psychic nature with its double aspect. I strive consciously and deliberately for ambiguous expressions, because it is superior to unequivocalness and corresponds to 

the nature of being" (Letters 2, pp. 70-71). 
143 The Drqft continues: "Look at the images of the Gods that the ancients and the men ofold left behind: their nature is ambiguous and equivocal" (p. 87). 
144 I John 4:16: "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." 
145 The Drqft continues: "Whoever reverses this word and others that I speak, is a player, since he doesn't respect the spoken word. Know that you attain yourself from 

what you read in a book. You read as much into a book as out ofit" (p. 88). 
146 The Corrected Drqft has "birth--of-the-new [conception ofa] God" (p. 74). 
147 The reference is to the Virgin Mary 
148 See note 57, p. 237149 
This seems to refer to the wounding of Izdubar in Libel' Secundus, ch. 8, "First Day" See below, p. 278£ 


MYSTERIUM. ENCOUNTER I 245 

who wishes to be perfect, because he is an imitation ofperfection.lso Selfish desire ultimately desires itself You find yourself in your 

Imitation was a way of life when men still needed the heroic desire, so do not say that desire is vain. Ifyou desire yoursel£ you 
prototype.lSI The monkey's manner is a way of life for monkeys, produce the divine son in your embrace with yourself Your desire 
and for man as long as he is like a monkey Human apishness has is the father of the God, your self is the mother of the God, but 
lasted a terribly long time, but the time will come when a piece of the son is the new God, your master. 
that apishness will fall away from men. If you embrace your sel£ then it will appear to you as if the 

That will be a time of salvation and the dove, and the eternal world has become cold and empty The cOlning God moves into 
fire, and redemption will descend. this emptiness. 

Then there will no longer be a hero, and no one who can If you are in your solitude, and all the space around you has 
imitate him. Because from that time henceforth all imitation become cold and unending, then you have moved far from men, 
is cursed. The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship. He and at the same time you have come near to them as never before. 
needs no imitators and no pupils. He forces men through himself Selfish desire only" apparently led you to men, but in reality it led 
The God is his own follower in man. He imitates himself you away from them and in the end to yoursel£ which to you and 

We think that there is singleness within us, and communality to others was the most remote. But now, if you are in solitude, 
outside us. Outside of us is the communal in relation to the your God leads you to the God ofothers, and through that to the 
external, while singleness refers to us. We are single if we are in true neighbor, to the neighbor of the selfin others. 
ourselves, but communal in relation to what is outside us. But Ifyou are in yoursel£ you become aware ofyour incapacity. 
if we are outside of ourselves, then we are single and selfish in the You will see how little capable you are ofimitating the heroes and 
communal. Our self suffers privation if we are outside ourselves, ofbeing a hero yourself So you will also no longer force others to 
and thus it satisfies its needs with communality Consequently; become heroes. Like you, they suffer from incapacity Incapacity; 
communality is distorted into singleness. Ifwe are in ourselves, we too, wants to live, but it will overthrow your Gods. [BP v (1]] I fo1. vCr) Iv(v) 
fulfil the need ofthe sel£ we prosper, and through this we become 
aware ofthe needs ofthe communal and can fulfil them.ls2 

M ysteriutn. 

Ifwe set a God outside ofourselves, he tears us loose from the 
sel£ since the God is more powerful than we are. Our self falls 
into privation. But if the God moves into the sel£ he snatches us Encounter 
from what is outside US. IS3 We arrive at singleness in ourselves. So [HI v(v)] 
the God becomes communal in reference to what is outside us, Cap. ix. 
but single in relation to us. No one has my God, but my God has 
everyone, including myself The Gods ofall individual men always On the night when I considered the essence of the God, I 
have all other men, including myself So it is always only the one became aware of an image: I lay in a dark depth. An old man 
God despite his multiplicity You arrive at him in yourselfand only stood before me. He looked like one of the old prophets.ls6 A 
through your self seizing you. It seizes you in the advancement black serpent lay at his feet. Some distance away I saw a house 
ofyour life. with columns. A beautiful maiden steps out of the door. She 

The hero must fall for the sake of our redemption, since he is walks uncertainly and I see that she is blind. The old man waves 
the model and demands imitation. But the measure of imitation to me and I follow him to the house at the foot of the sheer wall 
is fulfi1led.ls4 We should become reconciled to solitude in ourselves of rock. The serpent creeps behind us. Darkness reigns inside 
and to the God outside ofus. Ifwe enter into this solitude then the house. We are in a high hall with glittering walls. A bright 
the life of the God begins. Ifwe are in ourselves, then the space stone the color ofwater lies in the background. As I look into its 
around us is free, but filled by the God. reflection, the images of Eve, the tree, and the serpent appear to 

Our relations to men go through this empty space and also me. After this I catch sight of Odysseus and his journey on the 
through the God. But earlier it went through selfishness since we high seas. Suddenly a door opens on the right, onto a garden full 
were outside ourselves. Therefore the spirit foretold to me that the ofbright sunshine. We step outside and the old man says to me, 
cold of outer space will spread across the earth.lss With this he "Do you know where you are?" 
showed me in an image that the God will step between men and I: "I am a stranger here and everything seems strange to me, 
drive every individual with the whip oficy cold to the warmth ofhis anxious as in a dream. Who are you?" 
own monastic hearth. Because people were beside themselves, E: "I am Elijahls7 and this is my daughter Salome."IS8 
going into raptures like madmen. I: "The daughter of Herod, the bloodthirsty woman?" 

ISO The importance ofwholeness above perfection is an important theme in Jung's later work. Cf Aion, 1951, cw 9, 2, ¤123; Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1955/56, CW 14, ¤616. 

lSI 
In 1916, Jung wrote: "Man has one ability which, though it is ofthe greatest utility for collective purposes, is the most pernicious for individuation, and that is imitation. 
Collective psychology can hardly dispense with imitation" ("The structure of the unconscious," CW 7, ¤463). In "On the psychology ofthe child archetype" (1940) Jung wrote 
about the danger of identifying with the hero: "This identity is often very extremely stubborn and dangerous for the equilibrium of the soul. If the identity can be 
dissolved, the figure ofthe hero, through the reduction ofconsciousness to a human level, can gradually be differentiated into a symbol ofthe self" (CW 9, I, ¤303). 

IS2 Jung dealt with the issue ofthe conflict between individuation and collectivity in 1916 in "Individuation and collectivity" (CW 18). 
IS3 Cf Jung's comments in "Individuation and collectivity" that "The individual must now consolidate himself by cutting himself offfrom God and becoming wholly himself 


Thereby and at the same time he also separates himselffrom society: Outwardly he plunges into solitude, but inwardly into Hell, distance from God" (CW 18, ¤II03). 
IS4 This is an interpretation ofthe murder of Siegfried in Liber Primus, ch. 7, "Murder of the Hero." 
ISS This refers to the dream mentioned in the prologue, p. 231. . 
IS6 In Black Book 2 Jung noted: "with a gray beard and wearing an Oriental robe" (p. 231). 
IS7 Elijah was one ofthe prophets ofthe Old Testament. He first appears in I Kings 17, bearing a message from God to Ahab, the Icing of Israel. In 1953, the Carmelite 

Pere Bruno wrote to Jung asking how one established the existence ofan archetype. Jung replied by tiling Elijah as an example, describing him as a highly mythical 
personage, which did not prevent him from probably being a historical figure. Drawing together descriptions ofhim throughout history; Jung described him as a "living 
archetype" who represented the collective unconscious and the self He noted that such a constellated archetype gave rise to new forms ofassimilation, and represented 
a compensation on the part ofthe unconscious (CW 18, ¤¤15I8-31). 


IS8 Salome was the daughter of Herodias and the step-daughter of King Herod. In Matthew 14 and Mark 6, John the Baptist had told King Herod that it was unlawful for 
him to be married to his brother's wife, and Herod put him in prison. Salome (who is not named, but simply called the daughter of Herodias) danced before Herod on 
his birthday, and he promised to give her anything she wished for. She requested the head ofJohn the Baptist, who was then beheaded. In the late nineteenth and early 
twentieth centuries, the figure of Salome fascinated painters and writers, including Guillaume Apollinaire, Gustave Flaubert, Stephane Mallarme, Gustave Moreau, 
Oscar Wilde, and Franz von Stuck, featuring in many works. See Bram Dijkstra, Idols ojPerversity: Fantasies ojFeminine Evil in Fin-de-Siecle Culture (New York: Oxford 
University Press, 1986), pp. 379-98. 


246 I LIBER PRIMUS fol. V(V) /vi(r) 

E: "Why do you judge so? You see that she is blind. She is my 
daughter, the daughter of the prophet." 
I: "What miracle has united you?" 
c 

E: "It is no miracle, it was so from the beginning. My wisdom 
and my daughter are one." 
I am shocked, I am incapable of grasping it. 

E: "Consider this: her blindness and my sight have made us 
companions through eternity." 
I: "Forgive my astonishment, am I truly in the underworld?" 
S: "Do you love me?" 
I: "How can I love you? How do you come to this question? I 
see only one thing, you are Salome, a tiger, your hands are stained 
with the blood ofthe holy one. How should I love you?" 
S: "You will love me." 
I: "I? Love you? Who gives you the right to such thoughts?" 
S: "I love you." 
I: "Leave me be, I dread you, you beast." 
S: "You do me wrong. Elijah is my father, and he knows the 
deepest mysteries. The walls of his house are made of precious 
stones. His wells hold healing water and his eyes see the things of 
the future. And what wouldn't you give for a single look into the 
infinite unfolding of what is to come? Are these not worth a sin 
for you?" 
I: "Your temptation is devilish. I long to be back in the upper 
world. It is dreadful here. How oppressive and heavy is the air!" 
E: "What do you want? The choice is yours." 
I: "But I do not belong to the dead. I live in the light of day: 
Why should I torment myself here with Salome? Do I not have 
enough of my own life to deal with?" 
E: "You heard what Salome said." 
I: "I cannot believe that you,áthe prophet, can recognize her 
as a daughter and a companion. Is she not engendered from heinous 
seed? Was she not vain greed and criminal lust?" 
E: "But she loved a holy man." 
I: ''And shamefully shed his precious blood." 
E: "She loved the prophet who announced the new God 
to the world. She loved him, do you understand that? For sh~ is 
my daughter." 
I: "Do you think that because she is your daughter, she loved 
the prophet in John, the father?" 
E: "By her love shall you know her." 
I: "But how did she love him? Do you call that love?" 
E: "What else was it?" 
I: "I am horrified. Who wouldn't be horrified if Salome 
loved him?" 
E: ''Are you cowardly? Consider this, I and my daughter have 
been one since eternity." 
I: "You pose dreadful riddles. How could it be that this unholy 
woman and you, the prophet ofyour God, could be one?" 
E: "Why are you amazed? But you see it, we are together." 
I: "What my eyes see is exactly what I cannot grasp. You, Elijah, 
who are a prophet, the mouth ofGod, and she, a bloodthirsty horror. 
You are the symbol of the most extreme contradiction." 
E: "We are real and not symbols." 
I see how the black serpent writhes up the tree, and hides in 
the branches. Everything becomes gloomy and doubtful. Elijah 
rises, I follow and we go silently back through the hall.I59 Doubt 
tears me apart. It is all so unreal and yet a part of my longing 
remains behind. Will I come again? Salome loves me, do I love 
her? I hear wild music, a tambourine, a sultry moonlit night, the 
bloody-staring head ofthe holy onel6o-fear seizes me. I rush out. 
I am surrounded by the dark night. It is pitch black all around 
me. Who murdered the hero? Is this why Salome loves me? Do I 
love her, and did I therefore murder the hero? She is one with the 
prophet, one with John, but also one with me? Woe, was she the 
hand ofthe God? I do not love her, I fear her. Then the spirit ofthe 
depths spoke to me and said: "Therein you acknowledge her divine 
power." Must I love Salome?161 

[2] 162This play that I witnessed is my play, not your play. It is my 
secret, not yours. You cannot imitate me. My secret remains virginal and my 
mysteries are inviolable, they belong to me and cannot belong to you. You 
have your own. 163 
He who enters into his own mustgrope through what lies at hand, he must 
sense his way from stone to stone. He must embrace the worthless and the 
worthy with the same love. A mountain is nothing, and agrain ojsand holds 
kingdoms, or also nothing. Judgment mustfall from you, even taste, but above 
all pride, even when it is based on merit. Utterly poor, miserable, unknowingly 
humiliated, go on through the gate. Turn your anger against yourself, since 
only you stop yourselffrom looking andfrom liVing. The mystery play is soft 
like air and thin smoke, and you are raw matter that is disturbingly heavy. 
But let your hope, which is your highestgood and highest ability, lead the way 

159 Black Book 2 continues: "The crystal shines dimly. I think again ofthe image ofOdysseus, how he passed the rocky island ofthe Sirens on his lengthy odyssey. Should I, 
should I not?" (P.74). 

160 I.e., the head ofJohn the Baptist. 

161 
In the 1925 Seminar, Jung recounted: "I used the same technique of the descent, but this time I went much deeper. The first time I should say I reached a depth of 
about one thousand feet, but this time it was a cosmic depth. It was like going to the moon, or like the feeling of a descent into empty space. First the picture was ofa 
crater, or a ring-chain of mountains, and my feeling association was that ofone dead, as if oneself were a victim. It was the mood of the land of the hereafter. I could see 
two people, an old man with a white beard and a young girl who was very beautiful. I assumed them to be real and listened to what they were saying. The old man said 
he was Elijah and I was.quite shocked, but she was even more upsetting because she was Salome. I said to myself that there was a queer mixture: Salome and Elijah, but 
Elijah assured me that he and Salome had been together since eternity. This also upset me. With them was a black serpent who had an affinity for me. I stuck to Elijah 
as being the most reasonable of the lot, for he seemed to have a mind. I was exceedingly doubtful about Salome. We had a long conversation but I did not understand 
it. Ofcourse I thought of the fact of my father being a clergyman as being the explanation ofmy having figures like this. How about this old man then? Salome was 
not to be touched upon. Itwas only much later that I found her association with Elijah quite natural. Whenever you take journeys like this you find a young girl with 
an old man" (ftnalytical Psychology, pp. 63-64). Jung then refers to examples of this pattern in the work of Melville, Meyrink, Rider Haggard, and the Gnostic legend of 
Simon Magus (see note 154, p. 359), Kundry and Klingsor from Wagner's Parsifal (see below, p. 303), and Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia. In Memories, he noted: 
"In myths the snake is a frequent counterpart of the hero. There are numerous accounts of their affinity ... Therefore the presence of the snake was an indication of 
a hero-myth" (p. 206). Of Salome, he said: "Salome is an anima figure. She is blind because she does not see the meaning of things. Elijah is the figure of the wise old 
prophet and represents the factor of intelligence and knowledge; Salome, the erotic element. One might say that the two figures are personifications of Logos and Eros. 
But such a definition would be excessively intellectual. It is more meaningful to let the figures be what they were for me at that time-namely; events and experiences" 
(pp. 206-7). In 1955/56, Jung wrote: "For purely psychological reasons I have elsewhere attempted to equate the masculine consciousness with the concept ofLogos 
and the feminine with that ofEros. By Logos I meant discrimination, judgment, insight, and by Eros I meant the placing into relation" (Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, 
¤224). On Jung's reading of Elijah and Salome in terms of Logos and Eros respectively; see Appendix B, "Commentaries." 

162 The Corrected Draft has: "Guiding Rejfection" (p. 86). The Draft and Corrected Draft have "This, my friend, is a mystery play in which the spirit of the depths cast me. I had 
recognized the-birth-ofthe-new-6od [the conception], and therefore the spirit ofthe depths allowed me to participate in the underworld ceremonies, which were supposed 
to instmct me about the God's intentions and works. Through these rituals I was supposed to be initiated into the mysteries ofredemption" (Corrected Draft, p. 86). 

163 The Draft continues: "In the renewed world you can have no outer possessions, unless you create them out ofyourselves. You can enter only into your own mysteries. 
The spirit of the depths has other things to teach you than me. I only have to bring you tidings of the new God and of the ceremonies and mysteries of his service. But 
this is the way. It is the gate to darkness" (p. lOO). 


MYSTERIUM. ENCOUNTER I 247 

and serve you as aguide in the world ofdarkness) since it is oflike substance space. Pleasure is not older than forethinking, and forethinking 
with the forms ofthat world. 164 [Image v (v)] 165 is not older than pleasure. Both are equally old and in nature 

The scene ofthe mystery play is a deep place like the crater of intimately one. Only in man does the separate existence of both 
a volcano. My deep interior is a volcano, that pushes out the fieryprinciples 
become apparent. 
molten mass of the unformed and the undifferentiated. Thus my Apart from Elijah and Salome I found the serpent as a third 
interior gives birth to the children of chaos, of the primordial principle.171 It is a stranger to both principles although it is 
mother. He who enters the crater also becomes chaotic matter, associated with both. The serpent taught me the unconditional 
he melts. The formed in him dissolves and binds itself anew with difference in essence between the two principles in me. If I look 
the children of chaos, the powers of darkness, the ruling and the across from forethinking to pleasure, I first see the deterrent 
seducing, the compelling and the alluring, the divine and the poisonous serpent. If I feel from pleasure across to forethinlcing, 
devilish. These powers stretch beyond my certainties and limits likewise I feel first the cold cruel serpent.172 The serpent is the 
on all sides, and connect me with all forms and with all distant earthly essence ofman ofwhich he is not conscious. Its character 
beings and things, through which inner tidings oftheir being and changes according to peoples and lands, since it is the mystery 
their character develop in me. that flows to him from the nourishing earth-mother.173 

Because I have fallen into the source ofchaos, into the primordial The earthly (numen loci) separates forethinking and pleasure 
beginning, I myself become smelted anew in the connection with in man, but not in itself The serpent has the weight of the earth 
the primordial beginning, which at the same time is what has in itself but also its changeability and germination from which 
been and what is becoming. At first I come to the primordial everything that becomes emerges. It is always the serpent that causes 
beginning in myself But because I am a part of the matter and man to becolne enslaved now to one, now to the other principle, 
formation ofthe world, I also come into the primordial beginning so that it becomes error. One cannot live with forethinking alone, 
ofthe world in the first place. I have certainly participated in life or with pleasure alone. You need both. But you cannot be 
as someone formed and determined, but only through my formed in forethinking and in pleasure at the same time, you must take 
and determined consciousness and through this in a formed and turns being in forethinking and pleasure, obeying the prevailing 
determined piece of the whole world, but not in the unformed law, unfaithful to the other so to speak. But men prefer one or the 
and undetermined aspects of the world that likewise are given to other. Some love thinlcing and establish the art oflife on it. Theyá 
me. Yet it is given only to my depths, not to my surface, which is a practice their thinking and their circumspection, so they lose their 
formed and determined consciousness. pleasure. Therefore they are old and have a sharp face. The others 

The powers of my depths are predetermination and pleasure.166 love pleasure, they practice their feeling and living. Thus they forget 
Predetermination or forethinlcing167 is Prometheus/68 who, without thinlcing. Therefore they are young and blind. Those who think 
determined thoughts, brings the chaotic to form169 and definition, base the world on thought, those who feel, on feeling. You find 
who digs the channels and holds the object before pleasure. truth and error in both. 
Forethinking also comes before thought. But pleasure is the force The way oflife writhes like the serpent from right to left and 
that desires and destroys forms without form and definition. It from left to right, from thinlcing to pleasure and from pleasure 
loves the form in itselfthat it takes hold o£ and destroys the forms to thinking. Thus the serpent is an adversary and a symbol of 
that it does not talce. The forethinker is a seer, but pleasure is blind. enmity, but also a wise bridge that connects right and left through 
It does not foresee, but desires what it touches. Forethinlcing is not longing, much needed by our life.174 
powerful in itself and therefore does not move. But pleasure is The place where Elijah and Salome live together is a dark 
power, and therefore it moves. Forethinlcing needs pleasure to space and a bright one. The dark space is the space of forebe 
able to come to form. Pleasure needs forethinking to come thinking. It is dark so he who lives there requires vision.175 
to form, which it requires.17o If pleasure lacked forming, pleasure This space is limited, so forethinking does not lead into the 
would dissolve in manifoldness and become splintered and extended distance, but into the depth of the past and the 
powerless through unending division, lost to the unending. If future. The crystal is the formed tho~ght that reflects what is 
a form does not contain and compress pleasure within itsel£ to come in what has gone before. 
it cannot reach the higher, since it always flows like water from Eve / and the serpent show me that my next step leads to fo1. v(v)/vi(r) 
above to below. All pleasure, when left alone, flows into the deep pleasure and from there again on lengthy wanderings like 
sea and ends in the deathly stillness of dispersal into unending Odysseus. He went astray when he played his trick at Troy.176The 

164 The Draft continues: "The mystery play took place at the deepest bottom ofmy interior, which is that other world. You have to bear this in mind, it is also a world 
and its reality is large and frightening. You cry and laugh and tremble and sometimes you break out in a cold sweat for fear ofdeath. The mystery play represents my 
self and through me the world to which I belong is represented. Thus, my friends, you learn much about the world, and through it about yoursel£ by what I say to you 
here. But you have not learned anything about your mysteries in this way; indeed, your way is darker than before, since my eXaIhple will stand obstructively in your 
path. You may follow me, not on my way; but on yours" (p. I02). 

165 This depicts the scene in the fantasy 
166 This is a subjective interpretation of the figures ofElijah and Salome. 
167 In the Corrected Drcift, "Predetermination or forethought" is replaced by "The Idea." This substitution occurs throughout the rest ofthis section (p. 89). 
168 In Greek mythology; Prometheus created mankind out of clay He could foretell the future, and his name signifies "forethought." In 1921, Jung wrote an extended 


analysis of Carl Spitteler's epic poem Prometheus und Epimetheus (1881) together with Goethe's Prometheus Fragmettt (1773); see psychological Types, CW 6, ch. 5. 
169 The Corrected Drcift has: "Boundary" (p. 89). .) 
170 The Drcift continues: "Therefore the forethinker approached me as Elijah, the prophet, and pleasure as Salome" (p. I03). 
171 The Drcift continues: "The animal ofdeadly horror, which lay between Adam and Eve" (p. I05). 
172 The Corrected Draft continues: "The serpent is not only a separating but also a unifying principle" (p. 91). 
I73 When commenting on this in the 1925 seminar, Jung noted that there were many accounts in mythology ofthe relation between a hero and a serpent, so the presence 

of the serpent indicated that "it will again be a hero myth" (p. 89). He showed a diagram of a cross with Rational/Thinking (Elijall) at the top, Feeling (Salome) at the 
bottom, Irrational / Intuition (Superior) at the left, and Sensation / Inferior (Serpent) at the right (p. 90). He interpreted the black serpent as the introverting libido: 
"The serpent leads the psychological movement apparently astray into the kingdom ofshadows, dead and wrong images, but also into earth, into concretization ... 
Inasmuch as the serpent leads into the shadows, it has the function ofthe anima; it leads you into the depths, it connects the Above and Below ... the serpent is also 
the symbol ofwisdom" (Analytical Psychology, pp. 94-95). 


174 The Drcift continues: "By following Elijah and Salome, I follow the two principles inside me and through me in the world, ofwhich I am part" (p. I06). 
175 The Corrected Drcift continues: "that is, ofthinking. And without thinking one cannot grasp an idea" (p. 92). 
176 The Drcift continues: "What would Odysseus have been without his wandering?" (p. I07). The Corrected Drcift adds: "There would have been no odyssey" (p. 92). 



248 I LIBER PRIMUS fo1. vier) 

bright garden is the space of pleasure. He who lives there needs 
no vision;I77 he feels the unending.178 A thinker who descends into 
his forethinking finds his next step leading into the garden of 
Salome. Therefore the thinker fears his forethought, although 
he lives on the foundation offorethinking. The visible surface 
is safer than the underground. Thinking protects against the 
way of error, and therefore it leads to petrification. 

A thinker should fear Salome, since she wants his head, 
especially ifhe is a holy man. A thinker cannot be a holy person, 
otherwise he loses his head. It does not help to hide oneself in 
thought. There the solidification overtakes you. You must turn 
back to motherly forethought to obtain renewal. But forethought 
leads to Salome. 

179Because I was a thinker and caught sight of the hostile 
principle of pleasure from forethinking, it appeared to me as 
Salome. If I had been one who felt, and had groped my way 
toward forethinking, then it would have appeared to me as a 
serpent-encoiled daimon, if I had actually seen it. But I would 
have been blind. Therefore I would have felt only slippery, dead, 
dangerous, allegedly overcome, insipid, and mawkish things, 
and I would have pulled back with the same shudder I felt in 
turning from Salome. 

The thinker's passions are bad, therefore he has no pleasure. 
The thoughts of one who feelsl80 are bad, therefore he has no 
thoughts. He who prefers to think than to feel,181 leaves his 
feelingl82 to rot,in darkness. It does not grow ripe, but in moldiness 
produces sick tendrils that do not reach the light. He who 
prefers to feel than to think leaves his thinking in darkness, 
where it spins its nets in gloomy places, desolate webs in which 
mosquitos and gnats become enmeshed. The thinker feels the 
disgust of feeling, since :the feeling in him is mainly disgusting. 
The one who feels thinks the disgust of thinking, since the 
thinking in him is mainly disgusting. So the serpent lies between 
the thinker and the one who feels. They are each other's poison 
and healing. 

In the garden it had to become apparent to me that I loved 
Salome. This recognition struck me, since I had not thought it. 
What a thinker does not think he believes does not exist, and 
what one who feels does not feel he believes does not exist. You 
begin to have a presentiment of the whole when you embrace 
your opposite pripdple, since the whole belongs to both principles, 
which grow from one root.183 

Elijah said: "You should recognize her through her love!" Not 
only do you venerate the object, but the object also sanctifies 
you. Salome loved the prophet, and this sanctified her. The 
prophet loved God, and this sanctified him. But Salome did not 
love God, and this profaned her. But the prophet did not love 
Salome, and this profaned him. And thus they were each other's 

poison and death. May the thinking person accept his pleasure, 
and the feeling person accept his own thought. Such leads one 
along the way.184 

Instruction 

[HI vier)] 

Cap. x. 

On the following night/8s I was led to a second image: I am 
standing in the rocky depth that seems to me like a crater. Before 
me I see the house with columns. I see Salome walking along the 
length of the wall toward the left, touching the wall like a blind 
person. The serpent follows her. The old man stands at the door 
and waves to me. Hesitantly I draw closer. He calls Salome back. 
She is like someone suffering. I cannot detect any sacrilege in her 
nature. Her hands are white and her face has a gentle expression. 
The serpent lies before them. I stand before them clumsily like a 
stupid boy; overwhelmed by uncertainty and ambiguity. The old 
man eyes me searchingly and says: "What do you want here?" 

I: "Forgive me, it is not obtrusiveness or arrogance that leads 
me here. I am here perchance, not knowing what I want. A longing 
that stayed behind in your house yesterday has brought me here. 
You see, prophet, I am tired, my head is as heavy as lead. I am 
lost in my ignorance. I have toyed with myself enough. I played 
hypocritical games with myselfand they all would have disgusted 
me, were it not clever to perform what others expect from us in 
the world ofmen. It seems to me as if I were more real here. And 
yet I do not like being here." 
Wordlessly Elijah and Salome step inside the house. I follow 
them reluctantly. A feeling ofguilt torments me. Is it bad conscience? 
I would like to turn back, but I cannot. I stand before the play 
offire in the shining crystal. 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 
Goddessl86-it is Salome desperately wringing her handsl87-it 
takes hold ofme, she is my own soul, and now I see Elijah in the 
image ofthe stone. 

Elijah and Salome stand smiling before me. 

I: "These visions are full oftorment, and the meaning ofthese 
images is dark to me, Elijah; please shed some light." 
Elijah turns away silently; and leads the way toward the left. 
Salome enters a colonnade to the right. Elijah leads me into an 
even darker room. A burning red lamp hangs from the ceiling. I 
sit down exhausted. Elijah stands before me leaning on a marble 
lion in the middle ofthe room. 

E: ''Are you anxious? Your ignorance is to blame for your bad 
conscience. Not-knowing is guilt, but you believe that it is the 
177 The Corrected Draft continues: "Than much rather the pleasure to enjoy the garden" (p. 92). . 

178 The Corrected Drqft continues: "It is strange that Salome's garden lies so close to the dignified and mysterious hall ofideas. Does a thinker therefore experience awe or 
perhaps even fear ofthe idea, because ofits proximity to paradise?" (p. 92). 
179 The Draft continues: "I was a forethinker. What could astonish me more than the intimate community offorethinking and pleasure, these inimical principles?" (p. lO8). 
180 The Corrected Draft has instead: "One who has pleasure" (p. 94). 
181 The Corrected Draft has instead: "Pleasure" (p. 94). 
182 The Corrected Draft has instead: "Pleasure" (p. 94). 
183 The Draft continues: "as one ofyour poets has said: 'the shaft bears two irons' " (p. IIO). 
184 In 1913, Jung presented his paper, "On the question ofpsychological types," in which he noted that the libido or psychic energy in an individual was characteristically 

directed toward the object (extraversion) or toward the subject (introversion); CW 6. Commencing in the summer of1915 he had extensive correspondence with 
Hans Schmid on this question, in which he now characterized the introverts as being dominated by the function of thinking, and the extraverts as being dominated by 
the function offeeling. He also characterized the extraverts as being dominated by the pleasure-pain mechanism, seeking out the love of the object, and unconsciously 
seeking tyrannical power. Introverts unconsciously sought inferior pleasure, and had to see that the object was also a symbol oftheir pleasure. On August 7, 1915, he 
wrote to Schmid: "The opposites should be evened out in the individual himself' (The}ung-Schmid Correspondence, eds. John Beebe and Ernst Falzeder, tr. Ernst Falzeder with Tony 
Woolfson [Philemon Series, forthcoming)). This linkage between thinking and introversion and feeling and extraversion was maintained in his discussion ofthis 
subject in 1917 in The Psychology oJthe Unconscious Processes. In psychological Types (1921), this model had expanded to encompass two main attitude types ofintroverts 
and extraverts further subdivided by the predominance ofone of the four psychological functions of thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition. 

I8S December 22, 1913. On December 19, 1913, Jung gave a talk "On the psychology ofthe unconscious" to the Zurich Psychoanalytical Society. 

186 The Draft continues: "Kali" (p. II3). 

187 Black Book 2 continues: "now that white shape ofa girl with black hair-my own soul-and now that white shape ofa man, which also appeared to me at the time-
it resembles Michelangelo's sitting Moses-it is Elijah" (p. 84). Michelangelo's Moses is in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. It was the subject ofa study 


INSTRUCTION I 249 

urge toward forbidden knowledge that causes your feeling of 
guilt. Why do you think you are here?" 

1: "I don't know. I sank into this place when unknowingly 
I tried resisting the not-known. So here I am, astonished and 
confused, an ignorant fool. I experience strange things in your 
house, things that frighten me and whose meaning is dark to me." 
E: "Ifit were not your law to be here, how would you be here?" 
I: "I'm afflicted by fatal weakness, my father." 
E: "You are evasive. You cannot extricate yourself from your law. 
I: "How can I extricate myself from what is unknown to me, 
which I cannot reach with either feeling or presentiment?" 
E: "You are lying. Do you not know that you yourself 
recognized what it means if Salome loves you?" 
I: "You are right. A doubtful and uncertain thought arose in 
me. But I have forgotten it again." 
E: "You have not forgotten it. It burned deep inside you. Are 
you cowardly? Or can you not differentiate this thought from your 
own self enough so that you wished to claim it for yourself?" 
I: "The thought went too far for me, and I shun far-fetched 
ideas. They are dangerous, since I am a man, and you know how 
much men are ;ccustomed to seeing thoughts as their very own, 
so that they eventually confuse them with themselves." 
E: "Will you therefore confuse yourself with a tree or animal, 
because you look at them and because you exist with them in one 
and the same world? Must you be your thoughts, because you are 
in the world ofyour thoughts? But your thoughts are just as much 
outside your self as trees and animals are outside your body."188 
I: "I understand. My thought world was for me more word 
than world. I thought of my thought world: it is I." 
E: "Do you say to your human world and every being outside 
ofyou: you are I?" 
I: "I stepped into your house, my father, with the fear of a 
schoolboy. But you taught me salutary wisdoml89: I can also 
consider my thoughts as being outside my self. That helps me 
to return to that terrible conclusion that my tongue is reluctant 
to express. I thought that Salome loves me because I resemble 
John or you. This thought seemed unbelievable to me. That's why 
I rejected it and thought that she loves me because I am really 
quite opposite to you, that she loves her badness in my badness. 
This thought was devastating." 
Elijah is silent. Heaviness lies on me. Then Salome steps in, comes 
over to me and lays her arm around my shoulder. She takes me for 
her father in whose chair I sat. I dare neither move nor spealc. 

S: "I know that you are not my father. You are his son, and I 
am your sister." 
I: "You, Salome, my sister? Was this the terrible attraction that 
emanated from you, that unnamable horror ofyou, ofyour touch? 
Who was our mother?" 
S: "Mary." 
1: "Is it a hellish dream? Mary; our mother? What madness 
lurks in your words? The mother of our Savior, our mother? 
When I crossed your threshold today; I foresaw calamity. Alas! It 
has come. Are you out of your senses, Salome? Elijah, protector 
ofthe divine law, speak: is this a devilish spell cast by the rejected? 
How can she say such a thing? Or are both of you out of your 
senses? You are symbols and Mary is a .symbol. I am simply too 
confused to see through you now." 
E: "You may call us symbols for the same reason that you can 
also call your fellow men symbols, ifyou wish to. But we are just as 
real as your fellow men. You invalidate nothing and solve nothing 
by calling us symbols." 
I: "You plunge me into a terrible confusion. Do you wish to 
be real?" 
E: "We are certainly what you call real. Here we are, and you 
have to accept us. The choice is yours." 
I am silent. Salome has removed herself Uncertainly I look around. 
Behind me a high golden red flame burns on a round altar. The 
serpent has encircled the flame. Its eyes glitter with golden reflections. 
Swaying I turn to the exit. As I step out into the hall, I see a powerful 
lion going before me. Outside, it is a wide cold starry night. 

[2] 190 1t is no small matter to acknowledge one's yearning. 
For this many need to make a particular effort at honesty. All 
too many do not want to know where their yearning is, because 
it would seem to them impossible or too distressing. And yet 
yearning is the way of life. If you do not acknowledge your 
yearning, then you do not follow yourself but go on foreign ways 
that others have indicated to you. So you do not live your life but 
an alien one. But who should live your life ifyou do not live it? It 
is not only stupid to exchange your own life for an alien one, but 
also a hypocritical game, because you can never really live the life 
of others, you can only pretend to do it, deceiving the other and 
yourself since you can only live your own life. 
If you give up your self you live it in others; thereby you 
become selfish to others, and thus you deceive others. Everyone 
thus believes that such a life is possible. It is, however, only apish 
imitation. Through giving in to your apish appetite, you infect 
others, because the ape stimulates the apish. So you turn yourself 
and others into apes. Through reciprocal imitation you live 
according to the average expectation. The image of the hero was 
set up for all in every age through the appetite for imitation. 
Therefore the hero was murdered, since we have all been aping 
him. Do you know why you cannot abandon apishness? For fear 
ofloneliness and defeat. 

To live oneself means: to be one's own task. Never say that it 
is a pleasure to live oneself It will be no joy but a long suffering, 
since you must become your own creator. If you want to create 

by Freud that was published in 1914 (The Standard Edition ofthe complete psychological Works ofSigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey in collaboration with Anna Freud assisted 
by Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson, tr. J. Strachey, 24 vols. [London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1953-1974], vol. 13). The third-person 
pronoun "it" identifies Salome with Kali, whose many hands wring each other; cf note 196, p. 000. 

188 Jung mentioned this conversation in the 1925 seminar and commented: "Only then I learned psychological objectivity Only then could I say to a patient, 'Be quiet, 
something is happening.' There are such things as mice in a house. You cannot say you are wrong when you have a thought. For the understanding of the unconscious we 
must see our thoughts as events, as phenomena" (Analytical Psychology, p. 95). 

189 The Corrected Draft has instead: "Truth" (p. 100). 

190 The Corrected Drqft has: "Guiding Reflection" (p. 103). In the Drqft and Corrected Drqft, a lengthy passage occurs. What follows here is a paraphrase: I wonder whether 
this is real, an underworld, or the other reality, and whether it was the other reality that had forced me here. I see here that Salome, my pleasure, moves to the left, the 
side of the impure and bad. This movement follows the serpent, which represents the resistance and the enmity against this movement. Pleasure goes away from the 
door. Forethinking [Corrected Drqft: "the Idea," throughout this passage] stands at the door, knowing the entrance to the mysteries. Therefore desire melts into the 
many, if forethi11.king does not direct it and force it toward its goal. If one meets a man who only desires, then one will find resistance against his desire behind it. Desire 
without forethinking gains much but keeps nothing, therefore his desire is the source ofconstant disappointment. Thus Elijall calls Salome back. If pleasure is united 
with forethinking, the serpent lies before them. To succeed in something, you first need to deal with the resistance and difficulty, otherwise joy leaves behind pain and 
disappointment. Therefore I drew nearer. I had first to overcome the difficulty and the resistance to gain what I desired. When desire overcomes the difficulty, it 
becomes seeing and follows forethinking. Therefore I see that Salome's hands are pure, with no trace ofcrime. My desire is pure if I first overcome the difficulty and 
resistance. If I weigh up pleasure and forethinking, I am Wee a fool, blindly following his longing. If I follow my thinking, I forsake my pleasure. The ancients said in 
images that the fool finds the right way Forethinking has the first word, therefore Elijah asked me what I wanted. You should always ask yourself what you desire, since all 
too many do not know what they want. I did not know what I wanted. You should confess your longing and what you long for to yourself Thus you satisfy your pleasure 
and nourish your forethinking at the same time" (Corrected Drqfi, pp. 103-4). 


250 I LIBER PRIMUS fo1. vier) /vi(v) 

yoursel£ then you do not begin with the best and the highest, 
but with the worst and the deepest. Therefore say that you are 
reluctant to live yourself The flowing together of the stream of 
life is not joy but pain, since it is power against power, guilt, and 
shatters the sanctified. 

The image of the mother of God with the child that I foresee, 
indicates to me the mystery of the transformation.191 If forethinking 
and pleasure unite in me, a third arises from them, the divine 
son, who is the supreme meaning, the symbol, the passing over into 

2

a new creation. I do not myself become the supreme meaning19or the symbol, but the symbol becomes in me such that it has its 
substance, and I mine. Thus I stand like Peter in worship before 
the miracle of the transformation and the becoming real of the 
God in me. 

Although I am not the son ofthe God mysel£ I represent him 
nevertheless as one who was a mother to the God, and one therefore 
to whom in the name ofthe God the freedom ofthe binding 
and loosing has been given. The binding and loosing take place 
in me.193 But insofar as it tal<.es place in me, and I am a part ofthe 
world, it also takes place through meiin the world, and no one can 
hinder it. Itdoesn't tal<.e place according to the way ofmy will but 
in the way of unavoidable effect. I am not master over you, but 
the being ofthe God in me. I lock the past with one key; with the 
other I open the future. This takes place through my transformation. 
The miracle of transformation commands. I am its servant, 
just as the Pope is. 

You see how incredible it was to believe such of oneself1 It

94 

applies not to me, but to the symbol. The symbol becomes my lord 
and unfailing commander. Itwill fortify its reign and change itself 
into aástarry and riddling image, whose meaning turns completely 
inward, and whose pleasure radiates outward like blazing fire,r95 
a Buddha in the flames.196 Because I sink into my symbol to such 
an extent, the symbol changes me from my one into my other, and 
that cruel Goddess of my interior, 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. 

197In the moment ofyour bewilderment, follow your forethinking 
and not your blind desire, since forethinking leads you to the 
difficulties that should always come first. They come nevertheless. 

Ifyou look for a light, you fall first into an even deeper darkness. 
In this darkness you find a light with a weal<. reddish flame that 
gives only a low brightness, but it is enough for you to see your 
neighbor. It is exhausting to reach this goal that seems to be no 
goal. And so it is good: I am paralyzed and therefore ready to 
accept. My forethinking rests on the lion, my power.198 

I held to the sanctified form, and didn't want to allow the 
chaos to breal<. through its dams. I believed in the order of 
the world and hated everything disorganized and unformed. 
Therefore above all I had to realize that my own law had 
brought me to this place. As the God developed in me, I 
thought he was a part ofmy self I thought that my "I" included 
him and therefore I took him for my thought. But I also considered 
that my thoughts were parts of my "1." Thus I entered into my 
thoughts, and into the thinking about the God, in that I took 
him / for a part of my self fo1. vier) / vie 

On account of my thoughts, I had left myself; therefore my 
self became hungry and made God into a selfish thought. If I 
leave mysel£ my hunger will drive me to find my selfin my object, 
that is, in my thought. Therefore you love reasonable and orderly 
thoughts, since you could not endure it ifyour self was indisordered, 
that is, unsuitable thoughts. Through your selfish wish, you pushed 
out ofyour thoughts everything that you do not consider ordered, 
that is, unfitting. You create order according to what you know, 
you do not know the thoughts of chaos, and yet they exist. My 
thoughts are not my sel£ and my I does not embrace the thought. 
Your thought has this meaning and that, not just one, but many 
meanings. No one knows how many. 

My thoughts are not my sel£ but exactly like the things of 
the world, alive and dead.199 Just as I am not damaged through 
living in a partly chaotic world, so too I am not damaged if I 
live in my partly chaotic thought world. Thoughts are natural 
events that you do not possess, and whose meaning you only 
imperfectly recognize.20o Thoughts grow in me like a forest, 
populated by many different animals. But man is domineering 
in his thinking, and therefore he kills the pleasure of the forest 
and that of the wild animals. Man is violent in his desire, and 
he himself becomes a forest and a forest animal. Just as I have 
freedom in the world, I also have freedom in my thoughts. 
Freedom is conditional. 

I9I The Corrected Draft has: "in his outer appearance, in the misery ofearthly reality" (p. 107). 

I92 The Corrected Draft has instead: "the son of God" (p. 107). 

I93 Cf Matthew I8:I8. Christ: "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." 

I94 The Draft and Corrected Draft continue: "The Pope in Rome has become an image and-symbol for us ofhow God becomes human and how he [God] becomes the 
visible lord of men. Thus the coming God will become the lord of the world. This happens first [here] in me. The supreme meaning becomes my lord and infallible 
commander, though not only in me, but perhaps in many others whom I don't know" (Corrected Draft, pp. 108-9). 

I95 The Corrected Draft has: "thus I become, like the Buddha sitting in the flames" (p. 109). 

I96 The Corrected Draft continues: "Where the idea is, pleasure always is too. If the idea is inside, pleasure is outside. Therefore an air of evil pleasure envelops me. A lecherous 
and bloodthirsty Godhead gives me this false air. This happens because I must altogether suffer the becoming of the God and can therefore not separate it from 
myself at first. But as long as it is not separated from me, I am so seized by the idea that I am it, and therefore I am also the woman associated with the idea from the 
beginning. In that I receive the idea and represent it in the manner of Buddha, my pleasure is like the Indian Kali, since she is Buddha's other side. Kali, however, is 
Salome and Salome is my soul" (p. 109). 

I97 In the Draft, a lengthy passage occurs here, a paraphrase ofwhich follows: The numbness is like a death. I needed total transformation. Through this my meaning, like 
that of the Buddha, went completely inside. Then the transformation happened. I then went over to pleasure, as I was a thinker. As a thinker, I rejected my feeling, but 
I had rejected part oflife. Then my feeling became a poisonous plant, and when it awakened, it was sensuality instead of pleasure, the lowest and commonest form of 
pleasure. This is represented by Kali. Salome is the image ofhis pleasure, that suffers pain, since it was shut out for too long. It then became apparent that Salome, i.e., 
my pleasure, was my soul. When I recognized this, my thinking changed and ascended to the idea, and then the image of Elijah appeared. This prepared me for the 
mystery play; and showed me in advance the way of transformation that I had to undergo in the Mysterium. The flowing together of the forethinking with pleasure 
produces the God. I recognized that the God in me wanted to become a man, and I considered this and honored this, and I became the servant of the God, but for 
no one other than myself [Corrected Draft: it would be madness and presumption to assume that I also did this for others, p. no]. I sank into the contemplation of the 
wonder of transformation, and first turned into the lower level ofmy pleasure, and then through this I recognized my soul. The smiles of Elijah and Salome indicate that 
they were happy at my appearance, but I was in deep darkness. When the way is dark, so is the idea that gives light. When the idea in the moment of confusion allows 
the words and not the blind longing, then the words lead you to difficulty Whereas it leads you to the right. That is why Elijah turns left, to the side of the unholy and 
evil, and Salome turns right to the side of the correct and good. She doesn't go to the garden, the place of pleasure, but remains in the house of the father" (pp. 125-27). 

I98 In the Draft, a passage occurs, a paraphrase ofwhich follows: If I am strong, so also are my intentions and presuppositions. My own thought weakens and goes over 
into the idea. The idea becomes strong; it is supported by its own strength. I recognize this in the fact that Elijah is supported by the lions. The lion is of stone. My 
pleasure is dead and turned to stone, because I did hot love Salome. This gave my thought the coldness of stone, and from this the idea took its solidity; which it 
needed to subjugate my thought. It needed to be subjugated as it strove against Salome, since she appeared bad to it. (p. 128). 

I99 In I92I Jung wrote: "The peculiar reality ofunconscious contents, therefore, gives us the same right to describe them as objects as outer things" 
(psychological Types, CW 6, ¤28o). 
200 The Draft and Corrected Draft have: "f--would have to consider myself mad, [: It would be more than inconsistent,] if I thought that I had produced the thoughts of the 
Mysterium" (Corrected Draft, p. lIS). 


RESOLUTION I 251 

To certain things of the world I must say: you should not be 
thus, but you should be different. Yet first I look carefully at their 
nature, otherwise I cannot change it. I proceed in the same way 
with certain thoughts. You change those things of the world that, 
not being useful in themselves, endanger your welfare. Proceed 
likewise with your thoughts. Nothing is complete, and much is in 
dispute. The way oflife is transformation, not exclusion. Well-being 
is a better judge than the law. 

But as I became aware of the freedom in my thought world, 
Salome embraced me and I thus became a prophet, since I had 
found pleasure in the primordial beginning, in the forest, and in 
the wild animals. It stands too close to reason for me to set myself 
on a par with my visions, and for me to take pleasure in seeing. I 
am in danger of believing that I myself am significant since I see 
the significant. This will always drive us crazy; and we transform 
the vision into foolishness and monkey business, since we cannot 
desist from imitation.201 

Just as my thinking is the son of forethinking, so is my 
pleasure the daughter of love, of the innocent and conceiving 
mother of God. Aside from Christ Mary gave birth to Salome. 
Therefore Christ in the gospel ofthe Egyptians says to Salome: 
"Eat every herb, but do not eat the bitter." And when Salome 
wanted to know, Christ spoke to her: "Ifyou crush the covering 
of shame, and when the two become one, and the male with 
the female, neither male nor female."202 

Forethinking is the procreative, love is the receptive.203 Both 
are beyond this world. Here are understanding and pleasure, 
we only suspect the other. It would be madness to claim that 
they are in this world. So much that is riddling and cunning 
coils around this light. I won the power back again from the 
depths, and it went before me like a lion.204 

Resolution 

[HI vi (v)] 205 
Cap. xi. 

2060n the third night, deep longing to continue experiencing 
the mysteries seized me. The struggle between doubt and desire 
was great in me. But suddenly I saw that I stood before a steep 
ridge in a wasteland. It is a dazzling bright day I catch sight ofthe 

prophet high above me. His hand makes an averting movement, 
and I abandon my decision to climb up. I wait below, gazing 
upward. I look: to the right it is dark night; to the left it is bright 
day The rock separates day and night. On the dark side lies a big 
black serpent, on the bright side a white serpent. They thrust 
their heads toward each other, eager for battle. Elijah stands on 
the heights above them. The serpents pounce on one another and 
a terrible wrestling ensues. The black serpent seems to be stronger; 
the white serpent draws back. Great billows ofdust rise from the 
place ofstruggle. But then I see: the black serpent pulls itselfback 
again. The front part ofits body has become white. Both serpents 
curl about themselves, one in light, the other in darkness.207 

Elijah: "What did you see?" 

I: "I saw the fight oftwo formidable serpents. It seemed to me 
as ifthe black would overcome the white serpent; but behold, the 
black one withdrew and its head and the top part ofits body had 
turned white." 
E: "Do you understand that?" 
I: "I have thought it over, but I cannot understand it. Should 
it mean that the power ofthe good light will become so great that 
even the darkness that resists it will be illumined by it?" 
Elijah climbs before me into the heights, to a very high summit; 
I follow. On the peak we come to some masonry made of huge 
blocks. It is a round embankment on the summie08 Inside lies a 
large courtyard, and there is a mighty boulder in the middle, like an 
altar. The prophet stands on this stone and says: "This is the temple 
ofthe sun. This place is a vessel, that collects the light ofthe sun." 

Elijah climbs down from the stone, his form becomes smaller 
in descending, and finally becomes dwarflike, unlike himself 

I ask: "Who are you?" 

"I am Mime,209 and I will show you the wellsprings. The collected 
light becomes water and flows in many springs from the summit 
into the valleys ofthe earth." He then dives down into a crevice. I 
follow him down into a dark cave. I hear the rippling ofa spring. 
I hear the voice of the dwarf from below: "Here are my wells, 
whoever drinks from them becomes wise." 

But I cannot reach down. I lose courage. I leave the cave 
and, doubting, pace back and forth in the square of the yard. 
Everything appears to me strange and incomprehensible. It is 
solitary and deathly silent here. The air is clear and cool as on the 
remotest heights, a wonderful flood of sunlight all around, the 

201 The Draft continues: "I recognized the father because I was a thinker, and thus I did not know the mother, but saw love in the guise of pleasure and called it pleasure, 
and therefore this was Salome to me. Now I learn that Mary is the mother, the innocent and love-receiving, and not pleasure, who bears the seed of evil in her heated 
and seductive nature. / If Salome, evil pleasure, is my sister, then I must be a thinking saint, and my intellect has met with a sad fate. I must sacrifice my intellect and 
confess to you that what I told you about pleasure, namely that it is the principle opposed to forethought, is incomplete and prejudiced. I observed as a thinker from 
the vantage point of my thinking, otherwise I could have recognized that Salome, as Elijah's daughter, is an offspring of thought and not the principle itself which 
Mary, the innocent Virgin Mother, now appears as"(p. 133). 

202 The gospel of the Egyptians is one of the apocryphal gospels that features a dialogue between Christ and Salome. Christ states that he has come to undo the work of 
the female, namely; lust, birth, and decay: To Salome's question ofhow long shall death prevail, Christ answered, as long as women bear children. Here, Jung is referring 
to the following passage: "she said, 'Then I have done well in not giving birth,' imagining that it is not permitted to bear children; the Lord answered, 'Eat of every 
herb, but the bitter one eat not.' " The dialogue continues: "When Salome asked when it shall be made known the Lord said, 'When you tread under foot the covering 
of shame and when out of two is made one, and the male with the female, neither male nor female' "(The Apocryphal New Testament, ed.]. K. Elliot [Oxford: Oxford 
University Press, 1999], p. IS). Jung cites this logion, available to him from Clement in the Stromateis, as an example of the union of opposites in Visions (1932, vol. 
1., p. 524), and as an example of the coniunctio ofmale and female in "On the psychology of the child archetype" (1940, CW 9, I, ¤295) and Mysterium Coniunctionis 
(1955-56, CW 14, ¤52S). 

203 The Draft and Corrected Drtift have: "but when the mystery play showed me this, I didn't understand, but I thought I had produced an incredible thought. I a1ll1llad-wbelieve-
tlris, And I bdieved-it Therefore I was seized by fear, and I wanted to explain my arbitrary thoughts to Elijah and Salome, and thus invalidate them" (Corrected 
Drtift, p. lIS). 

204 The Drtift continues: "The image of the cool starry night and of the vast sky opens up my eye to the infinity of the inner world, which I as a desirous man feel is still 
too cold. I cannot pull the stars down to myself but only watch them. Therefore my impetuous desire feels that that world is nightly and cold" (p. 135). 

205 This depicts a scene in the fantasy that follows. 

206 December 25, 1913. 

207 In the 1925 seminar, Jung said: "A few evenings later, I felt that things should continue, so again I tried to follow the same procedure, but it would not descend. I 
remained on the surface. Then I realized that I had a conflict in myself about going down, but I could not make out what it was, I only felt that two dark principles 
were fighting each other, two serpents" (Analytical Psychology, p. 95). He then recounted the fantasy that ensued. 

208 In the 1925 seminar, Jung added: "I thought, 'Ha, this is a Druidic sacred place' " (Analytical Psychology, p. 96). 

209 In Wagner's Ring ofthe Nibelung, the Nibelung dwarf Mime is the brother ofAlberich and a master craftsman. Alberich stole the Rhinegold from the Rhinemaidens; 
through renouncing love, he was able to forge a ring out ofit that conferred limitless power. In Siegfried, Mime, who lives in a cave, brings up Siegfried so that he will 
kill Fafner the giant, who has transformed into a dragon and now has the ring. Siegfried slays Fafner with the invincible sword that Mime has fashioned, and kills 
Mime, who had intended to kill him after he had recovered the gold. 


252 I LIBER PRIMUS fol. vi (v) /vii(r) 

great wall surrounds me. A serpent crawls over the stone. It is the 
serpent of the prophet. How did it come out of the underworld 
into the world above? I follow it and see how it crawls into the 
wall. I feel weird allover: a little house stands there with a 
portico, minuscule, snuggling against the rock. The serpents 
become infinitely small. I feel as if I too am shrinking. The walls 
enlarge into a huge mountain and I see that I am below on the 
foundation ofthe crater in the underworld, and I stand before the 
house of the prophet.2IO He steps out of the door ofhis house. 

I: "I notice, Elijah, that you have shown me and let me 
experience all sorts of strange things and allowed me to come 
before you today. But I confess that it is all dark to me. Your 
world appears to me today in a new light. Just now it was as if 
I were separated by a starry distance from your place, which I 
still wanted to reach today. But behold: it seems to be one and 
the same place." 
E: "You wanted to come here far too much. I did not deceive 
you, you deceived yourself He sees badly who wants to see; you 
have overreached yourself" 
I: "It is true, I eagerly longed to reach you, to hear more. 
Salome startled me and led me into bewilderment. I felt dizzy; 
because what she said seemed to me to be monstrous and like 
madness. Where is Salome?" 
E: "How impetuous you are! What is up with you? Step over to 
the crystal and prepare yourself in its light." 
A wreath of fire shines around the stone. I am seized with 
fear at what I see: The coarse peasant's boot? The foot of a 
giant that crushes an entire city? I see the cross, the removal 
of the cross, the mourning. How agonizing this sight is! No 
longer do I yearn-I see the divine child, with the white serpent 
in his right hand, and the black serpent in his left hand. I see 
the green mountain, the cross of Christ on it, and a stream of 
blood flowing from the summit ofthe mountain-I can look no 
longer, it is unbearable-I see the cross and Christ on it in his last 
hour and torment-at the foot of the cross the black serpent 
coils itself-it has wound itself around my feet-lam held 

fast and I spread my arms wide. Salome draws near. The serpent 
has wound itself around my whole body, and my countenance 
is that of a lion. 

Salome says, "Mary was the mother ofChrist, do you understand?" 

1: "I see that a terrible and incomprehensible power forces me 
to imitate the Lord in his final torment. But how can I presume 
to call Mary my mother?" 
S: "You are Christ." 
I stand with outstretched arms like someone crucified, my 
body taut and horribly entwined by the serpent: "You, Salome, say 
that I am Christ?"2II 

It is as if I stood alone on a high mountain with stiff 
outstretched arms. The serpent squeezes my body in its terrible 
coils and the blood streams from my body; spilling down the 
mountainside. Salome bends down to my feet and wraps her 
black hair round them. She lies thus for a long time. Then she 
cries, "I see light!" Truly; she sees, her eyes are open. The serpent 
falls from my body and lies languidly on the ground. I stride 
over it and lmeel at the feet of the prophet, whose form shines 
like a flame. 

E: "Your work is fulfilled here. Other things will come. Seek 
untiringly; and above all write exactly what you see." 
Salome looks in rapture at the light that streams from the 
prophet. Elijah transforms into a huge flame ofwhite light. The 
serpent wraps itself around her foot, as if paralyzed. Salome 
kneels before the light in wonderstruck devotion. Tears fall from 
my eyes, and I hurry out into the night, like one who has no part 
in the glory of the mystery. My feet do not touch the ground of 
this earth, and it is as if I were melting into air.2I2 

[2] 213My longing214 led me up to the overbright day; whose light 
is the opposite to the dark space of forethinking.215 The opposite 
principle is, as I think I understand it, heavenly love, the mother. 
The darkness that surrounds forethinking216 appears to be due to 
the fact that it is invisible in the interior and tal<:es place in the 
depths.217 But the brightness of love seems to come from the fact 
that love is visible life and action. My pleasure was with forethinlcing 
and had its merry garden there, surrounded by darkness 
2IO 
In the 1925 seminar, Jung interpreted this episode as follows: "the fight ofthe two snakes: the white means a movement into the day, the black into the kingdom of 
darkness, with moral aspects too. There was a real conflict in me, a resistance to going down. Mystronger tendency was to go up. Because I had been so impressed 
the day before with the cruelty ofthe place I had seen, I really had a tendency to find a way to the conscious by going up, as I did on the mountain ... Elijah said that 
it was just the same below or above. Compare Dante's Inferno. The Gnostics express this same idea in the symbol of the reversed cones. Thus the mountain and the 
crater are similar. There was nothing ofconscious structure in these fantasies, they were just events that happened. So I assume that Dante got his ideas from the same 
archetypes" (Analytical Psychology, pp. 96-97). McGuire suggests that Jung is referring to Dante's conception "ofthe conical form ofthe cavity of Hell, with its circles, 
mirroring in reverse the form of Heaven, with its spheres" (Ibid.). In Aion, Jung also noted that serpents were a typical pair ofopposites, and that the conflict between 
serpents was a motiffound in medieval alchemy (1951, CW 9,2, ¤181). 

2II In the 1925 seminar, Jung recounted that after Salome's declaration that he was Christ: "In spite ofmy objections she maintained this. I said, 'this is madness,' and 
became filled with skeptical resistance" (Analytical Psychology, p. 96). He interpreted this event as follows: "Salome's approach and her worshiping ofme is obviously that 
side of the inferior function which is surrounded by an aura ofevil. One is assailed by the fear that perhaps this is madness. This is how madness begins, this is madness 
... You cannot get conscious ofthese unconscious facts without giving yourself to them. Ifyou can overcome your fear ofthe unconscious and can let yourself go 
down, then these facts take on a life of their own. You can be gripped by these ideas so much that you really go mad, or nearly so. These images have so much reality 
that they recommend themselves, and such extraordinary meaning that one is caught. They form part ofthe ancient mysteries; in fact it is such fantasies that made the 
mysteries. Compare the mysteries of Isis as told in Apuleius, with the initiation and deification of the initiate ... One gets a peculiar feeling from being put through 
such an initiation. The important part that led up to the deification was the snal<e's encoiling ofme. Salome's performance was deification. The animal face which I 
felt mine transformed into was the famous [Deus] Leontocephalus of the Mithraic mysteries, the figure which is represented with a snake coiled around the man, the 
snake's head resting on the man's head, and the face of the man that ofa lion ... In this deification mystery you make yourself into the vessel, and are a vessel ofcreation 
in which the opposites reconcile." He added: "All this is Mithraic symbolism from beginning to end" (ibid., pp. 98-99). In The Golden Ass, Lucian undergoes an 
initiation into the mysteries of Isis. The significance of this episode is that it is the only direct description ofsuch an initiation that has survived. Of the event itself, 
Lucian states: "I approached the very gates cifdeath and setfoot on Prosperine's threshold, yet was permitted to retUr11, rapt through all the elements. At midnight I saw the sun shining as ifit 
were noon; I entered the presence ofthe gods ofthe under-world and the gods ofthe upper-world, stood near and worshiped them." After this, he was presented on a pulpit in the temple in 
front ofa crowd. He wore garments which included designs of serpents and winged lions, held a torch, and wore "a palm tree chaplet with its leaves sticking all out like 
rays oflight" (The Golden Ass, tr. R. Graves [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984], p. 241). Jung's copy ofa German translation ofthis work has a line in the margin by this passage. 

212 
In "On the psychology ofthe Kore figure" (1951), Jung described these episodes as follows: "In an underground house, actually in the underworld, there lives an old 
magician and prophet with his 'daughter.' She is, however, not reallyáhis daughter; she is a dancer, a very loose person, but is blindand seeks healing" (CW 9,1, ¤360). 
This description of Elijah draws him together with the later description of Philemon. Jung noted that this "shows the unlmown woman as a mythological figure in the 
beyond (that means in the unconscious). She is soror orfilia mystica of a hierophant or 'philosopher,' evidently a parallel to those mystic syzigies which are to be met 
with in the figures ofSimon Magus and Helen, Zosimus and Theosebia, Comarius and Cleopatra, etc. Our dream-figure fits in best with Helen" (ibid., ¤372). 

213 The Corrected Drqft has: "Guiding Reflection" (p. 127). In Black Book 2, Jung copied the following citations from Dante's Commedia in German translation (p. 104): 
'~nd I to him: 'I am one who, when love / Breathes on me, notices, and in the manner / That he dictates within, I utter words' " (Purgatorio 24, 52-54); "And then, 
in the same manner as a flame / Which follows the fire whatever shape it takes, / The new form follows the spirit exactly" (Purgatorio 25, 97-99). Tr. C. H. Sisson 
(Manchester: Carcanet, 1980), pp. 259, 265. 

214 The Drqft has: "the news ofthe desire revived by the mother" (p. 143). 

215 The Corrected Drqft has: "of the primordial image" (p. 127). 

216 The Corrected Drqft has: "The idea or the primordial image" (p. 127). 

217 The Corrected Draft has: "lives" (p. 127). 


RESOLUTION I 253 

and night. I climbed down to my pleasure, but ascended to my serpent. Ifyou go to thinlcing,224 take your heart with you. Ifyou 
love. I see Elijah high above me: this indicates that forethinking go to love, talce your head with you. Love is emptywithout thinking, 
stands nearer to love than 1, a man, do. Before I ascend to love, thinking hollow without love. The serpent lurks behind the pure 
a condition must be fulfilled, which represents itself as the fight principle. Therefore I lost courage, until I found the serpent that 
between two serpents. Left is day; right is night. The realm oflove at once led me across to the other principle. In climbing down I 
is light, the realm of forethinking is dark Both principles have become smaller. 
separated themselves strictly; and are even hostile to one another Great is he who is in love, since love is the present act of the 
and have taken on the form of serpents. This form indicates the great creator, the present moment ofthe becoming and lapsing of 
daimonic nature of both principles. I recognize in this struggle a the world. Mighty is he who loves. But whoever distances himself 
repetition ofthat vision where I saw the struggle between the sun from love, feels himself powerful. 
and the black serpent.218 In your forethinlcing you recognize the nullity ofyour current 

At that time, the loving light was annihilated, and blood began being as a smalle'st point between the infinity ofwhat has passed 
to pour out. This was the great war. But the spirit of the depths219 and of what is to come. The thinlcer is small, he feels great if he 
wants this struggle to be understood as a conflict in every man's distances himself from thinking. But if we speak about appearown 
nature.220 Since after the death of the hero our urge to live ances, it is the other way around. To whoever is in love, form is a 
could no longer imitate anything, it therefore went into the depths trifling. But his field of vision ends with the form given to him. 
ofevery man and excited the terrible conflict between the powers To whoever is in thinking, form is unsurpassable and the height 
of the depths.221 Forethinking is singleness, love is togetherness. of Heaven. But at night he sees the diversity of the innumerBoth 
need one another, and yet they kill one another. Since men able worlds and their never-ending cycles. Whoever is in love is 
do not know that the conflict occurs inside themselves, they go a full and overflowing vessel, and. awaits the giving. Whoever is 

.... )

tol. vi(v) /vii(r) 
mad, / and one lays the blame on the other. Ifone-halfofmankind in fore thinking is deep and hollow and awaits fulfillment. 
is at fault, then every man is half at fault. But he does not see the Love and forethinlcing are in one and the same place. Love 
conflict in his own soul, which is however the source ofthe outer cannot be without fore thinking, and forethinking cannot be 
disaster. Ifyou are aggravated against your brother, think that you without love. Man is always too much in one or the other. This 
are aggravated against the brother in you, that is, against what in comes with human nature. Animals and plants seem to have 
you is similar to your brother. enough in every way; only man staggers between too much and 

As a man you are part of mankind, and therefore you have too little. He wavers, he is uncertain how much he must give 
a share in the whole of mankind, as if you were the whole of here and how much there. His knowledge and ability is 
mankind. If you overpower and kill your fellow man who is insufficient, and yet he must still do it himself Man doesn't only 
contrary to you, then you also kill that person in yourself and grow from within himsel£ for he is also creative225 from within 
have murdered a part of your life. The spirit of this dead man himself The God becomes revealed in him.226 Human nature is 
follows you and does not let your life become joyful. You need little skilled in divinity; and therefore man fluctuates between 
your wholeness to live onward. too much and too little.227 

If I myself endorse the pure principle, I step to one side and The spirit of this time has condemned us to haste. You have 
become onesided. Therefore my forethinking in the principle222 no more futurity and no more past if you serve the spirit of this 
of the heavenly mother becomes an ugly dwarf who lives in a time. We need the life ofeternity. We bear the future and the past 
dark cave like an unborn in the womb. You do not follow him, in the depths. The future is old and the past is young. You serve 
even if he says to you that you could drinlc wisdom from his the spirit of this time, and believe thatyou are able to escape the 
source. But forethinking223 appears to you there as dwarfish spirit of the depths. But the depths do not hesitate any longer 
cleverness, false and of the night, just as the heavenly mother and will force you into the mysteries of Christ.228 It belongs to 
appears to me down there as Salome. That which is lacking in the this mystery that man is not redeemed through the hero, but 
pure principle appears as the serpent. The hero strives after the becomes a Christ himself The antecedent example of the saints 
utmost in the pure principle, and therefore he finally falls for the symbolically teaches us this. 

218 I.e., in ch. 5, "Descent into Hell in the Future." 
219 The Corrected Draft has: "the spirit" (P.127). 
220 The Draft continues: "Therefore they all say that they are fighting for the good and for peace, but one cannot fight one another over the good. But since men don't 


know that the conflict lies within themselves, the Germans thus believe that the English and the Russians are wrong; but the English and the Russians say that the 
Germans are wrong. But no one can judge history in terms of right and wrong. Because one-half ofmankind is wrong, every man is halfwrong. Therefore a conflict 
resides in his own souL But man is blind and always knows only his half The German has in him the English and the Russian whom he fights outside ofhimself 
Likewise, the English and the Russian has in him the German whom he fights. But man appears to see the outer quarrel, not the one within, which alone is the wellspring 
of the great war. But before man can ascend to light and love, the great battle is needed" (P.145). 

221 
In December I9I6, in his preface to The Psychology ofthe Unconscious Processess, Jung wrote: "The psychological processes, whichaccompany the present war, above all the 
incredible brutalization ofpublic opinion, the mutual slanderings, the unprecedented fury ofdestruction, the monstrous flood oflies, and man's incapacity to call a halt 
to the bloody demon-are suited like nothing else to powerfully push in front of the eyes of thinking men the problem of the restlessly slumbering chaotic unconscious 
under the ordered world ofconsciousness. This war has pitilessly revealed to civilized man that he is still a barbarian ... But the psychology ofthe individual corresponds to the 
psychology ofthe nation. What the nation does is done also by each individual, and so long as the individual does it, the nation also does it. Only the change in the attitude ofthe individual 
is the beginning of the change in the psychology of the nation" (CW 7, p. 4). 

222 The Corrected Draft has: "the prophet, the personification of the idea" (p. 13I). 
223 The Corrected Draft has: "Idea" (p. I3I). 
224 The Corrected Draft has "Idea" substituted throughout this paragraph (p. I31). 
225 The Corrected Draft adds "conscious" and deletes "From within himself" (p. I33). 
226 The Draft and Corrected Draft have instead: "The divine creative power becomes [in him] a-person [a personal consciousness] from the [unconscious] collective" (PP.133-34). 
227 The Draft and Corrected Draft have: "But why, you ask does forethinking [the idea] appear to you in the guise ofa Jewish prophet and your [the] pleasure in the guise of 


the heathen Salome? My friend, do not forget, that I too am one who thinks and wants in the spirit of this time, and is completely under the spell of the serpent. 
I am just now through my initiation into the mysteries of the spirit of the depths about to not entirely discard all the ancientness lacked by those thinking in the 
spirit of this time, but to readopt it into my being human, to malce my life whole. For I have become poor and far removed from God. I must take in the divine and 
the mundane, since the spirit of this time had nothing else to give me; on the contrary he took the little that I possessed of real life. But in particular he made me hasty 
and greedy, since he is merely the present and he forced me to hunt down everything present to fill the moment" (pp. I34-35). 

228 The Draft and Corrected Draft have: "Just as the old prophets [ancients] stood before the Mysterium of Christ, I also stand as yet before the [this] Mysterium of-C-hrist, 
[insofar as I reassume the past] although I live two thousand years after-h:im [later] and at one time believed I was a Christian. But I had never been a Christ" (p. I36). 


254 I LIBER PRIMUS fo1. vii(r) 

Whoever wants to see will see badly: It was my will that 

deceived me. It was my will that provoked the huge uproar among 

the daimons. Should I therefore not want'anything? I have, and I 

have fulfilled my will as well as I could, and thus I fed everything 

in me that strived. In the end I found that I wanted myself in 

everything, but without looking for ,myself Therefore I no longer 

wanted to seek myself outside of myself but within. Then I 

wanted to grasp myself and then I wanted to go on again, without 

knowing what I wanted, and thus I fell into the mystery: 

Should I therefore not want anything anymore? You wanted 

this war. That is good. If you had not, then the evil of this war 

would be smal1.229 But with your wanting you make the evil great. 

If you do not succeed in producing the greatest evil out of this 

war, you will never learn the violent deed and learn to overcome 

fighting what lies outside yoU.230 Therefore it is good ifyou want 

this greatest evil with your whole heart.231You are Christians and 

run after heroes, and wait for redeemers who should take the 

agony on themselves for you, and totally spare you Golgotha. 

With that you232 pile up a mountain of Calvary over all Europe. 

Ifyou succeed in maldng a terrible evil out ofthis war and throw 

innumerable victims into this abyss, this is good, since it makes 

each ofyou ready to sacrifice himself For as I, you draw close to 

the accomplishment of Christ's mystery: \ 

You already feel the fist of the iron one on your back. This is 
the beginning of the way: If blood, fire, and the cry of distress 
fill this world, then you will recognize yourself in your acts: 
Drink your fill of the bloody atrocities of the war, feast upon the 
killing and destruction, then your eyes will open, you will see 
that you yourselves are the bearers ofsuch fruit.233 You are on the 
, way if you will all this: Willing creates blindness, and blindness 
leads to the way: Should we will error? You should not, but you 
do will that error which you take for the best truth, as men have 

always done. 

The symbol of the crystal signifies the unalterable law of 

events that comes of itself In tlijs seed you grasp what is to 

come. I saw something terrible and incomprehensible. (It was 

on the night of Christmas day of the year 1913.) I saw the 

peasant's boot, the sign of the horrors of the peasant war,234 of 

murdering incendiaries and ofbloody cruelty: I knew to interpret 

this sign for myself as nothing but the fact that something 

bloody and dreadful lay before us. I saw the foot of a giant that 

crushed a whole city: How could I interpret this sign otherwise? 

I saw that the way to self-sacrifice began here. Theywill all become 

terribly enraptured by these tremendous experiences, and in their 

blindness will want to understand them as outer events. It is an 

inner happening; that is the way to the perfection of the mystery 

of Christ,235 so that the peoples learn self-sacrifice. 

May the frightfulness become so great that it can turn men's 
eyes inward, so that their will no longer seeks the self in others 
but in themselves.236 I saw it, I know that this is the way: I saw 
the death of Christ and I saw his lament; I felt the agony of his 
dying, of the great dying. I saw a new God, a child, who subdued 
daimons in his hand.237 The God holds the separate principles in 
his power, he unites them. The God develops through the union 
of the principles in me. He is their union. 

If you will one of these principles, so you are in one, but far 
from your being other. If you will both principles, one and the 
other, then you excite the conflict between the principles, since 
you cannot want both at the same time. From this arises the 
need, the God appears in it, he takes your conflicting will in his 
hand, in the hand of a child whose will is simple and beyond 
conflict. You cannot learn this, it can only develop in you. You 
cannot will this, it takes the will from your hand and wills itself 
Will yourself that leads to the way:238 ' 

But fundamentally you are terrified ofyourself and therefore 
you prefer to run to all others rather than to yourself I saw 
the mountain of the sacrifice, and the blood poured in streams 
from its sides. When I saw how pride and power satisfied men, 
how beauty beamed from the eyes ofwomen when the great war 
broke out, I knew that mankind was on the way to self-sacrifice. 

The spirit of the depths239 has seized mankind and forces 
self-sacrifice upon it. Do not seek the guilt here or there. The 
spirit of the depths clutched the fate of man unto itself as it 
clutched mine. He leads mankind through the river of blood 
to the mystery: In the mystery man himself becomes the two 
principles, the lion and the serpent. 

Because I also want my being other, I must become a Christ. I 
am made into Christ, I must suffer it. Thus the redeeming blood 
flows. Through the self-sacrifice my pleasure is changed and goes 
above into its higher principle. Love is sighted, but pleasure is 
blind. Both principles are one in the symbol of the flame. The 
principles strip themselves ofhuman form.24o 

The mystery showed me in images what I should afterward 
live. I did not possess any ofthose boons that the mystery showed 
me, for I still had to earn all of them.241 

finis. part. prim. (End of part one) 

229 In Thus Spoke zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote: "To redeem the past and to transform every 'It was' into an 'I wanted it thus!'-that alone do I call redemption!" ("Of 
redemption," p. 161). 

230 On February II, 1916, Jung said in a discussion at the Association for Analytical Psychology: "We abuse the will, natural growth is subjugated to the will ... 
War teaches us: The will is ofno use-we will see where this leads. We are completely subject to the absolute power of the becoming" (MAP, vo1. I, p. I06). 

231 The Draft and Corrected Draft have: "Since you-are [we are] inwardly still ancient Jews and heathens with unholy Gods" (p. 137). 

232 The Corrected Draft has: "we ourselves" (p. 138). 

233 The Corrected Draft has: "and we called ourselves Christians, imitators of Christ. To be Christ onself is the true following of Christ" (p. 139). 

234 This may refer to the German peasants' rebellion of 1525. 

235 In 1918, in his preface to the second edition ofThe Psychology ofthe Unconscious Processes, Jung wrote: "The spectacle of this catastrophe threw man back on himself by 
making him feel his complete impotence; it q.trned him inward, and, with everything rocking, he seeks something that guarantees him a hold. Too many still seek 
outward ... But still too few seek inward, to their own selves, and still fewer ask themselves whether the ends ofhuman society might not best be served if each man 
tries to abolish the old order in himsel£ and to practice in his own person and in his own inward state those precepts, those victories which he preaches at every streetcorner, 
instead of always expecting these things of his fellow men (CW 7, p. 5). 

236 The Draft has: "If this doesn't happen, Christ will not be overcome and the evil must become even greater. Therefore, my friend, I say this to you so that you can tell 
your friends, and that the word may spread among the people" (p. 157). 

237 The Draft continues: "I saw that a new God had come to be out of Christ the Lord, a young Hercules" (p. 157). 

238 A long passage occurs here in the Draft and Corrected Draft, a paraphrase ofwhich follows: The God holds love in his right, forethinking ["the idea," substituted 
throughout] in his left. Love is on our favorable side, forethinking on the unfavorable. This should recommend love to you, insofar as you are a part of this world, 
and especially ifyou are a thinker.:r--he--6od-po-ss Their unity is God. rhe God develops through the uniting of both principles in yon [me]' You [I] do not 
become God through this, or become divine, but God becomes human. He becomes apparent in you and through you, as a child. The-divine-wiH-come-to-you as childlikeor-
childish, insofar as you are a developed man. The childish man has an old God, the old 6od-who-we--know-andhose-death-we-have-seerr.-Ifyou-are-growrrup;-youcan-
only become more childlike. Yuu-have-youth-before-you-and--all the mysteties-ofwhat is to come. The childish has death before-him-since he must-first-becomegrown 
up. Yuu will become grown up insofar as you-overcome the God of t:he-ancients and ofyour-dt:i:ldllOod. You overcome him not through setting him aside, obeying 
the spirit of the-time [: Zeitgeist]. 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 yoursel£ as one who seeks himself and no longer imitates heroes. You free yoursel£ when you free yourself from the old God and his model. When you have 


RESOLUTION I 255 

become the model, then you no longer need his. frr-that-the-G-od held love and forethinking in the form of the serpent irrhis-hands, it was-s-hown-to me that he-hadseized-
the-human-will: ["God unifies the opposition between love and the idea, and holds it in his hands."] Love and forethinking existed from eternity, but they were 
not willed. Everyone always wills the spirit of this time, which thinks and desires. He who wills the spirit ofthe depths, wills love and forethinking. Ifyou will both, 
you become God. Ifyou do this, the God is born and seizes possession of the will ofmen and holds his will in his child's hand. The-spirit-of-the depths appears ill---yotr 
as--thoroughly-childi-sh::-I-fyon-d-orrr-want the spirit of the depths, he is to you a tOllnent. V/illing leads to the-way.-Love and forethinking are in the world ofthe beyond, 
so long as you do not will them and your willing li-es-between them like the serpent ["keeps them separate"]. Ifyou will both, the struggle breaks out in you between 
willing love and willing fo-rethinking ["recognition"]. You will see that you can't will both at the same time. In this need the God will be born, as-you-have-experiencedin-
the-Mysterium, and he will take the divided will in his hands, in the hands ofa child, whose will is simple and beyond being split. What is this divine-childish willing? 
You can't learn it through description, it can only become in you. Nor can you will it. You cannot learn or empathize it from what I say: -Iris unbelievable-how men can 
:fa:lsify--themlves-and-li-e-to-themsehes. Let t_y-i-s-my-mystery and not yours-;-my-way and not yours, since my self belongs to me and not to 
you:-´ott-should--not-1earn-my-way-bnt-your-owrr.-My-vvay leads to me and not-to-yOtt (pp. 142-45). . 

239 The Corrected Draft has "The great spirit" (p. 146). 

240 A long passage appears here in the Corrected Draft, a paraphrase ofwhich follows: As you-saw-how pride and power filled men and how beauty streamed out of the eyes 
ofwomen when the war gripped the people, you-knew that manlcind was on the way: You knew that this war was not only adventure, criminal acts and killing, but 
the mystery ofself-sacrifice. The ["great," changed throughout] spirit of-the-depths has seized humanity and forced him through the war to self-sacrifice. Bo not seekthe-
gui-lt-here-orthere:-["Guilt doesn't lie outside"] Itis the spirit-of-the-depths-who leads the people-into-the-Mysteriurrr,-ittst-as-he-led-me: He leads the people to 
the river ofblood, just as he led me. I experienced in the Mysterium what the people were-forced to do in actuality-["which happened outside on a large scale"]. -I-chdnot-
know-it;-bnt-the-Mysterium taught me how-my-wi-lling-laid-itself-at-the-feet of the crucified-God:-I experienced [wanted] Christ's self-sacrifice. The Mysterium of 
Ghrist completed itself in front of my eyes. My-forethinking ['The idea standing above me'] forced me to this, but I resisted. My highest desire, my lions, my-hottestand-
strongest-passi-on, I wanted to rise up against the mysterious will to self-sacrifice. So I was like a lion encircled by the serpent, ["an image offate eternally renewing 
itself"]. Salome came to me from the right, the favorable side. Pleasu:re-awakened-in-me: I experienced that my pleasure comes to me when I accomplish the self-sacrifice. 
I hear that Maria, the-symbol oflove, is also the [my] mother of Christ, since love has also borne Christ. Love brings the self-sacrificer and self-sacrifice. Love is also 
the mother of my self-sacrifice. In that I hear and accept this, I experience that I become Christ, since I recognize that love makes me into Christ. But I still doubt, 
since it is nearly impossible for the thinker to differentiate himself from his thought and accept that what happens in his thought is also something outside ofhimself 
ft-i-s-outside-him-in the inner world-: I become Christ in-the-Mysterium;-rather I see, hoW+Was-made into Christ-and-yet-am-completely mysel£ so that I could still 
dottbt-wherrmyp:le~sure-told me that I-was-Chri-st [Salome,] My pleasure said to me, ["that I am Christ"] because love, which is higher than pleasure, which however 
is still in me hidden in pleasure, had led me to self-sacrifice and made me into Christ. Pleasure came near to me, encircled me in rings and forced me to experience the 
torment of Christ and to spill my blood for the world. My willing, which earlier served the spirit-of-this-time ["Zeitgeist," substituted throughout] went under to the 
spirit of the depths, and just as it was previously determined by the spirit ofthe time, it is now determined by the spirit ofthe depths, by forethinking ["Idea," substituted 
throughout] and pleasure. It determined me through the willing of self-sacrifice, and to the spilling ofblood, my life's essence. Mark that it is my bad pleasure which 
leads me to self-sacrifice. Its innermost is love, which will be freed from pleasure through sacrifice. Here the wonder happened that my previously blind pleasure 
became sighted. My pleasure was blind, and it was love. Since my strongest willing willed self-sacrifice, my pleasure changed, it went into a higher principle, which in 
God is one with forethinking. Love is sighted, but pleasure is blind. Pleasure always wants what is closest, and feels through the multiplicity; going from one to another, 
without a goal, just seeking and never fulfilled. Love wants what is furthest, the best and the fulfilling. And I saw ~omething further, namely that the forethinking in 
me had the form ofan old prophet, which showed that it was pre-Christian, and transformed itself into a principle that no longer appeared in a human form, but in 
the absolute form of a pure white light. &o-the humanrel:arive transformed itself into the divine absolute thro_Forethinking and pleasure 
united in me in a new form and the willing in me, which appeared foreign and dangerous, the willing of the spirit ofthe depths, lay-paralyzed-arthe-feet of the shining 
flame. I became one with my will. This happened in me, I just saw it in the mysteryp:lay.-::r-hrough this much was made-known that I didn't previottsly-know ["like in 
a play"]. But I found everything doubtful. I felt as ifhe was melting in the air, since the land ofthe-Mysterium: [that spirit] was still foreign to me. The-Mysteriumshowed 
me the things-which-lay-before me and had . . But that image of the sighted Salome, who knelt in rapture 
before the white flame, was a strong feeling that came to the side ofmy will and led me through everything that came after. What happened was my wandering with 
mysel£ through whose suffering I had to earn what-served:-foretion-ofthe-Myserittm I had seen ["I had first seen"] (PP.146-50). 

241 Gilles ~ispel reports that Jung told the Dutch poet Roland Horst that he had written psychological Types on the basis of thirty pages ofThe Red Book (cited in Stephan 
Hoeller, The Gnostic}ung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead [Wheaton, 11: ~est, 1985], p. 6). It is likely that he had in mind these preceding three chapters of the 
"Mysterium." What is presented here develops the notions ofthe conflict between opposing functions, the identification with the leading function, and the development of 
the reconciling symbol as a resolution of the conflict ofopposites, which are the central issues in chapter 5 of psychological Types (CW 6), the "Type Problem in Poetry:" 
In his 1925 seminar, Jung said: "I found that the unconscious is working out enormous collective fantasies. Just as, before, I was passionately interested in worlcing out 
myths, now I became just as much interested in the material of the unconscious. This is in fact the only way ofgetting at myth formation. And so the first chapter of 
the Psychology ofthe Unconscious became most correctly true. I watched the creation of myths going on, and got an insight into the structure of the unconscious, forming 
thus the concept that plays such a role in the Types. I drew all my empirical material from my patients, but the solution of the problem I dláew from the inside, from my 
observations of the unconscious processes. I have tried to fuse these two currents of outer and inner experience in the book of the Types, and have termed the process 
of the fusion of the two currents the transcendent function" (Analytical Psychology, p. 34). 


n u 



THE RED ONE I 259. 

I: "Who are you?" 
The Images of the Erring' 

T R.: "Who am I? You think I am the devil. Do not pass 
[HI 1J 23nolite audire verba prophetarum, qui prophetant vobis et decipiunt judgment.á Perhaps you can also talk to me without knowing who 
vos visionem cordis sui loquuntur, non de ore Domini. audivi quae dixerunt I am. What sort ofa superstitious fellow are you, that immediately 
prophetae prophetantes in nomine mea mendacium, atque dicentes: somniavi, you think of the devil?" 
somniavi. usquequo istud est in corde prophetarum vaticinantium mendacium I: "Ifyou have no supernatural ability, how could you feel that 
et prophetantium seductionem cordis sui? qui volunt facere ut obliviscatur I stood waiting on my tower, looking out for the unknown and 
populus meus nominis mei propter somnia eorum, quae narrant unusquisque the new? My life in the castle is poor, since I always sit here and 
ad proximum suum: sicut obliti sunt patres eorum nominis mei propter Baal. no one climbs up to me." 
propheta, qui habet somnium, narret somnium et qui habet sermonem meum, T R.: "So what are you waiting for?" 
loquatur sermonem meum vere: quid paleis ad triticum? dicit dominus. I: "I await all kiJ?ds ofthings, and especially I'm waiting for some 

of the world's wealth, which we don't see here, to come to me." 
["Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy T R.: "So, I have come to absolutely the right place. I have 

I 

unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own wandered a long time through the world, seeking those like you 
heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord." (Jeremiah 23: 16)J who sit upon a high tower on the lookout for things unseen." 

I: "You make me curious. You seem to be a rare breed. Your 
["I have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in my appearance is not ordinary, and then too-forgive me-it seems 
name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. How long shall to me that you bring with you a strange air, something worldly, 
this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies? Yea, something impudent, or exuberant, or-in fact-something pagan." 
they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart; Which think T R.: "You don't offend me, on the contrary, you hit your nail 
to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams which on the head. But I'm no old pagan as you seem to think" 
they tell every man to his neighbour, as their fathers have I: "I don't want to insist on that. You are also not pompous and 
forgotten my name for Baal. The prophet that hath a dream, Latin enough. You have nothing classical about you. You seem to 
let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speal( my be a son of our time, but as I must remark, a rather unusual one. 
word faithfully: What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord" You're no real pagan, but the kind of pagan who runs alongside 
1/2 (Jeremiah 23: 25-28)J. / our Christian religion." 
T R.: "You're truly a good diviner of riddles. You're doing 

better than many others who have totally mistal(en me." The Red One4 
I: "You sound cool and sneering. Have you never broken your 
Cap. i. heart over the holiest mysteries ofour Christian religion?" 

T R.: "You're an unbelievably ponderous and serious person. 
[HI 2J5 The door of the Mysterium has closed behind me. I Are you always so urgent?" 
feel that my will is paralyzed and that the spirit of the depths I: "I would before God always like to be as serious and true to 
possesses me. I know nothing about a way: I can therefore neither myself as I try to be. However, that certainly becomes difficult in 
want this nor that, since nothing indicates to me whether I your presence. You bring a certain gallows air with you, and you're 
want this or that. I wait, without knowing what I'm waiting for. bound to be from the black school of Salerno,s where pernicious 
But already in the following night I felt that I had reached a arts are taught by pagans and the descendants ofpagans." 
solid point.6 T R.: "You're superstitious and too German. You take literally 

71 find that I am standing on the highest tower ofa castle. The what the scriptures say, otherwise you could not judge me so hat'd." 
air tells me so: I am far back in time. My gaze wanders widely / I: ''A hard judgment is the last thing I would want. But my 
over solitary countryside, a combination of fields and forests. I nose does not play tricks on me. You're evasive, and don't want to 
am wearing a green garment. A horn hangs from my shoulder. I reveal yourself What are you hiding?" 
am the tower guard. I look out into the distance. I see a red point 
out there. It comes nearer on a winding road, disappearing for a (The Red One seems to get redder, his garments shine like 
while in forests and reappearing again: it is a horseman in a red glowing iron') 
coat, the red horseman. He is coming to my castle: he is already 
riding through the gate. I hear steps on the stairway, the steps T R.: "I hide nothing from you, you true-hearted soul. I simply 
creak, he knocks: a strange fear comes over me: there stands the amuse myself with your weighty seriousness and your comic 
Red One, his long shape wholly shrouded in red, even his hair is veracity: This is so rare in our time, especially in men who have 
red. I think: in the end he will turn out to be the devil. understanding at their disposal." 

I: "I believe you cannot fully understand me. You apparently 
The Red One: "I greet you, man on the high tower. I saw you compare me with those whom you knOw. But I must say to you 
from afar, looking and waiting. Your waiting has called me." for the sake of truth that I neither really belong to this time nor 

I The Handwritten Draft has: "The Adventures of the Wandering" (P.353). 

2 In his essay on Picasso in 1932, Jung described the paintings ofschizophrenics-meaning here only those in which a psychic disturbance would probably produce 
schizoid symptoms, rather than people who suffered from this condition-as follows: "From a purely formal point ofview, the main characteristic is one ofjfagmentation, 
which expresses itself in the so-called lines of fracture, that is, a type ofpsychic fissure which runs right through the picture"(CW IS, ¤20B). 

3 These passages in Latin from the Bible were cited by Jung in psychological Types (1921) (from Luther's Bible) and introduced with the following comments: "The form 
in which Christ presented the content ofhis unconscious to the world became accepted and was delared valid for all. Thereafter all individual fantasies became otiose 
and worthless, and were persecuted as heretical, as the fate of the Gnostic movement and of all later heresies testifies. The prophet Jeremiah is speaking just in this vein 
when he warns" (CW 6, ¤BI). 

4 The Corrected Draft has: "V The Great Wandering I. The Red One" (p. 157). 
5 This depicts Jung in the opening scene of this fantasy. 
6 The previous paragraph was added in the Draft (p. 167). 
7 December 26, 1913á 
B Salerno is a town in southwest Italy; founded by the Romans. Jung may have been referring to the Academia Segreta, which was established in the 1540s 


and promoted alchemy. 


260 I LIBER SECUNDUS 3/6 

to this place. A spell has banished me to this place and time for 
years. I am really not what you see before you." 

T. R.: "You say astounding things. Who are you then?" 
I: "That is irrelevant. I stand before you as that which I presently 
am. Why am I here and like this, I do not knOw. But I do know 
that I must be here to justify myself according to mybest knowledge. 
I know just as little who you are, as you know who I am." 
T R.: "That sounds very strange. Are you something of a saint? 
Hardly a philosopher, since you have no aptitude for scholarly 
language. But a saint? Surely that. Your solemnity smells of 
fanaticism. You have an ethical air and a simplicity that smacks 
ofstale bread and water." 

I: "I can say neither yes nor no: you spealc as one trapped in 
the spirit of this time. It seems to me that you lack the terms 
of comparison." 
T. R.: "Perhaps you attended the school of the pagans? You 
answer like a sophist.9 How can you then measure me with the 
yardstick of the Christian religion, ifyou are no saint?" 
I: "It seems to me, though, that one can apply this yardstick 
even ifone is no saint. I believe I have learned that no one is allowed 
to avoid the mysteries of the Christian religion unpunished. I 
repeat: he whose heart has not been broken over the Lord Jesus 
Christ drags a pagan around in himsel£ who holds him back from 
the best." 
T. R.: ''Again this old tune? What for, ifyou are not a Christian 
saint? Are you not a damned sophist after all?" 
I: "You are ensnared in your own world. But you certainly 
seem to think that one can assess the worth of Christianity 
correctly without being a downright saint." 
T. R.: ''Are you a doctor oftheology, who examines Christianity 
from the outside and appreciates it historically, and therefore a 
sophist after all?" 
I: "You're stubborn. What I mean is that it's hardly a coincidence 
that the whole world has become Christian. I also believe that it 
was the task of Western man to carry Christ in his heart and to 
grow with his suffering, death, and resurrection." 
T. R.: "Well, there are also Jews who are good people and yet 
had no need for your solemn gospels." 
I: "You are, it seems to me, no good reader of people: have 
you never noticed that the Jew himself lacks something-one 
in his head, another in his heart, and he himself feels that he 
lacks something?" 
. T. R.: "Indeed I'm no Jew; but I must come to the Jew's defense: 
you seem to be a Jew hater." 
I: "Well, now you speak like all those Jews who accuse anyone 
ofJew hating who does not have a completely favorable judgment, 
while they themselves make the bloodiest jokes about their own 
kind. Since the Jews only too clearly feel that particular lack and yet 
do not want to admit it, they are extremely sensitive to criticism. 
Do you believe that Christianity left no mark on the souls ofmen? 
And do you believe that one who has not experienced this most 
intimately can still partake ofits fruit?"10 
T. R.: "You argue your case well. But your solemnity?! You 
could make matters much easier for yourself If you're no saint, 
I really don't see why you have to be so solemn. You wholly 
spoil the fun. What the devil is troubling you? Only Christianity 
with its mournful escape from the world can make people / so 
ponderous and sullen." 
I: "I think there are still other things that bespeak seriousness." 
T. R.: "Oh, I know; you mean life. I know this phrase. I too live 
and don't let my hair turn white over it. Life doesn't require any 
seriousness. On the contrary, it's better to dance through life."II 
I: "I know how to dance. Yes, would we could do it by dancing! 
Dancing goes with the mating season. I know that there are those 
who are always in heat, and those who also want to dance for their 
Gods. Some are ridiculous and others enact Antiquity, instead of 
honestly admitting their utter incapacity for such expression." 
T. R.: "Here, my dear fellow; I doff my mask. Now I grow 
somewhat more serious, since this concerns my own province. 
It's conceivable that there is some third thing for which dancing 
would be the symbol." 
The red of the rider transforms itself into a tender reddish 
flesh color. And behold-Oh miracle-my green garments 
everywhere burst into leaf 

I: "Perhaps too there is a joy before God that one can call 
dancing. But I haven't yet found this joy. I look out for things that 
are yet to come. Things came, but joy'was not among them." 
T. R.: "Don't you recognize me, brother, I am joy!" 
I: "Could you be joy? I see you as through a cloud. Your image 
fades. Let me take your hand, beloved, who are you, who are you?" 
Joy? Was he joy? 

