Symbols of Transformation – Quotation Excerpts
Carl Jung: CW 5 “Symbols of Transformations”
The same is true of the religious attitude: it must be fully conscious of itself and of its foundations if it is to signify anything more than unconscious imitation. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 106
When the libido leaves the bright upper world, whether from choice, or from inertia, or from fate, it sinks back into its own depths, into the source from which it originally flowed, and returns to the point of cleavage, the navel, where it first entered the body. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 449
As most people know, one of the basic principles of analytical psychology is that dream-images are to be understood symbolically; that is to say, one must not take them literally, but must surmise a hidden meaning in them. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 4.
We must begin by overcoming our virtuousness, with the justifiable fear of falling into vice on the other side. This danger certainly exists, for the greatest virtuousness is always compensated inwardly by a strong tendency to vice, and how many vicious characters treasure inside themselves sugary virtues and a moral megalomania. Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 221
The psychic health of the adult individual, who in childhood was a mere particle revolving in a rotary system, demands that he should himself become the centre of a new system. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 644
But anyone who refuses to experience life must stifle his desire to live—in other words, he must commit partial suicide. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 165
That the highest summit of life can be expressed through the symbolism of death is a well-known fact, for any growing beyond oneself means death. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 432
I do not take kindly to the argument that because certain working hypotheses may not possess eternal validity or may possibly be erroneous, they must be withheld from the public. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 685
I do not regard the pursuit of science as a bickering about who is right, but as an endeavour to augment and deepen human knowledge. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 685
The world comes into being when man discovers it. But he only discovers it when he sacrifices his containment in the primal mother, the original state of unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 652
Fear of our erotic fate is quite understandable, for there is something unpredictable about it. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 101
Symbols are not allegories and not signs; they are images of contents which for the most part transcend consciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 114
The dream, we would say, originates in an unknown part of the psyche and prepares the dreamer for the events of the following day. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 5
One such successful interpretation has been, for instance, Mother Church, but once this form begins to show signs of age and decay a new interpretation becomes inevitable. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 351
The religious interest, which ought normally to be the greatest and most decisive factor, turned away from the inner world, and great figures of dogma dwindled to strange and incomprehensible vestiges, a prey to every sort of criticism. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 113.
One might expect, perhaps, that a man of genius would luxuriate in the greatness of his own thoughts and renounce the cheap approbation of the rabble he despises; yet he succumbs to the more powerful impulse of the herd instinct. His seeking and his finding, his heart’s cry, are meant for the herd and must be heeded by them. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 14
We quite forget that we can be as deplorably overcome by a virtue as by a vice. There is a sort of frenzied, orgiastic virtuousness which is just as infamous as a vice and leads to just as much injustice and violence. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 222
The wounding and painful shafts do not come from outside, through gossip which only pricks us only on the surface, but from the ambush of our own unconscious. It is our own repressed desires that stick like arrows in our flesh. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 438
Just as our bodies still retain vestiges of obsolete functions and conditions in many of their organs, so our minds, which have apparently outgrown those archaic impulses, still bear the marks of the evolutionary stages we have traversed, and re-echo the dim bygone in dreams and fantasies. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 36
Therefore the sun is perfectly suited to represent the visible God of this world, i.e., the creative power of our own soul, which we call libido, and whose nature it is to bring forth the useful and to bring forth the useful and the harmful, the good and the bad. ~Carl Jung; CW 5, Para 176.
It would be a ridiculous and unwarranted assumption on our part if we imagined that we were more energetic or more intelligent than the men of the past. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 23
We have become rich in knowledge, but poor in wisdom. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 23
One cannot please everybody, therefore it is better to be at peace with oneself. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 911
The psychic health of the adult individual, who in childhood was a mere particle revolving in a rotary system, demands that he should himself become the centre of a new system. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 644
It is “moral” repression that makes sexuality on the one hand dirty and hypocritical, and on the other shameless and blatant. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 295
The world comes into being when man discovers it. But he only discovers it when he sacrifices his containment in the primal mother, the original state of unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 652
We shall all be as good as dead one day, but in the interests of life we should postpone this moment as long as possible, and this we can only do by never allowing our picture of the world to become rigid. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 700
The world changes its face —tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis—for we can grasp the world only as a psychic image in ourselves, and it is not always easy to decide, when the image changes, whether the world or ourselves have changed, or both. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 700.
