Carl Jung; Crucifixion and the Red Book:
Everything that becomes too old becomes evil, the same is true oj your highest. Learn from the suffering oj the crucified God that one can also betray and crucify a God, namely the God of the old year. If a God ceases being the way of life, he must fall secretly.
The God becomes sick if he oversteps the height of the zenith. That is why the spirit of the depths took me when the spirit of this time had led me to the summit. ~Carl Jung; Red Book
Salome says, “Mary was the mother of Christ, do you understand?”
I: “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?”
Salome: “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?”
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 I kneel at the feet of the prophet, whose form shines like a flame. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
81 awaken, the day reddens the East. A night, a wonderful night in the distant depths of time lies behind me. In what far-away space was I? What did I dream? Of a white horse? It seems to me as if I had seen this white horse on the Eastern sky over the rising sun. The horse spoke to me: What did it say?
It said: “Hail him who is in darkness since the day is over him.” There were four white horses, each with golden wings. They led the carriage of the sun, on which Helios stood with flaring mane. I stood down in the gorge, astonished and frightened. A thousand black serpents crawled swiftly into their holes. Helios ascended, rolling upward toward the wide paths of the sky: I knelt down, raised my hands suppliantly, and called: “Give us your light, you are flame-curled, entwined, crucified and revived; give us your light, your light!” This cry woke me. Didn’t Ammonius say yesterday evening: “Do not forget to say your morning prayer when the sun rises.” I thought that perhaps he secretly worships the sun. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
It is better to be thrown into visible chains than into invisible ones. You can certainly leave Christianity but it does not leave you. Your liberation from it is delusion. Christ is the way. You can certainly run away, but then you are no longer on the way. The way of Christ ends on the cross. Hence we are crucified with him in ourselves. With him, we wait until we die for our resurrection. With Christ the living experience no resurrection, unless it occurs after death. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
It belongs to the way of Christ that he ascends with few of the living, but many of the dead. His work was the salvation of the despised and lost, for whose salce he was crucified between two criminals. I suffer my agony between two madmen. I enter the truth if I descend. Become accustomed to being alone with the dead. It is difficult, but this is precisely how you will discover the worth of your living companions. ~Carl Jung; Red Book,
Just as Christ said that he did not come to make 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. 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. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
Truly; the way leads through the crucified, that means through him to whom it was no small thing to live his own life, and who was therefore raised to magnificence. He did not simply teach what was knowable and worth knowing, he lived it. It is unclear how great one’s humility must be to take it upon oneself to live one’s own life. The disgust of whoever wants to enter into his own life can hardly be measured. Aversion will sicken him. He makes himself vomit. His bowels pain him and his brain sinks into lassitude. He would rather devise any trick to help him escape, since nothing matches the torment of one’s own way. It seems impossibly difficult, so difficult that nearly anything seems preferable to this torment. Not a few choose even to love people
for fear of themselves. I believe, too, that some commit a crime to pick a quarrel with themselves. Therefore I cling to everything that obstructs my way to myself.
He who goes to himself climbs down. Pathetic and ridiculous forms appeared to the greatest prophet who came before this time, and these were the forms of his own essence. He did not accept them, but exorcised them before others. Ultimately; however, he was forced to celebrate a Last Supper with his own poverty and to accept these forms of his own essence out of compassion, which is precisely that acceptance of the lowest in us. But this enraged the mighty lion, who chased down the lost and restored it to the darkness of the depths. And like all those with power, the one with the great name wanted to erupt from the womb of the mountain like the sun. But what happened to him?
His way led him before the crucified and he began to rage. He raged against the man of mockery and pain because the power of his own essence forced him to follow precisely this way as Christ had done before us. Yet he loudly proclaimed his power and greatness. No one speaks louder of his power and greatness than he from whom the earth disappears under his feet. Ultimately the lowest in him got to him, his incapacity; and this crucified his spirit, so that, as he himself had predicted, his soul died before his body. ~Carl Jung; Red Book
I, to Salome: “I see, Salome, that you are still weeping. You are not yet done for. I hover and curse my hovering. I am hanging for your sake and for mine. First I was crucified, now I’m simply hanging-which is less noble, but no less agonizing. Forgive me, for wanting to do you in; I thought of saving you as I did when I healed your blindness through my self-sacrifice. Perhaps I must be decapitated a third time for your sake, like your earlier friend John, who brought us the Christ of agony. Are you insatiable? Do you still see no way to become reasonable?” ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
I: And the crown? Solve the riddle of the crown for me!”
Soul Bird: “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.”
Soul Bird: “What words did the crown bring you? “Love never ends”-that is the mystery of the crown and the serpent.” ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
I 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 of life.” ~Carl Jung Red Book.
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. And I called out:
“You know what has taken place. You see that it surpasses the power and understanding of a man. But I accept it for your sake and mine. To be crucified on the tree of life, Oh bitterness! Oh painful silence! If it weren’t you, my soul, who touched the fiery Heaven and the eternal fullness, how could I? ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