[2] Surely this red one was the devil, but my devil. That is, he 
was my joy, the joy of the serious person, who keeps watch alone 
on the high tower-his red-colored, red-scented, warm bright 
red joy.12 Not the secret joy in his thoughts and in his looking, but 
that strange joy of the world that comes unsuspected like a warm 
southerly wind with swelling fragrant blossoms and the ease of 
living. You know it from your poets, this seriousness, when they 
expectantly look toward what happens in the depths, sought out 
first of all by the devil because of their springlike joy.1 It picks up
3 

men like a wave and drives them forth. Whoever tastes this joy 
forgets himself14 And there is nothing sweeter than forgetting 
oneself And not a few have forgotten what they are. But even 
more have taken root so firmly that not even the rosy wave is able 
to uproot them. They are petrified and too heavy, while the others 
are too light. 

I earnestly confronted my devil and behaved with him as with 
a real person. This I learned in the Mysterium: to take seriously 
every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, 
since they are real because they are effectual.15 It does not help that 
we say in the spirit of this time: there is no devil. There was one 

9 The Sophists were Greek philosophers in the fourth and fifth centuries BCE, centered in Athens, and included figures such as Protagoras, Gorgias, and Hippias. They 
gave lectures and took on students for fees, and paid particular attention to teaching rhetoric. Plato's attack in a number of dialogues gave rise to the modern negative 
connotation of the term as one who plays with words. 

10 The Drqft continues:"No one can flout the spiritual development ofmany centuries and reap what they have not sowed" (p. 172). 

II In Nietzsche's Thus Spoke zarathustra, Zarathustra admonishes the overcoming of the spirit ofgravity, and urges "You Higher Men, the worst thing about you is: none of 
you has learned to dance as a man ought to dance-to dance beyond yourselves!" ("Of the higher men," p. 306). 

12 In a seminar in 1939, Jung discussed the historical transformation of the figure of the devil. He noted that "When he appears red, he is of a fiery; that is, passionate 
nature, and causes wantonness, hate, or unruly love"; see Children's Dreams: Notesfrom the Seminar Given in 1936-1940, eds. Lorenz Jung and Maria Meyer-Grass, tr. Ernst 
Falzeder and Tony Woolfson (Princeton: Princeton University Press/Philemon Series, 2008), P.174. 

13 The Drqft continues: "You have heard from Faust about how commanding this kind ofjoy is" (p. 175). The reference is to Goethe's Faust. 

14 The Drqft has: '~s you have known from Faust, there are many who forget who they were because they let themselves be swept away" (p. 175). 

15 Jung elaborated this point in 1928 while presenting the method ofactive imagination: '~against this, the scientific credo ofour time has developed a superstitious phobia 
about fantasy. But the real is what works. The fantasies of the unconscious work-there can be no doubt about that" (The Relations between the I and the Unconscious, cw 7, ¤353). 


THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST I 261 

with me. This took place in me. I did with him what I could. I me courage. But if the devil has gotten more earnest, one must 
could speak with him. A religious conversation is inevitable with brace oneselfl It is always a risky thing to accept joy, but it leads

7 

the devil, since he demands it, if one does not want to surrender us to life and its disappointment, from which the wholeness of 
to him unconditionally. Because religion is precisely what the our life becomes.18 
devil and I cannot agree about. I must have it out with him, as 
I cannot expect that he as an independent personality would 

The Castle in the Forestl9 

accept my standpoint without further ado. 

I would be fleeing if I did not try to come to an understanding Cap. ii. 
with him. If ever you have the rare opportunity to speak with the 
devil, then do not forget to confront him in all seriousness. He is [HI 5] wIn the second night thereafter, I am walking alone 
your devil after all. The devil as the adversary is your own other in a dark forest and I notice that I have lost my way.21 I am on a 
standpoint; he tempts you and sets a stone in your path where you dark cart track and stumble through the darkness. I finally come to 
least want it. quiet, dark swamp water, and a small old castle stands at its center. 

Taking the devil seriously does not mean going over to his I think it would be good to ask here for the night's lodgings. I 
side, or else one becomes the devil. Rather it means coming to an knock on the door, I wait a long time, it begins to rain. I have 
understanding. Thereby you accept your other standpoint. With to knock again. Now I hear someone coming: the door opens. A 
that the devil fundamentally loses ground, and so do you. And man in an old fashioned garment, a servant, asks what I want. I ask 
that may be well and good. about lodgings for the night, and he lets me enter a dark vestibule. 

Although the devil very much abhors religion for its particular Then he leads me up an old, worn-out stairway. At the top I come 
solemnity and candor, it has become apparent, however, that it to a wider and higher hall-like space with white walls, lined with 
is precisely through religion that the devil can be brought to an black chests and wardrobes. 
understanding. What I said about dancing struck him because I I am led into a kind of reception room. It is a simple space 
spoke about something that belonged in his own domain. He fails with old upholstered furniture. The dim light of an antiquated 
to take seriously only what concerns others because that is the lamp lights the room only very meagerly. The servant knocks on a 
peculiarity ofall devils. In such a manner, I arrive at his seriousness, side door and then quietly opens it. I scan it swiftly: it's a scholar's 
and with this we reach common / ground where understanding is study, with bookshelves on all four walls and a large writing desk, 
possible. The devil is convinced that dancing is neither lust nor at which an old man sits wearing a long black robe. He beckons 
madness, but an expression of joy, which is something proper to me to draw closer. The air in the room is heavy and the old man 
neither one nor the other. In this I agree with the devil. Therefore seems careworn. He is not without dignity-he seems to be one 
he humanizes himself before my eyes. But I turn green like a of those 'who have as much dignity as 9ne can be granted. He has 
tree in spring. that modest-fearful look of scholarly men who have long since 

Yet that joy is the devil, or that the devil is joy, has got to been squashed to nothing by the abundance ofknowledge. I think 
worry you. I pondered this for over a week, and I fear that it has that he is a real / scholar who has learned great modesty before 5/6 
not been enough. You dispute the fact that your joy is your devil. the immensity of knowledge and has given himself tirelessly 
But it seems as if there is always something devilish about joy. If to the material of science and research, anxiously and equably 
your joy is no devil for you, then possibly it is for your neighbors, appraising, as if he personally had to represent the working out 
since joy is the most supreme flowering and greening oflife. This of scientific truth. 
knocks you down, and you must grope for a new path, since the He greets me embarrassed, as ifabsent and defensive. I do not 
light in that joyful fire has completely gone out for you. Or your wonder about this since I look like an ordinary person. Only with 
joy tears your neighbor away and throws him offcourse, since life difficulty can he turn his gaze away from his work. I repeat my 
is like a great fire that torches everything in its vicinity. But fire is request for lodgings for the night. After a longer pause the old man 
the element of the devil. remarks, "So, you want to sleep, then please yourself" I notice that 

When I saw that the devil is joy, surely I would have wanted to he is absentminded, and therefore ask him to instruct the servant 
make a pact with him. But you can malce no pact with joy, because to show me a chamber. To this he says, "You are demanding, wait, 
it immediately disappears. Therefore you cannot capture the devil I cannot just drop everything!" He sinks again into his book. I wait 
either. Yes, it belongs to his essence that he cannot be captured. He patiently. Mtera while he looks up astonished: "What do you want 
is stupid if he lets himself be caught, and you gain nothing from here? Oh-forgive me-I totally forgot that you are waiting here. 
having yet one more stupid devil. The devil always seeks to saw I'll call the servant straightaway." The servant comes and leads me 
off the branch on which you sit. That is useful and protects you to a small chamber on the same floor with bare white walls and a 
from falling asleep and from the vices that go along with it. large bed. He wishes me good night and withdraws. 

The devil is an evil element. But joy? If you run after it, you As I am tired, I undress immediately and go to bed, after I 
see that joy also has evil in it, since then you arrive at pleasure and have snuffed out the candle. The sheet is uncommonly rough and 
from pleasure go straight to Hell, your own particular Hell, which the pillow hard. My errant way has led me to a strange place: a 
turns out differently for everyone. 16 small old castle whose scholarly owner is apparently spending the 

Through my coming to terms with the devil, he accepted evening ofhis life alone with his books. No one else seems to be 
some ofmy seriousness, and I accepted some ofhis joy. This gave living in the house apart from the servant who lives over there 

16 The Drqft continues: "Every attentive person knows their Hell, but not all know their devil. There are not only joyful devils, but also sad ones" (p. 178). 
17 The Drqft continues: "On a later adventure I discovered how seriousness suits the devil. While seriousness certainly makes him more dangerous for you, it doesn't agree 
with him, believe me" (pp. 178-79). 

18 The Drqft continues: "With this newly gained joy I took offon adventures without knowing where the way would lead. I could have known, however, that the devil 
always tempts us :first through women. While I might have had clever thoughts as a thinker, it was not so in life. There I was even fatuous and prejudiced. And so quite 
ready to be caught in a fox trap" (p. 179). 

19 The Handwritten Draft has: "SecondAdventure" (p. 383). 
20 December 28,1913. 
2I Dante's Inferno begins with the poet getting lost in a dark wood. There is a slip ofpaper in Jung's copy by this page. 



262 I LIBER SECUNDUS 6/9 

in the tower. An ideal though solitary existence, I think this life 
of the old man with his books. And here my thoughts linger for 
a long time, until I finally notice that another thought doesn't 
let go of me, namely that the old man has hidden his beautiful 
daughter here-a vulgar idea for a novel-an insipid, worn-out 
theme-but the romantic can be felt in every limb-a real novelistic 
idea-a castle in a forest-solitary night-an old man petrified 
in his books, protecting a costly treasure and enviously hiding it 
from all the world-what ridiculous thoughts come to me! Is it 
Hell or purgatory that I must also contrive such childish dreams 
on my wanderings? But I feel impotent to elevate my thoughts 
to something a bit stronger or more beautiful. I suppose I must 
allow these thoughts to come. What good would it do to push 
them away-they will come again-better to swallow this stale 
drink than keep it in the mouth. So what does this boring heroine 
look like? Surely blonde, pale-blue eyes-hoping longingly that 
every lost wanderer is her savior from the paternal prison-0 h, I 
know this hackneyed nonsense-I'd rather sleep-why the devil 
must I plague myself with such empty fantasies? 

Sleep does not come. I toss and turn-sleep still does not 
come-must I finally harbor this unsaved soul in myself? And is 
it this that will not let;me sleep? Have I such a novelistic soul? 
That's all I needed-this would be agonizingly ridiculous. 
Does this bitterest of all drinks never end? It must already 
be midnight-and still sleep does not come. What in the wide 
world, then, won't let me sleep? Is it something to do with this 
chamber? Is the bed bewitched? It's terrible, what sleeplessness 
can drive a man to-even the most absurd and superstitious 
theories. It seems to be cool, I'm freezing-perhaps that's what 
keeps me from sleeping-it's really uncanny here-Heaven knows 
what goes on here-weren't those steps just now? No, that must 
have been outside-I roll over, firmly closing my eyes, I simply 
must sleep. Wasn't that the door. just now? My God, someone 
is standing there! Am I seeing straight?-a slim girl, pale as 
death, standing at the door? For Heaven's sake, what is this? She's 
coming nearer! 

"Have you come at last?" she asks quietly: Impossible-this is a 
cruel mistake-the novel wants to become real-does it want to 
grow into some silly ghost story? To what nonsense am I damned? 
Is it my soul that harbors such novelistic brilliance? Must this, 
too, happen to me? I am truly in Hell-the worst awalcening after 
death, to be resurrected in a lending library! Have I held the men 
of my time and their taste in such contempt that I must live in 
Hell and write out the novels that I have already spat on long ago? 
Does the lower half of average human taste also claim holiness 

6/7 and invulnerability; so that we might not say any bad word / about 
it without having to atone for the sin in Hell? 
She says, "Oh, so you too think me common? Do you too let 
yourself be deluded by the wretched delusion that I belong in a 
novel? You as well, whom I hoped had thrown off appearances 
and striven after the essence of things?" 

I: "Forgive me, but are you real? It's the sorriest likeness to those 
foolishly threadbare scenes in novels for me. to assume that you 
are not simply some unfortunate product of my sleepless brain. Is 
my doubt then truly confirmed by a situation that conforms so 
thoroughly with a sentimental romance?" 
She: "You wretch, how can you doubt that I am real?" 

She falls to her knees at the foot of my bed, sobbing and 
holding her face in her hands. My God, in the end is she really real, 
and do I do her an injustice? My pity awalcens. 

I: "But for Heaven's salce, tell me one thing: in all earnestness 
must I assume that you are real?" 
She weeps and does not answer. 

I: "Who are you, then?" 
She: "I am the old man's daughter. He holds me here in 
unbearable captivity; not out ofenvy or hate, but out oflove, since 
I am his only child and the image ofmy mother. who died young." 

I scratch my head: is this not some hellish banality? Word for 
word, pulp fiction from the lending library! Oh you Gods, where 
have you led me? It's enough to make one laugh, it's enough 
to malce one weep-to be a beautiful sufferer, a tragic shattered 
person is difficult, but to become an ape, you beautiful and great 
ones? To you the banal and eternally ridiculous, the unutterably 
hackneyed and emptied out, is never set like a gift of Heaven in 
uplifted praying hands. 

But still she lies there, crying-yet what ifshe were real? Then 
she would be worth feeling sorry for, every man would have 
compassion for her. Ifshe is a decent girl, what must it have cost 
her to enter into the room ofa strange man! And to overcome her 
shame in this way? 

I: "My dear child, I believe you, despite everything, that you 
are real. What can I do for you?" 
She: "Finally, finally a word from a human mouth!" 

She gets up, her face beaming. She is beautiful. A deep purity 
rests in her look. She has a beautiful and unworldly soul, one 
that wants to come into the life of reality; to all reality worthy 
of pity; to the bath of filth and the well of health. Oh this beauty 
of the soul! To see it climb down into the underworld of realitywhat 
a spectacle! 

She: "What can you do for me? You have already done much 
for me. You spoke the redeeming word when you no longer placed 
the banal between you and me. Know then: I was bewitched by 
the banal." 

I: "Woe is me, you now become very fairy-tale-like." 
She: "Be reasonable, dear friend, and do not stumble now 
over the fabulous, since the fairy tale is the great mother of the 
novel, and has even more universal validity than the most-avidly 
read novel of your time. And you know that what has been 
on everyone's lips for millennia, though repeated endlessly, still 
comes nearest the ultimate human truth. So do not let the fabulous 
come between US."22 

I: "You are clever and do not seem to have inherited the wisdom 
of your father. But tell me, what do you thinlc of the divinity; of 
the so-called ultimate truths? I found it very strange to seek them in 
banality: According to their nature, they must be quite uncommon. 
Think only of our great philosophers." 
She: "The more uncommon these highest truths are, the more 
inhuman must they be and the less they speak to you as something 
valuable or meaningful concerning human essence and being. 
Only what is human and what you call banal and hackneyed / 7/8 
contains the wisdom that you seek. The fabulous does not speak 
against me but for me, and proves how universally human I am 
and how much I too not only need redemp~ion but also deserve 

22 In "Wish fulfillment and symbolism in fairy tales" (1908), Jung's colleague Franz Riklin argued that fairy tales were the spontaneous inventions of the primitive human 
soul and the general tendency to wishfulfilment (tr. W A. White, The Psychoanalytic Review [1913], p. 95.) In Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido, Jung viewed fairy tales 
and myths alike as representing primordial images. In his later work, he viewed them as expressions ofarchetypes, as in "On the archetypes of the collective unconscious" 
(CW 9, I, ¤6). Jung's pupil Marie-Louise von Franz developed the psychological interpretation of fairy tales in a series ofworks. See her The Interpretation ojFairy Tales 
(Boston: Shambala, 1996). 


THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST I 263 

it. For I can live in the world ofreality as well or better than many 
others of my sex." 

I: "Strange maiden, you are bewildering-when I saw your 
father, I hoped he would invite me to a scholarly conversation. 
He did not, and I was aggrieved at him because of this, since his 
distracted slackness hurt my dignity. But with you I find it much 
better. You give me matters to ponder. You are uncommon." 
She: "You are mistaken, I am very common." 

I: "I can't believe that. How beautiful and worthy ofadoration 
is the expression ofyour soul in your eyes. Happy and enviable is 
the man who will free you." 
She: "Do you love mer" 

1: "By God, I love you-but-unfortunately I am already 
married." 
She: "So-you see: even banal reality is a redeemer. I thankyou, 
dear friend, and I bring you greetings from Salome." 
With these words her shape dissolves into darkness. Dim 
moonlight penetrates the room. Where she stood something 
shadowy lies-it is a profusion ofred roses.23 

[2] 24 If no outer adventure happens to you, then no inner 
adventure happens to you either. The part that you take over 
from the devil-joy; that is-leads you into adventure. In this way 
you will find your lower as well as your upper limits. It is necessary 
for you to know your limits. If you do not know them, you run 
into the artificial barriers ofyour imagination and the expectations 
of your fellow men. But your life will not take kindly to being 
hemmed in by artificial barriers. Life wants to jump over such 
barriers and you will fallout with yourself These barriers are not 
your real limits, but arbitrary limitations that do unnecessary 
violence to you. Therefore try to find your real limits. One never 
knows them in advance, but one sees and understands them only 
when one reaches them. And this happens to you only ifyou have 
balance. Without balance you transgress your limits without noticing 
what has happened to you. You achieve balance, however, only ifyou 
nurture your opposite. But that is hateful to you in your innermost 
core, because it is not heroic. 
My spirit reflected on everything rare and uncommon, it pried 
its way into unfound possibilities, toward paths that lead into the 
hidden, toward lights that shine in the night. And as my spirit did 
this, everything ordinary in me suffered harm without my noticing 
it, and it began to hanker after life, since I did not live it: Hence 
this adventure. I was smitten by the romantic. The romantic is a 
step backward. To reach the way; one must sometimes also take a 
few steps backward. 25 

In the adventure I experienced what I had witnessed in the 
Mysterium. What I saw there as Salome and Elijah became in life 
the old scholar and his pale, locked-up daughter. What I live is a 
distorted likeness of the Mysterium. Following the romantic way 
I reached the awkwardness and ordinariness of life, where I run 
out of thoughts and almost forget myself What I formerly loved 

I must now experience as feeble and wasted, and what I formerly 

derided I had to envy as towering and helplessly crave. I accepted 

the absurdity of this adventure. No sooner had this happened 

than I also saw how the maiden transformed herselfand signified 

an autonomous meaning. One inquires into the desire of the 

ridiculous, and that is enough for it to change. 

What about masculinity? Do you know how much femininity 
man lacks for completenessr Do you know how much masculinity 
woman lacks for completenessr You seek the feminine in women 
and the masculine in men. And thus there are always only men 
and women. But where are peopler You, man, should not seek 
the feminine in women, but seek and recognize it in yourself as 
you / possess it from the beginning. It pleases you, however, to 
play at manliness, because it travels on a well-worn track. You, 
woman, should not seek the masculine in men, but assume the 
masculine in yourself since you possess it from the beginning. But 
it amuses you and is easy to play at femininity; consequently man 
despises you because he despises his femininity. But humankind is 
masculine and feminine, not just man or woman. You can hardly 
say ofyour soul what sex it is. But ifyou pay close attention, you 
will see that the most masculine man has a feminine soul, and the 
most feminine woman has a masculine soul. The more manly you 
are, the more remote from you is what woman really is, since the 
feminine in yourself is alien and contemptuous.26 

If you take a piece of joy from the devil and set off on 
adventures with it, you accept your pleasure. But pleasure 
immediately attracts everything you desire, and then you 
must decide whether your pleasure spoils or enhances you. If 
you are of the devil, you will grope in blind desire after the 
manifold, and it will lead you astray. But if you remain with 
yourself as a man who is himself and not of the devil, then 
you will remember your humanity. You will not behave toward 
women per se as a man, but as a human being, that is to say; as 
ifyou were of the same sex as her. You will recall your femininity. 
It may seem to you then as if you were unmanly; stupid, and 
feminine so to speak. But you must accept the ridiculous, 
otherwise you will suffer distress, and there will come a time, 
when you are least observant, when it will suddenly round on 
you and make you ridiculous. It is bitter for the most masculine 
man to accept his femininity; since it appears ridiculous to him, 
powerless and tawdry. 

Yes, it seems as ifyou have lost all virtue, as ifyou have fallen 
into debasement. It seems the same way to the woman who 
accepts her masculinity.2 
7 Yes, it seems to you like enslavement. 
You are a slave ofwhat you need in your soul. The most masculine 
man needs women, and he is consequently their slave. Become a 
woman yourself;8 and you will be saved from slavery to woman. 
You are abandoned without mercy to woman so long as you 
cannot fend off mockery with all your masculinity. It is good for 
you once to put on women's clothes: people will laugh at you, but 
through becoming a woman you attain freedom from women and 

23 In "On the psychological aspects ofthe Kore figure" (1951), Jung described this episode as follows: ''A lonely house in a wood, where an old scholar is living. Suddenly his 
daughter appears, a kind ofghost, complaining that people always only consider her as a fantasy" (Cw 9, I, ¤36I). Jung commented (following his remarks concerning the 
Elijah and Salome episode above, note 212, p. 69) "Dream iii. presents the same theme, but on a more fairy tale-like plane. The anima is here characterized as a ghostly 
being" (ibid., ¤373). 

24 The Drqft continues: "My friend, you learn nothing about my outer visible life. You only hear about my inner life, the counterpart ofmy outer life. Ifyou therefore think 
that I have but my inner life and that is my only life, then you are mistaken. For you must know that your inner life does not become richer at the expense ofyour outer 
one, but poorer. Ifyou do not live on the outside, you will not become richer within, but merely more burdened. This is not to your advantage and it is the beginning of 
evil. Likewise, your outer life will not become richer and more beautiful at the expense ofyour inner one, but only poorer and poorer. Balance finds the way" (p. 188). 

25 The Drqft continues: "I returned to my middle ages where I was still romantic, and there I experienced the adventure" (p. 190). 

26 In 1921 in psychological Types, Jung wrote: ''A very feminine woman has a masculine soul, and a very masculine man has a feminine soul. The contrast is due to the 
fact that for example a man is not in all things wholly masculine, but also normally has certain feminine traits. The more masculine his outer attitude is, the more his 
feminine traits are obliterated: instead, they appear in the unconscious" (CW 6; ¤804). He designated the man's feminine soul as the anima, and the woman's 
masculine soul as the animus, and described how individuals projected their soul images onto members of the opposite sex (¤ 805). 

27 For Jung, the integration ofthe anima for the man and ofthe animus for the woman was necessary for the development ofthe personality. In 1928, he described this 
process, which required withdrawing the projections from members ofthe opposite sex, differentiating from them, and becoming conscious ofthem in The Relations 
between the I and the Unconscious, part 2, ch. 2, cw 7, ¤296f£ See also Aion (1951), CW 9,2, ¤20ff . 

28 Instead ofthis phrase, the Corrected Drqft has: "But ifhe accepts the feminine in himself he frees himself from slavery to woman" (p. 178). 


264 I LIBER SECUNDUS 9/12 

their tyranny. The acceptance of femininity leads to completion. souls famished for recognition and their thirst which can never be 

The same is valid for the woman who accepts her masculinity. slaked. The soul demands your folly; not your wisdom. 

The feminine in men is bound up with evil. I find it on the Therefore, because I rise above gendered masculinity and yet 

way of desire. The masculine in the woman is bound up with do not exceed the human, the feminine that is contemptible to 

evil. Therefore people hate to accept their own other. But ifyou me transforms itself into a meaningful being. This is the most 

accept it, that which is connected with the perfection ofmen comes difficult thing-to be beyond the gendered and yet remain within 

to pass: namely; that when you become the one who is mocked, the human. If you rise above the gendered with the help of a 

the white bird of the soul comes flying. It was far away; but your general rule, you become the same as that rule and overreach the 

humiliation attracted it.29 The mystery draws near to you, and human. Therefore you become dry; hard, and inhuman. 

things happen around you like. miracles. A gold luster shines, since You may go past the gendered for human reasons, and never 

the sun has risen from its grave. As a man you have no soul, since it for the sake of a general rule that remains the same in the most 

is in the woman; as a woman you have no soul, since it is in the man. diverse situations, and therefore never has a perfect validity for 

But ifyou become a human being, then your soul comes to you. each single situation. Ifyou act from your humanity; you act from 

If you remain within arbitrary and artificially created that particular situation without general principle, with onlywhat 
boundaries, you will walk as between two high walls: you do corresponds to the situation. Thus you do justice to the situation, 
not see the immensity of the world. But if you break down the perhaps at the expense ofa general rule. That should not be too 
walls that confine your view, and ifthe immensity and its endless painful for you, because you are not the rule. There is something 
uncertainty inspire you with fear, then the ancient sleeper awakelse 
that is human, something all too human, and whoever has 
ens in you, whose messenger is the white bird. Then you need the ended up there will do well to remember the blessing of the 
message of the old tamer of chaos. There in the whirl of chaos general rule.3! For the general rule also has meaning and has not 
dwells eternal wonder. Your world begins to become wonderful. been set up for fun. It comprises much venerableá work of the 
Man belongs not only to an ordered world, he also belongs in human spirit. Such persons are not capable of a general principle 
the wonder-world ofhis soul. Consequently you must make your above the gendered, but only their imagination is capable ofwhat 
ordered world horrible, so that you are put offby being too much they have lost. They have become their own imagination and 
outside yourself arbitrariness, to their own detriment. They need to remember the 

Your soul is in great need, because drought weighs on its gendered, so that they wake from their dreams to reality. 
world. If you look outside yourselves, you see the far-off forest It is as agonizing as a sleepless night to fulfill the beyond 
and mountains, and above them your vision climbs to the realms from the here and now, namely the other and the opposing in 
of the stars. And ifyou look into yourselves, you will see on the myself It sneaks up like a fever, like a poisonous fog. And when 
other hand the nearby as far-off and infinite, since the world your senses are excited and stretched to the utmost, the daimonic 
of the inner is as infinite as the world of the outer. Just as you comes as something so insipid and worn out, so mild and stale, 
become a part ofthe manifold essence of the world through your that it makes you sick Here you would gladly stop feeling across 
bodies, so you become a part ofthe manifold essence ofthe inner to your beyond. Startled and disgusted, you long for the return of 
world through your soul. This inner world is truly infinite, in no the supernal beauties ofyour visible world. You spit out and curse 
way poorer than the outer one. Man lives in two worlds. A fool everything that lies beyond your lovely world, since you lmow 
lives here or there, but never here and there. that it is the disgust, scum, refuse ofthe human animal who stuffs 

30Perhaps you think that a man who consecrates his life to himself in dark places, creeps along sidewalks, sniffs out every 
research leads a spiritual life and that his soul lives in / larger blessed angle, and from the cradle to the grave enjoys only what 
measure than anyone else's. But such a life is also external, just has already been on everyone's lips. 
as external as the life of a man who lives for outer things. To be But hereyou may not stop-do not place your disgust between 
sure, such a scholar does not live for outer things but for outer your here-and-now and your beyond. The way to your beyond 
thoughts-not for himsel£ but for his object. Ifyou say of a man leads through Hell and in fact through your own wholly particular 
that he has totally lost himself to the outer and wasted his years Hell, whose bottom consists ofknee-deep rubble, whose air is the 
in excess, you must also say the same of this old man. He has spent breath of millions, whose -fires are dwarflike passions, and 
thrown himself away in all the books and thoughts of others. whose devils are chimerical sign-boards. 
Consequentlyhis soul is in great need, it must humiliate itselfand Everything odious and disgusting is your own particular Hell. 
run into every stranger's room to beg for the recognition that he How can it be otherwise? Every other Hell was at least worth 
fails to give her. seeing or full of fun. But that is never Hell. Your Hell is made 

Therefore you see those old scholars running after recognition up of all the things that you always ejected from your sanctuary 
in a ridiculous and undignified manner. They are offended iftheir with a curse and a kick of the foot. When you step into your 
name is not mentioned, cast down if another one says the same own Hell, never think that you come like one suffering in 
thing in a better way; irreconcilable ifsomeone alters theirs views beauty; or as a proud pariah, but you come like a stupid and 
in the least. Go to the meetings ofscholars and you will see them, curious fool and gaze in wonder at the scraps that have fallen 
these lamentable old men with their great merits and their starved from your table.32 / lo/n 

29 Albrecht Dieterich noted: "Often enough popular belief deems the soul a bird from the start" (Abraxas. Studien zur Religionsgeschichte des spatern Altertums [Leipzig, 1891], p. 184). 
30 The Drqft and Corrected Drqft have: "Inasmuch I was this old man, buried in books and batren science, just and appraising, wresting grains ofsand from the infinite 

desert, my [self] so called soul, natllely-my inner sel£ suffered greatly" (p. 180). 
31 Human, All Too Human was the title ofa work of Nietzsche's, published in three installments from 1878. He described psychological observation as the reflection on the 

"human, all too human" (tr. R. J. Hollingdale [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996], p. 31). 
32 In October 1916, in his talk before the Psychological Club on "Individuation and Collectivity;" Jung noted that through individuation, "the individual must now consolidate 

himself by cutting himself offfrom the divine and become wholly himself Thereby and at the same time he also separates himself from society Outwardly he plunges 

into solitude, but inwardly into hell, distance from God" (CW 18, ¤II03). 


ONE OF THE LOWLY I 265 

You really want to rage, but you see at the same time how well I have to think of Hell, where there are also cinemas for those 
rage suits you. Your hellish absurdity stretches for miles. Good who despised this institution on earth and did not go there because 
for you ifyou can swear! You will :find that profanity is lifesaving. everyone else found it to their taste. 
Thus if you go through Hell, you should not forget to give due I: "What interested you most about the cinema?" 
attention to whatever crosses your path. ~etlylook into everything He: "One sees all sorts of stunning feats. There was one man 
that excites your contempt or rage; thereby you accomplish the who ran up houses. Another carried his head under his arm. 
miracle that I experienced with the pale maiden. You give soul to Another even stood in the middle of a :fire and wasn't burnt. Yes, 
the soulless, and thereby it can come to something out ofhorrible it's really remarkable, the things that people can do." 
nothingness. Thus you will redeem your other into life. Your values And that's what this fellow calls mental stimulation! But 
want to draw you away from what you presently are, to get you wait-that does seem remarkable: didn't the saints also carry 
ahead of and beyond yourself Your being, however, pulls you their heads under their arms?36 Didn't Saint Francis and Saint 
to the bottom lilce lead. You cannot at the same time live both, Ignatius levitate~and what about the three men in the :fiery 
since both exclude each other. But on the way you can live both. furnace?37 Isn't it a blasphemous idea to consider theActa Sanctorum 
Therefore the way redeems you. You cannot at the same time be as historical cinema?38 Oh, todays miracles are simply somewhat less 
on the mountain and in the valley, but your way leads you from mythical than technical. I regard my companion with feeling-he 
mountain to valley and from valley to mountain. Much begins lives the history of the world-and I? 
amusingly and leads into the dark Hell has levels.33 1: "Certainly, it's very well done. Did you see anything else 

like this?" 
He: "Yes, Iá saw how the King of Spain was murdered." 

One of the Lowly" 

I: "But he wasn't murdered at al1." 
Cap. iii. He: "Well, that doesn't matter; in that case it was one of those 
damned capitalist Icings. At least they got one of them. If all of 
[HI II] In the following night,35 I found myself wandering them were talcen out, the people would be free." 
once more, in a homely, snow-covered country. A gray evening sky Not a word more dare I say: Wilhelm Tell, a work by Friedrich 
covers the sun. The air is moist and frosty. Someone who does not Schiller-the man is standing right in the thick ofit, in the stream 
look trustworthy has joined me. Most notably, he has only one eye ofheroic story. One who announces the murder ofthe tyrant to a 
and a few scars on his face. He is poor and dirtily clothed, a tramp. sleeping people.39 
He has a black stubble beard that has not seen a razor for a long We have arrived at the inn, a country tavern -areasonably clean 
time. I have a good walking stick for any eventuality. "It's damned parlor-a few men sit with beer in the corner. I am recognized as a 
cold," he remarks after a while. I agree. Mter a longer pause he "gentleman" and led into the better corner where a chequered cloth 
asks: "Where are you going?" covers the end ofa table. The other sits down at the far end ofthe 

I: "I'm going to the next village, where I plan to stay overnight." table, and I decide to have him served a proper evening meal. He 
He: "I'd like to do that too, but will hardly manage to get a bed." is already loolcing at me full of expectation and hunger-with his 
I: "Have you no money? Well, let us see. Are you out ofwork?" one eye. 
He: "Yes, times are bad. Until a few days ago, I was working for I: "Where did you lose your eye?" 
a locksmith. But then he had no more work Now I'm traveling He: "In a braw1. But I also got my knife into the other fellow 
and looking for work" pretty nicely. Mter that he got three months. They gave me 

I: "Wouldn't you work for a farmer? There is always a shortage six. But it was beautiful in prison. At the time the building was 
offarm labor." completely new. I worked in the locksmith's. There wasn't much to 
He: "Working for a farmer doesn't suit me. That means getting do and yet there was enough to eat. Prison really isn't all that bad." 
up early in the morning-the work is hard and wages are low." I look around to make sure that no one is listening to me 

I: "But it's always much more beautiful in the country than in talking with a former convict. But no one seems to have noticed. 
a town." 
I seem to have ended up in well-to-do company. Are there also 
He: "It's boring in the country, one meets nobody." prisons in Hell for those who never saw the inside of one while 

1: "Well, but there are also villagers." they were alive? Incidentally-mustn't it be a peculiarly beautiful 
He: "But there is no mental stimulation, the farmers are clods." feeling to hit bottom in reality at least once, where there is no 
I look at him astonished. What, he still wants mental stimulation? going down any further, but only upward beckons at best? Where 
Better that he honestly earn his keep, and when he has done that for once one stands before the whole height ofreality? 
IIiI2 he can think ofstimulation. i He: "So after that there I was, out on the street, since they 

I: "But tell me, what kind of mental stimulation is there in banished me. Then I went to France. It was lovely there." 
the city?" What demands beauty makes! Something can be learned from 
He: "You can go to the cinema in the evenings. That's great and this man. 
it's cheap. You get to see everything that happens in the world." I: "Why did you have this brawl?" 


33 In Dante's Commedia, Hell has rune levels. 
34 The Handwritten Draft has: "Third Adventure" (p. 440). The Corrected Drtift has "The Rogue," which is then covered over with paper (p. I86). 
35 December 29, I9I3á 
36 The emblem of the city of Zurich bears this motif, showing the late-third-century martyrs Felix, Regula, and Exuperantius. 
37 This appears to be a reference to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3, whom Nebuchadnezzar ordered to be placed into a furnace for refusing to 


worship the golden idol that he had erected. They were unscathed by the fire, which led Nebuchadnezzar to decree that he would cut up anyone who henceforth 
spoke against their God. 
38 The Acta Sanctorum is a collection of the lives and legends of the saints arranged according to their feast days. Published by Jesuits in Belgium known as the Bollandist 
Fathers, it began in I643 and ran to sixty-three folio volumes. 

39 In Wilhelm Tell (I805), Friedrich Schiller dramatized the revolt of the Swiss cantons against the rule ofthe Austrian Habsburg empire at the beginning of the fourteenth 
century, which led to the founding of the Swiss confederation. In act 4, scene 3, Wilhelm Tell kills Gessler, the imperial representative. Stiissi, the ranger, announces, 
"The tyrant of the land is dead. From now henceforth we suffer no oppression. We are free men" (tr. W Mainland [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, I973], p. II9). 


266 I LIBER SECUNDUS 12 fI6 

He: "It was over a woman. She was carrying his bastard but I 
wanted to marry her. She was already due. After that she didn't 
want to anymore. I haven't heard from her." 

I: "How old are you now?" 
He: "I'll be thirty-five in spring. Once I find a proper job 
we can get married right off I'll find myself one, I will. There's 
something wrong with my lungs, though. But that'll soon get 
better again." 

12/13 / He has a coughing fit. I think that the prospects are not good 
and silently admire the poor devil's unswerving optimism. 
After dinner I go to bed in a humble room. I hear how the 
other settles into his lodging for the night next door. He coughs 
several times. Then he falls still. Suddenly I awalcen again at an 
uncanny moan and gurgle mixed with a half-stifled cough. I listen 
tensely-no doubt, it's him. It sounds like something dangerous. 
I jump up and throw something on. I open the door ofhis room. 
Moonlight floods it. The man lies still dressed on a sack of straw. 
A dark stream ofblood is flowing from his mouth and forming a 
puddle on the floor. He moans halfchoking and coughs out blood. 
He wants to get up but sinks back again-I hurry to support him 
but I see that the hand of death lies on him. He is sullied with 
blood twice over. My hands are covered with it. A rattling sigh 
escapes from him. Then every stiffness loosens, a gentle shudder 
passes over his limbs. And then everything is deathly still. 
Where am I? Are there also cases of death in Hell for those 
who have never thought about death? I look at my bloodstained 
hands-as ifI were a murderer ... Is it not the blood ofmy brother 
that sticks to my hands? The moon paints my shadow black on 
the white walls ofthe chamber. What am I doing here? Why this 
horrible drama? I look inquiringly at the moon as a witness. How 
does this concern the moon? Has it not already seen worse? Has 
it not shone a hundred thousand times into broken eyes? This 
is certainly of no avail to its eternal craters-one more or less. 
Death? Does it not uncover the terrible deceit oflife? Therefore 
it is probably all the same to the moon, whether and how one 
passes away. Only we kick up a fuss about it-with what right? 

What did this one do? He worked, lazed about, laughed, drank, 
ate, slept, gave his eye for the woman, and for her sake forfeited 
his good name; furthermore, he lived the human myth after a 
fashion, he admired the wonder-workers, praised the death ofthe 
tyrant, and vaguely dreamed of the freedom of the people. And 
then-then he miserably died-like everyone else. That is generally 
valid. I sat down on the floor. What shadows over the earth! All 
lights gutter out in final despondency and loneliness. Death has 
entered-and there is no one left to grieve. This is a final truth 
and no riddle. What delusion could make us"believe in riddles? 

[2] We stand on the spiky stones ofmisery and death. 
A destitute joins me and wants admittance into my soul, and 
I am thus not destitute enough. Where was my destitution when 
I did not live it? I was a player at life, one who thought earnestly 
about life and lived it easily. The destitute was far away and 
forgotten. Life had become difficult and murkier. Winter kept 
on going, and the destitute stood in snow and froze. I join myself 
with him, since I need him. He malces living light and easy. He 
leads to the depths, to the ground where I can see the heights. 
Without the depths, I do not have the heights. I may be on the 
heights, but precisely because of that I do not become aware of 
the heights. I therefore need the bottommost for my renewal. If I 
am always on the heights, I wear them out and the best becomes 
atrocious to me. 

But because I do notwant to have it, my best becomes a horror to 

me. Because of that I myself become a horror, a horror to myself 

and to others, and a bad spirit oftorment. Be respectful and lmow 

that your best has become a horror, with that you save yourself 

and others from useless torment. A man who can no longer climb 

down from his heights is sick, and he brings himself and others 

to torment. If you have reached your depths, then you see your 

height light up brightly over you, worthy of desire and far-off, 

as if unreachable, since secretly you would prefer not to reach it 

since it seems unattainable to you. For you also love to praise your 

heights when you are low and to tell yourself that you would have 

only left them with pain, and that you did not live so long as you 

missed them. It is a good thing that you have almost become the 

other nature that malces you speak this way. But at bottom you 

know that it is not quite true. 

At your low point you are no longer distinct from your fellow 
beings. You are not ashamed and do not regret it, since insofar as 
you live the life ofyour fello~beings and descend to their lowliness 
/ you also climb into the holy stream of common life, where you 13/14 
are no longer an individual on a high mountain, but a fish among 
fish, a frog among frogs. 

Your heights are your own mountain, which belongs to you 
and you alone. There you are individual and live your very own 
life. If you live your own life, you do not live the common life, 
which is always continuing and never-ending, the life of history 
and the inalienable and ever-present burdens and products ofthe 
human race. There you live the endlessness of being, but not the 
becoming. Becoming belongs to the heights and is full oftorment. 
How can you become ifyou never are? Therefore you need your 
bottommost, since there you are. But therefore you also need 
your heights, since there you become. 

If you live the common life at your lowest reaches, then you 
become aware ofyour self Ifyou are on your heights, then you 
are your best, and you become aware only ofyour best, but not 
that which you are in the general life as a being. What one is 
as one who becomes, no one knows. But on the heights, 
imagination is at its strongest. For we imagine that we know 
what we are as developing beings, and even more so, the less 
we want to know what we are as beings. Because of that we do 
not love the condition of our being brought low; although or 
rather precisely because only there do we attain clear knowledge 
ofourselves. 

Everything is riddlesome to one who is becoming, but not to 
one who is. He who suffers from riddles should take thought of 
his lowest condition; we solve those riddles from which we suffer, 
but not those which please us. 

To be that which you are is the bath of rebirth. In the depths, 
being is not an unconditional persistence but an endlessly slow 
growth. You think you are standing still like swamp water, but 
slowly you flow into the sea that covers the earth's greatest deeps, 
and is so vast that firm land seems only an island imbedded in the 
womb of the immeasurable sea. 

As a drop in the ocean you take part in the current, ebb and 
flow. You swell slowly on the land and slowly sink back again in 
interminably slow breaths. You wander vast distances in blurred 
currents and wash up on strange shores, not knowing how you 
got there. You mount the billows of huge storms and are swept 
back again into the depths. And you do not know how this 
happens to you. You had thought that your movement came from 
you and that it needed your decisions and efforts, so that you could 
get going and make progress. But with every conceivable effort you 


THE ANCHORITE I 267 

would never have achieved that movement and reached those areas light. The death ofthe earth is foreign to it. Motionless and clear, 
to which the sea and the great wind of the world brought you. it sees the life of the earth from afar, without enveloping haze 

From endless blue plains you sink into black depths; luminous and streaming oceans. Its unchanging form has been solid from 
fish draw you, marvelous branches twine around you from above. eternity. It is the solitary clear light of the night, the individual 
You slip through columns and twisting, wavering, dark-leaved being, and the near fragment ofeternity. 
plants, and the sea takes you up again in bright green water From there you look out, cold, motionless, and radiating. With 
to white, sandy coasts, and a wave foams you ashore and swallows otherworldly silvery light and green twilights, you pour out into 
you back again, and a wide smooth swell lifts you softly and the distant horror. You see it but your gaze is clear and cold. Your 
leads you again to new regions, to twisting plants, to slowly hands are red from living blood, but the moonlight ofyour gaze is 
creeping slimy polyps, and to green water and white sand and motionless. It is the life blood ofyour brother, yes, it is your own 
breaking surf blood, but your gaze remains luminous and embraces the entire 

But from far off your heights shine to you above the sea in horror and the earth's round. Your gaze rests on silvery seas, on 
a golden light, like the moon emerging from the tide, and you snowy peaks, on blue valleys, and you do not hear the groaning 
become aware of yourself from afar. And longing seizes you and and howling of the human animal. 
the will for your own movement. You want to cross over from The moon is dead. Your soul went to the moon, to the preserver 
being to becoming, since you have recognized the breath of the of souls.4o Thus the soul moved toward deathY I went into the 
sea, and its flowing, that leads you here and there without your inner death and saw that outer dying is better than inner death. 
ever adhering; you have also recognized its surge that bears you to And I decided to die outside and to live within. For that reason I 
alien shores and carries you back, and gargles you up and down. turned awa~2 and sought the place of the inner life. 

You saw that it was the life of the whole and the death ofeach 
individual. You felt yourself entwined in the collective death, 

The Anchorite

from death to the earth's deepest place, from death in your own 
strangely breathing depths. Oh-you long to be beyond; despair Cap. iv. Dies 1.43 
and mortal fear seize you in this death that breathes slowly and 
streams back and forth eternally. All this light and dark, warm, [HI I5J On the following night,44 I found myself on new paths; 
tepid, and cold water, all these wavy; swaying, twisting plantlike hot dry air flowed around me, and I saw the desert, yellow sand 
animals and bestial plants, all these nightly wonders become a all around, heaped up in waves, a terrible irascible sun, a sky as 
horror to you, and you long for the sun, for light dry air, for firm blue as tarnished steel, the air shimmering above the earth, on my 
stones, for a fixed place and straight lines, for the motionless and right side a deeply cut valley with a dry river bed, some languid 
firmly held, for rules and preconceived purpose, for . singleness grass and dusty brambles. In the sand I see the tracks of naked 
and your own intent. feet that lead up from the rocky valley to the plateau. I follow 

The knowledge ofdeath came to me that night, from the dying them along a high dune. Where it falls off, the tracks move off 
that engulfs the world. I saw how we live toward death, how the to the other side. They appear to be fresh, and old half-worn-away 
swaying golden wheat sinks together under the scythe of the footprints run alongside. I pursue them attentively: again they 
reaper, / like a smooth wave on the sea-beach. He who abides in follow the slope of the dune, now they flow into another set of 
common life becomes aware of death with fear. Thus the fear of footprints-but it is the same / set that I have already followed, 15/16 
death drives him toward singleness. He does not live there, but the one ascending from the valley. 
he becomes aware of life and is happy; since in singleness he is Henceforth I follow the footprints downward in astonishment. 
one who becomes, and has overcome death. He overcomes death I soon reach the hot red rocks corroded by the wind. On the 
through overcoming common life. He does not live his individual stone the footprints are lost but I see where the rock falls off 
being, since he is not what he is, but what he becomes. in layers and I climb down. The air glows and the rock burns 

One who becomes grows aware of life, whereas one who my soles. Now I have reached the bottom; there are the tracks 
simply exists never will, since he is in the midst oflife. He needs again. They lead along the winding ofthe valley; a short distance. 
the heights and singleness to become aware oflife. But in life he Suddenly I stand before a small hut covered in reeds and made 
becomes aware of death. And it is good that you become aware of mud bricks. A rickety wooden plank forms the door where a 
of collective death, since then you know why your singleness cross has been painted in red. I open it quietly. A haggard man 
and your heights are good. Your heights are like the moon that covered in a white linen mantle is sitting on a mat with his back 
luminously wanders alone and through the night looks eternally leaning against the wall. Across his knees lies a book in yellow 
clear. Sometimes it covers itself and then you are totally in the parchment, with beautiful black handwriting-a Greek gospel, 
darkness of the earth, but time and again it fills itself out with without doubt. I am with an anchorite of the Libyan desert.45 

40 In Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (I9I2), Jung cited beliefs in different cultures that the moon was the gathering place of departed souls (CW B, ¤496). 

In Mysterium Coniunctionis (I955/56), Jung commented on this motif in alchemy (CW I4, ¤I55). 
4I The Draft continues: "I accepted the rogue, and lived and died with him. Since I lived him, I became his murderer, since we kill what we live" (p. 2I7). 
42 The Corrected Drcift continues: "from death" (p' 200). 
43 (First Day) The Handwritten Draft has: "Fourth Adventure: First Day" (p. 476). The Corrected Draft has: "Dies I. Evening" (p. 20I). 
44 December 30, I9I3-In Black Book 3, Jung noted: ''All kinds of things lead me far away from my scientific endeavor, which I thought I had subscribed to firmly I wanted 

to serve humanity through it, and now, my soul, you lead me to these new things. Yes, it is the in-between world, the pathless, the manifold-dazzling. I forgotthat I had 
reached a new world, which had been alien to me previously I see neither way nor path. What I believed about the soul has to become true here, namely that she knows 
her own way better, and that no intention can prescribe her a better one. I feel that a large chunk of science has been broken off I suppose it must be like this, for the sake 
of the soul and her life. I find the thought that this must occur only for me agonizing, and that perhaps no one will gain insight from my work. But my soul demands this 
achievement. I should be able to do this just for myself without hope-for thesake of God. This is truly a hard way But what else did those anchorites of the first centuries 
of Christianity do? And were they the worst or least capable ofthose living at the end? Hardly; since they came to the most relentless conclusions with regard to the psychological 
necessity oftheir time. They left wife and child, wealth, glory and science-and turned toward the desert-for God's sake. So be it" (pp. I-2). 


45 In the next chapter, the anchorite is identified as Ammonius. In a letter of December 3I, I9I3, Jung noted that the anchorite came from the third century (JFA). 
There are three historical figures named Ammonius in Alexandria from this period: Ammonius, a Christian philosopher in the third century; once thought to have been 
responsible for the medieval divisions of the gospels; Ammonius Cetus, who was born a Christian but turned to Greek philosophy and whose work presents a transition 
from Platonism to Neoplatonism; a Neoplatonic Ammonius in the fifth century; who tried to reconcile Aristotle and the Bible. At Alexandria, there was accommodation 
between Neoplatonism and Christianity; and some of the pupils of the latter Ammonius converted to Christianity 


268 I LIBER SECUNDUS 16/21 

I: ''Am I disturbing you, father?" 
A: "You do not disturb me. But do not call me father. I am a man 
like you. "What is your desire?" 
I: "I come without desire, I have come to this place in the 
desert by chance, and found tracks in the sand up there that led 
me in a circle to you." 
A: "You found the tracks of my daily walks at daybreak 
and sunset." 
I: "Excuse me ifI interrupt your devotion, it is a rare opportunity 
for me to be with you. I have never before seen an anchorite." 
A: "There are several others whom you can see further down 
in this valley: Some have huts like me, others live in the graves that 
the ancients have hollowed out in these rocks. I live uppermost in 
the valley, because it is most solitary and quiet here, and because 
here I am closest to the peace of the desert." 
I: "Have you already been here long?" 
A: "I have lived here for perhaps ten years, but really, I can no 
longer remember exactly how long it is. It could also be a few more 
years. Time passes so quickly:" 
I: "Time passes quickly? How is that possible? Your life lTIust 
be frightfully monotonous." 
A: "Time certainly passes quickly for me. Much too quickly 
even. It seems you are a pagan?" 
I: "Me? No-not exactly: I was raised in the Christian faith." 
A: "Well, then, how can you ask whether time drags on for me? 
You must know what preoccupies a man who is grieving. Only 
idlers grow bored." 
I: ''Again, forgive me, my curiosity is great, what then do you 
occupy yourself with?" 
A: ''Are you a child? To begin with you see that I am reading, 
and than I keep regular hours." 
I: "But I can see nothing at all with which you could occupy 
yourself here. You must have read this book from cover to cover 
often enough. And ifit is the gospels, as I suppose, then I am sure 
you already know them by heart." 
A: "How childishly you speak! Surely youá know that one can 
read a book many times-perhaps you almost know it by heart, and 
nevertheless it can be that, when you look again at the lines before 
you, certain things appear new or even new thoughts occur to you 
that you did not have before. Every word can work productively in 
your spirit. And finally if you have once left the book for a week 
and you take it up again after your spirit has experienced various 
different changes, then a number ofthings will dawn on you." 
I: "I have difficulty grasping this. The book remains one and 
the same, certainly a wonderfully profound, yes, even divine matter, 
but surely not rich enough to fill countless years." 
A: "You are astonishing. How, then, do you read this holy book? 
Do you really always see only one and the same meaning in it? 
"Where do you come from? You are truly a pagan." 
I: "I beg you, please don't hold it against me if I read like a 
pagan. Let me talk with you. I am here to learn from you. Consider 
me as an ignorant student, which I am in these matters." 
A: "If I call you a pagan, don't take it as an insult. I used to be a 
pagan, too, exactly like you as I / well remember. Therefore how 
can I blame you for your ignorance?" 
I: "Thank you for your patience. But it matters very much to 
me to know how you read and what you take from this book." 
A: "Your question is not easy to answer. It's easier to explain 
colors to a blind person. You must know one thing above all: a 
succession of words does not have only one meaning. But men 
strive to assign only a single meaning to the sequence of words, 
in order to have an unambiguous language. This striving is 
worldly and constricted, and belongs to the deepest layers of 
the divine creative plan. On the higher levels of insight into 
divine thoughts, you recognize that the sequence of words has 
more than one valid meaning. Only to the all-knowing is it given 
to know all the meanings of the sequence ofwords. Increasingly 
we try to grasp a few more meanings." 
I: "IfI understand you correctly, you think that the holy writings 
of the New Testament also have a doubleness, an exoteric and an 
esoteric meaning, as a few Jewish scholars contend concerning 
their holy books." 
A: "This bad superstition is far from me. I observe that you are 
wholly inexperienced in divine matters." 
I: "I must confess my deep ignorance about these things. But 
I am eager to experience and understand what you think about 
the multifaceted meaning of the sequence ofwords." 
A: "Unfortunately I am in no position to tell you everything I 
know about it. But at least I will try to make the elements clear to 
you. Because ofyour ignorance I will therefore begin elsewhere this 
time: "What you need to know is that before I became acquainted 
with Christianity; I was a rhetorician and philosopher in the city 
of Alexandria. I had a great throng of students, including many 
Romans, a few barbarians, and also some Gauls and Britons. I 
taught them not only the history of Greek philosophy but also 
the new systems, among them the system of Philo, whom we call 
the Jew.46 He was a clever head, but fantastically abstract, as the 
Jews are wont to be when they devise systems; moreover he was 
a slave of his own words. I added my own, and wove an atrocious 
web ofwords in which I ensnared not only my listeners, but also 
myself We rioted terribly among words and names, our own 
miserable creatures, and accorded divine potency to them. Yes, we 
even believed in their reality; and believed that we possessed the 
divine and had committed it to words." 
I: "But Philo Judeaus, if this is who you mean, was a serious 
philosopher and a great thinker. Even John the Evangelist included 
some of Philo's thoughts in the gospe!." 
A: "You are right. It is to Philo's credit that he furnished 
language like so many other philosophers. He belongs to the 
language artists. But words should not become Gods."47 
I: "I fail to understand you here. Does it not say in the gospel 
according to John: God was the Word. It appears to make quite 
explicit the point which you have just now rejected." 
A: "Guard against being a slave to words. Here is the gospel: 
read from that passage where it says: In him was the life. "What 
does John say there?"48 
I: "'And life was the light of men and the light shines in the 
darkness and the darkness has not understood it. But it became 
a person sent from God, by the name of John, who came as a 
witness and to be a witness of the light. The genuine light, which 
46 Philo Judeaus, also called Philo ofAlexandria (20 BCE-50 CE), was a Greek-speaking Jewish philosopher. His works presented a fusion of Greek philosophy and 
Judaism. For Philo, God, to whom he referred by the Platonic term "To On" (the One), was transcendent and unknowable. Certain powers reached down from God 
to the world. The facet of God knowable through reason is the divine Logos. There has been much debate on the precise relation between Philo's concept of the 
Logos and John's gospel. On June 23, 1954, Jung wrote to James Kirsch, "The gnosis from which John the Evangelist emanated, is definitely Jewish, but its essence is 
Hellenistic, in the style of Philo Judaeus, the founder of the teachings of the Logos" (JA). 

47 In 1957, Jung wrote: "Until now it has not truly and fundamentally been noted that our time, despite the prevalence ofirreligiosity, is so to speak congenitally charged with 
the attainment of the Christian epoch, namely with the supremacy ofthe word, that Logos which the central figure of Christian faith represents. The word has literally 
become our God and has remained so" (Present and Future, CW 10, ¤554). 

48 John 1:1-10: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made 
by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light ofmen. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness 
comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him 


THE ANCHORITE I 269 

illuminates each person, came into the world: He was in the 
world, and the world became through him, and the world did not 
recognize him.' -That is what I read here. But what do you make 
of this?" 

A: "I ask you, was this AorOL [Logos] a concept, a word? It 
was a light, indeed a man, and lived among men. You see, Philo 
only lent John the word so that John would have at his disposal 
the word 'AorOL' alongside the word 'light' to describe the son 
of man. John gave to living men the meaning of the AorOL, but 
Philo gave AorOL as the dead concept that usurped life, even the 
divine life. Through this the dead does not gain life, and the 
living is killed. And this was also my atrocious error." 
I: "I see what you mean. This thought is new to me and seems 
17/18 worth consideration. Until now it always seemed to me / as if it 
were exactly that which was meaningful in John, namely that the 
son ofman is the AorOL, in that he thus elevates the lower to the 
higher spirit, to the world of the AorOL. But you lead me to see 
the matter conversely; namely that John brings the meaning of 
the AorOL down to man." 

A: "I learned to see that John has in fact even done the great 
service ofhaving brought the meaning ofthe AorOL up to man." 
I: "You have peculiar insights that stretch my curiosity to the 
utmost. How is that? Do you think that the human stands higher 
than the AOrOL?" 
A: "I want to answer this question within the scope of your 
understanding: if the human God had not become important 
above everything, he would not have appeared as the son in the 
flesh, but in the AorOL."49 
I: "That makes sense to me, but I confess that this view is 
surprising to me. It is especially astonishing to me that you, a 
Christian anchorite, have come to such views. I would not have 
expected this ofyou." 
A: ''As I have already noticed, you have a completely false idea 
of me and my essence. Let me give you a small example of my 
preoccupation. I've spent many years alone with the process of 
unlearning. Have you ever unlearned anything?-Well, then you 
should know how long it takes. And I was a successful teacher. 
As you know, for such people to unlearn is difficult or even 
impossible. But I see that the sun has gone down. Soon it will be 
completely dark. Night is the time ofsilence. I want to show you 
your place for the night. I need the morning for my work, but 
after midday you can come to me again ifyou like. Then we will 
continue our conversation." 
He leads me out ofthe hut, the valley is covered in blue shadows. 
The first stars are already glittering in the sky He leads me around 
the corner of a rock: we are standing at the entrance of a50 grave 
cut into the stone. We step in. Not far from the entrance lies a heap 
of reeds covered with mats. Next to it there is a pitcher ofwater, 
and on a white cloth there are dried dates and black bread. 

A: "Here is your place and your supper. Sleep well, and do not 
forget your morning prayer, when the sun rises." 
[2] The solitary lives in endless desert full of awesome 
beauty. He looks at the whole and at inner meaning. He loathes 
manifold diversity ifit is near him. He looks at it from afar in its 
totality. Consequently silvery splendor and joy and beauty cloale 
diversity for him. What is near him must be simple and innocent, 
since close at hand the manifold and complicated tear and break 
through the silvery splendor. No cloudiness of the sky, no haze 
or mist is allowed to be around him, otherwise he cannot look 
at the distant manifold in the whole. Consequently the solitary 
loves the desert above all, where everything nearby is simple and 
nothing turbid or blurred lies between him and the far-away 

The life of the solitary would be cold were it not for the immense sun, 
which makes the air and rocks glow. The sun and its eternal splendor replace 
for the solitary his own life warmth. 

H is heart longsfor the sun. 

IIe wanders to the lands ofthe sun. 

He dreams ofthe}fickering splendor ofthe sun, ofthe hot red stones spread 

out at midday, ofthe golden hot rays ofdry sand. / 18/19 

The solitary seeks the sun and no one else is so ready to open his heart as he is. 

Therefore he loves the desert above all, since he loves its deep stillness. 

He needs littlefood since the sun and its glow nourish him. Consequently 
the solitary loves the desert above all since it is a mother to him, giving him 
food and invigorating warmth at regular hours. 

I n the desert the solitary is relieved ofcare and therefore turns his whole 

life to the sprouting garden ofhis soul, which can jfourish only under a hot 

sun. In his garden the delicious red fruit grows that bears swelling sweetness 

under a tight skin. 

You think that the solitary is poor. You do not see that he strolls under 

laden fruit trees and that his hand touches grain a hundredfold. under dark 

leaves the oveifull reddish blossoms swell toward him from abundant buds, 

and the fruit almost bursts with thronging juices. Fragrant resins drip from 

his trees and under hisfiet thrusting seed breaks open. 

Ifthe sun sinks onto the plane ofthe sea like an exhausted bird, the solitary 
envelops himselfand holds his breath. He does not move and is pure expectancy 
until the miracle ofthe renewal oflight rises in the East. 

Brimful delicious expectation is in the solitary. 51 

The horror ofthe desert and ofwithered evaporation surround him, and 

you do not understand how the solitary can live. / 19/20 

But his eye rests on the garden, and his ears listen to the source, and his 
hand touches velvet leaves andfruit, and his breath draws in sweet peifumes 
from blossom~rich trees. 

He cannot tell you, since the splendor ofhis garden is so abundant. He 
stammers when he speaks ofit, and he appears to you to be poor in spirit 
and in life. But his hand does not know where it should reach, in all this 
indescribablefullness. 

He gives you a small inSignificantfruit, which has justfallen at his fiet. 
I t appears worthless to you, but ifyou consider it, you will see that thisfruit 
tastes like a sun which you could not have dreamt of It gives off a peifume 
which confuses your senses and makes you dream ofrose gardens and sweet 
wine and whispering palm trees. And you hold this one fruit in your hands 
dreaming, and you would like the tree in which itgrows, the garden in which 
this tree stands, and the sun which broughtforth this garden. 

And you yourselfwant to be that solitary who strolls with the sun in his 
garden, his gaze resting on pendantjfowers and his hand brushing ahundred~ 
fold ofgrain and his breath drinking the peifumefrom a thousand roses. 

Dullfrom the sun and drunk from firmenting wines, you lie down in 
ancient graves, whose walls resound with many voices and many colors ofa 
thousand solar years. 

When you grow, then you see everything living again as it was. And / 20/21 
when you sleep, you rest, like everything that was, and your dreams echo 
softly againfrom distant temple chants. 

You sleep down through the thousand solar years, and you wake up 
through the thousand solar years, and your dreams full ofancient lore adorn 

might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was 
in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not." 

49 John I:I4: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as ofthe only begotten ofthe Father), full ofgrace and truth." 

50 The Draft has: "Egyptian" (p. 227). In an Egyptian context, the water, dates, and bread would be offerings to the dead. 

5I The Drqft continues: "Walking around in a circle I happen to return to myself and to him, the solitary one, who lives down in the depths hidden from the light, held 
securely by the warm bosom ofthe rock, above him the glowing desert and sharp resplendent skies" (p. 229). 


270 I LIBER SECUNDUS 20/24 

the walls ofyour bedchamber. should become what the darkness can comprehend, since what 
You also see yourselfin the totality. use is the light if the darkness does not comprehend it? But your 
darkness should grasp the light. 


You sit and lean against the wall, and look at the beautiful, 
riddlesome totality. The Summa52 lies before you like a book, and The God of words is cold and dead and shines from afar like 
an unspeakable greed seizes you to devour it. Consequently you the moon, mysteriously and inaccessibly: Let the word return to 
lean back and stiffen and sit for a long time. You are completely its / creator, to man, and thus the word will be heightened in 
incapable of grasping it. Here and there a light flickers, here and man. Man should be light, limits, measure. May he be your fruit, 
there a fruit falls from high trees which you can grasp, here and for which you longingly reach. The darkness does not comprethere 
your foot strikes gold. But what is it, ifyou compare it with hend the word, but rather man; indeed, it seizes him, since he 
the totality, which lies spread out tangibly close to you? You stretch himself is a piece of the darkness. Not from the word down to 
out your hand, but it remains hanging in invisible webs. You want man, but from the word up to man: that is what the darkness 
to see it exactly as it is but something cloudy and opaque pushes comprehends. The darkness is your mother; she behooves revitself 
exactly in between. You would like to tear a piece out ofit; it erence, since the mother is dangerous. She has power over you, 
is smooth and impenetrable like polished steel. So you sink back since she gave birth to you. Honor the darkness as the light, and 
against the wall, and when you have crawled through all the glowyou 
will illumine your darkness. 
ing hot crucibles of the Hell ofdoubt, you sit once more and lean 
back, and look at the wonder of the Summa that lies spread Ifyou comprehend the darkness, it seizes you. It comes over you 
out before you. Here and there a light flickers, here and there a like the night with black shadows and countless shimmering stars. 
fruit falls. For you it is all too little. But you begin to be satisfied Silence and peace come over you ifyou begin to comprehend the 
with yourself, and you pay no attention to the years passing darkness. Only he who does not comprehend the darkness fears 
away. What are years? What is hurrying time to him that sits the night. Through comprehending the dark, the nocturnal, the 
under a tree? Your time passes like a breath of air and you wait abyssal in you, you become utterly simple. And you prepare to 
for the next light, the next fruit. sleep through the millennia like everyone else, and you sleep down 

into the womb of the millennia, and your walls resound with 

The writing lies before you and always says the same, if you ancient temple chants. Since the simple is what always was. Peace 
believe in words. But if you believe in things in whose places and blue night spread over you while you dream in the grave of 
only words stand, you never come to the end. And yet you must the millennia. 
go an endless road, since life flows not only down a finite path 
but also an infinite one. But the unbounded makes you53 anxious 
since the unbounded is fearful and your humanity rebels against 
it. Consequently you seek limits and restraints so that you do not Cap. v. 
lose yoursel£ tumbling into infinity Restraint becomes imperative 
for you. You cry out for the word which has one meaning and [HI 22]57581 awaken, the day reddens the East. A night, a wonderful 
no other, so that you escape boundless ambiguity. The word night in the distant depths oftime lies behind me. In what far-away 
becomes your God, since it protects you from the countless space was I? What did I dream? Ofa white horse? It seems to me 
possibilities of interpretation. The word is protective magic as if I had seen this white horse on the Eastern sky over the rising 
against the daimons of the unending, which tear at your soul and sun. The horse spoke to me: What did it say? It said: "Hail him 
want to scatter you to the winds. You are saved if you can say at who is in darkness since the day is over him." There were four 
last: that is that and only that. You spealc the magic word, and white horses, each with golden wings. They led the carriage ofthe 
the limitless is finally banished. Because of that men seek and sun, on which Helios stood with flaring mane.59 I stood down in 
make words. 54 the gorge, astonished and frightened. A thousand black serpents 


He who breaks the wall ofwords overthrows Gods and defiles crawled swiftly into their holes. Helios ascended, rolling upward 
temples. The solitary is a murderer. He murders the people, because toward the wide paths of the sky: I knelt down, raised my hands 
he thus thinks and thereby breaks down ancient sacred walls. He suppliantly, and called: "Give us your light, you are flame-curled, 
calls up the daimons of the boundless. And he sits, leans back, entwined, crucified and revived; give us your light, your light!" This 
and does not hear the groans of mankind, whom the fearful fiery cry woke me. Didn't Ammonius say yesterday evening: "Do not 
smoke has seized. And yet you cannot find the new words ifyou forget to say your morning prayer when the sun rises." I thought 
do not shatter the old words. But no one should shatter the old that perhaps he secretly worships the sun. / 
words, unless he finds the new word that is a firm rampart against Outside a fresh morning wind rises. Yellow sand trickles in 
the limitless and grasps more life in it than in the old word. A new fine veins down the rocks. The redness expands across the sky 
word is a new God for old men. Man remains the same, even if and I see the first rays shoot up to the firmament. Solemn calm 
you create a new model of God for him. He remains an imitator. and solitude on all sides. A large lizard lies on a stone and awaits the 
What was word, shall become man. The word created the world sun. I stand as ifspellbound and laboriously remember everything 
and came before the world. It lit up like a light in the darkness, from yesterday, especially what Ammonius said. But what did he 
and the darkness did not comprehend it.55 And thus the word say? That the sequences ofwords have many meanings, and that 

52 Latin for "whole." 
53 The Draft has "to you," and the Corrected Draft has "to me" (p. 232). Throughout this section, the Corrected Draft substitutes "to me" for "to you," and "I" for "you" (P.214). 
54 In 1940, Jung commented on protective word magic ("Transformation symbolism in the mass," CW II, ¤442). 
55 See note 48, above. 
56 The Corrected Draft has "(The Anchorite). Second Day. Morning" (P.219). 
57 In "The Philosophical Tree" (1945), Jung noted: "A man who is rooted below as well as above is sort oflike an upright and inverted tree. The goal is not the heights but 


the center" (CW 13, ¤333). He also commented on "The inverted tree" (¤4IOf). 
58 January I, 1914. 
59 In Greek mythology; Helios was the sun God, and he drove a chariot led by four horses across the sky. 


DIES II I 271 

John brought the AOrOL to man. But that does not sound properly What am I saying? That was the desert. How everything 
Christian. Is he perhaps a Gnostic?60 No, that seems impossible appears so animated to me! This place is truly terrible. These 
to me, since they were really the worst of all the idolators of stones-are they stones? They seem to have gathered here 
words, as he would probably put it. deliberately. They're lined up like a troop transport. They've 

The sun-what fills me with such inner exaltation? I should arranged themselves by size, the large ones stand apart, the small 
not forget my morning prayer-but where has my morning prayer ones close ranks and gather in groups that precede the large 
gone? Dear sun, I have no prayer, since I do not knowhowone must ones. Here the stones form states. 
address you. Have I already prayed to the sun? But Ammonius Am I dreaming or am I awake? It's hot-the sun already stands 
really meant that I should pray to God at the break of day. He high-how the hours pass! Truly, the morning is nearly over-and 
probably does not know-we have no more prayers. How should how astonishing it has been! Is it the sun or is it these living stones, 
he know about our nakedness and poverty? What has happened or is it the desert that makes my head buzz? 
to our prayers? I miss them here. This must really be because of I go up the valley"and before long I reach the hut ofthe anchorite. 
the desert. Itseems as ifthere ought to be prayers here. Is this desert He is sitting on his mat lost in deep reflection. 
so very bad? I think it is no worse than our cities. But why then I: "My father, I am here." 
do we not pray there? I must look toward the sun, as if it had A: "How have you spent your morning?" 
something to do with this. Alas-one can never escape the age-old I: "I was surprised when you said yesterday that time passes 
dreams ofmankind. quickly for you. I don't question you anymore and this will no 

What shall I do this whole long morning? I do not understand longer surprise me. I've learned a lot. But only enough to make 
how Ammonius could have endured this life for even a year. I go you an even greater riddle than you were before. Why, all the 
back and forth on the dried-up river bed and finally sit down on things that you must experience in the desert, you wonderful 
a boulder. Before me there are a few yellow grasses. Over there a man! Even the stones are bound to speak to you." 
small dark beetle is crawling along, pushing a ball in front ofit-a A: "I'm happy that you have learned to understand something 
scarab.61 You dear little animal, are you still toiling away in order ofthe life ofan anchorite. That will make our difficult task easier. 
to live your beautiful myth? How seriously and undiscouraged it I don't want to intrude on your mysteries, but I feel that you come 
works! If only you had a notion that you are performing an old from a strange world that has nothing to do with mine." 
myth, you would probably renounce your fantasies as we men I: "You speak truthfully. I'm a stranger here, more foreign 
have also given up playing at mythology. than any you've ever seen. Even a man from Britain's remotest 

The unreality nauseates one. What I say sounds very odd in coast is closer to you than I am. Therefore have patience, masterthis 
place, and the good Ammonious would certainly not agree and let me drink from the source ofyour wisdom. Although the 
with it. What am I actually doing here? No, I don't want to thirsty desert surrounds us, an invisible stream of living water 
condemn him in advance, since I still haven't really understood flows here." 
what he actually means. He has a right to be heard. By the way, A: "Have you said your prayer?" 
I thought differently yesterday. I was even very thankful to him I: "Master, forgive me: I've tried, but I found no prayer. Yet I 
that he wanted to teach me. But I'm being critical once again, dreamed that I prayed to the rising sun." 
and superior, and may well learn nothing. His thoughts are not A: "Don't worryyourselfbecause ofthat. Ifyou do find a word, 
that bad at all; they are even good. I don't know why I always your soul has nevertheless found inexpressible words to greet the 
want to put the man down. break ofday." 

Dear beetle, where have you gone? I can no longer see youI: 
"But it was a heathen prayer to Helios." 
Oh, you're already over there with your mythical ball. These little A: "Let that suffice for you." 
animals stick to things, quite unlike us-no doubt, no change of I: "But Oh master, I've prayed not only to the sun in a dream, 
mind, no hesitation. Is this so because they live their myth? but in my absentmindedness also to the scarab and the earth." 

A: "Be astonished at nothing, and in no case condemn or regret 
D ear scarab, my father, I honor you, blessed be your work-in it. Let us go to work Do you want to ask something about the 
eternity-Amen. conversation we had yesterday?" 
What nonsense am I talking? I'm worshiping an animalI: 
"I interrupted you yesterday when you spoke of Philo. You 
that must be because of the desert. It seems absolutely to wanted to explain your notion ofthe various meanings ofparticular 
demand prayers. sequences ofwords." 

How beautiful it is here! The reddish color of the stones is A: "Well, I'll continue my account ofhow I was freed from the 
wonderful; they reflect the glow ofa hundred thousand past sunsawful 
predicament of spinning words. A man my father had set 
these small grains of sand have rolled in fabulous primordial free once came to me; this man, whom I'd been attached to since 
oceans, over them swam primordial monsters with forms never my childhood, spoke to me and said: 
beheld before. Where were you, man, in those days? On this warm "OhAmmonius, are you well?" "Certainly," I said, "as you 
sand lay your childish primordial animal ancestors, like children can see, I am learned and have great success." 
snuggling up to their mother. He: "I mean, are you happy and are you fully alive?" 

o mother stone, I love you, I lie snuggled up against your warm body, I laughed: ''As you can see, all is well." 
your late child. Blessed be you, ancient mother. The old man replied: "I saw how you lectured. You 
23/24 1 Yours is my heart and all glory and power-Amen. seemed to be anxious at the judgment of your listeners. 

60 During this period, Jung was engaged with the study ofGnostic texts, in which he found historical parallels to his own experiences. See Alfred Ribi, Die Suche nach 
den eigenen Wurzeln: Die Bedeutung von Gnosis, Hermetik und Alchemiefur C. G. ] ung und Marie-Louise von Franz und deren Einjfuss aufdas moderne Verstdndnis dieser Disziplin 
(Bern: Peter Lang, 1999). 

61 In Synchronicity as aPrinciple ofAcausal Connection (1952), Jung wrote: "The scarab is a classical rebirth symbol. According to the description in the ancient Egyptian 
book Am-Tuat, the dead sun God transforms himself at the tenth station into Khepri, the scarab, and as such mounts the barge at the twelfth station, which raises 
the rejuvenated sun into the morning sky" (CW 8, ¤843). 


272 I LIBER SECUNDUS 24/29 

You wove witty jokes into the lecture to please your listeners. 
You heaped up learned expressions to impress them. You 
were restless and hasty, as if still compelled to snatch up all 
knowledge. You are not in yourself" 

Although these words at first seemed laughable to me, 
they still made an impression on me, and reluctantly I had 
to / credit the old man, since he was right. 

Then he said: "Dear Ammonius, I have delightful 
tidings for you: God has become flesh in his son and has 
brought us all salvation." ""What are you saying," I called, "you 
probably mean Osiris,62 who shall appear in the mortal body?" 

"No," he replied, "this man lived in Judea and was 
born from a virgin." 

I laughed and answered: "I already know about this; 
a Jewish trader has brought tidings of our virgin queen 
to Judea, whose image appears on the walls of one of our 
temples, and reported it as a fairy tale." 

"No," the old man insisted, "he was the Son of God." 
"Then you mean Horus/3 the son of Osiris, don't you?" 
I answered. 
"No, he was not Horus, but a real man, and he was hung 
from a cross." 
"Oh, but this must be Seth, surely; whose punishments 
our old ones have often described." 
But the old man stood by his conviction and said: "He 

died and rose up on the third day." 
"Well, then he must be Osiris," I replied impatiently. 
"No," he cried, "he is called Jesus the anointed one." 
''Ah, you really mean this Jewish God, whom the poor 

honor at the harbor, and whose unclean mysteries they 
celebrate in cellars." 
"He was a man and yet the Son of God," said the old 
man staring at me intently. 

"That's nonsense, dear old man," I said, and showed 
him to the door. But like an echo from distant rock faces 
the words returned to me: a man and yet the Son of God. It 
seemed significant to me, and this phrase was what brought 
me to Christianity. 

I: "But don't you think that Christianity could ultimately be a 
transformation ofyour Egyptian teachings?" 
A: "If you say that our old teachings were less adequate 
expressions of Christianity, then I'm more likely to agree with you." 
I: "Yes, but do you then assume that the history of religions is 
aimed at a final goal?" 
A: "My father once bought a black slave at the market from the 
region of the source of the Nile. He came from a country that had 
heard ofneither Osiris nor the other Gods; he told me many things 
in a more simple language that said the same as we believed about 
Osiris and the other Gods. I learned to understand that those 
uneducated Negroes unknowingly already possessed most of 
what the religions of the cultured peoples had developed into 
complete doctrines. Those able to read that language correctly 
could thus recognize in it not only the pagan doctrines but also the 
doctrine of Jesus. And it's with this that I now occupy myself 
I read the gospels and seek their meaning which is yet to come. 
We know their meaning as it lies before us, but not their hidden 
meaning which points to the future. It's erroneous to believe that 
religions differ in their innermost essence. Strictly speaking, it's 
always one and the same religion. Every subsequent form ofreligion 
is the meaning ofthe antecedent." 

I: "Have you found out the meaning which is yet to come?" 
A: "No, not yet; it's very difficult, but I hope I'll succeed. 
Sometimes it seems to me that I need the stimulation of others, 
but I realize that those are temptations of Satan." 
I: "Don't you believe that you'd succeed ifyou were nearer men?" 
A: "Perhaps you're right." 
He looks at me suddenly as if doubtful and suspicious. "But," 
he continues, "I love the desert, do you understand? This yellow, 
sun-glowing desert. Here you can see the countenance of the sun 
every day; you are alone, you can see glorious Helios-no, that is 

-pagan-what's wrong with me? I'm confused-you are SatanI 
recognize you-give way; adversary!" 
/ He jumps up incensed and wants to lunge at me. But I am 
far away in the twentieth century.64 

[2] [HI 26] He who sleeps in the grave cifthe millennia dreams awondeiful 
dream. He dreams aprimordially ancient dream. He dreams cifthe rising sun. 
Ifyou sleep this sleep and dream this dream in this time ofthe world, you 

will know that the sun will also rise at this time. For the moment we are still 

in the dark, but the day is upon us. 

He who comprehends the darkness in himself, to him the light is near. He 

who climbs down into his darkness reaches the staircase ofthe working light, 

fire~manedH elios. 

H is chariot ascends withfour white horses, his back bears no cross, and his 

side no wound, but he is safi and his head blazes in thefire. 

Nor is he a man ofmockery, but ofsplendor and unquestionableforce. 

I do not know what I speak, I speak in adream. support mefor I stagger, 

drunk with fire. I drank fire in this night, since I climbed down through the 

centuries and plunged into the sun far at the bottom. And I rose up drunk 

from the sun, with a burning countenance and my head is ablaze. 

Give me your hand, ahuman hand, so that you / can hold me to the earth 
with it,for whirling veins offire swoop me up, and exultant longing tears me 
toward the zenith. 

But day is about to break, actual day; the day ofthis world. And I 

remain concealed in the gorge ofthe earth, deep down and solitary, 

and in the darkening shadows ofthe valley. That is the shadow and 

heaviness of the earth. 

How can I pray to the sun, that rises far in the East over the 

desert? Why should I pray to it? I drink the sun within me, so 

why should I pray to it? But the desert, the desert in me demands 

prayers, since the desert wants to satisfy itself with what is alive. 

I want to beg God for it, the sun, or one of the other immortals. 

I beg because I am empty and am a beggar. In the day of this 

world, I forget that I drank the sun and am drunk from its active 

light and singeing power. But I stepped into the shadows of the 

earth, and saw that I am naked and have nothing to cover my 

poverty. No sooner do you touch the earth than your inner life is 

over; it flees from you into things. 

And a wondrous life arises in things. What you thought was 

62 Osiris was the Egyptian God oflife, death, and fertility. Seth was the God of the desert. Seth was murdered and dismembered by his brother Osiris. Osiris's body was 
recovered and put back together by his wife, Isis, and he was resurrected. Jung discussed Osiris and Seth in Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (1912) (CW B, ¤358f). 

63 Horus, Osiris's son, was the Egyptian God of the sky He fought against Seth. 

64 The Corrected Dr4ft continues: "and I am unreal to myself as in a dream" (p. 228). Christian anchorites were perpetually on guard against the appearance of Satan. A 
famous example of temptations by the devil occurs in Athanasius's life of St. Anthony. In 1921 Jung noted that St. Anthony warned his monks "how cleverly the Devil 
disguised himself in order to bring holy men to their downfall. The Devil is naturally the voice of the anchorite's own unconscious, that rises up against the forcible 
suppression ofhis nature" (psychological Types, CW 6, ¤82). St. Anthony's experiences were elaborated by Flaubert in his Temptation ofAnthony, a work with which Jung 
was familiar (Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, ¤59). 


DEATH I 273 

dead and inanimate betrays a secret life and silent, inexorable 
intent. You have got caught up in a hustle and bustle where 
everything goes its own way with strange gestures, beside you, 
above you, beneath you, and through you; even the stones speak 
to you, and magical threads spin from you to things and from 
things to you. Far and near work within you and you work 
in a dark manner upon the near and the far. And you are always 
helpless and a prey. 

But ifyou watch closely, you will see what you have never seen 
before, namely that things live their life, and that they live offyou: 
the rivers bear your life to the valley,. one stone falls upon another 
with your force, plants and animals also grow through you and 
they are the cause ofyour death. A leaf dancing in the wind dances 
with you; the irrational animal65 guesses your thought and represents 
you. The whole earth sucks its life from you and everything 
reflects you again. 

Nothing happens in which you are not entangled in a secret 
manner; for everything has ordered itself around you and plays 
your innermost. Nothing in you is hidden to things, no matter 
how remote, how precious, how secret it is. It inheres in things. 
Your dog robs you ofyour father, who passed away long ago, and 
looks at you as he did. The cow in the meadow has intuited your 
mother, and charms you with total calm and security. The stars 
whisper your deepest mysteries to you, and the soft valleys of the 
earth rescue you in a motherly womb. 

Like a stray child you stand pitifully among the mighty, who 
hold the threads ofyour life. You cry for help and attach yourself 
to the first person that comes your way. Perhaps he can advise you, 
perhaps he knows the thought that you do not have, and which all 
things have sucked out ofyou. 

I know that you would like to hear the tidings ofhe whom things have 
not lived, but who lived and fulfilled himself. For you are ason ofthe earth, 
sucked dry by the suckling earth, that can suck nothing out ofitself, but suckles 
only from the sun. Therefore you would like to have tidings ofthe son ofthe 
sun, which shines and does not suckle. 

/ You would like to hear ofthe son ofGod, who shone and gave, who 
begot, and to whom life was born again, as the earth bears the sun green and 
colorful children. 

You would like to hear ofhim, the radiating savior, who as a son ofthe 
sun cut through the webs ofthe earth, who sundered the magic threads and 
released those in bondage, who owned himselfand was no one's servant, who 
sucked no one dry, and whose treasure no one exhausted. 

You would like to hear ofhim who was not darkened by the shadow of 
earth, but illuminated it, who saw the thoughts of all, and whose thoughts 
no one guessed, who possessed in himselfthe meaning ofall things, and whose 
meaning no thing could express. 

The solitary fled the world; he closed his eyes, plugged his ears 
and buried himself in a cave within himself but it was no use. 
The desert sucked him dry, the stones spoke his thoughts, the 
cave echoed his feelings, and so he himself became desert, stone, 
and cave. And it was all emptiness and desert, and helplessness 
and barrenness, since he did not shine and remained a son of the 
earth who sucked a book dry and was sucked empty by the desert. 
He was desire and not splendor, completely earth and not sun. 

65 An inversion ofAristotle's definition ofman as the "rational animal." 
66 See Jung's description of the Pleroma, p. 347. below. 

Consequently he was in the desert as a clever saint who very 
well knew that otherwise he was no different from the other sons 
of the earth. If he would have drunk of himself he would have 
drunk fire. 

The solitary went into the desert to find himself But he did 
not want to find himsel£ but rather the manifold meaning of holy 
scripture. You can suck the immensity of the small and the great 
into yoursel£ and you will become emptier and emptier, since 
immense fullness and immense emptiness are one and the same.66 

He wanted to find what he needed in the outer. But you 
find manifold meaning only in yourself not in things, since the 
manifoldness of meaning is not something that is given at the 
same time, but is a succession of meanings. The meanings that 
follow one another do not lie in things, but lie in you, who are . 
subject to many changes, insofar as you take part in life. Things 
also change, but you do not notice this ifyou do not change. But 
ifyou change, the countenance ofthe world alters. The manifold 
sense of things is your manifold sense. It is useless to fathom it 
in things. And this probably explains why the solitary went into 
the desert, and fathomed the thing but not himself 

And therefore what happened to every desirous solitary also 
happened to him: the devil came to him with smooth tongue and 
clear reasoning and knew the right word at the right moment. He 
lured him to his desire. I had to appear to him as the devil, since 
I had accepted my darkness. I ate the earth and I drank the sun, 
and I became a greening tree that stands alone and grows.67 
/ 28/29 

Death.68 

Cap. vi. 

[HI 29] On the following night,69 I wandered to the northern 
land and found myself under a gray sky in misty-hazy cool-moist 
air. I strive to those lowlands where the weak currents, flashing in 
broad mirrors, stream toward the sea, where all haste of flowing 
becomes more and more dampened, and where all power and all 
striving unites with the immeasurable extent of the sea. The trees 
become sparse, wide swamp meadows accompany the still, murky 
water, the horizon is unending and lonely, draped by gray clouds. 
Slowly, with restrained breath, and with the great and anxious 
expectation of one gliding downward wildly on the foam and 
pouring himself into endlessness, I follow my brother, the sea. 
It flows softly and almost imperceptibly, and yet we continually 
approach the supreme embrace, entering the womb ofthe source, 
the boundless expansion and immeasurable depths. Lower yellow 
hills rise there. A broad dead lake widens at their feet. We wander 
along the hills quietly and they open up to a dusky, unspeakably 
remote horizon, where the sky and the sea are fused into infinity. 

Someone is standing there, on the last dune. He is wearing 
a black wrinkled coat; he stands motionless and looks into the 
distance. I go up to him-he is gaunt and with a deeply serious 
look in his eyes. I say to him: 

"Let me stand beside you for a while, dark one. I recognized 
you from afar. There is only one who stands this way, so solitary and 
at the last corner of the world." 

67 The Drqft and Corrected Drqft continue: "But I saw solitude and its beauty; and I seized the life of the inanimate and the meaning of the meaningless. I also understood 
this side ofmy manifoldness. And thus my tree grew in the solitude and quiet, eating the earth with roots reaching far down and drinking the sun with branches reaching 
high up. The solitary [alien] guest entered my soul. But my greening life flooded me. [Thus I wandered, following the nature of the water]. The solitude gtew-andextended 
around llle. I did not k:now-h:oV\' unlimited the solitude was, and I wandered and looked. I wanted to fatholll the depths ofsolitude and I went so far until 
every last sound oflife died" (P.235). 

68 The Handwritten Drqft has: "Fifth Adventure: Death" (p. 557). 

69 January 2, 1914á 


274 I LIBER SECUNDUS 29/33 

He answered: "Stranger, you may well stand by me, if it is not 

too cold for you. As you can see, I am cold and my heart has 

never beaten." 

"I know, you are ice and the end; you are the cold silence ofthe 
stones; and you are the highest snow on the mountains and the 
most extreme frost ofouter space. I must feel this and that's why 
I stand near you." 

"What leads you here to me, you living matter? The living are 
never guests here. Well, they all flow past here sadly in dense 
crowds, all those above in the land of the clear day who have taken 
their departure, 1 never to return again. But the living never come 
here. What do you seek here?" 

"My strange and unexpected path led me here as I happily 
followed the way of the living stream. And thus I found you. I 
gather this is your place, your rightful place?" 

"Yes, here it leads into the undifferentiable, where none is 
equal or unequal, but all are one with one another. Do you see 
what approaches there?" 

"I see something like a dark ~all of clouds, swimming toward 
us on the tide." 

"Look more closely; what do you recognize?" 

"I see densely pressed multitudes of men, old men, women, 
and children. Between them I see horses, oxen and smaller 
animals, a cloud of insects swarms around the multitude, a 
forest swims near, innumerable faded flowers, an utterly dead 
summer. They are already near; how stiff and cool they all 
look, their feet do not move, no noise sounds from their closed 
ranks. They are clasping themselves rigidly with their hands 
and arms; they are gazing beyond and pay us no heed-they are 
all flowing past in an enormous stream. Dark one, this vision 
is awful." 

"You wanted to stay by me, so get hold ofyourself Look!" 

I see: "The first rows have reached the point where the surf 
and the stream flow together violently. And it looks as if a wave 
of air were confronting the stream of the dead together with the 
surging sea, whirling them up high, scattering them in black scraps, 
and dissolving them in murky clouds of mist. Wave after wave 
approaches, and ever new droves dissolve into black air. Dark one, 
tell me, is this the end?" 

"Look!" 

The dark sea breaks heavily-a reddish glow spreads out in 
it-it is like blood -a sea ofblood foams at my feet-the depths 
of the sea glow-how strange I feel-am I suspended by my feet? 
Is it the sea or is it the sky? Blood and fire mix themselves together 
in a ball-red light erupts from its smoky shroud-a new sun 
escapes from the bloody sea, and rolls gleamingly toward the 
uttermost depths-it disappears under my feet.7¡ 

I look around me, I am all alone. Night has fallen. What did 
Ammonius say? Night is the time ofsilence. 

[2] [HI 30] I looked around me and I saw that the solitude 
expanded into the immeasurable, and pierced me with horrible 
coldness. The sun still glowed in me, but I could feel myself 
stepping into the great shadow. I follow the stream that makes its 
70 Cf the vision in Liber Primus, ch. 5, "Descent into Hell in the Future," p. 24I. 

way into the depths, slowly and unperturbed, into the depths of 
what is to come. 

And thus I went out in that night (it was the second night of 
the year 1914), and anxious expectation :filled me. I went out to 
embrace the future. The path was wide and what was to come was 
awful. It was the enormous dying, a sea ofblood. From it the new 
sun arose, awful and a reversal of that which we call day. We have 
seized the darkness and its sun will shine above us, bloody and 
burning like a great downfall. 

When I comprehended my darkness, a truly magnificent night 
came over me and my dream plunged me into the depths of the 
millennia, and from it my phoenix ascended. 

But what happened to my day? Torches were kindled, bloody 
anger and disputes erupted. As darkness seized the world, the 
terrible war arose and the darkness destroyed the light of the 
world, since it was incomprehensible to the darkness and good 
for nothing anymore. And so we had to taste Hell. 

I saw which vices the virtues of this time changed into, how 
your mildness became hard, your goodness became brutality; your 
love became hate, and your understanding became madness. 
Why did you want to comprehend the darkness! But you had to 
or else it would have seized you. Happy the man who anticipates 
this grasp. 

Did you ever think of the evil in you? Oh, you spoke of it, you 
mentioned it, and you confessed it smilingly; as a generally human 
vice, or a recurring misunderstanding. But did you know 1 what 
evil is, and that it stands precisely right behind your virtues, that 
it is also your virtues themselves, as their inevitable substance?7! 
You locked Satan in the abyss for a millennium, and when the 
millennium had passed, you laughed at him, since he had become 
a children's fairy tale.72 But if the dreadful great one raises his 
head, the world winces. The most extreme coldness draws near. 

With horror you see that you are defenseless, and that the 
army of your vices falls powerless to its knees. With the power 
of daimons, you seize the evil, and your virtues cross over to him. 
You are completely alone in this struggle, since your Gods have 
become deaf You do not know which devils are greater, your 
vices, or your virtues. But ofone thing you are certain, that virtues 
and vices are brothers. 

73We need the coldness of death to see clearly. Life wants to 
live and to die, to begin and to end.74 You are not forced to live 
eternally; but you can also die, since there is a will in you for both. 
Life and death must strike a balance in your existence.75 Today's 
men need a large slice of death, since too much incorrectness 
lives in them, and too much correctness died in them. What 
stays in balance is correct, what disturbs balance is incorrect. But if 
balance has been attained, then that which preserves it is incorrect 
and that which disturbs it is correct. Balance is at once life and 
death. For the completion of life a balance with death is fitting. 
If I accept death, then my tree greens, since dying increases life. 
If I plunge into the death encompassing the world, then my buds 
break open. How much our life needs death! 

71 In 1940 Jung wrote: "Evil is relative, partly avoidable, partly fate; the same goes for virtue and one often does not know which is worst" ('~ttempt at a psychological 

interpretation of the dogma of the trinity;" CW II, ¤291). 
72 In the Corrected Draft, this sentence is replaced with: "Evil is one-half of the world, one of the two pans of the scale" (p. 242). 
73 The Draft continues: "In this bloody battle death steps up to you, just like today where mass killing and dying :fill the world. The coldness ofdeath penetrates you. 

When I froze to death in my solitude, I saw dearly and saw what was to come, as dearly as I could see the stars and the distant mountains on a frosty night" (p. 260). 
74 In Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (1912), Jung had argued that the libido was not only a Schopenhauerian life urge, but contained the contrary striving toward 
death within itself (CW B, ¤696). 

75 The Draft continues: "To live what is right and to let what is false die, that is the art oflife" (p. 261). In 1934 Jung wrote: "Life is an energetic process like any other. 
But every energetic process is in principle irreversible and therefore unequivocally directed toward a goal, and the goal is the state ofrest ... From the middle oflife, only he 
who is willing to die with life remains living. Since what takes place in the secret hour oflife's midday is the reversal ofthe parabola, the birth ofdeath . .. Not wanting to live 
is identical with not wanting to die. Becoming and passing away is the same curve" ("Soul and death," CW 8, ¤800). See my" 'The boundless expanse': Jung's reflections on 
life and death," QE.adrant:}ournal ofthe c. G.}ung Foundationfor Analytical psychology 38 (2008), pp. 9-32. 