Purusha is evidently a sort of Platonic world-soul who surrounds the earth from outside: “Being born he overtopped the world before, behind, and in all places” ( Rig-Veda ) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 649
As the all-encompassing world-soul Purusha has a maternal character, for he represents the original “dawn state” of the psyche: he is the encompasser and the encompassed, mother and unborn child, an undifferentiated, unconscious state of primal being ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 650
As such a condition must be terminated, and as it is at the same time an object of regressive longing, it must be sacrificed in order that discriminated entities i.e., conscious contents may come into being. Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 650
The foregoing passage is very remarkable. If one attempted to put this mythologem on the Procrustean bed of logic sore violence would be done to it. How on earth ordinary “sages” come to be sacrificing the primal being side by side with the gods is an utterly fantastic conception, quite apart from the fact that in the beginning (i.e., before the sacrifice) nothing existed except the primal being! ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 651
But if this primal being [Purusha] means the great mystery of the original psychic state, then everything becomes clear: ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 651
It is evident that by this is meant not a physical, but a psychological cosmogony. The world comes into being when man discovers it. But he only discovers it when he sacrifices his containment in the primal mother, the original state of unconsciousness Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 652
The intellect is its progenitor and father, and what the intellect conceives the world-soul brings to birth in reality. “What lies enclosed in the intellect comes to birth in the world-soul as Logos, fills it with meaning and makes it drunken as if with nectar” ( Plotinus, Enneads, III, 5, 9. ) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 198
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
Certain early Christian sects gave a maternal significance to the Holy Ghost (world-soul or moon) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 198
But, on the other hand, “love” is an extreme example of anthropomorphism and, together with hunger, the immemorial psychic driving-force of humanity ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 97
Love is, psychologically considered, a function of relationship on the one hand and a feeling-toned psychic condition on the other, which, as we have seen, practically coincides with the God-image ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 97
There can be no doubt that love has an instinctual determinant; it is an activity peculiar to mankind, and, if the language of religion defines God as “love,” there is always the great danger of confusing the love which works in man with the workings of God ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 97
This is an obvious instance of the above-mentioned fact that the archetype is inextricably interwoven with the individual psyche, so that the greatest care is needed to differentiate the collective type, at least conceptually, from the personal psyche ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 97
In practice, however, this differentiation is not without danger if human “love” is thought of as the prerequisite for the divine presence ( I John 4:12 ) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 97
“Love,” in the experience of psychology, proves to be the power of fate par excellence, whether it manifests itself as base concupiscentia or as the most spiritual affection. It is one of the mightiest movers of humanity ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 98
If it is conceived as “divine,” this designation falls to it with absolute right, since the mightiest force in the psyche has always been described as “God.” Whether we believe in God or not, whether we marvel or curse, the word “God” is always on our lips ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 98
Anything psychically powerful is invariably called “God.” At the same time “God” is set over against man and expressly set apart from him ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 98
This means, psychologically, that the libido, regarded as the force of desire and aspiration, as psychic energy in the widest sense, stands in part at the disposal of the ego, and in part confronts the ego autonomously, sometimes influencing it so powerfully that it is either put in a position of unwilling constraint, or else discovers in the libido itself a new and unexpected source of strength ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 98
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 CW5 ¶ 246
Soma and fire are identical in Vedic literature. The ancient Hindus saw fire both as a symbol of Agni and as an emanation of the inner libido-fire, and for them the same psychic dynamism was at work in the intoxicating drink (“fire-water,” Soma-Agni as rain and fire). The Vedic definition of soma as “seminal fluid” confirms this view ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 246
`The “somatic” significance of Agni has its parallel in the Christian interpretation of the Eucharistic Blood as the body of Christ ~Carl Jung, 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
The Sanskrit word for fire is agnis (Lat. ignis), personified as Agni, the god of fire, a divine mediator whose symbolism has certain affinities with Christian ideas CW 5 ¶ 239
Agni, fire, was worshipped as a golden-winged bird ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 271
After the birth of Buddha, the four genies of the East, West, North, and South come to offer their services as palanquin-bearers. To complete the symbolism, there is in the Buddha myth, besides the fertilization by star and wind, fertilization by a theriomorphic symbol, the elephant, who, as Bodhisattva, begets the Buddha. In Christian picture-language the unicorn, as well as the dove, is a symbol of the spermatic Word or Spirit ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Ser: 1
As Otto Rank has shown with a wealth of examples, the hero is frequently exposed and then reared by foster-parents. In this way he gets two mothers ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 494
An excellent example of this is the relation of Heracles to Hera. In the Hiawatha epic, Wenonah dies after giving birth, and her place is taken by Nokomis. Buddha, too, was brought up by a foster-mother ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 494
The foster-mother is sometimes an animal, e.g., the she-wolf mother of Romulus and Remus, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 494
The hero’s father is often a master carpenter or some kind of artisan. According to an Arabian legend, Terah, the father of Abraham, was a master craftsman who could cut a shaft from any bit of wood, which means in Arabic usage that he was a begetter of excellent sons. In addition, he was a maker of images ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 515
The light and fire attributes depict the intensity of the feeling-tone and are therefore expressions for the psychic energy which manifests itself as libido ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 128
If one worships God, sun, or fire, one is worshipping intensity and power, in other words the phenomenon of psychic energy as such, the libido. Every force and every phenomenon is a special form of energy ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 128
Form is both an image and a mode of manifestation. It expresses two things: the energy which takes shape in it, and the medium in which that energy appears. On the one hand one can say that energy creates its own image, and on the other hand that the character of the medium forces it into a definite form ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 128
One man will derive the idea of God from the sun, another will maintain that it is the numinous feelings it arouses which give the sun its godlike significance. The former, by attitude and temperament, believes more in the causal nexus of the environment, the latter more in the spontaneity of psychic experience ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 128
