That is the real essence of witchcraft.
Mrs. Baumann: One has to be in it, but a little bit objective in order to pull the strings; in working it, one goes from the higher to the lower things; it is black magic.
Dr. Jung: Well, you can obtain an effect by pulling the dark strings, which means you are yourself unconscious to a greater extent in an illegitimate way.
If you repress all the ore conscious, decent things, you can keep yourself on a lower level and can then influence people through mental contagion, you can induce a similar state, also an unconscious condition.
People who are unconscious always create unconsciousness, and in this way they influence others; they can get them into an unconscious condition so that they will behave exactly according to their intention.
That is the real essence of witchcraft.
Now here is the doubt: is this figure on a low unconscious level and therefore infectious through unconscious- ness?
In other words, is she the Makara?
The patient suspects that she may be below herself unconscious and creating unconsciousness, and so might eventually induce such unconsciousness in her that it would mean destruction in the underworld.
But when she asks: “Who are you?” that woman says:
“Behold!” She pulled off her robe. I saw a beautiful woman. She was all green, triumphant, dazzling, standing in a green light. I bowed my head.
Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 1272-1273
To Jolande Jacobi
JolandeJacobi, Bollingen, 26 August 1943
The mistake you are making consists in your being drawn too much into X.’s neurotic problem.
This is evident from the fact, for instance, that your animus is trying like mad to interpret when there is nothing to be interpreted.
Why does he say he has other relationships?
Why indeed!
As though anyone knew.
He just says it.
That is very nice of him, inconsiderate, truthful, tactless, unpremeditated, confiding, etc., etc.
If you knew the real reason you would also know who X. was at his birth and at his death.
But we shall only find that out in the Hereafter.
He has absolutely no reason he can state, it has simply happened and can be interpreted quite superfluously in a hundred different ways, and no single interpretation holds water, being merely an insistence which, once made, only has the effect of driving him into further whimsical and uninterpretable reactions.
In reality his irrational behaviour represents the conscious and unconscious sides of the anima, and is absolutely necessary in order to gain insight into her, just as in general he needs a bevy of women in order to grasp the essence of this glamorous figure.
Of course he is still too naive to notice this.
But you, just as naively, have intruded yourself as an anima figure into this witches’ Sabbath and are therefore caught up in the dance as though you were nothing but an anima.
Wherever you stick a finger in out of “love” or involuntary participation you will burn it, for it is not involvement that is expected of you, but objective, disincarnate observation, and if you want to snatch something out of it for the heart-and no reasonable objection can be made to this-you must pay for it in blood, as was always so and always will be.
At least one must keep one’s head out of it so as not to be eaten up entirely by emotional ape-men.
Where there are emotional ties one is always the disappointed disappointer.
This one has to know if one wants, or is forced, to participate correctly.
With cordial greetings,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 334-335.
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