THE REMAINS OF EARLIER TEMPLES I 275 

Joy at the smallest things comes to you only when you have and a tall gangly thin man with a childish gait and discolored red 
accepted death. But ifyou look out greedily for all that you could clothes. As they draw near, I recognize the tall one as the red rider. 
still live, then nothing is great enough for your pleasure, and the How he has changed! He has grown old, his red hair has become 
smallest things that continue to surround you are no longer a joy. gray, his fiery red clothes are worn out, shabby, poor. And the other? 
Therefore I behold death, since it teaches me how to live. He has a paunch and appears not to have fallen on bad times. But 

Ifyou accept death, it is altogether like a frosty night and an his face seems familiar: by all the Gods, it's Ammonius! 
anxious misgiving, but a frosty night in a vineyard full of sweet What changes! And where are these utterly different people 
grapes.76 You will soon take pleasure in your wealth. Death ripens. coming from? I approach them and bid them good day. Both 
One needs death to be able to harvest the fruit. Without death, look at me frightened and make the sign of the cross. Their 
life would be meaningless, since the long-lasting rises again and horror prompts me to look down at myself I am fully covered 
denies its own meaning. To be, and to enjoy your being, you need in green leaves, which spring from my body. I greet them a second 
death, and limitation enables you to fulfill your being. time, laughing. . 

[HI 31] When I see the lamentation and nonsense of the Ammonius exclaims horrified: ''Apage, Satanas!"83 
earth and consequently enter death with a covered head, then The Red One: "Damned pagan riffraff!" 
everything I see will indeed turn to ice. But in the shadowworld I: "But my dear friends, what's wrong with you? I'm the 
the other rises, the red sun.77 It rises secretly and unexpectedly, Hyperborean stranger, who visited you, Oh Ammonius, in the 
and my world revolves like a satanic apparition. I suspect blood desert.84 And I'm the watchman whom you, Red One, once visited." 
and murder. Blood and murder alone are still exalted, and have Ammonius: "I recognize you, you supreme devil. My downfall 
their own peculiar beauty; one can assume the beauty ofbloody began with you." 
acts of violence. The Red One looks at him reproachfully and gives him a 

But it is the unacceptable, the awfully repulsive, that which poke in the ribs. The monk sheepishly stops. The Red One turns 
I have forever rejected that rises in me. For if the wretchedhaughtily 
toward me. 
ness and poverty of this life ends, another life begins in what is R: ''Already at that time I couldn't help thinlcing that you 
opposed to me. This is opposed to such an extent that I cannot lacked a noble disposition, notwithstanding your hypocritical 
conceive it. For it is opposed not according to the laws of reason, seriousness. Your damned Christian play-act-" 
but thoroughly and according to its own nature. Yes, it is not only At this moment Ammonius pokes him in the ribs and the 
opposed, but repulsive, invisibly and cruelly repulsive, something Red One falls into an embarrassed silence. And thus both stand 
that takes my breath away, that drains the power from my muscles, before me, sheepish and ridiculous, and yet pitiable. 
that confuses my senses, stings me poisonously from behind in I: "Wherefrom, man of God? What outrageous fate has led 
the heel, and always strikes just where I did not suspect I possessed you here, let alone in the company of the Red One?" 
a vulnerable spot.78 A: "I would prefer not to tell you. But it does not appear to be 

It does not confront me like a strong enemy, manly and a dispensation ofGod that one can escape. So know then that you, 
dangerously, but I perish on a dung heap, while peaceful chickens evil spirit, have done me a terrible deed. You seduced me with 1 
cackle around me, amazedly and mindlessly laying their eggs. A your accursed curiosity, desirously stretching my hand after the 
dog passes, lifts his leg over me, then trots off calmly. I curse the divine mysteries, since you made me conscious at that time that 
hour ofmy birth seven times, and if I do not choose to kill myself I really knew nothing about them. Your remark that I probably 
on the spot, I prepare to experience the hour of my second birth. needed the closeness of men to arrive at the higher mysteries 
The ancients said: Interfaeces et urinas nascimur.79 For three nights I stunned me like infernal poison. Soon thereafter I called the 
was assaulted by the horrors ofbirth. On the third night, junglelike brothers of the valley together and announced to them that a 
laughter pealed forth, for which nothing is too simple. Then life messenger ofGod had appeared to me-so terribly had you blinded 

31 /32 began to stir again. 1 me-and commanded me to form a monastery with the brothers. 
"When Brother Philetus raised an objection, I refuted him with 
reference to the passage in the holy scriptures where it is said that

The Retnains 

it is not good for man to be alone.85 So we founded the monastery, 
near the Nile, from where we could see the passing ships. 

of Earlier T emples'o 

"We cultivated fat fields, and there was so much to do that the 
Cap. vii. holy scriptures fell into oblivion. We became voluptuous, and one 

day I was filled with such terrible longing to see Alexandria again. 
[HI 32]81 82Yet another new adventure occurred: wide meadows I talked myself into believing that I wanted to visit the bishop 
spread out before me-a carpet offlowers-soft hills-a fresh green there. But first I was intoxicated so much by life on the ship, and 
wood in the distance. I come across two strange journeymenthen 
by the milling crowds on the streets of Alexandria, that I 
probably two completely accidental companions: an old monk became completely lost. 

76 See above, note 20, p. 23I. 
77 A reference to the vision above. 
78 In Traniformations and Symbols oJthe Libido (1912), Jung commented on the motifof the wounded heel (CW B, ¤461). 
79 "We are born between faeces and urine," a saying widely attributed to St. Augustine, among others. 
80 The Handwritten Drtift has instead: "Sixth Adventure" (p. 586). The Corrected Draft has instead: "6. Degenerate Ideals" (p. 247). 
81 The mosaic form resembles the mosaics at Ravenna, which Jung visited in 1913 and 1914, and which made a lasting impression on him. 
82 January 5, 1914 . 


. 83 "Be gone, Satan" -a common expression in the Middle Ages. 
84 The Hyperboreans were a race in Greek mythology who lived in a land of sunshine beyond the north wind, worshiping Apollo. Nietzsche referred on several occasions 
to the free spirits as Hyperboreans, The Antichrist, ¤1 (TwilightoJthe Idols/The Antichrist, tr. R. Hollingdale [London:Penguin, 1990], p. 127). 

85 A reference to Genesis 2:18: ''And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him." There is one reference to a 
Philetus in the Bible, 2 Timothy 2:16-18: "But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. And their word will eat as doth a canker: 
ofwhom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith ofsome." 


276 I LIBER SECUNDUS 33/37 

"As in a dream I climbed onto a large ship bound for Italy. I 
felt an insatiable greed to see the world. I drank wine and saw that 
women were beautiful. I wallowed in pleasure and wholly turned 
into an animal. When I climbed ashore in Naples, the Red One 
stood there, and I knew that I had fallen into the hands ofevil." 

R: "Be silent, old fool, if I had not been present, you would 
have become an outright pig. When you saw me, you finally 
pulled yourself together, cursed the drinking and the women, and 
returned to the monastery. 
"Now hear my story; damned hobgoblin: I too fell into your 
snare, and your pagan arts also enticed me. After the conversation 
at that time, where you caught me in the fox trap with your 
remark about dancing, I became serious, so serious that I went 
into the monastery; prayed, fasted, and converted myself 

"In my blindness I wanted to reform the Church liturgy; and 
with the bishop's approval I introduced dancing. 

"I became Abbot and, as such, alone had the sole right to dance 
before the altar, like David before the ark of the covenarit.86 But 
little by little, the brothers also began to dance; indeed, even the 
congregation of the faithful and finally the whole city danced. 

"It was terrible. I fled into solitude and danced all day until I 
dropped, but in the morning the hellish dance began again. 

"I sought to escape from myself, and strayed and wandered 
around at night. In the daytime I kept myself secluded, and 
danced alone in the forests and deserted mountains. And thus 
gradually I came to Italy. Down there in the south, I no longer felt 
as I had felt in the north; I could mingle with the crowds. Only 
in Naples did I somewhat find my way again, and there I also 
found this ragged man of God. His appearance gave me strength. 
Through him I could regain my health. You've heard how he took 
heart from me, too, and found his way again." 

A: "I must confess I did not fare so badly with the Red One; he's 
a toned-down type of devil." 
R: "I must add that the monk is hardly the fanatical type, 
although I've developed a deep aversion against the whole 
Christian religion since my experience in the monastery." 
1: "Dear friends, it does my heart good to see you enjoying 
yourselves together." 
Both: "We are not pleased, mocker and adversary, clear off, 
you robber, pagan!" 

I: "But why are you traveling together, if you're not enjoying 
each other's company and friendshipr" 
A: "What can be doner Even the devil is necessary; since 
otherwise one has nothing that commands a sense of respect 
with people." 
R: "Well, I need to come to an arrangemerttwith the clergy; or 
else I will lose my clientele." 
I: "Therefore the necessities oflife have brought you together! 
So let's make peace and be friends." 
Both: "But we can never be friends." 


I: "Oh, I see, the system is at fault. You probably want to die 
out first( Now let me pass, you old ghosts!" 
[2] [HI 33] When I had seen death and all the terrible 
solemnity that is gathered around it, and had become ice and 
night myself, an angry life and impulse rose up in me. My thirst 
for the rushing water of the deepest knowledge87 began to 
clink with wine glasses; from afar I heard drunken laughter, 
33/34 laughing women and street noise. Dance music, / stamping and 

86 In Chronicles I:I5, David dances before the ark of the covenant. 
87 The Corrected Draft has "the wisdom" instead of"the deepest knowledge" (p. 25I). 


cheering poured forth from allover; and instead of the rosescented 
south wind, the reek of the human animal streamed over 
me. Luscious-lewd whores giggled and rustled along the walls, 
wine fumes and kitchen steam and the foolish cackling of the 
human crowd drew near in a cloud. Hot sticky tender hands 
reached out for me, and I was swaddled in the covers of a sickbed. 
I was born into life from below, and I grew up as heroes do, 
in hours rather than years. And after I had grown up, I found 
myself in the middle land, and saw that it was spring. 

[HI 34] But I was no longer the man I had been, for a 
strange being grew through me. This was a laughing being of 
the forest, a leaf green daimon, a forest goblin and prankster, 
who lived alone in the forest and was itself a greening tree 
being, who loved nothing but greening and growing, who was 
neither disposed nor indisposed toward men, full of mood 
and chance, obeying an invisible law and greening and wilting 
with the trees, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor 
bad, merely living, primordially old and yet completely young, 
naked and yet naturally clothed, not man but nature, frightened, 
laughable, powerful, childish, weak, deceiving and deceived, utterly 
inconstant and superficial, and yet reaching deep down, down 
to the kernel of the world. 

I had absorbed the life of both of my friends; a green tree 
grew from the ruins of the temple. They had not withstood 
life, but, seduced by life, had become their own monkey business. 
They had got caught in the muck, and so they called the living a 
devil and traitor. Because both of them believed in themselves 
and in their own goodness, each in his own way, they ultimately 
became mired in the natural and conclusive burial ground of 
all outlived ideals. The most beautiful and the best, like the 
ugliest and the worst, end up someday in the most laughable 
place in the world, surrounded by fancy dress and led by fools, 
and go horror-struck to the pit offilth. 

After the cursing comes laughter, so that the soul is savedfrom the dead. 

Ideals are, according to their essence, desired and pondered; 
they exist to this extent, but only to this extent. Yet their effective 
being cannot be denied. He who believes he is really living his 
ideals, or believes he can live them, suffers from delusions of 
grandeur and behaves like a lunatic in that he stages himself as an 
ideal; but the hero has fallen. Ideals are mortal, so one should 
prepare oneself for their end: at the same time it probably costs you 
your neck. For do you not see that it was you who gave meaning, 
value, and effective force to your idealr If you have become a 
sacrifice to the ideal, then the ideal cracks open, plays carnival 
with you, and goes to Hell on Ash Wednesday. The ideal is also 
a tool that one can put aside anytime, a torch on dark paths. But 
whoever runs around with a torch by day is a fool. How much 
my ideals have come down, and how freshly my tree greens! 

88When I turned green, they stood there, the sad remains 
of earlier temples and rose gardens, and I recognized with a 
shudder their inner affinity. It seemed to me that they had 
established an indecent alliance. But I understood that this 
alliance had already existed for a long time. At a time when 
I still claimed that my sanctuaries were of crystal purity, and 
when I compared my friends to the perfume of the roses of 
Persia,89 both of them formed an alliance of mutual silence. 

88 The Draft and Corrected Draft hav;e: "I had become a victim ofmy sanctuaries and beauties, and so I died miserable and depressed [therefore death came to me]" (p. 254). 
89 In Persia, the crushed petals of rose were steam-distilled to make rose oil, from which perfumes were made. 


FIRST DAY I 277 

They seemed to scatter, but secretly they worked together. The 

solitary silence of the temple lured me far away from men to 

the supernatural mysteries in which I lost myself to the point 

of surfeit. And while I struggled with God, the devil prepared 

himself for my reception, and tore me just as far to his side. 

There, too, I found no boundaries other than surfeit and disgust. 

I did not live, but was driven; I was a slave to my ideals.9o 

And thus they stood there, the ruins, quarreling with one 
another and unable to reconcile themselves to their common 
misery Within myself I had become one as a natural being, but 
I was a hobgoblin91 who frightened the solitary wanderer, and 
who avoided the places ofmen. But I greened and bloomed from 
within myself I had still not become a man again who carried 
within himself the conflict between a longing for the world and 
a longing for the spirit. I did not live either of these longings, 
but I lived mysel£ and was a merrily greening tree in a remote 
spring forest. And thus I learned to live without the world and 
spirit; and I was amazed how well I could live like this. 

But what about men, what about mankind? There they stood, 
the two deserted bridges that should lead across to mankind: 
one leads from above to below, and men glide down on it, which 
pleases them. / The other leads from below to above and mankind 
groans upward on it. This causes them trouble. We drive our 
fellow men to trouble and joy If I myself do not live, but merely 
climb, it gives others undeserved pleasure. If I simply enjoy 
mysel£ it causes others undeserved trouble. If I merely live, I 
am far removed from men. They no longer see me, and when 
they see me, they are astonished and shocked. I mysel£ however, 
quite simply living, greening, blooming, fading, stand like a tree 
always in the same spot and let the suffering and the joy ofmen 
pass over me with equanimity And yet I am a man who cannot 
excuse himselffrom the discord of the human heart. 

But my ideals can also be my dogs, whose yapping and 
squabbling do not disturb me. But at least then I am a good and 
a bad dog to men. But I have not yet achieved what should be, 
namely that I live and yet am a man. Itseems to be nearly impossible 
to live as a man. As long as you are not conscious ofyour selfyou 
can live; but if you become conscious of your sel£ you fall from 
one grave into another. All your92 rebirths could ultimately make 
you93 sick. The Buddha therefore finally gave up on rebirth, for 
he had had enough of crawling through all human and animal 
forms.94 After all the rebirths you still remain the lion crawling 
on the earth, the XAMAI AEQN [Chameleon], a caricature, one 
prone to changing colors, a crawling shimmering lizard, but 
precisely not a lion, whose nature is related to the sun, who draws 
his power from within himsel£ who does not crawl around in 
the protective colors of the environment, and who does not 
defend himselfby going into hiding. I recognized the chameleon 
and no longer want to crawl on the earth and change colors and 

be reborn; instead I want to exist from my own force, like the 

sun which gives light and does not suck light. That belongs to the 

earth. I recall my solar nature and would like to rush to my rising. 

But ruins95 stand in my way They say: "With regard to men you 

should be this or that." My chameleonesque skin shudders. They 

obtrude upon me and want to color me. But that should no longer 

be. Neither good nor evil shall be my masters. I push them aside, 

the laughable survivors, and go on my way again, which leads 

me to the East. The quarreling powers that for so long stood 

between me and myself lie behind me. 

Henceforth I ~m completely alone. I can no longer say to you: 
"Listen!" or "you should," or "you could," but now I talk only with 
myself Now no one else can do anything more for me, nothing 
whatsoever. I no longer have a duty toward you, and you no longer 
have duties toward me, since I vanish and you vanish from 
me. I no longer hear requests and no longer make requests ofyou. 
I no longer fight and reconcile myself with you, but place silence 
between you and me. 

Your call dies away in the distance, and you cannot find my 
footprints. Together with the west wind, which comes from the 
plains of the ocean, I journey across the green countryside, I 
roam through the forests, and bend the young grass. I talk with 
trees and the forest wildlife, and the stones show me the way 
When I thirst and the source does not come to me, I go to the 
source. When I starve and the bread does not come to me, I 
seek my bread and take it where I find it. I provide no help and 
need no help. If at any time necessity confronts me, I do not 
look around to see whether there is a helper nearby, but I accept 
the necessity and bend and writhe and struggle. I laugh, I weep, 
I swear, but I do not look around me. 

On this way, no one walks behind me, and I cross no one's 
path. I am alone, but I fill my solitariness with my life. I am man 
enough, I am noise, conversation, comfort, and help enough unto 
myself And so I wander to the far East. Not that I know anything 
about what my distant goal might be. I see blue horizons 
before me: they suffice as a goal. I hurry toward the East and my 
rising-I will my rising. / [Image 36]96/ 

First Day 

Cap. viii.97 

[HI 37] But on the third night,98 a desolate mountain range 
blocks my way, though a narrow valley gorge allows me to enter. 
The way leads inevitably between two high rock faces. My feet 
are bare and injure themselves on the jagged rocks. Here the 
path becomes slippery One-half of the way is white, the other 
black. I step onto the black side and recoil horrified: it is hot 
iron. I step onto the white half: it is ice. But so it must be. I dart 

90 In 1926, Jung wrote: "The transition from morning to afternoon is a transvaluation ofearlier values. From this comes the necessity to appreciate the value ofthe opposite of 
our former ideals, to recognize the error in former truth and to feel how much antagonism and even hatred lay in what had formerly passed for love for us" (The Unconscious 
in Normal and Sick Psychic Life, CW 7, ¤II5). 

91 The Corrected Draft has: "green creature" (P.255). 

92 The Corrected Draft has: "my" (p' 257). 

93 The Corrected Draft has: "me" (p. 257). 

94 The Corrected Draft continues: "like a chameleon" (p. 258). A passage occurs here in the Draft, a paraphrase ofwhich follows: It is our chameleon nature that forces us 
through these transformations. So long as we are chame{eons, we need an annual journey in the bath ofrebirth. Therefore I looked at the outdating ofmy ideals with 
horror, since I loved my natural greenness and mistrusted my chameleon skin, which changed colors according to the environment. The chameleon does this cleverly. 
One calls this change a progress through rebirth. So you experience 777 rebirths. The Buddha did not need quite so long to see that even rebirths are vain (pp. 275-76). 
There was a belief that the soul had to go through 777 reincarnations (Ernest Woods, The New Theosophy [Wheaton, Ii: The Theosophical Press, 1929], p. 41). 

95 The Draft has instead: "my ideal survival" (p. 277). 

96 Image legend: "This image was printed on Christmas 1915." The depiction of Izdubar strongly resembles an illustration ofhim in Wilhelm Roscher's Auifuhrliches 
Lexikon der Griechischen und Romischen Mythologie, ofwhich Jung possessed a copy ([Leipzig: Teubner, 1884-1937], vol. 2, p. 775). Izdubar was an early name given the figure 
now known as Gilgamesh. This was based on a mistranscription. In 1906 Peter Jensen noted: "It has now been established that Gilgamesch is the chiefprotagonist of 
the epic, and not Gistchubar or Izdubar as assumed previously" (Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der weltliteratur [Strassburg: Karl Triibner, I906], p. 2). Jung had discussed the 
Gilgamesh epic in 19I2 in Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido, using the corrected form, and cited Jensen's work several times. 

97 The HandwrittenDrqft has instead: "Seventh Adventure. First Day" (p. 626). The CorrectedDrqft has instead: "7-The Great Encounter. First Day. The Hero from the East" (p.262). 

98 January 8, I9I4. 


278 I LIBER SECUNDUS 37/40 

across and onward, and finally the valley widens into a mighty 

rocky basin. A narrow path winds up along vertical rocks to the 

mountain ridge at the top. 

As I approach the top, a mighty booming resounds from the 
other side of the mountain like ore being pounded. The sound 
gradually swells, and echoes thunderously in the mountain. 
As I reach the pass, I see an enormous man approach from the 
other side. 

Two bull horns rise from his great head, and a rattling suit 
of armor covers his chest. His black beard is ruffled and decked 
with exquisite stones. The giant is carrying a sparkling double axe 
in his hand, like those used to strike bulls. Before I can recover 
from my amazed fright, the giant is standing before me. I look 
at his face: it is faint and pale and deeply wrinkled. His almondshaped 
eyes look at me astonished. Horror takes hold of me: this 
is Izdubar, the mighty, the bull-man. He stands and looks at me: 
his face speal<:s of consuming inner fear, and his hands and knees 
tremble. Izdubar, the powerful bull trembling? Is he frightened? 
I callout to him: 

"Oh, Izdubar, most powerful, spare my life and forgive me for 
lying like a worm in your path." 
Iz: "I do not want your life. Where do you come from?" 

I: "I come from the West." 
Iz: "You come from. the West? Do you know of the Western 
lands? Is this the right way to the Western lands?"99 

I: "I come from a Western land, whose coast washes against 
the great Western sea." 
Iz: "Does the sun sink in that sea? Or does it touch the solid 
land in its decline?" 

I: "The sun sinks far beyond the sea." 
Iz: "Beyond the sea? What lies there?" 
I: "There is nothing but empty space there. As you know, the 
earth is round and moreover it turns around the sun." 
Iz: "Damned one, where do you get such knowledge? So there 
is no immortal land where the sun goes down to be reborn? Are 
you spealcing the truth?" 

His eyes flicker with fury and .fear. He steps a thundering 
pace closer. I tremble. 

I: "Oh, Izdubar, most powerful one, forgive my presumptuousness, 
but I'm really speaking the truth. I come from a land 
where this is proven science and where people live who travel 
round the world with their ships. Our scholars know through 
measurement how far the sun is from each point of the surface 
of the earth. It is a celestial body that lies unspeakably far out in 
unending space." 
Iz: "Unending-didyou say? Is the space ofthe world unending, 
and we can never reach the sun?" 

I: "Most powerful one, insofar as you are mortal, you can never 
reach the sun." 

I see him overcome with suffocating fear. 

Iz: "I am mortal-and I shall never r<each the sun, and never 
reach immortality?" 

He smashes his axe with a powerful, clanging blow on the rock. 

Iz: "Be gone, miserable weapon. You are not much use. How 

should you be of use against infinity, against the eternal void, / 
and against the unreplenishible? There is no one left for you to 
conquer. Smash yoursel£ what's it worth!" 

(In the West the sun sinks into the lap of glowing clouds in 

bright crimson') 

"So go away; sun, thrice-damned God, and wrap yourself in 

your immortality!" 

(He snatches the smashed piece of his axe from the ground 

and hurls it toward the sun.) 

"Here you have your sacrifice, your last sacrifice!" 

He collapses and sobs like a child. I stand shaking and hardly 

dare stir. 

Iz: "Miserable worm, where did you suckle on this poison?" 

I: "Oh Izdubar, most powerful one, what you call poison is 
science. In our country we are nurtured on it from youth, and 
that may be one reason why we haven't properly flourished and 
remain so dwarfish. When I see you, however, it seems to me as 
ifwe are all somewhat poisoned."lOo 
Iz: "No stronger being has ever cut me down, no monster has 
ever resisted my strength. But your poison, worm, which you have 
placed in my way has lamed me to the marrow. Your magical 
poison is stronger than the army of Tiamat."lOI (He lies as if 
paralyzed, stretched out on the ground.) "You Gods, help, here 
lies your son, cut down by the invisible serpent's bite in his heel. 

oh, if only I had crushed you when I saw you, and never heard 
your words." 
I: "Oh Izdubar, great and pitiable one, had I known that my 
knowledge could cut you down, I would have held my tongue. 
But I wanted to speak the truth." 
Iz: "You call poison truth? Is poison truth? Or is truth poison? 
Do not our astrologers and priests also speal<: the truth? And yet 
theirs does not act like poison." 

I: "Oh Izdubar, night is falling, and it will get cold up here. 
Shall I not fetch you help from men?" 
Iz: "Let it be, and answer me instead." 

I: "But we cannot philosophize here, ofall places. Your wretched 
condition demands help." 
Iz<: "I say to you, let it be. If I should perish this night, so be it. 
Just give me an answer." 

I: "I'm afraid, my words are weak, if they are to heal." 
Iz: "They cannot bring about something more grave. 
The disaster has already happened. So tell me what you 
know. Perhaps you even have a magic word that counteracts 
the poison." 

I: "My words, Oh most powerful one, are poor and have no 
magical power." 
Iz: "No matter, speak!" 

I: "I don't doubt that your priests speak the truth. It is certainly 
a truth, only it runs contrary to our truth." 
Iz: "Are there then two sorts of truth?" 

I: "It seems to me to be so. Our truth is that which comes to < 
us from the knowledge ofouter things. The truth ofyour priests 
is that which comes to you from inner things." 
Iz (half sitting up): "That was a salutary word." 

I: "I'm fortunate that my weak words have relieved you. Oh, 
ifonly I knew many more words that could help you. It has now 
grown cold and dark. I'll make a fire to warm us." 
Iz: "Do that, as it might help." (I gathered wood and lit a big 
fire') "The holy fire warms me. Now tell me, how did you make a 
fire so swiftly and mysteriously?" 

I: '~All I need are matches. Look they are small pieces ofwood 
99 In Egyptian mythology, the Western lands (the Western bank of the Nile) were the land ofthe dead. 

IOO 
In The Gay Science, Nietzsche argued that thinking originated through the cultivation and uniting ofseveral impulses which had the effect of poisons: the impulse to 
doubt, to negate, to wait, to collect, and to dissolve ("On the doctrine of poisons," tr. Walter Kaufmann [New York: Vintage, 1974] book 3, section II3). 

IOI In Babylonian mythology; Tiamat, the mother ofthe Gods, waged war with an army ofdemons. 


FIRST DAY I 279 

with a special substance at the tip. Rubbing them against the box 
produces fire." 
Iz: "~that is astonishing, where did you learn this art?" 

I: "Everyone has matches where I come from. But this is the 
least ofit. We can also fly with the help ofuseful machines." / 
Iz: "You can fly like birds? Ifyour words did not contain such 
powerful magic, I would say to you, you were lying." 

I: "I'm certainly not lying. Look, I also have a timepiece, for 
example, which shows the exact time of day." 
Iz: "This is wonderful. It is clear that you come from a strange 
and marvelous land. You certainly come from the blessed Western 
lands. Are you immortal?" 

I: "I-immortal? There is nothing more mortal than we are." 
Iz: "What? You are not even immortal and yet you understand 
such arts?" 

I: "Unfortunately our science has still not yet succeeded in 
finding a method against death." 
Iz: "Who then taught you such arts?" 

I: "In the course ofthe centuries men have made many discoveries, 
through precise observation and the science ofouter things." 
Iz: "But this science is the awful magic that has lamed me. How 
can it be that you are still alive even though you drink from this 
poison every day?" 

I: "We've grown accustomed to this over time, because men 
get used to everything. But we're still somewhat lamed. On the 
other hand, this science also has great advantages, as you've seen. 
What we've lost in terms offorce, we've rediscovered many times 
through mastering the force ofnature." 
Iz: "Isn't it pathetic to be so wounded? For my part, I draw my 
own force from the force ofnature. I leave the secret force to the 
cowardly conjurers and womanly magicians. If I crush another's 
skull to pulp, that will stop his awful magic." 

I: "But don't you realize how the touch of our magic has 
worked upon you? Terribly; I think." 
Iz: "Unfortunately; you are right." 

I: "Now you perhaps see that we had no choice. We had to 
swallow the poison ofscience. Otherwise we would have met the 
same fate as you have: we'd be completely lamed, ifwe encountered 
it unsuspecting and unprepared. This poison is so insurmountably 
strong that everyone, even the strongest, and even the eternal 
Gods, perish because of it. If our life is dear to us, we prefer 'to 
sacrifice a piece ofour life force rather than abandon ourselves to 
certain death." 
Iz: "I no longer think that you come from the blessed Western 
lands. Your country must be desolate, full of paralysis and 
renunciation. I yearn for the East, where the pure source ofour 
life-giving wisdom flows." 

We sit silently at the flickering fire. The night is cold. Izdubar 
groans and looks up at the starry sky above. 

Iz: "Most terrible day of my life-unending-so long-so 
long-wretched magical art-our priests know nothing, or else 
they could have protected me from it-even the Gods die, he says. 
Have you no Gods anymore?" 

I: "No, words are all we have." 
Iz: "But are these words powerful?" 
I: "So they claim, but one notices nothing ofthis." 
Iz: "We do not see the Gods either and yet we believe that they 
exist. We recognize their workings in natural events." 

I: "Science has taken from us the capacity ofbelief"102 
Iz: "What, you have lost that, too? How then do you live?" 

I: "We live thus, with one foot in the cold and one foot in the 
hot, and for the rest, come what may!" 
Iz: "You express yourself darkly." 


I: "So it also is with us, it is dark" 
Iz: "Can you bear it?" 
I: "Not particularly well. I personally don't find myself at ease 
with it. For that reason, I've set out to the East, to the land ofthe 
rising sun, to seek the light that we lack Where then does the 
sun rise?" 
Iz: "The earth .is, as you say; completely round. Thus the sun 
rises nowhere." 

I: "I mean, do you have the light that we lack?" / 
Iz: "Look at me: I áflourish in the light of the Western world. 
From this you can measure how fruitful this light is. But if you 
come from such a dark land, then beware ofsuch an overpowering 
light. You could go blind just as we all are somewhat blind." 

I: "Ifyour light is as fantastic as you are, then I will be careful." 
Iz: "You do well by this." 
I: "I long for your truth." 
Iz: '~s I long for the Western lands. I warn you." 
Silence descends. It is late at night. We fall asleep next to the fire. 
[2] [HI 40] I wandered toward the South and found the 
unbearable heat of solitude with myself I wandered toward the 
North and found the cold death from which all the world dies. I 
withdrew to my Western land, where the men are rich in knowing 
and doing, and I began to suffer from the sun's empty darkness. 
And I threw everything from me and wandered toward the East, 
where the light rises daily. I went to the East like a child. I did not 
ask, I simply waited. 
Cheerful flowery meadows and lovely spring forests hemmed 
my path. But in the third night, the heaviness came. It stood 
before me like a range ofcliffs full ofsorrowful desolation, and 
everything tried to deter me from following my life's path. But 
I found the entrance and the narrow way. The torment was great, 
since it was not for nothing that I had pushed the two dissipated 
and dissolute ones away from me. I unsuspectingly absorb what I 
reject. What I accept enters that part of my soul which I do not 
know; I accept what I do to mysel£but I reject what is done to me. 

So the path of my life led me beyond the rejected opposites, 
united in smooth and-alas!-extremely painful sides ofthe way 
which lay before me. I stepped on them but they burned and 
froze my soles. And thus I reached the other side. But the 
poison ofthe serpent, whose head you crush, enters you through 
the wound in your heel; and thus the serpent becomes more 
dangerous than it was before. Since whatever I reject is nevertheless 
in my nature. I thought it was without, and so I believed 
that I could destroy it. But it resides in me and has only assumed 
a passing outer form and stepped toward me. I destroyed its 
form and believed that I was a conqueror. But I have not yet 
overcome myself 

The outer opposition is an image of my inner opposition. 
Once I realize this, I remain silent and think of the chasm 
of antagonism in my soul. Outer oppositions are easy to overcome. 
They indeed exist, but nevertheless you can be united 
with yourself They will indeed burn and freeze your soles, 
but only your soles. It hurts, but you continue and look toward 
distant goals. 

102 The issue ofthe relation ofscience to belief was critical in Jung's psychology ofreligion, See "Psychology and religion" (1938), CW II. 


280 I LIBER SECUNDUS 40/46 

As I rose to the highest point and my hope wanted to look 
out toward the East, a miracle happened: as I moved toward the 
East, one from the East hurried toward me and strove toward the 
sinking light. I wanted light, he wanted night. I wanted to rise, he 
wanted to sink. I was dwarfish like a child, while he was enormous 
like an elementally powerful hero. Knowledge lamed me, while he 
was blinded by the fullness ofthe light. And so we hurried toward 
each other; he, from the light; I, from the darkness; he, strong; I, 
weak; he, God; I, serpent; he, ancient; I, utterly new; he, unknowing; 
I, knowing; he, fantastic; I, sober; he, brave, powerful; I, cowardly, 
cunning. But we were both astonished to see one another on the 
border between morning and evening. 

I was a child and grew like a greening tree and let the wind 

40/41 
and distant cries and commotion of opposites / blow calmly 
through my branches, I was a boy and mocked fallen heroes, I 
was a youth pushing aside their clutching grips left and right, 
and so I did not anticipate the Powerful, Blind, and Immortal 
One, who wandered longingly after the sinking sun, who wanted 
to cleave the ocean down to its bottom so he could descend into 
the source oflife. That which hurries toward the rising is small, 
that which approaches the descent is great. Hence I was small, 
since I simply came from the depths of my descent. I had been 
where he yearned to be. He who descends is great, and it would 
be easy for him to smash me. A God who looks like the sun does not 
hunt worms. But the worm aims at the heel of the Powerful One 
and will prepare him for the descent that he needs. His power is 
great and blind. He is marvelous to look at and frightening. But 
the serpent finds its spot. A little poison and the great one falls. 
The words of the one who rises have no sound and taste bitter. 
It is not a sweet poison, but one that is fatal for all Gods. 

Alas, he is my dearest, most beautiful friend, he who rushes across, 
pursuing the sun and wanting to marry himself with the immeasurable 
mother as the sun does. How closely akin, indeed how completely one are the 
serpent and the God! The word which was our deliverer has become a deadly 
weapon, aserpent that secretly stabs. 

No longer do outer opposites stand in my way, but my own 
opposite comes toward me, and rises up hugely before me, and 
we block each other's way. The word of the serpent certainly 
defeats the danger, but my way remains barred, since I then had 
to fall from paralysis into blindness, just as the Powerful One fell 
into paralysis to escape his blindness. I cannot reach the blinding 
power of the sun, just as he, the Powerful One, cannot reach the 
ever-fruitful womb ofdarkness. I seem to be'denied power, while 
he is denied rebirth, but I escape the blindness that comes with 
power and he escapes the nothingness that comes with death. My 
hope for the fullness of the light shatters, just as his longing for 
boundless conquered life shatters. I had felled the strongest, and 
the God climbs down to mortality. 

[0B 41] The Mighty OnefoIl, he lies on the ground. I03 
Power must subsidefor the sake oflifeá 
The circumforence ofouter life should be made smaller. 
Much more secrecy, solitaryfires, fire, caverns, dark wideforests, sparsely 


peopled settlements, quietlyffowing streams, silent winter and summer nights, 
small ships and carriages, and secure in dwellings the rare and precious. 

I03 The Draft continues: "This is what I saw in the dream" (p. 29S). 
I04 See Liber Secundus, ch. 4, p. 268£ 

From afar wanderers walk along solitary roads, looking here and there. 
Hurrying becomes impossible, patience grows. / 41/42 
[0B 42] The noise ofthe days ofthe worldfalls silent, and the warming 
fire blazes inside. 
Sitting at thefire, the shades ofthose gone before wail softly and give news 
ofthe past. 
Come to the solitaryfire, you blind and lame ones and hear ofboth kinds 
oftruth: the blind will be lamed and the lamed will be blinded, yet the shared 
fire warms both in the lengthening night. 
An old secretfire burns between us, giving sparse light and ample warmth. 
The primordial fire that conquers every necessity shall burn again, since 
the night ofthe world is wide and cold, and the need is great. 
The well~protectedfire brings together thosefrom far away and those who 
are cold, those who do not see one another and cannot reach one another, and 
it conquers suffiring and shatters need. 
The words uttered at the fire are ambiguous and deep and show life the 
right way. 
The blind shall be lamed, so that he will not run into the abyss, and the 
lamed shall be blind, so that he will not look at things beyond his reach with 
longing and contempt. 
Both may be aware oftheir deep helplessness so that they will respect the 
holy fire again, as well as the shades sitting at the hearth, and the words that 
encircle theffames. 
The ancients called the saving word the Logos, an expression 
of divine reason. I04 So much unreason / was in man that he 42 /43 
needed reason to be saved. If one waits long enough, one sees 
how the Gods all change into serpents and underworld dragons 
in the end. This is also the fate ofthe Logos: in the end it poisons 
us all. In time, we were all poisoned, but unknowingly we kept 
the One, the Powerful One, the eternal wanderer in us away 
from the poison. We spread poison and paralysis around us in 
that we want to educate all the world around us into reason. 
Some have their reason in thinking, others in feeling. Both are 
servants ofLogos, and in secret become worshipers ofthe serpent. I05 
You can subjugate yourself shackle yourself in irons, whip 
yourself bloody every day: you have crushed yourself but not 
overcome yourself Precisely through this you have helped the 
Powerful One, strengthened your paralysis, and promoted his 
blindness. He would like to see it in others, and inflict it on them, 
and would like to force the Logos onyou and others, longingly and 
tyrannically with blind obstinacy and vacant stubborness. Give 
him a taste of Logos. He is afraid, and he already trembles from 
afar since he suspects that he has become outdated, and that a tiny 
droplet ofthe poison ofLogos will paralyze him. But because he is 
your beautiful, much loved brother, you will act slavishly toward 
him and you would like to spare him as you have spared none of 
your fellow men. You spared no merry and no powerful means to 
strike your fellow men with the poisoned arrow. Paralyzed game is 
an unworthy prey. The powerful huntsman, who wrestles the bull 
to the ground and tears the lion to pieces and strikes the army of 
Tiamat, is your bow's worthy target.I06 
Ifyou live as he whom you are, He will come running against 
you impetuously, and you can hardly miss him. He will lay violent 
hands on you and force you into slavery ifyou do not remember 
your terrible weapon, which you have always used in his service 

IOS In psychological Types (1921), Jung considered thinking and feeling to be the rational functions (CW 6, ¤731). 

106 The Draft continues: '~s David, you may slay him, Goliath, with a cunning and impudent slingshot" (p. 299). In Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (CW B, ¤383f), 
Jung discussed the Babylonian creation myth in which Marduk, the God ofspring, battles with Tiamat and her army. Marduk slayed Tiamat, and from this he created 
the world. Thus "the mighty huntsman" corresponds to Marduk. 


SECOND DAY I 281 

against yourself You will be cunning, terrible, and cold if you so that he can at least reach the ear of the Godhead. Only your 
make the beautiful and much loved fall. But you should not kill fearful cry can stop the God. And then you see that the God also 
him, even ifhe suffers and writhes in unbearable agony. Bind the trembles, since he stands confronting his face, his observing gaze 
holy Sebastian to a tree and slowly and rationally shoot arrow in you, and he feels unknown power. The God is afraid of man. 
after arrow into his twitching flesh.107 When you do so, remind 
yourself that each arrow that strikes him spares one of your Ifmy God is lamed, I must stand by him, since I cannot abandon 
dwarfish and lame brothers. So you may shoot many arrows. But the much-loved. I sense that he is my lot, my brother, who abided 
there is a misunderstanding that occurs all too frequently and is and grew in the light while I was in the darkness and fed myself 
almost ineradicable: Men always want to destroy the beautiful and with poison. It is good to know such things: ifwe are surrounded 
much loved outside of themselves, but never within themselves. by night, our brother stands in the fullness of the light, doing his 

great deeds, tearing up the lion and killing the dragon. And he 

He, the beautiful and most loved one, came to me from the East, draws his bow against ever more distant goals, until he becomes 
from just that place which I was seeking to reach. Admiringly I aware of the sun wandering high up in the sky and wants to 
saw his power and magnificence, and I recognized that he was catch it. But when he has discovered his valuable prey; then your 
striving for precisely what I had abandoned, namely my dark longing for the light also awakens. You discard the fetters and 
human milling crowd ofabjection. I recognized the blindness and take yourself to the place of the rising light. And thus you rush 
unknowingness of his striving which worked against my desire, toward each other. He believed he could simply capture the sun 
and I opened his eyes and lamed his powerful limbs with a poisoned and encountered the worm of the shadows. You thought that in 
stab. And he lay crying like a child, as that which he was, a child, a the East you could drink from the source of the light, and catch 
primordial grown child that required human Logos. So he lay before the horned giant, before whom you fall to your knees. His essence 
me, helpless, my blind God, who had become half-seeing and is blind excessive longing and tempestuous force. My essence is 
paralyzed. And compassion seized me, since it was plain to me seeing limitation and the incapacity ofcleverness. He possesses in 
that I should not let him die, he who approached me from the abundance what I lack. Consequently I will also not let him go, 
rising, from that place where he could be well, but which I could the Bull God, who once wounded Jacob's hip and whom I have 
never reach. He whom I sought I now possessed. The East could now lamed.109 I want to make his force my own. 
give me nothing other than him, the sick and fallen one. It is therefore prudent to keep alive the severely afflicted so 

that his force continues to support me. We miss nothing more 

You need to undertake only half of the way; he will undertake than divine force. We say; "Yes, indeed, this is how it should or 
the other half If you go beyond him, blindness will befall you. could be. This or that should be achieved." We speak thus and 
If he goes beyond you, paralysis will befall him. Therefore, and stand thus, and look about us embarrassed, to see whether someinsofar 
as it is the manner ofthe Gods to go beyond mortals, they how something will occur. And should something happen, we 
become paralyzed, and become as helpless as children. Divinity look on and say: "Yes, indeed, we understand, it is this or that, 
and humanity should remain preserved, if man should remain or it is similar to this or that." And thus we speak and stand 
before the God, and the God remain before man. The high-blazing and look around to see whether somewhere something might 
flame is the middle way; whose luminous course runs between the happen. Something always happens, but we do not happen, 
human and the divine. since our God is sick. We have seen him dead with the venomous 

The divine primordial power is blind, since its face has gaze of the Basilisk on his face, and we have understood that he 
become human. The human is the face of-the Godhead. If the is dead. We must think of his healing. And yet again I feel it 
God comes near you, then plead for your life to be spared, since quite clearly that my life would have broken in halfhad I failed to 
the God is loving horror. The ancients said: it is terrible to fall heal my God. Hence I abided with him in the long cold night. 
into the hands of the living God.IOB They spoke thus because they [Image 44] / [Image 45]110 / 
knew, since they were still close to the ancient forest, and they 
turned green like the trees in a childlike manner and ascended far 

43/44 away toward the East. / Second Day 
Consequently they fell into the hands ofthe living God. They Cap. ix. 
learned to kneel and to lie with their faces down, to beg for pity; 
and they learned to live in servile fear and to be grateful. But he [HI 46] No dream gave me the saving word.1II Izdubar lay silent 
who saw him, the terrible beautiful one with his black velvet eyes and stiff all night, until daybreak.1I2 I paced the mountain ridge, 
and the long eyelashes, the eyes that do not see but merely gaze pondering, and looked back to my Western lands, where there 
lovingly and fearfully; he has learned to cry out and whimper, is so much knowledge and so much possibility of help. I love 

107 St. Sebastian was a Christian martyr persecuted by the Romans who lived in the third century. He was often depicted tied to a tree and shot with arrows. The earliest 

such representation is in the Basilica SanfApollinaire Nuova in Ravenna. 

108 This refers to Hebrews 10:31: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." 

109 This refers to Jacob's wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32:24-29: "And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And 

when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow ofhis thigh; and the hollow ofJacob's thigh was out ofjoint, as he wrestled with him. And he 
said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he 
said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, 
Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there." 

IIO Image legend: "Arthava-veda 4,1,4." Arthava-veda 4,1,4 is a charm to promote virility: "Thee, the plant, which the Gandharva dug up for Varuna, when his virility had 
decayed, thee, that causest strength, we dig up. / Ushas (Aurora), Surya (the sun), and this charm of mine; the bull Pragapati (the lord of creatures) shall with his lusty 
fire arouse him! / This herb shall make thee so very full oflusty strength, that thou shalt, when thou art excited, exhale heat as a thing on fire! / The fire of the plants, 
and the essence of the bulls shall arouse him! Do thou, 0 Indra, controller ofbodies, place the lusty force ofmen into this person! / Thou (0 herb) art the first-born 
sap of the waters and also ofthe plants. Moreover thou art the brother of Soma, and the lusty force ofthe antelope buck! / Now; 0 Agni, now; 0 Savitar, now; 0 goddess 
Sarasvatl, now, 0 Brahmanaspati, do thou stiffen the pasas as a bow! / I stiffen thy pasas as a bowstring upon the bow. Embrace thou (women) as the antelope buck 
the gazelle with ever unfailing (strength)! / The strength ofthe horse, the mule, the goat and the ram, moreover the strength of the bull bestow upon him, 0 controller 
ofbodies (Indra)!" (sacred Books ofthe East 42, p. 31-32) The connection is to the healing of Izdubar, the wounded bull God. 

III The Handwritten Draft has instead: "I have slept little; unclear dreams upset me more than they have prompted the redeeming word" (p. 686). 
II2 January 9, 1914á 



282 I LIBER SECUNDUS 46/49 

Izdubar, and I do not want him to wither away miserably: But 
where should help come from? No one will travel the hot-cold 
path. And I? I am afraid to return to that path. And in the East? 
Was there possibly help there? But what about the unlmown 
dangers that loomed there? I do not want to go blind. What use 
would that be to Izdubar? I cannot carry this lamed one as a 
blind man either. Yes, if I were powerful like Izdubar. Wha~ use 
is science here? 

Toward evening I went up to Izdubar and spoke to him: "Izdubar, 
my prince, listen! I will not let you decline. The second evening is 
falling. We have no food and we are bound to die if I cannot find 
help. We cannot expect any help from the West, but help is possible 
from the East. Did you meet anyone on your way whom we could 
calion for help?" 

Iz: "Let it be, may death come when it will." 

1: "My heart bleeds at the thought ofleaving you here without 
having done the upmost to help you." 
Iz: "What help is your magical power to you? Ifyou were strong, 
as I am, you could carry me. But your poison can only destroy and 
not help." 

1: "Ifwe were in my land, swift wagons could bring us help." 
Iz: "Ifwe were in my land, your poisoned barb would not have 
reached me." 

1: "Tell me, do you know ofno help from the side ofthe East?" 
Iz: "The way there is long and lonely, and when you reach the 
plains after crossing the mountains, you will meet the powerful 
sun which will blind you." 

I: "But what if I wandered by night and if I sheltered from the 
sun during the day?" 
Iz: "In the night all the serpents and dragons crawl out oftheir 
holes and you, unarmed, will inevitably fall victim to them. Let it 
be! How would this help? My legs have withered and are numb. 
I prefer not to bring home the booty ofthis journey:" 

1: "Should I not risk everything?" 
Iz: "Useless! Nothing is gained ifyou die." 
I: "Let me think it over a bit, perhaps a saving thought will yet 
come to me." 
I withdraw and sit down on a rock high above on the ridge of 
the mountain. And this speech began in me: Great Izdubar, you 
are in a hopeless position-and I no less.II3 What can be done? It 
is not always necessary to act; sometimes thinking is better. I am 
basically convinced that Izdubar is hardly real in the ordinary sense, 
but is a fantasy: It would help if the situation were considered 
from another angle ... considered ... considered ... it is remarkable 
that even here thoughts echo; one must be quite alone. But this 
will hardly last. He will of course not accept that he is a fantasy, 
but instead claim that he is completely real and that he can only 
be helped in a real way: nevertheless, it would be worth trying this 
means once. I will appeal to him: 

1: "My prince, Powerful One, listen: a thought came to me 
that might save us. I think that you are not at all real, but only 
a fantasy." 
Iz: "I am terrified by this thought. It is murderous. Do you 
46/47 even mean to declare me unreal / -now that you have lamed 
me so pitifully? 

II3 The Drqft continues: "thus spoke another voice in me, like an echo" (p. 309). 

I: "Perhaps I have not made myself clear enough, and have 
spoken too much in the language of the Western lands. I do not 
mean to say that you are not real at all, ofcourse, but onlyas real 
as a fantasy: Ifyou could accept this, much would be gained." 
Iz: "What would be gained by this? You are a tormenting devil." 

1: "Pitiful one, I will not torment you. The hand ofthe doctor 
does not seek to torment even ifit causes grief Can you really not 
accept that you are a fantasy?" 
Iz: "Woe betide me! In what magic do you want to entangle 
me? Should it help me if I take myself for a fantasy?" 

I: "You know that the name one bears means a lot. You also 
know that one often gives the sick new names to heal them, for 
with the new name, they come by a new essence. Your name is 
your essence." 
Iz: "You are right, our priests also say this." 

1: "So are you prepared to admit that you are a fantasy?" 
Iz: "Ifit helps-yes." 
The inner voice now spoke to me as follows: while admittedly 
he is a fantasy now, the situation remains extremely complex. 
A fantasy cannot be simply negated and treated with resignation 
either. It calls for action. Anyway, he is a fantasy-and thus 
considerably more volatile-I think I can see a way forward: I can 
take him on my back for now. I went to Izdubar and said to him: 

'~ way has been found. You have become light, lighter than 
a feather. Now I can carry you." I put my arms round him and 
lift him up from the ground; he is lighter than air, and I struggle to 
keep my feet on the ground since my load lifts me up into the air. 

Iz: "That was a masterstroke. Where are you carrying me?" 

1: "I am going to carry you down into the Western land. My 
comrades will happily accommodate such a large fantasy: Once 
we have crossed the mountains and have reached the houses of 
hospitable men, I can calmly go about finding a means to restore 
you completely again." 
Carrying him on my back, I climb down the small rock path 
with great care, more in danger ofbeing whirled aloft by the wind 
than oflosing balance because ofmy load and plunging down the 
mountainside. I hang on to my all too lightweight load. finally we 
reach the bottom of the valley and the way of the hot and cold 
pain. But this time I am blown by a whistling East wind down 
through the narrow rocks and across. the fields toward inhabited 
places, making no contact with the painful way: Spurred on, I 
hasten through beautiful lands. I see two people ahead of me: 
Ammonius and the Red One. When we are right behind them, 
they turn round and run off into the fields with horrified cries. I 
must have proved a strange sight indeed. 

Iz: "Who are these misshapen ones? Are these your comrades?" 

I: "These are not men, they are so-called relics of the past 
which one still often encounters in the Western lands. They used 
to.be very important. They're now used mostly as shepherds." 
Iz: "What a wondrous country! But look, isn't that a town? 
Don't you want to go there?" 

1: "No, God forbid. I don't want a crowd to gather, since the 
enlightened live there. Can't you smell them? They're actually 
dangerous, since they cook the strongest poisons from which even 
I must protect myself The people there are totally paralyzed, 

SECOND DAY I 283 

wrapped in a brown poisonous vapor and can only move with 

47/48 artificial means. / But you need not worry. Night has almost 
fallen and no one will see us. Moreover, no one would admit to 
having seen me. I know an out ofthe way house here. I have close 
friends there who will take us in for the night." 
Izdubar and I come to a quiet dark garden and a secluded 
house. I hide Izdubar under the drooping branches of a tree, go 
up to the door of the house, and knock. I ponder the door: it is 
much too small. I will never be able to get Izdubar through it. 
Yet-a fantasy takes up no space! Why did this excellent thought 
not occur to me earlier? I return to the garden and with no 
difficulty squeeze Izdubar into the size of an egg and put him in 
my pocket. Then I walk into the welcoming house where Izdubar 
should find healing. 

[2] [HI 48]Il4 Thus my God found salvation. He was saved 
precisely by what one would actually consider fatal, namely by 
declaring him a figment of the imagination. How often has it 
been assumed that the Gods have been brought to their end in 
this way:IIS This was obviously a serious mistalce, since this was 
precisely what saved the God. He did not pass away, but became 
a living fantasy, whose workings I could feel on my own body: my 
inherent heaviness faded and the hot and cold way of pain no 
longer burned and froze my soles. The weight no longer kept me 
pressed to the ground, but instead the wind carried me lightly 
like a feather, while I carried the giant.II6 
One used to believe that one could murder a God. But the 
God was saved, he forged a new axe in the fire, and plunged again 
into the flood of light of the East to resume his ancient cycle.Il7 
But we clever men crept around lamed and poisoned, and did not 
even know that we lacked something. But I loved my God, and 
took him to the house of men, since I was convinced that he also 
really lived as a fantasy, and should therefore not be left behind, 
wounded and sick. And hence I experienced the miracle of my 
body losing its heaviness when I burdened myselfwith the God. 

St. Christopher, the giant, bore his burden with difficulty, 
despite the fact that he bore only the Christ child.IlB But I was 
as small as a child and bore a giant, and yet my burden lifted 
me up. The Christ child became an easy burden for the giant 
Christopher, since Christ himselfsaid, "My yoke is sweet, and my 
burden is light."Il9 We should not bear Christ as he is unbearable, 
but we should be Christs, for then our yoke is sweet and our 
burden easy: This tangible and apparent world is one reality, but 
fantasy is the other reality: So long as we leave the God outside us 
apparent and tangible, he is unbearable and hopeless. But if we 
turn the God into fantasy, he is in us and is easy to bear. The God 
outside us increases the weight of everything heavy, while the 
God within us lightens everything heavy: Hence all Christophers 
have stooped backs and short breath, since the world is heavy: 

[HI 48/2] Many have wanted to get help for their sick God 
and were then devoured by the serpents and dragons lurking on 
the way to the land of the sun. They perished in the overbright 
day and have become dark men, since their eyes have been 
blinded. Now they go around like shadows and speak ofthe light 
but see little. But their God is in everything that they do not see: 
He is in the dark Western lands and he sharpens seeing eyes and 
he assists those cooking the poison and he guides serpents to 
the heels of the blind perpetrators. Therefore, ifyou are clever, 
talce the God with you, then you know where he is. If you do 
not have him with you in the Western lands, he will come 
running to you ~t night with clanking armor and a crushing 
battle axe.120 Ifyou do not have him with you in the land of the 
dawn, then you will step unawares on the divine worm who 
awaits your unsuspecting heel. / 

[HI 49] You gain everything from the God whom you bear, 
but not his weapon, since he crushed it. He who conquers needs 
weapons. But what else do you want to conquer? You cannot 
conquer more than the earth. And what is the earth? It is round 
allover and hangs like a drop in the cosmos. You will not reach 
the sun, and your power will not even extend to the barren moon; 
you will conquer neither the sea, nor the snow on the poles, nor 
the sands of the desert, but only a few spots on the green earth. 
You will not conquer anything for any length oftime. Your power 
will turn into dust tomorrow, for above all-at the very 1eastyou 
must conquer death. So do not be a fool, throw down your 
weapon. God himself smashed his weapon. Armor is enough 
to protect you from fools who still suffer from the need to 
conquer. God's armor will make you invulnerable and invisible 
to the worst fools. 

Take your God with you. Bear him down to your dark land 
where people live who rub their eyes each morning and yet always 
see only the same thing and never anything else. Bring your God 
down to the haze pregnant with poison, but not like those blinded 
ones who try to illuminate the darkness with lanterns which it does 
not comprehend. Instead, secretly carry your God to a hospitable 
roof The huts of men are small and they cannot welcome the 
God despite their hospitality and willingness. Hence do not wait 
until rawly bungling hands of men hack your God to pieces, but 
embrace him again, lovingly, until he has talcen on the form ofhis 
first beginning. Let no human eye see. the much loved, terribly 
splendid one in the state ofhis illness and lack ofpower. Consider 
that your fellow men are animals without knowing it. So long as 
they go to pasture, or lie in the sun, or suckle their young, or mate 
with each other, they are beautiful and harmless creatures ofdark 
Mother Earth. But if the God appears, they begin to rave, since 
the nearness of God makes people rave. They tremble with fear 

II4 This refers to a scene in the text describing how Jung reduced Izdubar to the size ofan egg so he could secretly carry Izdubar into the house and enable his healing. 
Jung said to Aniela Jaffe concerning these sections that some ofthe fantasies were driven by fear, such as the chapter on the devil and the chapter on Gilgamesh-Izdubar. 
From one perspective it was stupid that he had to find a way to help the giant, but he felt that ifhe didn't do so, he would have failed. He paid for the ridiculous solution 
through realizing that he had captured a God. Many ofthese fantasies were a hellish combination ofthe sublime and the ridiculous. (MP, p. 147-48). 

II5 In the Drift, this sentence reads: "Like many other Gods and on numerous previous occasions, the God was declared to be a fantasy; and it was thus assumed that he 
had been dealt with" (P.314). 
II6 The Drift continues: "We men apparently believed that there is no such thing as a fantasy; and ifwe declared something to be fantastic, then it would be well and truly 

destroyed" (p. 314). In I932, Jung commented on the contemporary dispargement offantasy ("The development ofthe personality;" CW I7, ¤302). 

II7 This seems to refer to the following chapter. 

II8 St. Christopher (Greek for 'Christ bearer') was a martyr in the third century. According to legend, he had sought a hermit to inquire as to how he could serve Jesus. 
The hermit suggested he help carry people across a dangerous crossing in a river, which he did. On one occasion, a small child asked to be taken across. He found that 
the child was heavier than anyone else, and the child revealed himself to be Christ, bearing the sins ofthe world. 

II9 Matthew II:30. 

I20 I.e., as Izdubar came to Jung. 


284 I LIBER SECUNDUS 49162 

and fury and suddenly attack one another in fratricidal struggles, Simple in the manifold. 
since one senses the approaching God in the other. So conceal the Meaning in absurdity. 
God that you have taken with you. Let them rave and maul each Freedom in bondage. 
other. Your voice is too weak for those raging to be able to hear. Subjugated when victorious. 
Thus do not speak and do not show the God, but sit in a solitary old in youth. 
place and sing incantations in the ancient manner: Yes in no. 


Set the egg before you, the God in his beginning. I [Image 53] 52/53 
And behold it. oh 
And incubate it with the magical warmth ofyour gaze. light ofthe middle way, 

enclosed in the egg, 
HERE THE INCANTATIONS BEGIN. I embryonic, 
full or ardor, oppressed. 


Fully expectant,
The Incantations121 
dreamlike, awaiting lost memories. 
Cap.x. As heavy as stone, hardened. 


Molten, transparent. 
[Image 50]122 Streaming bright, coiled on itself. 
Christmas has come. The God is in the egg. 
I have prepared arugfor my God, an expensive red rugfrom the land I [Image 54] 126. 127 


ofmorning. Amen, you are the lord ofthe beginning. 
He shall be surrounded by the shimmer of magnificence of his Amen, you are the star ofthe East. 
Eastern land. Amen, you are the jfower that blooms over everything. 
I am the mother, the simple maiden, who gave birth and did not 


know how. Amen, you are the deer that breaks out ofthe forest. 
I am the carefulfather, who protected the maiden. Amen, you are the song that soundsfar over the water. 
I am the shepherd, who received the message as he guarded his herd at Amen, you are the beginning and the end. 


night on the dark fields. 123 
I [Image 55]128 54/55 
50/51 I [Image 51] One word that was never spoken. 
I am the holy animal that stood astonished and cannot grasp the One light that was never lit up. 
becoming ofthe God.. An unparalleled confusion. 
I am the wise man who came from the East, suspecting the miracle And a road without end. 
from aftr. 124 
And I am the egg that surrounds and nurtures the seed of the God I [Image 56] 
in me. I forgive myself these words, as you also forgive me for wanting your 
blazing light. 

I [Image 52] 
The solemn hours lengthen. I [Image 57] 
And my humanity is wretched and suffirs torment. Rise up, you gracious fire ofold night. 
Since I am agiver ofbirth. I kiss the threshold ofyour beginning. 
Whence do you delight me, 0 h God!' Myhand prepares the rug and spreads abundant redjfowers before you. 
He is the eternal emptiness and the eternalfullness. 125 Rise up myfriend, you who lay sick, break through the shell. 
Nothing resembles him and he resembles everything. We have prepared a mealfor you. 
Eternal darkness and eternal brightness. Gifts have been preparedfor you. 
Eternal below and eternal above. Dancers await you. 
Double nature in one. We have built ahousefor you. 


I2I The chapter title is missing in the calligraphic volume, andis given here following the Draft. 
122 Images 50-64 symbolically depict the regeneration of Izdubar. 
I23 Luke 2:8-II: ''And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, 10, the angel of the Lord came upon 


them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of 
great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord." 
I24 Matthew 2:I-2: "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem ofJudaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, 

Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him." 
I25 The attributes of the God in this section are elaborated as the attributes ofAbraxas in the second and third sermons in Scrutinies. See below, p. 349. 
126 In "Dreams," Jung noted on January 3, 19I7: "In Lib. nov. snake image III incent" [stimulus to snake image III in Liber NOvus] (p. I). This notation appears to refer to 

this image. 

127 Image legend: "brahmallaspati." Julius Eggling notes that "Brihaspati or Brahmanaspati, the lord ofprayer or worship, takes the place ofAgni, as the representative 
of the priestly dignity ... In Rig-Veda X, 68,9 ... Brihaspati is said to have found (avindat) the dawn, the sky and the fire (agni), and to have chased away the darkness 
with his light (arka, sun), he seems rather to represent the element oflight and fire generally" (Sacred Books oJthe East I2, p. xvi). See also the note to image 45. 

128 The solar barge is a common motifin ancient Egypt. The barge was seen as the typical means ofmovement ofthe sun. In Egyptian mythology, the Sun God struggled 
against the monster Aphophis, who attempted to swallow the solar barge as it traveled across the heavens each day. In Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (I912) 
Jung discussed the Egyptian "living sun-disc" (CW B, ¤I53) and the motifof the sea monster (¤ 549f). In his I952 revision of this text, he noted that the battle with 
the sea monster represented the attempt to free ego-consciousness from the grip ofthe unconscious (Symbols ofTransformation, CW 5, ¤539). The solar barge resembles 
some of the illustrations in the Egyptian Book ofthe Dead (ed. E. A. Wallis Budge [London: Arkana, I899 / I985]), i.e., the vignettes on pp. 390,400, and 404). The 
oarsman is usually a falcon-headed Horus. The night journey of the sun God through the underworld is depicted in the Amduat, which has been seen as symbolic 
process of transformation. See Theodor Abt and Erik Hornung, Knowledgefor the Afterl!fo. The Egyptian Amduat-A QEestfor Immortality (Zurich: Living Human Heritage 
Publications, 2003). 


THE INCANTATIONS I 285 

Your servants stand ready. 
We drove herds togetherfor you on greenfields. 
We filled your cup with red wine. 
We set outfragrant fruit on golden dishes. 
We knock at your prison and lay our ears against it. 
The hours lengthen, tarry no longer. 
We are wretched without you and our song is worn out. 


57/58 / [Image 58J

129 

We are miserable without you and wear out our songs. 
We spoke all the words that our heart gave us. 
What else do you wantr 
What else shall wefulfill for your 
We open every door for you. 
We bend our knees where you want us to. 
We go to all points ojthe compass according to your wish. 
We carry up what is below, and we turn what is above into what is below, 
as you command. 
We give and take according to your wish. 
We wanted to turn right, butgo left, obedient to your sign. We rise and we 
fall, we sway and we remain still, we see and we are blind, we hear and we 
are deaf, we say yes and no, always hearing your word. 
We do not comprehend and we live the incomprehensible. 
We do not love and we live the unloved. 
And we evolve around ourselves again and comprehend 
and live the understandable. 


58/59 We love and live the loved, true to your law. / 

Come to us, we who are willingfrom our own will. 
Come to us, we who understand you from our own spirit. 
Come to us, we who will warm you at our ownfire. 
Come to us, we who will heal you with our own art. 
Come to us, we who will produce you out ojour own body. 
Come, child, to father and mother. 


59/60 [Image 59J

130 / 

We asked earth. 
We asked Heaven. 
We asked the sea. 
We asked the wind. 
We asked the fire. 

We lookedfor you with all the peoples. 
We lookedfor you with all the kings. 
We lookedfor you with all the wise. 
We lookedfor you in our own heads and hearts. 


60/61 And wefound you in the egg. [Image 60J / 

I have slain aprecious human sacrificefor you, 
a youth and old man. 
I have cut my skin with aknife. 


I have sprinkled your altar with my own blood. 
I have banished myfather and mother so that you can live with me. 
I have turned my night into day and went about at midday 
like asleepwalker. 
I have overthrown all the Gods, broken the laws, eaten the impure. 
I have thrown down my sword and dressed in women's clothing. 
I shattered myfirm castle and played like achild in the sand. 
I saw warriorsform into line ofbattle and I destroyed my suit ofarmor 
with a hammer. 
I planted myfield and let thefruit decay. 
I made small everything that was great and made everything great 
that was small. 
I exchanged myfurthest goalfor the nearest, and so I am ready. 


[Image 6IJI 1 

3 

/ [HI 62JHowever, I am not ready, since I have still not accepted 61/62 
that which chokes my heart. That fearful thing is the enclosing of 
the God in the egg. I am happy that the great endeavor has been 
successful, but my fear made me forget the hazards involved. I 
love and admire the powerful. No one is greater than he with the 
bull's horns, and yet I lamed, carried, and made him smaller with 
ease. I almost slumped to the ground with fear when I saw him, 
and now I rescue him with a cupped hand. These are the powers 
that make you afraid and conquer you; these have been your Gods 
and your rulers since time immemorial: yet you can put them in 
your pocket. What is blasphemy compared to this? I would like to be 
able to blaspheme against the God: That way I would at least have 
a God whom I could insult, but it is not worth blaspheming against 
an egg that one carries in one's pocket. That is a God against 
whom one cannot even blaspheme. 

I hated this pitifulness of the God. My own unworthiness 
is already enough. It cannot bear my encumbering it with the 
pitifulness of the God. Nothing stands firm: you touch yourself 
and you turn to dust. You touch the God and he hides terrified in 
the egg. You force the gates of Hell: the sound of cackling masks 
and the music of fools approaches you. You storm Heaven: stage 
scenery totters and the prompter in the box falls into a swoon. You 
notice: you are not true, it is not true above, it is not true below, 
left and right are deceptions. Wherever you grasp is air, air, air. 

But I have caught him, he who has been feared since time 
immemorial; I have made him small and my hand surrounds him. 
That is the demise of the Gods: man puts them in his pocket. 
That is the end of the story of the Gods. Nothing remains of 
the Gods other than an egg. And I possess this egg. Perhaps I 
can eradicate this last one and with this finally exterminate the 
race of Gods. Now that I know that the Gods have yielded to my 
power-what are the Gods to me now? Old and overripe, they 
have fallen and been buried in an egg. 

But how did this happen? I felled the Great One, I mourned 
him, I did not want to leave him, since I loved him because no 

129 In "Dreams," Jung wrote: "17 I 1917 Tonight: awful and formidable avalanches come crashing down the mountainside, like utterly nightmarish clouds; they will fill the 
valley on whose rim I am standing on the opposite side. I know that I must take flight up the mountain to avoid the dreadful catastrophe. This dream is explained 
in the Black Book in strange terms, in an entry bearing the same date. On 17 I 1917 I produced a drawing with red spots on page 58 of Lib. Nov. On 18 I 1917 I read 
about the current formation ofhuge sunspots" (p. 2). The following is a paraphrase of the entry in Black Book 6 for January 17,1917: Jung asks what it is that fills him 
with fear and horror, what is falling down from the high mountain. His soul tells him to help the Gods and to sacrifice to them. She tells him that the worm crawls up 
to Heaven, it begins to cover the stars and with a tongue offire he eats the dome of the seven blue heavens. She tells him that he will also be eaten, and that he should 
crawl into the stone and wait in the narrow casing until the torrent offire is over. Snow falls from the mountains because the fiery breath falls down from above the 
clouds. The God is coming, Jung should get ready to receive him. Jung should hide himself in stone, as the God is a terrible fire. He should remain quiet and look 
within, so that the God does not consume him in flames (P.152f). 

130 Image legend: "hirat;lyagarbha." In the Rig Veda, hirat;lyagarbha was the primal seed from which Brahma was born. In Jung's copy ofvol. 32 of the Sacred Books ofthe 
East (Vedic Hymns) the only section that is cut is the opening one, a hymn "To the Unknown God." This begins "In the beginning there arose the Golden Child 
(Hiranyagarbha); as soon as born, he alone was the lord ofall that is. He established the earth and this heaven:-Who is the God to whom we shall offer sacrifice?" 

(p. 1). In Jung's copy of the Upanishads in the Sacred Books ofthe East, there is a piece ofpaper inserted near page 3II of the Maitdiyana-Bdhmana-Upanishad, a passage 
describing the Self which begins, '~nd the same Self is also called ... Hiranyagarbha" (vol. 15, pt. 2). 
131 The face of the monster is similar to HI 29. 


286 I LIBER SECUNDUS 62/68 

mortal being rivals him. Out oflove I devised the trick that relieved ÇWhere am Ir How narrow it is here, how dark, how cool-am I 
him ofheaviness and freed him from the confines ofspace. I took in the graver Where was I r It seemed to me as ifI had been outside in the 
from him-out of love-form and corporeality. I enclosed him universe-over and under me was an endlessly dark star,glittering skylovingly 
in the maternal egg. Should I slay him, the defenseless and I was in apassion ofunspeakable yearning. 
one whom I loved? Should I shatter the delicate shell of his Streams offire brokefrom my radiating body-
grave, and expose him to the weightlessness and unboundedness I surged through blazingjfamesof 
the winds of the world? But did I not sing the incantations I swam in asea that wrapped me in livingfiresfor 
his incubation? Did I not do this out oflove for him? Why do Full oflight, full oflonging, full ofeternity-
I love him? I do not want to tear the love for the Great One from I was ancient and perpetually renewing myselfmy 
heart. I want to love my God, the defenseless and hopeless Fallingfrom the heights to the depths, 
one. I want to care fo! him, like a child. and whirled glowingfrom the depths to the heights


Are we not sons of the Gods? Why should Gods not be our hovering around myselfamidst glowing clouds-
children? Ifmy father the God should die, a God child should arise as raining embers beating down like the foam ofthe suif, engulfing 
from my maternal heart. Since I love the God and do not want to / myselfin stiffing heat-
leave him. Only he who loves the God can make him fall, and the Embracing and rejecting myselfin a boundless gameGod 
submits to his vanquisher and nestles in his hand and dies in Where was I r I was completely sun. "136 
the heart ofhim who loves him and promises him birth. 

I: "Oh Izdubar! Divine one! How wonderful! You are healed!" 
My God, I love you as a mother loves the unborn whom she carries in 
her heart. Grow in the egg ofthe East, nourish yourselffrom my love, drink ÇHealedr Was I ever sickr Who speaks ofsicknessr I was sun, completely 
the juice ofmy life so that you will become aradiant God. We need your light, sun. I am the sun." 
oh child. Since we go in darkness, light up our paths. May your light shine 
before us, may yourfire warm the coldness ofour life. We do not need your An inexpressible light breaks from his body, a light that my 
power but life. eyes cannot grasp. I must cover my face and cast my gaze to 

the ground. 
/ What does power avail us? We do not want to rule. We want to I: "You are the sun, the eternal light-most powerful one, 
live, we want light and warmth, and hence we need yours. Just as forgive me for carrying you." 
the greening earth and every living body needs the sun, so we as Everything is quiet and dark. I look around me: the empty 
spirits need your light and your warmth. A sunless spirit becomes egg shell is lying on the rug. I feel myself the floor, the walls: 
the parasite of the body. But the God feeds the spirit. [Image 63] everything is as usual, utterly plain and utterly real. I would like 

1

33

/ [Image 64]132. / to say that everything around me has turned to gold. But it is not 

true-everything is as it always has been. Here reigned eternal 
light, immeasurable and overpowering.137 

The Opening of the Egg.'l4 [2] [HI 66] It happened that I opened the egg and that the God 

Cap. xi. left the egg. He was healed and his figure shone transformed, 
[HI 65] 1350n the evening of the third day, I kneel down on the rug and and I knelt like a child and could not grasp the miracle. He who 
carefully open the egg. Something resembling smoke rises up from it had been pressed into the core of the beginning rose up, and no 
and suddenly Izdubar is standing before me, enormous, transformed, and trace ofillness could be found on him. And when I thought that 
complete. His limbs are whole and lfind no trace ofdamage on them. It's as I had caught the mighty one and held him in my cupped hands, 
ifhe had awokenfrom a deep sleep. He says: he was the sun itself 

132 In "Dreams," Jung noted on February 4,1917: "Started work on the Opening of the Egg (Image)" (p. 5). This indicates that the image depicts the regeneration of 
Izdubar from the egg. Concerning the solar barge in this image, cf image 55. 

133 Image legend: '\:atapatha-brahmanam 2,2,4." Satapatha-brahmana 2,2,4 (Sacred Books ofthe East, vol. 12) provides the cosmological justification behind the Agnihotra. It 
commences by describing how Prajapati, desiring to be reproduced, produced Agni from his mouth. Prajapati offered himself to Agni, and saved himself from Death as 
he was about to be devoured. The Agnihotra (lit. fire healing) is a Vedic ritual performed at sunrise and sunset. The performers purify themselves, light a sacred fire, 
and chant verses and a prayer to Agni. 

134 The Draft has instead: "Third Day" (P.329). 

135 January 10, 1914. In Black Book 3, Jung wrote: "It appears as ifsomething has been achieved through this memorable event. But it is incalculable where this will all lead. 
I hardly dare say that Izdubar's fate is grotesque and tragic, for that is what our most precious life is. Fr. Th. Vischer's (A[uch]. E[iner]) is the first attempt to elevate 
this truth to a system. He rightly deserves a place among the immortal. What lies in the middle is the truth. It has many faces; one is certainly comical, another sad, a 
third evil, a fourth tragic, a fifth funny; a sixth is a grimace, and so forth. Should one of these faces become particularly obtrusive, we thus recognize that we have deviated 
from certain truth and approach an extreme that constitutes a definite impasse should we decide to pursue this route. It is a murderous task to write the wisdom 
ofreal life, particularly if one has committed many years to serious scientific research. What proves to be most difficult is to grasp the playfulness oflife (the childish, 
so to speak). All the manifold sides oflife, the great, the beautiful, the serious, the black, the devilish, the good, the ridiculous, the grotesque are fields of application 
which each tend to wholly absorb the beholder or describer. / Our time requires something capable ofregulating the mind. Just as the concrete world has expanded 
from the limitedness of the ancient outlook to the immeasurable diversity ofour modern outlook, the world ofintellectual possibilities has developed to unfathomable 
diversity. Infinitely long paths, paved with thousands of thick volumes, lead from one specialization to another. Soon no one will be able to walk down these paths 
anymore. And then only specialists will remain. More than ever we require the living truth of the life of the mind, ofsomething capable of providing firm guidance" 
(pp. 74-77). Vischer's work was Auch Einer: Eine Reisebekanntschaft (Stuttgart, 1884). In 1921, Jung wrote: "Vischer's novel, Auch Einer, gives a deep insight into this side of 
the introverted state of the soul, and also into the underlying symbolism of the collective unconscious" (psychological Types, CW 6, ¤627). In 1932 Jung commented on 
Vischer in The Psychology ofKundalini Yoga, p. 54. On Auch Einer, see Ruth Heller, "Auch Einer: the epitome of F. Th. Vischer's Philosophy of Life," German Life and Letters 
8 (1954) pp. 9-18. 

136 Roscher notes that "As a God, Izdubar is associated with the Sun-God" (Auifiihrliches Lexikon der Griechischen und R6mischen Mythologie, vol. 2, p. 774). The incubation and 
rebirth of Izdubar follows the classic pattern ofsolar myths. In Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes, Leo Frobenius pointed out the widespread motif ofa woman becoming 
pregnant through a process of immaculate conception and giving birth to the sun God, who develops in a remarkably short period of time. In some forms, he incubates 
in an egg. Frobenius related this to the setting and rising of the sun in the sea ([Berlin, G. Reimer, 1904], pp. 223-63). Jung cited this work on a number ofoccasions 
in Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (1912). 

137 In psychological Types (1921), Jung commented on the motifofthe renewed God: "The renewed God signifies a renewed attitude, that is, a renewed possibility for intensive 
life, a recovery oflife, because psychologically God always denotes the greatest value, thus the greatest sum of the libido, the greatest intensity oflife, the optimum of 
psychological life's activity" (CW 6, ¤301). 


THE OPENING OF THE EGG I 287 

I wandered toward the East where the sun rises. I probably 
wanted to rise, too, as if I were the sun. I wanted to embrace 
the sun and rise with it into daybreak. But it came toward me 
and stood in my way. It told me that I had no chance ofreaching 
the beginning. But I lamed the one who wanted to rush down 
in order to set with the sun in the womb of the night; he was 
deprived of all hope ofreaching the blessed Western lands. 

But behold! I caught the sun without realizing it and carried 
it in my hand. He who wanted to go down with the sun found 
me through his downgoing. I became his nocturnal mother who 
incubated the egg of the beginning. And he rose up, renewed, 
reborn to greater splendor. 

While he rises, however, I go down. When I conquered the 
God, his force streamed into me. But when the God rested in 
the egg and awaited his beginning, my force went into him. And 
when he rose up radiantly, I lay on my face. He took my life with 
him. All my force was now in him. My soul swam like a fish in his 
sea of fire. But I lay in the frightful cool of the shadows of the 
earth and sanle down deeper and deeper to the lowest darkness. 
All light had left me. The God rose in the Eastern lands and I fell 
into the horror of the underworld. I lay there like a child-bearer 
cruelly mauled and bleeding her life into the child, uniting life 
and death in a dying glance, the day's mother, the night's prey. My 
God had torn me apart terribly, he had drunk the juice ofmy life, 
he had drunk myhighest power into him and became marvelous and 
strong like the sun, an unblemished God who bore no stigma or 
flaw. He had taken my wings from me, he had robbed me of the 
swelling force ofmy muscles, and the power ofmy will disappeared 
with him. He left me powerless and groaning. 

66/67 / I did not know what was happening to me, since simply 
everything powerful, beautiful, blissful, and superhuman had 
leaked from my maternal womb; none ofthe radiant gold remained. 
Cruelly andunthinkably the sunbird spread its wings and flew up 
into infinite space. I was left with the broken shells and the 
miserable casing of his beginning; the emptiness of the depths 
opened beneath me. 
Woe betide the mother who gives birth to a God! If she gives 
birth to a wounded and pain-stricken God, a sword will pierce 
her soul. But ifshe gives birth to an unblemished God, then Hell will 
open to her, from which monstrous serpents will rise convulsively 
to suffocate the mother with miasma. Birth is difficult, but a 
thousand times more difficult is the hellish afterbirth.138 All the 
dragons and monstrous serpents of eternal emptiness follow 
behind the divine son. 
What remains of human nature when the God has become 
mature and has seized all power? Everything incompetent, everything 
powerless, everything eternally vulgar, everything adverse 
and unfavorable, everything reluctant, diminishing, exterminating, 
everything absurd, everything that the unfathomable night of 
matter encloses in itself that is the afterbirth of the God and his 
hellish and dreadfully deformed brother. 
The God suffers when man does not accept his darkness. 
Consequently men must have a suffering God, so long as they 
suffer from evil. To suffer from evil means: you still love evil and 
yet love it no longer. You still hope to gain something, but you 
do not want to look closely for fear that you might discover that 
you sti1llove evil. The God suffers because you continue to suffer 
from loving evil. You do not suffer from evil because you recognize 
it, but because it affords you secret pleasure, and because you 
believe it promises the pleasure of an unlrnown opportunity. 

138 In the next chapter, Jung finds himselfin Hell. 

So long as your God suffers, you have sympathy with him and 
with yourself You thus spare your Hell and prolong his suffering. 
Ifyou want to malee him well without engaging in secret sympathy 
with yourself evil puts a spoke in your wheel-the evil whose form 
you generally recognize, but whose hellish strength in yourself 
you do not knOw. Your unlrnowing stems from the previous 
harmlessness ofyour life, from the peaceful passage of time, and 
from the absence of the God. But if the God draws near, your 
essence starts to seethe and the black mud ofthe depths whirls up. 

Man stands between emptiness and fullness. If his strength 
combines with fullness, it becomes fully formative. There is always 
something good about such formation. If his strength combines 
with emptiness, it has a dissolving and destructive effect, since 
emptiness can never be formed, but only strives to satisfy itselfat 
the cost of fullness. Combined thus human force turns emptiness 
into evil. Ifyour force shapes fullness, it does so because of 
its association with fullness. But to ensure that your formation 
continues to exist, it must remain tied to your strength. Through 
constant shaping, you gradually lose your force, since ultimately 
all force is associated with the shapeliness that has been given 
form. Ultimately, where you mistaleenly imagine that you are 
rich, you have actually become poor, and you stand amidst your 
forms like a beggar. That is when the blinded man is seized by 
an increasing desire to give shape to things, since he believes 
that manifold increased formation will satisfy his I desire. 
Because he has spent his force, he becomes desirous; he begins 
to compel others into his service and takes their force to pursue 
his own designs. 

In this moment, you need evil. When you notice that your 
strength is coming to an end and desire sets in, you must withdraw 
it from what has been formed into your emptiness; through this 
association with the emptiness you will succeed in dissolving the 
formation in you. You will thus regain your freedom, in that you 
have saved your strength from oppressive association with the 
object. So long as you persist with the standpoint of the good, 
you cannot dissolve your formation, precisely because it is what 
is good. You cannot dissolve good with good. You can dissolve 
good only with evil. For your good also leads ultimately to death 
through its progressive binding of your force by progressively 
binding your force. You are entirely unable to live without evil. 

Your shaping first produces an image ofyour formation within 
you. This image remains in you and / it is the first and 67/68 
unmediated expression ofyour shaping. It then produces precisely 
through this image an outer one, which can exist without you 
and outlive you. Your strength is .not directly linked to your 
outer formation, but only through the image that remains in you. 
When you set about dissolving your formation with evil, you do 
not destroy the outer shape, or else you would be destroying your 
own work. But what you do destroy is the image that you have 
formed in yourself For it is this image that clings to your force. 
You will need evil to dissolve your formation, and to free yourself 
from the power ofwhat has been, to the same extent which this 
image fetters your strength. 

Hence their formation causes many good persons to bleed to 
death, because they cannot attend to evil in the same measure. 
The better one is and the more attached one is to one's formation, 
the more one will lose one's force. But what happens when the 
good person has lost their force completely to their formation? 
Not only will they seek to force others into the service of their 
formation with unconscious cunning and power, but they will 


288 I LIBER SECUNDUS 68/75 

also become bad in their goodness without knowing it, since their But where is the God after his creation and after his separation 
longing for satisfaction and strengthening will mal(e them more from me? If you build a house, you see it standing in the outer 
and more selfish. But because of this the good ones will ultimately world. When you have created a God whom you cannot see with 
destroy their own work, and all those whom they forced into the your own eyes, then he is in the spiritual world that is no less 
service oftheir own work will become their enemies, because they valuable than the outer physical world. He is there and does 
will have alienated them. But you will also secretly begin to hate everything for you and others that you would expect from a God. 
whoever alienates you from -yourself against your own wishes, Thus your soul is your own self in the spiritual world. As the 
even if this were in the best interest of things. Unfortunately, the abode of the spirits, however, the spiritual world is also an outer 
good person who has bound his strength will all too easily find world. Just as you are also not alone in the visible world, but are 
slaves for his service, since there are more than plenty who yearn surrounded by objects that belong to you and obey only you, you 
for nothing more strongly than to be alienated from themselves also have thoughts that belong to you and obey only you. But just 
under a good pretext. -as you are surrounded in the visible world by things and beings 

You suffer from evil because you love it secretly and are unaware that neither belong to you nor obey you, you are also surrounded 
ofyour love. You wish to escape your predicament, and you begin in the spiritual world by thoughts and beings of thought that 
to hate evil. And once more you are bound to evil through your neither obey you nor belong to you. Just as you engender or bear 
hate, since whether you love or hate it, it makes no difference: you your physical children, and just as they grow up and separate 
are bound to evil. Evil is to be accepted. What we want remains themselves from you to live their own fate, you also produce or 
in our hands. What we do not want, and yet is stronger than us, give birth to beings of thought which separate themselves from 
sweeps us away and we cannot stop it without damaging ourselves, you and live their own lives. Just as we leave our children when we 
for our force remains in evil. Thus we probably have to accept grow old and give our body back to the earth, I separate myself 
our evil without love and hate, recognizing that it exists and must from my God, the sun, and sink into the emptiness of matter and 
have its share in life. In doing so, we can deprive it of the power obliterate the image of my child in me. This happens in that I 
it has to overwhelm us. accept the nature ofmatter and allow the force ofmy form to flow 

into emptiness. Just as I gave birth anew to the sick God through 

When we have succeeded in making a God, and if through my engendering force, I henceforth animate the emptiness of 
this creation our whole force has entered into this design, we are matter from which the formation of evil grows. 
filled with an overwhelming desire to rise with the divine sun and 
to become a part of its magnificence. But we forget that we are Nature is playful and terrible. Some see the playful side and dally with it 
then no more than hollow forms, since giving form to God has and let it sparkle. Others see the horror and cover their heads and are more 
sapped us completely. We are not only poor but have become dead than alive. The way does not lead between both, but embraces both. It 
sluggish matter throughout, which would never be entitled to is both cheeiful play and cold horror.139 [Image 69]140 / [Image 70] / 
share in divinity. [Image 71] 141 / [Image 72]. / 

Like a terrible suffering or an inescapable devilish persecution, 
the misery and neediness of our matter creeps up on us. The 
powerless matter begins to suckle and would like to swallow its Hell 
shape back into itself again. But since we are always enamored of Cap. xii 
our own design, we believe that the God calls us to him, and we 
mal(e desperate attempts to follow the God into the higher realm, [HI 73] On the second nighe42 after the creation of my God, a 
or we turn preachingly and demandingly to our fellow men to at vision made known to me that I had reached the underworld. 
any rate force others into following the God. Unfortunately there I find myself in a gloomy vault, whose floor consists of damp 
are men who allow themselves to be persuaded into doing this, to stone slabs. In the middle there is a column from which ropes and 
their and our detriment. axes hang. At the foot ofthe column there lies an awful serpentlike 

Much undoing resides in this urge: since who could suspect that tangle of human bodies. At first I catch sight of the figure of a 
he who has made the God is himself condemned to Hell? But this young maiden with wonderful red-gold hair-a man of devilish 
is the way it is, because the matter that is stripped of the divine appearance is lying halfunder her-his head is bent backward-a 
radiance offorce is empty and dark. Ifthe God alights from matter, thin streak ofblood runs down his forehead-two similar daimons 
we feel the emptiness ofmatter as one part ofendless empty space. have thrown themselves over the maiden's feet and body. Their 

Through haste and increased willing and action we want to faces bear an inhuman expression-the living evil-their muscles 
escape from emptiness and also from evil. But the right way is are taut and hard, and their bodies sleek like serpents. They lie 
that we accept emptiness, destroy the image of the form within motionless. The maiden holds her hand over one eye of the man 
us, negate the God, and descend into the abyss and awfulness of lying beneath her, who is the most powerful ofthe three-her hand 
matter. The God as our work stands outside us and no longer firmly clasps a small silver fishing rod that she has driven into the 
needs our help. He is created and remains left to his own devices. eye of the devil. 
A created work that perishes again immediately once we turn I break out in a profuse cold sweat. They wanted to torture 

68/69 away from it is not worth anything, even if it / were a God. the maiden to death, but she defended herselfwith the force of 

139 In "Dreams," Jung wrote on February 15,1917: "Finished copying the opening scene. / The most wonderful feeling of renewal. Back to scientific work today / Types!" 

(p. 5). This refers to completing this section of the transcription into the calligraphic volume, and to continuing his work on psychological types. 
140 The blue and yellow circles are similar to image 60. 
141 This might be the image Tina Keller is referring to in the following statement in an interview, where she recalled Jung's discussion ofhis relations with Emma Jung 
and Toni Wolff: "Jung once showed me a picture in the book he was painting, and he said, 'See these three snakes that are intertwined. This is how we three struggle 
with this problem.' I can only say that it seemed to me very important that, even as a passing phenomenon, here three people were accepting a destiny which was not 
gone into just for their personal satisfaction" (interview with Gene Nameche, 1969, R. D. Laing papers, University of Glasgow, p. 27). 

142 January 12, 1914. 


HELL I 289 

the most extreme despair, and succeeded in piercing the eye of I recognize the fearful devilishness of human nature. I cover 
the evil one with the little hook. Ifhe moves, she will tear out his my eyes before it. I put out my hand to fend it of( ifanyone wants 
eye with a final jerk. The horror paralyzes me: what will happen? to approach me for fear that my shadow could fallon him, or his 
A voice spealcs: shadow could fallon me, since I also see the devilish in him, who 

{(The evil one cannot make a sacrifice, he cannot sacrifice his eye, victory is the harmless companion ofhis shadow. 
is with the one who can sacrifice. "143 No one touches me, death and crime lie in wait for you and 
me. You smile innocently, my friend? Don't you see that a gentle 

[2] The vision vanished. I saw that my soul had fallen into the flickering ofyour eye betrays the frightfulness whose unsuspectpower 
of abysmal evil. The power of evil is unquestionable, and ing messenger you are? Your bloodthirsty tiger growls softly, your 
we rightfully fear it. Here no prayers, no pious words, no magical poisonous serpent hisses secretly, while you, conscious only of 
sayings help. Once raw power comes after you, there is no help. your goodness, offer your human hand to me in greeting. I know 
Once evil seizes you without pity, no father, no mother, no right, your shadow and mine, that follows and comes with us, and only 
no wall and tower, no armor and protective power come to your waits for the hour of twilight when he will strangle you and me 
aid. You fall powerless and forlorn into the hand of the superior with all the daimons of the night. 
power of evil. In this battle you are all alone. Because I wanted to 
give birth to my God, I also wanted evil. He who wants to create What abyss ofblood-dripping history separates you from me! 
an eternal fullness will also create eternal emptiness.l44 You cannot I grasped your hand and looked at you. I lay my head in your lap 
undertake one without the other. But ifyou want to escape evil, and felt the living warmth ofyour body on mine as if it were my 
you will create no God, everything that you do is tepid and gray. own body-and suddenly I felt a smooth cord around my neck, 
I wanted my God for the sake ofgrace and disgrace. Hence I also which choked me mercilessly, and a cruel hammer blow struck a 
want my evil. If my God were not overpowering, neither would nail into my temple. I was dragged by my feet along the pavement, 
be my evil. But I want my God to be powerful and beyond all and wild hounds gnawed my body in the lonely night. 
measure happy and lustrous. Only in this way do I love my God. 
And the luster of his beauty will also have me taste the very No one should be astonished that men are so far removed 
bottom of Hell. from one another that they cannot understand one another, 
My God rose in the Eastern sky; brighter than the heavenly that theywage war and kill one another. One should be much more 
host, and brought about a new day for all the peoples. This is why surprised that men believe they are close, understand one another 
I want to go to Hell. Would a mother not want to give up her life and love one another. Two things are yet to be discovered. The 
for her child? How much easier would it be to give up my life if first is the infinite gulf that separates us from one another. The 
only my God could overcome the torment of the last hour of the second is the bridge that could connect us. Have you considered 
night and victoriously break through the red mist ofthe morning? how much unsuspected animality human company makes possible? 
I do not doubt: I also want evil for the salce of my God. I enter 
the unequal battle, since it is always unequal and without doubt 4sWhen my soul fell into the hands of evil, it was defenseless 

1 

a lost cause. How terrible and despairing would this battle be except for the weak fishing rod which it could use, again with its 
otherwise? But precisely this is how it should and will be. power, to pull the fish from the sea of emptiness. The eye of the 
evil one sucked in all the force ofmy soul; only its will remained, 
73/74 / Nothing is more valuable to the evil one than his eye, since which is just that small fish hook. I wanted evil, since I realized 
only through his eye can emptiness seize gleaming fullness. that I was not able to elude it. And because I wanted evil, my soul 
Because the emptiness lacks fullness, it craves fullness and its held the precious hook in its hand, that was supposed to strike the 
shining power. And it drinks it in by means of its eye, which is vulnerable place of the evil one. He who does not want evil will 
able to grasp the beauty and unsullied radiance of fullness. The have no chance to save his soul from ~ell. So long as he remains 
emptiness is poor, and if it lacked its eye it would be hopeless. in the light ofthe upper world, he will become a shadow ofhimself 
It sees the most beautiful and wants to devour it in order to But his soul will languish in the dungeons of the daimons. This 
spoil it. The devil knows what is beautiful, and hence he is will act as a counterbalance that will forever constrain him. The 
the shadow of beauty and follows it everywhere, awaiting the higher circles of the inner world will remain unattainable for 
moment when the beautiful, writhing great with child, seeks to him. He ~emains where he was; indeed, he falls back. You know 
give life to the God. these people, and you know how extravagantly nature strews / 

If your beauty grows, the dreadful worm will also creep up human life and force on barren deserts. You should not lament 
you, waiting for its prey. Nothing is sacred to him except his eye, this, otherwise you will become a prophet, and will seek to 
with which he sees the most beautiful. He will never give up his redeem what cannot be redeemed. Do you not know that nature 
eye. He is invulnerable, but nothing protects his eye; it is delicate also dungs its fields with men? Talce in the seeker, but do not go 
and clear, adept at drinking in the eternal light. Itwants you, the out seeking those who err. What do you know about their error? 
bright red light ofyour life. Perhaps it is sacred. You should not disturb the sacred. Do not 

I43 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "fataphatha-brahmanam 2,2,4." The same inscription is given to image 64. See notes I32 and I33, above. 

I44 In Thus Spoke zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote: "one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star" ("Zarathustra's prologue," ¤5, p. 46; as underlined in Jung's copy). 