Since, psychologically speaking, the God-image is a complex of ideas of an archetypal nature, it must necessarily be regarded as representing a certain sum of energy (libido) which appears in projection ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 89
In most of the existing religions it seems that the formative factor which creates the attributes of divinity is the father-imago, while in older religions it was the mother-imago. These attributes are omnipotence, a sternly persecuting paternalism ruling through fear (Old Testament), and loving paternalism (New Testament) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 89
In certain pagan conceptions of divinity the maternal element is strongly emphasized, and there is also a wide development of the animal or theriomorphic element. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 89
The God-concept is not only an image, but an elemental force. The primitive power which Job’s Hymn of Creation vindicates, absolute and inexorable, unjust and superhuman, is a genuine and authentic attribute of the natural power of instinct and fate which “leads us into life,” which makes “all the world become guilty before God” ( Romans 3 : 19 ), and against which all struggle is in vain. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 89
The Judas legend is itself a typical motif, namely that of the mischievous betrayal of the hero. One is reminded of Siegfried and Hagen, Baldur and Loki: Siegfried and Baldur were both murdered by a perfidious traitor from among their closest associates ~Carl Jung, CW 5. Para 42
This myth is moving and tragic, because the noble hero is not felled in a fair fight but through treachery ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 42
At the same time it is an event that was repeated many times in history, for instance in the case of Caesar and Brutus. Through the myth is extremely old it is still a subject for repetition, as it expresses the simple fact that envy does not let mankind sleep in peace ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 42
This rule can be applied to the mythological tradition in general: it does not perpetuate accounts of ordinary everyday events in the past, but only of those which express the universal and ever-renewed thoughts of mankind ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 42
Thus the lives and deeds of the culture-heroes and founders of religions are the purest condensations of typical mythological motifs, behind which the individual figures entirely disappear ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 42
The archetype of the wise old man first appears in the father, being a personification of meaning and spirit in its procreative sense ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 515
The hero’s father is often a master carpenter or some kind of artisan. According to an Arabian legend, Terah, the father of Abraham, was a master craftsman who could cut a shaft from any bit of wood, which means in Arabic usage that he was a begetter of excellent sons. In addition, he was a maker of images ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 515
Tvashtri, the father of Agni, was the cosmic architect, a smith and carpenter, and the inventor of fire-boring ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 515
Joseph, the father of Jesus, was a carpenter, and so was Cinyras, the father of Adonis, who was supposed to have invented the hammer, the lever, roof-building and mining ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 515
The father of the many-faced Hermes, Hephaestus, was a cunning technician and sculptor `Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 515
In fairytales, the hero’s father is, more modestly, the traditional woodcutter ~Carl Jung, CW 5 ¶ 515
In the Rig-Veda the world is hewn from a tree by the cosmic architect, Tvashtri CW 5, Para 515
To say that Hiawatha’s father-in-law was an arrowsmith means, therefore, that the mythological attribute otherwise characteristic of the hero’s father has been transferred to the father-in-law. This corresponds to the psychological fact that the anima always stands in the relationship of a daughter to the wise old man. Nor is it uncommon to find the father-in-law so much emphasized that he replaces the real father ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 515
Finally, father-attributes may occasionally fall to the son himself, i.e., when it has become apparent that he is of one nature with the father. The hero symbolizes a man’s unconscious Self, and this manifests itself empirically as the sum total of all archetypes and therefore includes the archetype of the father and of the wise old man. To that extent the hero is his own father and his own begetter ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 516
This combination of motifs can be found in the legend of Mani. He performs his great deeds as a religious teacher, then goes into hiding for years in a cave, dies, and is skinned, stuffed, and hung up. Besides that, he is an artist and has a crippled foot. There is a similar combination of motifs in Wieland the Smith ~Carl Jung, CW 5. Para 516
The hero himself appears as a being of more than human stature. He is distinguished from the very beginning by his godlike characteristics ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 612
Since he is psychologically an archetype of the Self, his divinity only confirms that the Self is numinous, a sort of god, or having some share in the divine nature ~Carl Jung, CW5, Para 612
The hero is the protagonist of God’s transformation in man; he corresponds to what I call the “mana personality.” The mana personality has such an immense fascination for the conscious mind that the ego all too easily succumbs to the temptation to identify with the hero, thus bringing on a psychic inflation with all its consequences. For this reason the repugnance felt by certain ecclesiastical circles for the “inner Christ” is understandable enough, at least as a preventive measure against the danger of psychic inflation which threatens the Christian European ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 612
Heroes are usually wanderers, and wandering is a symbol of longing, of the restless urge which never finds its object, of nostalgia for the lost mother. The sun comparison can easily be taken in this sense: the heroes are like the wandering sun, from which it is concluded that the myth of the hero is a solar myth ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 299
It seems to us, rather, that he is first and foremost a self-representation of the longing of the unconscious, of its unquenched and unquenchable desire for the light of consciousness. But consciousness, continually in danger of being led astray by its own light and of becoming a rootless will o’ the wisp, longs for the healing power of nature, for the deep wells of being and for unconscious communion with life in all its countless forms ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 299
It is not man as such who has to be regenerated or born again as a renewed whole, but, according to the statements of mythology, it is the hero or god who rejuvenates himself. These figures are generally expressed or characterized by libido-symbols (light, fire, sun, etc.), so that it looks as if they represented psychic energy. They are, in fact, personifications of the libido ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 388
The hero is a hero just because he sees resistance to the forbidden goal in all life’s difficulties and yet fights that resistance with the whole-hearted yearning that strives towards the treasure hard to attain, and perhaps unattainablea yearning that paralyses and kills the ordinary man ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 510
The hero is an extraordinary being who is inhabited by a daemon, and it is this that makes him a hero. That is why the mythological statements about heroes are so typical and so impersonal ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 536
The treasure which the hero fetches from the dark cavern is life: it is himself, new-born from the dark maternal cave of the unconscious where he was stranded by the introversion or regression of libido. Hence the Hindu fire-bringer is called Matarisvan, he who swells in the mother. The hero who clings to the mother is the dragon, and when the hero is reborn from the mother he becomes the conqueror of the dragon (fig. 258.59a) ~Carl Jung, CW 5. Para 580
