Barbara Hannah visits Bollingen
Toni paid back hospitality by asking Jung to invite me to Bollingen.
I was frankly terrified when I first arrived at the Tower.
It was very cold weather and Jung was cooking in his original round kitchen in a long Oriental robe which he often wore in cold weather.
He looked like a picture I had once seen of an old alchemist at work among his retorts.
He looked more whole than ever. . . . Toni, who was also staying there, just gave me some tea and told me to take a chair by the fire and watch Jung cook, then busied herself with fetching the things he asked for and her own jobs.
Jung was entirely engrossed in some absorbing cooking and in watching the fire.
(He was a most unusually good cook and used in those days to cook the most complicated dishes.
I remember one sauce with no fewer than sixteen ingredients!)
I did not yet know him well enough to feel it as a companionable silence (which I learned later to enjoy more than anything), so after two or three hours I took an opportunity, when he did not seem quite so engrossed to murmur: “I am scared stiff.”
Although only a faint amused smile indicated that he had even heard my remark, the ice was broken and I began to feel at home.
After a bit he gave me an aperitif. . . then I even got a small job or two to do, and finally we were ready to sit down at the round table.
The marvelous food and wine rapidly banished my fear, though I was fortunate enough still to say nothing, except for a few appreciative grunt-like murmurs while we were eating.
That was indeed fortunate because as I learned later Jung jung hated to talk while he was eating a really good meal.
(He used to quote his mother, who said that chattering was disrespectful to good food.)
The only remark I remember him making during that first meal was: “Oh, well, you already know how to enjoy your food, that is one thing (emphasis on the one!)
I shall not have to teach you!”~Barbara Hannah, “Jung”, Page 199.
Image:
Illustration from the Mutus Liber (Mutable Book), La Rochelle, 1677.
A couple kneels in prayer.
He is an alchemist; she is the soror mystica (sister in the mystery).
Like “an old alchemist,” Jung, in his Bollingen kitchen, concocted elaborate dishes from a variety of ingredients.
His guests often felt a touch of magic about their visit. ~Claire Dunne, Wounded Healer of the Soul, Page 108
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
Carl Jung on Bollingen. – Anthology
In Bollingen, silence surrounds me almost audibly, and I live “in modest harmony with nature.” Thoughts rise to the surface which reach back into the centuries, and accordingly anticipate a remote future. Here the torment of creation is lessened; creativity and play are close together. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 226.
I have appeared in the world, if that is good for me. My name enjoys an existence quasi-independent of myself. My real self is actually chopping wood in Bollingen and cooking the meals, trying to forget the trial of an eightieth birthday. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 270
After my wife’s death. . . I felt an inner obligation to become what I myself am. To put it in the language of the Bollingen house, I suddenly realized that the small central section which crouched so low, so hidden was myself! ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 225.
I observe myself in the stillness of Bollingen, with the experience of almost eight decades now, and I have to admit that I have found no plain answer to myself. ~Carl Jung, Jung Briefe, Page 386.
It (Bollingen Foundation) is a shining beacon in the darkness of the atomic age. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 150-151.
He felt the need to represent his innermost thoughts in stone and to build a completely primitive dwelling: “Bollingen was a great matter for me, because words and paper were not real enough. I had to put down a confession in stone.” ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xiii
Milk, as lac virginis, virgin’s milk, is a synonym for the aqua doctrinae one of the aspects of Mercurius, who had already bedeviled the Bollingen stones in the form of the trickster. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 615-616