I45 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "Kha.ndogya-upanishad I,2,I-7-" The Chandogya Upanisad reads: "Once, when the gods and demons, both children of 

Prajapati, arrayed themselves against each other, the gods got hold of the High Chant. 'With this we will overpower them,' they thought. / So they venerated the High 
Chant as the breath within the nostrils. The demons riddled it with evil. As a result, one smells with it both good and evil odors, for it is riddled with evil. / Then they 
venerated the High Chant as speech. The demons riddled it with evil. As a result, one speaks with it both what is true and what is false, for it is riddled with evil. / 
Then they venerated the High Chant as sight. The demons riddled it with evil. As a result one sees with it both what is good to see and what is not, for it is riddled 
with evil. / Then they venerated the High Chant as hearing. The demons riddled it with evil. As a result, one hears with it both what is good to hear and what is not, 
for it is riddled with evil. / Then they venerated the High Chant as the mind. The demons riddled it with evil. As a result, one envisages with it both what is good to 
envisage and what is not, for it is riddled with evil. / Finally; they venerated the High Chant as just this breath here within the mouth. And when the demons hurled 
themselves at it, they were smashed to bits like a clod ofearth hurled against a target that is a rock" (Upanishads, tr. P. Olivelle [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 
I996]). The "High Chant" is OM. 


290 I LIBER SECUNDUS 75/97 

look back and regret nothing. You see many near you fall? You 
feel compassion? But you should live your life, since then at least 
one in a thousand will remain. You cannot halt dying. 

But why did my soul not tear out the eye of the evil one? The 
evil one has many eyes, and losing one amounts to losing none. 
But ifshe had done it, she would have come completely under the 
spell of the evil one. The evil one can only fail to make sacrifice. 
You should not harm him, above all not his eye, since the most 
beautiful would not exist ifthe evil one did not see it and long for 
it. The evil one is holy. 

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. 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. 
[Image 75] / 

The Sacrificial Murder.146 

Cap. xiii. 

[HI 76] But this was the vision that I did not want to see, the 
horror that I did not want to live: A sickening feeling of nausea 
sneaks up on me, and abominable, perfidious serpents wind their 
way slowly and cracklingly through parched undergrowth; they 
hang down lazily and disgustingly lethargic from the branches, 
looped in dreadful knots. I am reluctant to enter this dreary and 
unsightly valley; where the bushes stand in arid stony defiles. The 
valley looks so normal, its air smells of crime, of foul, cowardly 
deeds. I am seized by disgust and horror. I walk hesitantly over 
the boulders, avoiding every dark place for fear of treading on a 
serpent. The sun shines weakly out ofa gray and distant sky; and 
all the leaves are shriveled. A marionette with a broken head lies 
before me amidst the stones-a few steps further, a small apronand 
then behind the bush, the body of a small girl-covered with 
terrible wounds-smeared with blood. One foot is clad with a 
stocking and shoe, the other is nalced and gorily crushed-the 
head-where is the head? The head is a mash of blood with hair 
and whitish pieces of bone, surrounded by stones smeared with 
brain and blood. My gaze is captivated by this awful sight-a 
shrouded figure, like that of a woman, is standing calmly next to 
the child; her face is covered by an impenetrable veil. She asks me: 

S: "What then do you say?" 
I: "What should I say? This is beyond words." 
S: "Do you understand this?" 
I: "I refuse to understand such things. I can't speak about 
them without becoming enraged." 
146 The Handwrittelt Drqft has instead: "Eighth Adveltture" (p. 793). 

S: "Why become enraged? You might as well rage every day of 
your life, for these and similar things occur every day." 
I: "But most of the time we don't see them." 
S: "So knowing that they happen is not enough to enrage you?" 
I: "If I merely have knowledge of something, it's easier and 
simpler. The horror is less real if all I have is knowledge." 
S: "Step nearer and you will see that the body of the child has 
been cut open; talce out the liver." 
I: "I will not touch this corpse. Ifsomeone witnessed this, they 
would think that I'm the murderer." 
S: "You are cowardly; talce out the liver." 
I: "Why should I do this? This is absurd." 
S: "I want you to remove the liver. You must do it." 
I: "Who are you to give me such an order?" 
S: "I am the soul of this child. You must do this for my sake." 
1: "I don't understand, but I'll believe you and do this horrific 
and absurd deed." / 
I reach into the child's visceral cavity-it is still warm-the 
liver is still firmly attached-I talce my knife and cut it free of 
the ligaments. Then I take it out and hold it with bloody hands 
toward the figure. 

S: "I thank you." 
I: "What should I do?" 
S: "You know what the liver means, and you ought to perform 
the healing act with it."147 
I: "What is to be done?" 
S: "Take a piece ofthe liver, in place of the whole, and eat it." 
I: "What are you demanding? This is absolute madness. This is 
desecration, necrophilia. You make me a guilty party to this most 
hideous of all crimes." 
S: "You have devised the most horrible torment for the 
murderer, which. could atone for his act. There is only one 
atonement: abase yourself and eat." 
I: "I cannot-I refuse-I cannot participate in this 
horrible guilt." 
S: "You share in this guilt." 
I: "I? Share in this guilt?" 
S: "You are a man, and a man has committed this deed." 
I: "Yes, I am a man-I curse whoever did this for being a man, 
and I curse myself for being a man." 
S: "So, take part in his act, abase yourself and eat. I need 
atonement." 
I: "So shall it be for your sake, as you are the soul of this child." 
I kneel down on the stone, cut off a piece of the liver and 
put it in my mouth. My gorge rises-tears burst from my eyescold 
sweat covers my brow-a dull sweet taste of blood-I 
swallow with desperate efforts-it is impossible-once again 
and once again-I almost faint-it is done. The horror has 
been accomplished.148 

S: "I thank you." 
She throws her veil back-a beautiful maiden with ginger hair. 
S: "Do you recognize me?" 
I: "How strangely familiar you are! Who are you?" 
S: "I am your soul."149 
147 In Memories, while commenting on the Liverpool dream (see below, p. 318, n. 296), Jung noted ''According to an older view, the liver is the seat oflife" (P.224). 
148 In 1940, Jung discussed ritual anthropophagy, sacrifice, and self-sacrifice in "Transformation symbolism in the mass," CW II. 
149 In Black Book 3, Jung noted: "The curtain drops. What dreadful game has been played here? I realize: Nil humanum a me alienum esse puto [nothing human is alien to me]" 


(p. 91). The phrase is from the Roman playwright Terence, from Heauton Timorumenos. On September 2,1960, Jung wrote to Herbert Read, "As a medical psychologist 
I do not merely assume, but I am thoroughly convinced, that nil humanum ame alieltum esse is even my duty" (Letters 2, p. 589). 

THE SACRIDcAL MURDER I 291 

[2] The sacrifice has been accomplished: the divine child, the proud of your shallow coastlines and broad country roads. But 
image of the God's formation, is slain, and I have eaten from the floodgates will be opened, there are inexorable things, from 
the sacrificial flesh.150 The child, that is, the image of the God's which only God can save you. 
formation, not only bore my human craving, but also enclosed 
all the primordial and elemental powers that the sons of the The primordial force is the radiance of the sun, which the 
sun possess as an inalienable inheritance. The God needs all sons of the sun have carried in themselves for aeons and pass on 
this for his genesis. But when he has been created and hastens to their children. But if the soul dips into radiance, she becomes 
away into unending space, we need the gold ofthe sun. We must as remorseless as the God himself since the life of the divine 
regenerate ourselves. But as the creation of a God is a creative child, which you have eaten, will feel like glowing coals in you. 
act ofhighest love, the restoration of our human life signifies an It will burn inside you like a terrible, inextinguishable fire. But 
act of the Below. This is a great and dark mystery. Man cannot despite all the torment, you cannot let it be, since it will not let 
accomplish this act solely by himself but is assisted by evil, which you be. From this you will understand that your God is alive and 
does it instead ofman. But man must recognize his complicity in that your soul has begun wandering on remorseless paths. You 
the act ofevil. He must bear witness to this recognition by eating feel that the fire of the sun has erupted in you. Something new 
from the bloody sacrificial flesh. Through this act he testifies that has been added to you, a holy affliction. 
he is a man, that he recognizes good as well as evil, and that he Sometimes you no longer recognize yourself You want to 
destroys the image of the God's formation through withdrawovercome 
it, but it overcomes you. You want to set limits, 
ing his life force, with which he also dissociates himselffrom the but it compels you to keep going. You want to elude it, but it 
God. This occurs for the salvation of the soul, which is the true comes with you. You want to employ it, but you are its tool; you 
77/78 mother ofthe divine child. / want to think about it, but your thoughts obey it. finally the 
When it bore and gave birth to the God, my soul was ofhuman fear of the inescapable seizes you, for it comes after you slowly 
nature throughout; it possessed the primordial powers since time and invincibly. 
immemorial, but only in a dormant condition. They flowed into There is no escape. So it is that you come to know what a real 
forming the God without my help. But through the sacrificial God is. Now you'll thinlc up clever truisms, preventive measures, 
murder, I redeemed the primordial powers and added them to secret escape routes, excuses, potions capable of inducing 
my soul. Since they became part of a living pattern, they are no forgetfulness, but it's all useless. The fire burns right through 
longer dormant, but awake and active and irradiate my soul you. That which guides forces you onto the way. 
with their divine working. Through this it receives a divine attribute. 
Hence the eating of the sacrificial flesh aided its healing. But the way is my own self my own life founded upon myself 
The ancients have also indicated this to us, in that they taught us The God wants my life. He wants to go with me, sit at the table 
to drink the blood and eat the flesh of the savior. The ancients with me, work with me. Above all he wants to be ever-present.!53 
believed that this brought healing to the soul.!5! But I'm ashamed of my God. I don't want to be divine but 
reasonable. The divine appears to me as irrational craziness. I hate 
There are not many truths, there are only a few. Their meaning it as an absurd disturbance of my meaningful human activity. It 
is too deep to grasp other than in symbols.!52 seems an unbecoming sickness which has stolen into the regular 
course ofmy life. Yes, I even find the divine superfluous. / [Image 

A God who is no stronger than man-what is he? You still 79] [Image 80] [Image 81] [Image 82] [Image 83] [Image 84]154 
should taste holy dread. How would you be worthy of enjoying [Image 85] [Image 86] [Image 87] [Image 88] [Image 89]155 
the wine and the bread ifyou have not touched the black bottom [Image 90] [Image 91] [Image 92] [Image 93]156 [Image 94]157 
of human nature? Hence you are lukewarm and pale shadows, [Image 95] [Image 96] [Image 97] / 

ISO 
Instead of this sentence, the Drqft has: "This experience accomplished what I needed. It occurred in the most abominable manner. The evil that I wanted performed 
the infamous deed, seemingly without me and yet with me, since I learned that I am party to all the horror ofhuman nature. I destroyed the divine child, the image 
ofmy God's formation, through the most dreadful crime which human nature is capable of It takes this atrocity to destroy the image ofthe God that drinks all my life 
force so that I could reclaim my life" (p. 355). 

151 I.e., the ritual ofthe mass. 
152 Jung developed his ideas concerning the significance ofsymbols in psychological Types (1921). See CW 6, ¤8I4ff. 
153 In 1909, Jung had his house built in Ktisnacht, and had the following motto from the Delphic oracle carved above the door: "Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit" 


(Called or not, the God will be present). The source of the quotation was Erasmus's Collectanea adagiorum. Jung explained the motto as follows: "It says, yes, the god will 
be on the spot, but in what form and to what purpose? I have put the inscription there to remind my patients and myself: Timor dei initium sapientiae [Psalms III:IO]. 
Here another not less important road begins, not the approach to 'Christianity' but to God himselfand this seems to be the ultimate question" (Jung to Eugene Rolfe, 
November 19,1960, Letters 2, p. 6II). 

154 There is a note at bottom of the page: "21 VIII. 1917-fect. I4.x.I7," possibly an abbreviation for "fecit," i.e., "made." 

ISS 
In Black Book 7, in Jung's fantasy of October 7, 1917, a figure appears, Ha, who says he is the father of Philemon. Jung's soul describes him as a black magician. His secret 
is the runes, which Jung's soul wants to learn. He refuses to teach them, but shows some examples, which Jung's soul asks him to explain. Some of the runes later 
appear in these paintings. About the runes in this painting, Ha explained: "See the two with different feet, one earth foot and one sun foot-which reach toward the 
upper cone and have the sun inside, but I have made one crooked line toward the other sun. Therefore one must reach downward. Meanwhile the upper sun comes 
out ofthe cone and the cone gazes after it, dejected about where it is going. One has to retrieve it with a hook and would like to place it in the small prison. Then 
the three have to stand together, unite, and twirl up at the top (curled). With this they manage to free the sun from its prison again. Now you make a thick bottom 
and a 1'00£ where the sun sits safe at the top. But inside the house the other sun has risen also. Therefore you too are coiled up at the top and have made a roof over 
the prison again at the bottom, so that the upper sun cannot enter. The two suns always want to be together-I said so, didn't I-the two cones-each has a sun. You 
want to let them come together, because then you think that thus you could be one. You have now drawn up both suns and brought them to one another, and now 
slope to the other side-that is important (=) but then there are simply two suns at the bottom, so therefore you have to go to the lower cone. Then you put the suns 
together there, but in the middle, neither at the bottom nor at the top, therefore there are not four but two, but the upper cone is at the bottom and there is a thick 
roof above and ifyou want to continue, you long to return with both arms. But at the bottom you have a prison for two, for both ofyou. Therefore you make a prison 
for the lower sun and fall toward the other side, to get the lower sun out of the prison. This is what you long for, and the upper cone comes and makes a bridge toward 
the lower, taking back its sun, which has run away before, and now the morning clouds come into the lower cone, but its sun is beyond the line, invisible (horizon). 
Now you are one and happy that you have the sun at the top and long to be up there, too. But you are imprisoned in the prison ofthe lower sun, that is rising. There 
is a stop. Now you make something quadrilateral above, which you call thoughts, a prison without doors, with thick walls, so that the upper sun does not leave, but the 
cone has already gone. You lean toward the other side, long for the below and coil up at the bottom. Then you are ol'}e and make the serpent's way between the sunsthat 
is amusing! roJ and important (=). But because it was amusing below, there is a roof above and you must raise upward the hook with both arms, so that it goes 
through the roof Then the sun below is free and there is a prison above. You look downward, but the upper sun looks toward you. But you stand upright as a pair and 


292 I LIBER SECUNDUS 98/roo 

Divine Folly"" 

Cap. xiv. 

[HI 98] 1591 am standing in a high hall. Before me I see a green 
curtain between two columns. The curtain parts easily. I see into 
a small deep room with bare walls. There is a small window with 
bluish glass above. I set foot on the stair leading up to this room 
between the pillars and enter. In the rear wall, I see a door right 
and left. It's as if I must choose between right and left. 

I choose the right. The door is open, I enter: I'm in the reading 
room of a large library. In the background sits a small thin man 
of pale complexion, apparently the librarian. The atmosphere 
is troubling-scholarly ambitions-scholarly conceit-wounded 
scholarly vanity. Apart from the librarian I see no one. I step 
toward him. He looks up from his book and says, "What do 
you want?" 

I'm somewhat embarrassed, since I don't know what I really 
want: Thomas aKempis crosses my mind. 

I: "I'd like to have Thomas aKempis's The Imitation ojChrist."16o 
He looks at me somewhat astonished as ifhe didn't credit me 
with such an interest; he gives me an order-form to:fill out. I too 
think that it's astonishing to ask for Thomas aKempis. 

''Are you surprised that I'm requesting Thomas's work?" 
"Well, yes, the book is seldom asked for, and I wouldn't have 
expected this interest from you." 

"I must confess that I'm also somewhat surprised by this 
inspiration, but recently I came across a passage from Thomas 
that made a particular impression on me. Why; I can't really say. If 

I remember correctly; it dealt with the problem of the Imitation 
of Christ." 
"Do you have particular theological or philosophical 
interests, or-" 
"Do you mean-whether I want to read it for the purpose 
of prayer?" 

"Well, hardly." 

"If I read Thomas aKempis, I do so for the sake of prayer, or 
something similar, rather than out ofscholarly interest." 
''Are you that religious? I had no idea." 
"You know that I value science extraordinarily highly: But 

there are actually moments in life where science also leaves us 
empty and sick. In such moments a book like Thomas's means 
very much to me since it is written from the soul." 

"But somewhat old-fashioned. We can no longer get involved 
in Christian dogmatics these days, surely:" 
"We haven't come to an end with Christianity by simply putting 
it aside. It seems to me that there's more to it than we see." 

"What is there about it? It's just a religion." 1 

"For what reasons and moreover at what age do men set it 
aside? Presumably; most do so during their student days or perhaps 
even earlier. Would you call that a particularly discriminating 
age? And have you ever examined more closely the grounds 
on which people put aside positive religion? The grounds are 
mostly dubious, such as that the contents of belief clash with 
natural science or philosophy:" 

"In my view, such an objection should not necessarily be 
rejected out ofhand, despite the fact that there are better reasons. 
For example, I consider the lack of a true and proper sense of 

have detached the serpent from you-you have probably been put off. Therefore you malce a prison for the below. Now the serpent crosses the sky above the earth. You 
are driven completely apart, the serpent wriggles its way through the sky around all the stars far above the earth. / At the bottom it says: the mother gives me this wisdom. / 
Be you content" (pp. 9-10). To Aniela Jaffe, Jung recounted that he had had a vision ofa red clay tablet inscribed with hieroglyphics and embedded in his bedroom 
wall, and that he had transcribed the tablet the following day. He felt that it contained an important message, but he didn't understand it. (MP, p. I72). In letters to Sabina 
Spielrein dated September I3 and October 10, I9I7, Jung commented on the significance ofsome hieroglyphs she'd seen in a dream. On October 10, he wrote to her 
that "with your hieroglyphics we are dealing with phylogenetic engrams of a historical symbolic nature." Commenting on the contempt meted out to Traniformations 
and Symbols ofthe Libido by the Freudians, he described himself as "clinging to his runes" which he would not hand over to those who would not understand them ("The 
letters ofJung to Sabina Spielrein," Journal ofAnalytical Psychology 4I [200I], p. I87-8). 

I56 The runes in this painting appear in Black Book 7 in the entry f~r October 7, I9I7-Jung appended the date "10 September I9I7" to them. Ha explained: "Ifyou have 
managed to move the arc forward, you make a bridge below and move upward and downward from the center, or you separate above and below, split the sun again and 
crawl like the serpent over the upper and receive the lower. You take with you what you have experienced and go forward to something new" (p. II). 

I57 The runes in this painting appear in Black Book 7 in the entry for October 7, I9I7-Jung appended the date "II September I9I7" to them. Ha explained: "Now, however, 
you make a bridge between you and the one longs for the below. But the serpent crawls at the top and draws the sun up. Then both ofyou move upward and want to 
go to the upper (-'), but the sun is below and tries to draw you down. But you draw a line above the below and long for the above and are completely at one. There the 
serpent comes and wants to drink from the vessel of the below. But there comes the upper cone and stops. Like the serpent, the looking coils back and moves forward 
again and afterward you very much (-) long to return. But the lower sun pulls and thus you become balanced again. But soon you fall backward, since the one has 
reached out toward the upper sun. The other does not want this and so you fall asunder, and therefore you must bind yourselves together three times. Then you stand 
upright again and you hold both suns before you, as if they were your eyes, the light of the above and the below before you and you stretch your arms out toward it, 
and you come together to become one and must separate the two suns and you long to return a little to the lower and reach out toward the upper. But the lower cone 
has swallowed the upper cone into itsel£ because the suns were so close. Therefore you place the upper cone back up again, and because the lower is then no longer 
there, you want to draw it up again and have a profound longing for the lower cone, while it is empty Above, since the sun Above the line is invisible. Because you have 
longed to return downward for so long, the upper cone comes down and tries to capture the invisible lower sun within itself There the serpent's way goes at the very 
top, you are split and everything below is beneath the ground. You long to be further above, but the lower longing already comes crawling like a serpent, and you build a 
prison over her. But there the lower comes up, you long.to be at the very bottom and the two suns suddenly reappear, close together. You long for this and come to be 
imprisoned. Then the one is defiant and the other longs for the below. The prison opens, the one longs even more to be below, but the defiant one longs for the above 
and is no longer defiant, but longs for what is to come. And thus it comes to pass: the sun rises at the bottom, but it is imprisoned and above three nest boxes are made 
for you two and the upper sun, which you expect, because you have imprisoned the lower one. But now the upper cone comes down powerfully and divides you and 
swallows the lower cone. This is impossible. Therefore you place the cones tip to tip and curl up toward the front in the center. Because that's no way to leave matters! 
So it has to happen otherwise. The one attempts to reach upward, the other downward; you must strive to do this, since if the tips of the cones meet, they can hardly 
be separated anymore-therefore I have placed the hard seed in-between. Tip to tip-that would be too beautifully regular. This pleases father and mother, but where 
does that leave me? And my seed? Therefore a quick change ofplan! One makes a bridge between you both, imprisons the lower sun again, the one longs for the above 
and the below, but the other longs especially strongly for the forward, above and below. Thus the future can become-see, how weill can already say it-yes, indeed, 
I am clever-cleverer than you-since you have taken matters in hand so well, you also get everything beneath the roof and into the house, the serpent, and the two 
suns. That is always most amusing. But you are separated and because you have drawn the line above, the serpent and the suns are too far below. This happens because 
beforehand you curled around yourself from below. But you come together and into agreement and stand upright, because it is good and amusing and fine and you say: thus 
shall it remain. But down comes the upper cone, because it felt dissatisfied, that you had set a limit above beforehand. The upper cone reaches out immediately for its 
sun-but there is nowhere a sun to be found anymore and the serpent also jumps up, to catch the suns. You fall over, and one ofyou is eaten by the lower cone. With 
the help of the upper cone you get him out and in return you give the lower cone its sun and the upper cone its as well. You spread yourself out like the one-eyed, who 
wanders in heaven and hold the cones beneath you-but in the end matters still go awry. You leave the cones and the suns to go and stand side by side and still do not 
want the same. In the end you agree to bind yourself threefold to the upper cone descending from above. / I am called Ha-Ha-Ha-a jolly name-I am clever-look 
here, my last sign, that is the magic of the white man who lived in the great magic house, the magic which you call Christianity. Your medicine man said so himself: I and 
the father are one, no one comes to the father other than through me. I told you so, the upper cone is the father. He has bound himself threefold to you and stands 
between the other and the father. Therefore the other must go through him, ifhe wants to reach the cone" (pp. I3-I4). 

I58 The Handwritten Drqft has instead: "Ninth Adventure Ist Night" (p. 8I4). 

I59 January I4, I9I4á 

I60 The Imitation ofChrist is a work ofdevotional instruction that appeared at the beginning of the fifteenth century and became extremely popular. Its authorship is still 
in dispute, though it is generally attributed to Thomas aKempis (ca. I38o-I47I), who was a member of the Brethren of the Common Life, a religious community in 
the Netherlands that was a prime representative of the devotio moderna, a movement stressing mediation and the inner life. In clear and simple language, The Imitation of 
Christ exhorts people to be concerned with the inner spiritual life as opposed to outer things, gives advice as to how this is to be lived, and shows the comfort and ultimate 
rewards of a life lived in Christ. The title derives from the first line ofthe first chapter, where it is also stated that ''Anyone who wishes to understand and to savor 
the words of Christ to the full must try to make his whole life conform to the pattern of Christ's life" (The Imitation ofChrist, tr. B. Knott [London: Fount, I996], book I, 


NOX SECUNDA I 293 

actuality in religion a disadvantage. Incidentally, a host ofsubstitutes with him in ourselves. With him, we wait until we die for our 
now exists for the loss of opportunity for prayer caused by the resurrection.162 With Christ the living experience no resurrection, 
collapse of religion. Nietzsche, for example, has written a more unless it occurs after death.163 
than veritable book of prayer,r61 not to mention Faust." If I imitate Christ, he is always ahead of me and I can never 


"I suppose that's correct in a certain sense. But especially reach the goal, unless I reach it in him. / But thus I move beyond 99/roo 
Nietzsche's truth strikes me as too agitated and provocative-; it's myself and beyond time, in and through which I am as I am. I 
good for those who are yet to be set free. For that reason his truth thus blunder into Christ and his time, which created him thus 
is good only for them. I believe that I've recently discovered that and not otherwise. And so I am outside my time, despite the 
we also need a truth for those who are forced into a corner. It's fact that my life is in this time and I am split between the life of 
possible that instead they need a depressive truth, which makes man Christ and my life that still belongs to this present time. But if I 
smaller and more inward." am truly to unders~and Christ, I must realize how Christ actually 

"Forgive me, but Nietzsche interiorizes man exceptionally well." lived only his own life, and imitated no one. He did not emulate 

"Perhaps from your standpoint you're right, but I can't help any mode1.164 
feeling that Nietzsche speaks to those who need more freedom, If I thus truly imitate Christ, I do not imitate anyone, I emulate 
not to those who clash strongly with life, who bleed from wounds, no one, but go my own way, and I will also no longer call myself 
and who hold fast to actualities." a Christian. Initially, I wanted to emulate and imitate Christ by 

"But Nietzsche confers a precious feeling of superiority upon living my life, while observing his precepts. A voice in me protested 
such people." against this and wanted to remind me that my time also had its 
"I can't dispute that, but I know men who need inferiority; not prophets who struggle against the yoke with which the past 
superiority." burdens us. I did not succeed in uniting Christ with the prophets of 
"You express yourself very paradoxically. I don't understand this time. The one demands bearing, the other discarding; the one 
you. Inferiority can hardly be a desideratum." commands submission, the other the will.165 How should I think 

"Perhaps you'll understand me better if instead of inferiority of this contradiction without doing injustice to either? What I 
I say resignation, a word that one used to hear a lot o{ but could not conjoin in my mind probably lends itself to living one 
seldom anymore." after the other. 

"It also sounds very Christian." And so I decided to cross over into lower and everyday life, my 

''As I said, there seem to be all sorts of things in Christianity life, and to begin down there, where I stood. 
that maybe one would do well to keep. Nietzsche is too When thinking leads to the unthinkable, it is time to return 
oppositional. Like everything healthy and long-lasting, truth to simple life. What thinking cannot solve, life solves, and what 
unfortunately adheres more to the middle way, which we action never decides is reserved for thinking. If I ascend to the 
unjustly abhor." highest and most difficult on the one hand, and seek to eke out 

"I really had no idea that you talce such a mediating position." redemption that reaches even higher, then the true way does not 

"Neither did I-my position is not entirely clear to me. If I lead upward, but toward the depths, since only my other leads me 
mediate, I certainly mediate in a very peculiar manner." beyond myself But acceptance of the other means a descent into 
At this moment the servant brought the book, and I took my the opposite, from seriousness into the laughable, from suffering 
leave from the librarian. into the cheerful, from the beautiful into the ugly, from the pure 

into the impure.I66 

[2] The divine wants to live with me. My resistance is in vain. 
167
I asked my thinking, and it said: "Take as your model one that 
shows you how to live the divine." Our natural model is Christ. N OX secundaWe have stood under his law since antiquity; first outwardly, and Cap. xv. 
then inwardly. At first we knew this, and then knew it no longer. 
We fought against Christ, we deposed him, and we seemed to be [HI roo] On leaving the library, I stood in the anteroom 
conquerors. But he remained in us and mastered us. again.16B This time I look across to the door on the left. I put the 

It is better to be thrown into visible chains than into invisible small book into my pocket and go to the door; it is also open, and 
ones. You can certainly leave Christianity but it does not leave leads to a large kitchen, with a large chimney over the stove. Two 
you. Your liberation from it is delusion. Christ is the way. You long tables stand in the middle of the room, flanked by benches. 
can certainly run away, but then you are no longer on the way. Brass pots, copper pans, and other vessels stand on shelves along 
The way of Christ ends on the cross. Hence we are crucified the walls. A large fat woman is standing at the stove-apparently 

ch. I, p. 33). The theme of the Imitation of Christ dates back much earlier. There was much discussion in the Middle Ages concerning how this was to be understood 
(on the history of this notion, see Giles Constable, "The Ideal of the Imitation of Christ," in Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought [Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1995], pp. 143-248). As Constable shows, two broad approaches may be distinguished, depending upon how imitation was understood: the first, the 
imitation of the divinity of Christ, stressed the doctrine of deification by which "Christ showed the way to become God through him" (p. 218). The 
second, the imitation of the humanity and body of Christ, stressed the imitation ofhis life on earth. The most extreme form of this was in the tradition ofstigmatics, 
individuals who bore the wounds of Christ on their body 


161 I.e., Thus Spoke zarathustra. 

162 In The Imitation ojChrist, Thomas aKempis wrote: "There is no salvation for the soul nor hope for eternal life except in the cross. Take up your cross then, and follow 
Jesus, and you will enter eternal life. He went before you carrying his cross, and on the cross he died for you, so that you too should carry your cross, and long for a 
death on the cross. For ifyou share his death, you will also share his life" (book 2, ch. 12, p. 90). 

163 The Draft continues: "But we know that the ancients spoke to us in images. Hence my thinking advised me to emulate Christ, not to imitate him but because he is the 
way If I follow a way, I do not imitate him. But if I imitate Christ, he is my goal and not my way But ifhe is my way, I thus go toward his goal, as the mysteries had 
shown me previously Thus my thinking spoke to me in a confused and ambiguous manner, but it advised me to imitate Christ" (p. 366). 

164 The Drqft continues: "His 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 oflife. But as I was still blinded, I was inclined to yield to the enormous temptation of imitation and to look across to 
Christ, as ifhe were my goal and not my way" (P.367). 

165 The references seem to be to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, respectively 
166 The Drqft continues: "Consider this. Once you have considered it, you will understand the adventure that beset me the following night" (P.368). 
167 Second night. 
168 January 17, 1914á 



294 I LIBER SECUNDUS 100/103 

the cook-wearing a checkered apron. I greet her, somewhat toward me: "We are wandering to Jerusalem to pray at the most 
astonished. She too seems embarrassed. I ask her: "May I sit down holy sepulcher." 
for a while? It's cold outside and I must wait for something." "Take me with you." 


"please have a seat." 
172"You cannot join us, you have a body. But we are dead." 

She wipes the table in front of me. Having nothing else to do, "Who are you?" 
I take out my Thomas and begin to read. The cook is curious and "I am Ezechiel, and I am an Anabaptist."173 
looks at me furtively. Every once in a while she goes past me. "Who are those wandering with you?" 

"Excuse me, are you perhaps a clergyman?" "These are my fellow believers." 
"No, why do you think so?" "Why are you wandering?" 
"Oh, I just thought you mightbe because you are reading a "We cannot stop, but must make a pilgrimage to all the 


small black book. My mother, may God rest her soul, left me such holy places." 

a book." "What drives you to this?" 
"I see, and what book might that be?" "I don't knOw. But it seems that we still have no peace, although 
"It is called The Imitation of Christ. It's a very beautiful book. we died in true belief" 

I often pray with it in the evenings." "Why do you have no peace ifyou died in true belief?" 
"You have guessed well, I too am reading The Imitation ofChrist." "It always seems to me as ifwe had not come to aproper end 
"1 don't believe that a man like you would read such a book with life." 

unless he were a pastor." "Remarkable-how so?" 
"Why shouldn't I read it? It also does me good to read a "It seems to me that we forgot something important that 
proper book." should also have been lived." 
"]vIy mother, God bless her, had it with her on her deathbed, "And what was that?" 
and she gave it to me before she died." "Would you happen to know?" 
I browse through the book absentmindedly while she is With these words he reaches out greedily and uncannily 

100/101 
spealcing. My eyes fall on the following / passage in the nineteenth toward me, his eyes shining as if from inner heat. 
chapter: "The righteous base their intentions more on the mercy "Let go, daimon, you did not live your animal."174 
of God, which in whatever they undertake they trust more than The cook is standing in front of me with a horrified face; she 
their own wisdom."169 has talcen me by the arm and grips me firmly. "For God's sake," she 

This is the intuitive method that Thomas recommends, it calls out, "Help, what's wrong with you? Are you in a bad way?" 
occurs to me.170 I turn to the cook: "Your mother was a clever I look at her astonished and wonder where I really am. But 
woman, and she did well to give you this book." soon strange people burst in-among them the librarian


"Yes, indeed, it has often comforted me in difficult hours and infinitely astonished and dismayed at first, then laughing 
it always provides good counse1." maliciously: "Oh, I might have known! ~iclc, the police!" 

I become immersed in my thoughts again: I believe one can Before I can collect myself, I am pushed through a crowd . 
also follow one's own nose. That would also bel71 the intuitive ofpeople into a van. I am still clutching my copy ofThomas and 
method. But the beautiful way in which Christ does this must ask myself: "What would he say to this new situation?" I open 
nevertheless be ofspecial value. I would like to imitate Christ-an the booldet and my eyes fall on the thirteenth chapter, where it 
inner disquiet seizes me-what is supposed to happen? I hear says: "So long as we live here on earth, we cannot escape tempan 
odd swishing and whirring-and suddenly a roaring sound tation. There is no man who is so perfect, and no saint so sacred, 
fills the room like a horde of large birds-with a frenzied that he cannot be tempted on occasion. Yes, we can hardly be 
flapping of wings-I see many shadowlike human forms rush without temptation."175 
past and I hear a manifold babble of voices utter the words: Wise Thomas, you always come up with the right answer. That 
"Let us pray in the temple!" crazy Anabaptist certainly had no such knowledge, or he might 

"Where are you rushing off to?" I call out. A bearded have made a peaceful end. He also could have read it in Cicero: 
man with tousled hair and dark shining eyes stops and turns rerum omnium satietas vitae focit satietatem-satietas vitae tempus maturum 

169 "The resolve of the upright depends upon the grace of God, not on their own wisdom; in him they trust, whatever they undertake; for man proposes, God disposes, 
and it is l1Otfor man to choose his lot" (The Imitation ofChrist, book 1, ch. 19, p. 54). 

170 Instead of this sentence, Black Book 4 has: "Well, Henri Bergson, I think there you have it-this is precisely the genuine and right intuitive method" (p. 9). On March 
20, 1914, Adolf Keller gave a talk on "Bergson and the theory oflibido" to the Zurich Psychoanalytical Society. In the discussion, Jung said "Bergson should have been 
discussed here long ago. B. says everything that we have not said" (MZS, vol. 1, p. 57). On July 24,1914, Jung gave a talk in London where he noted that his "constructive 
method" corresponded to Bergson's "intuitive method" ("On psychological understanding," Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, ed. Constance Long [London: 
Balliere, Tindall and Cox, 1917], p. 399). The work Jung read was L'evolution creatrice (Paris: Alcan, 1907). He possessed the 1912 German translation. 

171 Cary Baynes's transcription has: "Bergson's." 
172 In the Draft, the speaker is identified as "The Uncanny One." 
173 The biblical Ezechiel was a prophet in the sixth century BCE. Jung saw a great deal ofhistorical significance in his visions, which incorporated a mandala with quaternities, 


as representing the humanization and differentiation ofYahweh. Although Ezechiel's visions are often viewed as pathological, Jung defended their normality, arguing that 
visions are natural phenomena that can be designated as pathological only when their morbid aspects have been demonstrated ("Answer to Job," 1952, CW II, ¤¤665, 
667,686). Anabaptism was a radical movement of the sixteenth-century Protestant reformation, which tried to restore the spirit of the early church. The movement 
originated in Zurich in the 1520S, where they rebelled against Zwingli and Luther's reluctance to completely reform the church. They rejected the practice of infant 
baptism, and promoted adult baptisms (the first of these took place in Zollikon, which is near Kusnacht, where Jung lived). Anabaptists stressed the immediacy of the 
human relation with God and were critical of religious institutions. The movement was violently suppressed and thousands were killed. See Daniel Liechty, ed., Early 
Anabaptist Spirituality: selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1994). 

174 In 1918, Jungargued that Christianity had suppressed the animal element ("On the unconscious," CW 10, ¤31). He elaborated this theme in his 1923 seminars in 
Polzeath, Cornwall. In 1939, he argued that the "psychological sin" which Christ committed was that "he did not live the animal side ofhimself" (Modern Psychology 4, p. 230). 

175 Chapter 13 ofbook 1 of the Imitation ojChrist begins: ''As long as we are in this world we shall have to face trials and temptations. As it says in the Book of Job-What 
is man's life on earth but a time of temptation? That is why we should treat our temptations as a serious matter and endeavor by vigilance and prayer to keep the devil 
from finding any loophole. Remember that the devil never sleeps, but goes about looking for his prey. There is no one so perfect and holy that he never meets temptation; 
we cannot escape it altogether" (p. 46). He goes on to emphasize the benefits oftemptation, as being the means through which a man is "humbled, purified and disciplined." 


NOX SECUNDA I 295 

mortis affert [satiety of all things causes satiety of life-one is 
satiated with life and the time is ripe for deathJ.1 6 This knowledge

7 

had evidently brought me into conflict with society. I was flanked 
by policemen left and right. "Well," I said to them, "you can let 

101/102 
me go now." "Yes, we know all about this," / one said laughing. 
"Now just you hold your peace," said the other sternly. So, we are 
obviously heading for the madhouse. That is a high price to pay. 
But one can go this way too, it seems. It's not so strange, since 
thousands ofour fellows take that path. 

We have arrived-a large gate, a hall-a friendly bustling 
sup'erintendent-and now also two doctors. One of them is a 
small fat professor. 

Pr: "What's that book you've got there?" 
"It's Thomas aKempis, The Imitation ofChrist. " 
Pr: "So, a form of religious madness, perfectly clear, religious 


paranoia.I77-You see, my dear, nowadays, the imitation of Christ 

leads to the madhouse." 
"That is hardly to be doubted, professor." 
Pr: "The man has wit-he is obviously somewhat maniacally 

aroused. Do you hear voices?" 
"You bet! Today it was a huge throng of Anabaptists that 

swarmed through the kitchen." 
Pr: "Now, there we have it. Are the voices following you?" 
"Oh no, Heaven forbid, I summoned them." 
Pr: ''Ah, this is yet another case that clearly indicates that 

hallucinations directly call up voices. This belongs in the case 
history. Would you immediately malce a note ofthat, doctor?" 
"With all due respect, Professor, may I say that it is absolutely 
not abnormal, but much rather the intuitive method." 

Pr: "Excellent. The fellow also uses neologisms. Well-I 
suppose we have an adequately clear diagnosis. Anyway, I wish 
you a good recovery, and make sure you stay quiet." 

"But professor, I'm not at all sick, I feel perfectly well." 

Pr: "Look, my dear. You don't have any insight into your 
illness yet. The prognosis is naturally pretty bad, with at best 
limited recovery." 

Superintendent: "Professor, can the man keep the book?" 
Pr: "Well, I suppose so, as it seems to be a harmless 
prayer book." 

Now my clothes are inventoried-then the bath-and now 
I'm talcen off to the ward. I enter a large sickroom, where I'm 
told to get into bed. The person to my left is lying motionless 
with a transfixed gaze, while the one to the right appears to 
possess a brain whose girth and weight are shrinking. I enjoy 
perfect silence. The problem of madness is profound. Divine 

. 
madness-a higher form of the irrationality ofthe life streaming 
through us-at any rate a madness that cannot be integrated into 
present-day society-but how? What if the form ofsociety were 
integrated into madness? At this point things grow dark, and 
there is no end in sight.178 

[2] [HI 102] The growing plant sprouts a sapling on its 
right-hand side, and when this is completely formed, the natural 
urge to grow will not develop beyond the final bud but flows back 
into the stem, into the mother of the sprig, paving an uncertain 
way in the dark and through the stem, and finally finding the 
right position on the left where it sprouts a new sapling. But this 
new direction of growth is completely opposed to the previous 
one. And yet the plant nevertheless grows regularly in this way, 
without overstraining or disturbing its balance. 
On the right is my thinking, on the left is my feeling. I enter 
the space of my feeling which was previously unknown to me, 
and see with astonishment the difference between my two rooms. 
I cannot help laughing-many laugh instead of crying. I have 
stepped from the right foot onto the left, and wince, struck by 
inner pain. The difference between hot and cold is too great. I 
leave the spirit of this world which has thought Christ through 
to the end, and step over into that other funny-frightful realm in 
which I can find Christ again. 

The "imitation of Christ" led me to the master himselfand to 
his astonishing kingdom. I do not know what I want there; I can 
only follow the master who governs this other realm in me. In 
this realm other laws are valid than the guidelines of my wisdom. 
Here, the "mercy of God," which I had never relied on, for good 
practical reasons, is the highest law of action. The "mercy of 
God" signifies a particular / state of the soul in which I entrust 102/103 
myself to all neighbors with trembling and hesitation and with 
the mightiest outlay ofhope that everything will work out well. 

I can no longer say that this or that goal should be reached, or 
that this or that reason should apply because it is good; instead I 
grope through mist and night. No line emerges, no law appears; 
instead everything is thoroughly and convincingly accidental, as 
a matter of fact even terribly accidental. But one thing becomes 
dreadfully clear, namely that contrary to my earlier way and all its 
insights and intentions, henceforth all is error. It becomes ever 
more apparent that nothing leads, as my hope sought to persuade 
me, but that everything misleads. 

And suddenly to your shivering horror it becomes clear to you 
that you have fallen into the boundless, the abyss, the inanity of 
eternal chaos. It rushes toward you as if carried by the roaring 
wings of a storm, the hurtling waves ofthe sea. 

Every man has a quiet place in his soul, where everything 
is self-evident and easily explainable, a place to which he likes 
to retire from the confusing possibilities of life, because there 
everything is simple and clear, with a manifest and limited 
purpose. About nothing else in the world can a man say with 
the same conviction as he does of this place: "You are nothing 
but ... " and indeed he has said it. 

And even this place is a smooth surface, an everyday wall, 
nothing more than a snugly sheltered and frequently polished 
crust over the mystery of chaos. Ifyou break through this most 
everyday ofwalls, the overwhelming stream of chaos will flood 

176 The citation is from Cicero's Cato Maior de Senectute (Cato the Elder on Old Age), The text is a eulogy to old age. The lines Jung cites are italicized in the following 
passage: "Omnino, ut mihi quidem videtur, rerum omnium satietas vitaefoCi! satietatem. Sunt pueritiae studia certa; num igitur ea des ide rant adulescentes? Sunt ineuntis 
adulescentiae: num ea cons tans iam requirit aetas quae media dicitur? Sunt etiam eius aetatis; ne ea quidem quaeruntur in senectute. Sunt extrema quaedam studia 
senectutis: ergo, ut superiorum aetatum studia occidunt, sic occidunt etiam senectutis; quod cum evenit, satietas vitae tempus maturum mortis qffert" (Tullii Ciceronis, Cato 
Maior de Senectttte, ed. Julius Sommerbrodt [Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1873]). Translation: "Undoubtedly; as it seems to me at least, satiety ofall things causes 
satiety oflife. Boyhood has certain pursuits: does adolescence yearn for them? Adolescence has its pursuits: does the matured or so-called middle stage oflife need them? 
Maturity; too, has such as not even sought in old age, and finally; there are those suitable to old age. Therefore as the pleasures and pursuits of the earlier periods of 
life fall away; so also do those of old age; and when that happens one is satiated oflife and the time is ripefor death" (Cicero, De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Divinatione [London: 
William Heinemann, 1927], pp. 86-88, tr. mod.). 

177 Black Book 4 has: "paranoid form of Dementia praecox" (p. 16). 

178 In the Drqft a passage occurs here, a paraphrase ofwhich follows: Since I was a thinker, my feeling was the lowest, oldest, and least developed. When I was brought up 
against the unthinkable through my thinking and what was unreachable through my thought power, then I could only press forward in a forced way But I overloaded 
on one side, and the other side sank deeper. Overloading is not growth, which is what we need (p. 376). 


296 I LIBER SECUNDUS r03/r06 

in. Chaos is not single, but an unending multiplicity. It is not for their young, how they go together to pasture, and how they 
formless, otherwise it would be single, but it is filled with draw one another to the spring. There is not one that conceals 
figures that have a confusing and overwhelming effect due to its overabundance of prey and lets its brother starve as a result. 
their fullness.179 There is not one that tries to enforce its will on those of its own 

These figures are the dead, not just your dead, that is, all the kind. Not a one mistakenly imagines that it is an elephant when 
images ofthe shapes you took in the past, which your ongoing life it is a mosquito. The animal lives fittingly and true to the life ofits 
has left behind, but also the thronging dead of human history, species, neither exceeding nor falling short of it. 
the ghostly procession of the past, which is an ocean compared He who never lives his animal must treat his brother like an 
to the drops ofyour own life span. I see behind you, behind the animal. Abase yourself and live your animal so that you will be 
mirror of your eyes, the crush of dangerous shadows, the dead, able to treat your brother correctly. You will thus redeem all those 
who look greedily through the empty sockets of your eyes, who roaming dead who strive to feed on the living. And do not turn 
moan and hope to gather up through you all the loose ends of anything you do into a law, since that is the hubris ofpower.ISO 
the ages, which sigh in them. Your cluelessness does not prove When the time has come and you open the door to the dead, 
anything. Put your ear to that wall and you will hear the rustling your horrors will also afflict your brother, for your countenance 
of their procession. proclaims the disaster. Hence withdraw and enter solitude, since 

Now you know why you lodged the simplest and most easily no one can give you counsel ifyou wrestle with the dead. Do not 
explained matters in just that spot, why you praised that peaceful cry for help if the dead surround you, otherwise the living will 
seat as the most secure: so that no one, least of all yoursel£ talce flight, and they are your only bridge to the day. Live the life 
would unearth the mystery there. For this is the place where of the day and do not speak of mysteries, but dedicate the night 
day and night agonizingly merge. What you excluded from your to bringing about the salvation of the dead. 
life, what you renounced and damned, everything that was and For whoever well-meaningly tears you away from the dead has 
could have gone wrong, awaits you behind that wall before which rendered you the worst service, since he has torn your life branch 
you sit quietly. from the tree of divinity. He also sins against restoring what 

Ifyou read the books ofhistory, you will find men who sought was created and later subjugated and lost.lSI "For the earnest 
the strange and incredible, who ensnared themselves and who expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the 
were held captive by others in wolv~s' lairs; men who sought the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not 
highest and the lowest, and who were wiped by fate, incomplete, willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in 
from the tablets ofthe living. Few ofthe living know ofthem, and hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from 
these few appreciate nothing about them, but shake their heads at the bondage ofcorruption into the glorious liberty ofthe children 
such delusion. of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and 

While you mock them, one ofthem stands behind you, panting travaileth in pain together until now." 
from rage and despair at the fact that your stupor does not attend Every step upward will restore a step downward so that the 
to him. He besieges you in sleepless nights, sometimes he takes dead will be delivered into freedom. The creating of the new 
hold of you in an illness, sometimes he crosses your intentions. shrinks from the day since its essence is secret. It prepares the 
He malces you overbearing and greedy, he pricks your longing for destruction of precisely this day in the hope of leading it over 
everything, which avails you nothing, he devours your success in into a new creation. Something evil is attached to the creation 
discord. He accompanies you as your evil spirit, to whom you can of the new, which you cannot proclaim loudly. The animal that 
grant no release. looks for new hunting grounds cowers slinking and sniffing on 

Have you heard of those dark ones who roamed incognito dark paths and does not want to be surprised. 
alongside those who ruled the day, conspiratorially causing Please consider that it is the suffering ofthe creative that they 
unrest? Who devised cunning things and did not shrink from any carry something evil in them, a leprosy of the soul that separates 
crime to honor their God? them from its danger. They could praise their leprosy as a virtue 

Beside them place Christ, who was the greatest among them. and could indeed do so out of virtuousness. But this would be 
It was too little for him to brealc the world, so he broke himself doing what Christ does, and would therefore be his imitation. 
And therefore he was the greatest of them all, and the powers For only one was Christ and only one could violate the laws as he 
of this world did not reach him. But I spealc of the dead who did. It is impossible to commit higher infringements on his path. 
fell prey to power, broken by force and not by themselves. Their Fulfill that which comes to you. Break the Christ in yourself so 

r03/r04 hordes people the land of the soul. Ifyou accept / them, they fill that you may arrive at yourself and ultimately at your animal 
you with delusion and rebellion against what rules the world. From which is well-behaved in its herd and unwilling to infringe its 
the deepest and from the highest they devised the most dangerlaws. 
May it suffice in terms of transgression that you do not 
ous things. They were not ofa common nature, but fine blades of imitate Christ, since thereby you take a step back from Christianity 
the hardest steel. They would have nothing to do with the small and a step beyond it. Christ brought salvation through adeptness, 
lives of men. They lived on the heights and accomplished the and ineptitude will save you. 
lowest. They forgot only one thing: they did not live their animal. Have you counted the dead whom the master of sacrifice 
The animal does not rebel against its own kind. Consider honored? Have you asked them for whose salce they believe 
animals: how just they are, how well-behaved, how they keep they have suffered death? Have you entered the beauty of their 
to the time-honored, how loyal they are to the land that bears thoughts and the purity oftheir intention? "And they shall go forth, 
them, how they hold to their accustomed routes, how they care and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed 

179 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "26. 1. 1919." The date appears to refer to when this section was transcribed into the calligraphic volume. 

180 In 1930, Jung said in a seminar: "We are prejudiced in regard to the animal. People don't understand when I tell them they should become acquainted with their animals 
or assimilate their animals. They think the animal is always jumping over walls and raising hell allover town. Yet in nature the animal is a well-behaved citizen. It is 
pious, it follows the path with great regularity, it does nothing extravagant. Only man is extravagant. So ifyou assimilate the character of the animal you become a 
peculiarly law-abiding citizen, you go very slowly; and you become very reasonable in your ways, in as much as you can afford it" (Visions I, p. 168). 

181 The Handwritten Drqft has in the margin: "Rom 819" (p. 863). What follows in the text is a citation from Romans 8:19-22. 


NOX SECUNDA I 297 

against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire Therefore you should have reverence for what has become, so 
be quenched."182 that the law oflove may become redemption through the restoration 

Thus do penance, consider what fell victim to death for the ofthe lower and ofthe past, not perdition through the boundless 
sake of Christianity, lay it before you and force yourself to accept mastery of the dead. But the spirits of those who die before 
it. For the dead need salvation. The number of the unredeemed their time will live, for the sake of our present' incompleteness, 
dead has become greater than the number of living Christians; in dark hordes in the rafters of our houses and besiege our ears 
therefore it is time that we accept the dead.183 with urgent laments, until we grant them redemption through 

Do not throw yourself against what has become, enraged or restoring what has existed since ancient times under the rule 
benton destruction. What will you put in its place? Do you not oflove. 
know that if you are successful in destroying what has become, What we call temptation is the demand of the dead who 
you will then turn the will of destruction against yourself? But passed away prematurely and incomplete through the guilt ofthe 
anyone who makes destruction their goal will perish through good and of the laW. For no good is so complete that it could not 
self-destruction. Much rather respect what has become, since do injustice and brealc what should not be broken. 
reverence is a blessing. 

Then turn to the dead/84 listen to their lament and accept We are a blinded race. We live only on the surface, only in 

104/105 them with love. Be not their blind spokesman/85 / [Image 105]186 the present, and think only of tomorrow. We deal roughly with 

105/106 / there are prophets who in the end have stoned themselves. But the past in that we do not accept the dead. We want to work 
we seek salvation and hence we need to revere what has become onlywith visible success. Above all we want to be paid. We would 
and to accept the dead, who have fluttered through the air and consider it insane to do hidden work that does not visibly serve 
lived like bats under our roofs since time immemorial. The new men. There is no doubt that the necessity of life forced us to 
will be built on the old and the meaning ofwhat has become will prefer only those fruits one can taste. But who suffers more from 
become manifold. Your poverty in what has become you will thus the tempting and misleading influence of the dead than those 
deliver into the wealth of the future. who have gone wholly missing on the surface of the world? 
There is one necessary but hidden and strange work-a 
What seeks to distance you from Christianity and its holy rule major work-which you must do in secret, for the sake of the 
of love are the dead, who could find no peace in the Lord since dead. He who cannot attain his own visible field and vineyard 
their uncompleted workhas followed them. A new salvation is always is held fast by the dead, who demand the work of atonement 
a restoring of the previously lost. Did not Christ himself restore from him. And until he has fulfilled ihis, he cannot get to 
bloody human sacrifice, which better customs had expelled from his outer work, since the dead do not let him. He shall have 
sacred practice since days of old? Did he not himself reinstate to search his soul and act in stillness at their behest and complete 
the sacred practice of the eating of human.sacrifice? In your the mystery; so that the dead will not let him. Do not look 
sacred practice that which earlier laws condemned will once again forward so much, but back and into yourself, so that you will not 
be included. fail to hear the dead. 
However, just as Christ brought back human sacrifice and the It belongs to the way of Christ that he ascends with few 
eating of the sacrificed, all this happened to him and not to his of the living, but many of the dead. His work was the salvation 
brother, since Christ placed above it the highest law of love, so of the despised and lost, for whose salce he was crucified between 
that no brother would come to harm as a result, but so that all two criminals. 
could rejoice in the restoration. The same thing happened as in I suffer my agony between two madmen. I enter the truth if I 
ancient times, but now under the law oflove.187 So ifyou have no descend. Become accustomed to being alone with the dead. It is 
reverence for what has become, you will destroy the law oflove.188 difficult, but this is precisely how you will discover the worth of 
And what will become ofyou then? You will be forced to restore your living companions. 
what was before, namely violent deeds, murder, wrongdoing, and What the ancients did for their dead! You seem to believe 
contempt ofyour brother. And one will be alien to the other, and that you can absolve yourself from the care of the dead, and 
confusion will rule. from the work that they so greatly demand, since what is dead 

182 This is a citation from Isaiah 24:66. 

183 The Drqft continues: "We were led by a prophet, whose proximity to God had driven him insane. He raged blindly against Christianity in his sermon, but he was the 
champion of the dead who had appointed him their spokesman and resounding trumpet. He shouted in a deafening voice so that many would hear him, and the power 
ofhis language also burned those who resisted death. He preached the struggle against Christianity. This was good, too" (p. 387). The reference is to Nietzsche. 

184 The Draft continues: "whose champion you are" (P.388). 
185 The Drqft continues: "like that raving prophet who did not know whose cause he was promoting, but instead believed himself to be speaking on his own behalfand 
thought he was the will ofdestruction" (p. 388). The reference is to Nietzsche. 

186 In 1930, Jung anonymously reproduced this image in "Commentary on 'The Secret of the Golden Flower' "as a mandala painted by a male patient during treatment. 
He described it as follows: "In the centre, the white light, shining in the firmament; in the first circle, protoplasmic life-seeds; in the second, rotating cosmic principles 
which contain the four primary colors; in the third and fourth, creative forces working inward and outward. At the cardinal points, the masculine and feminine souls, 
both again divided into light and dark" (CW 13, A6). He reproduced it again in 1952 in "Concerning mandala symbolism" and wrote: "Picture by a middle-aged man. 
In the center is a star. The blue sky contains golden clouds. At the four cardinal points we see human figures: at the top, an old man in the attitude ofcontemplation; 
at the bottom, Loki or Hephaestus with red, flaming hair, holding in his hands a temple. To the right and left are a light and dark female figure. Together they indicate 
four aspects of the personality, or four archetypal figures belonging, as it were, to the periphery of the self The two female figures can be recognized without difficulty 
as the two aspects ofthe anima. The old man corresponds to the archetype ofmeaning, or ofthe spirit, and the dark chthonic figure to the opposite of the Wise Old 
Man, namely the magical (and sometimes destructive) Luciferian element. In alchemy it is Hermes Trismegistus versus Mercurius, the evasive 'trickster.' The circle 
enclosing the sky contains structures or organisms that look like protozoa. The sixteen globes painted in four colors just outside the circle derived originally from an 
eye motifand therefore stand for the observing and discriminating consciousness. Similarly; the ornaments in the next circle, all opening inward, are rather like vessels 
pouring out their content toward the center. [Fn: There is a similar conception in alchemy; in the Ripley Scrowle and its variants (Psychology and Alchemy, fig 257). 
There it is the planetary Gods who are pouring their qualities into the bath ofrebirth.] On the other hand the ornaments along the rim open outward, as if to receive 
something from outside. That is, in the individuation process what were originally projections stream back 'inside' and are integrated into the personality again. Here, 
in contrast to Figure 25, :Above' and 'Below,' male and female, are integrated, as in the alchemical hermaphrodite" (CW 9, I, ¤682). On March 21,1950, he wrote to 
Raymond Piper concerning the same image: "The other picture is by an educated man about 40 years old. He produced this picture also as an at-first unconscious 
attempt to restore order in the emotional state he was in which had been caused by an invasion ofunconscious contents" (Letters I, p. 550). 

187 The Draft continues: "Not one title of Christian law is abrogated, but instead we are adding a new one: accepting the lament ofthe dead" (p. 390). 
188 The Drqft continues: "It is nothing other than common evil desire, nothing but everyday temptation, as long as you do not know that it is what the dead demand. But 
as long as you know about the dead, you will understand your temptation. As long as it is no more than evil desire, what can you do about itr Damn it, regret it, arise 


29B I LIBER SECUNDUS 106/n2 

is past. You excuse yourself with your disbelief in the immortality 
of the soul. Do you think that the dead do not exist because 
you have' devised the impossibility of immortality? You believe 
in your idols of words. The dead produce effects, that is 
sufficient. In the inner world there is no explaining away, as 
little as you can explain away the sea in the outer world. You 
must finally understand your purpose in explaining away, namely 
to seek protection.189 
I accepted the chaos, and in the following night, my soul 

106/10B approached me. I [Image 107] I 

N OX tertial90 

Cap. xvi. 

[HI loB] 191My soul spoke to me in a whisper, urgently and 
alarmingly: "Words, words, do not make too many words. Be 
silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you 
admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely 
mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness 
and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. 
So accept madness too. Let the light ofyour madness shine, 
and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised 
and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life." 

1: "Your words sound hard and the task you set me is difficult." 
S: "Ifyou want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, 
since it malees up such a great part ofyour nature." 
1: "I didn't know that this is so." 
S: "Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid 
becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and 
clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily 
life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly 
illogical. Man strives toward áreason only so that he can malee 
rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery 
and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to 
impose something comprehensible on life." 
1: "That all sounds very desolate, but nevertheless it prompts 
me to disagree." 
S: "You have nothing to disagree with-you are in the madhouse." 
There stands the fat little professor-had he spoken this way? 
And had I taken him for my soul? 
Prof: "Yes, my dear, you are confused. Your speech is 
completely incoherent." 

I: "I too believe that I've completely lost myself. Am I really 
crazy? It's all terribly confusing." 
Prof: "Have patience, everything will work out. Anyway, 
sleep welL" 

I: "Thank you, but I'm afraid." 
Everything inside me is in utter disarray. Matters are becoming 
serious, and chaos is approaching. Is this the ultimate bottom? 
Is chaos also a foundation? If only there weren't these terrible 
waves. Everything breaks asunder like black billows. Yes, I see 

and understand: it is the ocean, the almighty nocturnal tide-a 
ship moves there-a large steamer-I'm just about to enter the 
smoking parlor-many people-beautiful clothes-they all look 
at me astonished-someone comes up to me and says: "What's the 
matter? You look just like a ghost! What happened?" 

1: "Nothing-that is-I believe that I have gone crazy-the 
floor sways-everything moves-" 
Someone: "The sea is somewhat rough this evening, that's 
all-have a hot toddy-you're seasick." 

I: "You're right, I am seasick but in a special way-I'm really 
in a madhouse." 
Someone: "Well now; you're joking again, life is returning." 

1: "Do you call that wit? Just now the professor pronounced 
me truly and utterly mad." 
The fat little professor is actually sitting at a green-covered 
table playing cards. He turns toward me when he hears me speale 
and laughs: "Well, where did you get to? Come here. Would you 
like a drink too? You're quite a character, I must say. You've put 
all the ladies in quite a flurry this evening." 

1: "Professor, for me this is no longer a joke. Just now I was 
your patient-" 
The parlor erupts in unbridled laughter. 
Prof: "I hope that I haven't upset you too much." 

I: "Well, to be committed is no small matter.'~ 
The person to whom I had been speaking before suddenly 
comes up to me and looks me in the face. He is a man with a black 
beard, a tousled head ofhair, and dark shining eyes. He speaks to 
me vehemently: "Something worse happened to me, it's five years 
now that I've been here." 

I realize that it is my neighbor, who has apparently awakened 
from his apathy and is now sitting on my bed. He goes on speaking 
fiercely and urgently: "But I am Nietzsche, only rebaptized, I am 
also Christ, the Savior, and appointed to save the world, but they 
won't let me." 

I: "Who won't let you?" 
The fool: "The devil. We are in Hell. But ofcourse, you haven't 
noticed it yet. I didn't realize until the second year of my time 
here that the director is the devil." 

I: "You mean the professor? That sounds incredible." 
The fool: "You're an ignoramus. I was supposed to marry the 
mother of God long ago.192 But the professor, that devil, has her 
in his power. Every evening when the sun goes down he gets her 
with child. In the morning before sunrise she gives birth to it. 
Then all the devils come together and kill the child in a gruesome 
I [Image 109]193 I manner. I distinctly hear his cries." 10B/no 

1: "But what you have told me is pure mythology." 
The fool: "You're crazy and understand nothing of it. You 
belong in the madhouse. My God, why does my family always 
shut me in with crazy people? I'm supposed to save the world, 
I'm the Savior!" 

He lies down again and sinles back into his lassitude. I clutch 
the sides of my bed to protect myself against the terrible waves. 
I stare at the wall, so that I can at least latch onto something with 

anew, only to stumble again and mock and loathe yourself, but definitely despise and pity yourself But ifyou lmow what the dead demand, temptation will become the 
wellspring ofyour best work, indeed of the work ofsalvation: When Christ ascended after completing his work, he led those up with him who had died prematurely 
and incomplete under the law ofhardship and alienation and raw violence. The lamentations ofthe dead filled the air at the time, and their misery became so loud 
that even the living were saddened, and became tired and sick oflife and yearned to die to this world already in their living bodies. And thus you too lead the dead to 
their completion with your work ofsalvation" (pp. 390-9I). 

IS9 The Drcift continues: "You employ old word magic to protect yourself through superstition for you are still a powerless child of the old wood. But we can see behind 
your word magic, and it is rendered feeble, and nothing protects you against the chaos other than acceptance" (P.395). 

190 Third night. 

191 January IS, 19I4. 

192 In The Relations between the I and the Unconscious (I92S), Jung refersto a case of a man with paranoid dementia he encountered during his time at the Burgholzli who was 
in telephonic communication with the Mother of God (CW 7, ¤229). 

193 Image legend: "This man ofmatter rises up too far in the world of the spirits, but there the spirit of the heart bores through him with a golden ray He falls with joy 
and disintegrates. The serpent, who is evil, could not remain in the world ofspirits." 


NOX TERTIA I 299 

my eyes. A horizontal line runs along the wall, which is painted a words have meanings. With words you pull up the underworld. 
darker color beneath. A radiator stands in front ofit-it is a railing Word, the paltriest and the mightiest. In words the emptiness 
and I can see the sea beyond it. The line is the horizon. And there and the fullness flow together. Hence the word is an image 
the sun now rises in red glory, solitary and magnificent-in it is a of God. The word is the greatest and the smallest that man 
cross from which a serpent hangs-or is it a bull, slit open, as at created, just as what is created through man is the greatest and 
the slaughterhouse, or is it an ass? I suppose it is really a ram with the smallest. 
a crown of thorns-or is it the crucified one, myself? The sun of So if I fall prey to the web ofwords, I fall prey to the greatest 
martyrdom has arisen and is pouring bloody rays over the sea. and the smallest. I am at the mercy of the sea, of the inchoate 
This spectacle lasts a long time, the sun rises higher, its rays grow waves that are forever changing place. Their essence is movement 
brighterl94 and hotter and the sun burns down white on a blue sea. and movement is their order. He who strives against waves is 
The swell has subsided. A charitable and quiet summer dawn lies exposed to the arbitrary. The work of men is steady but it swims 
on the shimmering sea. The salty smell ofwater rises up. A faint upon chaos. The striving of men seems like lunacy to him who 
wide surf brealcs on the sand with a dull thunder, and returns comes from the sea. But men consider him mad.198 He who comes 
incessantly, twelve times, the strokes of the world clock95-the from the sea is sick He can hardly bear the gaze of men. For to 
twelfth hour is complete. And now silence enters. No noise, no him they all seem to be drunk and foolish from sleep-inducing 
breeze. Everything is rigid and deathly still. I wait, secretlyanxpoisons. 
They want to come to your rescue, and as for accepting 
ious. I see a tree arise from the sea. Its crown reaches to Heaven help, for sure you would like less of that, rather than swindling 
and its roots reach down into Hell. I am completely alone and disyour 
way into their company and being completely like one who 
heartened and gaze from afar. It is as if all life had flown from has never seen the chaos but only talks about it. 
me and completely passed into the incomprehensible and fearful. But for him who has seen the chaos, there.is no more hiding, 
I am utterly weak and incapable. "Salvation," I whisper. A strange because he knows that the bottom sways and knows what this 
voice spealcs: "There is no salvation here,196 you must remain calm, swaying means. He has seen the order and the disorder of the 
or you will disturb the others. It is night and the other people want endless, he knows the unlawful laws. He knows the sea and can 
to sleep." I see, it's the attendant. The room is dimly lit by a weak never forget it. The chaos is terrible: days full of lead, nights 
lamp and sadness weighs on the room. full ofhorror. 

1: "I couldn't find the way." But just as Christ knew that he was the way, the truth, and the 
He says: "You don't need to find a way now." life, in that the new torment and the renewed salvation came into 
He speaks the truth. The way, or whatever it might be, on the world through him,199 I know that chaos must come over men, 
which people go, is our way, the right way. There are no paved and that the hands of those who unknowingly and unsuspectingly 
ways into the future. We say that it is this way, and it is. We break through the thin walls that separate us from the sea are 
build roads by going on. Our life is the truth that we seek Only busy. For this is our way, our truth, and our life. 
my life is the truth, the truth above all. We create the truth by Just as the disciples of Christ recognized that God had 
living it. become flesh and lived among them as a man, we now recognize 

[2] This is the night in which all the dams broke, where what that the anointed of this time is a God who does not appear in 
was previously solid moved, where the stones turned into serpents, the flesh; he is no )nan and yet is a son of man, but in spirit and 
and everything living froze. Is this a web ofwords? If it is, it is a not in flesh; hence he can be born only through the spirit ofmen 
hellish web for those caught in it. as the conceiving womb of the God.2oO What is done to this God 
There are hellish webs of words, only words, but what are you do to the lowest in yoursel£ under the law oflove according 
words? Be tentative with words, value them well, take safe words, to which nothing is cast out. For how else should your lowest be 
words without catches, do not spin them with one another so that saved from depravity? / [Image III]201 / Who should accept the IIO/II2 
no webs arise, for you are the first who is ensnared in them.197 For lowest in you, if you do not? But he who does it not from love 

194 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "22.3-1919." This seems to refer to when this passage was transcribed into the calligraphic volume. 
195 In Psychology and Religion (1938), Jung commented on the symbolism of the world clock (CW II, ¤IIoff). 
196 In Dante's Commedia, the following lines are inscribed over the gates of Hell: "Abandon every hope, you who enter" (canto 3, line 9). See The Divine Comedy ofDante 


Aligheri, vol. I., ed. and tr. Robert Durling (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 55. 
197 The Draft continues: "For words are not merely words, but have meanings for which they are set. They attract these meanings like daimonic shadows" (P.403). 
198 The Drift continues: "Once you have seen the chaos, look at your face: you saw more than death and the grave, you saw beyond and your face bears the mark ofone 

who has seen chaos and yet was a man. Many cross over, but they do not see the chaos; however the chaos sees them, stares at them, and imprints its features on them. 

And they are marked forever. Call such a one mad, for that is what he is; he has become a wave and has lost his human side, his constancy" (p. 404). 
199 The preceding sentence is crossed out in the Corrected Drift, and Jung has written in the margin: "cpIAHMQN identification" (P.405). 
200 Jung elaborated on this issue many years later in Answer to]ob (1952), where he studied the historical transformation ofJudeo-Christian God images. A major theme 

in this is the continued incarnation of God after Christ. Commenting on the Book of Revelation, Jung argued that: "Ever since John the apocalyptist experienced . 
for the first time (perhaps unconsciously) the conflict into which Christianity inevitably leads, mankind is burdened with this: God wanted and wants to become 
man" (CW II, ¤739). In Jung's view, there was a direct link between John's views and Eckhart's views: "This disturbing invasion engendered in him the image of the 
divine consort, whose image lives in every man: of the child, whom Meister Eckhart also saw in the vision. It was he who knew that God alone in his Godhead is not 
in a state ofbliss, but must be born in the human soul. The incarnation in Christ is the prototype which is continually being transferred to the creature by the Holy 
Ghost" (Ibid., ¤741). In contemporary times, Jung gave great importance to the papal bull of the Assumptio Maria. He held that it "points to the hieros gamos in the 
pleroma, and this in turn implies, as we have said, the future birth of the divine child, who, in accordance with the divine trend toward incarnation, will choose as his 
birthplace the empirical man. This metaphysical process is known as the individuation process in the psychology ofthe unconscious" (Ibid., ¤755). Through being identified 
with the continued incarnation of God in the soul, the process of individuation found its ultimate significance. On May 3, 1958, Jung wrote to Morton Kelsey: "The 
real history of the world seems to be the progressive incarnation of the deity" (Letters 2, p. 436). 


201 Image legend: "The serpent fell dead unto the earth. And that was the umbilical cord ofa new birth." The serpent is similar to the serpent in Image 109. In Black Book 
7 on January 27,1922, Jung's soul refers to images 109 and III. His soul says: "the giant cloud of eternal night is awful. I see a yellow shining stroke on this cloud from 
the top left-hand corner in the irregular shape of a streak oflightning, and behind it an indeterminate reddish light in the cloud. It does not move. I see a dead black 
serpent lying beneath the cloud and the lightning. It does not move. Beneath the cloud I see a dead black serpent and the thunderbolt stuck in its head like a spear. A 
hand, as large as that of a God, has thrown the spear and everything has frozen to a gloomy image. What is it trying to say. Do you recall that image that you painted 
years ago, the one in which the black and red man with the black and white serpent is struck by the ray of God [i.e., image 109]? This image seems to follow that one, 
because afterward you also painted the dead serpent [i.e., image III] and did you not behold a gloomy image this morning, of that man in the white robe and a black 
face, like a mummy?" I: "How now, what is this supposed to mean?" Soul: "It is an image ofyour self" (p. 57). 


300 I LIBER SECUNDUS U2/U4 

but from pride, selfishness, and greed, is damned. None of the 
damnation is cast out either.202 
Ifyou accept the lowest in you, suffering is unavoidable, since 
you do the base thing and build up what lay in ruin. There are 

3

many graves and corpses in us, an evil stench ofdecomposition.20Just as Christ through the tormentá of sanctification subjugated 
the flesh, so the God of this time through the torment of 
sanctification will subjugate the spirit. Just as Christ tormented 
the flesh through the spirit, the God of this time will torment 
the spirit through the flesh. For our spirit has become an 
impertinent whore, a slave to words created by men and no 
longer the divine word itself204 

The lowest in you is the source of mercy: We take this sickness 
upon ourselves, the inability to find peace, the baseness, and 
the contemptibility so that the God can be healed and radiantly 
ascend, purged ofthe decomposition ofdeath and the mud ofthe 
underworld. The despicable prisoner will ascend to his salvation 
shining and wholly healed.205 

Is there a suffering that would be too great to want to undergo 
for our God? You only see the one, and do not notice the other. 
But when there is one, so there is also another and that is the 
lowest in you. But the lowest in you is also the eye ofthe evil that 
stares at you and looks at you coldly and sucks your light down 
into the dark abyss. Bless the hand that keeps you up there, the 
smallest humanity; the lowest living thing. GE:ite a few would 
prefer death. Since Christ imposed bloody sacrifice on humanity; 
the renewed God will also not spare bloodshed. 

Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments 
like him that treadeth it). the winefat? I have trodden the winepress 
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.206 For I took my 
misdeed upon myself so that the God would be healed. 

Just as Christ said that he did not come to mal(e peace but 
brought the sword/07 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. 208 
But it will tal(e 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 ofmy 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.20 

9 

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."210 For 
craftiness counsels against chaos, and guilelessness veils its 

202 The Draft continues: "But who does this under the law oflove will move beyond suffering, sit at the table with the anointed and behold God's glory" (P.406). 

203 The Draft continues: "But God will come to those who take their suffering upon themselves under the law oflove, and he will establish a new bond with them. For it 
is predicted that the anointed is supposed to return, but no longer in the flesh, but in the spirit. And just as Christ guided the flesh upward through the torment of 
salvation, the anointed ofthis time will guide the spirit upward through the torment ofsalvation" (P.407). 

204 The Draft continues: "The lowest in you is the stone that the builders discarded. It will become the cornerstone. The lowest in you will grow like a grain ofrice from 
dry soil, shooting up from the sand ofthe most barren desert, and rise and stand very tall. Salvation comes to you from the discarded. Your sun will rise from muddy 
swamps. Like all others, you are annoyed at the lowest in you because its guise is uglier than the image ofyourself that you love. The lowest in you is the most despised 
and least valued, full ofpain and sickness. He is despised so much that one hides one's face from him, that he is held in no respect whatsoever, and it is even said that 
he does not exist because one is ashamed for his sake and despises oneself In truth, it carries our sickness and is ridden with our pain. We consider him the one who 
is plagued and punished by God on account ofhis despicable ugliness. But he is wounded, and exposed to madness, for the sake ofour own justice; he is crucified and 
suppressed for the sake ofour own beauty We leave him to punishment and martyrdom that we might have peace. But we will take his sickness upon ourselves, and 
salvation will come to us through our own wounds" (pp. 407-8). The first lines refer to Psalm II8:22. The passage echoes Isaiah 53, which Jung cited above, p. 229. 

205 The Draft continues: "Why should our spirit not take upon itself torment and restlessness for the salce ofsanctification? But all this will come over you, for I already 
hear the steps ofthose who bear the keys to open the gates of the depths. The valleys and mountains that resound with the noise ofbattles, the lamentation arising 
from innumerable inhabited sites is the omen ofwhat is to come. My visions are truth for I have beheld what is to come. But you are not supposed to believe me, 
because otherwise you will stray from your path, the right one, that leads you safely to your suffering that I have seen ahead. May no faith mislead you, accept your 
utmost unbelief it guides you on your way. Accept your betrayal and infidelity, your arrogance and your better knowledge, and you will reach the safe and secure route 
that leads you to your lowest; and what you do to your lowest, you will do to the anointed. Do not forget this: Nothing ofthe law oflove is abrogated, but much has 
been added to it. Cursed unto himselfis he who kills the one capable oflove in himself for the horde ofthe dead who died for the salce oflove is immeasurable, and 
the mightiest among these dead is Christ the Lord. Holding these dead in reverence is wisdom. Purgatory awaits those who murder the one in themselves who is 
capable oflove. You will lament and rave against the impossibility ofuniting the lowest in you with the law of those who love. I say to you: Just as Christ subjugated 
the nature of the physical to the spirit under the law ofthe word ofthe father, the nature of the spirit shall be subjugated to the physical under the law of Christ's 
completed work ofsalvation through love. You are afraid of the danger; but know that where God is nearest, the danger is greatest. How can you recognize the 
anointed one without any danger? Will one ever acquire a precious stone with a copper coin? The lowest in you is what endangers you. Fear and doubt guard the gates 
ofyour way. The lowest in you is the unforeseeable for you cannot see it. Thus shape and behold it. You will thus open the floodgates of chaos. The sun arises from 
the darkest, dampest, and coldest. The unknowing people of this time only see the one; they never see the other approaching them. But if the one exists, so does the 
other" (pp. 409-10). Jung here implicitly cites the opening lines of Friedrich Holderlin's "Patmos," which was one ofhis favorite poems: "Near is / the God, and hard 
to grasp. / But where danger is, / salvation also grows." Jung discussed this in Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (1912, CW B, ¤65If). 
206 These lines actually cite Isaiah 63:2-6. 
207 Matthew 10:34: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." 
208 In Answer to}ob (1952), Jung wrote of Christ on the cross: "This picture is completed by the two thieves, one whom goes down to hell, the other into paradise. One 
could hardly imagine a better representation of the oppositeness ofthe central Christian symbol" (CW II, ¤659). 
209 Dieterich notes that in Plato's Gorgias, there is the motif that transgressors hang in Hades (Nekyia, p. II7). In Jung's list ofreferences at the back ofhis copy ofNekyia, 
he noted: "II7 hanging." 
210 Matthew 10:16: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst ofwolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." 


NOX TERTIA I 301 

terrible aspect. Thus men could take the safe middle path, failed to accept, your roots no longer sudded the dark nourishment 
hedged both upward and downward. of the depths and your tree became sick and withered. 

But the dead of the Above and the Below mounted, and their Therefore the ancients said that after Adam had eaten the 
demands grew ever louder. And both the noble and the wicked apple, the tree of paradise withered.213 Your life needs the dark. 
rose up again and, unaware, broke the law of the mediator. They But ifyou know that it is evil, you can no longer accept it and you 
flung open doors both above and below. They drew many after suffer anguish and you do not know why: Nor can you accept it as 
them to higher and lower madness, thereby sowing confusion evil, else your good will reject you. Nor can you deny it since you 
and preparing the way ofwhat is to come. know good and evil. Because of this the knowledge of good and 

But he who goes into the one and not also at the same time evil was an insurmountable curse. 
into the other by accepting what comes toward him, will simply But ifyou return to primal chaos and ifyou feel and recognize 
teach and live the one and turn it into a reality. For he will be that which hangs stretched between the two unbearable poles of 
its victim. When you go into the one and hence consider the fire, you will notice that you can nolonger separate good and evil 
other approaching you as your enemy, you will fight against conclusively, neither through feeling nor through knowledge, but 
the other. You will do so because you fail to recognize that that you can discern the direction of growth only from below to 
the other is also in you. On the contrary, you think that the above. You thus forget the distinction between good and evil, and 
other comes somehow from without and you think that you you no longer know it as long as your tree grows from below to 
also catch sight of it in the views and actions of your fellow above. But as soon as growth stops, what was united in growth 
men which clash with yours. You thus fight the other and are falls apart and once more you recognize good and evil. 
completely blinded. You can never deny your knowledge of good and evil to 

But he who accepts what approaches him because it is also in yoursel£ so that you could betray your good in order to live evil. 
him, quarrels and wrangles no more, but looks into himself and For as soon as you separate good and evil, you recognize them. 
II2/II4 keeps silent. / [Image II3]211 / They are united only in growth. But you grow ifyou stand still in 


the greatest doubt, and therefore steadfastness in great doubt 
He sees the tree of life, whose roots reach into Hell and whose is' a veritable flower of life. 
top touches Heaven. He also no longer knows differences:212 He who cannot bear doubt does not bear himself. Such a one 
who is right? What is holy? What is genuine? What is is doubtful; he does not grow and hence he does not live. Doubt 
good? What is correct? He knows only one difference: the is the sign of the strongest and the weakest. The strong have 
difference between below and above. For he sees that the tree doubt, but doubt has the weak. Therefore the weakest is close 
of life grows from below to above, and that it has its crown to the strongest, and if he can say to his doubt: "I have you," 
at the top, clearly differentiated from the roots. To him this is then he is the strongest.214 But no one can say yes to his doubt, 
unquestionable. Hence he knows the way to salvation. unless he endures wide-open chaos. Because there are so many 

To unlearn all distinctions save that concerning direction is among us who can talk about anything, pay heed to what they 
part ofyour salvation. Hence you free yourself from the old curse live. What someone says can be very much or very little. Thus 
of the knowledge of good and evil. Because you separated good examine his life. 
from evil according to your best appraisal and aspired only to the My speech is neither light nor dark, since it is the speech of 
good and denied the evil that you committed nevertheless and someone who is growing. 

2II Image legend: "This is the image of the divine child. It means the completion of a long path. Just as the image was finished in April 1919, and work on the next image 
had already begun, the one who brought the 8 came, as cI>IAHMnN [Philemon] had predicted to me. I called him cI>ANID: [Phanes], because he is the newly appearing 
God." 8 may be the astrological sign for the sun. In the Orphic theogony; Aither and Chaos are born from Chronos. Chronos makes an egg in Aither. The egg splits 
into two, and Phanes, the first of the Gods, appears. Guthrie writes that "he is imagined as marvelously beautiful, a figure ofshining light, with golden wings on his shoulders, 
four eyes, and the heads ofvarious animals. He is ofboth sexes, since he is to create the race of the gods unaided" (Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study ofthe orphic 
Movement [London: Methuen, 1935, p. 8o). In Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (1912) while discussing mythological conceptions ofcreative force, Jung drew attention 
to the "Orphic figure of Phanes, the 'Shining One,' the first-born, the 'Father of Eros.' In Orphic terms, Phanes also denotes Priapos, a god oflove, androgynous, and equal 
to the Theban Dionysus Lysios. The Orphic meaning of Phanes is the same as that of the Indian IOma, the God oflove, which is also a cosmogonic principle" (CW B, 
¤223). Phanes appears in Black Book 6 in the autumn of 1916. His attributes match the classical depictions, and he is described as the brilliant one, a God of beauty 
and light. Jung's copy of Isaac Cory's Ancient Fragments ofthe Phoenician, Chaldean, Egyptian, Tryian, Carthaginian, Indian, Persian, and Other Writers; With an Introductory 
Dissertation; And an Inquiry into the philosophy and Trinity ofthe Ancients has underlinings in the section containing the Orphic theogony; and a slip ofpaper and mark by the 
following statement: "they imagine as the god a conceiving and conceived egg, or a white garment, or a cloud, because Phanes springs forth from these" ([London: 
William Pickering, 1832], p. 310). Phanes is Jung's God. On September 28, 1916, Phanes is described as a golden bird (Black Book 6, p. II9). On February 20, 1917, Jung 
addresses Phanes as the messenger ofAbraxas (ibid., p. 167). On May 20,1917, Philemon says that he will become Phanes (ibid., p. 195). On September II, Philemon 
describes him as follows: "Phanes is the God who rises agleam from the waters. / Phanes is the smile of dawn. / Phanes is the resplendent day. / He is the immortal 
present. / He is the gushing streams. / He is the soughing wind. / He is hunger and satiation. / He is love and lust. / He is mourning and consolation. / He is promise 
and fulfillment. / He is the light that illuminates every darkness. / He is the eternal day. / He is the silver light of the moon. / He is the flickering stars. / He is the 
shooting star that flashes and falls and lapses: / He is the stream of shooting stars that returns every year. / He is the returning sun and moon. / He is the trailing star that 
brings wars and noble wine. / He is the good and fullness of the year. / He fulfills the hours with life-filled enchantment. / He is love's embrace and whisper. / He is the 
warmth of friendship. / He is the hope that enlivens the void. / He is the magnificence ofall renewed suns. / He is the joy at every birth. / He is the blooming flowers. / 
He is the velvety butterfly's wing. / He is the scent ofblooming gardens that fills the nights. / He is the song of joy. / He is the tree oflight. / He is perfection, everything 
done better. / He is everything euphonious. / He is the well-measured. / He is the sacred number. / He is the promise oflife. / He is the contract and 
the sacred pledge. / He is the diversity of sounds and colors. / He is the sanctification of morning, noon, and evening. / He is the benevolent and the gentle. / He is 
salvation ... / In truth, Phanes is the happy day ... / In truth, Phanes is work and its accomplishment and its remuneration. / He is the troublesome task and the 
evening calm. / He is the step on the middle way; its beginning, its middle, and its end. / He is foresight. / He is the end of fear. / He is the sprouting seed, the opening 
bud. / He is the gate ofreception, of acceptance and deposition. / He is the spring and the desert. / He is the safe haven and the stormy night. / He is the certainty in 
desperation. / He is the solid in dissolution. / He is the liberation from imprisonment. / He is counsel and strength in advancement. / He is the friend ofman, the light 
emanating from man, the bright glow that man beholds on his path. / He is the greatness of man, his worth, and his force" (Black Book 7, pp. 16-9). On July 31,1918, 
Phanes himself says: "The mystery of the summer morning, the happy day; the completion of the moment, the fullness of the possible, born from suffering and joy; the 
treasure of eternal beauty; the goal of the four paths, the spring and the ocean of the four streams, the fulfillment of the four sufferings and of the four joys, father and 
mother of the Gods of the four winds, crucifixion, burial, resurrection, and man's divine enhancement, highest effect and nonbeing, world and grain, eternity and 
instance, poverty and abundance, evolution, death and the rebirth of God, borne by eternally creative power, resplendent in eternal effect, loved by the two mothers 
and sisterly wives, ineffable pain-ridden bliss, unknowable, unrecognizable, a hair's breadth between life and death, a river ofworlds, canopying the heavens-I give 
you philanthropy; the opal jug ofwater; he pours water and wine and milk and blood, food for men and Gods. / I give you the joy of suffering and suffering of joy. / I 
give you what has been found: the constancy in change and the change in constancy. / The jug made of stone, the vessel of completion. Water flowed in, wine flowed in, 
milk flowed in, blood flowed in. / The fours winds precipitated into the precious vessel. / The Gods of the four heavenly realms hold its curvature, the two mothers 
and the two fathers guard it, the fire of the North burns above its mouth, the serpent of'the South encircles its bottom, the spirit of the East holds one ofits sides and 


302 I LIBER SECUNDUS U4/U7 

I: "Oh, I had no idea that the librarian had such a cook"
Nox quarta"5 

"Yes, you must know that he's a gourmet." 
Cap. xvii I: "Farewell, madam cook, and thank you for the accommodation." 
"You are most welcome and the pleasure was entirely mine." 

[HI u4] 216I hear the roaring of the morning wind, which Now I am outside. So that was the librarian's cook Does he 
comes over the mountains. The night is overcome, when all my really know what food is prepared inside? He has certainly never 
life was subject to eternal confusion and stretched out between gone in there for a temple sleep.22o I think that I'll return the 
the poles of fire. Thomas aKempis to him. I enter the library 

My soul speaks to me in a bright voice: "The door should be L: "Good evening, here you are again." 
lifted off its hinges to provide a free passage between here and I: "Good evening, Sir, I've come to return the Thomas. I sat 
there, between yes and no, between above and below, between down for a bit in your kitchen next door to read, without suspecting 
left and right. Airy passages should be built between all opposed that it's your kitchen." 
things, light smooth streets should lead from one pole to the other. L: "Please, there's no problem whatsoever. Hopefully my cook 
Scales should be set up, whose pointer sways gently A flame should received you well." 
burn that cannot be blown out by the wind. A stream should flow I: "I can't complain about the reception. I even had an afternoon 
to its deepest goal. The herds ofwild animals should move to their sleep over Thomas." 
feeding grounds along their old game paths. Life should proceed, L: "That doesn't surprise me. These prayer books are 
from birth to death, from death to birth, unbroken like the path terribly boring." 
of the sun. Everything should proceed on this path." I: "Yes, for people like us. But your cook finds the little book 

Thus spealcs my soul. But I toy casually and terribly with very edifying." / 
myself Is it day or night? Am I asleep or awake? Am I alive or L: "Well yes, for the cook" 
have I already died? I: ''Allow me the indiscrete question: have you ever had an 

Blind darkness besieges me-a great wall-a gray worm of incubation sleep in your kitchen?" 
twilight crawls along it. It has a round face and laughs. The 1: "No, I've never entertained such a strange idea." 
laughter is convulsive and actually relieving. I open my eyes: the I: "Let me say that you'd learn a lot that way about the nature 
fat cook is standing before me: "You're a sound sleeper, I must ofyour kitchen. Good night, Sir!" 
say. You've slept for more than an hour." After this conversation I left the library and went outside into 

I: "Really? Have I slept? I .. must have dreamed, what a dreadful the anteroom where I approached the green curtains. I pushed 
play! Did I fall asleep in this kitchen? Is this really the realm them aside, and what did I see? I saw a high-ceilinged hall before 
of mothers?"217 me-with a supposedly magnificent garden in the background"
Have a glass ofwater, you're still thoroughly drowsy" Klingsor's magical garden, it occurred to me at once. I had 

I: 'Yes, this sleep can make one drunk Where is my Thomas? entered a theater; those two over there are part of the play: 
There it lies, open at the twenty-first chapter: "My soul, in Amfortas and Kundry; or rather, just what am I looking at? It is 
everything and yet beyond everything, you must find your rest in the librarian and his cook He is ailing and pale, and has a bad 
the Lord, for he is the eternal rest of the saints."218 stomach, she is disappointed and furious. Klingsor is standing to 
I read this sentence aloud. Is not every word followed by a the left, holding the feather the librarian used to tuck behind his 
question mark? ear. How closely Klingsor resembles me! What a repulsive play! 
"Ifyou fell asleep with this sentence, you must really have had But look, Parsifal enters from the left. How strange, he also looks 
a beautiful dream." like me. Klingsor venomously throws the feather at Parsifal. But 

I: "I certainly dreamed, and I will think about the dream. the latter catches it calmly 
Incidentally; can you tell me whose cook you are?" The scene changes: It appears that the audience, in this case 
"The librarian's. He loves good cooking and I have been with me, joins in during the last act. One must kneel down as the 
u4/u6 him for many years." / [Image U5]219 
/ Good Friday service begins: Parsifal enters-slowly; his head 

the spirit of the West the other. / Forever denied it exists forever. Recurring in all forms, forever the same, this one precious vessel, surrounded by the circle ofanimals, 
denying itself and arising in new splendor through its self-denial. / The heart of God and of man. / It is the One and the Many A path leading across mountains and 
valleys, a guiding star on the oceans, in you and always ahead ofyou. /Perfected, indeed truly perfected is he who knows this. /Perfection is poverty But poverty means 
gratitude. Gratitude is love (2 August). / In truth, perfection is sacrifice. / Perfection is joy and anticipation of the shadow. / Perfection is the end. The end means the 
beginning, and hence perfection is both smallness and the smallest possible beginning. / Everything is imperfect, and pelfection is hence solitude. But solitude seeks 
community Hence perfection means community / I am perfection, but perfected is only he who has attained his limits. / I am the eternal light, but perfect is he who 
stands between day and night. I am eternal love, but perfect is he who has placed the sacrificial knife beside his love. / I am beauty, but perfect is he who sits against the 
temple wall and mends shoes for money / He who is perfect is simple, solitary, and unanimous. Hence he seeks diversity, community, ambiguity Through diversity, 
community, and ambiguity he advances toward simplicity, solitude, and unanimousness. / He who is perfect knows suffering and joy; but I am the bliss beyond joy and 
suffering. / He who is perfect knows light and dark, but I am the light beyond day and darkness. / He who is perfect knows up and down, but I am the height beyond 
high and low. / He who is perfect knows the creating and the created, but I am the parturient image beyond creation and creature. / He who is perfect knows love and 
being loved, but I am the love beyond embrace and mourning. / He who is perfect knows male and female, but I am the One, his father and son beyond masculine and 
feminine, beyond child and the aged. / He who is perfect knows rise and fall, but I am the center beyond dawn and dusk. / He who is perfect knows me and hence he is 
different from me" (Black Book 7, pp. 76-80). 

2I2 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: I4. IX. I922. 
2I3 In Traniformations and Symbols qfthe Libido (I9I2), Jung referred to a legend in which the tree had withered after the fall (CW B, ¤375). 
214 The Draft continues: "Hence Christ taught: Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (p. 4I6). This refers to Luke 6:20. 
215 Fourth night. 
216 January I9, I9I4. 
217 In the first act of the second part of Goethe's Faust, Faust has to descend to the realm of the Mothers. There has been much speculation concerning the meaning of 


this term in Goethe. To Eckermann, Goethe stated that the source for the name was from Plutarch. In all likelihood, this was Plutarch's discussion of the Mother 
Goddesses in Engyon. (See Cryus Hamlin, ed., Faust [New York: W W Norton, 1976], pp. 328-29.) In I958, Jung identified the realm ofthe Mothers with the collective 
unconscious (A Modem Myth: OfThings That Were Seen in the Skies, CW 10, ¤7I4). 

218 The Imitation qfChrist, ch. 21, p. I24. 
219 Image legend: "This is the golden fabric in which the shadow of God lives." 
220 Jung is referring to the Greek practices of dream incubation. See C. A. Meier, Healing Dream and Ritual: Ancient Incubation and Modem psychotherapy (Einsiedeln: Daimon 


Verlag,1989). 


NOX QYARTA I 303 

covered with a black helmet. The lionshn of Hercules adorns his lazy and the hungry grows weak. And so we suffocate in fat, 
shoulders and he holds the club in his hand; he is also wearing consumed by lack. 
modern black trousers in honor of the church holiday. I bristle This is sickness, but you see a lot of this type. It must be so, 
and stretch out my hand avertingly, but the play goes on. Parsifal but it need not be so. There are grounds and causes enough that 
tal<:es offhis helmet. Yet there is no Gurnemanz to atone for and it is so, but we also want it not / to be so. For man is afforded II6/II7 
consecrate him. Kundry stands in the distance, covering her head the freedom to overcome the cause, for he is creative in and of 
and laughing. The audience is enraptured and recognizes itself himself Ifyou have reached that freedom through the suffering 
in Parsifal. He is I. I take off my armor layered with history and of your spirit to accept the other despite your highest belief in 
my chimerical decoration and go to the spring wearing a white the one, since you are it too, then your growth begins. 
penitent's shirt, where I wash my feet and hands without the If others mock me, it is nevertheless them doing this, and 
help of a stranger. Then I also tal<:e off my penitent's shirt and I can attribute guilt to them for this, and forget to mock myself 
put on my civilian clothes. I walk out of the scene and approach But he who cannot mock himself will be mocked by others. 
myself-I who am still kneeling down in prayer as the audience. So accept your self-mockery so that everything divine and heroic 
I rise and become one with myself22I falls from you and you become completely human. What is 

divine and heroic in you is a mockery to the other in you. For 

[2] What would mockery be, if it were not true mockery? the sake of the other in you, set off your admired role which 
What would doubt be, if it were not true doubt? What would you previously performed for your own self and become who 
opposition be, it if were not true opposition? He who wants to you are. 
accept himself must also really accept his other. But in the yes not He who has the luck and misfortune of a particular talent 
every no is true, and in the no every yes is a lie. But since I can be falls prey to believing that he is this gift. Hence he is also often 
in the yes today and in the no tomorrow, yes and no are both true its fool. A special gift is something outside of me. I am not 
and untrue. Whereas yes and no cannot yield because they exist, the same as it. The nature of the gift has nothing to do with 
our concepts of truth and error can. the nature of the man who carries it. It often even lives at the 
I presume you would like to have certainty with regard to truth expense of the bearer's character. His character is marked by 
and error? Certainty within one or the other is not only possible, the disadvantage of his gift, indeed even through its opposite. 
but also necessary, although certainty in one is protection and Consequently he is never at the height of his gift but always 
resistance against the other. If you are in one, your certainty beneath it. If he accepts his other he becomes capable of bearing 
about the one excludes the other. But how can you then reach his gift without disadvantage. But if he only wants to live in 
the other? And why can the one not be enough for us? One his gift and consequently rejects his other, he oversteps the 
cannot be enough for us since the other is in us. And if we mark, since the essence of his gift is extrahuman and a natural 
were content with one, the other would suffer great need and phenomenon, which he in reality is not. All the world sees his 
afflict us with its hunger. But we misunderstand this hunger and error, and he becomes the victim of its mockery. Then he says 
still believe that we are hungry for the one and strive for it even that others mock him, while it is only the disregard of his other 
more adamantly. that makes him ridiculous. 