He [the hero] shares this paradoxical nature with the snake. According to Philo the snake is the most spiritual of all creatures; it is of a fiery nature, and its swiftness is terrible. It has a long life and sloughs off old age with its skin. In actual fact the snake is a cold-blooded creature, unconscious and unrelated. It is both toxic and prophylactic, equally a symbol of the good and bad daemon (the Agathodaimon), of Christ and the devil. Among the Gnostics it was regarded as an emblem of the brain-stem and spinal cord, as is consistent with its predominantly reflex psyche. It is an excellent symbol for the unconscious, perfectly expressing the latter’s sudden and unexpected manifestations, its painful and dangerous intervention in our affairs, and its frightening effects ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 580
Taken purely as a psychologem the hero represents the positive, favourable action of the unconscious, while the dragon is its negative and unfavourable actionnot birth, but a devouring; not a beneficial and constructive deed, but greedy retention and destruction. (cf. fig. 035) and (fig. 030) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 580
The hero who sets himself the task of renewing the world and conquering death personifies the world-creating power which, brooding on itself in introversion, coiled round its own egg like a snake, threatens life with its poisonous bite, so that the living may die and be born again from the darkness ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 592
The hero is himself the snake, himself the sacrificer and the sacrificed, which is why Christ rightly compares himself with the healing Moses-serpent (fig. 258.09b) and why the saviour of the Christian Ophites was a serpent, too. It is both Agathodaimon (fig. 037) and Cacodaimon. In German legend we are told that the heroes have snake’s eyes ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 593
He is the one who has the great longing for an understanding soul-mate ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 465
He is the seeker who survives the adventures which the conscious personality studiously avoids ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 465
He it is who, with a magnificent gesture, offers his breast to the slings and arrows of a hostile world, and displays the courage which is so sadly lacking to the conscious mind ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 465
He is the measure against which the man who comes in contact with such a women is compared with, being relentlessly set up as the ideal who receives direct punishment from her should he ever be otherwise `Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 465
The animus, a typical “son”-hero,true to his ancient prototype, is seeking the mother. This youthful hero is always the son-lover of the mother-goddess and is doomed to an early death (fig. 020) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 466
The libido that will not flow into life at the right time regresses to the mythical world of the archetypes, where it activates images which, since the remotest times, have expressed the non-human life of the gods, whether of the upper world or the lower ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 466
He is therefore sure of his success and cuts out all possible rivals. He wins the soul of the dreamer, not in order to lead her back to normal life, but to her spiritual destiny ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 468
For he is a bridegroom of death, one of the son-lovers who die young because they have no life of their own but are only fast-fading flowers on the maternal tree. Their meaning and their vitality begin and end in the mother-goddess ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 468
The answer to this question is that the hero is not born like an ordinary mortal because his birth is a rebirth from the mother-wife. That is why the hero so often has two mothers ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 494
One would think it possible for a hero to be born in the normal manner, and then gradually to grow out of his humble and homely surroundings, perhaps with a great effort and in face of many dangers. (This motif is by no means uncommon in the hero-myths) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 493
As a general rule, however, the story of his origins is miraculous. The singular circumstances of his procreation and birth are part and parcel of the hero-myth. What is the reason for these beliefs? ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 493
As Rank ( The Myth of the Birth of the Hero ), has shown with a wealth of examples, the hero is frequently exposed and then reared by foster-parents. In this way he gets two mothers ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 494
An excellent example of this is the relation of Heracles to Hera. In the Hiawatha epic, Wenonah dies after giving birth, and her place is taken by Nokomis. Buddha, too, was brought up by a foster-mother ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 494
The foster-mother is sometimes an animal, e.g., the she-wolf mother of Romulus and Remus, etc. (fig. 258.02) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 494
The world is not a garden of God the Father, it is also a place of horror. Not only is heaven no father and earth no mother and men are not brothers, but they represent as many hostile destructive forces to which we are the more surely delivered over the more confidently and thoughtlessly we entrust ourselves to the so-called fatherly hand of God. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 224
Nothing remains for mankind but to work in harmony with this will. To work in harmony with the libido does not mean letting oneself drift with it, for the psychic forces have no uniform direction, but are often directly opposed to one another. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 89
A mere letting go of oneself leads in the shortest space of time to the most hopeless confusion. It is often difficult, if not impossible, to feel the ground current and to know the true direction; at any rate collisions, conflicts, and mistakes are scarcely avoidable. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 89
We thus arrive at the objectionable conclusion that, from the psychological point of view, the God-image is a real but subjective phenomenon. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 129
As Seneca says: “God is near you, he is with you, he is within you,” or, as in the First Epistle of John, “He who does not love does not know God; for God is love,” and “If we love one another, God abides in us” ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 129
To anyone who understands libido merely as the psychic energy over which he has conscious control, the religious relationship, as we have defined it, is bound to appear as a ridiculous game of hide-and-seek with oneself. But it is rather a question of the energy which belongs to the archetype, to the unconscious, and which is therefore not his to dispose of. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 130
This “game with oneself” is anything but ridiculous; on the contrary, it is extremely important. To carry a god around in yourself means a great deal; it is guarantee of happiness, or power, and even of omnipotence, in so far as these are attributes of divinity. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 130
To carry a god within oneself is practically the same as being God oneself. In Christianity, despite the weeding out of the most grossly sensual ideas and symbols, we can still find traces of this psychology. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 130
The idea of “becoming a god” is even more obvious in the pagan mystery cults, where the neophyte, after initiation, is himself lifted up to divine status: at the conclusion of the consecration rites in the syncretistic Isis mysteries he was crowned with a crown of palm leaves, set up on a pedestal, and worshipped as Helios. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 130
When man becomes God, his importance and power are enormously increased. That seems to have been its main purpose: to strengthen the individual against his all-too-human weakness and insecurity in personal life. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 134
