Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1940
[Carl Jung on the “Dog.”]
The dog is the gravedigger who disposes of the bodies, as happened in ancient times in Persia.
There it was also customary to lead a dog to the bed of a dying person who then had to grant the dog a bite, presumably to appease him so that he spared his body.
Cerberus, too, is calmed by the honey cake of Heracles.
In the Mithras reliefs, a dog jumps up on the killed bull.
Cerberus is the guardian between life and death.
Anubis with the jackal head helps Isis to gather the dismembered and scattered body of Osiris, so that he can be incorporated by Osiris and reborn.
The dog helps with dying, and consequently also helps with rebirth.
In the present case, a man comes with a dog, and their appearance causes a transformation.
Unity, agreement, and evenness can work wonders.
Man and dog stand for a harmonious unit between man and animal, that is, between consciousness and less consciousness, to put it cautiously.
Strangely enough, by the way, one often speaks about human characteristics while meaning animal ones.
In this man-dog pair the unconscious (the consciously domesticated dog) is, so to speak, bound, and so the miracle can happen. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 45.