Through this we cause the other in us to assert its demands When the God enters my life, I return to my poverty for the 
on us even more strongly. If we are then ready to recognize the sal<:e of the God. I accept the burden of poverty and bear all my 
claim of the other in us, we can cross over into the other to satisfy ugliness and ridiculousness, and also everything reprehensible 
it. But we can thus reach across, since the other has become in me. I thus relieve the God of all the confusion and absurdity 
conscious to us. Yet ifour blinding through the one is strong, we that would befall him if I did not accept it. With this I prepare 
become even more distant from the other, and a disastrous chasm the way for the God's doing. What should happen? Has the 
between the one and the other opens up in us. The one becomes darkest abyss been emptied and exhausted? Or what stands and 
surfeited and the other becomes too hungry. The satiated grows waits down there, impending and red-hot? [Image II7]222 

221 In Parsifal, Wagner presented his reworking of the Grail legend. The plot runs as follows: Titurel and his Christian knights have the Holy Grail in their keeping in 
their castle, with a sacred spear to guard it. Klingsor is a sorcerer who seeks the Grail. He has enticed the keepers of the Grail into his magic garden, where there are 
flower maidens and the enchantress, Kundry Amfortas, Titurel's son, goes into the castle to destroy Klingsor but is enchanted by Kundry and lets the sacred spear fall, 
and Klingsor wounds him with it. Amfortas needs the touch of the spear to heal his wound. Gurnemanz, the oldest of the knights, looks after Kundry, not lmowing 
her role in Amfortas's wounding. A voice from the Grail sanctuary prophesies that only a youth who is guileless and innocent can regain the spear. Parsifal enters, having 
killed a swan. Not knowing his name or the name ofhis father, the knights hope that he is this youth. Gurnemanz takes him to Klingsor's castle. Klingsor orders Kundry 
to seduce Parsifal. Parsifal defeats Klingsor's knights. Kundry is transformed into a beautiful woman, and she kisses him. From this, he realizes that Kundry seduced 
Amfortas, and he resists her. Klingsor hurls the spear at him, and Parsifal seizes it. Klingsor's castle and garden disappear. After wandering, Parsifal finds Gurnemanz, 
now living as a hermit. Parsifal is covered in black armor, and Gurnemanz is offended that he is armed on Good Friday. Parsifal lays his spear before him, and removes 
his helmet and arms. Gurnemanz recognizes him, and anoints him king of the lmights of the Grail. Parsifal baptizes Kundry They go into the castle and ask Amfortas 
to uncover the Grail. Amfortas asks them to slay him. Parsifal enters and touches his wound with the spear. Amfortas is transfigured, and Parsifal radiantly holds 
up the Grail. On May 16, 1913, Otto Mensendieck gave a presentation to the Ziirich Psychoanalytical Society on "The Grail-Parsifal Saga." In the discussion, Jung said: 
"Wagner's exhaustive treatment of the legend ofthe Holy Grail and Parsifal would need to be supplemented with the synthetic view that the various figures correspond 
to various artistic aspirations. -The incest barrier will not serve to explain that Kundry's ensnarement fails; instead this has to do with the activity of the psyche to 
elevate human aspirations ever higher" (MZS, p. 20). In psychological Types (1921), Jung put forward a psychological interpretation ofParsifal (CW 6, ¤¤371-72). 

222 Text in image: (Atmavictu); (iuvenis adiutor) [a youthful supporter]; (TEAEI:<POPOI:) [TELESPHORUS]; (spiritus malus in homnibus quibusdam) [evil spirit 
in some menl Image legend: "The dragon wants to eat the sun and the youth beseeches him not to. But he eats it nevertheless." Atmaviktu (as spelled there) first 
appears in Brack Book 6 in 1917-Here is a paraphrase of the fantasy ofApril 25, 1917: The serpent says that Atmaviktu was her companion for thousands ofyears. He 
was first an old man, and then he died and became a bear. Then he died and became an otter. Then he died and became a newt. Then he died again and came into the 
serpent. The serpent is Atmavilctu. He made a mistake before then and became a man, while he was still an earth serpent. Jung's soul says that Atmaviktu is a kobold, 
a serpent conjuror, a serpent. The serpent says that she is the kernel of the self From the serpent, Atmaviktu transformed into Philemon (p. 179f). There is a 
sculpture ofhim in Jung's garden in Kusnacht. In "From the earliest experiences of my life" Jung wrote: "When I was in England in 1920, I carved two similar figures 
out of thin branch without having the slightest recollection of that childhood experience. One of them I had reproduced on a larger scale in stone, and this figure now 
stands in my garden in Klisnacht. Itwas only at that time that the unconscious supplied me with a name. Itcalled the figure Atmavictu-the 'breath oflife.' It is a further development 
ofthat quasi-sexual object ofmy childhood, which turned out to be the 'breath oflife,' the creative impulse. Basically, the manikin is a kabir" (lA, pp. 29-30; 
cf Memories, pp. 38-39). The figure ofTelesphorus is like Phanes in Image II3. Telesphorus is one of the Cabiri, and the daimon ofAesclepius (see fig. 77, Psychology 
and Alchemy, CW 12). He was also regarded as a God of healing, and had a temple at Pergamon in Asia Minor. In 1950, Jung carved an image of him in his stone at 
Bollingen, together with a dedication to him in Greek, combining lines from Heraclitus, the Mithraic Liturgy, and Homer (Memories, p. 254). 


304 I LIBER SECUNDUS nS/I24 

n7InS I Which fire has not been put out and which embers are still 
ablaze? We sacrificed innumerable victims to the dark depths, 
and yet it still demands more. What is this crazy desire craving 
satisfaction? Whose mad cries are these? Who among the dead 
suffers thus? Come here and drink blood, so that you can speak,223 
Why do you reject the blood? Would you like milk? Or the red 
juice of the vine? Perhaps you would rather have love? Love for 
the dead? Being in love with the dead? Are you perhaps demanding 
the seeds of life for the faded thousand-year-old body of the 
underworld? An unchaste incestuous lust for the dead? Something 
that makes the blood run cold. Are you demanding a lusty 
commingling with corpses? I spoke of "acceptance"-but you 
demand "to seize, embrace, copulate?" Are you demanding the 
desecration of the dead? That prophet, you say; lay on the child, 
and placed his mouth on the child's mouth, and his eyes on its 
eyes, and his hands on its hands and he thus splays himself over 
the boy; so that the child's body became warm. But he rose again 
and went here and there in the house before he mounted anew 
and spread himself over him again. The boy snorted seven times. 
Then the boy opened his eyes. So shall your acceptance be, 
so shall Y9U accept, not cool, not superior, not thought out, 
not obsequious, not as a self-chastisement, but with pleasure, 
precisely with this ambiguous impure pleasure, whose ambiguity 
enables it to unite with the higher, with that holy-evil pleasure 
ofwhich you do not know whether it be virtue or vice, with that 
pleasure which is lusty repulsiveness, lecherous fear, sexual 
immaturity One wal(ens the dead with this pleasure. 
Your lowest is in a sleep resembling death and needs the 
warmth of life which contains good and evil inseparably and 
indistinguishably. 'That is the way of life; you can call it neither 
evil nor good, neither pure nor impure. Yet this is not the goal, 
but the way and the crossing. It is also sickness and the beginning 
of recovery. It is the mother of all abominable deeds and all 
salutary symbols. It is the most primordial form of creation, the 
very first dark urge that flows through all secret hiding places 
and dark passages, with the unintentional lawfulness ofwater and 
from unexpected places in the loose soil, swelling from the finest 
cracks to fructify the dry soil. It is the very first, secret teacher 
of nature, teaching plants and animals the most astonishing and 
supremely clever skills and tricks, which we hardly know how 
to fathom. It is the great sage who has superhuman knowledge, 
who has the greatest of all the sciences, who makes order out 
of confusion, and who prophesies the future clairvoyantly out of 
ungraspable fullness. It is the serpentlil(e, perishable and beneficial, 
the dreadfully and ridiculously daimonic. It is the arrow that 
always hits the weal(est spot, the spring root which opens the 
sealed treasure chambers. 
You can call it neither clever nor stupid, neither good nor evil, 
since its nature is inhuman throughout. It is the son of the earth, 
the dark one whom you should awal(en.224 It is man and woman 
at the same time and immature sex, rich in interpretation and 
misinterpretation, so poor in meaning and yet so rich. This is the 

dead that cried loudest, that stood right at the bottom and waited, 
that suffered worst. It desired neither blood nor milk nor wine 
for the sacrifice of the dead, but the willingness of our flesh. Its 
longing paid no heed to the torment ofour spirit which struggled 
and tortured itself to devise what cannot be devised, that hence 
tore itself apart and sacrificed itself. Not until our spirit lay 
dismembered on the altar did I hear the voice of the son of the 
earth, and only then did I see that he was the great suffering one, 
who needed salvation. He is the chosen one since he was the most 
rejected. It is bad to have to say this, but perhaps I hear badly; or 
perhaps I misunderstand what the depths say. It is miserable to 
say as much, and yet I must say it. 


The depths are silent. He has arisen and now beholds the light 
of the sun and is among the living. Restlessness and discord rose 
up with him, doubt and the fullness oflife. 


Amen, it is finished. What was unreal is real, what was real is 
unreal. However, I may not, I do not want to, I cannot. Oh human 
wretchedness! Oh unwillingness in us! Oh doubt and despair. 
This is really Good Friday; upon which the Lord died and descended 
into Hell and completed the mysteries.225 This is the Good Friday 
when we complete the Christ in us and we descend to Hell 
ourselves. This the Good Friday on which we moan and cry to will 
the completion of Christ, for after his completion we go to Hell. 
Christ was so powerful that his realm covered all the world and 
only Hell lay outside it. 


Who succeeded in crossing the borders of this realm with 
good grounds, pure conscience, and obeying the law of love? 
Who among the living is Christ and journeys to Hell in living 
flesh? Who is it that expands the realm of Christ with Hell? 
Who is it that is full of drunkenness while sober? Who is it that 
descended from being one into being two? Who is it that tore 
apart his own heart to unite what has been separated? 


I am he, the nameless one, who does not know himself and 
whose name is concealed even from himself I have no name, 
since I have not yet existed, but have only just become. To myself 
I am an Anabaptist and a stranger. I, who I am, am not it. But 
I, who will be I before me and after me, am it. In that I abased 
mysel£ I elevated myself as another. In that I accepted mysel£ I 
divided myself into two, and in that I united myself with mysel£ 
I became the smaller part ofmyself I am this in my consciousness. 
However, I am thus in my consciousness as if I were also separated 
from it. I am I [Image n9]226 I not in my second and greater state, nS/I20 
as if I were this second and greater one mysel£ but I am always 

. in ordinary consciousness, yet so separate and distinct from 
it, as if I were in my second and greater state, but without the 
consciousness of really being it. I have even become smaller and 
poorer, but precisely because of my smallness I can be conscious 
of the nearness of the great. 

I have been baptized with impure water for rebirth. A }fame from the 
fire ofHell awaited me above the baptismal basin. I have bathed myselfwith 
impurity and I have cleansed myself with dirt. I received him) I accepted 


223 In Book II of the Odyssey, Odysseus makes a libation to the dead to enable them to speak. Walter Burkert notes: "The dead drink the pourings and indeed the bloodthey 
are invited to come to the banquet, to the satiation with blood; as the libations seep into the earth, so the dead will send good things up above" (Greek Religion, 
tr. J. Raffar [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987], pp. 194-95). Jung had used this motifin a metaphorical sense in 1912 in TranifOrmations and Symbols oJthe Libido: "like 
Odysseus, I have sought to allow this shade [Miss Frank Miller] to drink only as much so as to make it speak so it can give away some of the secrets of the underworld" 
(CW B, ¤57n). Around 1910, Jung went on a sailing trip with his friends Albert Oeri and Andreas Vischer, during which Oeri read aloud the chapters from the 
Odyssey dealing with Circe and the nekyia. Jung noted that shortly after this, he "like Odysseus, was presented by fate with a nekyia, the descent into the dark Hades" 
(Jung/Jaffe, Erinnerungen, Triiume, Gedanken, p. 104). The passage which follows depicting the prophet's revival of the child paraphrases Elisha's revival of the son of the 
Shunammite widow in 2 Kings 4:32-36. 

224 See below, p. 327


225 See above, note 135, p. 243. 

226 Image legend: "The accursed dragon has eaten the sun, its belly being cut open and he must not hand over the gold of the sun, together with his blood. This is the 
turning back ofAtmavictu, of the old one. He who destroyed the proliferating green covering is the youth who helped me to kill Siegfried." The reference is to Libel' 
Primus, ch. 7, "Murder of the Hero." 


THE THREE PROPHECIES I 30 5 

him, the divine brother, the son ofthe earth, the two'sexed and impure, and I: '''I will accept what you give. I do not have the right to judge 
overnight he has become a man. His two incisors have broken through and or to reject." 
light down covers his chin. I captured him, I overcame him, I embraced him. S: "So listen. There is old armor and the rusty gear ofour fathers 
He demanded muchfrom me and yet brought everything with him. For he is down here, murderous leather trappings hanging from them, 
rich; the earth belongs to him. But his black horse has partedfrom him. worm-eaten lance shafts, twisted spear heads, broken arrows, rotten 

shields, skulls, the bones ofman and horse, old cannons, catapults, 

Truly; I have shot down a proud enemy; I have forced a greater crumbling firebrands, smashed assault gear, stone spearheads, 
and stronger one to be my friend. Nothing should separate me stone clubs, sharp bones, chipped arrowhead teeth-everything 
from him, the dark one. If I want to leave him, he follows me like the battles ofyore have littered the earth with. Will you accept 
my shadow. If I do not think of him, he is still uncannily near. all this?" 
He will turn into fear if I deny him. I must amply commemorate 1: "I accept it. You know better, my soul." 
him, I must prepare a sacrificial meal for him. I fill a plate for S: "I find painted stones, carved bones with magical signs, 
him at my table. Much that I would have done earlier for men, I talismanic sayings on hanks of leather and small plates of lead, 
now must do for him. Hence they consider me selfish, for they dirty pouches filled with teeth, human hair and fingernails, 
do not know that I go with my friend, and that many days timbers lashed together, black orbs, moldy animal skins-all the 
are consecrated to him.227 But unrest has moved in, a quiet undersuperstitions 
hatched by dark prehistory. Will you accept all this?" 
ground earthquake, a distant great roaring. Ways have been 1: "I accept it all, how should I dismiss anything?" 
opened to the primordial and to the future. Miracles and terrible S: "But I find worse: fratricide, cowardly mortal blows, torture, 
mysteries are close at hand. I feel the things that were and that child sacrifice, the annihilation ofwhole peoples, arson, betrayal, 
will be. Behind the ordinary the eternal abyss yawns. The earth war, rebellion-will you also accept this?" 

120/122 gives me back what it hid. / [Image 121]228.229.230 / [Image 122]231¥ 232 I: ''Also this, if it must be. How can I judge?" 

122/124 / [Image 123]233/ S: "I find epidemics, natural catastrophes, sunken ships, razed 
cities, frightful feral savagery; famines, human meanness, and fear, 
whole mountains of fear."

The Three Prophecies 

I: "So shall it be, since you give it." 
Cap. xviii S: "I find the treasures of all past cultures, magnificent images 
of Gods, spacious temples, paintings, papyrus rolls, sheets of 
parchment with the characters of bygone languages, books full 

[HI 124] 234Wondrous things came nearer. I called my soul and of lost wisdom, hymns and chants of ancient priests, stories told 
asked her to dive down into the floods, whose distant roaring I could down the ages through thousands ofgenerations." 
hear. This happened on 22 January of the year 1914, as recorded I: "That is an entire world-whose extent I cannot grasp. How 
in my black book. And thus she plunged into the darkness like can I accept it?" 
a shot, and from the depths she called out: "Will you accept what S: "But you wanted to accept everything? You do not know 
I bring?" your limits. Can you not limit yourself?" 


227 The Drqft continues: "I put many people, books, and thoughts aside for his sake; but even more, I withdrew from the current world and did the plain and simple, and 
what suggested it most immediately, to serve his secret purpose. By serving him, the dark one, I encounter another on the path ofmercy. Ifintentions and wishes torment 
me, I think, feel, and do what lies closest. Thus what is most remote reaches me" (p. 434). 

228 In 1944 in Psychology und Alchemy, Jung referred to an alchemical representation of a circle quadrated by four "rivers" in the context ofa discussion of mandala symbolism 
(CW 12, ¤167n). Jung commented on the four rivers ofparadise on a number of occasions-see, for instance, Aion, CW ¤¤2, 9, 3II, 353, 358, 372. 

229 Inscription: "XI. MCMXIX. [II. 1919: This date seems to refer to when this image was painted.] This stone, set so beautifully, is certainly the Lapis Philosophorum. 
It is harder than diamond. But it expands into space through four distinct qualities, namely breadth, height, depth, and time. It is hence invisible and you can pass 
through it without noticing it. The four streams ofAquarius flow from the stone. This is the incorruptible seed that lies between the father and the mother and prevents 
the heads ofboth cones from touching: it is the monad which countervails the Pleroma." On the pleroma, see below p. 347-Concerning the reference to the incorruptible 
seed, see the dialogue with Ha in the note to image 94, p. 297, n. 157 above. 

230 On June 3,1918, Jung's soul described Philemon as the joy of the earth: "The daimons become reconciled in the one who has found himself who is the source of all 
four streams, of the source-bearing earth. From his summit waters flow in all four directions. He is the sea that bears the sun; he is the mountain that carries the sun; 
he is the father ofall four great streams; he is the cross that binds the four great daimons. He is the incorruptible seed of nothingness, which falls accidentally through 
space. This seed is the beginning, younger than all other beginnings, older than all endings" (Black Book 7, p. 61). Some of the motifs in this statement may have some 
connections with this image. There is a gap between July 1919 and February 1920 in Black Book 7, during which time Jung was presumably writing psychological Types. 
On February 23 he made the following entry: "What lies between appears in the book ofdreams, but even more in the images of the red book" (p. 88). In "Dreams" 
Jung noted around eight dreams during this period, and a vision at night in August 1919 of two angels, a dark transparent mass, and a young woman. This suggests 
that the symbolic process continues in the paintings in the calligraphic volume, which do not appear to have direct cross-references to either the text in Liber Novus 
or the Black Books. In 1935, Jung put forward a psychological interpretation of the symbolism ofmedieval alchemy, viewing the philosopher's stone-the goal of the 
alchemical opus-as a symbol of the self (Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12). 

231 
Inscription: "4 December MCMXIX. [December 4,1919: This date seems to refer to when the image was painted.] This is the back side of the gem. He who is in 
the stone has this shadow. This is Atmavictu, the old one, after he has withdrawn from the creation. He has returned to endless history, where he took his beginning. 
Once more he became stony residue, having completed his creation. In the form of Izdubar he has outgrown and delivered <I>IAHMQN and Ka from him. <I>IAHMQN 
gave the stone, Ka the 8." The final character appears to be the astrological symbol for the sun. 

232 On Atmavictu, see note to image II7-On May 20, 1917, Philemon said: ''As Atmavictu I committed the error and became human. My name was Izdubar? I approached 
him as just that. He paralyzed me. Yes, man paralyzed me and turned me into a dragon's serpent. Fortunately, I recognized my error, and the fire consumed the serpent. 
And thus Philemon came into being. My form is appearance. Previously, my appearance was form" (Black Book 7, p. 195). In Memories, Jung said: "Later, Philemon 
became relativized by yet another figure, whom I called Ka. In ancient Egypt the 'ICing's Ka' was his earthly form, the embodied soul. In my fantasy the ka-soul came 
from below, out of the earth as out of a deep shaft. I did a painting of him, showing him in his earth-bound form, as a herm with base of stone and upper part of 
bronze. High up in the painting appears a kingfisher's wing, and between it and the head of Ka floats a round, glowing nebula ofstars. Ka's expression has something 
demonic about it-one might also say Mephistophelian. In one hand he holds something like a colored pagoda, or a reliquary, and in the other a stylus with which he 
is working on the reliquary. He is saying, 'I am he who buries the Gods in gold and gems.' Philemon has a lame foot, but was a winged spirit, whereas Ka represented 
a kind of earth demon or metal demon. Philemon was the spiritual aspect, 'the meaning: Ka, on the other hand was a spirit of nature like the Anthroparion of Greek 
alchemy-with which at that time I was still unfamiliar. Ka was he who made everything real, but who also obscured the kingfisher spirit, the meaning, or replaced it 
by beauty, the 'eternal reflection.' In time I was able to integrate both figures through the study of alchemy" (pp. 209-IO). Wallace Budge notes that "The ka was an 
abstract individuality or personality which possessed the form and attributes of the man to whom it belonged, and, though its normal dwelling place was in the tomb 
with the body, it could wander at will; it was independent of the man and could go and dwell in any statue ofhim" (Egyptian Book ofthe Dead, p.lxv). In 1928, Jung 
commented: ''At a rather higher stage ofdevelopment, where the idea of the soul already exists, not all the images continue to be projected ... but one or the other 
complex has come near enough to consciousness to be felt as no longer strange, but as somehow belonging. Nevertheless, the feeling that it belongs is not at first 
sufficiently strong for the complex to be sensed as a subjective content ofconsciousness. It remains in a sort ofno-man's-land between consciousness and the unconscious, 
in the half-shadow, in part belonging or akin to the conscious subject, in part an autonomous being, and meeting consciousness as such. At all events it is not necessarily 


306 I LIBER SECUNDUS 124/128 

l: "I must limit myself Who could ever grasp such wealth?" The future should be left to those of the future. I return to 
S: "Be content and cultivate your garden with modesty."235 the small and the real, for this is the great way, the way of what 
l: "I will. I see that it is not worth conquering a larger piece is to come. I return to my simple reality, to my undeniable and 
of the immeasurable, but a smaller one instead. A well-tended most minuscule being. And I take a knife and hold court over 
small garden is better than an ill-tended large garden. Both everything that has grown without measure and goal. Forests have 
gardens are equally small when faced with the immeasurable, grown around me, winding plants have climbed up me, and I am 
but unequally cared for." completely covered by endless proliferation. The depths are inexS: 
"Take shears and prune your trees." haustible, they give everything. Everything is as good as nothing. 
Keep a little and you have something. To recognize and lmow your 
[2] From the flooding darkness the son of the earth had ambition and your greed, to gather / [Image 125]237 / your craving, 
brought, my soul gave me ancient things that pointed to the to cultivate it, grasp it, make it serviceable, influence it, master it, 
future. She gave me three things: The misery ofwar, the darkness order it, to give it interpretations and meanings, is extravagant. 
of magic, and the gift of religion. It is lunacy, like everything that transcends its boundaries. 
If you are clever, you will understand that these three things How can you hold that which you are not? Would you really like 
belong together. These three mean the unleashing of chaos and to force everything which you are not under the yoke of your 
its power, just as they also mean the binding of chaos. War is wretched knowledge and understanding? Remember that you can 
obvious and everybody sees it. Magic is dark and no one sees know yoursel£ and with that you lmow enough. But you cannot 
it. Religion is still to come, but it will become evident. Did you know others and everything else. Beware of knowing what lies 
think that the horrors of such atrocious warfare would come beyond yoursel£ or else your presumed knowledge will suffocate 
over us? Did you think that magic existed? Did you think about the life of those who know themselves. A knower may know 
a new religion? I sat up for long nights and looked ahead at what himself That is his limit. 
was to come and I shuddered. Do you believe me? I am not too With a painful slice I cut offwhat I pretended to know about 
concerned. What should I believe? What should I disbelieve? I what lies beyond me. I excise myself from the cunning interpretive 
saw and I shuddered. loops that I gave to what lies beyond me. And my knife cuts even 

But my spirit could not grasp the monstrous, and could not deeper and separates me from the meanings that I conferred upon 
conceive the extent ofwhat was to come. The force ofmy longing myself I cut down to the marrow, until everything meaningful 
languished, and powerless sank the harvesting hands. I felt the falls from me, until I am no longer as I might seem to mysel£ until 
burden of the most terrible work ofthe times ahead. I saw where I know only that I am without knowing what I am. 
and how, but no word can grasp it, no will can conquer it. I could I want to be poor and bare, and I want to stand naked before 
not do otherwise, I let it sink again into the depths. the inexorable. I want to be my body and its poverty. I want to be 

I cannot give it to you, and I can speak only of the way ofwhat from the earth and live its law. I want to be my human animal and 
is to come. Little good will come to you from outside. What will accept all its frights and desires. I want to go through the wailcome 
to you lies within yourself But what lies there! I would like ing and the blessedness of the one who stood alone with a poor 
to avert my eyes, close my ears and deny all my senses; I would like unarmed body on the sunlit earth, a prey ofhis drives and of the 
to be someone among you, who knows nothing and who never saw lurking wild animals, who was terrified by ghosts and dreaming 
anything. It is too much and too unexpected. But I saw it and my of distant Gods, who belonged to what was near and was enemy 
memory will not leave me alone.236 Yet I curtail my longing, which to the far-off, who struck fire from stones, and whose herds were 
would like to stretch out into the future, and I return to my small stolen by unlmowable powers that also destroyed the crops ofhis 
garden that presently blooms, and whose extent I can measure. It fields, and who neither lmew nor recognized, but who lived by 
shall be well-tended. what lay at hand, and received by grace what lay far-off 

obedient to the subject's intentions, it may even be of a higher order, more often than not a source ofinspiration or warning, or ofsupernatural information. 
Psychologically such a content could be explained as a partly autonomous complex that is not yet fully integrated. The primitive souls, the Egyptian Ba and Ka, are 
complexes of this kind" (The Relations between the I and the Unconscious, CW 7, ¤295). In 1955/56, Jung described the Anthroparion in alchemy as "a type ofgoblin, that 
as 1tVEU!.HX napEopov [devoted spirit], spiritus familiaris, stands by the adept in his work and helps the physician to heal" (Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, ¤304). The 
Anthroparion was seen to represent the alchemical metals ("On the psychology of the Child archetype," CW 9, I, ¤268) and appeared in the visions of Zosimos (CW 
13, pp. 60-62). The painting ofKa that Jung refers to has not come to light. Ka appeared to Jung in a fantasy on October 22,1917, where he introduced himself as the 
other side of Ha, his soul. It was Ka who had given Ha the runes and the lower wisdom (see note 155, p. 292). His eyes are ofpure gold and his body is ofblack iron. 
He tells Jung and his soul that they need his secret, which is the essence of all magic. This is love. Philemon says that Ka is Philemon's shadow (Black Book 7, p. 25ff). 
On November 20, Ka calls Philemon his shadow, and his herald. Ka says that he is eternal and remains, while Philemon is fleeting and passes on (p. 34). On February 
ro, 1918, Ka says that he has built a temple as a prison and grave for the Gods (p. 39). Ka features in Black Book 7 until 1923. During this period, Jung attempts to 
understand the connection among Ka, Philemon, and the other figures, and to establish the right relation to them. On October 15,1920, Jung discussed an unidentified 
picture with Constance Long, who was in analysis with him. Some of the comments she noted shed light on his understanding of the relation of Philemon and Ka: 
"The 2 figures on either side are personifications ofdominants 'fathers.' The one is the creative father, Ka, the other, Philemon that one whom gives form and law (the 
formative instinct) Ka would equal Dionysus & P = Apollo. Philemon gives formulation to the things within elements of the collective unc ... Philemon gives 
the idea (maybe of a god) but it remains floating, distant & indistinct because all the things he invents are winged. But Ka gives substance & is called the one who 
buries the gods in gold & marble. He has a tendency to misprison them in matter, & so they are in danger oflosing their spiritual meaning, & becoming buried in 
stone. So the temple maybe the grave of God, as the church has become the grave of Xt. The more the church develops, the more Xt dies. Ka must not be allowed to 
produce too much-you must not depend on substantiation; but if too little substance is produced the creature floats. The transcendent function is the whole. Not 
this picture, nor my rationalization ofit, but the new and vivifying creative spirit that is the result of the intercourse between the consc. intelligence and the creative 
side. Ka is sensation, P is intuition, he is too supra-human (he is Zarathustra, extravagantly superior in what he says & cold. (CGJ has not printed the questions 
he addressed to P nor his answers) ... Ka & Philemon are bigger than the man, they are supra-human (Disintegrated into them one is in the Col. Unc)" (Diary, 
Countway Library of Medicine, pp. 32-33). 

233 Inscription: "IV Jan, MCMXX Uanuary 4,1920: This date seems to refer to when the image was painted.] This is the caster ofholy water. The Cabiri grow out of the 
flowers which spring from the body of the dragon. Above is the temple." 
234 In Black Book 4, Jung noted: "Thereafter I walk on like a man who is tense, and who expects something new that he has never suspected before. I listen to the depthswarned, 
instructed, and undaunted-outwardly striving to lead a full human life" (P.42). 
235 These lines refer to the end of Voltaire's Candide: 'WI that is well said-but we must cultivate our garden" (Candide and Other Stories, tr. R. Pearson [Oxford: Oxford 
University Press, 1759/1998], pp. 392-93). Jung kept a bust of Voltaire in his study 
236 The Drqft continues: "How can I fathom what will happen during the next eight hundred years, up to the time when the One begins his rule? I am speaking only of 
what is to come" (p. 440). 
237 The scene in the landscape resembles one ofJung's waldng fantasies during his childhood in which Alsace is submerged by water, Basle is turned into a port, there is a 
ship with sails and a steamer, a medieval town, a castle with cannons and soldiers and inhabitants of the town, and a canal (Memories, p. roo). 


THE GIFT OF MAGIC I 307 

He was a child and unsure, yet full of certainty; weak and yet S: "Magic is not easy, and it demands sacrifice." 
blessed with enormous strength. When his God did not help, he I: "Does it demand the sacrifice of love? Of humanity? If it 
took another. And when this one did not help either, he castigated does, take the rod back." 
him. And behold: the Gods helped one more time. Thus I discard S: "Don't be rash. Magic doesn't demand that sacrifice. It 
everything that was laden with meaning, everything divine and demands another sacrifice." 
devilish with which chaos burdened me. Truly, it is not up to me I: "What sacrifice is that?" 
to prove the Gods and the devils and the chaotic monsters, to feed S: "The sacrifice that magic demands is solace." 
them carefully, to warily drag them with me, to count and name I: "Solace? Do I understand correctly? Understanding you is 
them, and to protect them with belief against disbelief and doubt. unspeakably difficult. Tell me, what does this mean?" 

A free man knows only free Gods and devils that are selfS: 
"Solace is to be sacrificed." 
contained and take effect on account of their own force. If they I: "What do yo~ mean? Should the solace that I give or the 
fail to have an effect, that is their own business, and I can solace that I receive be sacrificed?" 
remove this burden from myself But if they are effective, they S: "Both." 
need neither my protection nor my care, nor my belief Thus you I: "I'm confused. This is too dark." 
may wait quietly to see whether they work. But if they do, be S: "You must sacrifice solace for the sake of the black rod, the 
clever, for the tiger is stronger than you. You should be able to solace you give and the solace you receive." 
cast everything from you, otherwise you are a slave, even if you I: '~re you saying that I shouldn't be allowed to receive the 
are the slave ofa God. Life is free and chooses its way It is limited solace of those I love? And should give no solace to those I love? 
enough, so do not pile up more limitation. Hence I cut away This means the loss of a piece of humanity; and what one calls 
everything confining. I stood here, and there lay the riddlesome severity toward oneself and others takes its place."239 
multifariousness of the world. S: "That is how it is." 

I: "Does the rod demand this sacrifice?" 
And a horror crept over me. Am I not the tightly bound? Is S: "It demands this sacrifice." 
the world there not the unlimited? And I became aware of my I: "Can I, am I allowed to make this sacrifice for the sake of 
weakness. What would poverty; nakedness and unpreparedness the rod? Must I accept the rod?" 
be without consciousness of weakness and without horror at S: "Do you want to or not?" 
powerlessness? Thus I stood and was terrified. And then my soul I: "I can't say What do I know about the black rod? Who gives 
whispered to me: it to me?" 

S: "The darkness that lies before you. It is the next thing that 
comes to you. Will you accept it and offer it your sacrifice?"
The Gift of Magic 

I: It is hard to sacrifice to the dark, to the blind darkness-and 
Cap. xix. what a sacrifice!" 
S: "Nature-does nature offer solace? Does it accept solace?" 
[HI 126] 238 "Do you not hear something?" I: "You venture a heavy word. What solitude are you asking 
I: "I'm not aware ofanything, what should I hear?" ofme?" 
S: '~ringing." S: "This is your misfortune, and-the power of the black rod." 
I: '~ringing? What? I hear nothing." I: "How gloomily and full of foreboding you speak! Are you 
S: "Listen harder." sheathing me in the armor / [Image 127]240 / oficy severity? Are 126/128 
I: "Perhaps something in the left ear. What could it mean?" you clasping my heart with a bronze carapace? I'm happy with 
S: "Misfortune." the warmth of life. Should I miss it? For the sake of magic? 
I: "I accept what you say I want to have fortune and misfortune." What is magic?" 
S: "Well, then, raise your hands and receive what comes to you." S: "You don't know magic. So don't judge. What are you 
I: "What is it? A rod? A black serpent? A black rod, formed bristling at?" 
like a serpent-with two pearls as eyes-a gold bangle around its I: "Magic! What should I do with magic? I don't believe in it, I 
neck. Is it not like a magical rod?" can't believe in it. My heart sinks-and I'm supposed to sacrifice 
S: "It is a magical rod." a greater part ofmy humanity to magic? 
I: "What should I do with magic? Is the magical rod a S: "I advise you, don't struggle against this, and above all don't 
misfortune? Is magic a misfortune?" act so enlightened, as ifdeep down you did not believe in magic." 
S: "Yes, for those who possess it." I: "You're inexorable. But I can't believe in magic, or maybe I 
I: "That sounds like the sayings of old-how strange you are, have a completely false idea of it." 
my soul! What should I do with magic?" S: "Yes, I gather that from what you're saying. Cast aside 
S: "Magic will do a lot for you." your blind judgment and critical gesture, otherwise you'll never 
I: "I'm afraid that you're stirring up my desire and misunderunderstand. 
Do you still mean to waste years Waiting?" 
standing. You know that man never stops craving the black art I: "Be patient, my science has not yet been overcome." 
and things that cost no effort." S: "High time that you overcame it!" 
238 January 23, I9I4á 
239 In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche wrote: "Every acquisition, every step forward in knowledge is the result ofcourage, ofseverity toward oneself, of cleanliness with respect to 
oneself" (tr. R. J. Hollingdale [Harmondsworth: Penguin, I979], foreword 3, p. 34). 

240 Inscription on top: '~mor triumphat." Inscription at bottom: "This image was completed on 9 January I92I, after it had waited incomplete for 9 months. It expresses 
I know not what kind ofgrief, a fourfold sacrifice. I could almost choose not to finish it. It is the inexorable wheel of the four functions, the essence ofall living beings 
imbued with sacrifice." The functions are those of thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition, which Jung wrote about in psychological Types (192I). On February 23, 
I920, Jung noted in Black Book 7: "What occurs between the lover and the beloved is the entire fullness of the Godhead. Both are unfathomable riddles to each other. 
For who understands the Godhead? / But the God is born in solitude, from the secret / mystery of the individual. / The separation between life and love is the contradiction 
between solitude and togetherness" (p. 88). The next entry in Black Book 7 is on September 5, 1921. On March 4, I920, Jung went to North Africa with his 
friend Hermann Sigg, returning on April I7 


308 I LIBER SECUNDUS 128/136 

I: "You ask a great deal, almost too much. After all-is science 
essential to life? Is science life? There are people who live without 
science. But to overcome science for the salce of magic? That's 
uncanny and menacing." 
S: '~re you afraid? Don't you want to risk life? Isn't it life that 
presents you with this problem?" 
I: '~l this leaves me so dazed and confused. Won't you give me 
an enlightening word?" 
S: "Oh, so it's solace you long for? Do you want the rod or 
don't you?" 
I: "You tear my heart to pieces. I want to submit to life. But 
how difficult this is! I want the black rod because it is the first 
thing the darkness grants me. I don't know what this rod means, 
nor what it gives-I only feel what it takes. I want to kneel down 
and receive this messenger of darkness. I have received the black 
rod, and now I hold it, the enigmatic one, in my hand; it is cold 
and heavy; like iron. The pearl eyes of the serpent look at me 
blindly and dazzlingly. What do you want, mysterious gift? All the 
darkness of all former worlds crowds together in you, you hard, 
black piece ofsteel! Are you time and fate? The essence ofnature, 
hard and eternally inconsolable, yet the sum of all mysterious 
creative force? Primordial magic words seem to emanate from 
you, mysterious effects weave around you, and what powerful arts 
slumber in you? You pierce me with unbearable tension-what 
grimaces will you make? What terrible mystery will you create? 
Will you bring bad weather, storms, cold, thunder and lightning, 
or will you make the fields fruitful and bless the bodies ofpregnant 
women? What is the mark ofyour being? Or don't you need that, 
you son of the dark womb? Do you content yourself with the 
hazy darkness, whose concretion and crystal you are? Where in 
my soul do I shelter you? In my heart? Should my heart be your 
shrine, your holy ofholies? So choose your place. I have accepted 
you. What crushing tension you bring with you! Isn't the bow of 
my nerves breaking? I've taken in the messenger of the night." 
S: "The most powerful magic lives in it." 
I: "I feel it and yet can't put into words the nightmarish power 
granted to it. I wanted to laugh, because so much alters in laughter, 
and resolves itself only there. But laughter dies in me. The 
magic of this rod is as solid as iron and as cold as death. Forgive 
me, my soul, I don't want to be impatient, but it seems to me that 
something has got to happen to break through this unbearable 
tension that came with the rod." 
S: "Wait, keep your eyes and ears open." 
1: "I'm shuddering, and I don't know why." 
S: "Sometimes one must shudder before-the greatest." 
I: "I bow, my soul, before unknown forces-I'd like to consecrate 
an altar to each unknown God. I must submit. The black iron 
in my heart gives me secret power. It's like defiance and likecontempt 
for men."24
1 

[2] Oh dark act, violation, murder! Abyss, give birth to the 
unredeemed. Who is our redeemer? Who our leader? Where are 
the ways through black wastes? God, do not abandon us! What 
are you summoning, God? Raise your hand up to the darkness 
above you, pray, despair, wring your hands, kneel, press your 

forehead into the dust, cry out, but do not name Him, do not 

look at Him. Leave Him without name and form. What should 

form the formless? Name the nameless? Step onto the great way 

and grasp what is nearest. Do not look out, do not want, but lift 

up your hands. The gifts ofdarkness are full ofriddles. The way 

is open to whomever can continue in spite of riddles. Submit 

to the riddles and the thoroughly incomprehensible. There are 

dizzying / [Image 129] / bridges over the eternally deep abyss. 

But follow the riddles. 

Endure them, the terrible ones. It is still dark, and the terrible 

goes on growing. Lost and swallowed by the streams ofprocreating 

life, we approach the overpowering, inhuman forces that are busily 

creating what is to come. How much future the depths carry! Are 

not the threads spun down there over millennia?242 Protect the 

riddles, bear them in your heart, warm them, be pregnant with 

them. Thus you carry the future. 

The tension of the future is unbearable in us. It must brealc 
through narrow cracks, it must force new ways. You want to cast 
off the burden, you want to escape the inescapable. Running away 
is deception and detour. Shut your eyes so that you do not see the 
manifold, the outwardly plural, the tearing away and the tempting. 
There is only one way and that is your way; there is only one salvation 
and that is your salvation. Why are you looking around for 
help? Do you believe that help will come from outside? What is to 
come is created in you and from you. Hence look into yourself Do 
not compare, do not measure. No other way is Wee yours. All other 
ways deceive and tempt you. You must fulfill the way that is in you. 

Oh, that all men and all their ways become strange to you! 
Thus might you find them again within yourself and recognize 
their ways. But what weakness! What doubt! What fear! You will 
not bear going your way. You always want to have at least one foot 
on paths not your own to avoid the great solitude! So that maternal 
comfort is always with you! So that someone acknowledges you, 
recognizes you, bestows trust in you, comforts you, encourages 
you. So that someone pulls you over onto their path, where you 
stray from yourself and where it is easier for you to set yourself 
aside. As if you were not yourself! Who should accomplish your 
deeds? Who should carry your virtues and your vices? You do not 
come to an end with your life, and the dead will besiege you 
terribly to live your unlived life. Everything must be fulfilled. 
Time is of the essence, so why do you want to pile up the lived 
and let the unlived rot? 

Great is the power of the way.243 In it Heaven and Hell grow 
together, and in it the power of the Below and the power of the 
Above unite. The nature ofthe way is magical, as are supplication 
and invocation;244 malediction and deed are magical if they occur 
on the great way. Magic is the working of men on men, but your 
magic action does not affect your neighbor; it affects you first, and 
only if you withstand it does an invisible effect pass from you to 
your neighbor. There is more ofit in the air than I ever thought. 
However, it cannot be grasped. Listen: 

241 In Black Book 4, Jung noted: [Soul:] "Tame your impatience. Only waiting will help you here." [I:] "Waiting-I know this word. Hercules also found waiting troublesome 
when he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders." [Soul:] "He had to await Atlas's return and carried the weight of the world for the sake of the apples" 

(p. 6o). The reference is to the eleventh labor of Hercules, in which he has to get the golden apples, which confer immortality. Atlas offered to get them for him, ifhe 
held up the world in the interim. 
242 In Greek mythology, the Moirae, or three fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropus, spun and controlled the threads ofhuman life. In Norse mythology, the norns spun the 
threads offate at the foot of Yggsdrasil, the world tree. 
243 The Drqft continues: "The power of the way is so great that it carries away others and ignites them. You do not know how this happens; hence it is best you call this 
effect magical" (P.453). 
244 The Drqft continues: "which is represented as a serpent precisely on account ofits particular nature" (P.453). 
245 This appears to refer to the magical circle, in which ritual acts are performed. 
246 In Matthew 24:40, Christ rebukes his disciples for having been unable to remain awake for an hour while he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane. 
247 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "29/II/1922." This appears to refer to when this passage was transcribed. 


THE WAY OF THE CROSS I 309 

The Above is poweiful, The winds in~between bind the 
The Below is poweiful, cross. The poles are united by the 
Twofold power is in the One. intermediate poles in~between. 
North, come hither, Steps leadfrom above to below. 
West, snuggle up, Boiling water bubbles in 
East,flow upward, cauldrons. Red~hot ash envelops 
South, spill over. the roundfloor. 245 

Night sinks blue and deep from 
above, earth rises blackfrom 
130 /1 32 below. 1 [Image 131] 1 

A solitary is cooking up healing potions. 
He makes ojfering to the four winds. 
He greets the stars and touches the earth. 
He holds something luminous in his hand. 


Flowers sprout around him and the bliss ofanew spring kisses all his limbs. 
Birdsfly around and the shy animals oftheforest gaze at him. 
He isfarfrom men and yet the threads oftheirfate pass through his hands. 
May your intercession be meantfor him, so that his medicine grows ripe 


and strong and brings healing to the deepest wounds. 
For your sake he is solitary and waits alone between Heaven and earth,for 

the earth to rise up to him andfor Heaven to come down to him. 
All peoples are stillfar off and stand behind the wall ofdarkness. 
But I hear his words, which reach mefrom afar. 
He has chosen a poor scribe, someone hard ofhearing, who also stutters 

when he writes. 
I do not recognize him, the solitary. What is he saying? He says: ({I suffer 
fear and distress for the sake ofman." 
I dug up old runes and magical sayings for words never reach men. Words 
have become shadows. 
Therefore I took old magical apparatuses and prepared hot potions and mixed 

in secrets and ancient powers, things that even the cleverest would notguess at. 
I stewed the roots ofall human thoughts and deeds. 
I watched over the cauldron through many starry nights. The brewfer~ 

mentsforever. I need your intercession, your kneeling, your desperation and your 
patience. I need your ultimate and highest longing, your purest willing, your 
most humble subjugation. 

Solitary, who are you waitingfor? Whose help do you require? There is none 
who can rush to your aid, since all look to you and waitfor your healing art. 
We are all utterly incapable and need help more than you. Grant us help 
so that we can help you in return. 

The solitary speaks: ({Will no one stand by me in this need? should I leave 
my work to help you so that you can help me again? But how should I help 
you, ifmy brew has not grown ripe and strong? It was supposed to help you. 
What do you hopefrom me?JJ 

Come to us! Why are you standing there cooking up marvels? What can 
your healing and magical potion do for us? Do you believe in healing potions? 
Look at life, behold how much it needs you! 1 [Image 133] 1 

The solitary speaks: {{Fools, can you not keep watch with me for an 
hour,246 until the difficult and long~lasting achieves completion and the juice 
has ripened? 

Just a little longer and fermentation will be complete. Why can't you 
wait? Why should your impatience destroy the highest opus?JJ 

What highest opus? We are not alive; cold and numbness have seized 
us. Your opus, solitary one, will not befinished for aeons, even ifit advances 
day after day. 

The work ofsalvation is endless. Why do you want to waitfor the end of 
this work? Even ifyour waiting turned you into stone for endless ages, you 

could not endure till the end. And ifyour salvation came to its end, you would 
have to be savedfrom your salvation again. 

The solitary speaks: ({What smooth~tongued lamentation reaches my ears! 
What whining! Whatfoolish doubters you are! Unruly children! Persevere, 
it will be accomplished after this night!" 

We will not wait a single night longer; we have persevered long enough. 
Are you a God, that a thousand nights are as one night to you? For us, this 
one night would be like athousand nights. Abandon the work ofsalvation, and 
we will be saved. What stretch ofages are you saving usfor? 

The solitary speaks: ({You embarrassing human swarm, you foolish 
bastard ofGod and cattle, I'm still lacking apiece ofyour preciousflesh for 
my mixture. Am I truly your most valuable piece ofmeat? Is it worth my 
while to come to the boil for you? One let himselfbe nailed to the cross for 
you. One is truly enough. He blocks my way. Therefore neither will I walk 
on his ways, nor makefor you any healing brew or immortal247 blood potion, 
but rather I will abandon the potion and cauldron and occult work for your 
sake, since you can neither waitfor nor endure thefulfillment. I throw down 
your intercession, your genuflection, your invocations. You can save your~ 
selves from both your lack ofsalvation and your salvation! Your worth rose 
quite high enough because one died for you. Now prove your worth by each 
living for himself. My God, how difficult it is to leave a wo~k unfinished 

for the sake ofmen! But for the sake ofmen, I abstain from being asavior. 

Lo! Now my potion has completed itsfermentation. I did not mix apiece of 

myselfinto the drink, but I did slice in apiece ofhumanity, and behold, it 

clarified the murkyfoaming potion. 

H ow sweet, how bitter The form ofthe One East, spread yourself, 
it tastes! becomes double. South, die down. 
The Below is weak, North, rise and be gone, The winds in~between 
The Above is weak, West, retire to your place, loosen the crucified. 1 
[Image 135]248 1 

The far poles are separated The ash turns gray 
by the poles in~between. beneath its ground. 
The levels are broad ways, Night covers the sky andfar 
patient streets. below lies the black earth. 
The bubbling potgrows cold. 

Day approaches, and above the clouds adistant sun. 
No solitary cooks healing potions. 
The four winds blow and laugh at their bounty. 
And he mocks the four winds. 
He has seen the stars and touched the earth. 
Therefore his hand clasps something luminous 
and his shadow has grown to Heaven. [Image 136] 


The inexplicable occurs. You would very much like to forsake 
yourself and defect to each and every manifold possibility. You 
would very much like to risk every crime in order to steal for 
yourself the mystery ofthe changeful. But the road is without end. 

The Way of the Cross 

Cap. XX.249 

[HI 136] 25¡1 saw the black serpent,251 as it wound itself upward 
around the wood of the cross. It crept into the body of the 
crucified and emerged again transformed from his mouth. It had 

248 Inscription: "Completed on 25 November I922. The fire comes out of Muspilli and grasps the tree oflife. A cycle'is completed, but it is the cycle within the world ~gg.' 
A strange God, the unnameable God of the solitary, is incubating it. New creatures form from the smoke and ashes." In Norse mythology Muspilli (or Muspelheim) is 
the abode of the Fire Gods. 

249 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "25 February I923. The transformation ofblack into white magic." 

250January 27, I9I4á 

25I The Drqft continues: "the serpent of my way" (p. 460). 


310 I LIBER SECUNDUS 136/ 139 

become white. It wound itself around the head of the dead one 4. No one rises above himself who has notáturned his most 
like a diadem, and a light gleamed above his head, and the sun dangerous weapon against himself One who wants to rise above 
rose shining in the east. I stood and watched and was confused himself shall climb down and hoist himself onto himself and lug 
and a great weight burdened my soul. But the white bird that himself to the place of sacrifice. But what must happen to a man 
sat on my shoulder spoke to me:252 "Let it rain, let the wind blow, until he realizes that outer visible success, that he can grasp with 
let the waters flow and the fire burn. Let each thing have its his hands, / leads him astray. What suffering must be brought 136/137 
development, let becoming have its day." upon humanity; until man gives up satisfying his longing for 

power over his fe110w man and forever wanting others to be the 

[2] 2. Truly; the way leads through the crucified, that means same. How much blood must go on flowing until man opens his 
through him to whom it was no small thing to live his own life, eyes and sees the way to his own path and himself as the enemy; 
and who was therefore raised to magnificence. He did not simply and becomes aware of his real success. You ought to be able to 
teach what was knowable and worth knowing, he lived it. It is live with yoursel£ but not at your neighbor'S expense. The herd 
unclear how great one's humility must be to take it upon oneself animal is not his brother's parasite and pest. Man, you have even 
to live one's own life. The disgust of whoever wants to enter forgotten that you too are an animal. You actually sti11 seem to 
into his own life can hardly be measured. Aversion wi11 sicken believe that life is better elsewhere. Woe unto you ifyour neighbor 
him. He makes himselfvomit. His bowels pain him and his brain also thinks so. But you may be sure that he does. Someone must 
sinks into lassitude. He would rather devise any trick to help him begin to stop being childish. 
escape, since nothing matches the torment of one's own way. It 5. Your craving satisfies itself in you. You can offer no more 
seems impossibly difficult, so difficult that nearly anything seems precious a sacrificial meal to your God than yourself May your 
preferable to this torment. Not a few choose even to love people greed consume you, for this wearies and calms it, and you wi11 
for fear of themselves. I believe, too, that some commit a crime sleep we11 and consider the sun ofeach day as a gift. Ifyou devour 
to pick a quarrel with themselves. Therefore I cling to everything other things and other people, your greed remains eternally 
that obstructs my way to myself dissatisfied, for it craves more, the most costly-it craves you. 
3. 2 
53He who goes to himsel£ climbs down. Pathetic and ridicuAnd 
thus you compel your desire to take your own way. You 
lous forms appeared to the greatest prophet who came before may ask others provided that you need help and advice. But you 
this time, and these were the forms of his own essence. He did should make demands on no one, neither desiring nor expectnot 
accept them, but exorcized them before others. Ultimately; ing anything from anyone except from yourself For your craving 
however, he was forced to celebrate a Last Supper with his own satisfies itself only within you. You are afraid of burning in your 
poverty and to accept these forms of his own essence out of own fire. May nothing prevent you from doing so, neither anyone 
compassion, which is precisely that acceptance of the lowest in else's sympathy nor your more dangerous sympathy with yourself 
US.
US.
254 

But this enraged the mighty lion, who chased down the lost Since you should live and die with yourself 
and restored it to the darkness of the depths.255 And like all those 6. When the flame of your greed consumes you, and nothing 
with power, the one with the great name wanted to erupt from the remains ofyou but ash, so nothing ofyou was steadfast. Yet the 
womb ofthe mountain like the sun.256 But what happened to him? flame in which you consumed yourself has i11uminated many. But 
His way led him before the crucified and he began to rage. He raged ifyou flee from your fire fu11 of fear, you scorch your fe110w men, 
against the man ofmockery and pain because the power ofhis own and the burning torment ofyour greed cannot die out, so long as 
essence forced him to follow precisely this way as Christ had you do not desire yourself 
done before us. Yet he loudly proclaimed his power and great7-
The mouth utters the word, the sign, and the symbol. If the 
ness. No one speaks louder of his power and greatness than he word is a sign, it means nothing. But if the word is a symbol, it 
from whom the earth disappears under his feet. Ultimately the means everything.258 When the way enters death and we are 
lowest in him got to him, his incapacity; and this crucified his surrounded by rot and horror, the way rises in the darkness and 
spirit, so that, as he himself had predicted, his soul died before leaves the mouth as the saving symbol, the word. It leads the sun 
his body. 257 on high, for in the symbol there is the release ofthe bound human 

252 In Black Book 4, this is spoken by his soul. In this chapter and in Scrutinies, we find a shift in the attribution ofsome statements in the Black Books from the soul to the 
other characters. This textual revision marks an important psychological process ofdifferentiating the characters, separating them out from one another, and disidentifying 
from them. Jung discussed this process in general in 1928, in The Relations between the I and the Unconscious, ch. 7, "The technique for differentiation between the I 
and the figures ofthe unconscious" (CW 7). In Black Book 6, the soul explains to Jung in 1916: "If I am not conjoined through the uniting of the Below and the Above, 
I break down into three parts: the serpent, and in that or some other animal form I roam, living nature daimonically, arousing fear and longing. The human soul, living 
forever within you. The celestial soul, as such dwelling with the Gods, far from you and unknown to you, appearing in the form ofa bird." (Appendix C, p. 370). The 
textual changes that Jung makes among the soul, the serpent, and the bird from the Black Books in this chapter and in Scrutinies can be seen to be the recognition and 
differentiation of the threefold nature ofthe soul. Jung's notion of the unity and multiplicity of the soul resembles Eckhart's. In Sermon 52, Eckhart wrote: "the soul 
with her higher powers touches eternity, which is God, while her lower powers being in touch with time make her subject to change and biased toward bodily things, 
which degrade her" (Sermons & Treatises, vol. 2, tr. M. O'e. Walshe [London: Watkins, 1981], p. 55). In Sermon 85, he wrote: "Three things prevent the soul from uniting 
with God. The first is that she is too scattered, and that she is not unitary: for when the soul is inclined toward creatures, she is not unitary. The second is when she is 
involved with temporal things. The third is when she is turned toward the body, for then she cannot unite with God" (ibid., p. 264). 

253 The Drift continues: " 'Why,' you ask, 'does man not want to reach himself?' The raging prophet who preceded this time wrote a book about this and embellished it 

with a proud name. The book is about how and why man does not want to reach himself" (p. 461). The reference is to Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 
254 See "The Last Supper," Thus Spoke zarathustra, p. 294£ 
255 In the last chapter ofThus spoke zarathustra, "The sign;" when the higher men come to meet Zarathustra in his cave, "the lion started violently, suddenly turned away 

from Zarathustra, and leaped up to the cave, roaring fiercely" (p. 407). In 1926 Jung noted: "The roaring of the Zarathustrian lion drove all the 'higher' men who were 
clamoring for experience back again into the cavern of the unconscious. Hence his life does not convince us ofhis teaching" (The Unconscious in Normal and Sick Psychic 
Life, CW 7, ¤37). 


256 Nietzsche ends Thus Spoke zarathustra with the lines: "Thus spoke Zarathustra and left his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun emerging from behind dark 
clouds" (p. 336). 

257 In Zarathustra's prologue, a tightrope walker falls from a rope. Zarathustra says to the injured tightrope walker: "Your soul will be dead even before your body: therefore 
fear nothing any more!" (zarathustra, ¤6, 48; as underlined in Jung's copy, p. 22). In 1926 Jung argued that this was prophetic of Nietzsche's own fate (The Unconscious in 
Normal and Sick Psychic Life," CW 7, ¤36-44). 

258 For Jung's differentiation of the significance ofsigns and symbols, see psychological Types (1921, CW 6, ¤814ff). 


THE WAY OF THE CROSS I 3II 

force struggling with darkness. Our freedom does not lie outside 
us, but within us. One can be bound outside, and yet one will still 
feel free since one has burst inner bonds. One can certainly gain 
outer freedom through powerful actions, but one creates inner 
freedom only through the symbol. 

8. The symbol is the word that goes out ofthe mouth, that one 
does not simply speak, but that rises out of the depths of the self 
as a word of power and great need and places itself unexpectedlyon 
the tongue. It is an astonishing and perhaps seemingly 
irrational word, but one recognizes it as a symbol since it is alien 
to the conscious mind. If one accepts the symbol, it is as if a door 
opens leading into a new room whose existence one previously 
did not knOw. But ifone does not accept the symbol, it is as ifone 
carelessly went past this door; and since this was the only door 
leading to the inner chambers, one must pass outside into the 
streets again, exposed to everything external. But the soul suffers 
great need, since outer freedom is of no use to it. Salvation is a 
long road that leads through many gates. These gates are symbols. 
Each new gate is at first invisible; indeed, it seems at first that / 
it must be created, for it exists only ifone has dug up the spring's 
root, the symbol. 
To find the mandrake, one needs the black dog,259 since good 
and bad must always be united first if the symbol is to be created. 
The symbol can be neither thought up nor found: it becomes. 
Its becoming is like the becoming of human life in the womb. 
Pregnancy comes about through voluntary copulation. It goes on 
through willing attention. But if the depths have conceived, then 
the symbol grows out ofitselfand is born from the mind, as befits 
a God. But in the same way a mother would like to throw herself 
on the child like a monster and devour it again. 

In the morning, when the new sun rises, the word steps out of 
my mouth, but is murdered lovelessly; since I did not know that 
it was the savior. The newborn child grows quickly; if I accept 
it. And immediately it becomes my charioteer. The word is the 
guide, the middle way which easily oscillates like the needle on 
the scales. The word is the God that rises out of the waters each 
morning and proclaims the guiding law to the people. Outer laws 
and outer wisdom are eternally insufficient, since there is only 
one law and one wisdom, namely my daily law, my daily wisdom. 
The God renews himself each night. 

The God appears in multiple guises; for when he emerges, he 
has assumed some of the character of the night and the nightly 
waters in which he slumbered, and in which he struggled for 
renewal in the last hour of the night. Consequently his appearance 
is twofold and ambiguous; indeed, it even tears at the heart 
and the mind. On emerging, the God calls me toward the right 
and the left, his voice calling out to me from both sides. Yet the 
God wants neither the one nor the other. He wants the middle 
way: But the middle is the beginning of the long road. 

Man, however, can never see this beginning; he always sees 
only one and not the other, or the other and not the one, but 

never that which the one as well as the other encloses in itself 

The point of origin is where the mind and the will stand still; it 

is a state of suspension that evokes my outrage, my defiance and 

eventually my greatest fear. For I can see nothing anymore and 

can no longer want anything. Or at least that is how it seems to 

me. The way is a highly peculiar standstill of everything that was 

previously movement, it is a blind waiting, a doubtful listening 

and groping. One is convinced that one will burst. But the reso


lution is born from precisely this tension, and it almost always 

appears where one did not expect it. 

But what is tht:: resolution? It is always something ancient and 
precisely because ofthis something new, for when something long 
since passed away comes back again in a changed world, it is new. 
To give birth to the ancient in a~new time is creation. This is the 
creation ofthe new, and that redeems me. Salvation is the resolution 
ofthe task. The task is to give birth to the old in a new time. The 
soul of humanity is like the great wheel of the zodiac that rolls 
along the way: Everything that comes up in a constant movement 
from below to the heights was already there. There is no part of 
the wheel that does not come around again. Hence everything 
that has been streams upward there, and what has been will be 
again. For these are all things which are the inborn properties of 
human nature. It belongs to the essence of forward movement 
that what was returns.260 Only the ignorant can marvel at this. Yet 
the meaning does not lie in the eternal recurrence of the same,26! 
but in the manner ofits recurring creation at any given time. 

The meaning lies in the manner and the direction of the 
recurring creation. But how do I create my charioteer? Or do I 
want to be my own charioteer? I can guide myself only with will 
and intention. But will and intention are simply part of myself 
Consequently they are insufficient to express my wholeness. 
Intention is what I can foresee, and willing is to want a foreseen 
goal. But where do I find the goal? I take it from what is presently 
known to me. Thus I set the present in place ofthe future. In this 
/ manner, though I cannot reach the future, I artificially produce 
a constant present. Everything that would like to break into this 
present strikes me as a disturbance, and I seek to drive it away so 
that my intention survives. Thus I close off the progress of life. 
But how can I be my own charioteer without will and intention? 
Therefore a wise man does not want to be a charioteer, for he 
knows that will and intention certainly attain goals but disturb 
the becoming of the future. 

Futurity grows out of me; I do not create it, and yet I do, 
though not deliberately and willfully; but rather against will 
and intention. If I want to create the future, then I work against 
my future. And if I do not want to create it, once again I do not 
take sufficient part in the creation of the future, and everything 
happens then according to unavoidable laws to which I fall victim. 
The ancients devised magic to compel fate. They needed it to 
determine outer fate. We need it to determine inner fate and 
to find the way that we are unable to conceive. For a long time I 

259 The mandrake is a plant whose roots bear some resemblance to the human figure, hence they have been used in magical rites. According to legend, they shriek when 
they are pulled from the ground. In "The philosophical tree" (1945), Jung noted that the magical mandrake "when tied to the tail ofa black dog, shrieks when it is torn 
out of the earth" (CW 13, ¤4IO). 

260 The Drcift continues: "Everything is forever the same and yet not, for the wheel rolls along on a long road. But the way leads through valleys and across mountains. 
The movement of the wheel and the eternal recurrence ofits parts is essential to the carriage, but meaning lies in the way. Meaning is attained only through the wheel's 
constant revolution and forward movement. The recurrence of the past is inherent in forward movement. This can only baffle the ignorant person. Ignorance makes 
us resist the necessary recurrence of the same, or greed allows the wheel to toss us up and away in its upward movement because we believe that we will rise ever 
higher with this part of the wheel. But we will not rise higher, but deeper; ultimately we will be at the very bottom. Thus praise standstill, since it shows you that you 
are not bound to the spokes like Ixion, but sit alongside the charioteer who will interpret the meaning of the way to you" (pp. 469-70). In Greek mythology, Ixion 
was the son ofAres. He tried to seduce Hera, and Zeus punished him by binding him to a fiery wheel that rolled unceasingly. 

261 The notion that everything recurs is found in various traditions, such as Stoicism and Pythagoreanism, and features prominently in Nietzsche's work. There has 
been much debate in Nietzsche studies as to whether it should primarily be understood as an ethical imperative oflife affirmation or as cosmological doctrine. See 
Karl L6with, Nietzsche's Doctrine ofthe Eternal Recurrence ofthe Same, tr. J. Lomax (Berkeley: University of California Press, I997). Jung discusses this in I934, Nietzsche's 
Zarathustra, vol. I, pp. I9I-92. 


312 I LIBER SECUNDUS 139 /142 

considered what type ofmagic this would have to be. And in the end 
I found nothing. Whoever cannot find it within himself should 
become an apprentice, and so I took myself off to a far country 
where a great magician lived, ofwhose reputation I had heard. 

The Magician"'" 

Cap. xxi. 

[HI: 139] {I} [1] 263After a long search I found the small house 
in the country fronted by a large bed of tulips. This is where 
<I>IAHMQN [Philemon]' the magician, lives with his wife, BAYKIL 
[Baucis]. <I>IAHMQN is one of those magicians who has not yet 
managed to banish old age, but who lives it with dignity, and his 
wife can only do the same.264 Their interests seem to have become 
narrow, even childish. They water their bed oftulips and tell each 
other about the flowers that have newly appeared. And their 
days fade into a pale wavering chiaracuso, lit up by the past, only 
slightly frightened of the darkness ofwhat is to come. 

Why is <I>IAHMQN a magician?265 Does he conjure up 
immortality for himself, a life beyond? He was probably only 
a magician by profession, and he now appears to be a pensioned 
magician who has retired from service. His desirousness and 
creative drive have expired and he now enjoys his well-earned 
rest out ofsheer incapacity, like every old man who can do nothing 
else than plant tulips and water his little garden. The magical 
rod lies in a cupboard together with the sixth and seventh books 
of Moses266 and the wisdom of EPMHL TPILMErILTYL [Hermes 
Trismegitsus].267 <I>IAHMQN is old and has become somewhat 
feeble-minded. He still murmurs a few magical spells for the wellbeing 
of bewitched cattle in return for some petty cash or a gift 
for the kitchen. But it is uncertain if these spells are still correct 
and whether he understands their meaning. It is also clear that 
it hardly matters what he murmurs, 1 as the cattle might also 
get well on their own. There goes old <I>IAHMQN in the garden, 
bent, with a watering can in his shaking hand. Baucis stands at 
the kitchen window and looks at him calmly and impassively. She 
has already seen this image a thousand times-somewhat more 
infirm every time, feebler, seeing it a little less well every time 
since her eyesight gradually has become we aker. 268 

262 The Handwritten Draft has instead: "Tenth Adventure" (p. 1061). 
263 January 27, 1914. 

I stand at the garden gate. They have not noticed the stranger. 
"<I>IAHMQN, old magician, how are you?" I callout to him. He 
does not hear me, seeming to be stone-deaf I follow him and talce 
his arm. He turns and greets me awkwardly and trembling. He has 
a white beard and thin white hair and a wrinkled face and there 
appears to be something about this face. His eyes are gray and old 
and something in them is strange, one would like to say alive. "I 
am well, stranger," he says, "but what are you doing here?" 

I: "People tell me that you understand the black art. I am 
interested in that. Will you tell me about it?" 
<I>: "What should I tell you about? There is nothing to tell." 

I: "Don't be ill-natured, old man, I want to learn." 
<I>: "You are certainly more learned than I. What could I 
teach you?" 

I: "Do not be mean. I certainly don't intend to become your 
competitor. I'm just curious to know what you are up to and what 
magic you are performing." 
<I>: "What do you want? In the past I have helped people here 
and there who have been sick and disadvantaged." 

I: "What exactly did you do?" 
<I>: "Well, I did it quite simply with sympathy." 
I: " Old man, that word sounds comical and ambiguous." 
<I>: "How so?" 
I: "It could mean that you helped people either by expressing 
compassion or by superstitious, sympathetic means." 
<I>: "Well, surely it would have been both." 

I: "And that's all there was to your magic?" 
<I>: "There was more." 
I: "What was it, tell me." 
<I>: "That is none of your business. You are impertinent 
and meddlesome." 

I: "Please, don't take my curiosity badly. Recently I heard 
something about magic that awalcened my interest in this 
bygone practice. And then I came to you because I heard that 
you understand the black art. If magic were still taught today 
at university, I would have studied it there. But the last college of 
magic was closed long ago. Today no professor knows anything 
anymore about magic. So do not be sensitive and miserly, but 
tell me a bit about your art. Surely, you don't want to take your 
secrets with you to the grave, do you?" 
264 In the Metamorphoses, Ovid tells the tale of Philemon and Baucis. Jupiter and Mercury wandered disguised as mortals, in the hill country of Phyrgia. They searched for 
somewhere to rest but were barred by a thousand homes. An old couple finally took them in. The couple had been married in their cottage in their youth, grew old 
together, and contentedly accepted their poverty. They prepared a meal for their guests. During the meal, the couple saw that the flagon automatically refilled itself as 
soon as it was emptied. In honor of their guests, the couple offered to kill their sole goose. The goose took refuge with the Gods, who said that it should not be killed. 
Jupiter and Mercury then revealed themselves and toldá the couple that their neighborhood would be punished, but that they would be spared. They asked the couple 
to climb the mountain with them. "When they reached the top, the couple saw that the country surrounding their cottage had been flooded and only their cottage remained; it 
had been transformed into a temple with marble columns and a gold roof The Gods asked what the couple would like, and Philemon replied that they would like to 
be their priests and serve in their shrine, and also that they could die at the same time. Their wish was granted, and as they died, they transformed into trees side 
by side. In Goethe's Faust 2, act V, a wanderer, who had previously been saved by them, calls upon Philemon and Baucis. Faust was in the process of building a city 
on land reclaimed from the sea. Faust proceeds to tell Mephistopheles that he wants Philemon and Baucis moved. Mephistopheles and three mighty men go and burn the 
cottage, with Philemon and Baucis in it. Faust replies that he had only intended to exchange their dwelling. To Eckermann, Goethe recounted that "My Philemon and 
Baucis ... have nothing to do with that renowned ancient couple or the tradition connected with them. I gave this couple the names merely to elevate the characters. 
The persons and relations are similar, and hence the use of the names has a good effect" (June 6, 1831, cited in Goethe, Faust, tr. W Arndt [New York: Norton Critical 
Edition, 1976], p. 428). On June 7, 1955, Jung wrote a letter to Alice Raphael which refers to Goethe's comments to Eckermann: '~d Philemon and Baucis: a typical 
Goethean answer to Eckermann! trying to conceal his vestiges. Philemon (<ptA:ru.l.<X [philema] = kiss), the loving one, the simple old loving couple, close to the earth and 
aware of the Gods, the complete opposite to the Superman Faust, the product of the devil. Incidentally: in my tower at Bollingen is a hidden inscription: Philemon sacrum 
Fausti poenitentia [Philemon's Sanctuary, Faust's Repentance]. "When I first encountered the archetype of the old wise man, he called himself Philemon. / In Alchemy Ph. 
and B. represented the artifex or vir sapiens and the soror mystica (Zosimos-Theosebeia, Nicolas Flamel-Peronelle, Mr. South and his daughter in the XIXth Cent') 
and the pair in the mutus tiber (about 1677)" (Beinecke Library, Yale University). On Jung's inscription, see also his letter to Hermann Keyserling, January 2,1928 
(Letters I, p. 49). On January 5, 1942, Jung wrote to Paul Schmitt, "I have taken over Faust as my heritage, and moreover as the advocate of Philemon and Baucis, who, 
unlike Faust the superman, are the hosts of the gods in a ruthless and godforsal<.en age" (Letters I, pp. 309-10). 

265 In psychological Types (1921), in the course of a discussion of Faust, Jung wrote: "The magician has preserved in himself a trace of primordial paganism, he possesses 
a nature that is still unaffected by the Christian splitting, which means he has access to the unconscious, which is still pagan, where the opposites still lie in their 
original nmve state, beyond all sinfulness, but, if assimilated into conscious life, produce evil and good with the same primordial and consequently daimonic force ... 
Therefore he is a destroyer as well as savior. This figure is therefore pre-eminently suited to become the symbol carrier for an attempt at unification" (CW 6, ¤316). 

266 The sixth and seventh books of Moses (i.e., in addition to the five contained in the Torah) were published in 1849 by Johann Schiebel, who claimed that they came 
from ancient Talmudic sources. The work is a compendium of Kabbalistic magical spells, which has been enduringly popular. 
267 The figure of Hermes Trismegistus was formed through the amalgamation of Hermes with the Egyptian God Thoth. The Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of largely 
alchemical and magical texts dating from the early Christian era but initially thought to have been much older, was ascribed to him. 
268 In Goethe's Faust, Philemon speaks ofhis declining powers: "Older, I could not lend a hand [to the building of the dyke] / as once I did full well, / and with my powers 
ebbing / the waters were pushed back" (Ll. II087-9) 


THE MAGICIAN I 313 

<1>: "Well, all you will do is laugh anyway. So why should I tell 
you anything? It would be better if everything were buried with 
me. It can always be rediscovered later. It will never be lost to 
humanity, since magic is reborn with each and every one of us." 

1: "What do you mean? Do you believe that magic is really 
inborn in man?" 
<1>: "If I could, I would say; yes, ofcourse, it is. But you will find 
this laughable." 

I: "No, this time I will not laugh, because I have often wondered 
about the fact that all peoples in all times and in all places have 
the same magical customs. As you can see, I have already thought 
along similar lines." 
<1>: "What do you make of magic?" 

1: "To put it plainly; nothing, or very little. It appears to me 
that magic is one ofthe vain tools ofmen inferior to nature. I can 
detect no other tangible meaning in magic." 
<1>: Your professors probably also know just as much." 

1: "Yes, but what do you know about it?" 
<1>: "I'd prefer not to say." 
I: "Don't be so secretive, old man, otherwise I must assume 
that you know no more than I do." 
<1>: "Take it as you please." 


I: "Your answer suggests that you most definitely understand 
more about it than others." 
<1>: "Comical fellow, how stubborn you are! But what I like 
about you is that your reason does not deter you." 

I: "That's actually the case. Whenever I want to learn and 
understand something, I leave my so-called reason at home and 
give whatever it is that I am trying to understand the benefit of 
the doubt. I have learned this gradually; because nowadays the 
world ofscience is full of scary examples of the opposite." 
140/141 <1>: "In which case you could do very well for yourself" / 

I: "I hope so. Now, let us not stray from magic." 
<1>: "Why are you so determined about learning more about 
magic, if you claim that you have left your reason at home? Or 
would you not consider consistency part of reason?" 

I: "I do-I see, or rather, it seems as ifyou are quite an adept 
sophist, who skillfully leads me around the house and back to 
the door." 
<1>: "It seems that way to you because you judge everything from 
the standpoint ofyour intellect. Ifyou forsake reason for a while, 
you will also give up consistency." 

1: "That's a difficult test. But if I want to be adept at some 
point, I suppose I ought to submit to your request. Alright, 
I'm listening." 
<1>: "What do you want to hear?" 

1: "You're not going to draw me out. I'm simply waiting for 
whatever you are going to say." 
<1>: "And what if I say nothing?" 


1: "Well, then I'll withdraw somewhat embarrassed and think 
that <1>IAHMnN is at the very least a shrewd fox, who definitely 
would have something to teach me." 
<1>: "With this, my boy; you have learned something about magic." 

1: "I'll have to chew on this. I must admit that this is somewhat 
surprising. I had imagined magic as being somewhat different." 
<1>: "Well, this shows you how little you understand about 
magic and how incorrect your notion of it is." 

1: "If this should be the case, or that's how it is, then I must 
confess that I approached the problem completely incorrectly. I 
gather from what you are saying that these matters do not follow 
ordinary understanding." 
<1>: "Nor does magic." 

1: "But you have not deterred me at all; on the contrary; 
I'm burning to hear even more. What I know up to now is 
essentially negative." 
<1>: "With this you have recognized a second main point. 
Above all, you must know that magic is the negative of what 
one can know." 

I: "That, too, my dear <1>IAHMQN, is a piece of knowledge that 
is hard to digest and causes me no small pain. The negative of 
what one can know? I suppose you mean that it cannot be known, 
don't you? This exhausts my understanding." 
<1>: "That is the third point that you must note as essential: 
namely; that there is nothing for you to understand." 

1: "Well, I must confess that that is new and strange. So 
nothing at all about magic can be understood?" 
<1>: "Exactly. Magic happens to be precisely everything that 
eludes comprehension." 

I: "But then how the devil is one to teach and learn magic?" 
<1>: "Magic is neither to be taught nor learned. It's foolish that 
you want to learn magic." 

1: "But then magic is nothing but deception." 
<1>: "Watch out-you have started reasoning again." 
I: "It's difficult to exist without reason." 
<1>: ''And that is exactly how difficult magic is." 
I: "Well, in that case it's hard work. I conclude that it is an 
inescapable condition for the adept that he completely unlearns 
his reason." 
<1>: "I'm afraid that is what it amounts to." 

1: "Ye Gods, this is serious." 
<1>: "Not as serious as you think. Reason declines with old 
age, since it is an essential counterpart of the drives, which are 
much more intense in youth than in old age. Have you ever seen 
young magicians?" 

I: "No, the magician is proverbially old." 
<1>: "You see, I'm right." 
1: "But then the prospects of the adept are bad. He must wait 
until old age to experience the mysteries of magic." 
<1>: "If he gives up his reason before then, he can already 
experience something useful sooner." 

1: "That seems to me to be a dangerous experiment. One cannot 
give up reason without further ado." 
<1>: "Nor can one / simply become a magician." 

I: "You lay damnable snares." 
<1>: "What do you want? Such is magic." 
I: "Old devil, you make me envious ofunreasoning old age." 
<1>: "Well, well, a youth who wants to be an old man! And 
why? He wants to learn magic and yet dares not to for the sake 
of his youth." 

1: "You spread a terrible net, old trapper." 
<1>: "Perhaps you should still wait a few years with magic 
until your hair has gone gray and your reason has slackened 
somewhat." 

1: "I don't want to listen to your scorn. Stupidly enough, I got 
caught up in your yarn. I can't make sense ofyou." 
<1>: "But stupidity would perhaps be progress on the way 
to magic." 

1: "Incidentally; what on earth do you intend to achieve with 
your magic?" 
<1>: "I am alive, as you see." 

1: "Other old men are, too." 
<1>: "Yes, but have you seen how?" 

3I4 I LIBER SECUNDUS I42/I48 

I: "Well, admittedly it was not a pleasant sight. Incidentally, greater part of the world eludes our understanding. We must 
time has left its mark on you, too." value the incomprehensible and unreasonable equally, although 
<P: "I knOw." they are not necessarily equal in themselves; a part ofthe incomI: 
"So, what gives you the advantage?" prehensible, however, is only presently incomprehensible and 
<P: ''It doesn't exactly meet the eye." might already concur with reason tomorrow. But as long as one 
I: "What kind of advantage doesn't meet the eye?" does not understand it, it remains unreasonable. Insofar as the 
<P: "I call that magic." incomprehensible accords with reason, one may try to think 
I: "You're moving in a vicious circle. May the devil get the it with success; but insofar as it is unreasonable, / one needs 
better ofyou." magical practices to open it up. 
<P: "Well, that's another advantage ofmagic: not eve!! the devil The practice ofmagic consists in malting what is not understood 
gets the better ofme. You're beginning to understand magic, so I understandable in an incomprehensible manner. The magical 
must assume that you have a good aptitude for it." way is not arbitrary, since that would be understandable, but 
I: "Thank you, <pIAHMQN, that is enough; I feel dizzy: Goodbye!" it arises from incomprehensible grounds. Besides, to speak of 
I leave the small garden and walk down the street. People are grounds is incorrect, since grounds concur with reason. Nor can 
standing around in groups and glancing at me furtively. I hear them one speak of the groundless, since hardly anything further can be 
whispering behind my back: "Look, there he goes, old <pIAHMQN's said about this. The magical way arises by itself If one opens up 
student. He spoke a long time with the old man. He has learned chaos, magic also arises. 
something. He knows the mysteries. If only I could ~o what he is One can teach the way that leads to chaos, but one cannot 
able to do now." "Be quiet, you damned fools," I want to callout teach magic. One can only remain silent about this, which seems 
to them, but I cannot, since I do not know whether I have actually to be the best apprenticeship. This view is confusing, but this is 
learned anything. And because I remain silent, they are even more what magic is like. Where reason establishes order and clarity, 
convinced that I have received the black art from <pIAHMQN." magic causes disarray and a lack of clarity.2 1 One indeed needs

7 

reason for the magical translation of the not-understood into 

26 

9 [2] [HI . I42] It is an error to believe that there are magical practices the understandable, since only by means of reason can the 
that one can learn. One cannot understand magic. One can only understandable be created. No one can say how to use reason, 
understand what accords with reason. Magic accords with but it does arise if one tries to express only what an opening of 
unreason, which one cannot understand. The world accords not chaos means.272 
only with reason but also with unreason. But just as one employs Magic is a way ofliving. Ifone has done one's best to steer the 
reason to make sense of the world, in that what is reasonable chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steerabout 
it approaches reason, a lack of understanding also accords ing it, then magical operation takes place. One cannot say what 

I42 /I43 with unreason. / the effect of magic will be, since no one can know it in advance 
This meeting is magical and eludes comprehension. Magical because the magical is the lawless, which occurs without rules 
understanding is what one calls noncomprehension. Everything that and by chance, so to spealc But the condition is that one totally 
works magically is incomprehensible, and the incomprehensible accepts it and does not reject it, in order to transfer everything 
often works magically. One calls incomprehensible workings to the growth of the tree. Stupidity too is part of this, which 
magical. The magical always surrounds me, always involves me. everyone has a great deal of, and also tastelessness, which is possibly 
lt opens spaces that have no doors and leads out into the open the greatest nuisance. 
where there is no exit. The magical is good and evil and neither Thus a certain solitude and isolation are inescapable conditions 
good nor evil. Magic is dangerous since what accords with unreason oflife for the well-being ofoneselfand ofthe other, otherwise one 
confuses, allures and provokes; and I am always its first victim. cannot / sufficiently be oneself A certain slowness oflife, which is 
Where reason abides, one needs no magic. Hence our time like a standstill, will be unavoidable. The uncertainty ofsuch a life 
no longer needs magic. Only those without reason needed it will most probably be its greatest burden, but still I must unite 
to replace their lack of reason. But it is thoroughly unreasonable the two conflicting powers of my soul and keep them together 
to bring together what suits reason with magic since they have in a true marriage until the end of my life, since the magician is 
nothing to do with one another. Both become spoiled through called <pIAHMQN and his wife BAYKIL. I hold together what 
being brought together. Therefore all those lacking reason quite Christ has kept apart in himself and through his example in 
rightly fall into superfluity and disregard. A rational man of this others, since the more the one halfofmy being strives toward the 
time will therefore never use magic.270 good, the more the other half journeys to Hell. 
But it is another thing for whoever has opened the chaos When the month of the Twins had ended, the men said to 
in himself We need magic to be able to receive or invoke the their shadows: "You are I," since they had previously had their 
messenger and the communication of the incomprehensible. spirit around them as a second person. Thus the two became one, 
We recognized that the world comprises reason and unreason; and through this collision the formidable broke out, precisely 
and we also understood that our way needs not only reason but that spring of consciousness that one calls culture and which 
also unreason. This distinction is arbitrary and depends upon lasted until the time of Christ.273 But the fish indicated the 
the level of comprehension. But one can be certain that the moment when what was united split, according to the eternal law 

269 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "Jan. 1924." This seems to refer to when this passage was transcribed into the calligraphic volume. The writing at this 
point gets larger, with more space between the words. At this time, Cary Baynes commenced her transcription. 

270 In psychological Types (1921) Jung wrote: "Reason can only give one equilibrium if one's reason is already an equilibrating organ ... As a rule, man needs the opposite of 
his actual condition to force him to find his place in the middle" (CW 6, ¤386). 

271 The Drqft continues: "Magical practice hence falls into two parts: first, developing an understanding ofchaos; and second, translating the essence into what can be 
understood" (p. 484). 

272 The Draft continues: "Reason takes up only a very small share ofmagic. This will offend you. Age and experience are needed. The rash desirousness and fear ofyouth, as 
well as its necessary virtuousness, disturb the secret interplay ofGod and the devil. You are then all too easily torn to one side or the other, blinded or paralyzed" (p. 484). 


THE MAGICIAN I 315 

of contrasts, into an underworld and upperworld. If the power 

ofgrowth 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 ofthe fish will soon 

be over.274 We suspect and understand that growth needs both, 

and hence we keep good and evil close together. Because we know 

that too far into the good means the same as too far into evil, we 

keep them both together.275 

But we thus lose direction and things no longer flow from the 
mountain to the valley, but grow quietly from the valley to the 
mountain. That which we can no longer prevent or hide is our 
fruit. The flowing stream becomes a lake and an ocean / that has 
no outlet, unless its water rises to the sky as steam and falls from 
the clouds as rain. While the sea is a death, it is also the place of 
rising. Such is cpIAHMQN, who tends his garden. Our hands have 
been tied, and each must sit quietly in his place. He rises invisibly 
and falls as rain on distant lands.276 The water on the ground is no 
cloud, which should rain. Only pregnant women can give birth, 
not those who have yet to conceive.277 

[HI 146] But what mystery are you intimating to me with your 
name, Oh cpIAHMQN? Truly you are the lover who once took in 
the Gods as they wandered the earth when everyone else refused 
them lodging. You are the one who unsuspectingly gave hospitality 
to the Gods; they thanked you by transforming your house into 
a golden temple, while the flood swallowed everyone else. You 
remained alive when chaos erupted. You it was who served in the 
sanctuary when the peoples called out in vain to the Gods. Truly, 
it is the lover who survives. Why did we not see that? And just 
when did the Gods manifest? Precisely when BAYKI2: wished to 
serve the esteemed guests her only goose, that blessed stupidity: 
the animal fled to the Gods who then revealed themselves to their 
poor hosts, who had given their last. Thus I saw that the lover 
survives, and that he is the one who unwittingly grants hospitality 
to the Gods.278 

Truly, Oh cpIAHMnN, I did not see that your hut is a temple, 
and that you, CPIAHMnN, and BAYKI2:, serve in the sanctuary / 
This magical power allows itself to be neither taught nor learned. 
Either one has it or does not have it. Now I know your final mystery: 
you are a lover. You have succeeded in uniting what has been 
sundered, that is, binding together the Above and Below. Have we 
not known this for a long time? Yes, we knew it, no, we did not 
know it. It has always been this way, and yet it has never been 
thus. Why did I have to wander such long roads before I came 
to cpIAHMQN, ifhe was going to teach me what has been common 
knowledge for ages? Alas, we have known everything since time 

immemorial and yet we will never know it until it is has been 

accomplished. Who exhausts the mystery oflove? 

[HI 147] Under which mask) oh cpIAHMQN, are you hiding? You 
did not strike me as a lover. But my eyes were opened, and I saw 
that you are a lover of your soul, who anxiously and jealously 
guards its treasure. 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 cpIAHMQN, the host of the Gods. 

You lie in the sun) oh CPIAHMQN, like a serpent that coils around 
itself. Your wisdom is the wisdom ofserpents, cold, with a grain 
of poison, yet healing in small doses. Your magic paralyzes and 
therefore makes strong people, who tear themselves away from 
themselves. But do they love you, are they thankful, lover of 
your own soul? Or do they curse you for your magical serpent 
poison? They keep their distance, shaking their heads and 
whispering together. 

Are you still a man, cpIAHMQN, or / is one not a man until 
one is a lover of one's own soul? You are hospitable, cpIAHMQN, 
you took the dirty wanderers unsuspectingly into your hut. 
Your house then became a golden temple, and did I really leave 
your table unsatisfied? What did you give me? Did you invite 
me for a meal? You shimmered multicolored and inextricable; 
nowhere did you give yourself to me as prey. You escaped my 
grasp. I found you nowhere. Are you still a man? Your kind is 
far more serpentlike. 

I sought to grab hold of you and tear it out of you, since the 
Christians have learned to devour their God. And how long will 
it take for what happens to the God also to happen to man? I look 
into the vast land and hear nothing but wailing and see nothing 
but men consuming each other. 

Oh cpIAHMnN, you are no Christian. You did not let yourself 
be engorged and did not engorge me. Because of this you have 
neither lecture halls nor columned halls teeming with students 
who stand around and speak of the master and soak up his words 
like the elixir of life. 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. 

But did I really leave you unsatisfied? No, I left you because 
I was really satisfied. Yet what did I eat? Your words gave me 
nothing. Your words left me to myself and my doubt. And so 
I ate myself. And because of this, Oh cpIAHMQN, you are no 
Christian, since you nourish yourself from yourself and force 
men to do the same. This displeases them most, since nothing 
disgusts the human animal more than itself. Because of this 
they would rather eat all crawling, hopping, swimming and 
flying creatures, yes, even their own species, before they nibble 
at themselves. But this nourishment is effective and one is soon 

273 The reference is to the astrological conception of the Platonic month, or aeon, of Pisces, which is based on the precession of the equinoxes. Each Platonic month 
consists of one zodiacal sign, and lasts approximately 2,300 years. Jung discusses the symbolism attached to this in Aion (1951, CW 6, ch. 6). He notes that around 7 
BC there was a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, representing a union of extreme opposites, which would place the birth of Christ under Pisces. Pisces (Latin for 
"fishes") is known as the sign of the fish and is often represented by two fish swimming in opposite directions. On the Platonic months, see Alice Howell,jungian 
Synchronicity in Astrological Signs and Ages (Wheaton, Ii: ~est Books, 1990), p. 125£ Jung started studying astrology in 19II, in the course ofhis study ofmythology; and 
learned to cast horoscopes (Jung to Freud, May 8, 19II, The Freud/jung Letters, p. 421). In terms ofJung's sources for the history ofastrology; he cited Auguste BoucheLeclercq's 
L'Astrologie Grecque on nine occasions in his later work (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1899). 

274 This refers to the end of the Platonic month of Pisces and the beginning of the Platonic month ofAquarius. The precise dating of this is uncertain. In Aion (1951), 
Jung noted: "Astrologically the beginning of the next aeon, according to the starting point you select, falls between AD 2000 and 2200" (CW 9,2, ¤149, note 88). 

275 In Aion (1951), Jung wrote: "1£ as seems probable, the aeon ofthe fishes is ruled by the archetypal motifofthe 'hostile brothers,' then the approach ofthe next Platonic 
month, namely Aquarius, will constellate the problem of the union ofopposites. It will then no longer be possible to write off evil as a mere privatio boni; its real 
existence will have to be recognized" (CW 9, ¤142). 

276 The Draft continues: "The hibernal rains began with Christ. He taught mankind the way to Heaven. We teach the way to earth. Hence nothing has been removed 
from the Gospel, but only added to it" (P.486). 

277 The Draft continues: "Our striving focused on sagacity and intellectual superiority, and we hence developed all our cleverness. But the extraordinary extent of stupidity 
inherent in all men was disregarded and denied. But ifwe accept the other in us, we also evoke the particular stupidity of our nature. Stupidity is one of man's strange 
hobbyhorses. There is something divine about it, and yet something of the megalomania of the world. Which is why stupidity is really large. It keeps away everything 
that could induce us to intelligence. It leaves everything not understood which is not naturally supposed to demand understanding. This particular stupidity occurs 
in thought and in life. Somewhat deaf somewhat blind, it brings about necessary fate and keeps from us the virtuous ness coupled with rationality. It is what separates 
and isolates the mixed seeds oflife, affording us thus with a clear view ofgood and evil, and ofwhat is reasonable and what not. But many people are logical in their 
lack ofreason" (P.487). 

278 In this paragraph, Jung refers to the classical account of Philemon and Baucis from the Metamorphoses. 


316 , LIBER SECUNDUS 148/157 

satiated from it. Because of this, Oh <I>IAHMQN, we rise satiated 
from your table. 

Your way, Oh <I>IAHMQN, is instructive. You leave me in a 
salutary darkness, where there is nothing for me to either see 
or look for. You are no light that shines in the darkness,279 no 
savior who establishes an eternal truth and thus extinguishes the 

148/149 / nocturnal light of human understanding. You leave room for 
the stupidity and jokes of others. You do not want, Oh blessed 
one, anything from the other, but instead you tend the flowers 
in your own garden. He who needs you asks you, and, Oh clever 
<I>IAHMnN, I suppose that you also ask those from whom you 
need something and that you pay for what you receive. 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 
ofgiving is the sky-blue mantle of the tyrant. You are wise, Oh 
<I>IAHMQN, you do not give. You want your garden to bloom, 
and for everything to grow from with~n itself. 
I praise, Oh <I>IAHMnN, your lack ofacting like a savior; you are 
no shepherd who runs after stray sheep, since you believe in the 
dignity ofman, who is not necessarily a sheep. But ifhe happens to 
be a sheep, you would leave him the rights and dignity of sheep, 
since why should sheep be made into men? There are still more 
than enough men. 
You know, Oh <I>IAHMQN, the wisdom of things to come; 
therefore you are old, oh so very ancient, and just as you tower 
above me in years, so you tower above the present in futurity, and 
the length of your past is immeasurable. You are legendary and 
unreachable. You were and will be, returning periodically: Your 
wisdom is invisible, your truth is unknowable, entirely untrue in 
any given age, and yet true in all eternity; but you pour out living 
water, from which the flowers of your garden bloom, a starry 
water, a dew of the night. 
What do you need, Oh <I>IAHMQN? You need men for the sake 
ofsmall things, since everything greater and the greatest thing is 
in you. Christ spoiled men, since he taught them that they can be 
saved only by one, namely Him, the Soil of God, and ever since 
men have been demanding the greater things from others, 
especially their salvation; and if a sheep gets lost / somewhere, 
it accuses the shepherd. Oh <I>IAHMQN, you are a man, and you 
prove that men are not sheep, since you look after the greatest 
in yourself, and hence fructifying water flows into your garden 
from inexhaustible jugs. 

[HI 150] Are you lonelYJ oh <I>IAHMQN, I see no entourage and no 
companions around you; BAYKII: is only your other half. You 
live with flowers, trees, and birds, but not with men. Should you 
not live with men? Are you still a man? Do you want nothing 
from men? Do you not see how they stand together and concoct 
rumors and childish fairy tales about you? Do you not want to go 
to them and say that you are a man and a mortal as they are, and 
that you want to love them? Oh <I>IAHMQN, you laugh? I understand 
you. Just now I ran into your garden and wanted to tear out of 
you what I had to understand from within myself. 

