Emma Jung: The relation of the animus to immortality
Mrs. Jung: Could you say something about the relation of the animus to immortality in the same way that you discussed the anima and immortality?
Dr. Jung: The animus seems to go back only to the fourteenth century, and the anima to remote antiquity, but with the animus I must say I am uncertain altogether.
Mrs. Jung: It had seemed to me that the animus was not a symbol of immortality, but of movement and life, and that it is man’s attitude that gives that different aspect to the anima.
Dr. Jung: It is true that the animus is often represented by a moving figure—an aviator or a traffic manager.
Perhaps there is something in the historical fact of women being more stable, therefore there is more movement in the unconscious.
Mr. Schmitz: Surely there could have been no repression of the animus at the time of the matriarchy. Dr. Jung: We cannot be too sure.
Mrs. Zinno: The figures of gods carry the idea of immortality, do they not?
smuch as they are also animus figures and come into women’s dreams, I should think one could say the ani- mus carried the meaning of immortality also.
Dr. Jung: Yes, that is true, but there remains a tremendous difference between the animus and the anima. Mr. Schmitz: Is immortality in the individual?
Dr. Jung: No, only as the image. Immortality belongs to the child of the anima. Inasmuch as the anima has not brought forth, she assumes immortality.
When she brings forth she dies. Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 168.
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
Introduction to Jungian Psychology: Notes of the Seminar on Analytical Psychology Given in 1925
Our life is indeed the same as it ever was.
At all events, in our sense of the word it is not transitory; for the same physiological and psychological processes that have been man’s for hundreds of thousands of years still endure, instilling into our inmost hearts this profound intuition of the “eternal” continuity of the living.
But the self, as an inclusive term that embraces our whole living organism, not only contains the deposit and totality of all past life, but is also a point of departure, the fertile soil from which all future life will spring.
This premonition of futurity is as clearly impressed upon our innermost feelings as is the historical aspect.
The idea of immortality follows legitimately from these psychological premises. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 303
Nectar, like soma, is the drink of fertility and immortality. The soul is fructified by the intellect; as the “oversoul” it is called the heavenly Aphrodite, as the “under-soul” the earthly Aphrodite. It knows “the pangs of birth.” It is not without reason that the dove of Aphrodite is the symbol of the Holy Ghost ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 198
Just as Christ left behind his redeeming blood, a true pharmakon athanasias in the wine, so Agni is the soma, the holy drink of inspiration, the mead of immortality CW 5 Para 246
Soma is also the “nourishing drink.” Its mythological characteristics coincide with those of fire, and so both are united in Agni. The drink of immortality, Amrita, was stirred by the Hindu gods like the fire. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 247
Flight from life does not exempt us from the laws of old age and death. The neurotic who tries to wriggle out of the necessity of living wins nothing and only burdens himself with a constant foretaste of aging and dying, which must appear especially cruel on account of the total emptiness and meaninglessness of his life. If it is not possible for the libido to strive forwards, to lead a life that willingly accepts all dangers and ultimate decay, then it strikes back along the other road and sinks into its own depths, working down to the old intimation of the immortality of all that lives, to the old longing for rebirth. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 617
Faust’s desire, like that of every hero, is a yearning for the mystery of rebirth, for immortality; therefore his way leads out to sea and down into the maw of death, that frighteningly narrow “passage” which signals the new day ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 417
This primordial experience finds an echo in the widespread motif of robbery (sun-cattle of Geryon, apples of the Hesperides, herb of immortality). And it is worth remembering that in the cult of Diana at Aricia [Lake Nemi], only he could become her priest who plucked the golden bough from the sacred grove of the goddess ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 250
Dhulqarnein brought his “friend” Khidr to the source of life, that he might drink of immortality. Alexander himself bathed in the stream of life and performed the ritual ablutions ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 288
It happens sometimes that I must say to an older patient: “Your picture of God or your idea of immortality is atrophied, consequently your psychic metabolism is out of gear.” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 794
The feeling of immortality, it seems to me, has its origin in a peculiar feeling of extension in space and time, and I am inclined to regard the deification rites in the mysteries as a projection of this same psychic phenomenon. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 248-249
As a psychopomp she [Sophia] leads the way to God and assures immortality. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 613
There the main concern is the “diamond body,” in other words, the attainment of immortality through the transformation of the body. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 511