But the strengthening of his power-consciousness is only the outward effect of his becoming God; far more important are the deeper lying processes in the realm of feeling. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 134
For whoever introverts libido, i.e., withdraws it from the external object, suffers the necessary consequences of introversion: the libido which is turned inwards, into the subject, reverts to the individual past and digs up from the treasure-house of memory those images glimpsed long ago, which bring back the time when the world was a full and rounded whole. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 134
First and foremost are the memories of childhood, among them the imagos of father and mother. These are unique and imperishable, and in adult life not many difficulties are needed to reawaken those memories and make them active. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 134
The regressive reactivation of the father and mother imagos plays an important role in religion. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 134
The benefits of religion are equivalent, in their effects, to the parental care lavished upon the child, and religious feelings are rooted in unconscious memories of certain tender emotions in early infancy memories of archetypal intuitions. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 134
The sun is the only truly “rational” image of God, whether we adopt the standpoint of the primitive savage or of modern science ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 176
In either case the sun is the father-god from whom all living things draw life; he is the fructifier and creator, the source of energy for our world. ~Carl Jung, CW 5. Para 176
The discord into which the human soul has fallen can be harmoniously resolved through the sun as a natural object which knows no inner conflict. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 176
The sun is not only beneficial, but also destructive; hence the zodiacal sign for August heat is the ravaging lion which Samson slew in order to rid the parched earth of its torment. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 176
Samson as a sun-god. The killing of the lion, like the Mithraic bull-sacrifice, is an anticipation of the god’s self-sacrifice. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 176
Yet it is the nature of the sun to scorch, and its scorching power seems natural to man. It shines equally on the just and the unjust, and allows useful creatures to flourish as well as the harmful. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 176
Therefore the sun is perfectly suited to represent the visible God of this world, i.e., the creative power of our own soul, which we call libido, and whose nature it is to bring forth the useful and the harmful, the good and the bad. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 176
Agni is the sacrificial flame, the sacrificer and the sacrificed ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 246
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 CW5 ¶ 246
Soma and fire are identical in Vedic literature. The ancient Hindus saw fire both as a symbol of Agni and as an emanation of the inner libido-fire, and for them the same psychic dynamism was at work in the intoxicating drink (“fire-water,” Soma-Agni as rain and fire). The Vedic definition of soma as “seminal fluid” confirms this view ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 246
`The “somatic” significance of Agni has its parallel in the Christian interpretation of the Eucharistic Blood as the body of Christ ~Carl Jung, 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
The Sanskrit word for fire is agnis (Lat. ignis), personified as Agni, the god of fire, a divine mediator whose symbolism has certain affinities with Christian ideas CW5 ¶ 239
Agni, fire, was worshipped as a golden-winged bird ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 271
The chthonic god was in all probability a snake that was housed in a cave and was fed with(fig. 258.57b) . In the Asclepieia of the later period the sacred snakes were hardly ever visible, so they may have existed only figuratively ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 577
Nothing was left but the hole in which the snake was said to dwell. There the honey cakes were placed and the obolus thrown in. The sacred cave in the temple at Cos consisted of a rectangular pit covered by a stone slab with a square hole in it ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 577
This arrangement served the purpose of a treasure-house: the snake-pit had become a slot for money, a “poor-box,” and the cave a “hoard.” That this development is fully in accord with the archaeological evidence is proved by a discovery in the temple of Aesculapius and Hygeia at Ptolemaïs ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 577
Here the serpent lies on the treasury as protector of the hoard. Fear of the deadly maternal womb has become the guardian of the treasure of life. That the snake really is a death-symbol is evident from the fact that the souls of the dead, like the chthonic gods, appear as serpents, as dwellers in the kingdom of the deadly mother ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 578
Thus the crevice at Delphi with the Castalian spring was the habitation of the chthonic Python who was vanquished by the sun-hero Apollo. The Python, incited by Hera, had pursued Apollo’s mother, Leto, when he was still in her womb; but she fled to the floating island of Delos on a “night sea journey” and was there safely delivered of her child, who later slew the Python ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 577
In Hierapolis (Edessa) a temple was built over the earth where the flood subsided, and in Jerusalem the foundation-stone of the temple was laid over the great abyss, in the same way that Christian churches are often built over caves, grottoes, wells, etc. ~Carl Jung, CW 5. Para 577
We find the same motif in the Grotto of Mithras and the various other cave-cults, including the Christian catacombs, which owe their importance not to legendary persecutions but to the cult of the dead ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 577
Even the burial of the dead in consecrated ground (“garden of the dead,” cloisters, crypts, etc.) is a rendering back to the mother with the hope of resurrection which such burials presuppose ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 577
Hence the Attic custom of giving the dead man the(same as, honey-cakes), with which to pacify the hound of hell, the three-headed monster guarding the door of the underworld ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 577
I have had occasion to observe, in the course of my daily professional work [that… ] a dream, often of visionary clarity, occurs about the time of the onset of the illness or shortly before, which imprints itself indelibly on the mind and, when analyzed, reveals to the patient a hidden meaning that anticipates the subsequent events of his life. ~Carl Jung; CW 5; para 78
A substitute for the gifts seems to have been the obolus given to Charon, which is why Rohde calls him the second Cerberus, akin to the jackal-headed Anubis of the Egyptians. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 577
The dog and the underworld serpent are identical. In the Greek tragedies the Erinyes are serpents as well as dogs; the monsters Typhon and Echidna are parents of the Hydra, of the dragon of the Hesperides, and of the Gorgon; they also spawned the dogs Cerberus, Orthros, and Scylla. Snakes and dogs are guardians of the treasure ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 577
It is hard to believe that this teeming world is too poor to provide an object for human love – it offers boundless opportunities to everyone. It is rather the inability to love which robs a person of these opportunities. The world is empty only to him who does not know how to direct his libido towards things and people, and to render them alive and beautiful. What compels us to create a substitute from within ourselves is not an external lack, but our own inability to include anything outside ourselves in our love. Certainly the difficulties and adversities of the struggle for existence may oppress us, yet even the worst conditions need not hinder love; on the contrary, they often spur us on to greater efforts. Carl Jung, CW 5, 253.
