All the tendrils that would not bear grapes.
Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume 2, 1951-1961
Carl Jung’s Letter to “N” interpreting her fantasy story:
Dear N:
As promised, I will try to sketch my “reaction”:
I was drawn into the ream which oneself is, and in which there is no I and no You anymore. It be He has to acquire it for himself because he begins with the great parents, the King and Queen, who own many forests, fields, meadows, and vineyards. Late in life someone find his inheritance, a tiny little bit of land, where he grows his vine and tree of life (vita = life, vinum = wine).
He as to acquire it for himself because he has been expelled from paradise and has nothing more, or rather, he has but doesn’t know it. It is walled round like a holy place. There he sees everything that has ever happened to him: sun and rain, heat and cold, sickness, wounds, tears and pain, but also fruitfulness and increase, sweetness and drunkenness, and there with access to the All, the Whole.
Though he doesn’t know it, somebody else is there, an old man who knows but doesn’t tell. When one has looked and labored for a long time, one knows oneself and has grown old. The “secret of life” is my life, which is enacted round about by me, my life and my death; for when the vine has grown old it is torn up by the roots.
All the tendrils that would not bear grapes are pruned away. Its life is remorselessly cut down to its essence, and the sweetness of the grape is turned into wine, dry and heady, a son of the earth who serves his blood to the multitude and causes the drunkenness which unites the divided and brings back the memory of possessing all and of the kingship, a time of loosening, and a time of peace.
There is much more to follow, but it can no longer be told.
Ever yours, C.G. [Letter dated August 1959]
Note: “N” had requested Dr. Jung to paraphrase a fantasy story she had sent her about a vine shoot.
If you accept Death
Joy at the smallest things comes to you only when you have accepted dea!h. But if you look out greedily for all that you could still live, then nothing is great enough for your pleasure, and the smallest things that continue to surround you are no longer a joy. Therefore I behold dea!h, since it teaches me how to live.
If you accept dea!h, it is altogether like a frosty night and an anxious misgiving, but a frosty night in a vineyard full of sweet grapes. You will soon take pleasure in your wealth. Dea!h ripens. One needs death to be able to harvest the fruit.
Without death, life would be meaningless, since the long-lasting rises again and denies its own meaning. To be, and to enjoy your being, you need dea!h, and limitation enables you to fulfill your being. ~Carl Jung; Red Book; Page
Jung’s Premonitions of World War I
Dreamed 1913-1914 by Carl Jung
This account is from Jung’s autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
In October [1913], while I was alone on a journey, I was suddenly seized by an overpowering vision: I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps.
When it came up to Switzerland I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country.
I realized that a frightful catastrophe was in progress.
I saw the mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilization, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands.
Then the whole sea turned to blood.
This vision last about one hour.
I was perplexed and nauseated, and ashamed of my weakness.
Two weeks passed; then the vision recurred, under the same conditions, even more vividly than before, and the blood was more emphasized.
An inner voice spoke. “Look at it well; it is wholly real and it will be so. You cannot doubt it.”
That winter someone asked me what I thought were the political prospects of the world in the near future.
I replied that I had no thoughts on the matter, but that I saw rivers of blood.
I asked myself whether these visions pointed to a revolution, but could not really imagine anything of the sort.
And so I drew the conclusion that they had to do with me myself, and decided that I was menaced by a psychosis.
The idea of war did not occur to me at all.
Soon afterward, in the spring and early summer of 1914, I had a thrice-repeated dream that in the middle of summer an Arctic cold wave descended and froze the land to ice.
I saw, for example, the whole of Lorraine and its canals frozen and the entire region totally deserted by human beings.
All living green things were killed by frost.
This dream came in April and May, and for the last time in June, 1914.
In the third dream frightful cold had again descended from out of the cosmos.
This dream, however, had an unexpected end. There stood a leaf-bearing tree, but without fruit (my tree of life, I thought), whose leaves had been transformed by the effects of the frost into sweet grapes full of healing juices.
I plucked the grapes and gave them to a large, waiting crowd…
On August 1 the world war broke out.