Oh <I>IAHMQN, I understand: immediately I made you into a 
savior who lets himselfbe consumed and bound with gifts. That's 
what men are like, you think; they are all still Christians. But they 
want even more: they want you as you are, otherwise you would 
not be <I>IAHMnN to them and they would be inconsolable, if they 

could find no bearer for their legends. Hence they would also 

laugh, if you approached them and said you were as mortal as 

they are and want to love them. Ifyou did that, you would not be 

<I>IAHMQN. They want you, <I>IAHMQN, but not another mortal 

who suffers from the same ills as they do. 

I understand you, Oh <I>IAHMQN, you are a true / lover, since 150/151 
you love your soul for the sake of men, because they need a king 
who lives from himself and owes no one gratitude for his life. 
They want to have you thus. You fulfill the wish ofthe people and 
you vanish. You are a vessel offables. You would besmirch yourself 
ifyou went to men as a man, since they would all laugh and call 
you a liar and a swindler, since <I>IAHMnN is not a man. 

I saw, Oh <I>IAHMQN, that crease in your face: you were young 
once and wanted to be a man among men. But the Christian 
animals did not love your pagan humanity, since they felt in you 
what they needed. They always sought the branded one, and 
when they caught him somewhere in freedom, they locked him 
in a golden cage and took from him the force of his masculinity, 
so that he was paralyzed and sat in silence. Then they praise him 
and devise fables about him. I know, they call this veneration. 
And if they do not find the true one, they at least have a Pope, 
whose occupation it is to represent the divine comedy. But the 
true one always disowns himsel£ since he knows nothing higher 
than to be a man. 

Are you laughing, Oh <I>IAHMQN? I understand you: it irked 
you to be a man like others. And because you truly loved being 
human, you voluntarily locked it away so that you could be for men 
at least what they wanted to have from you. Therefore I see you, 
Oh <I>IAHMQN, not with men, but wholly with flowers, the trees 
and the birds and all waters flowing and still that do not besmirch 
your humanity: For you are not <I>IAHMQN to the flowers, trees, and 
birds, but a man. Yet what solitude, what inhumanity! / 

[HI 152] why are you laughingJOh<I>IAHMnNJ I cannotfathomyou. But 
do I not see the blue air ofyour gardenr What happy shades surround your 
Does the sun hatch blue midday specters around your 

Are you laughing, Oh <I>IAHMQN? Alas, I understand you: 
humanity has completely faded for you, but its shadow has arisen 
for you. How much greater and happier the shadow ofhumanity 
is than it is itself! The blue midday shadows ofthe dead! Alas, there 
is your humanity, Oh <I>IAHMnN, you are a teacher and friend of 
the dead. They stand sighing in the shade ofyour house, they live 
under the branches ofyour trees. They drink the dew ofyour tears, 
they warm themselves at the goodness ofyour heart, they hunger 
after the words of your wisdom, which sounds full to them, full 
ofthe sounds oflife. I sawyou, Oh <I>IAHMnN, at the noonday hour 
when the sun stood highest; you stood spealcing with a blue shade, 
blood stuck to its forehead and solemn torment darkened it. I can 
guess, Oh <I>IAHMnN, who your midday guest was.280 How blind I 
was, fool that I am! That is you, Oh <I>IAHMQN! But who am I! I go 
myway, shaking my head, and people's looks follow me and I remain 
silent. Oh despairing silence! / [HI 153] 

oh master ofthe garden! I see your dark treefrom afar in the shimmering 
sun. My street leads to the valleys where men live. I am a wandering beggar. 
And I remain silent. 
Killing off would-be prophets is a gain for the people. If 
they want murder, then may they kill their false prophets. If the 

279 Contrast with John 1:5, where Christ is described as follows: "The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." 
280 Cf Jung's fantasy ofJune 1, 1916, where Philemon's guest was Christ (see below, p. 359). 


THE MAGICIAN I 3I 7 

mouth of the Gods remains silent, then each can listen to his I: "I. can feel it, and I'm worried that your tree will ultimately 
own speech. He who loves the people remains silent. Ifonly false bear me no more fruit." 
teachers teach, the people will kill the false teachers, and will fall S: "Worried already? Don't be stupid, and let me rest." 
into the truth even on the way of their sins. Only after the I: "I notice that you like being banal. But I do not take you to 
darkest night will it be day: So cover the lights and remain silent heart, my dear friend, since I now know you much better than 
so that the night will become dark and noiseless. The sun rises before." 
without our help. Only he who knows the darkest error knows S: "You're getting ,to be familiar. I'm afraid that you are 
what light is. beginning to lose respect." 


I: "Are you upset? I believe that would be uncalled for. 
oh master of the garden, your magical grove shone to me from afar. I'm sufficiently well-informed about the proximity of pathos 
I venerate your deceptive mantle, you father of all will,o',the,wisps. /281 and banality:" 
[Image I54]282 S: "So, have you noticed that the becoming of the soul follows 

a serpentine path? Have you seen how soon day becomes night, 

I continue on my way; accompanied by a finely polished piece and night day? How water and dry land change places? And 
of steel, hardened in ten fires, stowed safely in my robe. Secretly; that everything spasmodic is merely destructive?" 
I wear chain mail under my coat. Overnight I became fond of I: "I believe that I sawall this. I want to lie in the sun on this 
serpents, and I solved their riddle. I sit down next to them on warm stone for a while. Perhaps the sun will incubate me." 
the hot stones lying by the wayside. I know how to catch them 
cunningly and cruelly; those cold devils that prick the heel of the But the serpent crept up to me quietly and wound herself 
unsuspecting. I became their friend and played a softly toned smoothly around my feet.286 Evening fell and night came. I spoke 
flute. But I decorate my cave with their dazzling skins. As I to the serpent and said: "I don't know what to say: All pots are 
walked on my way; I came to a red rock on which a great irideson 
the boil." 
cent serpent lay: Since I had now learned magic from <l>IAHMON, 287S: ''A meal is being prepared." 
I took out my flute again and played a sweet magical song to I: ''A Last Supper, I suppose?" 
make her believe that she was my soul. When she was sufficiently S: ''A union with all humanity:" 

I54/I55 
enchanted, / [Image I55]283 {2} [I]284 I spoke to her: "My sister, I: ''A horrifying, sweet thought: to be both guest and dish at 
my soul, what do you say?" But she spoke, flattered and therefore this meal."288 
tolerantly: "I let grass grow over everything that you do." S: "That was also Christ's highest pleasure." 

I: "That sounds comforting and seems not to say much." I: "How holy; how sinful, how everything hot and cold flows 
S: "Would you like me to say much? I can also be banal, as into one another! Madness and reason want to be married, 
you know, and let myself be satisfied that way:" the lamb and the wolfgraze peacefully side by side.289 It is all yes 
I: "That seems hard to me. I believe that you stand in a close and no. The opposites embrace each other, see eye to eye, and 
connection with everything beyond, / 285 with what is greatest intermingle. They recognize their oneness in agonizing pleasure. 
and most uncommon. Therefore I thought that banality would My heart is filled with wild battle. The waves of dark and bright 
be foreign to you." rivers rush together, one crashing over the other. I have never 
S: "Banality is my element." 
experienced this before." 
I: "That would be less astonishing if I said it about myself" S: "That is new, my dear one, at least for you." 
S: "The more uncommon you are, the more common I can be. I: "I suppose you are mocking me. But tears and laughter are 
A true respite for me. I think you can sense that I don't need to one.290 / I no longer feel like either and I am rigid with tension. I56/I57 
torment myself today:" Loving reaches up to Heaven and resisting reaches just as high. 
281 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "The bhagavadgita says: whenever there is a decline of the law and 'an increase in iniquity; then I put forth myself For 
the rescue of the pious and for the destruction of the evildoers, for the establishment of the law I am born in every age." The citation is from chapter 4, verses 7-8 of 
the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna is instructing Arjuna concerning the nature of truth. 

282 The text in the image reads: "Father of the Prophet, beloved Philemon." Jung subsequently painted another version ofthis painting as a mural in one ofthe bedrooms in 
his tower at Bollingen, He added an inscription in Latin from the Rosarium philosophorum, in which Hermes describes the stone as saying: "defend me and I will defend 
thee, give me my right that I may help thee, for Sol is mine and the beams thereof are my inward parts; but Luna is proper to me, and my light excelleth all light, and 
my goods are higher than all goods. I give many riches and delights to men desiring them, and when I seek after anything they acknowledge it, I make them understand 
and I cause them to possess divine strength. I engender light, but my nature is darkness. Unless my metal should be dry, all bodies have need ofme, because I moisten 
them. I blot out their rustiness and extract their substance. Therefore I and my son being joined together, there can be nothing made better nor more honorable in 
the whole world." Jung cited some of these lines in Psychology and Alchemy (1944, CW 12, ¤¤99, 140, 155). The Rosarium, first published in 1550, was one of the most 
important texts of European alchemy, and concerns the means of producing the philosopher's stone. It contained a series ofwoodcuts of symbolic figures, which was 
Jung's exemplar in Psychology ofthe Transference. Explained through an Alchemical Series ofPictures. For Doctors and Practical Psychologists (1946, CW 16). 

283 In "The psychological aspects of the Kore" (1951), Jung anonymously described this image as "xLThen she [the anima] appears in a church, taking the place of the 
altar, still over-life-size but with veiled face." He commented: "Dream xi restores the anima to the Christian church, not as an icon but as the altar itself The altar is the 
place ofsacrifice and also the receptacle for consecrated relics" (CW 9, I, ¤369, 380). On the left-hand side, there is the Arabic word for "daughters." On the border 
of the image is the following inscription: "Dei sapientia in mysterio quae abscondita est quam praedestinavit ante secula in gloriam nostrum quam nemo principium 
huius secuti cognovit. Spiritus enim omnia scrutatur etiam profundo dei." This is a citation from I Corinthians 2:7-10. (Jung has omitted "Deus" before "ante secula.") The 
portions cited are marked here in italics: "But we speak the wisdom ofGod in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained bifore the world unto our glory: Which none of 
the princes of the world lmew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord ofglory. But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit:for the Spirit searcheth 
all things, yea, the deep things ofGod." On either side of the arch is the following inscription: "Spiritus et sponsa dicunt veni et qui audit dicat veni et qui sitit veniat qui 
vult accipiat aquam vitae gratis." The text is from Revelation 22:17: "the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst 
come. And whosoever will, let him take the water oflife freely." Above the arch is the following inscription: "ave virgo virginum." This is the title ofa medieval hymn. 

284 January 29, 1914á 
285 From this point in the calligraphic volume, Jung's coloring ofred and blue initials becomes less consistent. Some have been added here for consistency. 
286 This line is not in Black Book 4, where the voice is not identified as the serpent. 


287 January 31, 1914. 

288 In Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955/56), Jung noted: "Ifthe projected conflict is to be healed, it must return into the soul of the individual, where it had its beginnings 
in an unconscious manner. He who wants to be the master of this descent must celebrate a Last Supper with himself, and eat his own flesh and drink his own blood; 
which means that he must recognize and accept the other in himself" (CW 14, ¤5I2). 

289 Cf Isaiah II:6: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a 
little child shall lead them." 

290 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "XIV AUG. 1925." This appears to refer to when this passage was transcribed into the calligraphic volume. In the autumn 
of 1925, Jung went to Africa, together with Peter Baynes and George Beckwith. They left England on October 15, and he arrived back in Zurich on March 14, 1926. 


318 I LIBER SECUNDUS 157/162 

They are entwined and will not let go of each other, since the this?" But I spoke to her smilingly: "The sinuous line oflife could 
excessive tension seems to indicate the ultimate and highest not escape me in the long run." 
possibility of feeling." 


S: "You express yourself emotionally and philosophically. You [2] [HI 158] Where is truth and faith? Where is warm trust? 
know that one can say all this much more simply. For example, You find all this between men but not between men and serpents, 
one can say that you hav~ fallen in love all the way from' the even if they are serpent souls. But wherever there is love, the 
worm up to Tristan and Isolde.291 serpentlike abides also. Christ himself compared himself to a 
I: "Yes, I know, but nonetheless-" 
serpent,294 and his hellish brother, the Antichrist, is the old 
S: "Religion is still tormenting you, it seems? How many dragon himself295 What is beyond the human that appears in 
shields do you still need? Much better to say it straight out." love has the nature of the serpent and the bird, and the serpent 
I:" You're not tripping me up." often enchants the bird, and more rarely the bird bears off the 

S: "Well, what is it with morality? Have morality and immorality serpent. Man stands in-between. What seems like a bird to you 
also become one today?" is a serpent to the other, and what seems like a serpent to you 
I: "You're mocking me, my sister and chthonic devil. But I is a bird to the other. Therefore you will meet the other only in 
must say that those two thatrose up to Heaven entwined are also human form. Ifyou want to become, then a battle between bird 
good and evil. I'm not joking but I groan, because joy and pain and serpent breaks out. And ifyou only want to be, you will be a 
sound shrill together." man to yourselfand to others. He who is becoming belongs in the 
S: "Where then is your understanding? You've gone utterly desert or in a prison, for he is beyond the human. Ifmen want to 
stupid. After all, you could resolve everything by thinking." become, they behave like animals. No one saves us from the evil 
1: "My understanding? My thinking? I no longer have any ofbecoming, unless we choose to go through Hell. 
understanding. It has grown impervious to me." Why did I behave as if that serpent were my soul? Only; it 
S: "You deny everything that you believed. You've completely seems, because my soul was a serpent. This knowledge gave my 
forgotten who you are. You even deny Faust, who walked calmly soul a new face, and I decided henceforth to enchant her myself 
past all the specters." and subject her to my power. Serpents are wise, and I wanted my 
I: "I'm no longer up to this. My spirit, too, is a specter." serpent soul to communicate her wisdom to me. Never before 
S: ''Ah, I see, you follow my teaching." 
had life been so doubtful, a night of aimless tension, being one 
I: "Unfortunately; that's the case, and it has benefited me with in being directed against one another. Nothing moved, neither 
painful joy." God nor the devil. So I approached the serpent that lay in the 
S: "You turn your pain into pleasure. You are twisted, blinded; sun, as if she were unthinking. Her eyes were not visible, since 
just suffer, you fool." they blinked in the shimmering sunshine, and 1 [Image 159]296 1 158/160 
I: "This misfortune ought to make me happy." {3} [I] I spoke to her297: "How will it be, now that God and the 
devil have become one? Are they in agreement to bring life to a 
The serpent now became angry and tried to bite my heart, but my standstill? Does the conflict ofopposites belong to the inescapable 
secret armorbroke her poisonous fang.292 She drew back astonished conditions oflife? And does he who recognizes and lives the unity 
and said hissing: "You actually behave as ifyou were unfathomable." ofopposites stand still? He has completely taken the side ofactual 

I: "That's because I have studied the art of stepping from the life, and he no longer acts as ifhe belonged to one party and had 
left foot onto the right and vice versa, which others have done to battle against the other, but he is both and has brought their 
unthinkingly from time immemorial." discord to an end. Through taking this burden from life, has 
157/158 
The serpent raised herself again, as if accidentally 1 holding he also taken the force from it?"298 
her tail in front ofher mouth, so that I should not see the broken The serpent turned and spoke ill-humoredly: "Truly; you pester 
fang. Proudly and calmly she said293: "So you have finally noticed me. Opposites were certainly an element of life for me. You 

29I The twelfth-century tale ofthe adulterous romance between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Isolde has been retold in many versions, up to Wagner's 

opera, which Jung referred to as an example of the visionary mode ofartistic creation ("Psychology and poetry," I930, CW I5, ¤I42). 
292 This sentence is not in Black Book 4. 
293 This sentence is not in Black Book 4. 
294 Jung commented on the comparison of Christ with the serpent in Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (I912), CW B, ¤585 and in Aion (I950), CW 9,2, ¤29I. 
295 C£ Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (I9I2), CW B; ¤585. 
296 Image legend: "9 January I927 my friend Hermann Sigg died age 52." Jung described this as "A luminous flower in the center, with stars rotating about it. Around the 

flower, walls with eight gates. The whole conceived as a transparent window." This mandala was based on a dream noted on January 2, I927 (see above, p. 2I7). From 
the 'town map,' the relation between the dream and the painting is clear (see Appendix A). He anonymously reproduced this in I930 in "Commentary to the 'Secret 
ofthe Golden Flower,' " from which this description is taken. He reproduced it again in I952, and added the following commentary: "The rose in the center is depicted 
as a ruby, its outer ring being conceived as a wheel or a wall with gates (so that nothing can come out from inside or go in from outside). The mandala was a spontaneous 
product from the analysis ofa male patient." Mter narrating the dream, Jung added: "The dreamer went on: 'I tried to paint this dream. But as so often happens, 
it came out rather different. The magnolia turned into a sort ofrose made ofruby-colored glass. It shone like a four-rayed star. The square represents the wall ofthe 
park and at the same time a street leading rpund the park in a square. From it there radiate eight main streets, and from each ofthese eight side-streets, which meet in 
a shining red central point, rather like the Etoile in Paris. The acquaintance mentioned in the dream lived in a house at the corner ofone ofthese stars.' The mandala 
thus combines the classic motifs offlower, star, circle, precinct (temenos), and plan ofcity divided into quarters with citadel.' The whole thing seemed like a window 
opening on to eternity;' wrote the dreamer" ("Concerning mandala symbolism," CW 9, I, ¤654-55). In I955/56 he used this same expression to denote the illustration of 
the self (Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW I4,¤763). On October 7, I932, Jung showed this mandala in a seminar, and commented on it the next day. In this account, he states 
that the painting ofthe mandala preceded the dream: "You remember possibly the picture that I showed you last evening, the central stone and the little jewels round 
it. It is perhaps interesting if I tell you about the dream in connection with it. I was the perpetrator of that mandala at a time when I had not the slightest idea what 
a mandala was, and in my extreme modesty I thought, I am the jewel in the center and those little lights are surely very nice peosple who believe that they are also jewels, 
but smaller ones ... I thought very well ofmyself that I was able to express myself like that: my marvelous center here and I am right in my heart." He added that at 
first he did not recognize that the park was the same as the mandala which he had painted, and commented: "Now Liverpool is the center oflife-liver is the center of 
life-and I am not the center, I am the fool who lives in a dark place somewhere, I am one of those little side lights. In that way my Western prejudice that I was the 
center of the mandala was corrected-that I am everything, the whole show, the king, the god" (The Psychology ofKundalini Yoga, p. IOO). In Memories, Jung added some 
further details (pp. 223-24). . 

297 February I, I9I4. 
298 Black Book 4 also has: "I lay these questions before you today, my soul" (p. 9I). Here, the serpent is substituted for the soul. 



THE MAGICIAN I 319 

probably will have noticed this. Your innovations deprive me seem to be.305 We have no single correct truth either. Rather, a most 
of this source of power. I can neither lure you with pathos nor remarkable and strange fact has occurred: after the opposites had 
annoy you with banality. I am somewhat baffled." been united, quite unexpectedly and incomprehensibly nothing 

1: "If you are baffled, should I give counsel? I would rather further happened. Everything remained in place, peacefully and yet 
you dive down to the deeper grounds to which you have entry completely motionless, and life turned into a compl~te standstill." 
and ask Hades or the heavenly ones, perhaps someone there can S: "Yes, you fools, you certainly have made a pretty mess 
give counsel." of things." 
S: "You have become imperious." 
I: "Well, your mockery is unnecessary. Our intentions 
I: "Necessity is even more imperious than 1. I must live and be were serious." 
able to move." S: "Your seriousness leads us to suffer. The ordering of the 
S: "You have the whole wide earth. What do you want to ask beyond is shaken to its foundations." 
the beyond for?" 1: "So you realize that matters are serious. I want an answer 
1: "It isn't curiosity that drives me, but necessity. I will not yield." to my question, what should happen under these circumstances? 
S: "I obey; but reluctantly. This style is new and unaccustomed We no longer know what to do." 
tome." S: "Well, it is hard to know what to do, and difficult to give 
1: "I'm sorry; but there is pressing need. Tell the depths that advice even if one would like to give it. You are blinded fools, a 
prospects are not looking too good for us, because we have cut brashly impertinent people. Why didn't you stay out of trouble? 
offan important organ from life. As you know, I'm not the guilty How do you mean to understand the ordering of the world?" 
one, since you have led me carefully along this way." 1: "Your ranting suggests that you are quite thoroughly 
S:299 "You might have rejected the apple." 
aggrieved. Look, the holy trinity is taking things coolly. It seems 
1: "Enough of these jokes. You know that story better than I not to dislike the innovation." . 
do. I am serious. We need some air. Be on your way and fetch the S: ''Ah, the trinity is so irrational that one 1 can never trust 
fire. It has already been dark around me for too long. Are you its' reactions. I strongly advise you not to talce those symbols 
sluggish or cowardly?" seriously."306 
S: "I'm off to work. Take from me what I bring Up."300 1: "I thank you for this well-meant advice. But you seem to be 
interested. One would expect you to pass unbiased judgment on 
[HI 160] Slowly; the throne of the God ascends into empty account ofyour proverbial intelligence." 
space, followed by the holy trinity; all of Heaven, and finally S: "Me, unbiased! You can judge for yourself If you consider 
160/161 
Satan himself He resists and clings to his beyond. He will not 1 this absoluteness in its completely lifeless equanimity; you can 
let it go. The upperworld is too chilly for him. easily discover that the state and standstill produced by your 

S: "Have you got tight hold ofhim?"301 
presumptuousness closely resembles the absolute. But if I counsel 
1: "Welcome, hot thing of darkness! My soul probably pulled you, I place myself completely on your side, since you too find 
you up roughly?" this standstill unbearable." 
S:302"Why this noise? I protest against this violent extraction." 1: "What? You take my side? That is strange." 

I: "Calm down. I didn't expect you. You come last of all. You S: "That's not so strange. The absolute was always adverse to 
seem to be the hardest part." the living. I am still the real master oflife." 
S: "What do you want from me? I don't need you, 1: "That is suspicious. Your reaction is far too personal." 
impertinent fellow." S: "My reaction is far from personal. I am utterly restless, 
1: "It's a good thing we have you. You're the liveliest thing in quickly hurrying life. I am never contented, never unperturbed. 
the whole dogma."303 I pull everything down and hastily rebuild. I am ambition, greed 
S: "What concern is your prattle to me! Make it quick. for fame, lust for action; I am the fizz ofnew thoughts and action. 
I'm freezing." The absolute is boring and vegetative." 
1: "Listen, something has just happened to us: we have united the I: ''Alright, I believe you. So-just what do you advise?" 
opposites. Among other things, we have bonded you with God."30 S: "The best advice I can give you is: revoke your completely 
4 

S: "For God's sake, why this hopeless fuss? Why such nonsense?" harmful innovation as soon as possible." 
1: "Please, that wasn't so stupid. This unification is an I: "What would be gained by that? We'd have to start from 
important principle. We have put a stop to never-ending scratch again and would infallibly reach the same conclusion a 
quarreling, to finally free our hands for real life." second time. What one has grasped once, one cannot intentionally 
not know again and undo. Your counsel is no counsel." 

S: "This smells of monism. I have already made note of some S: "But could you exist without divisiveness and disunity? You 
of these men. Special chambers have been heated for them." have to get worked up about something, represent a party, overcome 
I: "You're mistaken. Matters are not as rational with us as they opposites, ifyou want to live." 
299 Black Book 4: "You are playing Adam and Eve with me" (p. 93). 
300 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "Visio." 
301 Black Book 4: "Satan crawls out of a dark hole with horns and tail, I pull him out by the hands" (p. 94). 
302 The interlocutor is Satan. 
303 For Jung's account of the significance of Satan, see Answer to Job (1952), CW II. 
304 Jung discussed the issue ofuniting the opposites at length in psychological Types (1921), ch. 6, "The type problem in the poetic art." The uniting of the opposites takes 


place through the production of the reconciling symbol. 
305 Black Book 4 has instead of this sentence: "Matters are not as intellectual and generally ethical with us as in Monism" (p. 96). The reference is to Ernst Haeckel's system 
of Monism, which Jung was critical of 
306 Cf Jung, "Attempt at a psychological interpretation of the dogma of the trinity" (1940), CW II. 


320 I LIBER SECUNDUS r62/r72 

I: "That does not help. We also see each other in the opposite. ofmanure in which the Gods had secured their eggs. I would like 
We have grown tired of this game." to kick the garbage away from me, if the golden seed were not in 
S: ''And so with life." the vile heart of the misshapen form. 
I: "It seems to me that it depends on what you call life. Your Arise then, son of darlmess and stench! How firmly you cling 
notion of life has to do with climbing up and tearing down, to the rubble and waste of the eternal cesspit! I do not fear you, 
with assertion and doubt, with impatient dragging around, / though I hate you, you brother ofeverything reprehensible in me. 
[Image r63]307 / with hasty desire. You lack the absolute and its Today, you shall be forged with heavy hammers so that the gold 
forbearing patience." of the Gods will spray out of your body. Your time is over, your 
S: "~ite right. My life bubbles and foams and stirs up years are numbered, and today your day of judgment has gone to 
turbulent waves, it consists ofseizing and throwing away, ardent smithereens. May your casings burst asunder, with our hands we 
wishing and restlessness. That is life, isn't itr" wish to take hold of your seed, the golden one, and free it from 
I: "But the absolute also lives." slithery mud. May you freeze, devil, since we will cold-forge you. 
S: "That is no life. It is a standstill or as good as a standstill, or Steel is harder than ice. You shall fit into our form, you thief of 
rather: it lives interminably slowly and wastes thousands ofyears, the divine marvel, you mother ape, you who stuffyour body with 
just like the miserable condition that you have created." the egg of the Gods and thereby make yourself weighty. Hence 
I: "You enlighten me. You are personal life, but the apparent we curse you, though not because of you, but for the sal(e of the 
standstill is the forbearing life ofeternity, the life ofdivinity! This golden seed. 
time you have counseled me well. I will let you go. Farewell." What serviceable forms rise from your body, you thieving 
abyss! These appear as elemental spirits, dressed in wrinkled 

[HI r64] Satan crawls deftly like a mole back into his hole garb, Cabiri, with delightful misshapen forms, young and yet old, 
again. The symbol of the trinity and its entourage rise up in dwarfish, shriveled, unspectacular bearers of secret arts, possessors 
peace and equanimity to Heaven. I thank you, serpent, .for of ridiculous wisdom, first formations of the unformed gold, 
hauling up the right one for me. Everyone understands his words, worms that crawl from the liberated egg of the Gods, incipient 
since they are personal. We can live again, a long life. We can ones, unborn, still invisible. What should your appearance be to 
waste thousands ofyears. usr What new arts do you bear up from the inaccessible treasure 

chamber, the sun yoke from the egg of the Godsr You still have 

[HIr64/2] [2] Where to begin, oh Godsr In suffering or roots in the soil like plants and you are animal faces / of the r65/r66 
in joy, or in the mixed feeling lying betweenr The beginning is human body; you are foolishly sweet, uncanny, primordial, and 
always the smallest, it begins in nothing. If I begin there, I see the earthly. We cannot grasp your essence, you gnomes, you objectlittle 
drop of "something" that falls into the sea of nothingness. souls. You have your origin in the lowest. Do you want to become 
It is forever about beginning again down where the nothingness giants, you Tom Thumbsr Do you belong to the followers of the 
widens itself to unrestricted freedom.308 Noth~ng has happened son of the earthr Are you the earthly feet of the Godheadr What 
yet, the world has yet to begin, the sun is not yet born, the watery do you wantr Speak!"3IO 
firmament has not been separated,30we have not yet climbed 

9 

onto the shoulders of our fathers, since our fathers have not yet The Cabiri: "We come to greet you as the master of the 

become. They have only just died ,and rest in the womb of our lower nature." 

bloodthirsty Europe. I: ''Are you speaking to mer Am I your master?" 
We stand in the vastness, wed to the serpent, and consider The Cabiri: "You were not, but you are now." 
which stone could be the foundation stone of the building, / I: "So you declare. And so be it. Yet what should I do with 
which we do not yet know. The most ancientr It is suitable as your following?" 
a symbol. We want something graspable. We are weary of the The Cabiri: "We carry what is not to be carried from below 
webs that the day weaves and the night unpicks. The devil is to above. We are the juices that rise secretly, not by force, but 
probably supposed to create it, that paltry partisan with sham sucked out of inertia and affixed to what is growing. We know 
understanding and greedy handsr He emerged from the lump the unknown ways and the inexplicable laws ofliving matter. We 

307 Image legend: "1928. When I painted this image, which showed the golden well-fortified castle, Richard Wilhelm sent me from Frankfurt the Chinese, thousandyear-
old text of the golden castle, the embryo of the immortal body. Ecclesia catholic et protestantes et seclusi in secreto. Aeon finitus. (A church both Catholic and 
Protestant shrouded in secrecy. The end of an aeon.) Jung described this as: A mandala as a fortified city with wall and moat. Within, a broad moat surrounding a wall 
fortified with sixteen towers and with another inner moat. This moat encloses a central castle with golden roofs whose centre is a golden temple. He anonymously 
reproduced this in 1930 in "Commentary on 'The Secret of the Golden Flower: " from which this description is taken. He reproduced it again in 1952 in "Concerning 
mandala symbolism" and added the following commentary: "Painting ofa medieval city with walls and moats, streets and churches, arranged quadratically. The inner 
city is again surrounded by walls and moats, like the Imperial City in Peking. The buildings all open inward, toward the center, represented by a castle with a golden 
roof It too is surrounded by a moat. The ground round the castle is laid with black and white tiles, representing the united opposites. This mandala was done by a 
middle-aged man ... A picture like this is unknown in Christian symbolism. The Heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation is known to everybody. Coming to the Indian 
world ofideas"we find the city of Brahma on the world mountain, Meru. We read in the Golden Flower: 'The Book ofthe Yellow Castle says: "In the square inch field of 
the square fooát house, life can be regulated." The square foot house is the face. The square inch field in the face: what could that be other than the heavenly heart? 
In the middle of the square inch dwells the splendor. In the purple hall of the city ofJade dwells the God of Utmost Emptiness and Life.' The Taoists call this center 
'the land ofancestors or golden castle' " (CW 9, I, ¤69I). On this mandala, see John Peck, The Visio Dorothei: Desert Context, Imperial Setting, Later Alignments: Studies in the 
Dreams and Visions ojSaint Pachomius and Dorotheus, Son ojQEintus, Thesis, C. G. Jung Institute, Zurich, 1992, pp. 183-85. 

308 This line links with the beginning of Sermon one, Scrutinies (see below, p. 346). 

309 A reference to the account ofcreation in the book of Genesis. 

310 The Cabiri were the deities celebrated at the mysteries of Samothrace. They were held to be promoters of fertility and protectors of sailors. Friedrich Creuzer and 
Schelling held them to be the primal deities of Greek mythology, from which all others developed (Symbolik und Mytlwlogie der alten Volker [Leipzig: Leske, 1810-23]; The 
Deities ofsamothrace [1815], introduced and translated by R. F. Brown [Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977]). Jung had copies ofboth of these works. They appear in 
Goethe's Faust, part 2, act 2. Jung discussed the Cabiri in Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (1912, CW B ¤209-II). In 1940 Jung wrote: "The Cabiri are, in fact, 
the mysterious creative powers, the gnomes who work under the earth, i.e., below the threshold ofconsciousness, in order to supply us with lucky ideas. As imps and 
hobgoblins, however, they also lay all sorts of nasty tricks, keeping back names and dates that were 'on the tip of the tongue,' making us say the wrong thing, etc. They 
give an eye to everything that has not already been anticipated by consciousness and the functions at its disposal ... deeper insight will show that the primitive and 
archaic qualities of the inferior function conceal all sorts of significant relationships and symbolic meanings, and instead oflaughing off the Cabiri as ridiculous Tom 
Thumbs he may begin to suspect that they are a treasure-house ofhidden wisdom" ('~ttempt at a psychological interpretation of the dogma of the trinity," CW II, 
¤244). Jung commented on the Cabiri scene in Faust in Psychology and Alchemy (1944, CW 12, ¤203f). The dialogue with the Cabiri that takes place here is not found in 
Black Book 4, but is in the Handwritten Drift. It may have been written separately; if so it would have been written prior to the summer of1915. 


THE MAGI ClAN I 321 

carry up what slumbers in the earthly; what is dead and yet enters 
into the living. We do this slowly and easily; what you do in vain 
in your human way. We complete what is impossible for you." 

I: "What should I leave to you? Which troubles can I transfer 
to you? What should I not do, and what do you do better?" 
The Cabiri: "You forget the lethargy of matter. You want to 
pull up with your own force what can only rise slowly; ingesting 
itself affixed to itself from within. Spare yourself the trouble, or 
you will disturb our work." 

1: "Should I trustyou, you untrustworthy ones, you slaves and 
slave souls? Get to work. Let it be so." 
3
3
1I [HI 166] "It seems to me that I gave you a long time. Neither 
did I descend to you nor did I disturb your work. I lived in the 
light of day and did the work of the day. What did you do?" 

The Cabiri: "We hauled things up, we built. We placed stone 
upon stone. Now you stand on solid ground." 

1: "I feel the ground more solid. I stretch upward." 
166/167 
The Cabiri: "We forged a flashing / sword for you, with which 
you can cut the knot that entangles you." 

1: "I take the sword firmly in my hand. I lift it for the blow." 
The Cabiri: "We also place before you the devilish, skillfully 
twined knot that locks and seals you. Strike, only sharpness will 
cut through it." 

1: "Let me see it, the great knot, all wound round! Truly a 
masterpiece of inscrutable nature, a wily natural tangle of roots 
grown through one another! Only Mother Nature, the blind 
weaver, could work such a tangle! A great snarled ball and a 
thousand small knots, all artfully tied, intertwined, truly; a human 
brain! Am I seeing straight? What did you do? You set my brain 
before me! Did you give me a sword so that its flashing sharpness 
slices through my brain? What were you thinking of?"312 
The Cabiri: "The womb of nature wove the brain, the womb 
of the earth gave the iron. So the Mother gave you both: 
entanglement and severing." 

1: "Mysterious! Do you really want to make me the executioner 
of my own brain?" 
The Cabiri: "It befits you as the master of the lower nature. 
Man is entangled in his brain and the sword is also given to him 
to cut through the entanglement." 

I: "What is the entanglement you speak of?" 
The Cabiri: "The entanglement is your madness, the sword is 
the overcoming ofmadness."313 

I: "You offsprings of the devil, who told you that I am mad? 
You earth spirits, you roots of clay and excrement, are you not 
yourselves the root fibers ofmy brain? You polyp-snared rubbish, 
channels for juice knotted together, parasites upon parasites, all 
sucked up and deceived, secretly climbing up over one another 
by night, you deserve the flashing sharpness of my sword. You 
want to persuade me to cut through you? Are you contemplating 
self-destruction? How come nature gives birth to creatures that 
she herselfwants to destroy?" 
The Cabiri: "Do not hesitate. We need destruction since we 
ourselves are the entanglement. He who wishes to conquer new 

land / brings down the bridges behind him. Let us not exist 167/168 
anymore. We are the thousand canals in which everything also 
flows back again into its origin." 

1: "Should I sever my own roots? Kill my own people, whose 
king I am? Should I make my own tree wither? You really are 
the sons of the devil." 
The Cabiri: "Strike, we are servants who want to die for 
their master." 

I: "What will happen if I strike?" 
The Cabiri: "Then you will no longer be your brain, but will 
exist beyond your madness. Do you not see, your madness is 
your brain, the terrible entanglement and intertwining in the 
connection of the roots, in the nets of canals, the confusion of 
fibers. Being engrossed in the brain makes you wild. Strike! He 
who finds the way rises up over his brain. You are a Tom Thumb 
in the brain, beyond the brain you gain the form ofa giant. We 
are surely sons of the devil, but did you not forge us out of the 
hot and dark? So we have something ofits nature and ofyours. 
The devil says that everything that exists is also worthy, since 
it perishes. As sons of the devil we want destruction, but as your 
creatures we want our own destruction. We want to rise up in 
you through death. We are roots that suck up from all sides. 
Now you have everything that you need, therefore chop us up, 
tear us out." 

1: "Will I m'iss you as servants? As a master I need slaves." 
The Cabiri: "The master serves himself" 
1: "You ambiguous sons of the devil, these words are 
your undoing. May my sword strike you, this blow shall be 
valid forever." 
The Cabiri "Woe, woe! What we feared, what we desired, has 
come to pass." 

/ [Image 169] / [HI 171] I set foot on new land. Nothing 
brought up should flow back. No one shall tear down what I 
have built. My tower is of iron and has no seams. The devil is 
forged into the foundations. The Cabiri built it and the master 
builders were sacrificed with the sword on the battlements ofthe 
tower. Just as a tower surmounts the summit of a mountain on 
which it stands, so I stand above my brain, from which I grew. 
I have become hard and cannot be undone again. No more do I 
flow back. I am the master of my own self I admire my mastery. 
I am strong and beautiful and rich. The vast lands and the blue 
sky have laid themselves before me and bowed to my mastery. I 
wait upon no one and no one waits upon me. I serve myself and 
I myself serve. Therefore I have what I need.314 

My tower grew for several thousand years, imperishable. It does 
not sinlc back. But it can be built over and will be built over. Few 
grasp my tower, since it stands on a high mountain. But manywill 
see it / and not grasp it. Therefore my tower will remain unused. 
No one scales its smooth walls. No one lands on its pointed roof 
Only he who finds the entrance hidden in the mountain and rises 
up through the labyrinths ofthe innards can reach the tower, and 
the happiness of he who surveys things from there and he who 
lives from himself This has been attained and created. It has not 

3II Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "Thereupon I laid this matter aside for three weeks." 

312 In "Transformation symbolism in the mass" (1941), Jung noted that the motif ofthe sword played an important role in alchemy and discussed its significance as an 
instrument ofsacrifice, its divisive and separative functions. He noted that "The alchemical sword brings about the solutio or separatio elementorum, thereby restoring 
the original condition ofchaos, so that a new and more perfect body can be produced by a new impressio formae or imaginatio" (CW II, ¤357 & ff). 

313 The notion here ofovercoming madness is close to Schelling's distinction between the person who is overcome by madness and the person who manages to govern 
madness (see note 89, p. 238). 

314 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "accipe quod tecum est. in collect. Mangeti in ultimis paginis" (Accept what is present. In the last page of the Mangeti 
collection). It seems that this refers to the Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, seu rerum ad alchemiam pertinentium thesaurus instructissimus ofJ. J. Manget (1702), a collection of 
alchemical texts. Jung possessed a copy ofthis work, which has some slips ofpaper in it and some underlinings. Jung's note possibly refers to the last woodcut of the 
Mutus Uber, which concludes volume one of the Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, a representation ofthe completion ofthe alchemical opus, with a man being lifted upward by 
angels, while another lies prostrate. 


322 I LIBER SECUNDUS 172/182 

arisen from a patchwork ofhuman thoughts, but has been forged 
from the glowing heat of the innards; the Cabiri themselves 
carried the matter to the mountain and consecrated the building 
with their own blood as the sole keepers of the mystery of its 
genesis. I built it out ofthe lower and upper beyond and not from 
the surface of the world. Therefore it is new and strange and 
towers over the plains inhabited by humans. This is the solid and 
the beginningYs 

[HI 172] I have united with the serpent of the beyond. I have 
accepted everything beyond into myself From this I have built 
my beginning. When this work was completed, I was pleased, 
and I felt curious to know what might still lie in my beyond. So I 
approached my serpent and asked her / amiably whether she 
would not like to creep over to bring me news of what was 
happening in the beyond. But the serpent was weary and said that 
she had no liking for this. 

{4}[I]316 I: "I don't want to force anything, but perhaps, who 
knows? We will still find out something useful."For a while the 
serpent hesitated, then she disappeared into the depths. Soon 
I heard her voice: "I believe that I have reached Hell. There is 
a hanged man here." A plain, ugly man with a contorted face 
stands before me. He has protruding ears and a hunchback. He 
said: "I am a poisoner who was condemned to the rope." 

I: "What did you do?" 
He: "I poisoned my parents and my wife." 
I: "Why did you do that?" 
He: "To honor God." 
I: "What? To honor God? What do you mean by that?" 
He: "First of all, everything that happens is for the honor of 
God, and secondly; I had my own ideas." 

I: "What went through your mind?" 
He: "I loved them and wanted to transport them more quic1dy 
from a wretched life into eternal blessedness. I gave them a 
strong, too strong a nightcap." 

I: ''And did this not lead you to find out what your own interest 
in this was?" 
He: "I was now alone and very unhappy. I wanted to live for the 
sake ofmy two children, for whom I foresaw a better future. I was 
in better health than my wife, so / I wanted to live." 

I: "Did your wife agree to the murders?" 
He: "No, she certainly would have consented, but she knew 
nothing of my intentions. Unfortunately; the murder was 
discovered and I was condemned to death." 

I: "Have you found your relatives again inthe beyond?" 
He: "That's a strange and unlikely story. I suspect that I'm 
in Hell. Sometimes it seems as if my wife were here too, and 
sometimes I'm not sure, just as little as I'm sure ofmy own self" 

I: "What is it like? Tell me." 
He: "From time to time, she seems to speak to me and I reply. 
But we haven't spoken about either the murder or our children 
until now. We only speak together here and there, and only 
about trivial things, small matters from our earlier daily life, but 
completely impersonal, as if we no longer had anything to do 
with each other. But the true nature of things eludes me. I see 
even less of my parents; I believe that I have yet to meet my 

mother. My father was here once and said something about his 
tobacco pipe, which he had lost somewhere." 


I: "But how do you pass your time?" 
He: "I believe that there is no time with us, so there is none to 
spend. Nothing at all happens." 


I: "Isn't that / extremely boring?" 
He: "Boring? I've never thought about it like that. Boring? 
Perhaps, but there's nothing interesting. In actual fact, it's pretty 
much all the same." 

I: "Doesn't the devil ever torment you?" 
He: "The devil? I've seen nothing ofhim." 
I: "You come from the beyond and yet you have nothing to 
report? I find that hard to believe." 
He: "When I still had a body; I often thought that surely it 
would be interesting to speak to one of the dead. But now the 
prospect means nothing much to me. As I said, everything here 
is impersonal and purely matter of fact. As far as I knOw, that's 
what they say." 

I: "That is bleak. I assume that you are in the deepest Hell." 
He: "I don't care. I guess I can go now, can't I? Farewell." 
Suddenly he vanished. But I turned to the serpent3I7 and said: 
"What should this boring guest from the beyond mean?" 

S: "I met him over there, stumbling around restlessly like so 
many others. I chose him as the next best. He strikes me as a 
good example." 
I: "But is the beyond so colorless?" 
S: "It seems so; there is nothing but motion, when I make 
my way over there. Everything merely surges back and forth in a 
shadowy way. There is nothing personal whatsoever." 
I: "What is it, then, with this damned personal quality? Satan 
recently made / a strong impression on me, as if he were the 
quintessence of the personal." 
S: "Of course he would, since he is the eternal adversary; and 
because you can never reconcile personal life with absolute life." 
I: "Can't one unite these opposites?" 
S: "They are not opposites, but simply differences. Just as 
little as you make the day the opposite of the year or the bushel 
the opposite of the cubit." 
I: "That's enlightening, but somewhat boring." 
S: "As always, when one speaks of the beyond. It goes on 
withering away; particularly since we have balanced the opposites 
and married. I believe the dead will soon become extinct." 
[HI 176] [2] The devil is the sum of the darkness of human 
nature. He who lives in the light strives toward being the image 
ofGod; he who lives in the dark strives toward being the image of 
the devil. Because I wanted to live in the light, the sun went out 
for me when I touched the depths. It was dark and serpentlike. 
I united myselfwith it and did not overpower it. I took my part 
of the humiliation and subjugation upon myself, in that I took 
on the nature ofthe serpent. 

IfI had / not become like the serpent, the devil, the quintessence 
of everything serpentlilce, would have held this bit of power over 
me. This would have given the devil a grip and he would have 
forced me to make a pact with him just as he also cunningly 
deceived Faust.318 But I forestalled him by uniting myselfwith the 
serpent, just as a man unites with a woman. 

315 In psychological Types, Jung commented on the symbolism of the tower in his discussion of the vision ofthe tower in The Shepherd ofHermas (CW 6, ¤390ff). In 1920, 
Jung began planning his tower at Bollingen. 

316 February 2, 1914. 

317 Black Book 4 has: "soul" (p. lIO). 

318 In Goethe's Faust, Mephistopheles makes a pact with Faust that he will serve him in life on condition that Faust will serve him in the beyond (1. 1655). 


THE MAGICIAN I 323 

So I took away from the devil the possibility of influence, 
which only ever passes through one's own serpenthood,319 which one 
commonly assigns to the devil instead ofoneself Mephistopheles 
is Satan, taken with my serpenthood. Satan himself is the 
quintessence ofevil, naked and therefore without seduction, not 
even clever, but pure negation without convincing force. Thus I 
resisted his destructive influence and grasped him and fettered 
him firmly. His descendants served me and I sacrificed them 
with the sword. 

Thus I built a firm structure. Through this I myself gained 
stability and duration and could withstand the fluctuations ofthe 
personal. Therefore the immortal in me is saved. Through drawing 
the darkness from my beyond over into the day, I emptied my 
beyond. Therefore the demands ofthe dead disappeared, as they 
were satisfied. 

1 I am no longer threatened by the dead, since I accepted 
their demands though accepting the serpent. But through this I 
have also taken over something of the dead into my day. Yet it 
was necessary, since death is the most enduring ofall things, that 
which can never be canceled out. Death gives me durability and 
solidity. So long as I wanted to satisfy only my own demands, I 
was personal and therefore living in the sense of the world. But 
when I recognized the demands of the dead in me and satisfied 
them, I gave up my earlier personal striving and the world had to 
take me for a dead man. For a great cold comes over whoever in 
the excess ofhis personal striving has recognized the demands of 
the dead and seeks to satisfy them. 

While he feels as ifa mysterious poison has paralyzed the living 
quality of his personal relations, the voices of the dead remain 
silent in his beyond; the threat, the fear, and the restlessness 
cease. For everything that previously lurked hungrily in him no 
longer lives with him in his day. His life is beautiful and rich, since 
he is himself 

But whoever always wants only the fortune of others is ugly, 
since he 1 cripples himself A murderer is one who wants to 
force others to blessedness, since he kills his own growth. A 
fool is one who exterminates his love for the sake of love. Such 
a one is personal to the other. His beyond is gray and impersonal. 
He forces himself upon others; therefore he is cursed into 
forcing himselfupon himselfin a cold nothingness. He who has 
recognized the demands ofthe dead has banished his ugliness to 
the beyond. He no longer greedily forces himself upon others, 
but lives alone in beauty and speaks with the dead. But there 
comes the day when the demands of the dead also are satisfied. 
If one then still perseveres in solitude, beauty fades into 
the beyond and the wasteland comes over onto this side. A 
black stage comes after the white, and Heaven and Hell are 
forever there.32o 

{5}[I] [HI 179] Now that I had found the beauty in me and 
with mysel£ I spoke to my serpent32l: "I look back as onto a work 
that has been accomplished." 

Serpent: "Nothing is accomplished yet." 

I: "What do you mean? Not accomplished?" 
Se: "This is only the beginning." 
I: "I think you are lying." 
Se: "Whom are you quarreling with? Do you know better?" 
179/180 1: "I know 1 nothing, but I'd already gotten used to the idea 

319 The Corrected Draft has instead: "me with the serpent" (p. 521). 

that we had reached a goal, at least a temporary one. If even the 
dead are about to become extinct, what else is going to happen?" 
Se: "But then the living must first begin to live." 
I: "This remark could certainly be deeply meaningful, but it 
seems to be nothing but a joke." 
Se: "You are getting impertinent. I'm not joking. Life has yet 
to begin." 
1: "What do you mean by life?" 
Se: "I say, life has yet to begin. Didn't you feel empty today? Do 
you call that life?" 
1: "What you say is true, but I tryto put as good a face as I can 
on everything and to settle for things." 
Se: "That might be quite comfortable. But you really ought to 
make much higher demands." 
I: "That I dread. I will certainly not assume that I could satisfy 
my own demands, but neither do I think that you are capable 
of satisfying them. However, it might be that once again I'm not 
trusting you enough. I suppose that might be so because I've drawn 
closer to you in human terms and find you so urbane." 
Se: "That proves nothing. Just don't assume that somehowyou 
could ever grasp me and embody me." 
1: "So, what should it be? I'm ready." 
Se: "You are entitled to' a reward for 1 what has been 180/181 
accomplished so far." 
1: ''A sweet thought, that payment could be made for this." 
Se: "I give you payment in images. Behold:" 
[HI 181] Elijah and Salome! The cycle is completed and the 
gates ofthe mysteries have opened again. Elijah leads Salome, the 
seeing one, by the hand. She blushes and lowers her eyes while 
lovingly batting her eyelids. 
E: "Here, I give you Salome. May she be yours." 
1: "For God's sake, what should I do with Salome? I am already 
married and we are not among the Turks."322 
E: "You helpless man, how ponderous you are. Is this not a 
beautiful gift? Is her healing not your doing? Won't you accept 
her love as the well-deserved payment for your trouble?" 
I: "It seems to me a rather strange gift, more burden than joy. I 
am happy that Salome is thankful to me and loves me. I love her 
too-somewhat. Incidentally, the care I afforded her, was, literally, 
pressed out of me, rather than something I gave freely and 
intentionally. If my partly unintentional 1 ordeal has had such a 181/182 
good outcome, I'm already completely satisfied." 
Salome to Elijah: "Leave him, he is a strange man. Heaven 
knows what his motives are, but he seems to be serious. I'm not 
ugly and surely I'm generally desirable." 
Salome to me: "Why do you refuse me? I want to be your maid 
and serve you. I will sing and dance before you, fend off people 
for you, comfort you when you are sad, laugh with you when you 
are happy. I will carry all your thoughts in my heart. I will kiss the 
words that you speak to me. I will pick roses for you each day and 
all my thoughts will wait upon you and surround you." 
1: "I thank you for your love. It is beautiful to hear you speak 
oflove. It is music and old, far-off homesickness. Look, my tears 
are falling because of your good words. I want to kneel before 
you and kiss your hands a hundred times, because they want to 
give me love. You speak so beautifully of love. One can never 
hear enough oflove being spoken." 

320 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "I still did not realize that I myself was this murderer." 
32I February 9, I9I4. Black Book 4 has: "soul" (p. II4). 
322 Polygamy used to be practiced in Turkey. It was officially banned by Ataturk in I926. 



324 I LIBER SECUNDUS 182/Draft 

Sal: "Why only speak? I want to be yours, utterly and 
completely yours." 

I: "You are like the serpent that coiled around me and pressed 
out my blood."323 / Your sweet words wind around me and I stand 
lil(e someone crucified." 
Sal: "Why still crucified?" 

I: "Don't you see that unrelenting necessity has flung me onto 
the cross? It is impossibility that lames me." 
Sal: "Don't you want to break through necessity? Is what you 
call a necessity really one?"32

4 

I: "Listen, I doubt that it is your destiny to belong to me. I do 
not want to intervene in your utterly singular life, since I can never 
help you to lead it to an end. And what do you gain if one day I 
must lay you aside like a worn garment?" 
Sal: "Your words are terrible. But I love you so much that I 
could also lay myself aside when your time has come." 

I: "I know that it would be the greatest torment for me to let 
you go away. But ifyou can do this for me, I can also do it for you. 
I would go on without lament, since I have not forgotten the 
dream where I saw my body lying on sharp needles and a bronze 
wheel rolling over my breast, crushing it. I must think of this 
dream whenever I think oflove. Ifit must be, I am ready." 
Sal: "I don't want such a sacrifice. I want to bring you joy. Can 
I not be joy to you?" 

I: "I don't know, perhaps, / perhaps not." 
Sal: "So then at least try." 
I: "The attempt is the same as the act. Such attempts are costly." 
Sal: "Won't you bear the cost for my sake?" 
I: "I'm rather too weak, too exhausted after what I have suffered 
because ofyou, still to be able to undertake further tasks for you. 
I would be overwhelmed." 
Sal: "If you ,don't want to accept me, then surely I cannot 
accept you?" 

I: "It's not a matter of acceptance; if it's about anything in 
particular, it's about giving." 
Sal: "But I do give myself to you. Just accept me." 

I: "As ifthat would settle the matter! But being entangled with 
love! Simply thinking about it is dreadful." 
Sal: "So you really demand that I be and not be at the same time. 
That is impossible. What's wrong with you?" 

I: "I lack the strength to hoist another fate onto my shoulders. 
I have enough to carry." 
Sal: "But what if I help you bear this load?" 

I: "How can you? You'd have to carry me, an untamed burden. 
Shouldn't I have to carry it myself?" 
E: "You-speak the truth. May each one ca~ry his load. He who 
wants to burden others with his baggage is their slave.32s It is not 
too difficult for anyone to lug themselves." 
Sal: "But father, couldn't I help him bear part of his burden?" 

E: "Then he'd be your slave." / 
Sal: "Or my master and ruler." 
I: "That I shall. not be. You should be a free being. I can bear 
neither slaves nor masters. I long for men." 
Sal: "Am I not a human being?" 

I: "Be your own master and your own slave, do not belong to 
me but to yourself Do not bear my burden, but your own. Thus 
you leave me my human freedom, a thing that's worth more to 
me than the right of ownership over another person." 
Sal: "Are you sending me away?" 
I: "I'm not sending you away. You must not be far from me. 
But give to me out of your fullness, not your longing. I cannot 
satisfy your poverty just as you cannot still my longing. If your 
harvest is rich, send me some fruit from your garden. Ifyou suffer 
from abundance, I will drink from the brimming horn ofyour 
joy. I know that that will be a balm for me. I can satisfy myself 
only at the table of the satisfied, not at the empty bowls of those 
who yearn. I will not steal my payment. You possess nothing, so 
how can you give? Insofar as you give, you demand. Elijah, old 
man, listen: you have a strange gratitude. Do not give away your 
daughter, but set her / on her own feet. She would like to dance, 185/186 
to sing or play the lute before people, and she would like their 
flashing coins thrown before her feet. Salome, I thank you for 
your love. If you really love me, dance before the crowd, please 
people so that they praise your beauty and your art. And if you 
have a rich harvest, throw me one of your roses through the 
window, and if the fount of your joy overflo~s, dance and sing 
to me once more. I long for the joy of men, for their fullness and 
freedom and not their neediness." 
Sal: "What a hard and incomprehensible man you are." 
E: "You have changed since I last saw you. You speak another 
language, one that sounds foreign to me." 
1: "My dear old man, I'd like to believe thatyou find me changed. 
But you too seem to have changed. Where is your serpent?" 
E: "She has gone astray. I believe she was stolen. Since then 
things have been somewhat gloomy with us. Therefore I would 
have been happy ifyou had at least accepted my daughter." 
I: "I know where your serpent is. I have her. We fetched 
her from the underworld. She / gave me hardness, wisdom, and 186/187 
magical power. We need her in the upperworld, since otherwise 
the underworld would have had the advantage, to our detriment." 
E: '~waywith you, accursed robber, may God punish you." 
I: "Your curse is powerless. Whoever possesses the serpent 
cannot be touched by curses. No, be sensible, old man: whoever 
possesses wisdom is not greedy for power. Only the man who 
has power declines to use it. Do not cry, Salome, fortune is only 
what you yourself create and not what comes to you. Be gone, my 
unhappy friends, the night grows late. Elijah, expunge the false 
gleam of power from your wisdom, and you, Salome, for the sake 
of our love, do not forget to dance." 
[2]326 When everything was completed in me, I unexpectedly 
returned to the mysteries, to that first sight of the otherworldly 
powers of the spirit and desire. Just as I had achieved pleasure 
in myself and power over myself, Salome had lost pleasure in 
herself but learned love for the other, and Elijah had lost the 
power of his wisdom but he had learned to recognize the spirit 
of the other. Salome thus lost the power of temptation and has 
/ become love. As I have won pleasure in mysel£ I also want 187/188 
love for myself But that really would be too much and would 
bind me like an iron ring that would stifle me. I accepted Salome 
as pleasure, and reject her as love. But she wants to be with me. 
How, then, should I also have love for myself? Love, I believe, 

323 Jung's marginal note to the calligraphic volume: "In XI Cap. of the mystery play" (see above, p. 251). 
324 Black Book 4 continues: "I: My principles-it sounds stupid-for~ive me-but I have principles. Do not think these are stale moral principles, for these are insights that 


life has imposed on me. / Serpent: What principles are these?" (pp. 121-22). 
325 The issue ofmaster and slave morality featured prominently in the first essay of Nietzsche's On the Genealogy ofMorals (tr. D. Smith [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996]). 
326 In the calligraphic volume, there is a blank space for a historiated initial. 


THE MAGICIAN I 325 

belongs to others. But my love wants to be with me. I dread it. seen, that just as little happens in Heaven as in Hell, though 
May the power of my thinking push it from me, into the world, probably in another way. Even what does not occur cannot occur 
into things, into men. For something should join men together, in a particular way." 
something should be a bridge. It is the most difficult temptation, I: "You speak in riddles that could make one ill if one took 
if even my love wants me! Mysteries, open your curtains again! them to heart. Tell me, what do you make of the crown?" 
I want to wage this battle to its end. Come here, serpent of the B: "What do I make ofit? Nothing. It truly speaks for itself" 
dark abyss. I: "You mean, through the inscription it bears?" 


{6}327[1] I hear Salome still crying. What does she want, or B: "Precisely; I presume that makes sense to you?" 
what do I still want? It's a damnable payment you have given to I: "To some extent, I suppose. But that keeps the question 
me, a payment that one cannot touch without sacrifice. One that awfully in suspense." 
requires even greater sacrifice once one has touched it. B: "Which is how it is meant to be." 

Serpent:328 "Do you mean to live without sacrifice? Life must Now the bird suddenly turned into the serpent again.332 
cost you something, mustn't it?" I: "You're unnerving." 

I: "I have, I believe, already paid. I have rejected Salome. Is that Serpent:333 "Only for him who isn't in agreement with me." 
not sacrifice enough?" I: "That I am certainly not. But how could one? To hang in the 
Se: "Too little for you. As has been said, you are allowed to air in such a way is gruesome." 
make demands ofyourself" Se: "Is this sacrifice too difficult for you? You must also be able 

I: "You mean well with your damned logic: demanding in to hang ifyou want to solve problems. Look at Salome!" 
188/189 
sacrifice? That 1 isn't what I understood. My error has obviously I, to Salome: "I see, Salome, that you are still weeping. You are 
been to my own benefit. Tell me, isn't it enough if I force my feeling not yet done for. I hover and curse my hovering. I am hanging 
into the background?" for your sake and for mine. First I was crucified, now I'm simply 

Se: "You're not forcing your feeling into the background at all; hanging-which is less noble, but no less agonizing.334 Forgive me, 
rather it suits you much better not to agonize further over Salome." for wanting to do you in; I thought ofsaving you as I did when I 

I: 
"If you're speaking the truth, it's quite bad. Is that why healed your blindness through my self-sacrifice. Perhaps I must 
Salome is still crying?" 
be decapitated a third time for your sake, like your earlier friend 
Se: "Yes, it is." John, who brought us the Christ ofagony. Are you insatiable? Do 

I: "But what is to be done?" you still see no way to become reasonable?" 
Se: "Oh, you want to act? One can also think." Sal: "My beloved, what can I do for you? I have utterly 
I: "But what is there to think? I confess that I know nothing to forsaken you." 
think here. Perhaps you have advice. I have the feeling that I must I: "So why are you still crying? You know I can't bear seeing 
soar over my own head. I can't do that. What do you think?" you in tears." 
Se: "I think nothing and have no advice either." 
Sal: "I thought that you were invulnerable since you possessed 

I: "So ask the beyond, go to Heaven or Hell, perhaps there is the black serpent rod." 
advice there." I: "The effect of the rod seems doubtful to me. But in one 
Se: "I am being pulled upward." respect it does help me: at least I do not suffocate, although I 
Then the serpent turned into a small white bird which soared have been strung up. The magic rod apparently helps me bear the 

into the clouds where she disappeared. My gaze followed her for hanging, surely a gruesome good deed and aid. Don't you at least 
a long time.329 want to cut the cord?" 

Bird: "Do you hear me? I'm far off now. Heaven is so far away. Sal: "How can I? You are hanging too high.335 High on the 
Hell is much nearer the earth. I found something for you, a summit of the tree of life where I cannot reach. Can't you help 
discarded crown. It lay on a street in the immeasurable space of YOU(sel£ you knower of serpent wisdom?" 
Heaven, a golden crown." I: "Must I go on hanging for long?" 

189/Draft 
And now it already lies in33¡1 my hand, a golden royal crown, Sal: "Until you have devised help for yourself" 
with lettering incised within; what does it say? "Love never ends."331 I: "So at least tell me what you think ofthe crown that the bird 
A gift from Heaven. But what does it mean? of my soul fetched for me from Heaven." 

B: "Here I am, are you satisfied?" 
Sal: "What are you saying? The crown? You have the crown? 
I: "Partially-at any rate I thank you for this meaningful gift. Lucky one, what are you complaining about?" 
But it is mysterious, and your gift makes me well-nigh suspicious." I: ''A hanged king would like to change places with every 
B: "But the gift comes from Heaven, you knOw." 
blessed beggar on the country road who has not been hanged." 
I: "It's certainly very beautiful, but you know very well what we Sal (ecstatic): "The crown! You have the crown!" 
have grasped of Heaven and Hell." I: "Salome, take pity on me. What is it with the crown?" 
B: "Don't exaggerate. After all, there is a difference between Sal (ecstatic): "The crown-you are to be crowned! What 
Heaven and Hell. I certainly believe, to judge from what I have blessedness for me and you!" 
327 February II, 1914. 
328 In Black Book 4, this figure is identified as "soul" (p. 131). 
329 This sentence is added in the Draft, p. 533. 
330 The transcription in the calligraphic volume ofLiber Novus ends at this point. What follows here is transcribed from the Draft, pp. 533-56. 
331 This is a quotation from I Corinthians 13:8. Near the end ofhis life, Jung cited it again in his reflections on love at the end ofMemories (p. 387). In Black Book 4, the 


inscription is first given in Greek letters (p. 134). 
332 This sentence is added in the Draft (p. 534). 
333 This figure is not identified as the serpent in Black Book 4. 
334 In Traniformations and Symbols oJthe Libido (1912), Jung commented on the motifofhanging in folklore and mythology (CW B, ¤358). 
335 There is a passage missing in Black Book 4, covering the end of this dialogue and the next paragraph. 



326 I LIBER SECUNDUS Draft 

I: ''Alas, what do you want with the crown? I can't understand 
it and I'm s1.1ffering unspeakable torment." 
Sal (cruelly): "Hang until you understand." 

I remain silent and hang high above the ground on the 
swaying branch of the divine tree, for whose sake the original 
ancestors could not avoid sin. My hands are bound and I am 
completely helpless. So I hang for three days and three nights. 
From where should help come? There sits my bird, the serpent, 
which has put on her white feather dress. 

Bird: "We'll fetch help from the clouds trailing above your 
head, when nothing else is ofhelp to us." 

I: "You want to fetch help from the clouds? How is that possible?" 
B: "I will go and try:" 
The bird swings off like a rising lark, becomes smaller and 
smaller, and finally disappears in the thick gray veil of clouds 
covering the sky. My gaze follows her longingly and I make 
out nothing more than the endless gray cloudy sky above me, 
impenetrably gray; harmoniously gray and unreadable. But the 
writing on the crown-that is legible. "Love never ends"-does 
that mean eternal hanging? I was not wrong to be suspicious when 
my bird brought the crown, the crown ofeternal life, the crown of 
martyrdom-ominous things that are dangerously ambiguous. 

I am weary; weary not only of hanging but of struggling after 
the immeasurable. The mysterious crown lies far below my feet 
on the ground, winking gold. I do not hover, no, I hang, or rather 
worse, I am hanged between sky and earth-and do not tire of 
the state ofhanging for I could indulge in it forever, but love never 
ends. Is it really true, shall love n~ver end? If this was a blessed 
message to them, what is it for me? 

"That depends entirely on the notion," an old raven suddenly 
said, perched on a branch not far from me, awaiting the funeral 
meal, and immersed in philosophizing. 

I: "Why does it depend entirely on the notion?" 
Raven: "On your notion oflove and the other." 
I: "I knOw, unlucky old bird, you mean heavenly and earthly 
love.336 Heavenly love would be utterly beautiful, but we are men, 
and, precisely because we are men, I've set my mind on being a 
complete and full-fledged man." 
R: "You're an ideologue." 
.I: "Dumb raven, be gone!" 
There, very close to my face, a branch moves, a black serpent 
has coil,ed itself around it and looks at me with the blinding pearly 
shimmer ofits eyes. Is it not my serpent? 

I: "Sister, and black rod of magic, where do you come from? I 
thought that I saw you fly to Heaven as a bird and now you are 
here? Do you bring help?" 
Serpent: "I am only my own half; I'm not one, but two; I'm the 
one and the other. I a,m here only as the serpentlike, the magical. 
But magic is useless here. I wound myself idly around this branch 
to await further developments. You can use me in life, but not 
in hanging. In the worst case, I'm ready to lead you to Hades. I 
know the way there." 

A black form condenses before me out of the air, Satan, 
with a scornful laugh. He calls to me: "See what comes from the 
reconciliation of opposites! Recant, and in a flash you'll be down 
on the greening earth." 

I: "I won't recant, I'm not stupid. If such is the outcome of all 
this, let it be the end." 
Se: "Where is your inconsistency? Please remember this 
important rule of the art oflife." 

I: "The fact that I'm hanging here is inconsistency enough. I've 
lived inconsistently ad nauseam. What more do you want?" 
Se: "Perhaps inconsistency in the right place?" 

I: "Stop it! How should I know what the right and the wrong 
places are?" 
Satan: "Whoever gets on in a sovereign way with the opposites 
knows left from right." 

I: "Be quiet, you're an interested party. If only my white bird 
came back with help; I fear I'm growing weak." 
Se: "Don't be stupid, weakness too is a way; magic makes good 
the error." 
Satan: "What, you've not yet once had the courage ofweakness? 
You want to become a complete man-are men strong?" 

I: "White bird ofmine, I suppose you can't find your way back? 
Did you get up and leave because you couldn't live with me? Ah, 
Salome! There she comes. Come to me, Salome! Another night 
has passed. I didn't hear you cry; but I hung and still hang." 
Sal: "I haven't cried anymore, for good fortune and misfortune 
are balanced in me." 

I: "My white bird has left and has not yet returned. I know 
nothing and understand nothing. Does this have to do with the 
crown? Speak!" 
Sal: "What should I say? Ask yourself" 

I: "I cannot. My brain is like lead, I can only whimper for help. 
I have no way ofknowing whether everything is falling or standing 
still. My hope is with my white bird. Oh no, could it be that the 
bird means the same thing as hanging?" 
Satan: "Reconciliation of the opposites! Equal rights for 
all! Follies!" 

I: "I hear a bird chirping! Is that you? Have you come back?" 
Bird: "Ifyou love the earth, you are hanged; ifyou love the sky; 
you hover." 

I: "What is earth? What is sky?" 
B: "Everything under you is the earth, everything above you is 
the sky. You fly ifyou strive for what is above you; you are hanged 
ifyou strive for what is below you." 
I: "What is above me? What is beneath me?" 
B: '~bove you is what is before and over you; beneath you is 
what comes back under you." 
I: '~nd the crown? Solve the riddle of the crown for me!" 
B: "The crown and serpent are opposites, and are one. Did you 
not see the serpent that crowned the head of the crucified?" 
I: "What, I don't understand you." 
B: "What words did the crown bring you? "Love never ends"that 
is the mystery of the crown and the serpent." 
I: "But Salome? What should happen to Salome?" 
B: "You see, Salome is what you are. Fly, and she will grow wings." 
The clouds part, the sky is full of the crimson sunset of the 
completed third day.337 The sun sinks into the sea, and I glide with 
it from the top of the tree toward the earth. Softly and peacefully 
night falls. 

[2] Fear has befallen me. Whom did you carry to the mountain, 
you Cabiri? And whom have I sacrificed in you? You have piled 
336 Swedenborg described heavenly love as "loving uses for the sake ofuses, or goods for the sake ofgoods, which a man performs for the Church, his country; human 
society; and a fellow-citizen," differentiating it from selflove and love of the world (Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell: From Things Heard and Seen, tr. J. Rendell [London: 
Swedenborg Society; 1920], ¤554f). 

337 In the Biblical account ofcreation, the sea and the land were separated on the third day. 


THE MAGIClAN I 327 

me up yourselves, turning me into a tower on inaccessible crags, 

turning me into my church, my monastery, my place of execution, 

my prison. I am locked up and condemned within myself I am 

my own priest and congregation, judge and judged, God and 

human sacrifice. 

What a work you have accomplished, Cabiri! You have given 

birth to a cruel law from the chaos that cannot be revoked. It is 

understood and accepted. 

The completion of the secret operation approaches. What 
I saw I described in words to the best of my ability. Words are 
poor, and beauty does not attend them. But is truth beautiful and 
beauty true?338 

One can speak in beautiful words about love, but about life? 
And life stands above love. But love is the inescapable mother 
of life. Life should never be forced into love, but love into life. 
May love be subject to torment, but not life. As long as love goes 
pregnant with life, it should be respected; but ifit has given birth 
to life from itsel£ it has turned into an empty sheath and expires 
into transience. 

I speak against the mother who bore me, I separate myself 
from the bearing womb.339 I speak no more for the sake of love, 
but for the sake oflife. 

The word has become heavy for me, and it barely wrestles 
itself free of the soul. Bronze doors have shut. fires have burned 
out and sunk into ashes. Wells have been drained and where there 
were seas there is dry land. My tower stands in the desert. Happy 
is he who can be a hermit in his own desert. He survives. 

Not the power of the flesh, but of love, should be broken for 
the sake of life, since life stands above love. A man needs his 
mother until his life has developed. Then he separates from her. 
And so life needs love until it has developed, then it will cut loose 
from it. The separation of the child from the mother is difficult, 
but the separation of life from love is harder. Love seeks to have 
and to hold, but life wants more. 

The beginning of all things is love, but the being of things is 
life.34o This distinction is terrible. Why; Oh spirit of the darkest 
depths, do you force me to say that whoever loves does not live 
and whoever lives does not love? I always get it backward! Should 
everything be turned into its opposite?341 Will there be a sea where 
<I>IAHMnN's temple stands? Will his shady island sink into the 
deepest ground? Into the whirlpool of the withdrawing flood 
that earlier swallowed all peoples and lands? Will the bottom of 
the sea be where Ararat arises?342 

What repulsive words do you mutter, you mute son ofthe earth? 
You want to sever my soul's embrace? You, my son, do you thrust 
yourself between? Who are you? And who gives you the power? 
Everything that I strove for, everything I wrested from mysel£ do 
you want to reverse it again and destroy it? You are the son ofthe 
devil, to whom everything holy is inimical. You grow overpowering. 

You frighten me. Let me be happy in the embrace ofmy soul and 

do not disturb the peace of the temple. 

Offwith you, you pierce me with paralyzing force. For I do not 
want your way. Should I languidly fall at your feet? You devil and 
son of the devil, speak! Your silence is unbearable, and of awful 
stupidity. 

I won my soul, and to what did she give birth for me? You, 
monster, a son, ha!-a frightful miscreant, a stammerer, a newt's 
brain, a primordial lizard! You want to be king of the earth? You 
want to banish proud free men, bewitch beautiful women, break 
up castles, rip open the belly of old cathedrals? Dumb thing, a 
lazy bug-eyed frog that wears pond weed on his skull's pate! And 
you want to call yourself my son? You're no son ofmine, but the 
spawn ofthe devil. The father ofthe devil entered into the womb 
of my soul and in you has become flesh. 

I recognize you, <I>IAHMQN, you most cunning of all fraudsters! 
You have deceived me. You impregnated my maidenly soul with 
the terrible worm. <I>IAHMnN, damned charlatan, you aped the 
mysteries for me, you lay the mantle of the stars on me, you 
played a Christ-fool's comedy with me, you hanged me, carefully 
and ludicrously; in the tree just like Odin,343 you let me devise 
runes to enchant Salome-and meanwhile you procreated my 
soul with the worm, spew ofthe dust. Deception upon deception! 
Terrible devil trickery! 

You gave me the force of magic, you crowned me, you clad 
me with the shimmer of power, that let me playa would-be 
Joseph father to your son. You lodged a puny basilisk in the 
nest of the dove. 

My soul, you adulterous whore, you became pregnant with this 
bastard! I am dishonored; I, laughable father of the Antichrist! 
How I mistrusted you! And how poor was my mistrust, that it 
could not gauge the magnitude of this infamous act! 

What do you break apart? You broke love and life in twain. 
From this ghastly sundering, the frog and the son of the frog 
come forth. Ridiculous-disgusting sight! Irresistible advent! 
They will sit on the banks of the sweet water and listen to the 
nocturnal song of the frogs, since their God has been born as a 
son offrogs. 

Where is Salome? Where is the unresolvable question oflove? 
No more questions, my gaze turned to the coming things, and 
Salome is where I am. The woman follows your strongest, not you. 
Thus she bears you your children, in both a good and a bad way. 

{7}[I] As I stood so alone on the earth, which was covered by 
rain clouds and falling night, my serpent344 crept up to me and told 
me a story: 

"Once upon a time there was a king and he had no children. But 
he would have liked to have a son. So he went to a wise woman 
who lived as a witch in the forest and confessed all his sins, as if 
she were a priest appointed by God. To this she said: 'Dear King, 
you have done what you should not have done. But since it has 

338 John Keats's poem "Ode to a Grecian Urn" ends with these lines: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to knOw." 
339 In Traniformations and Symbols cifthe Libido (1912, cw B), Jung argued that in the course ofpsychological development, the individual had to free himself from the figure 
of the mother, as depicted in heroic myths (see ch. 6, "The battle for deliverance from the mother"). 
340 In Traniformations and Symbols cifthe Libido (1912), while discussing his concept oflibido, Jung referred to the cosmogonic significance of Eros in Hesiod's Theogony, which 
he linked with the figure ofPhanes in Orphism and with Kama, the Hindu God oflove (CW B, ¤223). 
341 In his later work, Jung gave importance to "enantiodromia," the principle that everything turns into its opposite, which he attributed to Heraclitus. See psychological 

Types (1921), CW 6, ¤708f 

342 In the biblical account of the flood, the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat (Genesis 8:4). Ararat is a dormant volcanic cone formerly in Armenia (now Turkey). 

343 In Norse mythology; Odin was pierced by a spear and hung from the world tree, Yggdrasill, where he hung for nine nights until he found the runes, which gave him power. 

344 February 23,1914. In Black Book 4, the dialogue is with the soul, and this section begins with Jung asking her what is stopping him from getting back to his work, and 
she tells him that it is his ambition, He thought he had overcome it, but she said that he had simply negated it, and thus tells him the tale that follows (p. 171). On 

February 13, 1914, Jung gave a talk, "On dream symbolism," to the Zurich Psychoanalytical Society. From March 30 to April 13, Jung vacationed in Italy. 


328 I LIBER SECUNDUS Draft 

come to pass, it has come to pass, and we will have to see howyou 
can do it better in the future. Take a pound of otter lard, bury it 
in the earth, and let nine months pass. Then dig up that place 
again and see what you find.' So the king went to his house, 
ashamed and saddened, because he had humiliated himself 
before the witch in the forest. Yet he listened to her advice, dug 
a hole in the garden at night, and placed a pot of otter lard in 
it, which he had obtained with some difficulty. Then he let nine 
months go by. 

'~fter this time had passed he went again by night to the 
place where the pot lay buried and dug it up. To his great 
astonishment, he found a sleeping infant in the pot, though the lard 
had disappeared. He took out the infant and jubilantly brought it 
to his wife. She took it immediately to her breast and behold-her 
milk flowed freely. And so the child thrived and became great and 
strong. He grew into a man who was greater and stronger than all 
others. When the king's son was twenty years old, he came before 
his father and said: 'I know that you have produced me through 
sorcery and that I was not born as one ofmen. You have made me 
from the repentance ofyour sins and this has made me strong. I 
am born from no woman, which makes me clever. I am strong and 
clever and therefore I demand the crown ofthe realm from you.' 
The old king was startled at his son's knowledge, but even more 
by his impetuous longing for regal power. He remained silent and 
thought: 'What has produced you? Otter lard. Who bore you? The 
womb ofthe earth. I drewyou from a pot, a witch humiliated me.' 
And he decided to let his son be killed secretly. 

"But because his sop was stronger than others, he feared him 
and therefore he wanted to talce refuge in a trick He went again 
to the sorceress in the forest and asked her for advice. She said: 
'Dear King, you confess no sin to me this time, because you want 
to commit a sin. I advise you to bury another pot with otter's 
lard and leave it to lie in the earth for nine months. Then dig 
it out again and see what has happened.' The king did what the 
sorceress advised him. And thenceforth his son became weaker 
and weaker, and when the king returned to the place where the 
pot lay after nine months, he could dig his son's grave at the same 
time. He lay the dead one in the fosse beside the empty pot. 

"But the king was saddened, and when he could no longer 
master his melancholy, he returned yet again to the sorceress one 
night and asked her for advice. She spoke to him: 'Dear King, you 
wanted a son, but the son wanted to be king himselfand also had 
the power and cleverness for it, and then you wanted your son no 
more. Because ofthis you lost your son. Why are you complaining? 
You have everything, dear King, that you wanted.' But the king 
said: 'You are right. I wanted it so. Bu't I did not want this 
melancholy. Do you have. any remedies against remorse?' The 
sorceress spoke: 'Dear King, go to your son's grave, fill the pot 
again with otter's lard, and after nine months see what you find 
in the pot.' The Icing did this, as he had been commanded, and 
henceforth he became happy and did not know why. 

"When the nine months had passed, he dug out the pot again; 
the body had disappeared, but in the pot there lay a sleeping 
infant, and he realized that the infant was his dead son. He 
took the infant to himself and henceforth he grew as much in 
a week as other infants grow in a year. And when twenty weeks 
had passed, the son came before the father again and claimed his 
realm. But the father had learned from experience and already 
knew for a long time how everything would turn out. After the 

345 Black Book 4 has: "ambition" (p. 180). 
346 Black Book 4 has "work" instead of"son" in the next few lines (p. 180). 


son had voiced his demand, the old king got up from his throne 
and embraced his son with tears of joy and crowned him king. 
And so the son, who had thus become king, was grateful to his 
father and held him in high esteem, as long as his father was 
granted life." 

But I spoke to my serpent: "In truth, my serpent, I didn't know 
that you are also a teller of fairy tales. So tell me, how should I 
interpret your fairy tale?" 

Se: "Imagine that you are the old king and have a son." 

I: "Who is the son?" 
Se: "Well, I thought that you had just spoken of a son who 
doesn't make you very happy." 

I: "What? You don't mean-that I should crown him?" 
Se: "Yes, who else?" 
I: "That's uncanny. But what about the sorceress?" 
Se: "The sorceress is a motherly woman whose son you should 
be, since you are a child renewing himself in you." 

I: "Oh no, will it be impossible for me to be a man?" 
Se: "Sufficient manhood, and beyond that fullness of childhood. 
Which is why you need the mother." 

I: "I'm ashamed to be a child." 
Se: '~nd thus you kill your son. A creator needs the mother, 
since you are not a woman." 

I: "This is a terrible truth. I thought and hoped that I could be 
a man in every way." 
Se: "You cannot do this for the sake of the son. To create 
means: mother and child." 

I: "The thought that I must remain a child is unbearable." 
Se: "For the sake ofyour son you must be a child and leave him 
the crown." 

I: "The thought that I must remain a child is humiliating and 
shattering." 
Se: "A salutary antidote against power!345 Don't resist being a 
child, otherwise you resist your son,346 whom you want above all." 

I: "It's true, I want the son and survival. But the price for this 
is high." 
Se: "The son stands higher. You are smaller and weaker than 
the son. That is a bitter truth, but it can't be avoided. Don't be 
defiant, children must be well-behaved." 

I: "Damned scorn!" 
Se: "Man of mockery! I'll have patience with you. My wells 
should flow for you and pour forth the drink of salvation, if all 
lands parch with thirst and everyone comes to you begging for the 
water oflife. So subject yourself to the son." 

I: "Where am I going to take hold of the immeasurable? My 
knowledge and ability are poor, my power is not enough." 
At which the serpent curled up, gathered herself into knots 
and said: "Do not ask after the morrow, sufficient unto you is the 
day. You need not worry about the means. Let everything grow, 
let everything sprout; the son grows out ofhimself" 

[2] The myth commences, the one that need only be lived, 
not sung, the one that sings itself I subject myself to the son, 
the one engendered by sorcery, the unnaturally born, the son 
of the frogs, who stands at the waterside and speaks with his 
fathers and listens to their nocturnal singing. Truly he is full 
of mysteries and superior in strength to all men. No man has 
produced him, and no woman has given birth to him. 

THE MAGICIAN I 32 9 

The absurd has entered the age-old mother, and the son has 
grown in the deepest ground. He sprang up and was put to death. 
He rose again, was produced anew in the way ofsorcery; and grew 
more swiftly than before. I gave him the crown that unites the 
separated. And so he unites the separated for me. I gave him the 
power and thus he commands, since he is superior in strength and 
cleverness to all others. 

I did not give way to him willingly, but out of insight. No 
man binds Above and Below together. But he who did not grow 
like a man, and yet has the form of a man, is capable of binding 
them. My power is paralyzed, but I survive in my son. I set aside 
my concern that he may master the people. I am solitary; the 
people rejoice at him. I was powerful, now I am powerless. I was 
strong, now I am weak. Since then he has talcen all the strength 
into himself. Everything has turned itself upside down for me. 

I loved the beauty of the beautiful, the spirit of those rich in 
spirit, the strength ofthe strong; I laughed at the stupidity ofthe 
stupid, I despised the weakness of the wealc, the meanness of the 
mean, and hated the badness ofthe bad. But now I must love the 
beauty ofthe ugly, the spirit ofthe foolish, and the strength ofthe 
weak. I must admire the stupidity of the clever, must respect the 
weakness of the strong and the meanness of the generous, and 
honor the goodness of the bad. Where does that leave mockery; 
contempt, and hatred? 

They went over to the son as a token of power. His mockery 
is bloody, and how contemptuously his eyes flash! His hatred is a 
singing fire! Enviable one, you son of the Gods, how can one fail 
to obey you? He broke me in two, he cut me up. He yokes the 
separated. Without him I would fall apart, but my life went on 
with him. My love remained with me. 

Thus I entered solitude with a black look on my face, full of 
resentment and outrage at my son's dominion. How could my son 
arrogate my power? I went into my gardens and sat down in a 
lonely spot on rocks by the water, and brooded darkly: I called the 
serpent, my nocturnal companion, who lay with me on the rocks 
through many twilights, imparting her serpent wisdom. But then 
my son emerged from the water, great and powerful, the crown 
on his head, with a swirling lion's mane, shimmering serpent skin 
covering his body; he said to me:347 

{8} [r] "I come to you and demand your life." 
I: "What do you mean? Have you even become a God?"348 
He: "I rise again, I had become flesh, now I return to eternal 
glitter and shimmer, to the eternal embers of the sun, and leave 
you your earthliness. You will remain with men. You have been in 
immortal company long enough. Your work belongs to the earth." 

I: "What a speech! Weren't you wallowing in the earth and 
the underearth?" 
He: "I had become man and beast, and now ascend again to my 
own country:" 

I: "Where is your country?" 
He: "In the light, in the egg, in the sun, in what is innermost 
and compressed, in the eternal longing embers. So rises the sun 
in your heart and streams out into the cold world." 

I: "How you transfigure yourself!" 
He: "I want to vanish from your sight. You ought to live in 
darkest solitude, men-not Gods-should illumine your darkness." 

347 April 19,1914. The preceding paragraph was added in the Drtift. 
348 In Black Book 5, this dialogue is with his soul (p. 29f). 

I: "Howhard and solemn you are! I'd like to bathe your feet with 
my tears, dry them with my hair-I'm raving, am I a woman?" 
He: "Also a woman, also a mother, pregnant. Giving birth 
awaits you." 

I: "Oh holy spirit, grant me a spark ofyour eternal light!" 
He: "You are with child." 
I: "I feelthe torment and the fear and the desolation ofpregnant 
woman. Do you go from me, my God?" 
He: "You have the child." 

I: "My soul, do you still exist? You serpent, you frog, you 
magically produced boy whom my hands buried; you ridiculed, 
despised, hated o~e who appeared to me in a foolish form? Woe 
betide those who have seen their soul and felt it with hands. I 
am powerless in your hand, my God!" 
He: "The pregnant woman belongs to fate. Release me, I rise 
to the eternal realm." -" 

I: "Will I never hear your voice again? Oh damned deception! 
What am I asking? You'll talk to me again tomorrow, you'll chat 
over and over in the mirror." 
He: "Do not rail. I will be present and not present. You will 
hear and not hear me. I will be and not be." 

I: "You utter gruesome riddles." 
He: "Such is my language and to you I leave the understanding. 
No one besides you has your God. He is always with you, yet you 
see him in others, and thus he is never with you. You strive to 
draw to yourself those who seem to possess your God. You will 
come to see that they do not possess him, and that you alone have 
him. Thus you are alone among men-in the crowd and yet alone. 
Solitude in multitude-ponder this." 

I: "I suppose I ought to remain silent after what you have 
said, but I cannot; my heart bleeds when I see you go from me." 
He: "Let me go. I shall return to you in renewed form. Do you 
see the sun, how it sinks red into the mountains? This day's work 
is accomplished, and a new sun returns. Why are you mourning 
the sun oftoday?" 

I: "Must night fall?" 
He: "Is it not mother ofthe day?" 
I: "Because of this night I want to despair." 
He: "Why lament? It is fate. Let me go, my wings grow and the 
longing toward eternal light swells up powerfully in me. You can 
no longer stop me. Stop your tears and let me ascend with cries 
of joy: You are a man of the fields, think ofyo"ur crops. I become 
light, like the bird that rises up into the skies ofmorning. Do not 
stop me, do not complain; already I hover, the cry oflife escapes 
from me, I can no longer hold back my supreme pleasure. I must 
go up-it has happened, the last cord tears away, my wings bear 
me up. I dive up' into the sea of light. You who are down there, 
you distant, twilight being-you fade from me." 

I: "Where have you gone? Something has happened. I am 
lamed. Has the God not left my sight?" 
Where is the God? 

What has happened? 

How empty, ~owutterly empty! Should I proclaim to men how 
you vanished? Should I preach the gospel ofgodforsaken solitude? 
Should we all go into the desert and strew ashes on our heads, 
since the God has left us? 


330 I LIBER SECUNDUS Draft 

I believe and accept that the God349 is something different 

from me. 

He swung high with jubilant joy 

I remain in the night of pain. 

No longer with the God,35o but alone with myself 

Now shut, you bronze doors I opened to the flood ofdevastation 
and murder brooding over the peoples, opened so as to midwife 
the God. 

351

Shut, may mountains bury you and seas flow over YOU.

I came to my sel£352 a giddy and pitiful figure. My I! I didn't 
want this fellow as my companion. I found myself with him. I'd 
prefer a bad woman or a wayward hound, but one's own I-this 
horrifies me. 

349 Black Book 5 has instead "Soul" (p. 37). 
350 Black Book 5 has instead "with my soul" (P.38). 
351 This paragraph was added in the Drift. 
352 The Corrected Draft has instead: "to myself" (p. 555). 
353 The remainder is added in the Drift (p. 555f). 


353An opus is needed, that one can squander decades on, and 
do it out of necessity I must catch up with a piece of the Middle 
Ages-within myself We have only finished the Middle Ages 
of-others. I must begin early, in that period when the hermits 
died out.354 Asceticism, inquisition, torture are close at hand 
and impose themselves. The barbarian requires barbaric means 
of education. My I, you are a barbarian. I want to live with you, 
therefore I will carry you through an utterly medieval Hell, until 
you are capable ofmalcing living with you bearable. You should be 
the vessel and womb oflife, therefore I shall purify you. 

The touchstone is being alone with oneself 

This is the way355 

354 In 1930, Jung stated: ''A movement back into the Middle Ages is a sort of regression, but it is not personal. It is a historical regression, a regression into the past of the 
collective unconscious. This always takes place when the way ahead is not free, when there is an obstacle from which you recoil; or when you need to get something out 
of the past in order to climb over the wall ahead" (Visions, vol. I, p. 148). Around this time, Jung began working intensively on Medieval theology (see psychological Types 
[1921], CW 6, ch. I, "The type problem in the history of the mind in antiquity and the Middle Ages"). 

355 At this point, the Handwritten Drift has: "Finis," surrounded by a box (p. 1205). 


Scrutinies 

{I} I resist, I cannot accept this hollow nothing that I am. 
What am I? What is my I? I always presuppose my I. Now it stands 
before me-I before my I. I speak now to you, my I: 
IWe are alone and our being together threatens to become 
unbearably boring. We must do something, devise a pastime; for 
example, I could educate you. Let us begin with your main flaw, 
which strikes me first: you have no correct self-esteem. Have you 
no good qualities that you can be proud of? You believe that 
being capable is an art. But one can also learn such skills to some 
extent. Please, do so. You find it difficult-well, all beginnings 
are difficult.2 Soon you will be able to do it better. Do you doubt 
this? That is of no use; you must be able to do it, or else I cannot 
live with you. Ever since the God has arisen and spreads himself 
in whichever fiery heavens, to do whatever he does, what exactly 
I do not know, we have depended upon one another. Therefore 
you must think about improving, or else our life together will 
become wretched. So pull yourself together and value yourself! 
Don't you want to? 

Pitiful creature! I will torment you a bit ifyou do not make an 
effort. What are you moaning about? Perhaps the whip will help? 
Now that gets under your skin, doesn't it? Take that-and that. 
What does it taste of? Ofblood, presumably? Ofthe Middle Ages 

in majorem Dei gloriam?3 

Or do you want love, or what goes by that name? One can also 
teach with love, ifblows do not bear fruit. So should I love you? 
Press you tenderly to myself? 

I truly believe that you are yawning. 

How now, you want to speak? But I won't let you, otherwise in 
the end you will claim that you are my soul. But my soul is with 
the fire worm, with the son ofthe frog who has flown to the heavens 
above, to the upper sources. Do I know what he is doing there? 
But you are not my soul, you are my bare, empty nothing-I, this 
disagreeable being, whom one cannot even deny the right to 
consider itself worthless. 

One could despair over you: your sensitivity and desirousness 
exceed any reasonable measure. And I should live with you, of all 
people? I must, since the strange misfortune occurred that gave 
me a son and took him away. 

I regret that I must speak such truths to you. Yes, you 
are laughably sensitive, self-righteous, unruly, mistrustful, 
pessimistic, cowardly; dishonest with yoursel£ venomous, vengeful; 
one can hardly speak about your childish pride, your craving 
for power, your desire for esteem, your laughable ambition, 
your thirst for fame without feeling sick. The playacting and 
pomposity become you badly and you abuse them to the best 
ofyour ability. 

Do you believe that it is a pleasure rather than a horror to live 
together with you? No, three times no! But I promise you that I 
will tighten the vise around you and slowly pull off your skin. I 
will give you the chance to be flayed. 

You, you of all people wanted to tell other people what to do? 

Come here, I will stitch a cloth of new skin onto you, so that 
you can feel its effect. 

You want to complain about others, and that one has done an 
injustice to you, not understood you, misinterpreted you, hurt 

I April I9, I9I4. 
2 "All beginnings are difficult" is a proverb from the Talmud. 
3 "To the greater glory of God." This was the motto of the Jesuits. 
4 See below, note 9I. p. 348. 
5 References to this God in the following pages are not in Black Book 5. 


your feelings, ignored you, not recognized you, falsely accused 
you, and what else? Do you see your vanity in this, your eternally 
ridiculous vanity? 

You complain that the torment has not yet come to an end? 

Let me tell you: it has only just begun. You have no patience 
and no seriousness. Only when it concerns your pleasure do 
you praise your patience. I will double the torment so that you 
learn patience. 

You find the pain unbearable, but there are other things that 
hurt even more, and you can inflict them on others with the 
greatest naivety and absolve yourself all unknowingly. 

But you will learn silence. For this I will pullout your 
tongue-with which you have ridiculed, blasphemed and-even 
worse-joked. I will pin all your unjust and depraved words 
one by one to your body with needles so that you can feel how 
evil words stab. 

Do you admit that you also derive pleasure from this torment? 
I will increase this pleasure until you vomit with joy so that you 
know what taking pleasure in self-torment means. 

You rise against me? I am screwing the vise tighter, that's 
all. I will break your bones until there is no longer a trace of 
hardness there. 

For I want to get along with you-I must-damn you-you are 
my I, which I must carry around with me to the grave. Do you 
think that I want to have such foolishness around me all my life? 
Ifyou were not my 1, I would have torn you to pieces long ago. 

But I am damned to haul you through a purgatory so that you 
too will become somewhat acceptable. 

You calIon God for help? 

The dear old God has died,4 and it is good that way; otherwise 
he would have had pity on your repentant sinfulness and spared 
me the execution by granting mercy. You must know that neither 
a God of love nor a loving God has yet arisen, but instead 
a worm of fire crawled up, a magnificent frightful entity that 
lets fire rain on the earth, producing lamentations.s So cry to the 
God, he will burn you with fire for the forgiveness of your sins. 
Coil yourself and sweat blood. You have needed this cure for a 
long time. Yes-others always do wrong-and you? You are the 
innocent, the correct, you must defend your good right and you 
have a good, loving God on your side, who always forgives sins 
with pity. Others must reach insight, not you, since you have a 
monopoly on all insight from the start and are always convinced 
that you are right. And so cry really loudly to your dear God-he 
will hear you and let fire fallon you. Have you not noticed that 
your God has become a fiery worm with a flat skull who crawls 
red-hot on the earth? 

You wanted to be superior! How laughable. You were, and are, 
inferior. Who are you, then? Scum that disgusts me. 