We have, therefore, two kinds of thinking: directed thinking, and dreaming or fantasy-thinking. The former operates with speech elements for the purpose of communication, and is difficult and exhausting; the latter is effortless, working as it were spontaneously, with the contents ready to hand, and guided by unconscious motives. The one produces innovations and adaptation, copies reality, and tries to act upon it; the other turns away from reality, sets free subjective tendencies, and, as regards adaptation, is unproductive ~Carl Jung, CW 5, para. 20.
What he is describing here is the libido, which is not only creative and procreative, but possesses an intuitive faculty, a strange power to “smell the right place,” almost as if it were a live creature with an independent life of its own (which is why it is so easily personified). It is purposive, like sexuality itself, a favorite object of comparison. ~Carl Jung; CW 5, Para. 182.
The sun is not only beneficial, but also destructive; hence the zodiacal sign for August heat is the ravaging lion which Samson slew in order to rid the parched earth of its torment. Yet it is in the nature of the sun to scorch, and its scorching power seems natural to man. It shines equally on the just and the unjust, and allows useful creatures to flourish as well as the harmful. ~Carl Jung; CW 5, para 176.
Numerous mythological and philosophical attempts have been made to formulate and visualize the creative force which man knows only by subjective experience. To give but a few examples, I would remind the reader of the cosmogonic significance of Eros in Hesiod, and also of the Orphic figure of Phanes, the ‘Shining One,’ the first-born, the ‘Father of Eros.’ In Orphic terms, Phanes also denotes Priapos, a god of love, androgynous, and equal to the Theban Dionysus Lysios. The Orphic meaning of Phanes is the same as that of the Indian Kama, the God of love, which is also a cosmogonic principle. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, para. 198.
It is hard to believe that this teeming world is too poor to provide an object for human love—it offers boundless opportunities to everyone. It is rather the inability to love which robs a person of these opportunities. The world is empty only to him who does not know how to direct his libido towards things and people, and to render them alive and beautiful. What compels us to create a substitute from within ourselves is not an external lack, but our own inability to include anything outside ourselves in our love. Certainly the difficulties and adversities of the struggle for existence may oppress us, yet even the worst conditions need not hinder love; on the contrary, they often spur us on to greater efforts. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 253
Our civilization enormously underestimates the importance of sexuality, but just because of the repressions imposed upon it, sexuality breaks through into every conceivable field where it does not belong, and uses such an indirect mode of expression that we may expect to meet it all of a sudden practically everywhere. Thus the very idea of an intimate understanding of the human psyche, which is actually a very pure and beautiful thing, becomes besmirched and perversely distorted by the intrusion of an indirect sexual meaning. A direct and spontaneous expression of sexuality is a natural occurrence and, as such, never ugly or repulsive. It is “moral” repression that makes sexuality on the one hand dirty and hypocritical, and on the other shameless and blatant. This secondary significance, or rather the misuse which the repressed and suborned sexuality makes of the highest psychic functions, gives certain of our opponents an opportunity to sniff out the prurient eroticism of the confessional in psychoanalysis. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 295
An individual is infantile because he has freed himself insufficiently, or not at all, from his childish environment and his adaptation to his parents, with the result that he has a false reaction to the world on the one hand he reacts as a child towards his parents, always demanding love and immediate emotional rewards, while on the other hand he is so identified with his parents through his close ties with them that he behaves like his father or his mother. He is incapable of living his own life and finding the character that belongs to him. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 431
It is not possible to live too long amid infantile surroundings, or in the bosom of the family, without endangering one’s psychic health. Life calls us forth to independence, and anyone who does not heed this call because of childish laziness or timidity is threatened with neurosis. And once this has broken out, it becomes an increasingly valid reason for running away from life and remaining forever in the morally poisonous atmosphere of infancy. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 461
If we wish to stay on the heights we have reached, we must struggle all the time to consolidate our consciousness and its attitude. But we soon discover that this praiseworthy and apparently unavoidable battle with the years leads to stagnation and desiccation of soul. Our convictions become platitudes ground out on a barrel-organ, our ideals become starchy habits, enthusiasm stiffens into automatic gestures. The source of the water of life seeps away. We ourselves may not notice it, but everybody else does, and that is even more painful. If we should risk a little introspection, coupled perhaps with an energetic attempt to be honest for once with ourselves, we may get a dim idea of all the wants, longings, and fears that have accumulated down there—a repulsive and sinister sight. The mind shies away, but life wants to flow down into the depths. Fate itself seems to preserve us from this, for each of us has a tendency to become an immovable pillar of the past. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 553
For all these things have taken on shape, and all shapes are worn thin by the working of time; they age, sicken, crumble to dust—unless they change. But change they can, for the invisible spark that generated them is potent enough for infinite generation. No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need risk it, but it is certain that some will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent; the vanishing shapes are shaped anew, and a truth is valid in the end only if it suffers change and bears witness in new images, in new tongues, like a new wine that is put into new bottles. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 553
Nature has the primary claim on mankind, and only long after that comes the luxury of reason. The medieval ideal of a life lived for death should gradually be replaced by a more natural attitude to life, in which the natural claims of man are fully acknowledged, so that the desires of the animal sphere need no longer drag down the higher values of the spiritual sphere in order to be able to function at all. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 295