Alchemy was trying to produce a corpus subtile, a transfigured and resurrected body, i.e., a body that was at the same time spirit. In this it finds common ground with Chinese alchemy, as we have learned from the text of The Secret of the Golden Flower. There the main concern is the “diamond body,” in other words, the attainment of immortality through the transformation of the body ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 511
The sun comparison tells us over and over again that the dynamic of the gods is psychic energy. This is our immortality, the link through which man feels inextinguishably one with the continuity of all life. The life of the psyche is the life of mankind. Welling up from the depths of the unconscious, its springs gush forth from the root of the whole human race, since the individual is, biologically speaking, only a twig broken off from the mother and transplanted ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 296
The “son of the mother” as a mere mortal, dies young, but as a god he can do that which is forbidden and superhuman: he commits the magical incest and thus obtains immortality. In the myths the hero does not die; instead, he has to overcome the dragon of death ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 394
In the Mithraic sacrifice the conquest of instinctuality no longer takes the archaic form of overpowering the mother, but of renouncing one’s own instinctive desires. The primitive idea of reproducing oneself by entering into the mother’s body has become so remote that the hero, instead of committing incest, is now sufficiently far advanced in the domestic virtues to seek immortality through the sacrifice of the incest tendency ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 398
Worringer rightly says of Oriental art: Tormented by the confusion and flux of the phenomenal world, these people were dominated by an immense need for repose. The enjoyment they sought in art consisted not so much in immersing themselves in the things of the outside world and finding pleasure there, as in raising the individual object out of its arbitrary and seemingly fortuitous existence, immortalizing it by approximation to abstract forms, and so finding a point of repose amid the ceaseless flux of appearances (Abstraction and Empathy, p. 16 ) ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 493
The primordial images are, of course, just as much ideas as feelings. Fundamental ideas, ideas like God, freedom, and immortality, are just as much feeling-values as they are significant ideas. Everything, therefore, that we have said about introverted thinking is equally true of introverted feeling, only here everything is felt while there it was thought.
But the very fact that thoughts can generally be expressed more intelligibly than feelings demands a more than ordinary descriptive or artistic ability before the real wealth of this feeling can be even approximately presented or communicated to the world. If subjective thinking can be understood only with difficulty because of it unrelatedness, this is true in even higher degree of subjective feeling ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 639
Our life is indeed the same as it ever was. At all events, in our sense of the word it is not transitory; for the same physiological and psychological processes that have been man’s for hundreds of thousands of years still endure, instilling into our inmost hearts this profound intuition of the “eternal” continuity of the living.
But the self, as an inclusive term that embraces our whole living organism, not only contains the deposit and totality of all past life, but is also a point of departure, the fertile soil from which all future life will spring. This premonition of futurity is as clearly impressed upon our innermost feelings as is the historical aspect. The idea of immortality follows legitimately from these psychological premises. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 303
They [spirits] are objects of outward perception, whereas their own soul (or one of several souls where a plurality is assumed), though believed to be essentially akin to the spirits, is not usually an object of so-called sensible perception. After death the soul (or one of the plurality of souls) becomes a spirit which survives the dead man, and often it shows a marked deterioration of character that partly contradicts the notion of personal immortality ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 293
The Self, as an inclusive term that embraces our whole living organism, not only contains the deposit and totality of all past life, but is also a point of departure, the fertile soil from which all future life will spring. This premonition of futurity is as clearly impressed upon our innermost feelings as is the historical aspect. The idea of immortality follows legitimately from these psychological premises ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 303
Nothing endangers this connection more in a man than a successful life; it makes him forget his dependence on the unconscious. The case of Gilgamesh is instructive in this respect: he was so successful that the gods, the representatives of the unconscious, saw themselves compelled to deliberate how they could best bring about his downfall. Their efforts were unavailing at first, but when the hero had won the herb of immortality and was almost at his goal, a serpent stole the elixir of life from him while he slept ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 457