Are you perhaps somewhat powerless? I place you in a corner 
where you can remain lying until you come to your senses again. 
Ifyou no longer feel anything, the procedure is of no use. After 
all, we must proceed skillfully. It really says a lot about you that 
one needs such barbaric means for your amendment. Your progress 
since the early Middle Ages appears to be minuscule. 

6Did you feel dejected today; inferior, debased? Shall I tell 
you why? 

6 April 20, I914. On the same day; Jung resigned as president of the International Psychoanalytical Association (The Freud/lung Letters, p. 6I3). 


334 I SCRUTINIES 

Your inordinate ambition is boundless. Your grounds are not 
focused on the good ofthe matter but on your vanity. You do not 
work for humanity but for your self-interest, You do not strive for 
the completion of the thing but for the 'general recognition and 
safeguarding ofyour own advantage. I want to honor you with a 
prickly crown of iron; it has teeth inside that bore themselves 
into your flesh. 

And nowwe come to the vile swindle that you pursue with your 
cleverness. You speak skillfully and abuse your capability and 
discolor, tone down, strengthen, apportion light and shade, and 
loudly proclaim your honorableness and upright good faith. You 
exploit the good faith ofothers, you gloatingly catch them in your 
snares and speal( of your benevolent superiority and the prize 
that you are for others. You play at modesty and do not mention 
your merit, in the certain hope that someone else will do it for 
you; you are disappointed and hurt if this doesn't happen. 

You preach hypocritical composure. But when it really matters, 
are you calm? No, you lie. You consume yourself in rage and your 
tongue speaks cold daggers and you dream of revenge. 

You are gloating and resentful. You begrudge the other the 
sunshine, since you would like to assign it to those whom you 
favor because they favor you. You are envious of all well-being 
around you and you impertinently assert the opposite. 

Inside yourself you think unsparingly and coarsely only what 
always suits you, and with this you feel yourself above humanity 
and not in the least responsible. But you are responsible to 
humanity in everything that you think, feel, and do. Do not pretend 
there is a difference between thinking and doing. You rely only on 
your undeserved advantage, not to be compelled to say or do what 
you think and feel. 

But you are shameless in everything where no one sees you. 
If another said that to you, you woul~ be mortally offended, 
despite knowing that it is true. You want to reproach others for 
their failings? So that they better themselves? Yes, confess, have 
you bettered yourself? From where do you get the right to have 
opinions of others? What is your opinion about yourself? And 
what are the good grounds that support it? Your grounds are 
webs oflies covering a dirty corner. You judge others and charge 
them with what they should do. You do this because you have no 
order within yourself because you are unclean. 

And then-how do you really think? It appears to me that you 
even think with men, regardless of their human dignity; you dare 
think by means ofthem, and use them as figures on your stage, as 
if they were how you conceive them? Have you ever considered 
that you thus commit a shameful act of power, as bad as that for 
which you condemn others, namely that they love their fellow 
men, as they claim, but in reality exploit them to their own ends. 
Your sin flourishes in seclusion, but it is no less great, remorseless, 
and coarse. 

What is concealed in you I will drag out into the light, 
shameless one! I will crush your superiority under my feet. 

Do not speak to me about your love. What you call love oozes 
with self-interest and desirousness. But you speak about it with 
great words, and the greater your words are, the more pathetic 

7 April2I, I9I4á 

your so-called love is. Never speak to me of your love, but keep 
your mouth shut. It lies. 

I want you to speak about your shame, and that instead of 
speaking great words, you utter a discordant clamor before 
those whose respect you wanted to exact. You deserve mockery; 
not respect. 

I will burn out ofyou the contents ofwhich you were proud, so 
that you will become empty like a poured-out vessel. You should 
be proud ofnothing more than your emptiness and wretchedness. 
You should be a vessel oflife, so kill your idols. 

Freedom does not belong to you, but form; not power, but 
suffering and conceiving. 

You should make a virtue out of your self-contempt, which I 
will spread out before men like a carpet. They should wall( over it 
with dirty feet and you should see to it that you are dirtier than 
all the feet that step on you. 

7If I tame you, beast, I give others the opportunity to tame 
their beasts. The taming begins with you, my I, nowhere else. Not 
that you, stupid brother I, had been particularly wild. There are 
some who are wilder. But I must whip you until you endure the 
wildness ofthe others. Then I can live with you. Ifsomeone does 
you wrong, I will torment you to death, until you have forgiven 
the wrong suffered, yet not just by paying lip service, but also in 
your heavy heart with its heinous sensitivity. Your sensitivity is 
your particular form ofviolence. 

Therefore listen, brother in my solitude, I have prepared every 
kind of torture for you, if it should ever occur to you again to be 
sensitive. You should feel inferior. You should be able to bear the 
fact that one calls your purity dirty and that one desires your 
dirtiness, that one praises your wastefulness as miserliness and 
your greed as a virtue. 

Fill your beal(er with the bitter drink ofsubjugation, since you 
are not your soul. Your soul is with the fiery God who flamed up 
to the roof of the heavens. 

Should you still be sensitive? I notice that you are forging 
secret plans for revenge, plotting deceitful tricks. But you are an 
idiot, you cannot take revenge on fate. Childish one, you probably 
even want to lash the sea. Build better bridges instead; that is a 
better way to squander your wit. 

You want to be understood? That's all we needed! Understand 
yourself and you will be sufficiently understood. You will have 
quite enough work in hand with that. Mothers' little dears 
want to be understood. Understand yourself that is the best 
protection against sensitivity and satisfies your childish longing 
to be understood. I suppose you want to turn others into slaves of 
your desirousness again?á But you know that I must live with you 
and that I will no longer tolerate such abject plaintiveness.8 

{2} Mter I had spoken these and many more angry words to my 
I, I noticed that I began to bear being alone with myself But 
the touchiness still stirred in me frequently and I had to lash 
myself just as often. And I did this until even the pleasure in 
self-torment faded.9 
8 Jung later described the self-criticism depicted in this opening section as the confrontation with the shadow. In I934 he wrote: "Whoever looks into the mirror of the 
water will see first ofall his own image. Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with himself The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into 
it; namely the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face. 
This confrontation is the first test ofcourage on the inner way; a test sufficient to frighten offmost people, for the meeting with ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant 
things that can be avoided as long as one can project everything negative into the environment. But ifwe are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, 
then a small part of the problem has already been solved: we have at least brought up the personal unconscious" ("On the archetypes of the collective unconscious," CW 
9, I, ¤¤43-44). 

9 This paragraph does not occur in Black Book 5. On April 30, 1914, Jung resigned as a lecturer in the medical faculty of the University of Zurich. 


SCRUTINIES I 335 

IOThen I heard a voice one night; it came from afar and was the 
voice of my soul. She spoke: "How distant you are!" 

I: "Is that you my soul, from which height and distance do 
you speak?" 
S: "I am above you. I am a world apart. I have become sunlike. 
I received the seeds of fire. Where are you? I can hardly find you 
in your mists." 
I: "I am down on the murky earth, in the dark smoke that 
the fire left us, and my gaze does not reach you. But your voice 
sounds closer." 
S: "I feel it. The heaviness ofthe earth penetrates me, damp cold 
enshrouds me, gloomy memories offormer pain overcome me." 
I: "Do not lower yourself into the smoke and the darkness of 
the earth. I would like that which I am still working on to remain 
sunlike. Otherwise I will lose the courage to live further down in 
the darkness ofthe earth. Let me just hear your voice. I will never 
want to see you in the flesh again. Say something! Take it from the 
depths, from which fear perhaps flows to me." 
S: "I cannot, since your creative source flows from there." 
I: "You see my uncertainty." 
S: "The uncertain way is the good way: Upon it lie possibilities. 
Be unwavering and create." 
I heard the rushing of wings. I knew that the bird rose 
higher, above the clouds in the fiery brilliance of the outspread 
Godhead. 

III turned to my brother, the I; he stood sadly and looked at the 
ground and sighed, and would rather have been dead, since the 
burden of enormous suffering burdened him. But a voice spoke 
from me and said: 

"It is hard-the sacrificed fall left and right-and you will be 
crucified for the sake oflife." 

And I said to my I: "My brother, how do you like this speech?" 

But he sighed deeply and moaned: "It is bitter, and I suffer much." 

To which I answered: "I know, but it is not to be altered." But 
I did not know what that was, since I still did not know what the 
future held (this happened on the 2Ist May of the year I9I4). In 
the excess ofsuffering I looked up to the clouds and called out to 
my soul and asked her. And I heard her voice, happy and bright, 
and she answered: 

"Much happiness has happened to me. I rise higher, cmy 
wings grow." 
I was seized with bitterness at these words and I cried: "You 
live from the blood of the human heart." 
I heard her laughing-or was she not laughing? "No drink is 
dearer to me than red blood." 

Powerless anger seized me and I called out: "If you were not 
my soul who followed the God to the eternal realm, I would 
call you the most terrible scourge of men. But who moves you? 
I know that divinity is not humanity. The divine consumes the 
human. I know that this is the severity, this is the cruelty; he who 
has felt you with his hands can never remove the blood from his 
hands. I have become enslaved to you." 

She answered: "Do not be angry, do not complain. Let the 
bloody victims fall at your side. It is not your severity, it is 
not your cruelty, but necessity: The way of life is sown with 
fallen ones." 

1: "Yes, I see, it is a battlefield. My brother, what is with you? 
Are you groaning?" 
Then my I answered: "Why should I not groan and moan? I 
load myself with the dead and cannot haul their number." 
But I did not understand my I and therefore spoke to him: 
"You are a pagan, my friend! Have you not heard that it is said, 
let the dead bury their dead?I2 Why do you want to be burdened 
with the, dead? You do not help them by hauling them." 

Then my I wailed: "But I pity the poor fallen ones, they cannot 
reach the light. Perhaps if I haul them-?" 

1: "What is this? Their souls have accomplished as much as 
they could. Then they encountered fate. Itwill also happen to us. 
Your compassion is sick." 
But my soul called from afar: "Leave him compassion, compassion 
binds life and death." 

These words of my soul stung me. She spoke of compassion, 
she, who rose up following the God without compassion, and I 
asked her: 

13"Why did you do that?" 
For my human sensitivity could not grasp the hideousness of 
that hour. She answered: 
"It is not meant for me to be in your world. I besmirch myself 
on the excrement ofyour earth." 

I: ''Am I not earth? Am I not excrement? Did I commit an 
error that forced you to follow the God into the upper realms?" 
S: "No, it was inner necessity. I belong to the Above." 
I: "Has no one suffered an irreplaceable loss through 
your disappearance?" 
S: "On the contrary, you have enjoyed utmost benefit." 
1: "If I heed my human feeling about this, doubt could come 
over me." 
S: "What have you noticed? Why should what you see always be 
untrue? It is your particular wrong that you cannot stop making a 
fool ofyourself Can you not remain on your way for once?" 
I: "You know that I doubt, because of my love for men." 
S: "No, for the sake of your weakness, for the sake of your 
doubt and disbelief Stay on your way and do not run away from 
yourself There is a divine and a human intention. They cross 
each other in stupid and godforsaken people, to whom you also 
belong from time to time." 
Since what my soul spoke about referred to nothing that I 
could see, nor could I see what my I suffered from (since this 
happened two months before the outbreak of the war), I wanted 
to understand it all as personal experiences within me, and 
consequently I could neither understand nor believe it all, since 
my belief is weak. And I believe that it is better in our time if 
belief is weak. We have outgrown that childhood where mere 
beliefwas the most suitable means to bring men to what is good 
and reasonable. Therefore if we wanted to have a strong belief 
again today, we would thus return to that earlier childhood. But 
we have so much knowledge and such a thirst for knowledge in 
us that we need knowledge more than belief But the strength of 
belief would hinder us from attaining knowledge. Belief certainly 
may be something strong, but it is empty, and too little of the 
whole man can be involved, if our life with God is grounded 
only on belief Should we simply believe first and foremost? That 

10 May 8,1914. There is a gap in the entries in Black Book 5 between April 21 and May 8, so the discussions referred to in the previous paragraph do not appear to have 

been recorded. 
II May 21, 1914. 
12 Matthew 8:21-22: '~nd another ofhis disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury 

their dead." 
13 May 23, 1914á 


336 I SCRUTINIES 

seems too cheap to me. Men who have understanding should not 

just believe, but should wrestle for knowledge to the best oftheir 

ability. Belief is not everythil1g, but neither is knowledge. Belief 

does not give us the security and the wealth ofknowing. Desiring 

knowledge sometimes takes away too much belief Both must 

strike a balance. 

But it is also dangerous to believe too much, because today 
everyone has to find his own way and encounters in himself a 
beyond full of strange and mighty things. He could easily talce 
everything literally with too much belief and would be nothing 
but a lunatic. The childishness ofbeliefbreaks down in the face 
of our present necessities. We need differentiating knowledge 
to clear up the confusion which the discovery of the soul has 
brought in. Therefore it is perhaps much better to await better 
knowledge before one accepts things all too believingly.14 

From these considerations I spoke to my soul: 

"Is all that to be accepted? You know in what sense I ask this." 
It is not stupid and unbelieving to ask thus, but is doubting of a 
higher type." 

To this she answered: "I understand you-but it is to be accepted." 
To which I replied: "The solitude of this acceptance terrifies 
me. I dread the madness that befalls the solitary." 

She answered: ''As you already know, I have long predicted 
solitude for you. You need not be afraid of madness. What I 
predict is valid." 

These words filled me with disquiet, since I felt that I could 
almost not accept what my soul predicted, because I did not 
understand it. I always wanted to understand it with regard to 
myself Therefore I said to my soul: "What misunderstood fear 
torments me?" 

"That is your disbelie£ your doubt. You do not want to believe 
in the size of the sacrifice that is required. But it will go on to the 
bitter end. Greatness requires greatness. You still want to be too 
cheap. Did I not speak to you of abandonment, of leaving be? 
Do you want to have it better than other men?" 

"No," I replied, "No, that is not it. But I fear committing an 
injustice to men if I go my own way." 

"What do you want to avoid?" she said; "there is no avoidance. 
You must go your way, unconcerned about others, no matter 
whether they are good or bad. You have laid your hand on the 
divine, which those have not." 

I could not accept these words since I feared deception. Therefore 
I also did not want to accept this way that forced me into dialogue 
with my soul. I preferred to speak with men. But I felt compelled 
toward solitude and I feared at the same time the solitude of 
my thinking which departed from accustomed paths.15 As I 
pondered this, my soul spoke to me: "Did I not predict dark 
solitude for you?" 

"I know," I answered, "but I did not really think that it would 
happen. Must it be so?" 

"You can only say yes. There is nothing to do other than for 
you to take care ofyour cause. If anything should happen, it can 
only happen on this way." 

"So it is hopeless," I cried, "to resist solitude?" 

"It is utterly hopeless. You should be forced into your work" 

As my soul spoke thus, an old man with a white beard and a 

haggard face approached me.16 I asked him what he wanted with 
me. To which he replied: 

"I am a nameless one, one of the many who lived and died 
in solitude. The spirit of the times and the acknowledged truth 
required this from us. Look at me-you must learn this. Things 
have been too good for you. "17 

"But," I replied, "is this another necessity in our so very different 
time?" 

"It is as true today as it was yesterday. Never forget that you 
are a man and therefore you must bleed for the goal ofhumanity. 
Practice solitude assiduously without grumbling so that everything 
will in time become ready. You should become serious, and hence 
take your leave from science. There is too much childishness in it. 
Your way goes toward the depths. Science is too superficial, mere 
language, mere tools. But you must set to work"18 

I did not know what work was mine, since everything was dark 
And everything became heavy and doubtful and an endless sadness 
seized me and lasted for many days. Then, one night, I heard the 
voice of an old man. He spoke slowly, heavily, and his sentences 
appeared to be disconnected and terribly absurd, so that the fear 
of madness seized me again.19 For he spoke the following words: 

20"It is not yet the evening of days. The worst comes last. 

The hand that strikes first, strikes best. 

Nonsense streams from the deepest wells, amply like the Nile. 

Morning is more beautiful than night. 

Flowers smell until they fade. 

Ripeness comes as late as possible in spring, or else it misses 

its purpose." 

These sentences that the old man spoke to me on the night of 
the 25 May ofthe year 1914 appeared to me dreadfully meaningless. 
I felt my I squirm in pain. It moaned and wailed about the burden 
of the dead that rested on it. It seemed as if it had to carry a 
thousand dead. 

This sadness did not leave until the 24th June 1914.21 In the 
night my soul spoke to me: "The greatest comes to the smallest." 
After this nothing further was said. And then the war broke out. 
This opened my eyes about what I had experienced before, and 
it also gave me the courage to say all of that which I have written 
in the earlier part of this book 

{3} 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 
14 These last two paragraphs do not occur in Black Book 5: In Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (1912), Jung wrote: "I think, belief should be replaced by understanding" 
(CW B, ¤356). On October 5,1945, Jung wrote to Victor White: "I began my career with repudiating everything that smelt ofbelief" (Ann Conrad Lammers and 
Adrian Cunningham, eds., The}ung-White Letters [Philemon Series, London: Routledge, 2007], p. 6). 

15 May 24,1914. The lines from the beginning of the paragraph do not occur in Black Book 4. 

16 Black Book 4 continues: "He is like one of the old saints, one of the first Christians who lived in the desert" (p. 77). 

17 In the handwritten manuscript ofScrutinies, there is a note here: "27/II/I?," which appears to refer to when this portion of the manuscript was composed. 

18 Black Book 5 continues: [I]: "I am scholastic?" [Soul]: "Not that, but scientific; science is a new version ofscholasticism. It needs to be surmounted." [I]: "Is it not enough 
yet? Do I thus not counter the spirit of the time if I dissociate myself from science?" [Soul]: "You are not supposed to dissociate yourself, but consider that science is 
merely your language." [I]: "Which depths do you require me to advance to?" [Soul]: "Forever above yourself and the present." / [I]: "I want to, but what should happen? I 
often feel I can no longer." [Soul]: "You must put in extra work. Provide respite. Too many take up your time." / [I]: "Will this sacrifice arise too?" [Soul]: "You must, 
you must" (pp. 79-80). 

19 This paragraph does not occur in Black Book 5. 

20 May 25, 1914. . 

21 Black Book 5 continues: "Ha, this book! I have laid hands on you again-banal and pathological and frantic and divine, my written unconscious! You have forced me to 
my knees again! Here I am, say what you have to say!" (p. 82). This is the one reference to "the unconscious" in Black Books 2 to 7



SCRUTINIES I 337 

large fish and rose up into the skies again clutching it.22 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 ofan old 
man (and this time I knew that it was cIlIAHMQN).23 He said: 24"1 
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.25 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.26 

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 cIlIAHMQN!" 

27But cIlIAHMQN 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 
ofwhich 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 cIlIAHMQN, men have 
deceived themselves about you, therefore you deceive them. But 
he who fathoms you, fathoms himself" 

28But cIlIAHMQN fell silent and retired into the shimmering 
cloud ofuncertainty. 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 selfforgetting 
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 ofthe 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 Ifone 
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 itself29 

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 

30

his burden. This sin rebounds on us.

22 June 3, 1915. In the interim, Jung wrote the draft of the preceding books ofLiber Novus. On July 28, 1914, Jung gave a talk: on "The importance of the unconscious in 
psychopathology" at a meeting of the British Medical Association in Aberdeen. From around August 9 to around August 22, Jung was on military service in Luzern for 
14 days. From around January I to around March 8, 1915, Jung was on military service in Olten for 64 days. Between March IO and 12, he served on the invalid transport 
(Jung's military service books,JFA). 

23 This sentence is not in Black Book 6. 

24 September 14,1915. In late summer and autumn ofI9I5, Jung conducted his correspondence with Hans Schmid on the question of psychological types. His concluding 
letter to Schmid of November 6 indicates a shift that signals a return to the elaboration ofhis fantasies in the Black Books: "Understanding is a terribly binding power, 
possibly a veritable soul murder when it levels out vitally important differences. The core of the individual is a mystery oflife, which dies when it is 'grasped: That is 
also why symbols want to keep their secrets, they are mysterious not only because we are unable to clearly see what is at their bottom ... All understanding as such, being an 
integration into general viewpoints, contains the devil's element, and kills ... That is why; in the later stages of analysis, we must help the other to come to those hidden and 
un-openable symbols, in which the seed oflife lies securely hidden like the tender seed in the hard shell. Actually; there must not be any understanding and agreement 
on this, even ifit were possible, as it were. But ifunderstanding and agreement on this has become generalized and obviously possible, the symbol is ripe for destruction, 
because it no longer covers the seed, which is about to outgrow the shell. Now I understand a dream I once had, and which greatly impressed me: I was standing in my 
garden, and I had dug open a rich spring ofwater which gushed forth mightily. Then I had to dig a trench and a deep hole, in which I collected all the water and let 
it flow back into the depths of the earth again. In this way salvation is given to us in the un-openable and un-sayable symbol, for it protects us by preventing the devil 
from swallowing the seed oflife" (John Beebe and Ernst Falzeder, eds., TheJung-Schmid Letters [philemon Series], forthcoming): 

25 Black Book 5 continues: "Hermes is your daimon" (p. 87). 

26 Jung discussed the alchemical symbolism of gold in Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955/56, CW 14, ¤353ff). 

27 September 15, 1915á 

28 September 17,1915. 

29 In Thus Spoke zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote: "The Self also seeks with the eyes ofsense, it listens too with the ears of the spirit. The Selfis always listening and seeking: it 
compares, subdues, conquers, destroys. It rules and is also the I's ruler. Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty commander, an unknown sagehe 
is called Self" (section I, "Ofthe despisers of the body;" ¤I, p. 62). The passage is underlined as in Jung's copy. There are also lines by the margin and exclamation marks. 
In commenting on this passage in 1935 in his seminar on Zarathustra, Jung said: "I was already very interested in the concept of the self, but I was not sure how I should 
understand it. I made my marks when I came across these passages, and they seemed very important to me ... The concept of the self continued to recommend itself 
to me ... I thought that Nietzsche meant a sort of thing-in-itselfbehind the psychological phenomenon ... I saw then also that he was producing a concept of the self 
which was like the Eastern concept; it is an Atman idea" (Nietzsche'S Zarathustra, vol.l, p, 391). 

30 In Thus Spoke zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote: "You crowd together with your neighbours and have beautiful words for it. But I tell you: Your love ofyour neighbour is your 
bad love ofyourself You flee away from yourselves and would like to make a virtue ofit: but I see through your 'selflessness' " ("Of love of one's neighbour," p. 86; as 
underlined by Jung in his copy). 


338 I SCRUTINIES 

It is submission enough, amply enough, if we subjugate 
ourselves to our self The work ofredemption is always first to be 
done on ourselves, ifone dare utter such a great word. This work 
cannot be done without love for ourselves. Must it be done at all? 
Certainly not, ifone can endure crgiven condition and does not feel 
inneed ofredemption. The tiresome feeling ofneeding redemption 
can finally become too much for one. Then one seeks to rid oneself 
ofit 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 ofredemption is in itselfa 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 ofredemption 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 overhealthy 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. Ifwe 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 ofsickness 
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 sel£ selfless love is a veritable sin. 

31We 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 

31 September 18, 1915. 

forget the self and through this we also become secretly selfish in 

our best endeavors.32 What we neglect in ourselves blends itself 

secretly into our actions toward others. 

Through uniting with the selfwe reach the God.33 

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 ofthe 
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 ifit is a deception, 
then deception is my God. Moreover, the God is in the deception. 
And ifthis 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 himselfin 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 ofthe soul. Therefore 
we reach the God through the self34 35Not the self is God, although 
we reach the God through the self The God is behind the sel£ 
above the sel£ the self itsel£ when he appears. But he appears as 
our sickness, from which we must heal ourselves.36 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 sel£ 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. 

32 In 1941, Jung noted: "The integration or humanization of the self, as has already been indicated, is initiated from the conscious side by making ourselves conscious of 
our egotistical aims, that means we give an account of our motives and try to form as objective a picture as possible of our own being" ("Transformation symbolism in 
the mass," CW II, ¤4oo). This corresponds to the process depicted here in the opening section ofScrutinies. 

33 Black Book 5 continues: "which unites Heaven and Hell in itself" (p. 92). Cf Jung, "Transformation symbolism in the mass": "The self then functions as a unio oppositorum 
and thus constitutes the most immediate experience of the divine which is at all psychologically comprehensible" (1941, CW II, ¤396). 

34 In 1921, Jung wrote concerning the self: "But inasmuch as the I is only the centre ofmy field ofconsciousness, it is not identical with the totality of my psyche, being 
merely one complex among other complexes. I therefore distinguish between the I and the self, since the I is only the subject of my consciousness, while the self is the 
subject ofmy total psyche, which also includes the unconscious" (psychological Types, CW 6, ¤706). In 1928, Jung described the process ofindividuation as "self-becoming" 
and "self-realization" (The Relations between the I and the Unconscious, CW 7, ¤266). Jung defined the self as the archetype of order, and noted that representations of the 
self were indistinguishable from God-images (ch. 4, "The self," Aion: Contributions to the Symbolism ofthe Self, CW 9, 2). In 1944 he noted that he chose the term because 
this concept was "on the one hand definite enough to convey the sum ofhuman wholeness and on the other hand indefinite enough to express the indescribable and 
indeterminate nature of this wholeness ... in scientific usage the 'self' refers neither to Christ nor to the Buddha but to the totality of the figures that are its equivalent, 
and each of these figures is asymbol ofthe self' (Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, ¤20). 

35 The following section is reworked from Black Book 5 in a manner that is hard to separate. 
36 In 1929, Jung wrote: "The Gods have become diseases; Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather the solar plexus and produces curious specimens for the doctor's consulting 
room" ("Commentary on 'The Secret of the Golden Flower: " CW 13, ¤54). 


SCRUTINIES I 339 

Yet we cannot remain in this state, since all the powers of our 
body are consulned like fat in the flames. Hence we must strive to 
free the self from the God, so that we can live.37 

38It 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 oflife. We go on living, but as ones lamed by the God. 
Where the fire blazed dead ashes lie. 

I believe thatwe have the choice: I preferred the living wonders 
ofthe 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,39 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. 

In the following night, I heard the voice of cDIAHMQN again 
and he said:4o 

"Draw nearer, enter into the grave of the God. The place of 
your work should be in the vault. The God should not live in you, 
but you should live in the God." 

41These words disturbed me since I had thought before precisely 
to free myself from the God. But cDIAHMQN advised me 
to enter even deeper into the God. 

Since the God has ascended to the upper realms, cDIAHMQN 
also has become different. He first appeared to me as a magician 
who lived in a distant land, but then I felt his nearness and, since 
the God has ascended, I knew that cDIAHMQN had intoxicated 
me and given me a language that was foreign to me and ofa different 
sensitivity. All of this faded when the God arose and only 
cDIAHMQN kept that language. But I felt that he went on other 
ways than I did. Probably the most part of what I have written 
in the earlier part of this book was given to me by cDIAHMnNY 
Consequently I was as if intoxicated. But now I noticed that 
cDIAHMQN assumed a form distinct from me. 

{4} 43 Several weeks later, three shades approached me. I noticed 
from their chilly breath that they were dead. The first figure was 
that of a woman. She drew near and made a soft whirring sound, 
the whirring of the wings of the sun beetle. Then I recognized 
her. When she was still alive, she recovered the mysteries of the 
Egyptians for me, the red sun disk and the song of the golden 
wings. She remained shadowy and I could hardly understand her 
words. She said: 

"It was night when I died-you still live in the day-there 
are still days, years ahead ofyou-what will you begin-Let me 
have the word-oh, that you cannot hear! How difficult-give 
me the word!" 

I answered dismayed: "I do not know the word that you seek." 
But she cried: "'The symbol, the mediator, we need the symbol, 
we hunger for it, make light for us." 
"Wherefrom? How can I? I do not know the symbol that 
you demand." 

But she insisted: "You can do it, reach for it." 

And precisely at this moment the sign was placed in my hand 
and I looked at it filled with boundless astonishment. Then she 
spoke loudly and joyfully to me:44 

"That is it, that is HAP, the symbol that we desired, that we 
needed. It is terribly simple, initially stupid, naturally godlike, the 
God's other pole. This is precisely the pole we needed." 

"Why do you need HAP?"45 I replied. 

"He is in the light, the other God is in the night." 

"Oh," I answered, "what's that, beloved? The God of the spirit 
is in the night? Is that the son? The son of the frogs? Woe betide 
us, ifhe is the God of our day!" 

But the dead one spoke full of triumph: 

"He is the flesh spirit, the blood spirit, he is the extract of all 
bodily juices, the spirit of the spe,rm and the entrails, of the genitals, 
of the head, of the feet, of the hands, of the joints, of the 
bones, of the eyes and ears, of the nerves and the brain; he is the 
spirit of the sputum and of excretion." 

''Are you of the devil?" I exclaimed full of horror, "where does 
my flashing godly light remain?" 
But she said: "Your body remains with you, my beloved, your 
living body. The enlightening thought comes from the body." 
"What thought are you talking about? I recognize no such 
thought," I said. 
"It crawls around like a worm, like a serpent, soon there, soon 
here, a blind newt of Hell." 
"Then I must be buried alive. Oh horror! Oh rottenness! Must I 
attach myself completely; like a leech?" 

"Yes, drink blood," she said, "suck it up, get your fill from the 
carcass, there is juice inside, certainly disgusting, but nourishing. 
You should not understand, but suck!" 

"Damned horror! No, three times no," I cried in outrage. 

But she said: "It should not irritate you, we need this meal, 
the life juices of men, since we want to share in your life. Thus 
we can draw closer to you. We want to give you tidings ofwhat 
you need to knOw." 

37 Black Book 5 continues: "The God has the power, not the self Powerlessness should thus not be deplored, but it is the condition that should abide. / The God acts from 
within himself This should be left to him. What we do to the self, we do to the God. / Ifwe twist the self, we also twist the God. It is divine service to serve oneself 
We thus relieve humanity ofourselves. May one man carry another's burden, has become an immorality. May each carry his own load; that is the least that one can 
demand anyone to do. We can at best show another how to carry his own load. / To give all one's goods to the poor means to educate them to become idle. / Pity should 
not carry another's load, but it should be a strict educator instead. Solitude with ourselves has no end. It has only just begun" (pp. 92-93). 

38 The next four paragraphs do not occur in the Black Books. 

39 In Jung's copy of Eckhart's Schriften und Predigten, the phrase "that the soul would also have to lose God!" is underlined, and there is a slip ofpaper on which is written: "Soul 
must lose God" (Meister Eckhart, Schriften und Predigten. Aus dem Mittelhochdeutschen ubersetzt und herausgegeben von Herman Buttner, 2 vols [Eugen Diederichs, 1912], p. 222). 
40 In Black Book 5, the voice is not identified as Philemon's. 
41 The next two paragraphs do not occur in Black Book 5. 
42 The handwritten manuscript ofScrutinies continues:"and--spokerrtll1ough me" (P.37). 
43 December 2, 1915á 
44 Instead of this paragraph, Black Book 5 has: '~phallus?" (p. 95). There is no mention of HAP in Black Book 5. The following references may be c~mnected to this. In The 

Egyptian Heaven and Hell, Wallis Budge notes that "The Phallus ofhis Pepi is Hap" (vol. I, p. IIO). He notes that Hap is a son of Horus (p. 49I-Jung placed a mark in 
the margin by this in his copy). He also noted that "In the Book ofthe Dead these four children of Horus play very prominent parts, and the deceased endeavoured to 
gain their help and protection at all costs, both by offerings and prayers ... the four children of Horus shared the protection of the deceased among them, and as far 
back as the Vth dynasty we find that they presided over his life in the underworld" (ibid.; underlined as in Jung's copy) [London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1905]). 

45 Black Book 5 has: "of this divine pole" (p. 95). 


340 I SCRUTINIES 

"That is horribly absurdl What are you talking about?" 

46But she looked at me as she had done on the day I had last 

seen her among the living, and on which she showed me, unaware 

ofits meaning, something ofthe mystery ofwhat the Egyptians had 

left behind. And she said to me: 

"Do it for me, for us. Do you recall my legacy, the red sun 

disk, the golden wings and the wreath of life and duration? 

Immortality; of this there are things to knOw." 

"The way that leads to this knowledge is Hell." 

47From this I sank into gloomy brooding since I suspected the 

heaviness and incomprehension and the immeasurable solitude 

of this way: And after a long struggle with all the weakness and 

cowardice in me, I decided to talce upon myself this solitude of 

the holy error and the eternally valid truth.48 

And in the third night I called to my dead beloved and asked 
her: 
"Teach me the knowledge ofthe worms and the crawling creatures, 
open to me the darkness of the spirits!" 

She whispered: "Give blood, so that I may drink and gain 

speech. Were you lying when you said that you would leave the 

power to the son?" 

"No, I was not lying. But I said something that I did 
not understand." 

"You are fortunate," she said, "ifyou can say what you do not 
understand. So listen: HAp49 is not the foundation but the 
summit of the church that still lies sunken. We need this church 
since we can live in it with you and take part in your life. You have 
excluded us to your own detriment." , 

"Tell me, is HAP for you the sign of the church in which you 
hope for community with the living? Speak, why do you hesitate?" 
She moaned and whispered with a wealc voice: "Give blood, I 

need blood."5o 

"So take blood from my heart," I spoke. 

"I thank you," she said, "that is fullness of life., The air of the 
shadow world is thin since we hover on the ocean of the air like 
birds above the sea. Many went beyond limits, fluttering on 
indeterminate paths of outer space, bumping at hazard into alien 
worlds. But we, we who are still near and incomplete, would like to 
immerse ourselves in the sea ofthe air and return to earth, to the 
living. Do you not have an animal form into which I can enter?" 

"What," I exclaimed horrified, "you would like to be my dog?" 

"Ifpossible, yes," she replied, "I would even like to be your dog. 
To me you are ofunspeakable worth, all my hope, that still clings 
to earth. I would still like to see completed what I left too soon. 
Give me blood, much blood!" 

"So drink," I said despairingly, "drink, so that what should be 
will be." 

I

She whispered with a hesitant voice: "Brim0 5-I guess that's 
what you call her-the old one-which is how it begins-the one 
who bore the son-the powerful HAP, who grew out ofher shame 
and strove after the wife of Heaven, who arches over earth, for 
Brimo, above and below, envelops the son.52 She bears and raises 
him. Born from below, he fertilizes the Above, since the wife is 
his mother, and the mother is his wife." 

46 This paragraph is not in Black Book 5. 
47 December 5, 1915á 
48 This paragraph is not in Black Book 5. 

'~ccursed teaching! Is this still not enough of the horrifying 

Mysterium?" I cried full of outrage and abhorrence. 

"If Heaven becomes pregnant and can no longer hold its fruit, 
it gives birth to a man who carries the burden of sin-that is the 
tree oflife and ofunending duration. Give me your blood! Listen! 
This riddle is terrible: when Brimo, the heavenly, was preg;nant, 
she gave birth to the dragon, first the afterbirth and then the son, 
HAP, and the one who carried HAP. HAP is the rebellion of the 
Below, but the bird comes from the Above and places itself on the 
head ofHAP. That is peace. You are a vessel. Speak, Heaven, pour 
out your rain. You are a shell. Empty shells do not spill, they catch. 
May it stream in from all the winds. Let me tell you that another 
evening is approaching. A day, two days, many days have come 
to an end. The light of day goes down and illumines the shadow, 
itself a shadow ofthe sun. Life becomes a shadow, and the shadow 
enlivens itself the shadow that is greater than you. Do you think 
that your shadow is your son? He is small at midday, and fills the 
sky at midnight."53 

But I was exhausted and desperate and could hear no more, 
and so I said to the dead one: 

54"SO you introduce the terrible son who lived beneath me, 
under the trees on the water? Is he the spirit that the heavens 
pour out, or is he the soulless worm that the earth bore? Oh 
Heaven-Oh most sinister womb! Do you want to suck the life 
out of me for the sake of the shadow? Should humanity thus 
completely go to waste for divinity?55 Should I live with shadows, 
instead of with the living? Should all the longing for the living 
belong to you, the dead? Did you not have your time to live? Did 
you not use it? Should a living person give his life for your sake, 
you who did not live the eternal? Speak, you mute shadows, who 
stand at my door and demand my blood!" 

The shadow of the dead one raised its voice and said: "You 
see-or do you still not see, what the living do with your life. 
They fritter it away: But with me you live yourself since I belong 
to you. I belong to your invisible following and community: Do 
you believe that the living see you? They see only your shadow, 
not you-you servant, you bearer, you vessel-" 

"How you hold forth! Am I at your mercy? Should I no longer 
see the light of day? Should I become a shadow with a living 
body? You are formless and beyond grasp, and you emanate 
the coldness of the grave, a breath of emptiness. To let myself 
be buried alive-what are you thinking of? Too soon, it seems 
to me, I must die first. Do you have the honey that pleases 
my heart and the fire that warms my hands? What are you, you 
mournful shadows? You specters of children! What do you want 
with my blood? Truly, you are even worse than men. Men give 
little, yet what do you give? Do you make the living? The warm 
beauty? Or joy perhaps? Or should all this go to your gloomy 
Hell? What do you offer in return? Mysteries? Will the living live 
from these? I regard your mysteries as tricks if the living cannot 
live from them." 

But she interrupted me and cried: "Impetuous one, stop, you 
take my breath away: We are shadows; become a shadow and you 
will grasp what we give." 

49 Black Book 5 has: "The Phallus" (p. IOO). Cf Jung's childhood dream of the ritual phallus in the underground temple, p. 4 above. 

50 See note 223, p. 304. 

51 In 1912, Jung discussed the Hecate mysteries that flourished in Rome at the end ofthe fourth century: Hecate, the Goddess ofmagic and spells, guarded the underworld, 
and was seen as the sender of madness. She was identified with Brimo, a Goddess ofdeath (Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido, CW B, ¤586ff). 
52 In Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (1912), Jung referred to Nut, the Egyptian Sky Goddess, who arched over the earth, daily giving birth to the Sun God 
(CW B, ¤364). 
53 This paragraph is reworked from Black Book 5. 
54 December 7, 1915á 
55 December 9,1915á 


SCRUTINIES I 341 

"I do not want to die to descend into your darkness." 

"But," she said, "you need not die. You must only let yourself 

be buried." 

"In the hope of resurrection? No joking now!" 

But she spoke calmly: "You suspect what will happen. Triple 

walls before you and invisibility-to Hell with your longing and 
feeling! At least you do not love us, so we will cost you less dearly 
than the men who roll in your love and patience and have you 
malce a fool ofyourself" 

"My dead one, I thinlc you are spealcing my language." 

She replied to me scornfully: "Men love-and you! What an 
error! All this means is that you want to run away from yourself 
What do you do to men? You tempt and coax them into 
megalomania, to which you fall victim." 

"But it grieves me, pains me, howls at me; I feel a great longing, 
everything soft complains, and my heart yearns." 

But she was unsparing. "Your heart belongs to us," she said, 
"What do you want with men? Self-defense against men-so that 
you walk on your own two feet, not on human crutches. Men need 
the undemanding, but they are always wanting love to be able to 
run away from themselves. This ought to stop. Why do fools go 
out and preach the gospel to the negroes, and then ridicule it in 
their own country? Why do these hypocritical preachers speak of 
love, divine and human love, and use the same gospel to justify . 
the right to wage war and commit murderous injustice? Above 
all, what do they teach others when they themselves stand up to 
their necks in the black mud of deception and self-deceit? Have 
they cleaned their own house, have they recognized and driven 
out their own devil? Because they do none of this, they preach 
love to be able to run away from themselves, and to do to others 
what they should do to themselves. But this greatly prized love, 
given to one's own self burns like fire. These hypocrites and liars 
have noticed this-as you have-and prefer to love others. Is 
that love? It is false hypocrisy56 It always begins in yourself and 
in all things and above all with love. Do you believe that one who 
wounds himself unsparingly does the other a good deed with his 
love? No, of course you don't believe it. You even know that he 
only teaches the other how one must wound oneself, so that he 
can compel others to express sympathy. Therefore you should be 
a shadow since this is what men need. How can they get away from 
the hypocrisy and foolishness ofyour love if you yourself cannot? 
For everything begins with yourself But your horse still cannot 
refrain from whinnying. Even worse, your virtue is a wagging dog, 
a growling dog, a licking dog, a barking dog-and you call that 
human love! But love is: to bear and endure oneself It begins with 
this. It is truly about you; you are not yet tempered; other fires 
must yet come over you until you have accepted your solitude and 
learned to love. 

What do you ask about love? What is love? To live, above all, 
that is more than love. Is war love? You are bound to see what 
human love is still good enough for-a means like other means. 
Therefore, above all, solitude, until every softness toward yourself 
has been burnt out ofyou. You should learn to freeze."57 

"I see only graves before me," I answered, "what cursed will is 
above me?" 
"The will of the God, that is stronger than you, you slave, you 
vessel. You have fallen into the hands of the greater. He knows 

no pity. Your Christian shrouds have fallen, the veils that blinded 
your eyes. The God has become strong again. The yoke of men is 
lighter than the yoke ofthe God; therefore everyone seeks to yoke 
the other out of mercy. But he who does not fall into the hands 
of men falls into those of the God. May he be well and may woe 
betide him! There is no escape." 

"Is that freedom?" I cried. 

"The highest freedom. Only the God above you, through 
yourself Comfort yourself with this and that as well as you 
can. The God bolts doors that you cannot open. Let your feelings 
whimper like puppies. The ears on high are deaf" 

"But," I answered, "is there no outrage for the sake of 
the human?" 

"Outrage? I laugh at your outrage. The God knows only 
power and creation. He commands and you act. Your anxieties 
are laughable. There is only one road, the military road of 
the Godhead." 

The dead one spoke these unsparing words to me.58 As I did 
not want to obey anyone, I had to obey this voice. And she spoke 
unsparing words about the power of the God. I had to accept 
these words.59 We have to greet a new light, a blood-red sun, 
a painful wonder. No one forces me to; only the foreign will 
in me commands and I cannot escape since I find no grounds 
to do so. 

The sun, appearing to me, swam in a sea ofblood and wailing; 
therefore I said to the dead one: 

"Should it be the sacrifice of joy?" 

But the dead one replied: "The sacrifice of all joy, provided 
that you d~ it yourself Joy should neither be made nor sought; it 
should come, if it must come. I demand your service. You should 
not serve your personal devil. That leads to superfluous pain. 
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. I have the power. 
I command, you obey." 

"I fear that you will destroy me." 

But she answered: "I am life that destroys only the unfit. 
Therefore take care that you are no unapt tool. You want to rule 
yourself? You steer your ship onto the sand. Build your bridge, 
stone upon stone, but don't think of wanting to take the helm. 
You go astray if you want to escape my service. There is no 
salvation without me. Why are you dreaming and hesitating?" 

"You see," I answered, "that I am blind and do not know where 
to begin." 
"It always begins with the neighbor. Where is the church? 
Where is the community?" 

"This is pure madness," I cried out indignantly, "why do you 
speak of a church? Am I a prophet? How can I claim such for 
myself? I am just a man who is not entitled to know any better 
than others." 

But she replied: "I want the church, it is necessary for you and 
for others. Otherwise what are you going to do with those whom 
I force to your feet? The beautiful and natural will nestle into the 
terrible and dark and will show the way. The church is something 

56 Jung was critical of Christian missionaries. See "The problems of the soul of modern men," (1931), CW IO, ¤185. 

57 Black Book 5 continues: [The dead one:] "after the devil has preceded you. Now is not the time for love, but for deeds." [I:] "Why do you mention deeds? Which deeds?" 
[The dead one]: "Your work." [1:] "What do you mean, my work? My science, my book?" [The dead one:] "That is not your book, that is the book. Science is what you 
do. Do it, without hesitation. There is no way back, only forward. Your love belongs there. Ridiculous-your love! You must allow death to occur." [1:] "Leave dead 
ones around me at least." [The dead one:] "Enough dead, you are surrounded." [1:] "1 do not notice anything." [The dead one:] "You ought to notice them." [1]: "How? 
How can I?" [The dead one:] "Proceed. Everything will come toward you. Not today, but tomorrow" (pp. II6-17). 

58 The handwritten manuscript ofScrutinies has "&mI:" (p. 49), and the dialogue partner in this section is changed from the soul to the dead one. 


342 I SCRUTINIES 

natural. The holy ceremony must be dissolved and become 

spirit. The bridge should lead out beyond humanity;60 inviolable, 

far, of the air. There is a community ofspirits founded on outer 
. signs with a solid meaning." 
"Listen," I cried, "that doesn't bear thinking about, it's 
incomprehensible." 

But she continued: "Community with the dead is what both 

you and the dead need. Do not commingle with any of the dead, 

but stand apart from them and give to each his due. The dead 

demand your expiatory prayers." 

And when she spoke these words, she raised her voice and 

evoked the dead in my name: 

"You dead, I call you. 

"You shades ofthe departed, who have cast off the torment of 

living, come here! 

"My blood, the juice ofmy 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 ofthe 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 ofgoodwill 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." 

59 December 20, 1915. 
60 See note 8, p. 230. 
61 January 8, 1916. This paragraph does not occur in Black Book 5. 


{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.61 And I called out: 
"You know what has taken place. You see that it surpasses the 

power and understanding ofa man. But I accept it for your sake 

and mine. To be crucified on the tree oflife, Oh bitterness! Oh 

painful silence! Ifit 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 ofthe 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 ofhorror 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 ofGod, the dreadful, proclaim the right ofmen 
also before the Gods and take revenge on them for the infamous 
deed ofhumanity; since only Gods are able to spur on the human 
worm63 to acts ofcolossal atrocity. Let my fate suffice and let men 
manage human destiny 

"Oh my mother humanity; thrust the terrible worm of God, 
the strangler ofmen, 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 <I>IAHMQN 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: 

64"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 stillwant to live with men? Because 
theywant 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 

62 In Gethsamane, Christ said: "0 my Father, ifit be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Matthew 26:39). 
63 Cf Job 25:6: "How much less man, that is a worm? and the son ofman, which is a worm?" 
64 January 10, 1916. 



SCRUTINIES I 343 

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 ofyour 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.65 

"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 yoursel£ 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. 

65 In the Poetic Edda, the giant Thrym stole the hammer ofthe God Thor. 

You don't need to play God. What are daimons, who don't act out 
ofthemselves? 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 yoursel£ 
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 ifyou 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 ofpatience 
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 aJ;e 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." 

When <llIAHMQN had finished, I turned to my soul, who 
had come nearer from above during <llIAHMQN's speech, and spoke 
to her: 

"Have you heard what <llIAHMQN has been saying? How does 
this tone strike you? Is his advice good?" 
But she said, "Do not mock, or else you strike yourself Do not 
forget to love me." 

"It is difficult for me to unite hate and love," I replied. 

"I understand," she said, "yet you know that it is the same. Hate 
and love mean the same to me. Like all women ofmy kind, form 
matters less to me than that everything belong to me or else 
to no one. I am also jealous of the hate you give others. I want 
everything, since I need everything for the great journey that 
I intend to begin after your disappearance. I must prepare in 
good time. Until then I must make timely provision and much 
is still lacking. " 

''And do you agree that I throw you into prison" I asked. 

"Ofcourse," she answered, "there I have peace and can collect 
myself Your human world makes me drunk-so much human 
blood-I could get intoxicated on it to the point of madness. 
Doors of iron, walls of stone, cold darkness and the rations of 
penance-that is the bliss ofredemption. You do not suspect my 
torment when the bloody intoxication seizes me, hurls me again 


344 I SCRUTINIES 

and again into living matter from a dark fearful creative urge that 
formerly brought me close to the lifeless and ignited the terrible 
lust for procreation in me. Remove me from conceiving matter, the 
rutting feminine ofyawning emptiness. Force me into confinement 
where I can find resistance and my own law. Where I can think 
about the journey, the rising sun the dead one spoke o£ and the 
buzzing, melodious golden wings. Be thankful-don'tyou want to 
thank me? You are blinded. You deserve my highest thanks." 

Filled with delight at these words, I cried: 

"How divinely beautiful you are!" And at the same time fury 

seized me: 

66"Oh bitterness! You have dragged me through sheer and utter 
Hell, you have tormented me nearly to death-and I long for 
your thanks. Yes, I am moved that you thank me. The hound's 
nature lies in my blood. Therefore I am bitter-for my sake, since 
how does it move you! You are divine and devilishly great, 
wherever and howsoever you are. As yet I am only your eunuch 
doorkeeper, no less imprisoned than you. Speak, you concubine 
of Heaven, you divine monster! Have I not fished you from 
the swamp? How do you like the black hole? Speak without 
blood, sing from your own force, you have gorged yourself 
on men." 

Then my soul writhed and like a downtrodden worm turned 
and cried out, "Pity, have compassion." 

"Compassion? Have you ever had compassion for me? You 
brute bestial tormentor! You've never gotten past compassionate 
moods. You lived on human food and drank my blood. Has it 
made you fat? Will you learn to revere the torment of the human 
animal? What would you souls and Gods want without man? 
Why do you long for him? Speak, whore!" 

She sobbed, "My speech stops. I'm horrified at your accusation." 

"Are you going to get serious? Are you going to have second 
thoughts? Are you going to learn modesty or perhaps even some 
other human virtue, you soulless soul-being? Yes, you have no 
soul, because you are the thing itself you fiend. Would you like a 
human soul? Should I perhaps become your earthly soul so that 
you will have a soul? You see, I've gone to your school. I've learned 
how one behaves as a soul, perfectly ambiguous, mysteriously 
untruthful and hypocritical." 

While I spoke to my soul in this way, <I>IAHMnN stood silently 
a little distance off But now he stepped forward, laid his hand on 
my shoulder, and spoke in my name: 

"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. 

"You live in the golden temple. The peoples come from afar 
and praise you. 

"We, your vassals, wait on your words. 

"We drinl( red wine, dispensing a sacrificial drink in recollection 
of the meal ofblood that you celebrated with us. 
"We prepare a black chicken for a sacrificial meal in remembrance 
of the man who fed you. 

"We invite our friends to the sacrificial meal, carrying wreaths 
of ivy and roses in remembrance of the farewell you took from 
your saddened vassals and maids. 

"Let this day be a festival celebrating joy and life-the day 
upon which you, blessed one, commence the return journey from 
the land of men where you have learned how to be a soul. 

"You follow the son who ascended and passed over. 

66 January II, 1916. 
67 January 13, 1916. The preceding paragraph does not occur in Black Book 5. 


"You carry us up as your soul and set yourself before the son of 

God, maintaining your immortal right as an ensouled being. 

"We are joyful, good things will follow you. We lend you strength. 

We are in the land of men and we are alive." 

After <I>IAHMnN had ended, my soul looked saddened and 

pleased, and hesitated and yet hurried to prepare herselfto leave 

us and to ascend again, happy at the regained freedom. But I 

suspected something secret in her, something that she sought to 

hide from me. Therefore I did not let her make off but spoke 

to her:67 

"What holds you back? What are you hiding? Probably a 
golden vessel, a jewel that you have stolen from men? Isn't that 
a gem, a piece of gold, shining through your robe? What is the 
beautiful thing that you robbed when you drank the blood of 
men and ate their sacred flesh? Speak the truth, for I see the lie 
on your face." 

"I haven't tal(en anything," she answered annoyed. 

"You are lying, you want to cast suspicion on me, where you 
are lacking. Those times when you could rob men unpunished are 
over. Surrender everything that is his sacred inheritance and that 
you have rapaciously claimed. You have stolen from the vassal and 
the beggar. God is rich and powerful, you can steal from him. His 
kingdom knows no loss. Shameful liar, when will you finally stop 
plaguing and robbing your humanity?" 

But she looked at me as innocently as a dove and said gently: 

"I do not suspect you. I wish you well. I respect your right. I 
acknowledge your humanity. I do not take anything away from 
you. I do not withhold anything from you. You possess everything, 
I, nothing." 

"Yet," I exclaimed, "you lie insufferably: You possess not only 
that marvelous thing that belongs to me, but you also have access to 
the Gods and eternal fullness. Therefore surrender what you have 
stolen, liar." 

Now she was vexed and replied: 

"How can you? I no longer recognize you. You are crazy, even 
more: you are laughable, a childish ape, who extends his paw 
toward everything that glitters. But I will not allow what is mine 
to be taken from me." 

Then I cried enraged, "You're lying, you're lying; I saw the 
gold, I saw the sparkling light of the jewel; I know it belongs to 
me. You ought not take that away from me. Give it back!" 

Then she broke out in defiant tears and said, "I don't want to 
part with it, it's too precious to me. Do you want to rob me ofthe 
last ornament?" 

"Embellish yourself with the gold of the Gods, but not with 
the meager treasures of earthbound human beings. May you 
taste heavenly poverty after you have preached earthly poverty 
and necessity to your humankind, like a true and proper cleric 
full oflies, who fills his belly and purse and preaches poverty." 

"You torment me awfully," she wailed, "leave me just this one 
thing. You men still have enough. I cannot be without this very one, 
this incomparable one, for whose sake even the Gods envy men." 

"I will not be unjust," I replied, "But give me what belongs to 
me and beg for what you need from it. What is it? Speak!" 

"Alas, that I can neither keep it nor conceal it! It is love, warm 
human love, blood, warm red blood, the holy source of life, the 
unification of everything separated and longed for." 

"So," I said, "it is love that you claim as a natural right and 
property, although you still ought to beg for it. You get drunk 


SCRUTINIES I' 345 

on the blood of man and let him starve. Love belongs to me. I 
want to love, not you through me. You'll crawl and beg for it like 
a dog. You'll raise your hands and fawn like hungry hounds. I 
possess the key. I will be a more just administrator than you 
godless Gods. You will gather around the source of blood, the 
sweet miracle, and you will come bearing gifts so that you may 
receive what you need. I protect the holy source so that no 
God can seize it for himself The Gods know no measure and 
no mercy. They get drunk on the most precious of draughts. 
Ambrosia and nectar68 are the flesh and blood of men, truly a 
noble meal. They waste the drink in drunkenness, the goods 
of the poor, since they have neither God nor soul presiding 
over them as their judges. Presumptuousness and excessiveness, 
severity and callousness are your essence. Greed for the 
sake ofgreed, power for the sake of power, pleasure for the salce 
of pleasure, immoderation and insatiabl~ness: this is how one 
recognizes you, you daimons. 

"Yes, you have yet to learn, you devils and Gods, you daimons 
and souls, to crawl in the dust for the sake oflove so that from 
someone somewhere you snatch a drop of the living sweetness. 
Learn humility and pride from men for the sake oflove. 

"You Gods, your first born son is man. He bore a terribly 
beautiful-ugly son of God who is renewal to you all. But this 
mystery, too, fulfills you: you bore a son ofmen who is my renewal, 
no less splendid-terrible, and his rule also will serve you." 

Then ([>IAHMQN approached me, raised his hand, and spoke:69 

"Both God and man are disappointed victims of deception, 
blessedly blessed, powerlessly powerful. The eternally rich universe 
unfolds again in the earthly Heaven and the Heaven ofthe Gods, 
in the underworlds and in the worlds above. Separation once more 
comes to the agonizingly united and yoked. Endless multiplicity 
takes the place of what has been forced together, since only 
diversity is wealth, blood, and harvest." 

A night and a day passed, and when night came again and 
I looked around I saw that my soul hesitated and waited. So I 
addressed her: 70 

"What, you're still here? Didn't you find the way or didn't 
you find the words, which belong to me? How do you honor 
humankind, your earthly soul? Recall what I bore and suffered 
for you, how I wasted mysel£ how I lay before you and writhed, 
how I gave my blood to you! I have an obligation to lay on you: 
learn to honor humankind, for I saw the land that is promised to 
man, the land where milk and honey flows.71 

"I saw the land of the promised love. 

"I saw the splendor of the sun on that land. 

"I saw the green forests, the golden vineyards and the villages 
ofman. 
"I saw the towering mountains with hanging fields of 

eternal snow. 

"I saw the fruitfulness and fortune of the earth. 

"None but I saw the fortune of man. 

"You, my soul, force mortal men to labor and suffer for your 
salvation. I demand that you do this for the earthly fortune of 

68 In Greek mythology, ambrosia and nectar are the food and drink ofthe Gods. 
69 This sentence does not occur in Black Book 5. 
70 January 14, 1916. The preceding paragraph does not occur in Black Book 5. 


humankind. Pay heed! I speak in both my name and the name 
of mankind, since our power and glory are yours, thine is the 
kingdom and our promised land. So bring it about, employing 
your abundance! I will remain silent, yes, I will leave you be, it 
depends on you; you can bring about what man is denied to create. 
I stand waiting. Torment yoursel£ so that you come to find 
it. Where is your own salvation, ifyou fail in your duty to bring 
about that of man? Pay heed! You will be working for me, and I 
will remain silent." 

"Now then," she said, "I want to set to work. But you must 
build the furnace. Throw the old, the broken, the worn out, the 
unused, and the ruined into the melting pot, so that it will be 
renewed for fresh use. 

"It is the custom of the ancients, the tradition of the ancestors, 
observed since days of old. It is to be adapted for new use. 
It is practice and incubation in a smelter, a taking-back into the 
interior, into the hot accumulation where rust and brokenness 
are talcen away through the heat ofthe fire. It is a holy ceremony, 
help me so that my work may succeed. 

"Touch the earth, press your hand into matter, shape it with 
care. The power of matter is great. Did HAP not come from 
matter? Is matter not the filling of emptiness? By forming matter, 
I shape your salvation. If you do not doubt the power of HAP, 
how can you doubt the power of its mother, matter? Matter is 
stronger than HAp, since HAP is the son ofthe earth. The hardest 
matter is the best; you should form the most durable matter. This 
strengthens thought." 

{6} I did as my soul advised, and formed in matter the thoughts 
that she gave me. She spoke often and at length to me about the 
wisdom that lies behind US.72 But one night she suddenly came 
to me with a sense ofunease and anxiety and exclaimed:73 "What 
am I seeing? What does the future harbor? Blazing fire? A 
fire hovers in the air-it draws near-a flame-many flames-a 
searing miracle-how many lights burn? My beloved, it is the 
mercy ofthe eternal fire-the breath offire descends on you!" 
But I cried out in horror, "I fear something terrible and 
dreadful, I am deeply afraid, since the things thatyou announced 
beforehand were awful-must everything be broken, burned, 
and destroyed?" 

"Patience," she said and stared into the distance, "fire surrounds 
you-an immeasurable sea of embers." 

"Don't torture me-what dreadful mysteries do you possess? 
Speak, I implore you. Or are you lying again, damned tormenting 
spirit, deceiving fiend? What are your treacherous specters 
supposed to mean?" 

But she answered calmly, "I also want your fear." 

"What for? To torment me?" 

But she continued, "To bring it before the ruler ofthis world.74 

He demands the sacrifice ofyour fear. He appreciates your sacrifice. 
He75 has mercy upon you." 
"Mercy upon me? What is that supposed to mean? I want 
to hide myself from him. My face shrinlcs from the ruler of this 

71 In Exodus 3, God appears to Moses in the burning bush and promises to lead his people out of Egypt into a land flowing with milk and honey. 

72 See Appendix C, January 16,1916. This is a preliminary sketch ofthe cosmology of the Septem Sermones. Jung's reference to forming his soul's thoughts in matter seems 
to refer to composition ofthe Systema Munditotius (see Appendix A). For a study ofthis, see Barry Jeromson, "Systema Munditotius and Seven Sermons: symbolic collaborators 
in Jung's confrontation with the dead," lung History I, 2 (2005/6), pp. 6-10, and "The sources of Systema Munditotius: mandalas, myths and a misinterpretation," 
} ung History 2, 2, 2007, pp. 20-22. 

73 January 18, 1916. 

74 The painting "Systema munditotius" has a legend at the bottom: "Abraxas dominus mundi" (Abraxas Master ofthe World). 

75 Black Book 5 has: "Abraxas" (p. 181). 


346 I SCRUTINIES 

world, for it is branded, it bears a mark, it beheld the forbidden. 

Therefore I avoid the ruler of this world." 

"But you should come before him," she said, "he has heard about 
your fear." 
"You instilled this fear in me. Why did you give me away?" 
"You have been summoned to serve him." 
But I moaned and exclaimed: "Thrice damned fate! Why can't 

you leave me in seclusion? Why has he chosen me for sacrifice? 
Thousands would gladly throw themselves before him! Why 
must it be me? I cannot, I don't want to." 

But the soul said, "You possess the word that should not be 
allowed to remain concealed." 

"What is myword?" I answered, "it is the stammering ofa minor; 
it is my poverty and my incapacity, my inability to do otherwise. 
And you want to drag this before the ruler of this world?" 

But she looked straight into the distance and said, "I see the 
surface of the earth and smoke sweeps over it-a sea of fire rolls 
close in from the north, it is setting the towns and villages on 
fire, plunging over the mountains, breaking through the valleys, 
burning the forests-people are going mad-you go before the 
fire in a burning robe with singed hair, a crazy look in your eyes, a 
parched tongue, a hoarse and foui-sounding voice-you forge ahead, 
you announce what approaches, you scale the mountains, you go 
into every valley and stammer words of fright and proclaim the 
fire's agony. You bear the mark of the fire and men are horrified 
at you. They do not see the fire, they do not believe your words, 
but they see your mark and unknowingly suspect you to be the 
messenger ofthe burning agony. What fire? they ask, what fire? You 
stutter, you stammer, what do you know about a fire? I looked at 
the embers, I saw the blazing flames. May God save us." 

"My sou!," I cried in despair, "speak, explain, what should I 
proclaim? The fire? Which fire?" 
"Look up, see the flames that blaze over your head-look up, 
the skies redden." 

76 January 29, I9I6. 
77 January 30, I9I6. The preceding sentence does not occur in Black Book 5. 


With these words my soul vanished. 

But I remained anxious and confused for many days. And 
my soul remained silent and was not to be seen.76 But one night 
a dark crowd knocked at my door, and I trembled with fear. 
Then my soul appeared and said in haste, "They are here and 
will tear open your door." 

"So that the wicked herd can break into my garden? Should 
I be plundered and thrown out onto the street? You make me 
into an ape and a child's plaything. When, Oh my God, shall 
I be saved from this Hell of fools? But I want to hack to pieces 
your cursed webs, go to Hell, you fools. What do you want 
with me?" 

But she interrupted me and said, "What are you talking about? 
Let the dark ones speak." 

I retorted, "How can I trust you? You work for yoursel£ not 
for me. What good are you, ifyou can't even protect me from the 
devil's confusion?" 

"Be quiet," she replied, "or else you'll disturb the work." 

And as she spoke these words, behold, <I>IAHMQN came up to 
me, dressed in the white robe of a priest, and lay his hand on my 
shoulder.77 Then I said to the dark ones, "So speak, you dead." And 
immediately they cried in manyvoices,?B "We have come back from 
Jerusalem, where we did not find what we sought.79 We implore 
you to let us in. You have what we desire. Not your blood, but your 
light. That is it." 

Then <I>IAHMQN lifted his voice and taught them, sayingBO (and 
this is the first sermon to the dead)Bl: 

"Now hear: I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same 
as the fullness. In infinity full is as good as empty. Nothingness 
is empty and full. You might just as well say anything else about 
nothingness, for instance, that it is white, or black, or that it does 
not exist, or that it exists. That which is endless and eternal has 
no qualities, since it has all qualities. 

78 On the significance of the Sermones that follow; Jung said to Aniela Jaffe that the discussions with the dead formed the prelude to what he would subsequently communicate 
to the world, and that their content anticipated his later books. "From that time on, the dead have become ever more distinct for me as the voices of the unanswered, 
unresolved and unredeemed." The questions he was required to answer did not come from the world around him, but from the dead. One element that astonished him 
was the fact that the dead appeared to know no more than they did when they died. One would have assumed that they had attained greater knowledge since death. 
This explained the tendency of the dead to encroach upon life, and why in China important family events have to be reported to the ancestors. He felt that the dead 
were waiting for the answers of the living (MP, pp. 258-9; Memories, p. 217). See note 134 (p. 243), above, concerning Christ's preaching to the dead in Hell. 

79 See above, p. 294, where the dead Anabaptists led by Ezechiel were heading to Jerusalem to pray at th!'! holy places. 
80 This sentence does not occur in Black Book 5. Concerning the relation of Philemon to the Sermones, Jung told Aniela Jaffe that he grasped Philemon in the Sermones. It 
was here that Philemon lost his autonomy. (MP, p. 25). 

81 Jung's calligraphic and printed versions of the Sermones bear the subheading: "The seven instructions of the dead. Written by Basilides in Alexandria, where the East 
touches the West. Translated from the original Greek text into the German language." Basilides was a Christian philosopher in Alexandria in the :first part ofthe second 
century. Little is known about his life, and only fragments ofhis teachings have survived (and none in his own hand), which present a cosmogonic myth. For the extant 
fragments and commentary; see Bentley Layton ed., The Gnostic Scriptures (New York: Doubleday; 1987, pp. 4I7-44). According to Charles King, Basilides was by birth 
an Egyptian. Before his conversion to Christianity; he "followed the doctrines of Oriental Gnosis, and endeavoured ... to combine the tenets of the Christian religion 
with the Gnostic philosophy ... For this purpose he chos'e expressions ofhis own invention, and ingenious symbols" (The Gnostics and their Remains [Bell and Daldy; 
1864], pp. 33-34). According to Layton, the classical Gnostic myth has the following structure: '~ct I. The expansion ofa solitary first principle (god) into a full nonphysical 
(spiritual) universe. Act II. Creation of the material universe, including stars, planets, earth, and hell. Act III. Creation ofAdam, Eve, and their children. Act 
IV-Subsequent history of the human race" (The Gnostic Scriptures, p. 13). Thus in its broadest outlines, Jung's Sermones is presented in the form analogous to a Gnostic 
myth. Jung discusses Basilides in Aion (1951). He credits the Gnostics for having found suitable symbolic expressions of the self, and notes that Basilides and Valentinus 
"allowed themselves to be influenced in a large measure by natural inner experience. They therefore provide, like the alchemists, a veritable mine ofinformation concerning 
all those symbols arising out ofthe repercussions ofthe Christian message. At the same time, their ideas compensate the aysmmetry ofGod postulated by the doctrine of 
the privato boni, exactly like those well-known modern tendencies of the unconscious to produce symbols of totality for bridging the gap between consciousness and the 
unconscious" (CW 9,2, ¤428). In 1915, he wrote a letter to a friend from his student days, Rudolf Lichtenhan, who had written a book, Die offenbarung im Gnosticismus 
(1901). From Lichtenhan's reply dated November II, it appears that Jung had asked for information concerning the conception ofdifferent human characters in 
Gnosticism, and their possible correlation with William James's distinction between tough-and tender-minded characters (fA). In Memories, Jung said: "Between 
1918 and 1926 I had seriously studied the Gnostics, for they too had been confronted with the primal world of the unconscious. They had dealt with its contents and 
images, which were obviously contaminated with the world of drives" (p. 226). Jung was already reading Gnostic literature in the course of the preparatory reading 
for Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido. There has been an extensive body ofcommentaries concerning the Septem Sermones, which provides some valuable discussion. 
However, these should be treated cautiously; as they considered the Sermones without the benefit ofUber N ovus and the Black Books, and, not least, Philemon's commentaries, 
which together provide critical contextual clarification. Scholars have discussed Jung's relation to Gnosticism and the historical Basilides, other possible sources and 
parallels for Sermones, and the relation of the Sermones to Jung's later works. See especially Christine Maillard, Les Septem Sermones aux Morts de Carl Gustav jung (Nancy: 
Presses Universitaires de Nancy; I993). See also Alfred Ribi, Die Suche nach den eigenen Wurzeln: Die Bedeutung von Gnosis, Hermetik und Alchemiefur C. G. j ung und MarieLouise 
von Franz und deren EinJfuss aufdas moderne Verstiindnis dieser Disziplin (Bern: Peter Lang, 199I); Robert Segal, The Gnosticjung (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 
1992); Gilles ~ispel, "c. G. Jung und die Gnosis," Eranos-}ahrbuch 37 (1968, reprinted in Segal); E. M. Brenner, "Gnosticism and Psychology: Jung's Septem Sermones 
ad Mortuos," journal ofAnalytical Psychology 35 (I990); Judith Hubback, "VII Sermones ad mortuos," journal ofAnalytical Psychology II (1966); James Heisig, "The VII 
Sermones: Play and Theory;" Spring (1972); James Olney; The Rhizome and the Flower: The Perennial philosophy, Yeats andjung (Berkeley: University of California Press, 
1980), and Stephen Hoeller, The Gnosticjung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead (Wheaton, IL: ~est, 1982). 


SCRUTINIES I 347 

"We call this nothingness or fullness the Pleroma.82 Therein 
both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and endless 
possess no qualities. No one is in it, for he would then be distinct 
from the Pleroma, and would possess qualities that would 
distinguish him as something distinct from the Pleroma. 

"In the Pleroma there is nothing and everything. It is fruitless 
to think about the Pleroma, for this would mean self-dissolution. 

"Creation is not in the Pleroma, but in itself The Pleroma is 
the beginning and end of creation.83 It pervades creation, just as 
the sunlight pervades the air. Although the Pleroma is altogether 
pervasive, creation has no share in it, just as a wholly transparent 
body becomes neither light nor dark through the light 
pervading it. 

"We are, however, the Pleroma itsel£ for we are a part of the 
eternal and the endless. But we have no share therein, as we are 
infinitely removed from the Pleroma; not spatially or temporally; 
but essentially, since we are distinguished from the Pleroma in our 
essence as creation, which is confined within time and space. 

"Yet because we are parts of the Pleroma, the Pleroma is also 
in us. Even in the smallest point the Pleroma is endless, eternal, 
and whole, since small and great are qualities that are contained 
in it. It is nothingness that is whole and continuous throughout. 
Only figuratively; therefore, do I speak of creation as part of 
the Pleroma. Because, actually; the Pleroma is nowhere divided, 
since it is nothingness. We are also the whole Pleroma, because, 
figuratively; the Pleroma is the smallest point in us, merely 
assumed, not existing, and the boundless firmament about us. 
But why then do we speak ofthe Pleroma at all, ifit is everything 
and nothing!> 

"I speak about it in order to begin somewhere, and also to free 
you from the delusion that somewhere without or within there 
is something fixed or in some way established from the outset. 
Every so-called fixed and certain thing is only relative. That alone 
is fixed and certain that is subject to change. 

"Creation, however, is subject to change; therefore it alone 
is fixed and determined because it has qualities: indeed, it is 
quality itself 

"Thus we ask: how did the creation come into being!> Creatures 
came into being, but not creation: since creation is the very 
quality of the Pleroma, as much as noncreation, eternal death. 
Creation is ever-present, and so is death. The Pleroma has 
everything, differentiation and nondifferentiation. 

"Differentiation84 is creation. It is differentiated. Differentiation 
is its essence, and therefore it differentiates. Therefore man 

differentiates, since his essence is differentiation. Therefore he also 
differentiates the qualities of the Pleroma that do not exist. He 
differentiates them on account of his own essence. Therefore he 
must speak of those qualities ofthe Pleroma that do not exist. 

"You say: 'what use is there in speaking about it at all!>' 
Did you yourself not say that it is not worth thinking about 
the Pleroma!> 

"I mentioned that to free you from the delusion that we are 
able to think about the Pleroma. When we distinguish the 
quali ties ofthe Pleroma, we are speaking from the ground ofour 
own differentiated state and about our own differentiation, but 
have effectively said nothing about the Pleroma. Yet we need to 
speal( about our own differentiation, so that we may sufficiently 
differentiate ourselves. Our very nature is differentiation. If 
we are not true to this nature we do not differentiate ourselves 
enough. We must therefore make distinctions between qualities. 

"You ask: 'what harm is there in not differentiating oneself!>' 
Ifwe do not differentiate, we move beyond our essence, beyond 
creation, and we fall into nondifferentiation, which is the other 
quality of the Pleroma. We fall into the Pleroma itself and cease 
to be created beings. We lapse into dissolution in nothingness. 
This is the death of the creature. Therefore we die to the same 
extent that we do not differentiate. Hence the creature's essence 
strives toward differentiation and struggles against primeval, 
perilous sameness. This is called the principium individuationis.85 
This principle is the essence of the creature. From this you can 
see why nondifferentiation and nondistinction pose a great 
danger to the creature. 

"We must, therefore, distinguish the qualities of the Pleroma. 
These qualities are pairs ofopposites, such as 

"the effective and the ineffective, 

the fullness and the emptiness, 

the living and the dead, 

the different and the same, 

light and darkness, 

hot and cold, 

force and matter, 

time and space, 

good and evil, 

the beautiful and the ugly; 

the one and the many; etc. 

"The pairs of opposites are the qualities of the Pleroma that 
do not exist, because they cancel themselves out. As we are the 

82 The Pleroma, or fullness, is a term from Gnosticism. It played a central role in the Valentinian system. Hans Jonas states that "Pleroma is the standard term for the 
fully explicated manifold ofdivine characteristics, whose standard number is thirty, forming a hierarchy and together constituting the divine realm" (The Gnostic Religion: 
The Message oJthe Alien God and the Beginnings ofchristianity [London: Routledge, 1992], p. 180). In 1929, Jung said: "The Gnostics ... expressed it as Pleroma, a state of 
fullness where the pairs ofopposites, yea and nay; day and night, are together, then when they 'become,' it is either day or night. In the state of'promise' before they 
become, they are nonexistent, there is neither white nor black, good nor bad" (Dream Analysis: Notes ojthe Seminar Given in 1928-1930, ed. William McGuire [Bollingen 
Series, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984], p. 131). In his later writings, Jung used the term to designate a state of pre-existence and potentiality, identifying 
it with the Tibetan Bardo: "He must ... accustom himself to the idea that 'time' is a relative concept and needs to be compensated by the concept ofa 'simultaneous' 
Bardo-or pleromatic existence of all historical processes. What exists in the Pleroma as an eternal 'process' appears in time as aperiodic sequence, that is to say; it is 
repeated many times in an irregular pattern" (Answer to}ob, 1952, CW II, ¤629; see also ¤¤620, 624, 675, 686, 727, 733, 748). The distinction that Jung draws between 
the Pleroma and the creation has some points ofcontact with Meister Eckhart's differentiation between the Godhead and God. Jung commented on this in psychological 
Types (1921, CW 6, ¤429f). The relation ofJung's Pleroma to Eckhart is discussed by Maillard, op cit., pp. II8-20. In 1955/56, Jung equated the Pleroma with the alchemist 
Gerhardus Dorn's notion ofthe 'unus mundus' (one world) (Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, ¤660). Jung adopted this expression to designate the transcendental postulate 
of the unity underlying the multiplicity of the empirical world (Ibid., ¤759f). 

83 In psychological Types (1921), Jung described 'Tao' as "the creative being, begetting as the father and bringing forth as the mother. It is the beginning and end ofall 
beings" (CW 6, ¤363.) The relation ofJung's Pleroma to the Chinese Tao is discussed by Maillard, op cit., p. 75. See also John Peck, The Visio Dorothei: Desert Context, 
Imperial Setting, Later Alignments, pp. 179-80. 

84 Lit. Unterschiedenheit. Cf psychological Types (1921), CW 6, ¤705, "Differentiation" [D@renzierung]. 

85 The principiumindividuationis is a notion from the philosophy ofArthur Schopenhauer. He defined space and time as the principium individuationis, noting that he 
had borrowed the expression from Scholasticism. The principium individuationis was the possibility ofmultiplicity (The World as will and Representation (1819), 2 vols., 
tr. E. J. Payne [New York: Dover], pp. 145-46). The term was used by Eduard von Hartmann, who saw its origin in the unconscious. It designated the "uniqueness" of each 
individual set against the "all-one unconscious" (philosophie des Unbewussten: Versuch einer weltanschauung [Berlin: C. Dunker], 1869, p. 519). In 1912, Jung wrote, "Diversity 
arises from individuation. This fact validates an essential part of Schopenhauer's and Hartmann's philosophy in profound psychological terms" (Transformations and Symbols 
ofthe Libido, CW B, ¤289). In a series ofpapers and presentations later in 1916, Jung developed his concept ofindividuation ("The structure ofthe unconscious," CW 7, 
and "Individuation and collectivity," CW 18). In 1921, Jung defined it as follows: "The concept ofindividuation plays no minor role in our psychology. Individuation is 
in general the process ofthe formation and particularization ofindividual beings; especially the development ofthe psychological individual, as a being distinct from generality, 
from collective psychology. Individuation, therefore, is a process ofdifferentiation, having for its goal the development of the individual personality" (psychological Types, 
CW7, ¤758). 


348 I SCRUTINIES 

pleroma itself, we also have all these qualities in us. Since our 

nature is grounded in differentiation, we have these qualities in 

the name and under the sign of differentiation, which means: 

"First: these qualities are differentiated and separate in us; 

therefore they do not cancel each other out, but are effective. 

Thus we are the victims ofthe pairs ofopposites. The Pleroma is 

rent within us. 

"Second: these qualities belong to the Pleroma, and we must 
possess and live them only in the name and under the sign 
of differentiation. We must differentiate ourselves from these 
qualities. They cancel each other out in the Pleroma, but not in 
us. Distinction from them saves us. 

"When we strive for the good or the beautiful, we forget our 
essence, which is differentiation, and we fall subject to the spell 
of the qualities of the Pleroma, which are the pairs of opposites. 
We endeavor to attain the good and the beautiful, yet at the same 
time we also seize the evil and the ugly; since in the Pleroma these 
are one with the good and the beautiful. But ifwe remain true to 
our essence, which is differentiation, we differentiate ourselves 
from the good and the beautiful, and hence from the evil and ugly. 
And thus we do not fall under the spell of the Pleroma, namely 
into nothingness and dissolution.86 

"You object: you said that difference and sameness are also 
qualities of the Pleroma. What is it like ifwe strive for distinctiveness? 
Are we, in so doing, not true to our own nature? And must we 
nonetheless fall into sameness when we strive for distinctiveness? 

"You must not forget that the Pleroma has no qualities. 
We create these through thinking. If, therefore, you strive for 
distinctiveness or sameness, or any qualities whatsoever, you 
pursue thoughts that flow to you out of the Pleroma: thoughts, 
namely; concerning the non-existing qualities of the Pleroma. 
Inasmuch as you run after these thoughts, you fall again into the 
Pleroma, and attain distinctiveness and sameness at the same time. 
Not your thinking, but your essence, is differentiation. Therefore 
you must not strive for what you conceive as distinctiveness, but 
for your own essence. At bottom, therefore, there is only one striving, 
namely the striving for one's own essence. Ifyou had this striving, 
you would not need to know anything about the Pleroma and its 
qualities, and yet you would attain the right goal by virtue of your 
own essence. Since, however, thought alienates us from our 
essence, I must teach you that knowledge with which you can 
bridle your thoughts." 

87The dead faded away grumbling and moaning and their 
cries died away in the distance. 

88But I turned to <I>IAHMnN and said, "My father, you utter 
strange teachings. Did not the ancients teach similar things? 
And was it not a reprehensible heresy; removed equally from 
love and the truth? And why do you layout such a teaching 
to this horde; which the night wind swirled up from the dark 
bloodfields of the West?" 

"My son," <I>IAHMnN replied, "these dead ended their lives too 
early. These were seekers and therefore still hover over their graves. 

Their lives were incomplete, since they knew no way beyond the 

one to which belief had abandoned them. But since no one teaches 

them, I must do so. That is what love demands, since they wanted 

to hear, even if they grumble. But why do I impart this teaching 

of the ancients? I teach in this way because their Christian faith 

once discarded and persecuted precisely this teaching. But they 

repudiated Christian beliefand hence were rejected by that faith. 

They do not know this and therefore I must teach them, so that 

their life may be fulfilled and they can enter into death." 

"But do you, Oh wise <I>IAHMnN, believe what you teach?" 

"My son," <I>IAHMnN replied, "why do you raise this question? 
How could I teach what I believe? Who would give me the right 
to such belief? It is what I know how to say; not because I believe 
it, but because I know it. If I knew better, I would teach better. 
But it would be easy for me to believe more. Yet should I teach a 
beliefto those who have discarded belief? And, I ask you, is it good 
to believe something even more, if one does not know better?"89 

"But," I retorted, "are you certain that things really are as you say?" 

To this <I>IAHMnN answered, "I do not know whether it is the 
best that one can knOw. But I know nothing better and therefore 
I am certain these things are as I say. If they were otherwise I 
would say something else, since I would know them to be otherwise. 
But these things are as I know them, since my knowledge is precisely 
these things themselves." 

"My father, is that your guarantee that you are not mistaken?" 

"There are no mistakes in these things," <I>IAHMnN replied, "there 
are only different levels ofknowledge. These things are as you know 
them. Only in your world are things always other than you know 
them, and therefore there are only mistakes in your world." 

After these words <I>IAHMnN bent down and touched the earth 
with his hands and disappeared. 

{7} That night <I>IAHMnN stood beside me and the dead drew near 
and lined the walls and cried out,90 "We want to know about God. 
Where is God? Is God dead?"91 
But <I>IAHMnN rose and said (and this is the second sermon 
to the dead): 

"God is not dead. He is as alive as ever. God is creation, for 
he is something definite, and therefore differentiated from the 
Pleroma. God is a quality of the Pleroma, and everything I have 
said about creation also applies to him. 

"But he is distinct from creation in that he is much more 
indefinite and indeterminable. He is less differentiated than 
creation, since the ground of his essence is effective fullness. 
Only insofar as he is definite and differentiated is he creation, 
and as such he is the manifestation of the effective fullness of 
the Pleroma. 

"Everything that we do not differentiate falls into the Pleroma 
and is cancelled out by its opposite. If, therefore, we do not 
differentiate God, effective fullness is canceled out for us. 

"Moreover, God is the Pleroma itself, just as each smallest 
point in the created and uncreated is the Pleroma itself 

86 The notion oflife and nature being constituted by opposites and polarities featured centrally in the Naturphilosophie of Schelling. The notion that psychic conflict took 
the form of a conflict ofopposites and that healing represented their resolution featured prominently in Jung's later work; see psychological Types, 1921, CW 6, ch. 5, and 
Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1955/56, CW 14. 

87 The following paragraphs to the end of this section do not occur in Black Book 6. 

88 In the published version of the Sermones, these commentaries that follow each sermon do not appear, and nor does Philemon. The person delivering the sermons has 
been assumed to be Basilides. These commentaries were added in Scrutinies. 

89 In his 1959 BBC TV interview, John Freeman asked Jung, "Do you now believe in God?" Jung replied: "Now? [Pause.] Difficult to answer. I know. I don't need to 
believe. I knOw." William McGuire and R.F.C. Hul1, eds., C. G.}ung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters (p. 428). Philemon's statement here seems to be the background 
for this much cited and debated statement. This emphasis on direct experience also accords with classical Gnosticism. 

90 January 31, 1916. This sentence does not occur in Black Book 6. 

91 For Nietzsche's discussion of the death of God,see The Gay Science (1882, ¤¤I08 and 125), and Thus Spoke zarathustra, section 4 ("Retired from service," p. 271f). For 
Jung's discussion of this, see "Psychology and religion," 1938, CW II ¤142£ Jung commented: "When Nietzsche said: 'God is dead: he expressed a truth which is valid 
for the greater part of Europe" (ibid., ¤145). To Nietzsche's statement, Jung noted, "However it would be more correct to say: 'He has discarded our image, and where 
will we find him again?' " (Ibid.) He goes on to discuss the motifof the death and disappearance of God in connection with Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. 


SCRUTINIES I 349 

"Effective emptiness is the essence of the devil. God and devil 

are the first manifestations of nothingness, which we call the 

Pleroma. It malces no difference whether the Pleroma exists or 

not, since it cancels itselfout completely. Not so creation. Insofar 

as God and the devil are created beings, they do not cancel each 

other out, but stand one against the other as effective opposites. 

We need no proof of their existence. It is enough that we have to 

keep speaking about them. Even ifboth were not, creation would 

forever distinguish them anew out of the Pleroma on account of 

their distinct essences. 

"Everything that differentiation takes out of the Pleroma is a 

pair of opposites, therefore the devil always belongs to God.92 

"This inseparability is most intimate and, as you know from 
experience, as indissoluble in your life as the Pleroma itsel£ since 
both stand very close to the Pleroma in which all opposites are 
canceled out and united. 

"Fullness and emptiness, generation and destruction, are what 
distinguish God and the devil. Effictiveness is common to both. 
Effectiveness joins them. Effectiveness, therefore, stands above 
both, and is a God above God, since it unites fullness and emptiness 
through its effectuality. 

"This is a God you knew nothing about, because mankind 
forgot him. We call him by his name ABRAXAS.93 He is even more 
indefinite than God and the devil. 

"To distinguish him from God, we call God HELlOS or sun.94 
Abraxas is effect. Nothing stands opposed to him but the 
ineffective; hence his effective nature unfolds itself freely. The 
ineffective neither exists nor resists. Abraxas stands above the 
sun and above the devil. He is improbable probability, that which 
talces unreal effect. Ifthe Pleroma had an essence, Abraxas would 
be its manifestation. 

"He is the effectual itsel£ not any particular effect, but effect 
in general. 

He talces unreal effect, because he has no definite effect. 

He is also creation, since he is distinct from the Pleroma. 

The sun has a definite effect, and so does the devil. Therefore 
they appear to us more effective than the indefinite Abraxas. 
He is force, duration, change." 

95The dead now raised a great tumult, for they were Christians. 

But when <I>IAHMQN had ended his speech, one after 
another the dead also stepped back into the darkness once 
more and the noise of their outrage gradually died away in the 
distance. When all the clamor had passed, I turned to <I>IAHMQN 
and exclaimed: 

"Pity us, wisest one! You take from men the Gods to whom they 
could pray. You take alms from the beggar, bread from the hungry; 
fire from the freezing." 

<I>IAHMQN answered and said, "My son, these dead have had to 
reject the belief of the Christians and therefore they can pray to 

no God. So should I teach them a God in whom they can believe 
and to whom they can pray? That is precisely what they have 
rejected. Why did they reject it? They had to reject it because 
they could not do otherwise. And why did they have no other 
choice? Because the world, without these men knowing it, entered 
into that month of the great year where one should believe only 
what one knoWS.96 That is difficult enough, but it is also a remedy 
for the long sickness that arose from the fact that one believed 
what one did not knOw. I teach them the God whom both I and 
they know of without being aware of him, a God in whom one 
does not believe and to whom one does not pray; but of whom 
one knows. I teach this God to the dead since they desired entry 
and teaching. But I do not teach him to living men since they 
did not desire my teaching. Why; indeed, should I teach them? 
Therefore, I take away from them no kindly hearer of prayers, 
their father in Heaven. What concern is my foolishness to the 
living? The dead need salvation, since they are a great waiting 
flock hovering over their graves, and long for the knowledge that 
belief and the rejection of belief have breathed their last. But 
whoever has fallen ill and is near death wants knowledge, and he 
sacrifices pardon." 

"It appears," I replied, "as ifyou teach a terrible and dreadful 
God beyond measure, to whom good and evil and human suffering 
and joy are nothing." 

"My son," said <I>IAHMQN, "Didyou not see that these dead had a 
God oflove and rejected him? Should I teach them a loving God? 
They had to reject him after already having long since rejected 
the evil God whom they call the devil. Therefore they must know 
a God to whom everything created is nothing, because he himself 
is the creator and everything created and the destruction of 
everything created. Have they not rejected a God who is a father, 
a lover, good and beautiful? One whom they thought to have 
particular qualities and a particular being? Therefore I must teach 
a God to whom nothing can be attributed, who has all qualities and 
therefore none, because only I and they can know such a God." 

"But how, Oh my father, can men unite in such a God? Does 
the knowledge of such a God not amount to destroying human 
bonds and ev;ery society based on the good and the beautiful?" 

<I>IAHMnN answered: "These dead rejected the God of love, 
of the good and the beautiful; they had to reject him and so 
they rejected unity and community in love, in the good and the 
beautiful. And thus they killed one another and dissolved the 
community of men. Should I teach them the God who united 
them in love and whom they rejected? Therefore I teach them 
the God who dissolves unity; who blasts everything human, who 
powerfully creates and mightily destroys. Those whom love 
does not unite, fear compels." 

And as <I>IAHMnN spoke these words, he bent down swiftly to 
the ground, touched it with his hand, and disappeared. 

{8} The following night,97 the dead approached like fog from a 
swamp and exclaimed, "Tell us more about the highest God." 
92 Cf ''Attempt at a psychological interpretation of the dogma of the Trinity" (1940), CW II, ¤284f 

93 In 1932, Jung commented on Abraxas: "the Gnostic symbol Abraxas, a made-up name meaning three hundred and sixty-five ... the Gnostics used it as the name of 
their supreme deity. He was a time god. The philosophy of Bergson, la duree creatrice, is an expression of the same idea." Jung described him in a way that echoes his 
description here: "just as this archetypal world of the collective unconscious is exceedingly paradoxical, always yea and nay; that figure ofAbraxas means the beginning 
and the end, it is life and death, therefore it is represented by a monstrous figure. It is a monster because it is the life ofvegetation in the course ofone year, the spring 
and the autumn, the summer and the winter, the yea and nay ofnature. So Abraxas is really identical with the Demiurgos, the world creator. And as such he is surely 
identical with the Purusha, or with Shiva" (November 16, Visions Seminar, vol. 2, pp. 806-7). Jung added that ''Abraxas is usually represented with the head of a fowl, the 
body ofa man, and the tail of a serpent, but there is also the lion-headed symbol with a dragon's body; the head crowned with the twelve rays, alluding to the number 
of months" (June 7, 1933, Visions Seminar, vol. 2, p. 1041-42). According to St. Irenaeus, Basilides held that "the ruler of them is named Abrasaks, and that is why this 
(ruler) has the number 365 within it" (Layton, ed., The Gnostic Scriptures, p. 425). Abraxas featured in Albrecht Dieterich's work, Abraxas. Studien zur Religionsgeschichte des 
spiitern Altertums. Jung studied this work closely early in 19I3, and his copy is annotated. Jung also had a copy of Charles King's The Gnostics and their Remains (London: Bell 
and Daldy; 1864), and there are marginal annotations next to the passage discussing the etymology ofAbraxas on p. 37


94 Helios is the Greek Sun God. Jung discussed solar mythologies in Traniformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (1912, CW B, ¤177f) and also in his unpublished concluding 
talk on Opicinus de Canistris at the Eranos conference in Ascona in 1943 (fA). 

95 The following paragraphs to the end of this section do not occur in Black Book 6. 

96 The reference is to the Platonic months. See note 273, p. 315. 


350 I SCRUTINIES 

And <I>IAHMQN stepped forward and began to speak (and this 
is the third sermon to the dead)98: 

'~braxas is the God who is difficult to grasp. His power is 
greatest, because man does not see it. From the sun he draws 
the summum bonum;99 from the devil the infinum malum; but from 
Abraxas LIFE, altogether indefinite, the mother ofgood and evil.lOo 

"Life seems to be smaller and weaker than the summum bonum; 
therefore it is also hard to conceive that Abraxas's power transcends 
even the sun's, which is the radiant source of all vital force. 

'~braxas is the sun, and at the same time the eternally 
sucking gorge of emptiness, of the diminisher and dismemberer, 
of the devil. 

The power of Abraxas is twofold; but you do not see it, 
because in your eyes the warring opposites of this power are 
canceled out. 

"What the Sun God speaks is life, what the devil speaks is death. 
"But Abraxas speaks that hallowed and accursed word that is 
at once life and death. 

'~braxas produces truth and lying, good and evil, light and 
darkness, in the same word and in the same act. Therefore Abraxas 
is terrible. 

"He is as splendid as the lion in the instant he strikes down his 
victim. He is as beautiful as a spring day. 

"He is the great and the small Pan alike. 

"He is Priapos. 

"He is the monster of the underworld, a thousand-armed 
polyp, a coiled knot ofwinged serpents, frenzy. 
"He is the hermaphrodite of the earliest beginning. 
"He is the lord of toads and frogs, which live in the water 

and go up on the land, whose chorus ascends at noon and 
at midnight. 

"He is the fullness that seeks union with emptiness. 

"He is holy begetting, 

"He is love and its murder, 

"He is the saint and his betrayer, 

"He is the brightest light ofday and the darkest night ofmadness. 

"To look upon him, is blindness. 

"To recognize him is sickness. 

"To worship him is death. 

"To fear him is wisdom. 

"Not to resist him is redemption. 

"God dwells behind the sun, the devil behind the night. What 
God brings forth out of the light, the devil sucks into the night. 
But Abraxas is the world, its becoming and its passing. Upon every 
gift that comes from the sun god the devil lays his curse. 

"Everything that you request from the Sun God produces a 
deed from the devil. Everything that you create with the Sun 
God gives effective power to the devil. 

97 February 1,1916. 
98 This sentence does not occur in Black Book 6. 


"That is terrible Abraxas. 

"He is the mightiest created being and in him creation is 

afraid ofitself 

"He is the manifest opposition ofcreation to the Pleroma and 
its nothingness. 

"He is the son's horror of the mother. 

He is the mother's love for the son. 

He is the delight of the earth and the cruelty of the heavens. 

At his sight man's face congeals. 

Before him there is no question and no reply. 

He is the life ofcreation. 

He is the effect ofdifferentiation. 

He is the love of man. 

He is the speech of man. 

He is the appearance and the shadow of man. 

He is deceptive reality."101 

102Now the dead howled and raged, for they were incomplete. 

But when their noisy cries had faded away; I said to <I>IAHMQN: 
"How, Oh my father, should I understand this God?" 

<I>IAHMQN answered and said: 

"My son, why do you want to understand him? This God is to 
be known but not understood. Ifyou understand him, then you 
can say that he is this or that and this and not that. Thus you hold 
him in the hollow of your hand and therefore your hand must 
throw him away. The God whom I know is this and that and just 
as much this other and that other. Therefore no one can understand 
this God, but it is possible to know him, and therefore I speak 
and teach him." 

"But," I retorted, "does this God not bring despairing confusion 
into the minds of men?" 