What aroused a feeling of horror in the Greeks still remains true, but it is true for us only if we give up the vain illusion that we are different, i.e., morally better, than the ancients. We have merely succeeded in forgetting that an indissoluble link binds us to the men of antiquity. This truth opens the way to an understanding of the classical spirit such as has never existed before—the way of inner sympathy on the one hand and of intellectual comprehension on the other. By penetrating into the blocked subterranean passages of our own psyches we grasp the living meaning of classical civilization, and at the same time we establish a firm foothold outside our own culture from which alone it is possible to gain an objective understanding of its foundations. That at least is the hope we draw from the rediscovery of the immortality of the Oedipus problem. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para i
People who strive to be excessively ethical, who always think, feel, and act altruistically and idealistically, avenge themselves for their intolerable ideals by a subtly planned maliciousness, of which they are naturally not conscious as such, but which leads to misunderstandings and unhappy situations. All these difficulties appear to them as “especially unfortunate circumstances,” or the fault and the malice of other people, or as tragic complications. Consciously they imagine they are rid of the conflict, but it is still there, unseen, to be stumbled over at every step. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 62
The essential thing is that we should be able to stand up to our judgment of ourselves. From outside this attitude looks like self-righteousness, but it is so only if we are incapable of criticizing ourselves. If we can exercise self-criticism, criticism from outside will affect us only on the outside and not pierce to the heart, for we feel that we have a sterner critic within us than any who could judge us from without. And anyway, there are as many opinions as there are heads to think them. We come to realize that our own judgment has as much value as the judgment of others. One cannot please everybody, therefore it is better to be at peace with oneself. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 911
All through our lives we possess, side by side with our newly acquired directed and adapted thinking, a fantasy thinking which corresponds to the antique state of mind. Just as our bodies still retain vestiges of obsolete functions and conditions in many of their organs, so our minds, which have apparently outgrown those archaic impulses, still bear the marks of the evolutionary stages we have traversed, and re-echo the dim bygone in dreams and fantasies. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 36
It would be a ridiculous and unwarranted assumption on our part if we imagined that we were more energetic or more intelligent than the men of the past. Our material knowledge has increased, but not our intelligence. This means that we are just as bigoted in regard to new ideas, and just as impervious to them, as people were in the darkest days of antiquity. We have become rich in knowledge, but poor in wisdom. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 23
The world changes its face —tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis—for we can grasp the world only as a psychic image in ourselves, and it is not always easy to decide, when the image changes, whether the world or ourselves have changed, or both. The picture of the world can change at any time, just as our conception of ourselves changes. Every new discovery, every new thought, can put a new face on the world. We must be prepared for this, else we suddenly find ourselves in an antiquated world, itself a relic of lower levels of consciousness. We shall all be as good as dead one day, but in the interests of life we should postpone this moment as long as possible, and this we can only do by never allowing our picture of the world to become rigid. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 700
If we do not fashion for ourselves a picture of the world, we do not see ourselves either, who are the faithful reflections of that world. Only when mirrored in our picture of the world can we see ourselves in the round. Only in our creative acts do we step forth into the light and see ourselves whole and complete. Never shall we put any face on the world other than our own, and we have to do this precisely in order to find ourselves. For higher than science or art as an end in itself stands man, the creator of his instruments. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 737
In the same way one can withhold the material content of primitive myths from a child but not take from him the need for mythology, and still less his ability to manufacture it for himself. One could almost say that if all the world’s traditions were cut off at a single blow, the whole of mythology and the whole history of religion would start all over again with the next generation. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 30
The conscious mind must have reason, firstly to discover some order in the chaos of disorderly individual events occurring in the world, and secondly to create order, at least in human affairs. We are moved by the laudable and useful ambition to extirpate the chaos of the irrational both within and without to the best of our ability. Apparently the process has gone pretty far. As a mental patient once told me: “Doctor, last night I disinfected the whole heavens with bichloride of mercury, but I found no God.” Something of the sort has happened to us as well. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 104A
The myth of the hero … is first and foremost a self-representation of the longing of the unconscious, of its unquenched and unquenchable desire for the light of consciousness. But consciousness, continually in danger of being led astray by its own light and of becoming a rootless will o’the wisp, longs for the healing power of nature, for the deep wells of being and for unconscious communion with life in all its countless forms. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 299
People often behave as if they did not rightly understand what constitutes the destructive character of the creative force. A woman who gives herself up to passion, particularly under present-day civilized conditions, experiences this all too soon. We must think a little beyond the framework of purely bourgeois moral conditions to understand the feeling of boundless uncertainty which befalls the man who gives himself over unconditionally to fate. Even to be fruitful is to destroy oneself, for with the creation of a new generation the previous generation has passed beyond its climax. Our off spring thus become our most dangerous enemies, with whom we cannot get even, for they will survive us and so inevitably will take the power out of our weakening hands. Fear of our erotic fate is quite understandable, for there is something unpredictable about it. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 101
Fear of fate is a very understandable phenomenon, for it is incalculable, immeasurable, full of unknown dangers. The perpetual hesitation of the neurotic to launch out into life is readily explained by his desire to stand aside so as not to get involved in the dangerous struggle for existence. But anyone who refuses to experience life must stifle his desire to live—in other words, he must commit partial suicide. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 165
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
