In Black Book 7, in Jung’s fantasy of October 7, 1917, a figure appears, Ha, who says he is the father of Philemon.
Jung’s soul describes him as a black magician.
His secret is the runes, which Jung’s soul wants to learn.
He refuses to teach them, but shows some examples, which Jung’s soul asks him to explain.
Some of the runes later appear in these paintings.
About the runes in this painting, Ha explained:
“See the two with different feet, one earth foot and one sun foot-which reach toward the upper cone and have the sun inside, but I have made one crooked line toward the other sun.
Therefore one must reach downward.
Meanwhile the upper sun comes out of the cone and the cone gazes after it, dejected about where it is going.
One has to retrieve it with a hook and would like to place it in the small prison.
Then the three have to stand together, unite, and twirl up at the top (curled).
With this they manage to free the sun from its prison again.
Now you make a thick bottom and a roof where the sun sits safe at the top.
But inside the house the other sun has risen also.
Therefore you too are coiled up at the top and have made a roof over the prison again at the bottom, so that the upper sun cannot enter.
The two suns always want to be together- I said so, didn’t I -the two cones-each has a sun.
You want to let them come together, because then you think that thus you could be one.
You have now drawn up both suns and brought them to one another, and now slope to the other side-that is important (=) but then there are simply two suns at the bottom, so therefore you have to go to the lower cone.
Then you put the suns together there, but in the middle, neither at the bottom nor at the top, therefore there are not four but two, but the upper cone is at the bottom and there is a thick roof above and if you want to continue, you long to return with both arms.
But at the bottom you have a prison for two, for both of you.
Therefore you make a prison for the lower sun and fall toward the other side, to get the lower sun out of the prison.
This is what you long for, and the upper cone comes and makes a bridge toward the lower, taking back its sun, which has run away before, and now the morning clouds come into the lower cone, but its sun is beyond the line, invisible (horizon).
Now you are one and happy that you have the sun at the top and long to be up there, too.
But you are imprisoned in the prison of the lower sun, that is rising.
There is a stop.
Now you make something quadrilateral above, which you call thoughts, a prison without doors, with thick walls, so that the upper sun does not leave, but the cone has already gone.
You lean toward the other side, long for the below and coil up at the bottom.
Then you are one and make the serpent’s way between the suns – that is amusing! ~ and important (=). But because it was amusing below, there is a roof above and you must raise upward the hook with both arms, so that it goes through the roof Then the sun below is free and there is a prison above. You look downward, but the upper sun looks toward you. But you stand upright as a pair and have detached the serpent from you-you have probably been put off.
Therefore you make a prison for the below.
Now the serpent crosses the sky above the earth.
You are driven completely apart, the serpent wriggles its way through the sky around all the stars far above the earth. / At the bottom it says: the mother gives me this wisdom. / Be you content” (pp. 9-10).
To Aniela Jaffe, Jung recounted that he had had a vision of a red clay tablet inscribed with hieroglyphics and embedded in his bedroom wall, and that he had transcribed the tablet the following day.
He felt that it contained an important message, but he didn’t understand it. (MP, p. 172).
In letters to Sabina Spielrein dated September I3 and October 10, 19I7, Jung commented on the significance of some hieroglyphs she’d seen in a dream.
On October 10, he wrote to her that “with your hieroglyphics we are dealing with phylogenetic engrams of a historical symbolic nature.” Commenting on the contempt meted out to Transformations
and Symbols of the Libido by the Freudians, he described himself as “clinging to his runes” which he would not hand over to those who would not understand them.
(“The letters of Jung to Sabina Spielrein,” Journal of Analytical Psychology 4I [200I], p. I87-8). ~Liber Novus, Pages 291-2, Footnote 155.