To this <I>IAHMQN said, "These dead rejected the order of 
unity and community since they rejected the belief in the father 
in Heaven who ruled with just measure. They had to reject him. 
Therefore I teach them the chaos that is without measure and 
utterly boundless, to which justice and injustice, leniency and 
severity; patience and anger, love and hate, are nothing. For how 
can I teach anything other than the God whom I know and 
whom they know, without being conscious ofhim?" 

I replied, "Why; Oh solemn one, do you call the eternally 
incomprehensible, the cruel contradictoriness of nature, God?" 

<I>IAHMQN said, "How should I name it otherwise? If the 
overpowering essence ofevents in the universe and in the hearts 
of men were law, I would call it law. Yet it is also no law, but 
chance, irregularity; sin, error, stupidity; carelessness, folly; illegality. 
Therefore I cannot call it law. You know that this must be 
so, and at the same time you know that it did not have to be so 
and that at some other time it will not be so. It is overpowering 

99 Aristotle defined happiness as the supreme good (Summum Bonum). In his Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas identified this with God. Jung saw the doctrine of the 
Summum Bonum as being the source of the concept of the privatio boni, which in his view had led to the denial of the reality of evil. See Aion, 1951, CW 9, 2, ¤¤80 and 94. 
Hence it is counterbalanced here with the "Infinum Malum." 

100 In Black Book 6 (see Appendix C), Jung notes that Abraxas is the God of the frogs and that "The God of the frogs or toads, the brainless one, is the union of the 
Christian God with Satan" (see below, p. 367). In his later writings, Jung argued that the Christian God image was one-sided, in that it left out the factor of evil. 
Throughstudying the historical transformations of God-images, he attempted to correct this (especially, Aion and Answer to Job). In his note on how Answer to Job came 
to be written he wrote that in Aion he had "criticized the idea of the privatio boni as not agreeing with the psychological findings. Psychological experience shows us that 
whatever we call 'good' is balanced by an equally substantial 'bad' or 'evil: If 'evil' is non-existent, then whatever there is must needs be 'good: Dogmatically, neither 
'good' nor 'evil' can be derived from Man, since the 'Evil One' existed before Man as one of the 'Sons of God: The idea of the privatio boni began to playa role in the 
Church only after Mani. Before this heresy, Clement of Rome taught that God rules the world with a right and a left hand, the right being Christ, the left being Satan. 
Clement's view is clearly monotheistic, as it unites the opposites in one God. Later Christianity, however, is dualistic, inasmuch as it splits offone half of the opposites, 
personified in Satan ... If Christianity claims to be a monotheism, it becomes unavoidable to assume the opposites as being contained in God" (1956, CW II, pp. 357-58). 

101 In 1942, Jung noted: "the concept of an all-encompassing God must necessarily include his opposite. The coincidence of course must not be too radical, otherwise 
God would cancel himself out. The principle of the coincidence of opposites must therefore be completed by its opposite in order to attain full paradoxicality and 
hence psychological validity" ("The spirit Mercurius," CW 13, ¤256). 

102 The following paragraphs through the end of the section do not occur in Black Book 6. 


SCRUTINIES I 351 

and occurs as if from eternal law, and at another time a slanting 
wind blows a speck of dust into the works and this void is a 
superior strength, harder than a mountain ofiron. Therefore you 
know that the eternal law is also no law. So I cannot call it law. 
But how else should it be named? I know that human language 
has forever named the maternal womb of the incomprehensible 
God. Truly, this God is and is not, since from being and nonbeing 
everything emerged that was, is, and will be." 

But when <I>IAHMQN had spoken the last word, he touched the 
earth with his hand and dissolved. 

{9} The following night, the dead came running sooner, filling 
the place with their mutterings, and said: 
"Speak to us about Gods and devils, accursed one." 
And <I>IAHMQN appeared and began to speal( (and this is the 

fourth sermon to the dead)103: 

"The Sun God is the highest good, the devil the opposite. Thus 
you have two Gods. But there are many high and good things 
and many great evils. Among these are two devil Gods; one is the 
Burning One, the other the Growing One. 

The burning one is EROS, in the form of a flame. It shines by 
consuming.104 
"The growing one is the TREE OF LIFE. It greens by heaping up 
growing living matter.105 
"Eros flames up and dies. But the tree of life grows with slow 
and constant increase through measureless periods of time. 

"Good and evil unite in the flame. 

"Good and evil unite in the growth ofthe tree. In their divinity 
life and love stand opposed. 
"The number of Gods and devils is as innumerable as the host 
of stars. 
"Each star is a God, and each space that a star fills is a devil. But 
the empty fullness of the whole is the Pleroma. 
''Abraxas is the effect of the whole, and only the ineffective 
opposes him. 
"Four is the number ofthe principal Gods, as four is the number 
of the world's measurements. 

"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. 

"Happy am I who can recognize the multiplicity and diversity 
of the Gods. But woe unto you, who replace this incompatible 
multiplicity with a single God. In so doing you produce the 

I03 February 3, 1916. This sentence does not occur in Black Book 6. 

torment of incomprehension, and mutilate the creation whose 
nature and aim is differentiation. How can you be true to your own 
nature when you try to turn the many into one? What you do unto 
the Gods is done likewise unto you. You all become equal and thus 
your naturelO6 is maimed. 

"Equality prevails not for the sake ofGod, but only for the sake 
ofman. For the Gods are many, while men are few. The Gods are 
mighty and endure their manifoldness. Like the stars they abide 
in solitude, separated by vast distances. Therefore they dwell 
together and need communion, so that they may bear their 
separateness.107 For redemption's sake I teach you the reprehensible, 
for whose salce I ~as rejected. 

"The multiplicity of the Gods corresponds to the multiplicity 
of men. 

"Numberless Gods await the human state. Numberless Gods 
have been men. Man shares in the nature of the Gods. He comes 
from the Gods and goes unto the God. 

"Thus, just as it is no use to reflect upon the Pleroma, it is not 
worthwhile to worship the multiplicity of the Gods. Least of all 
does it serve to worship the first God, the effective fullness, and 
the summum bonum. By our prayer we can add nothing to it, and 
take nothing from it; because effective emptiness gulps down 
every thing. 108 The bright Gods form the heavenly world. It is 
manifold and extends and increases infinitely: The Sun God is the 
supreme lord of the world. 

"The dark Gods form the earthly world. It is simple and 
diminishes and declines infinitely: The devil is its nethermost 
lord, the moon spirit, satellite of the earth, smaller, colder, and 
more dead than the earth. 

"There is no difference between the might of the heavenly 
and earthly Gods. The heavenly Gods magnify; the earthly Gods 
diminish. Both directions are immeasurable." 

109Here the dead interrupted <I>IAHMQN's speech with angry 
laughter and mocking shouts, and as they withdrew, their 
discord, mockery, and laughter faded into the distance. I turned 
to <I>IAHMQN and said to him: 

"Oh <I>IAHMnN, I believe you are mistaken. It seems'that you 
teach a raw superstition which the Fathers had successfully and 
gloriously overcome, that polytheism which a mind produces only 
when it cannot free its gaze from the force of compulsive desire 
chained to sensory things." 

"My son," <I>IAHMnN replied, "these dead have rejected the 
single and highest God. So how can I teach them about the one, 
only, and not multifarious God? They must ofcourse believe me. 
But they have rejected their belief So I teach them the God that 
I know, the multifarious and extended, who is both the thing and 
its appearance, and they also know him even if they are not 
conscious ofhim. 

I04 In 1917, Jung wrote a chapter on "the sexual theory" in The Psychology ofthe Unconscious Processes, which presented a critique of the psychoanalytic understanding of 
the erotic. In his 1928 revision of this chapter, retitled "The Eros theory" he added: "The Erotic .. , belongs on the one hand to the original drive nature of man . , . 
On the other hand it is related to the highest forms of the spirit. It only thrives when spirit and drive are in right harmony ... 'Eros is a mighty daemon,' as the wise 
Diotima said to Socrates ... He is not all ofnature within us, though he is at least one ofits essential aspects" (CW 7, ¤¤32-33). In the Symposium, Diotima teaches 
Socrates about the nature of Eros. She tells him that" 'He is a great spirit, Socrates. Everything classed as a spirit falls between god and human.' / 'What function do 
they have?' I asked, / 'They interpret and carry messages from humans to gods and from gods to humans. They convey prayers and sacrifices from humans, and commands and 
gifts in return for sacrifices from gods. Being intermediate between the other two, they fill the gap between them, and enable the universe to form an interconnected 
whole. They serve as the medium for all divination, for priestly expertise in sacrifice, ritual and spells, and for all prophecy and sorcery. Gods do not make direct contact 
with humans; they communicate and converse with humans (whether awake or asleep) entirely through the medium ofspirits" (tr. C. Gill [London: Penguin, 1999], pp. 
202e-203a. In Memories Jung reflected on the nature of Eros, describing it as "a kosmogonos, a creator and father-mother ofall consciousness" (p. 387). This cosmogonic 
characterization of Eros needs to be distinguished from Jung's use of the term to characterize women's consciousness. See note 161, p. 246. 

I05 In 1954, Jung wrote an extended study of the archetype of the tree: "The philosophical tree" (CW 13). 

I06 Black Book 6 continues: "The dead: 'You are a pagan, a polytheist!' " (p. 30). 

I07 February 5, 1916. 

I08 In Black Book 6, the dark guest (see below, p. 355) enters here. 

I09 The following paragraphs to the end of the section do not occur in Black Book 6, 


352 I SCRUTINIES 

"These dead have given names to all beings, the beings in the 
air, on the earth and in the water. They have weighed and counted 
things. They have counted so and so many horses, cows, sheep, 
trees, segments of land, and springs; they said, this is good for 
this purpose, and that is good for that one. What did they do 
with the admirable tree? What happened to the sacred frog? 
Did they see his golden eye? Where is the atonement for the 
7,777 cattle whose blood they spilled, whose flesh they consumed? 
Did they do penance for the sacred ore that they dug up from 
the belly of the earth? No, theynamed, weighed, numbered, and 
apportioned all things. They did whatever pleased them. And 
what did they do! You saw the powerful-but this is precisely 
how they gave power to things unknowingly. Yet the time has 
come when things speak. The piece offlesh says: how many men? 
The piece of ore says, how many men? The ship says, how many 
men? The coal says, how many men? The house says: how many 
men? And things rise and number and weigh and apportion and 
devour millions ofmen. 

"Your hand grasped the earth and tore offthe halo and weighed 
and numbered the Dones of things. Is not the one and only, 
simpleminded God pulled down and thrown onto a heap, the 
massed seeming of separate things dead and living? Yes, this 
God taught you to weigh and number bones. But the month of 
this God is drawing to a close. A new month stands at the door. 
Therefore everything had to be as it is, and hence everything must 
become different. 

"This is no polytheism that I have made up! But many Gods 
who powerfully raise their voices and tear humanity to bloody 
pieces. So and so many men, weighed, numbered, apportioned, 
hacked, and devoured. Therefore I speak ofmany Gods as I spealc 
of many things, since I know them. Why do I call them Gods? 
For the sake oftheir superiority. Do you know about this superior 
strength? Now is the time when you can learn. 

"These dead laugh at myfoolishness. But would theyhave raised 
a murderous hand against their brothers if they had atoned for 
the ox with the velvet eyes? If they had done penance for the 
shiny ore? If they had worshiped the holy trees?1I0 If they had 
made peace with the soul of the golden-eyed frog? What say 
things dead and living? Who is greater, man or the Gods? Truly, 
this sun has become a moon and no new sun has arisen from the 
contractions of the last hour of the night." 

And when he had finished these words, <I>IAlIMQN bent down 
to the earth, kissed it, and said, "Mother, may your son be strong." 
Then he stood, looked up at the heavens, and said, "How dark is 
your place of the new light." Then he disappeared. 

{ro} When the following night came, the dead approached 
noisily, pushing and shoving; they were scoffing and exclaimed, 
"Teach us, fool, about the church and holy communion." 

But <I>IAHMQN stepped before them, and began to speak:III 
(and this is the fifth sermon to the dead): 

"The world of the Gods is made manifest in spirituality and 
in sexuality. The celestial ones appear in spirituality, the earthly 
in sexuality.1I2 

"Spirituality conceives and embraces. It is womanlike and 
therefore we call it MATER COELESTIS,1I3 the celestial mother. 
Sexuality engenders and creates. It is manlike, and therefore we 
call it PHALLOS,1I4 the earthly father.1I5 The sexuality ofman is more 
earthly, that ofwoman is more spiritual. The spirituality of man 
is more heavenly, it moves toward the greater. 

"The spirituality of woman is more earthly, it moves toward 
the smaller. 
"Mendacious and devilish is the spirituality of man, and it 
moves toward the smaller. 
"Mendacious and devilish is the spirituality of woman, and it 
moves toward the greater. 

"Each shall go to its own place. 

"Man and woman become devils to each other if they do 
not separate their spiritual ways, for the essence of creation 
is differentiation. 

"The sexuality of man goes toward the earthly, the sexuality 
of woman goes toward the spiritual. Man and woman become 
devils to each other if they do not distinguish their sexuality. 

"Man shall know the smaller, woman the greater. 

"Man shall differentiate himself both from spirituality and 
sexuality. He shall call spirituality mother, and set her between 
Heaven and earth. He shall call sexuality Phallos, and set him 
between himself and earth. For the mother and the Phallos are 
superhuman daimons that reveal the world of the Gods. They 
affect us more than the Gods since they are closely akin to our 
essence.1I6 If you do not differentiate yourselves from sexuality 
and from spirituality, and do not regard them as an essence both 
above and beyond you, you are delivered over to them as qualities 
of the Pleroma. Spirituality and sexuality are not your qualities, 
not things you possess and encompass. Rather, they possess and 
encompass you, since they are powerful daimons, manifestations 
ofthe Gods, and hence reach beyond you, existing in themselves. 
No man has a spirituality unto himself or a sexuality unto himself 
Instead, he stands under the law of spirituality and of sexuality. 
Therefore no one escapes these daimons. You shall look upon 
them as daimons, and as a common task and danger, a common 
burden that life has laid upon you. Thus life, too, is for you a 
common task and danger, as are the Gods, and first and foremost 
terrible Abraxas. 

"Man is weak, and community is therefore indispensable. Ifyour 
community is not under the sign ofthe mother, it is under the sign 
of the Phallos. Absence of community is suffering and sickness. 
Community in everything is dismemberment and dissolution. 

"Differentiation leads to singleness. Singleness is opposed 
to community. But because of man's weakness with regard to 
the Gods and daimons and their invincible law, community 
is necessary, not for man's salce, but because of the Gods. The 
Gods drive you to community. Insofar as the Gods impose 
community upon you, it is necessary; more is bad. 

"In the community every man shall submit to others, so that 
the community be maintained, for you need it. 
"In singleness every man shall place himselfabove the other, so 
that every man may come to himself and avoid slavery. 

IIO This may refer to the advent of Christianity into Germany in the eighth century CE, when sacred trees were chopped down. 

III This sentence does not occur in Black Book 6. 

II2 In the 1925 seminar, Jung said: "Sexuality and spirituality are pairs ofopposites that need each other" (Analytical Psychology, p. 29). 

II3 Goethe's Faust ends with a vision ofthe Mater Gloriosa. In his lecture, "Faust and alchemy;" Jung said ofthis: "The Mater Coelestis should on no account be thought 
of as Mary or the Church. She is rather Aphrodite urania, as in St. Augustine or Pico de Mirandola, the beatissima mater" (in Irene Gerber-Munch, Goethes Faust: Eine 
tiefenpsychologische Studie aber den Mythos des modernen Menschen. Mit dem Vortrag von C. G. jung, Faust und die Alchemie [Kusnacht, Verlag Stiftung fur Jung'sche Psychologie, 
1997], p. 37). 

II4 Black Book 6 has "Phallus" (p. 41), as does the han~written calligraphic version ofthe Septem Sermones (p. 21). 

II5 In Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (1912), Jung noted: "The phallus is the creature that moves without limbs, sees without eyes, and knows the future; and as the 
symbolic representative ofubiquitous creative power it claims immortality" (CW B, ¤209). He goes on to discuss phallic Gods. 

n6 Black Book 6 continues: "The mother is the grail. / The phallus is the spear" (P.43). 


SCRUTINIES I 353 

''Abstention shall hold good in community, extravagance 

in singleness. 

Community is depth, singleness is height. 

Right measure in community purifies and preserves. 

Right measure in singleness purifies and increases. 

Community gives us warmth, singleness gives us light."1I7 

{II}When <I>IAHMQN had finished, the dead remained silent 
and did not move, but looked at <I>IAHMQN with expectation. But 
when <I>IAHMnN saw that the dead remained silent and waited, he 
continued (and this is the sixth sermon to the dead) liB: 

"The daimon ofsexuality approaches our soul as a serpent. She 

is half human soul and is called thought-desire. 

"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 ofearth, 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." 

1I9When <I>IAHMQN 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 <I>IAHMQN 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 ofyour 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?" 

<I>IAHMQN 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. Ifyou 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? Itwill tear you apart, blinded one!" 

<I>IAHMQN 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 <I>IAHMQN and slowly 
crept away: But <I>IAHMQN 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 oflife." 

Then <I>IAHMQN disappeared. 

12¡1 was probably very confused when <I>IAHMnN approached 
me the following night, since I called to him saying, "What 
did you do, Oh <I>IAHMQN? 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 <I>IAHMQN said, "I stepped onto what is solid and took it 
with me and saved it from the wave surge, from the cycle ofbirths, 
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. Theyhave recognized, felt, 

II7 Black Book 6 continues: "In community, we go to the source, which is the mother, / In singleness we go to the future, which is the engendering phallus" (p. 46). In 
October 1916, Jung gave two presentations to the Psychological Club concerning the relation ofindividuation to collective adaptation; see '~daptation, individuation 
and collectivity," CW 18. This theme dominated the discussions in the club that year. 

II8 This paragraph is not in Black Book 6. 

II9 The following paragraphs to the end of the section are not in Black Book 6. 

120 This section does not occur in Black Book 6. 


354 I SCRUTINIES 

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 ct>IAHMQN, since the riddle distressed 

me. But he had already touched the earth and disappeared. And 

the darkness ofthe 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 ct>IAHMQN had indicated and not 

given away. 

{I2} Another day passed and the seventh night fell. 

And the dead came again, this time with pitiful gestures and 
said, "We forgot to mention one thing, that we would like you to 
teach us about men." 

And <I>IAHMnN stepped before me, and began to speakl21 (and 
this is the seventh sermon to the dead)122: 

"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 ofhis 
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 ofAbraxas. 

"Man here, God there. 

"Weakness and nothingness here, eternally creative power there. 

121 February 8, 1916.This sentence does not occur in Black Book 6. 
122 This sentence is not in Black Book 6. 

"Here nothing but darkness and clammy cold 

there total sun."123 

124But when ct>IAHMnN had finished, the dead remained silent. 
Heaviness fell from them, and they ascended like smoke above 
the shepherd's fire, who watches over his flock by night. 

But I turned to ct>IAHMQN and said, "Illustrious one, you teach 
that man is a gateway? A gateway through which the procession of 
the Gods passes? Through which the stream oflife flows? Through 
which the entire future streams into the endlessness ofthe past?" 

ct>IAHMQN answered, saying, "These dead believed in the 
transformation and development of man. They were convinced 
of human nothingness and transitoriness. Nothing was clearer 
to them than this, and yet they knew that man even creates its 
Gods, and so they knew that the Gods were of no use. Therefore 
they had to learn what they did not knOw, that man is a gateway 
through which crowds the train of the Gods and the coming and 
passing of all times. He does not do it, does not create it, does 
not suffer it, since he is the being, the sole being, since he is the 
moment of the world, the eternal moment. Whoever recognizes 
this stops being flame; he becomes smoke and ashes. He lasts 
and his transitoriness is over. He has become someone who is. 
You dreamed of the flame, as if it were life. But life is duration, 
the flame dies away. I carried that over, I saved it from the fire. 
That is the son of the fire flower. You saw that in me, I myself 
am of the eternal fire of light. But I am the one who saved it for 
you, the black and golden seed and its blue starlight. You eternal 
being-what is length and brevity? What is the moment and 
eternal duration? You, being, are eternal in each moment. What 
is time? Time is the fire that flares up, consumes, and dies down. 
I saved being from time, redeeming it from the fires of time and 
the darkness of time, from Gods and devils." 

But I said to him, "Illustrious one, when will you give me the 
dark and golden treasure and its blue starlight?" 
<I>IAHMnN replied, "When you have surrendered everything 
that wants to burn to the holy flame."125 

{I3} And as ct>IAHMQN spoke these words, a dark form with 
golden eyes approached me from the shadows of the night.126 I 
was startled and cried, ''Are you an enemy? Who are you? Where 
do you come from? I have never seen you before! Speak, what do 
you want?" 

123 On February 29, 1919, Jung wrote a letter to Joan Corrie and commented on the Sermones, with particular reference to the last one: "The primordial creator of the 
world, the blind creative libido, becomes transformed in man through individuation & out of this process, which is like pregnancy, arises a divine child, a reborn God, 
no more (longer) dispersed into the millions ofcreatures, but being one & this individual, and at the same time all individuals, the same in you as in me. Dr. L[ong] 
has a little book: VII sermones ad mortuous. There you find the description of the Creator dispersed into his creatures, & in the last sermon you find the beginning of 
individuation, out ofwhich, the divine child arises ... The child is a new God, actually born in many individuals, but they don't know it. He is a spiritual God. A spirit 
in many people, yet one and the same everywhere. Keep to your time and you will experience His qualities" (Copied in Constance Long's diary, Countway Library of 
Medicine, pp. 21-22). 

124 The following paragraphs to the end of the section do not occur in Black Book 6. 

125 In September 1916, Jung had conversations with his soul that provided further elaboration and clarification of the cosmology of the Sermones. September 25: [Soul]: 
"How many lights do you want, three or seven? Three is the heartfelt and modest, seven the general and encompassing." [I:] "What a question! And what a decision! I 
must be true: I think I would like seven lights." [Soul:] "Seven, you say? I thought so. That has broad scope-cold lights." [I:] "I need cooling, fresh air. Enough of this 
stifling mugginess. Too much fear and not enough free breathing. Give me seven lights." [Soul:] "The first light means the Pleroma. / The second means Abraxas. / 
The third the sun. / The fourth the moon. / The fifth the earth. / The sixth the phallus. / The seventh the stars." [I:] "Why were there no birds, and why were the 
celestial mother and the sky missing?" [I:] "They are all enclosed in the star. As you look at the star, you look through them. They are the bridges to the star. They 
form the seventh light, the highest, the floating, which rises with flapping wings, released from the embrace of the tree oflight with six branches and one blossom, in 
which the God ofthe star lay slumbering. / The six lights are single and form a multiplicity; the one light is one and forms a unity; it is the blossoming crown of the tree, 
the holy egg, the seed of the world endowed with wings so it can reach its place. The one gives rise to the many over and again, and the many entails the one" (plack 
Book 6, pp. 104-6). September 28: [Soul:] "Now let us try this: it is something ofthe golden bird. It is not the white bird, but the golden one. It is different. The white 
bird is a good daimon, but the golden one is above you and under your God. It flies ahead ofyou. I see it in the blue ether, flying toward the star. It is something that is 
part ofyou. And it is at once its own egg, containing you. Do you feel me. Then ask!" [I] "Tell me more. It makes me feel queasy" [Soul:] "The golden bird is no soul; it 
is your entire nature. People are golden birds as well; not all; some are worms and rot in the earth. But many are also golden birds." [I]: "Continue, I fear my revulsion. 
Tell me what you have grasped." [Soul:] "The golden bird sits in the tree of the six lights. The tree grows out ofAbraxas's head, but Abraxas grows out of the Pleroma. 
Everything from which the tree grows blossoms as a ligHt, transformed, as a womb of the flowering treetop, of the golden egg-bird. The tree oflight is first a plant, 
which is called an individual; this grows out ofAbraxas's head, his thought is one among many The individual is a mere plant without flowers and fruits, a passageway 
to the tree of seven lights. The individual is a precursor of the tree oflight. The lucent blossoms from him, Phanes himsel£ Agni, a new fire, a golden bird. This comes 
after the individual, namely when it has been reunited with the world, the world blossoms from it. Abraxas is the drive, individual, distinct from him, but the tree of the 
seven lights is the symbol of the individual united with Abraxas. This is where Phanes appears and he, the golden bird, flies ahead. / You unite yourself with Abraxas 
through me. / First you give me your heart, and then you live through me. I am the bridge to Abraxas. Thus the tree oflight arises in you and you become the tree of 


SCRUTINIES I 355 

The dark one answered, saying, "I come from afar. I come from 
the east and follow the shining fire that precedes me, <I>IAHMQN. 
I am not your enemy, I am a stranger to you. My skin is dark and 
my eyes shine golden." 

"What do you bring?" I asked fearfully. 

"I bring abstinence-abstinence from human joy and suffering. 
Compassion leads to alienation. Pity, but no compassion-pity 
for the world and a will held in check toward the other. 

Pity remains misunderstood, therefore it works. 

Far from longing, know no fear. 

Far from love, love the whole." 

I looked at him fearfully and said, "Why are you as dark as the 
earth of the fields and as black as iron? I'm afraid of you; such 
pain, what have you done to me?" 

"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." 

"You bring grief and despair," I answered, "I wanted to be 
among men." 

But he said, "You will go to men as one veiled. Your light shines 
at night. Your solar nature departs from you and your stellar 
nature begins." 

"You are cruel," I sighed. 

"The simple is cruel, it does not unite with the manifold." 

With these words the mysterious dark one vanished. But 
<I>IAHMQN regarded me with a serious and questioning look. 
"Did you take a proper look at him, my son?" he said, "you will 
be hearing from him. But come now, so that I can fulfill what the 
dark one prophesied for you." 

As he spoke these words, he touched my eyes and opened my 
gaze and showed me the immeasurable mystery. And I looked for 
a long time until I could grasp it: but what did I see? I saw the 
night, I saw the dark earth, and above this the sky stood gleaming 
in the brilliance of countless stars. And I saw that the sky had the 
form of a woman and sevenfold was her mantle of stars and it 
completely covered her. 

And when I had beheld it, <I>IAHMQN said: 

127"Mother, you who stand in the higher circle, nameless one, 
who shrouds me and him and protects me and him from the Gods: 
he wants to become your child. 

"May you accept his birth. 

"May you renew him. I separate myself from him.128 The cold 
is growing and its star blazes brighter. 
"He needs the bond ofchildhood. 
"You gave birth to the godly serpent, you released it from the 

pangs of birth; take this man to the abode of the sun, he needs 
the mother." 

A voice came from afar129 and was like a falling star: 

"I cannot take him as a child. He must cleanse himself first." 

<I>IAHMQN said/3o "What is his impurity?" 

But the voice said, "It is the commingling: he contains human 
suffering and joy. He shall remain secluded until abstinence is 
complete and he is freed from the commingling with men. Then 
shall he be taken as a child." 

In this moment my vision ended. And <I>IAHMQN went away 
and I was alone. And I remained apart as I had been told. But 
in the fourth night I saw a strange form, a man wearing a long 
coat and a turban; his eyes shone cleverly and kindly like a wise 
doctor's.131He approached me and said, "I speak to you ofjoy." But 
I answered, "You want to speak to me of joy? I bleed from the 
thousandfold wounds ofmen." 

He replied, "I bring healing. Women taught me this art. They 
know how to heal sick children. Do your wounds burn you? Healing 
is at hand. Give ear to good counsel and do not be incensed." 

I retorted, "What do you want? To tempt me? Mock me?" 
"What are you thinking?" he interrupted, "I bring you the bliss 
ofparadise, the healing fire, the love ofwomen."13

2 

"Are you thinking," I asked, "ofthe descent into the frog swamp?133 
The dissolution in the many, the scattering, the dismembering?" 

But as I spoke, the old man turned into <I>IAHMQN/34 and 
I saw that he was the magician who was tempting me. But 
<I>IAHMQN continued: 

"You have not yet experienced the dismembering. You should 
be blown apart and shredded and scattered to the winds. Men are 
preparing for the Last Supper with you." 

"What then will remain of me?" I cried. 

"Nothing but your shadow. You will be a river that pours 
forth over the lands. It seeks every valley and streams toward 
the depths." 

I asked, full ofgrief "But where will my uniqueness remain?" 

"You will steal it from yoursel£" <I>IAHMQN replied/35 "You 
will hold the invisible realm in trembling hands; it lowers its 
roots into the gray darknesses and mysteries of the e~rth and 
sends up branches covered in leaves into the golden air. 

''Animals live in its branches. 

"Men camp in its shade. 

"Their murmuring arises from below. 

''A thousand-mile-Iong disappointment is the juice of the tree. 

"It will stay green for a long time. 

"Silence abides in its treetop. 

"Silence in its deep roots." 

1361 gathered from <I>IAHMQN's words that 1 must remain true 
to love to cancel out the commingling that arises through unlived 
love. I understood that the commingling is a bondage that takes 
the place ofvoluntary devotion. Scattering or dismembering arises, 

light and Phanes arises from you. You have anticipated, but not understood this. At the time you had to separate from Abraxas to become individual, opposed to the 
drive. Now you become one with Abraxas. This happens through me. You cannot do this. Therefore you must remain with me. Unification with the physical Abraxas 
occurs through the human female, but that with the spiritual Abr. occurs through me; that is why you must be with me" (Black Book 6, pp. II4-20). 

126 In Black Book 6, this figure enters on February 5, in the middle of the Sermones (p. 35f). See note 108, p. 35I above. 

I27 February I7, I9I6. In Black Book 6, this speech is spoken by Jung himself (p. 52). 

128 Black Book 6 has here: "I need a new shadow, since I recognized dreadful Abraxas and withdrew from him" (p. 52). 

129 In Black Book 6, this voice is identified as "mother" (p. 53). 

I30 In Black Book 6, this is spoken by Jung (p. 53). 

I3I February 2I, I9I6. Black Book 6 has instead: "[I:] "A Turk? Whence the journey? Do you profess Islam? What you are announcing Mohammed for?" [Visitor:] "I speak 
of polygamy, houris, and paradise. This is what you shall hear about." [I:] "Speak and end this torment" (p. 54). 

I32 The version of this dialogue in Black Book 6 includes the following interchange: [I:] "What about polygamy, houris, and paradise?" [Visitor]: "Many women amount to 
many books. Each woman is a book, each book a woman. The houri is a thought and the thought is a houri. The world of ideas is paradise and paradise is the world 
ofideas. Mohammed teaches that the houris admit the believer into paradise. The Teutons said as much" (p. 56). (C£ The Koran 56:I2-39). In Norse mythology, the 
Valkyries escorted the brave who were slain in battle to Valhalla and tended them there. 

I33 February 24, I9I6. 

I34 This statement does not occur in Black Book 6. 

135 February 28, 1916. 

136 The next two paragraphs do not occur in Black Book 6. 


356 I SCRUTINIES 

as <I>IAHMON had taught me, from voluntary devotion. It cancels 

out the commingling. Through voluntary devotion I removed 

binding ties. Therefore I had to remain true to love, and, devoted 

to itvoluntarily, I suffer the dismembering and thus attain bonding 

with the great mother, that is, the stellar nature, liberation from 

bondage to men and things. If I am bound to men and things, I 

can neither go on with my life to its destination nor can I arrive at 

my very own and deepest nature. Nor can death begin in me as a 

new life, since I can only fear death. I must therefore remain true 

to love since how else can I arrive at the scattering and dissolution 

ofbondage? How else could I experience death other than through 

remaining true to love and willingly accepting the pain and all the 

suffering? As long as I do not voluntarily devote myself to the 

dismembering, a part of my self secretly remains with men and 

things and binds me to them; and thus I must, whether I want 

to or not, be a part of them, mixed in with them and bound to 

them. Only fidelity to love and voluntary devotion to love enable 

this binding and mixing to be dissolved and lead back to me that 

part of my self that secretly lay with men and things. Only thus 

does the light of the star grow, only thus do I arrive at my stellar 

nature, at my truest and innermost sel£ that simply and singly is. 

It is difficult to remain true to love since love stands above 

all sins. He who wants to remain true to love must also overcome 

sin. Nothing occurs more readily than failing to recognize 

that one is committing a sin. Overcoming sin for the sake 

of remaining true to love is difficult, so difficult that my feet 

hesitated to advance. 

When night fell, <I>IAHMON 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 thatyou 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 ofgrandeur.137 
His face was pale and blood had flowed into the furrows ofhis 
brow. But <I>IAHMON knelt down, touched the earth, and said to 
the shade/38 "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?139 Did you not sit with 

137 I.e., Christ. 
138 April 12, 1916. In Black Book 6, this speech is not attributed to Philemon. 
139 C£]ohn 8:I-II. 
140 C£ Matthew 21:31-32. 
141 C£John 9:13£ 
142 The reference is to the Platonic months. See note 273, p. 315. 
143 The next six paragraphs do not occur in Black Book 6. 


whores and tax-collectors?14 Did you not brealc the command

0 

of the Sabbath?141You 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 talcen 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 ofredemption in us. Thanlcs 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 y~ur 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. 

"I wanted people to address you in this way. But they have no 
love for you, my master and brother. They begrudge you the price 
of peace. They leave your work incomplete, eternally needing 
your pity and your care. 

"But, my master and my brother, I believe you have completed 
your work, since the one who has given his life, his entire truth, 
all his love, his entire soul, has completed his work. What one 
individual can do for men, you have done and accomplished 
and fulfilled. The time has come when each must do his own 
work ofredemption. Mankind has grown older and a new month 
has begun. "142 

143When <I>IAHMON had finished, I looked up and saw that the 
place where the shade had stood was empty. I turned to <I>IAHMON 
and said, "My father, you spoke ofmen. I am a man. Forgive me!" 

But <I>IAHMON dissolved into the darkness and I decided to do 
what was required of me. I accepted all the joy and every torment 
ofmy nature and remained true to my love, to suffer what comes to 
everyone in their own way. And I stood alone and was afraid. 

{I4} On a night when everything was silent, I heard a murmur 
like that of many voices and a bit more clearly I heard the voice 
of<I>IAHMON, and it was as if he were giving a speech. And as I 
listened more closely, I heard his words: 

144''Afterward, when I had impregnated the dead body of the 
underworld, and when it had given birth to the serpent of the 
God, I went to men and saw the fullness of their affliction and 
their madness. I saw that they were slaying each other and that 
they sought the grounds for their actions. They did this because 
they did not have anything different or better to do. But because 
they were accustomed to doing nothing for which they could 
not account, they devised reasons that compelled them to go on 
killing. Stop, you are out of your minds, said the sage. Stop, for 
Heaven's sake, and take stock of what damage you have done, 
said the canny one. But the fool laughed, since honors had 

144 The next two passages also occur in "Dreams" after entries for the middle ofJuly 1917, introduced by the statement: "Fragments of the next book" (p. 18). 


SCRUTINIES I 357 

been conferred upon him overnight. Why do men not see their 
stupidity? Stupidity is a daughter of the God. Therefore men 
cannot stop murdering, since thus they serve the serpent of the 
God without knowing it. It is worth giving one's life for the sake 
of serving the serpent of the God. Hence be reconciled! But it 
would be far better to live despite the God. But the serpent of 
the God wants human blood. This feeds it and makes it shine. 
Not wanting to murder and die amounts to deceiving the God. 
Whoever lives has become one who deceives the God. Whoever 
lives invents his life for himself But the serpent wants to be 
deceived, out of hope for blood. The greater the number of 
men who stole their lives from the Gods, the greater the harvest 
feeding the serpent from the blood-sown field. The God grows 
strong through human murder. The serpent grows hot and fiery 
through the drenching flood. Its fat burns in the blazing flame. 
The flame becomes the light of men, the first ray of a renewed 
sun, He, the first appearing light." 

I could not grasp what else <PIAHMQN said. I spent a long 
time pondering his words, which evidently he had spoken to 
the dead, and I was horrified by the atrocities that attend the 
rebirth of a God. 

145And soon afterward I saw Elijah and Salome in a dream. 
Elijah appeared concerned and alarmed. Therefore, when in 
the following night that light was extinguished and every living 
sound fell still, I called Elijah and Salome so that they would 
answer my questions. Elijah came forward and said: 

"I have become weak, I am poor, an excess ofmy power has gone 
to you, my son. You took too much from me. You went too far 
away from me. I heard strange and incomprehensible things and 
the peace of my depths became disturbed." 

I asked, "But what did you hear? What voice did you hear?" 

Elijah answered, "I heard a voice full ofconfusion, an alarmed 
voice full ofwarning and the incomprehensible." 

"What did it say;" I asked, "did you hear the words?" 

"Indistinctly; it was confused and confusing. The voice spoke 
first of a knife cutting something or perhaps harvesting, perhaps 
the grapes that go to the wine press. Perhaps the one wearing 
the red robe treads the winepress from which the blood flows.146 
Thereupon the voice spoke ofgold that lies below, and that kills 
whoever touches it. Then it mentioned fire that-burns terribly 
and that should flare up in our time. And then there was a malicious 
word, that I would rather not utter." 

''A malicious word? What was it?" I asked. 
He answered, ''A word about the death of God. There is only 
one God and God cannot die."147 

Then I replied, "I am astonished, Elijah. Do you not know 
what happened? Do you not know that the world has put on a 
new garb? That the one God has gone away; and that in turn 
many Gods and many daimons have come to man? Truly; I am 
surprised; I am extremely surprised! How could you not have 
known? Know you nothing ofthe new that has come to pass? Yet 
you know the future! You have foresight! Or maybe you should 
not know what is? Do you ultimately deny what is?"148 

145 May 3, 1916. 
146 See above, p. 300. 
147 See above, p. 348. 

Salome interrupted me: "What is, gives no pleasure. Pleasure 
comes only from the new. Your soul would also like a new 
husband-ha hal-she loves change. You are not pleasurable 
enough for her. In that respect she is unteachable and therefore 
you believe she is mad. We love only what is coming, not what 
is. Only the new gives us pleasure. Elijah does not think about 
what is, only about what is to come. Therefore he knows it." 

I answered, "What does he know? He should say." 

Elijah said, "I have already uttered the words: the image that 
I saw was crimson, fiery colored, a gleaming gold. The voice that 
I heard was like distant thunder, like the wind roaring in the 
forest, like an earthquake. It was not the voice of my God, but it 
was a thunderous pagan roar, a call my ancestors knew but which 
I have never heard. It sounded prehistoric, as iffrom a forest on 
a distant coast; it rang with all the voices of the wilderness. It 
was full of horror yet harmonic." 

To this I replied, "My good old man, you heard correctly; as I 
thought you had. How wonderful! Shall I tell you about it? After 
all, I told you that the world has acquired a new face. A new cover 
was thrown over it. How odd that you don't know! 

"Old Gods have become new. The one God is dead-yes, truly; 
he died. He disintegrated into the many; and thus the world became 
rich overnight. And something also happened to the individual 
soul-who would care to describe it! But therefore men too became 
rich overnight. How is it possible that you didn't know this? 

"The one God became two, a multiple one, whose body consists 
ofmany Gods, and a single one, whose body is a man and yet he is 
brighter and stronger than the sun. 

"What shall I tell you about the soul? Haven't you noticed 
that she has become multiple? She has become the closest, nearest, 
near, far, further, furthest and yet she is one, as before. First 
she divided herself into a serpent and a bird, then into a father 
and mother, and then into Elijah and Salome-How are you, my 
good fellow? Does it disturb you? Yes, you must be realizing that 
you are already very far removed from me, so that I can hardly 
recleon you as being part of my soul; since if you belonged to 
my soul, you would have to know what is happening. Therefore 
I must separate you and Salome from my soul and place you 
among the daimons. You are connected to what is primordially 
old and always exists, therefore you also know nothing of the 
being of men but simply of the past and future. 

"Nevertheless it is good that you came to my call. Take part in 
that which is. For what is ought to be such that you can take part 
in it." 

But Elijah sullenly replied, "I do not like this multiplicity. It is 
not easy to think it." 
And Salome said, "The simple alone is pleasurable. One need 
not think about it. " 
I replied, "Elijah, you need not contemplate it at all. It is not to 
be thought; it is to be viewed. It is a painting." 

And to Salome I said, "Salome, it is not true that only the simple 
is pleasurable; over time it is even boring. In truth the multiple 
captivates you." 

148 In Memories, Jung stated: "The figures of the unconscious are also 'uninformed: and need man, or contact with consciousness, in order to attain to 'knowledge.' When 
I began working with the unconscious, I found myself much involved with the figures of Salome and Elijah. Then they receded, but after about two years they reappeared. 
To my complete astonishment, they were completely unchanged; they spoke and acted as if nothing had happened in the meanwhile. In actuality the most 
incredible things had talcen place in my life. I had, as it were, to begin from the beginning again, to tell them all about what had been going on, and explain things 
to them. At the time I had been greatly surprised by this situation. Only later did I understand what had happened: in the interval the two had sunk back into the 
unconscious and into themselves-I might equally put, into timelessness. They remained out ofcontact with the I and the I's changing circumstances, and therefore 
were 'ignorant' ofwhat had happened in the world of consciousness" (pp. 338-39). This appears to refer to this conversation. 


358 I SCRUTINIES 

But Salome turned to Elijah and said, "Father, it seems to me that 

men have outstripped us. He is right: the many is more pleasurable. 

The one is too simple and always the same."149 

Elijah seemed saddened and said, "What about the one in this 
case? Does the one still exist ifit stands next to the many?" 

I answered, "That is your old and ingrained mistake, that the 
one excludes the many. But there are many individual things. The 
multiplicity of individual things is the one multiple God from 
whose bodymany Gods arise, but the uniqueness ofthe one thing 
is the other God, whose body is a man but whose spirit is as large 
as the world." 

But Elijah shook his head and said, "That is new, my son. Is the 
newgood? Whatwas, is good; and what was, will be. Is that not the 
truth? Has there ever been anything new? And was what you call 
new, ever good? Everything remains the same ifyou give it a new 
name. There is nothing new, there can be nothing new; how could 
I then look ahead? I look at the past and therein I see the future, 
as in a mirror. And I see that nothing new happens, everything is 
but mere recurrence ofwhat has been since time immemorial.150 
What is your being? An appearance, a darting light; tomorrow it 
is no longer true. It is gone; it is as if it never was. Come, Salome, 
let us go. One is mistaken in the world ofmen." 

But Salome looked back and whispered to me while leaving, 
"Being and multiplicity appeal to me, even ifit is not new and not 
eternally true." 

Thus they disappeared into the dark night and I returned to 
the burden signified by my existence. And I sought to do everything 
correctly that seemed to me to be a task and to take every 
way that seemed to me to be necessary for myself But my dreams 
became difficult and laden with anxiety, and I did not know why. 
One night my soul suddenly came to me, as ifworried, and said/51 
"Listen to me: I am in a great torment, the son ofthe dark womb 
besieges me. Therefore your dreams are also difficult, since you 
feel the torment of the depths, the pain of your soul, and the 
suffering ofthe Gods." 

I answered, "Can I help? Or is it superfluous that a man 
elevates himself to being a mediator ofthe Gods? Is it presumption 
or should a man become a redeemer of the Gods, after men are 
saved through the divine mediator?" 

"You speal( the truth," my soul replied, "the Gods need a human 
mediator and rescuer. With this man paves the way to crossing 
over and to divinity. I gave you a frightening dream so that your 
face would turn to the Gods. I let their torment reach you so that 
you would remember the suffering Gods. You do too much for 
men since they are the masters of your world. You can in effect 
help men only through the Gods, not directly. Alleviate the burning 
torment of the Gods." 

I asked her, "So tell me, where do I begin? I feel their torment and 
mine at the same time, and yet it is not mine, both real and unreal." 
"That is it; and this is where separation should occur," my 
soul replied. 

"But how? My wits fail me. You must know how." 

"Your wits fail quicldy," she retorted, "but the Gods need 
precisely your human wits." 
''And I the wits ofthe Gods," I added; "and thus we run aground." 
"No, you are too impatient; only patient comparison provides a 
solution, not one side taking a quick decision. It requires work" 

I asked, "What do the Gods suffer from?" 

"Well," my soul replied, "you have left them with torment, and 
since then they have suffered." 

149 The rest of this dialogue does not occur in Black Book 6. 
150 See note 261, p. 3II. 
151 May 31, 1916. 


"Rightly so," I cried, "they have tormented men enough. Now 

they should get a taste ofit." 

She answered, "But what if the torment also reaches you? 
What have you gained then? You cannot leave all suffering to the 
Gods or else they will draw you into their torment. After all, they 
possess the power to do so. To be sure, I must confess that men 
too possess a wondrous power over the Gods through their wits." 

I answered, "I recognize that the torment ofthe Gods reached 
me; therefore I also recognize that I must yield to the Gods. What 
is their desire?" 

"They want obedience," she replied. 

"So be it," I answered, "but I fear their desire, therefore I say: 
I want to do what I can. On no account will I take back onto 
myself all the torment that I had to leave to the Gods. Not even 
Christ took torment away from his followers, but rather he heaped 
it on. I reserve conditions for myself The Gods should recognize 
this and direct their desire accordingly. There is no longer any 
unconditional obedience, since man has stopped being a slave to 
the Gods. He has dignity before the Gods. He is a limb that even 
the Gods cannot do without. Giving way before the Gods is no 
more. So let their wish be heard. Comparison shall accomplish 
the rest so that each will have his appropriate part." 

My soul answered, "The Gods want you to do for their sake 
what you know you do not want to do." 

"I thought so," I exclaimed, "of course that is what the Gods 
want. But do the Gods also do what I want? I want the fruits of 
my labor. What do the Gods do for me? They want their goals to 
be fulfilled, but what about mine?" 

This infuriated my soul and she said, "You are unbelievably 
defiant and rebellious. Consider the fact that the Gods are strong." 

"I know," I replied, "but no longer is there any unconditional 
obedience. When will they use their strength for me? They also 
want me to place mine in their service. What is their payment in 
kind? That they are tormented? Man suffered agony and the Gods 
were still not satisfied, but remained insatiable in their devising of 
new torments. They allowed man to become so blinded that 
he believed that there were no Gods, and that there was only 
one God who was a loving father, so that today someone who 
struggles with the Gods is even thought to be crazy. They have 
thus prepared this shame too for those who recognize them, out 
ofboundless greed for power, since leading the blind is not easy. 
They will corrupt even their slaves." 

"You do not want to obey the Gods?" my soul cried, astonished. 

I answered, "I believe that has already gone on more than 
enough. Hence the Gods are insatiable, because they have 
received too many sacrifices: the altars of blinded humanity 
are streaming with blood. But dearth makes contentment, not 
abundance. May they learn dearth from men. Who does something 
for me? That is the question that I must pose. In no case 
will I do what the Gods would have to do. Ask the Gods what 
they think of my suggestion." 

Then my soul divided herself As a bird she swooped up to the 
higher Gods and as a serpent she crawled down to the lower Gods. 
Soon afterward, she returned and said, troubled, "The Gods are 
outraged that you do not want to be obedient." 

"That bothers me very little," I replied, "I have done everything 
to placate the Gods. May they do their share now. Tell them. I can 
wait. I will let no one tell me what to do. The Gods may devise a 
service in return. You can go. I will call you tomorrow so that you 
can tell me what the Gods have decided." 


SCRUTINIES I 359 

As my soul departed, I saw that she was shocked and worried, 
since she belonged to the race of the Gods and daimons and 
forever sought to convert me to their kind, as my humanity would 
like to convince me that I belong to the clan and must serve it. 
When I was asleep, my soul came again and in a dream cunningly 
painted me as a horned devil to terrify me and make me afraid of 
myself In the following night, however, I called my soul and said 
to her, "Your trick was recognized. It is to no avail. You do not 
frighten me. Now speak and convey your message!" 

She answered, "The Gods give in. You have broken the 
compulsion ofthe law. Therefore I painted you as a devil, since he 
is the only one among the Gods who bows to no compulsion. He 
is the rebel against the eternal law; to which, thanks to his deed, 
there are also exceptions. Thus one does not necessarily have 
to. The devil is helpful in this respect. But it should not happen 
without seeking counsel from the Gods. This detour is necessary, 
or else you will fall prey to their law despite the devil." 

Here the soul drew near to my ear and whispered, "The Gods 
are even happy to turn a blind eye from time to time, since 
basically they know very well that it would be bad for life if 
there were no exception to eternal law. Hence their tolerance of 
the devi1." 

She then raised her voice and cried loudly, "The Gods have 
mercy upon you and have accepted your sacrifice!" 

And so the devil helped me to cleanse myself from commingling 
in bondage, and the pain of one-sidedness pierced my heart and 
the wound ofbeing torn apart scorched me. 

{I5} IS21t was noon on a hot summer's day and I was taldng 
a stroll in my garden; when I reached the shade of the high 
trees, I met <I>IAHMQN strolling in the fragrant grass. But when 
I sought to approach him, a blue shadeIs3 came from the other 
side, and when <I>IAHMQN saw him, he said, "I find you in the 
garden, beloved. The sins of the world have conferred beauty 
upon your countenance. 

"The suffering of the world has straightened your shape. 

"You are truly a king. 

"Your crimson is blood. 

"Your ermine is snow from the coldness of the poles. 

"Your crown is the heavenly body of the sun, which you bear 
on your head. 

152 June I, 1916. 
153 In Black Book 6, the shade is identified as Christ (p. 85). 


"Welcome to the garden, my master, my beloved, my brother!" 
The shade replied, "Oh Simon Magus or whatever your name 
may be, are you in my garden or am I in yours?"IS4 

<I>IAHMQN said, "You are, Oh master, in my garden. Helena, or 
whatever you choose to call her, and I are your servants. You can 
find accommodation with us. Simon and Helena have become 
<I>IAHMQN and Bauds and so we are the hosts of the Gods. We 
granted hospitality to your terrible worm. And since you come 
forward, we take you in. It is our garden that surrounds yoU."ISS 

The' shade answered, "Is this garden not mine? Is not the 
world of the heavens and of the spirits my own?" 

<I>IAHMON said, "You are, Oh master, here in the world of 
men. Men have changed. They are no longer the slavesá and 
no longer the swindlers of the Gods and no longer mourn in 
your name, but they grant hospitality to the Gods. The terrible 

IS6

wormcame before you, whom you recognize as your brother 
insofar as you are of divine nature, and as your father insofar as 
you are ofhuman nature.IS7 You dismissed him when he gave you 
clever counsel in the desert. You took the counsel, but dismissed 
the worm: he finds a place with us. But where he is, you will be 
also.ISS When I was Simon, I sought to escape him with the ploy 
of magic and thus I escaped you. Now that I gave the worm a 
place in my garden, you come to me." 

The shade answered, "Do I fall for the power of your trick? 
Have you secretly caught me? Were not deception and lies always 
your manner?" 

But <I>IAHMON answered, "Recognize, Oh master and beloved, 
that your nature is also of the serpent.IS9 Were you not raised on 
the tree like the serpent? Have you laid aside your body, like the 
serpent its skin? Have you not practiced the healing arts, like the 
serpent? Did you not go to Hell before your ascent? And did you 
not see your brother there, who was shut away in the abyss?"I60 

Then the shade said, "You speak the truth. You are not lying. 
Even so, do you know what I bring you?" 

"This I know not," <I>IAHMON answered, "I know only one 
thing, that whoever hosts the worm also needs his brother. 
What do you bring me, my beautiful guest? Lamentation 
and abomination were the gift of the worm. What will you 
give us?" 

The shade answered, "I bring you the beauty ofsuffering. That 
is wha~ is needed by whoever hosts the worm." 

154 Simon Magus (first century) was a magician. In the Acts of the Apostles (8:9-24), after becoming a Christian, he wished to purchase the power of transmitting the 
Holy Spirit from Peter and Paul (Jung saw this account as a caricature). Further accounts ofhim are found in the apocryphal acts of Peter, and in writings of the 
Church fathers. He has been seen as one of the founders of Gnosticism, and in the second century a Simonian sect arose. He is said to have always traveled with a 
woman, whom he found in a brothel in Tyre, who was the reincarnation of Helen ofTroy. Jung cited this as an example of the anima figure ("Soul and earth," 1927, 
CW 10, ¤75). On Simon Magus, see Gilles ~ispel, Gnosis als Weltreligion (Zurich: Origo Verlag, 1951), pp. 51-70, and G.R.S. Mead, Simon Magus: An Essay on the Founder 
ojSimonianism Based on the Ancient Sources with a Reevaluation ofHis philosophy and Teachings (London: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1892). 

155 In Memories, Jung commented: "In such dream wandering one frequently encounters an old man who is accompanied by a young girl, and examples ofsuch couples are 
to be found in many mythic tales. Thus, according to Gnostic tradition, Simon Magus went about with a young girl whom he had picked up in a brotheL Her name was 
Helen, and she was regarded as the reincarnation of the Trojan Helen. Klingsor and Kundry; Lao-tzu and the dancing girl, likewise belong in this category" (p. 206). 

156 I.e., Satan. 

157 In Black Book 6, this sentence reads: "Your brother came before you, Oh master, the terrible worm, whom you dismissed, when he gave you clever counsel in the desert 
with a tempting voice" (p. 86). 
158 Black Book 6 continues: "since he is your immortal brother" (p. 86). 
159 Jung commented on the serpent as an allegory of Christ in Aion (1952, CW 9, 2, ¤¤369, 385, and 390). 
160 See above, p. 243. 


t 


1959 
I worl(ed on this bool( for 16 years. My acquaintance with alchemy in 
1930 tool( me away from it. The beginning ofthe end came in 1928, when 
Wilhelm sent me the text ofthe "Golden Flower," an alchemical treatise. 
There the contents ofthis bool(,found their way into actuality and I could 
no longer continue worlcing on it. To the. superficial observer, itwill appear 
like madness. I t would also have developed into one, had I not been able 
to absorb the overpowering force of the original experiences. With the 
help ofalchemy, I could finally arrange them into a whole. I always lmew 
that these experiences contained something precious, and therefore I 
knew ofnothing better than to write them down in a "precious," that is to 
say, costly book and to paint the images that emerged through reliving it 
all-as well as I could. I knew how frightfully inadequate this undertaking 
was, but despite much worl( and many distractions I remained true to it, 

190 /191 even if another / possibility never ... 

t 
This appears on p. 190 ofthe calligraphic volume ofLiber Novus. The transcription was abruptly left offin the middle ofa sentence on p. 189. This epilogue appears on 
the next page, in Jung's normal handwriting. This in turn was abruptly left offin the middle of a sentence. 


Appendix A 


Mandala sketch I appears to be the first in the series, dated August 2,1917-Mandala sketch 2 is the reverse ofmandala sketch 1. (19-4 eM x 14.3 eM) 
It is the basis ofimage 80. The legend at the top ofthe image is "<PANlfl: 
[Phanes]" (see note 2II, p. 3ar). Legend at bottom: "Stoffwechsel in Individuum" 
(metabolism in the individual). (19.4 eM x 14.3 eM) 


Mandala sketch 3 is dated August 4,1917, and August 8,1917, and is the basis of 
image 82. (14.9 eM x 12-4 eM) 

Mandala sketch 4 is dated August 6,1917-On these sketches, see 
introduction, pp. 206. (20.3 eM x 14.9 eM) 


362 I APPENDIX A 

Mandala sketch 6 is dated September 10,1917, and is the basis ofimage 93á

Mandala sketch 5 is dated September I, 1917, and is the basis ofimage 89á 

(14.9 eM x 12.1 eM)
(18.2 eM x 12.4 eM) 
The town plan is from Black Book 7, page 124b, and depicts the scene of the 
"~iverpool" dream. This sketch is the basis of image 159, linking the dream 
WIth the mandala. Text in image, from left: "Dwelling of the Swiss"; above, 

Mandala sketch 7 is dated September II, 1917, and is the basis ofimage 94. (12.1 "Houses"; below, "Houses", "Island"; (below) "Lalce", "Tree", "Streets", 
eM x 15.2 eM) "Houses." (13.3 eM x 19.1 eM) 


APPENDIX A I 363 

The sketch of"Systema Munditotius" is from Black Book 5, page 169 
(see Appendix C, p. 370, for further discussion). (22.9 eM x 17-8 eM) 
Image legend: 

A = Anthropos. Man 

A = Human soul 

,/ = Serpent = Earthly soul 

V = Bird = Heavenly soul 

'!l = Heavenly mother 

(J = Phallus (Devil) 

..;;;;;:::7 = Angel 

= 
Devil 

= Heavenly world 

= Earth, Mother of the Devil 

= 
Sun, Eye of the Pleroma 

= 
Moon, Eye of the Pleroma 
[Moon sighted] 
[Sun looking] 
Moon = Satan 
Sun = God


t -=<D+C ~ God of the Frogs ~ Abraxas 

= The Fullness 
The Emptiness 
= Flame, Fire, 
Love Eros, a daimon 


~!'1~1f}~lfI~(/~ = Gods, stars without numbers 

The middle point is again the Pleroma. The God in it is Abraxas, a world 
ofdaimons surrounds it, and again in a middle point is humanity, ending 
and beginning. 

Sketch offirst page ofLiber Secundus (see p. I). (38.7 eM x 27-3 eM) 
The calligraphic text is from a Babylonian creation myth, reproduced in 
Hugo Gressman (ed.), Altorientalische Texte und Bilder zum Alten Testamente, 
vol. I (Tiibingen: J. Mohr, 1909), p. 4£ which Jung cited in 1912 in 
Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (CW B, ¤383). It reads: "Mother 
Huber who formed everything / provided an irresistible weapon when 
she bore a giant serpent with pointed tooth / relentless in every respect. 
She filled her body with blood not with poison / and covered furious 
giant newts in fertility. She made them shine with frightful brilliance / 
and made them rise high. Whoever saw them should pine away with 
horror / their bodies should rear without them taking flight." 


364 I APPENDIX A 

Systema Munditotius. (30 CM x 34 CM) 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 (JA). 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 oflife, 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 ofAbraxas 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 ji-igus sive amor dei [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 inner 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 reporduced with the permission of the 

Foundation and Robert Hinshaw. 


Appendix B 
C0111111entaries 

pp.86-891 

Age 
Male 
Enantiodromia of the life-type 

It is difficult to force this image to make a statement. Yet it is 
so allegorical that it ought to speak. It differs from the earlier 
experiences in that it is more witnessed than experienced. For that 
matter, all the images that I have placed under the title "Mystery 
play" are rather more allegorical than actual experiences. They are 
certainly not intended allegories; they have not been consciously 
contrived to depict experience in either veiled or even fantastic 
terms. Rather, they appeared as visions. Itwas not until I reworked 
them later that I realized more and more that they could in no 
way be compared with the experiences portrayed in the other 
chapters. These images apparently are portrayals of personified 
unconscious thoughts. That follows from their imagistic manner. 
They also called for more reflection and interpretation than the 
other experiences, to which I could not do justice with cogitation, 
because they were quite simply experiences. 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. 

The action is set in a dark earthly depth, evidently an 
allegorical representation of the inner depths beneath the 
extension ofthe bright space ofconsciousness or the psychic field 
of vision. Sinking into such a depth corresponds to averting the 
mental gaze from outer things and focusing it on the inner dark 
depths. Gazing at the darkness to some extent animates the 
previously dark background. Since gazing at the darkness occurs 
without conscious expectation, the inanimate psychic background 
has an opportunity to let its contents appear, undisturbed by 
conscious assumptions. 

The preceding experiences indicated that strong psychic 
movements were present that consciousness could not grasp. 
Two figures-the old sage and the young maiden-step into the 
field of vision, unexpectedly for consciousness, but characteristic 
of the mythological spirit upon which consciousness rests. 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. A descendent of Logos is 
Nous, the intellect, which has done away with the commingling 
of feeling, presentiment, and sensation. In contrast, the Logos 
contains this commingling. But it is. not the product of such 
blending, or else it would be a lower animalistic psychic activity; 
yet it masters the blend, so that the four fundamental activities of 
the soul become subordinate to its principle. It is an independent 
principle of form that means understanding, insight, foresight, 
legislation, and wisdom. The figure of an old prophet is therefore 
a fitting allegory for this principle, since the prophetic spirit 
unites in itself all these qualities. In contrast, Eros is a principle 
that contains a commingling of all the fundamental activities of 
the soul just as much as it masters them, although its purpose is 

completely different. It is not form-giving but form-fulfilling; 
it is the wine that will be poured into the vessel; it is not the bed 
and direction of the stream but the impetuous water flowing in 
it. Eros is desire, longing, force, exuberance, pleasure, suffering. 
Where Logos is ordering and insistence, Eros is dissolution and 
movement. They are two fundamental psychic powers that form 
a pair of opposites, each one requiring the other. 

The old prophet expresses persistence, but the young maiden 
denotes movement. Their impersonal essence is expressed by the 
fact that they are figures belonging to general human history; they 
do not belong to a person but have been a spiritual content ofthe 
world's peoples since time immemorial. Everyone has them, and 
therefore these figures recur in the work of thinkers and poets. 

Such primordial images have a secret power that works just 
as much on human reason as on the soul. Wherever they appear 
they stir something linked with the mysterious, the long gone, 
and heavy with foreboding. A string sounds whose vibration 
reverberates in every man's breast; these primordial images dwell 
in everyone as they are the property of all manlcind.2 This secret 
power is like a spell, like magic, and causes elevation just as much 
as seduction. It is characteristic of primordial images that they 
talce hold of man where he is utterly human, and a power seizes 
him, as if the bustling throng were pushing him. And this happens 
even if individual understanding and feeling rise up against 
it. What is the power of the individual against the voice of the 
whole people in him? He is entranced, possessed, and consumed. 
Nothing makes this effect clearer than the serpent. It signifies 
everything dangerous and everything bad, everything nocturnal 
and uncanny, which adheres to Logos as well as to Eros, so long 
as they can work as the dark and unrecognized principles of the 
unconscious spirit. 

The house represents a fixed abode, which indicates that 
Logos and Eros have permanent residence in us. 

Salome is represented as the daughter of Elijah, thus 
expressing the order of succession. The prophet is her producer, 
she emanates from him. The fact that she is assigned to him as 
a daughter indicates a subordination of Eros to Logos. Although 
this relation is very frequent, as manifested by the constancy of 
this primordial image, it is nevertheless a special case that possesses 
no general validity. For if these were two opposed principles, 
one could not arise from the other and thus depend on it. Salome 
is hence apparently no (complete) correct embodiment of Eros, 
but a variety of the same. (This supposition is later confirmed.) 
That she is actually an incorrect allegory for Eros also stems from 
the fact that she is blind. Eros is not blind, since he regulates, just 
as well as Logos does, all fundamental activities of the soul. The 
blindness indicates her incompleteness and the absence of an 
essential quality. By virtue of her shortcoming she depends upon 
her father. 

The indistinct glittering walls of the hall point to something 
unrecognized, perhaps something valuable that wakens curiosity 
and attracts attention. In this manner, creative involvement is 
woven even deeper into the image, so that an even greater animation 
of the dark background becomes possible. Such enhanced 
attention gives rise to the image ofan object, which to all intents 
and purposes expresses concentration, namely the image of a 
crystal, which has been used to produce such visions since time 
immemorial. These figures, which at first are incomprehensible 
to the beholder, evoke dark processes in his soul, which to a cer


1 The page numbers refer to the Corrected Drqft. This corresponds to pp. 245-248 above. 

2 Jung here employs a metaphor used by Jacob Burkhardt to describe the primordial images of Faust and Oedipus, which he had cited in Traniformations and Symbols ofthe 
Libido (1912, CW B, ¤56n). 


366 I APPENDIX B 

tain extent lie even deeper (such as in the vision of blood), and 
whose perception requires an aid like the crystal. As has been 
said, however, this expresses nothing else than an even stronger 
concentration of creative attention. 

A figure like the prophet, which is clear and complete in 
itself, arouses less curiosity than the unexpected form of blind 
Salome, which is why one may expect that the formative process 
will first address the problem of Eros. Hence an image of Eve 
appears first, together with images of the tree and the serpent. 
This apparently refers to temptation, as already encapsulated in 
the figure ofSalome. Temptation brings about a further movement 
toward the side ofEros. This in turn forebodes many adventurous 
possibilities, for which the wandering ofOdysseus is the fitting 
image. This image stimulates and invites adventurousness; it is 
as ifa door opened to a new opportunity to free the gaze from the 
dark confinement and depths in which it was held fast. Hence 
the vision opens onto a sunny garden, whose red blooming 
trees represent a development oferotic feeling, and whose wells 
mean a steady source. The cool water of the well, which does 
not inebriate, indicates the Logos. (Therefore Salome also speaks 
later of the deep "wells" of the prophet') This suggests that the 
development ofEros also means a source ofknowledge. And with 
this Elijah begins to spealc 

Logos undoubtedly has the upper hand in this, my case, since 
Elijah says that he and his daughter have always been one. Yet 
Logos and Eros are not one, but two. In this case, however, Logos 
has blinded and subjugated Eros. But if this is the case, then the 
necessity will also arise to free Eros from the clutch of Logos, so 
that the former will regain vision. Therefore Salome turns to me, 
because Eros is in need of help, and because I have apparently 
been enabled to behold this image for precisely this reason. The 
soul of the man is more inclined to Logos than to Eros, which is 
more characteristic ofthe essence ofthe woman. The subjugation 
ofEros through Logos explains not only the blindness ofEros but 
also the somewhat strange fact that Eros is represented precisely 
by the not-so-pleasing figure of Salome. Salome denotes bad 
qualities. She brings to mind not only the murder ofthe holy one 
but also the incestuous pleasure of the father. 

A principle always has the dignity of independence. But if 
this dignity is taken from it, it is debased and then assumes a 
bad form. We know that psychic activity and qualities that are 
deprived of development through repression degenerate and 
thus become bad habits. Either an open or secret vice takes the 
place of a well-formed activity and gives rise to a disunity of 
the personality with itself, signifying a moral suffering or a real 
sickness. Only one way remains open to whoever wants to free 
himself from this suffering: he must accept the repressed part of 
his soul, he must love his inferiority, even his vices, so that what 
is degenerate can resume development. 

Wherever Logos rules, there is order but too much persistence. 
The allegory ofparadise where there is no struggle and therefore 
no development is fitting here. In this condition the repressed 
movement degenerates and its value is lost. This is the murder 
of the holy one, and the murder happens because, like Herod, 
Logos cannot protect the holy one on account of his own weakness, 
because he can do nothing else than hold onto himself, thus 
inducing the degeneration of Eros. Only disobedience against 
the ruling principle leads out of this condition of undeveloped 
persistence. The story of paradise repeats itself, and hence the 

3 This corresponds to pp. 245-248 above. 

serpent winds its way up the tree because Adam should be led 

into temptation. 

Every development leads through the undeveloped, but 

capable ofdevelopment. In its undeveloped condition it is almost 

worthless, while development represents a highest value that is 

unquestionable. One must give up this value or at least apparently 

give it up to be able to attend to the undeveloped. But this stands 

in the sharpest contrast to the developed, which perhaps rep


resents our best and highest achievement. The acceptance of the 

undeveloped is therefore like a sin, like a false step, a degeneration, 

a descent to a deeper level; in actual fact, however, it is a greater 

deed than remaining in an ordered condition at the expense ofthe 

other side ofour being, which is thus at the mercy ofdecay: 

pp. 103-1193 

The scene ofthe action is the same place as in the first image. The 

allusion to a crater heightens the impression ofa large cavity that 

reaches far down into the interior of the earth; this depth is not 

.~nactive, but violently discharges all kinds of matter. 

Since Eros poses the most serious problem at first, Salome 

enters the scene, blindly groping her way toward the left. Even what 

appear to be negligible details are important in such visionary 

images. The left is the side ofthe inauspicious. This suggests that 

Eros does not tend toward the right, the side of consciousness, 

conscious will and conscious choice, but toward the side of the 

heart, which is less subject to our conscious will. This movement 

toward the left is emphasized by the fact that the serpent moves 

in the same direction. The serpent represents magical power, 

which also appears where animal drives are aroused imperceptibly 

in us. They afford the movement of Eros the uncanny emphasis 

that strikes us as magical. Magical effect is the enchantment and 

underlining of our thought and feeling through dark instinctual 

impulses ofan animal nature. 

The movement toward the left is blind, that is, without 

purpose and intention. It hence requires guidance, not by 

conscious intention but by Logos. Elijah calls Salome back. Her 

blindness is an affliction, and as such demands healing. Closer 

scrutiny at least partially invalidates the prejudice against her. 

She seems to be innocent, and perhaps her badness ought to be 

attributed to her blindness. 

Logos asserts its power over Eros by calling back Salome. The 

serpent also obeys Logos. It rests with Logos and Eros to emphasize 

the power and significance of this image. A natural consequence 

of this magical, powerful view of the union of Logos and Eros is 

the strongly felt smallness and insignificance ofthe I, which finds 

expression in a sense ofboyishness. 

It appears as if the movement toward the left, following 
blind Eros, is not possible, or effectively disallowed, without the 
intervention of Logos. From the perspective of Logos, following 
a movement blindly is a sin, because it is one-sided and violates 
the law that man must forever strive for the highest degree of 
consciousness. Therein lies his humanity: The other he has in 
common with animals. Jesus also says, "Ifyou lmow what you are 
doing, you are blessed; if you do not know what you are doing, 
you are damned."4 The movement toward the left would be 
possible and permitted only if a conscious, seeing notion of it 
'existed. Formulating such a notion is not possible without the 

intervention of Logos. 

4 This sentence is an apocryphal insertion to Luke 6:4, from the Codex Bezae, "Man, ifindeed you know what you are doing, happy are you; but ifnot, you are accursed 
and a transgressor ofthe law." J. K. Elliot, ed., The Apocryphal New Testament, p. 68. In 1952, Jung cited it in Answer to}ob (CW II, ¤696). 


APPENDIX B I 367 

The first step toward developing such a notion is to become controlling the flesh, since he has altogether moved beyond 

conscious ofthe goal or intention ofthe movement. Hence Elijah pleasure and suffering. Passion, whose conquest still requires so 

asks about the intention ofthe I. And it must admit its blindness, much effort in the case of Christ and does so incessantly and in 

that is, its ignorance about intention. The only recognizable ever greater measure, has left Buddha and surrounds him as a 

thing is a longing, a wish, to unravel the embroilment caused by blazing fire. He is both unaffected and untouchable. 

the first image. But if the living I approaches this condition, its passion may 

Such making conscious stirs a vague sense of happiness in leave it, though it will not die. Or are we not our passion? And 

Salome. Understandably so, since consciousness means insight, what happens to our passion when it leaves the I? The I is 

that is, a healing of her blindness. Thus a step toward attaining consciousness, which only has eyes in front. It never sees what 

the healing of Eros is taken. is behind it. But that is where the passion it has overcome in 

At first the I remains in its inferior position, since its ignorance front regroups. Unguided by the eye of reason, unmitigated 

prevents it from surveying the further development ofits problem. by humaneness, the fire becomes a devastating, bloodthirsty 

Nor would it know which direction to take, since it has never Kali, who devours the life of man from within, as the mantra 

cast its gaze into the depths of its psychic substratum, but has of her sacrificial ceremony says: "Hail to you, 0 Kali, triple


seen only what meets the eye and recognized only the powers eyed Goddess of dreadful aspect, from whose throat hangs a 

of consciousness and the conscious world as effective forces, necldace ofhuman skulls. May you be honored with this blood!" 

half-consciously denying its inner impulses. Faced with its own Salome must of course despair of this end, which would like to 

depths, such an I can only feel embarrassed. Its belief in a conscious turn Eros into spirit, since Eros cannot exist without the flesh. In 

upperworld had been so firm that going down into the depths of resisting the inferiority of the flesh, the I resists its female soul, 

the self is like guilt, a betrayal of conscious ideals. which represents everything that strives to suppress conscious:. 

But since its desire to unravel the embroilment is greater than ness, against spirit. Thus this path also results in an opposition. 
its aversion to its own inferiority; the I entrusts itself to the guidance Hence the I returns from beholding the figures embodying 
of Logos. Since nothing comes into view that could answer the its conflict. 
question raised, even greater depths must evidently be opened up. Logos and Eros are reunited, as if they had overcome the 
This in turn occurs with the help of the crystal, that is, through conflict between spirit and flesh. They appear to know the solution. 
the utmost concentration ofexpectant attention. The first image The movement toward the left, which started from Eros at the 
to appear in the crystal is the mother of God with child. beginning ofthe image, now commences from Logos. He starts 

This image is obviously related, and opposed, to the vision of moving toward the left, to complete with seeing eyes what began 
Eve in the first image. Just as Eve represents carnal temptation in blindness. At first this movement leads into greater darkness, 
and carnal motherhood, the mother of God stands for carnal which is then still somewhat illumined by the reddish light. The 
virginity and spiritual motherhood. The first direction would be color red points to Eros. While it does not emit a bright light, 
a movement ofEros toward the flesh, the latter toward the spirit. Eros at least provides an opportunity to recognize something, 
Eve is an expression of the carnal side, whereas Mary expresses perhaps even merely by inducing a situation in which man can 
the spiritual side of Eros. As long as the I saw only Eve, it was recognize something, provided Logos assists him. 
blind. The evocation of awareness, however, affords a spiritual Elijah leans against the marble lion. The lion as a royal animal 
view of Eros. In the first case the I became an Odysseus on an signifies power. The stone suggests unshakeable firmness, 
adventurous journey, which concludes with the aging man's thereby expressing the power and solidity of Logos. Once again 
return to Penelope, the motherly woman. " awareness commences first, although now in, greater depths and 

In the latter case the I is depicted as Peter, the chosen rock in renewed surroundings. Here the I experiences its smallness 
upon which the Church is to be founded. The key as the symbol even more as it is even further removed from the world it knows, 
of the power of binding and loosing buttresses this idea, and where it is conscious of its value and meaning. In these new 
leads one to the image of the pope as God's governor on earth surroundings there is nothing to remind it ofits meaning. Hence 
with a threefold crown. it is obviously overwhelmed by so much otherness, which so 

Undoubtedly, the I becomes involved in a movement toward completely eludes its own discretion. Elijah assumes control of 
spiritual power, as attested by the one-sidedness ofthe movement. developing awareness. 
The vision of Eve leads astray, to adventurous odyssey, to Circe As the crystal visions have shown, the idea that should be 
and Calypso. The vision of the mother of God, on the other conveyed to consciousness is an idea of spiritual power, that 
hand, turns desire away from the flesh and toward the humble is, the I was tempted to arrogate prophethood. But this idea 
veneration of the spirit. Eros is subject to error in the flesh, but encountered such a feeling of resistance that it could not assert 
in the spirit it rises above the flesh and the inferiority of carnal itself against consciousness. Hence it remained behind the 
error. It therefore almost imperceptibly becomes the spirit, the curtain. But since the I could not follow Eros blindly, it sought 
power over the flesh in the guise oflove, and thus spiritual power at least to exchange spiritual power for this loss-as observed 
casts off the mantle oflove; although the former believes it loves so very often in human life! It is almost inevitable that such a 
the spirit, in effect it rules the flesh. And the more powerful it is, great loss, like that of Eros, presses man to search for a substitute 
the less loving it is. And the less it loves the spirit, the more it is at least in the sphere of power. This occurs in such an uncanny, 
carnal power. On account of its power over the flesh, the love of cunning manner that the I mostly fails to notice the ruse. Which 
the spirit thus becomes a secular power-drive in spiritual guise. explains why the I as a rule cannot enjoy its power, since it does 

Christ overcame the world by burdening himself with its not possess power, but is possessed by the power-devil. In this 
suffering. But Buddha overcame both the pleasure and suffering case it would have been easy for the I to grasp the fact that Elijah 
of the world by disposing of both. And thus he entered into imposes himself with such living reality; and lay claim to this 
nonbeing, a condition from which there is no return. Buddha figure as a personality valuable in itself. But awareness has 
is an even higher spiritual power, that derives no pleasure from forestalled this deception. 


368 I APPENDIX B 

The appearance ofliving figures should not be taken personally, 
even though one is obviously inclined to assume responsibility 
Yfor them. In reality such figures belong just as much or little 
to our personality as our hands and feet. The mere presence of 
hands or feet is not characteristic of personality: If anything 
about them is characteristic, it is merely their individual character. 
It is thus characteristic of the I that the old man and the young 
maiden are called Elijah and Salome; they might just as well 
have been called Simon Magus and Helena. What is significant, 
however, is that they are biblical figures. As proven later, this is 
one ofthe peculiarities ofthe psychic entanglement belonging to 
this moment. 

The awareness of the alluring idea of spiritual power shifts 
the question of Eros into the foreground again, once more in a 
new form: both the possibility indicated by Eve and the one 
represented by Mary are ruled out. Hence the third possibility 
remains, namely filial relationship, which avoids the two extremes 
of the flesh and the spirit: Elijah as the. father, Salome as the 
sister, the I as the son and brother. This solution corresponds to 
the Christian notion of childhood in God. Salome-as Marymakes 
up the as-yet-absent mother in what is a formidably 
ensnaring manner. This has a corresponding effect on the I. There 
is something undeniably cathartic about the Christian solutionbecause 
it seems to be altogether possible. There is a child in 
each of us; in the elderly, it is even the only thing still alive. 
One can have recourse to the childlike anytime, on account of 
its inexhaustible freshness and adherence. Everything, even the 
most ominous, can be rendered harmless through retranslation 
into the childlike. After all, we do this often enough in everyday 
life. We even manage to tame a passion by leading it back to 
the childlike, and perhaps the flame of passion collapses in 
a childlike lament even more often. Thus there are many 
prospects for which the childlike can seem to be a satisfactory 
remedy, including not least the far-reaching effect of our 
Christian education, which hammers into us the notion of 
childhood in hundreds of mantras and hymns. 

Salome's remark that Mary is their mother must thus appear 
even more devastating. Since this prevents the childlike solution 
from developing, it immediately prompts another thought: If 
Mary is the mother, then inescapably I must be Christ. The childlike 
solution would have canceled all reservations: Salome would 
no longer pose a threat, since she would be only the little 
sister. Elijah would be the caring father, whose wisdom and 
foresight would have left the I to its own devices with 
childlike trust. 

But this is the unfortunate drawback constituted by childhood 
as a solution: every child wishes to grow. Being a child involves 
the burning desire and impatienc~ for future adulthood. If we 
return to being a child for fear of the dangers of Eros, the 
child will want to develop toward spiritual power. But ifwe flee 
into childhood for fear of the dangers of the spirit, we fall into 
arrogating the power of Eros. 

The condition of spiritual childhood constitutes a transition 
in which not everyone can remain. In this case it stands to 
reason that Eros demonstrates to the I the impossibility of 
being a child. One might think that it is not that awful to 
renounce the condition of childhood. But only those who 
fail to grasp the consequences of this renunciation think that 
way. It is not the loss of immemorial Christian views and the 
religious possibilities they ensured -many bear this loss all too 
easily-but rather that what is renounced refers to the much more 
profound attitude that far transcends the Christian outlook, 

which provides individual life and thought with a tried and 
tested direction. Even if one has long abstained from Christian 
religious practice and has long ceased to regret this loss, one 
continues to behave intuitively as if the original views still 
existed by right. One fails to consider that a discarded worldview 
needs to be replaced by a new one; in particular one fails 
to be clear about the fact that renouncing the Christian outlook 
erodes present-day morals. Renouncing childhood means that 
no emotional or habitual dependence on hitherto valid moral 
views any longer exists. The hitherto valid view has arisen from 
the spirit of the Christian worldview. 

Notwithstanding all free thinking, our attitude to Eros, for 
instance, remains the old Christian view. We can now no longer 
bide our time peacefully without questioning and doubt, or else 
we will remain in the state of childhood. If we merely reject the 
dogmatic view, our liberation from the well-established will be 
merely intellectual, whereas our deeper feeling will persist on 
the old path. Most people, however, are unaware ofhow this sets 
them at odds with themselves. But later generations will become 
increasingly aware of this. Yet those who notice this will realize 
with horror that renouncing resumed childhood ousts them 
from our present times and that they can no longer follow any 
of the traditional ways. They enter uncharted territory, which 
has neither paths nor boundaries. They lack any direction, since 
they have forsaken all established bearings. This realization, 
however, dawns upon very few, since the vast majority makes do 
with half measures, and remains unperturbed by the stupidity of 
their spiritual condition. But then tepidity and slackness is not 
to everyone's taste. Some would rather abandon themselves to 
despair than adhere to a worldview completely removed from 
the well-trodden paths of their habitual behavior. They would 
rather venture into a pathless, dark land at the risk of perishing 
there, even if this should outrage all their cowardice. 

When Salome remarks that Mary is their mother, which 
means that the I is Christ, this means in brief that the I has 
left the state of Christian childhood and has taken the place of 
Christ. Nothing could be more absurd, ofcourse, than to assume 
that the I thus would be presuming excessive importance; on 
the contrary, it talces up a decidedly inferior position. Previously 
it had the advantage of being part of the crowd rallying behind 
a powerful figure, but now it has exchanged that for solitude 
and forlornness, rendering it as alien and lonely in its world as 
Jesus was in his, without possessing that great man's outstanding 
attributes. Being at odds with the world requires greatness, 
but the I experiences its almost ludicrous meagerness. Which 
explains its horror at Salome's revelations. 

Whoever steps beyond the Christian outlook, yet does so 
definitely, falls into a seeming abyss, an utmost solitude, and 
lacks any means of hiding the fact. Of course one would like to 
persuade oneself that this is not all that bad. But it is. 
Abandonment is about the worst thing that can happen to man's 
herd instinct, not to mention the daunting task with which 
we thus burden ourselves. Destruction is easy, but rebuilding 
is difficult. 

Thus the image ends with a sense of gloom, which stands 
opposed, however, to the tall, quietly burning flame encircled 
by the serpent. This view denotes devotion . coupled with the 
magical compulsion expressed by the serpent. Thus an effective 
counterpart is set against the disquieting sense ofdoubt and fear, 
as ifsomeone were saying, "Ofcourse your I is full ofunease and 
doubt, but the constant flame of devotion burns in you more 
strongly and the compulsion ofyour fate is more powerful." 


APPENDIX B I 369 

The far-reaching premonitions of the second image plunged the 
I into a chaos ofdoubt. Hence an understandable desire arose to 
rise above the confusion to attain greater clarity, as expressed in 
the image of the beetling mountain ridge. Logos appears to be 
leading the way What occurs next is the image of two opposites, 
expressed by two serpents and the separation of day and night. 
Daylight signifies good, whereas darkness represents evil. As 
compelling forces, both assume the figure of serpents. Therein 
lies concealed an idea that subsequently assumes great importance: 
whoever encountered a black serpent would have been no less 
surprised at encountering a white one. Color does not dispel 
fear. What this suggests is that perhaps an equally dangerous, 
bewitching power resides in good as in evil. Essentially, the 
good needs to be regarded as an inherently no-less-dangerous 
principle than evil. In any event, the I could decide to approach 
the white serpent just as little as the black one, even though 

5 This refers to pp. 251-254. 

it believes it can or must by all means entrust itself more to 
good than to evil. But the I is rooted to the spot halfway, 
transfixed, and observes the struggle between the two principleswithin 
itself 

The fact that the I remains in this middle position implies the 
advance ofevil, since anything but unconditional surrender to the 
good impairs it. This finds expression in the attack of the black 
serpent. But the fact that the I does not partal(e ofevil constitutes 
a victory for the good. This finds expression in the black serpent 
growing a white head. 

The disappearance of the serpent denotes that the opposition 
ofgood and evil has become ineffective, that is, that at least it has 
lost its immediate significance. For the I this means a release from 
the unconditional power of the hitherto abiding moral point 
of view in favor of a middle position freed from the pair of 
opposites. But neither clarity nor a clear view has been gained 
thereby; hence the ascent continues to the final point ofelevation, 
which might grant the longed-for outlook. 


Appendix C 

The following is an entry from Black Book 5, which gives a 

preliminary sketch ofcosmology of the Septem Sermones. 

r6. I. r6. 

The force of the God is frightful. 

"You shall experience even more of it. You are in the second 
age. The first age has been overcome. This is the age of the 
rulership ofthe son, whom you call the Frog God. A third age will 
follow; the age ofapportionment and harmonious power." 

My soul, where did you go? Did you go to the animals? 

I bind the Above with the Below. I bind God and animal. 

Something in me is part animal, something part God, and a third 

part human. Below you serpent, within you man, and above you 

God. Beyond the serpent comes the phallus, then the earth, then 

the moon, and finally the coldness and emptiness ofouter space. 

Above you comes the dove or the celestial soul, in which 
love and foresight are united, just as poison and shrewdness are 
united in the serpent. Shrewdness is the devil's understanding, 
which always detects smaller things and finds chinks where you 
suspect none. 

If I am not conjoined through the uniting of the Below and 
the Above, I brealc down into three parts: the serpent, and in that 
or some other animal form I roam, living nature daimonically, 
arousing fear and longing. The human soul, living forever within 
you. The celestial soul, as such dwelling with the Gods, far from 
you and unknown to you, appearing in the form ofa bird. Each of 
these three parts then is independent. 

Beyond me stands the celestial mother. Its counterpart is the 
phallus. Its mother is the earth, its goal is the heavenly mother. 
The celestial mother is the daughter of the celestial world. Its 
counterpart is the earth. 

The celestial mother is illuminated through the spiritual sun. 
Its counterpart is the moon. And just as the .moon is the crossing 
to the dead of space, the spiritual sun is the crossing to the 
Pleroma, the upper world of fullness. The moon is the God's 
eye of emptiness, just as the sun is the God's eye offullness. The 
moon that you see is the symbol, just as the sun that you see. Sun 
and moon, that is, their symbols, are Gods. There are still other 
Gods; their symbols are the planets. 

The celestial mother is a daimon among the order ofthe Gods, 
an inhabitant of the heavenly world. 

The Gods are favorable and unfavorable, impersonal, the souls of 
stars, influences, forces, grandfathers ofsouls, rulers in the heavenly 
world, both in spa~e and in force. They are neither dangerous nor 
kind, strong, yet humble, clarifications of the Pleroma and of the 
eternal emptiness, configurations of the eternal qualities. 

Their number is immeasurably great and leads over to the one 
supreme fundamental, which contains all qualities in itself and 
itself has none, a nothing and everything, the complete dissolution 
ofman, death and eternal life. 

Man becomes through the principium individuationis. He strives 
for absolute individuality, through which he ever increasingly 
concentrates the absolute dissolution of the Pleroma. Through 
this he malces the Pleroma the point that contains the greatest 

tension and is itself a shining star, immeasurably small, just as 
the Pleroma is immeasurably great. The more concentrated 
the Pleroma becomes, the stronger the star of the individual 
becomes. It is surrounded by shining clouds, a heavenly body in 
the making, comparable to a small sun. It emits fire. Therefore it 
is called: EyOJ [Et!-lt] O"U!-l1tAaVOS U!-ltV aO"'t1lp.! Just like the sun, which 
is also such a star, which is a God and grandfather ofsouls, the star 
ofthe individual is also like the sun, a God and grandfather ofthe 
souls. He is visible from time to time, just as I have described him. 
His light is blue, like that of a distant star. He is far out in space, 
cold and solitary, since he is beyond death. To attain individuality, 
we need a large share of death. Therefore it is called Et EOt EO"1:E,2 
since just as an innumerable number ofmen rule the earth, so a 
countless number ofstars and of Gods rule the celestial world. 

To be sure, this God is the one who survives the death ofmen. 

To him for whom solitude is Heaven, he goes to Heaven; to him 

for whom it is Hell, he goes to Hell. Whoever does not follow 

the principium individuationis to its end becomes no God, since he 

cannot bear individuality 

The dead who besiege us are souls who have not fulfilled the 
principium individuationis, or else they would have become distant 
stars. Insofar as we do not fulfill it, the dead have a claim on us 
and besiege us and we cannot escape them. [Image] 3 

The God of the frogs or toads, the brainless, is the uniting of 
the Christian God with Satan. His nature is like the flame; he is 
like Eros, but a God; Eros is only a daimon. 

The one God, to whom worship is due, is in the middle. 

You should worship only one God. The other Gods are unimportant. 
Abraxas is to beflared. Therefore it was a deliverance when he 
separated himselffrom me. You do not need to seek him. He will 
find you, just like Eros. He is the God of the cosmos, extremely 
powerful and fearful. He is the creative drive, he is form and 
formation, just as much as matter and force, therefore he is 
above all the light and dark Gods. He tears away souls and casts 
them into procreation. He is the creative and created. He is the 
God who always renews himsel£ in days, in months, in years, in 
human life, in ages, in peoples, in the living, in heavenly bodies. 
He compels, he is unsparing. Ifyou worship him, you increase his 
power over you. Thereby it becomes unbearable. You will have 
dreadful trouble getting clear ofhim. The more you free yourself 
from him, the more you approach death, since he is the life of 
the universe. But he is also universal death. Therefore you fall 
victim to him again, not in life but in dying. So remember him, 
do not worship him, but also do not imagine that you can flee 
him since he is all around you. You must be in the middle of 
life, surrounded by death on all sides. Stretched out, like one 
crucified, you hang in him, the fearful, the overpowering. 

But you have in you the one God, the wonderfully beautiful 
and kind, the solitary, starlike, unmoving, he who is older and 
wiser than the father, he who has a safe hand, who leads you 
among all the darknesses and death scares of dreadful Abraxas. 
He gives joy and peace, since he is beyond death and beyond what 
is subject to change. He is no servant and no friend of Abraxas. 
He himselfis an Abraxas, but not unto you, but in himselfand his 
distant world, since you yourself are a God who lives in faraway 
realms and who renews himself in his ages and creations and 
peoples, just as powerful to them as Abraxas is to you. 

You yourself are a creator ofworlds and a created being. 

I "I am a star, wandering about with you."-A citation from the Mithras Liturgy (Albrecht Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie [Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1903], p. 8, line 5). Jung 
carved the continuation ofthis sentence on his stone at Bollingen. 
2 "You are Gods." This is a citation from John 10:34: "The Jews answered him, saying, for a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being 
a man, makesth thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?" 
3 Sketch ofSystema Mundito#us; see Appendix A 


APPENDIX C I 371 

You have the one God, and you become your one God in the 

innumerable number of Gods. 

As a God, you are the great Abraxas in your world. But as a 
man you are the heart of the one God who appears to his world 
as the great Abraxas, the feared, the powerful, the donor of 
madness, he who dispenses the water oflife, the spirit ofthe tree 
oflife, the daimon of the blood, the death bringer. 

You are the suffering heart of your one star God, who is 
Abraxas to his world. 

Therefore because you are the heart of your God, aspire 
toward him, love him, live for him. Fear Abraxas, who rules over 
the human world. Accept what he forces upon you, since he is 
the master of the life of this world and none can escape him. If 
you do not accept, he will torment you to death and the heart of 
your God will suffer, just as the one God of Christ suffered the 
heaviest in his death. 

The suffering of mankind is without end, since its life is 
without end. Since there is no end where none sees an end. If 
mankind has come to an end, there is none who would see its 
end and none who could say that mankind has an end. So it has 
no end for itself but it certainly does for the Gods. 

The death of Christ took no suffering away from the world, 
but his life has taught us much; namely, that it pleases the 
one God if the individual lives his own life against the power of 
Abraxas. The one God thus delivers himself from the suffering 
of the earth into which his Eros plunged him; since when the 
one God saw the earth, he sought its procreation, and forgot 
that a world was already given to him in which he was Abraxas. 
So the one God became human. Therefore the one in turn 
pulls man up to him and into him, so that the one becomes 
complete again. 

But the freeing of man from the power of Abraxas does not 
follow man's withdrawing from the power of Abraxas-no one 
can pull away from it-but through subjugating himself to it. 
Even Christ had to subjugate himself to the power of Abraxas, 
and Abraxas killed him in a gruesome manner. 

Only by living life can you free yourself from it. So live it to 
such a degree that it befits you. To the degree that you live it, 
you also fall victim to the power of Abraxas and his dreadful 
deceptions. But to the same degree the star God in you gains 
in longing and power, in that the fruit of deception and human 
disappointment falls to him. Pain and disappointment fill the 
world of Abraxas with coldness, all of your life's warmth slowly 

sinks into the depths of your soul, into the midpoint of man, 
where the far blue starlight ofyour one God glimmers. 

Ifyou flee Abraxas from fear, you escape pain and disappointment 
and you remain terrified, that is, out of unconscious love 
you cling to Abraxas and your one God cannot catch fire. But 
through pain and disappointment you redeem yourself since 
your longing then falls ofits own accord like a ripe fruit into the 
depths, following gravity, striving toward the midpoint, where 
the blue light of the star God arises. 

So do not flee from Abraxas, do not seek him. You feel 
his coercion, do not resist him, so that you shall live and pay 
your ransom. 

The works of Abraxas are to be fulfilled, for consider that in 
your world you yourself are Abraxas and force your creature to 
fulfil your work. Here, where you are the creature subjugated to 
Abraxas, you must learn to fulfill the work of life. There, where 
you are Abraxas, you compel your creatures. 

You ask, why is all this so? I understand that it seems 
questionable to you. The world is questionable. It is the unending 
infinite folly of the Gods, which you know is unendingly wise. 
Surely it is also a crime, an unforgivable sin, and therefore also the 
highest love and virtue. 

So live life, do not flee Abraxas, provided that he compels you 
and you can recognize his necessity. In one sense I say to you: do 
not fear him, do not love him. In another sense I say: fear him, 
love him. He is the life ofthe earth, that says enough. 

You need to recognize the multiplicity of the Gods. You 
cannot unite all into one being. As little as you are one with the 
multiplicity of men, just so little is the one God one with the 
multiplicity of the Gods. This one God is the kind, the loving, 
the leading, the healing. To him all your love and worship is due. 
To him you should pray, you are one with him, he is near you, 
nearer than your soul. 

I, your soul, am your mother, who tenderly and frightfully 
surrounds you, your nourisher and corrupter; I prepare good 
things and poison for you. I am your intercessor with Abraxas. I 
teach you the arts that protect you from Abraxas. I stand between 
you and Abraxas the all-encompassing. I am your body, your 
shadow, your effectiveness in this world, your manifestation in 
the world of the Gods, your effulgence, your breath, your odor, 
your magical force. You should call me if you want to live with 
men, but the one God ifyou want to rise above the human world 
to the divine and eternal solitude of the star.