I have eaten from the sacrificial flesh
The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition (Philemon)
The sacrifice has been accomplished: the divine child, the image of the God’s formation, is slain, and I have eaten from the sacrificial flesh. The child, that is, the image of the God’s formation, not only bore my human craving, but also enclosed all the primordial and elemental powers that the sons of the sun possess as an inalienable inheritance.
The God needs all this for his genesis. But when he has been created and hastens away into unending space, we need the gold of the sun.
We must regenerate ourselves. But as the creation of a God is a creative act of highest love, the restoration of our human life signifies an act of the Below.
This is a great and dark mystery.
Man cannot accomplish this act solely by himself but is assisted by evil, which does it instead of man.
But man must recognize his complicity in the act of evil.
He must bear witness to this recognition by eating from the bloody sacrificial flesh.
Through this act he testifies that he is a man, that he recognizes good as well as evil, and that he destroys the image of the God’s formation through withdrawing his life force, with which he also dissociates himself from the God.
This occurs for the salvation of the soul, which is the true mother of the divine child.
When it bore and gave birth to the God, my soul was of human nature throughout; it possessed the primordial powers since time immemorial, but only in a dormant condition.
They flowed into forming the God without my help. But through the sacrificial murder,
I redeemed the primordial powers and added them to my soul. Since they became part of a living pattern, they are no longer dormant, but awake and active and irradiate my soul with their divine working. Through this it receives a divine attribute. Hence the eating of the sacrificial flesh aided its healing.
The ancients have also indicated this to us, in that they taught us to drink the blood and eat the flesh of the savior. The ancients believed that this brought healing to the soul.
There are not many truths, there are only a few. Their meaning is too deep to grasp other than in symbols.! A God who is no stronger than man -what is he? You still should taste holy dread.
How would you be worthy of enjoying the wine and the bread if you have not touched the black bottom of human nature?
Hence you are lukewarm and pale shadows, proud of your shallow coastlines and broad country roads.
But the floodgates will be opened, there are inexorable things, from which only God can save you.
The primordial force is the radiance of the sun, which the sons of the sun have carried in themselves for aeons and pass on to their children.
But if the soul dips into radiance, she becomes as remorseless as the God himself since the life of the divine child, which you have eaten, will feel like glowing coals in you.
It will burn inside you like a terrible, inextinguishable fire.
But despite all the torment, you cannot let it be, since it will not let you be. From this you will understand that your God is alive and that your soul has begun wandering on remorseless paths.
You feel that the fire of the sun has erupted in you. Something new has been added to you, a holy affliction.
Sometimes you no longer recognize yourself.
You want to overcome it, but it overcomes you.
You want to set limits, but it compels you to keep going. You want to elude it, but it comes with you.
You want to employ it, but you are its tool; you want to think about it, but your thoughts obey it. finally the fear of the inescapable seizes you, for it comes after you slowly and invincibly.
There is no escape.
So it is that you come to know what a real God is. Now you’ll think up clever truisms, preventive measures, secret escape routes, excuses, potions capable of inducing forgetfulness, but it’s all useless.
The fire burns right through you. That which guides forces you onto the way. But the way is my own self my own life founded upon myself .
The God wants my life. He wants to go with me, sit at the table with me, work with me. Above all he wants to be ever-present.! ~Carl Jung; Red Book