The sun, rising triumphant, tears himself from the enveloping womb of the sea, and leaving behind him the noonday zenith and all its glorious works, sinks down again into the maternal depths, into all-enfolding and all regenerating night. This image is undoubtedly a primordial one, and there was profound justification for its becoming a symbolical expression of human fate: in the morning of life the son tears himself loose from the mother, from the domestic hearth, to rise through battle to his destined heights. Always he imagines his worst enemy in front of him, yet he carries the enemy within himself—a deadly longing for the abyss, a longing to drown in his own source, to be sucked down to the realm of the Mothers. His life is a constant struggle against extinction, a violent yet fleeting deliverance from ever-lurking night. This death is no external enemy, it is his own inner longing for the stillness and profound peace of all-knowing non-existence, for all-seeing sleep in the ocean of coming-to-be and passing away. Even in his highest strivings for harmony and balance, for the profundities of philosophy and the raptures of the artist, he seeks death, immobility, satiety, rest. If, like Peirithous, he tarries too long in this abode of rest and peace, he is overcome by apathy, and the poison of the serpent paralyses him for all time. If he is to live, he must fight and sacrifice his longing for the past in order to rise to his own heights. And having reached the noonday heights, he must sacrifice his love for his own achievement, for he may not loiter. The sun, too, sacrifices its greatest strength in order to hasten onward to the fruits of autumn, which are the seeds of rebirth. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 553
When the libido leaves the bright upper world, whether from choice, or from inertia, or from fate, it sinks back into its own depths, into the source from which it originally flowed, and returns to the point of cleavage, the navel, where it first entered the body. This point of cleavage is called the mother, because from her the current of life reached us. Whenever some great work is to be accomplished, before which a man recoils, doubtful of his strength, his libido streams back to the fountainhead—and that is the dangerous moment when the issue hangs between annihilation and new life. For if the libido gets stuck in the wonderland of this inner world, then for the upper world man is nothing but a shadow, he is already moribund or at least seriously ill. But if the libido manages to tear itself loose and force its way up again, something like a miracle happens: the journey to the underworld was a plunge into the fountain of youth, and the libido, apparently dead, wakes to renewed fruitfulness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 449
To the degree that the modern mind is passionately concerned with anything and everything rather than religion, religion and its prime object—original sin—have mostly vanished into the unconscious. That is why, today, nobody believes in either. People accuse psychology of dealing in squalid fantasies, and yet even a cursory glance at ancient religions and the history of morals should be sufficient to convince them of the demons hidden in the human soul. This disbelief in the devilishness of human nature goes hand in hand with a blank incomprehension of religion and its meaning. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 106
At a time when a large part of mankind is beginning to discard Christianity, it may be worth our while to try to understand why it was accepted in the first place. It was accepted as a means of escape from the brutality and unconsciousness of the ancient world. As soon as we discard it, the old brutality returns in force, as has been made overwhelmingly clear by contemporary events. . . . We have had bitter experience of what happens when a whole nation finds the moral mask too stupid to keep up. The beast breaks loose, and a frenzy of demoralization sweeps over the civilized world. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 341
The conflict between horse and snake or bull and snake represents a conflict within the libido itself, a striving forward and backwards at one and the same time.It is as if the libido were not only a ceaseless forward movement, an unending will for life, evolution, creation, such as Schopenhauer envisaged in his cosmic Will, where death is a mishap or fatality coming from outside; like the sun, the libido also wills its own descent, its own involution. During the first half of life it strives for growth; during the second half, softly at first and then ever more perceptibly, it points towards an altered goal. And just as in youth the urge for limitless expansion often lies hidden under veiling layers of resistance to life, so that “other urge” often hides behind an obstinate and purposeless cleaving to life in its old form. This apparent contradiction in the nature of the libido is illustrated by a statue of Priapus in the archaeological museum at Verona: Priapus, with a sidelong smile, points with his finger to a snake biting his phallus. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 680
“The demands of the unconscious act at first like a paralysing poison on a man’s energy and resourcefulness, so that it may well be compared to the bite of a poisonous snake. Apparently it is a hostile demon who robs him of: energy, but in actual fact it is his own unconscious whose alien tendencies are beginning to check the forward striving of the conscious mind. The cause of this process is often extremely obscure, the more so as it is complicated by all kinds of external factors and subsidiary causes, such as difficulties in work, disappointments, failures, reduced efficiency due to age, depressing family problems, and so on and so forth. According to the myths it is the woman who secretly enslaves a man, so that he can no longer free himself from her and becomes a child again.It is also significant that Isis, the sister-wife of the sun-god, creates the poisonous serpent from his spittle, which, like all bodily secretions, has a magical significance, being a libido equivalent. She creates the serpent from the libido of the god, and by this means weakens him and makes him dependent on her. Delilah acts in the same way with Samson: by cutting off his hair, the sun’s rays, she robs him of his strength. This demon-woman of mythology is in truth the “sister-wife-mother,” the woman in the man, who unexpectedly turns up during the second half of life and tries to effect a forcible change of personality. I have dealt with certain aspects of this change in my essay on “The Stages of Life.” It consists in a partial feminization of the man and a corresponding masculinization of the woman. Often it takes place under very dramatic circumstances: the man’s strongest quality, his Logos principle, turns against him and as it were betrays him. The same thing happens with the Eros of the woman. The man becomes rigidly set in his previous attitude, while the woman remains caught in her emotional ties and fails to develop her reason and understanding, whose place is then taken by equally obstinate and inept “animus” opinions. The fossilization of the man shrouds itself in a smoke-screen of moods, ridiculous irritability, feelings of distrust and resentment, which are meant to justify his rigid attitude. A perfect example of this type of psychology is Schreber’s account of his own psychosis, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 458
