Carl Jung: If belief does not come to me as a shock, it would not convince me.
Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume 2, 1951-1961
To Father Victor White pro tempore Locarno, Ticino, Park Hotel
Dear Victor, [? Spring, 1952]
Thank you very much for your offprints!
You have been obviously busy.
I have read them all and I think the one about the “Dying God” is particularly good.
The one about Freud is clever and remarkably open-minded.
Your meditation about the way of the Cross contains nothing I could not subscribe to.
It is psychologically “correct.”
This amounts to a sincere compliment.
Does the book you are planning contain these articles?
I hope you have received my Antwort auf Hiob.
I had a pretty miserable time throughout March on account of a grippe, from which I am recovering very slowly.
I came down here to pick up again.
Although we are in the sun, the air is still pretty cold and windy.
I have finished the dreaded last chapter of my Mysterium Coniunctionis.
It has knocked me flat, and my head is tired.
Well, I am approaching my 78th year, and complaints are pointless.
My next goal seems to be a thorough contemplation of the spiritual life of lizards and similar cold-blooded animals.
But the world does not let me go so easily.
After this letter I have to write another one about understanding and believing to a
Protestant theologus.
I am afraid I cannot conceive of any religious belief which is less than a violation of
my ego-consciousness.
Otherwise I would be hardly aware of believing anything at all.
If belief does not come to me as a shock, it would not convince me.
I don’t know whether they are going to like my opinion or not.
The Curator of the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford has sent me a rather long series of dreams which he has unearthed from the Elias Ashmole MSS, the editor of the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum 1646(?).
They extend over about 5 years and contain the remarkable story of an invasion of unconscious contents aiming at a coniunctio with the unconscious.
The attempt fails, i.e., is superseded by a return of the former one-sided masculine consciousness.
It is an unconscious parallel to Faust.
The attempt culminates in a symbol of the self: Paradise on the North Pole, springs, and on a hill the chapel of Our Lady.
The series begins with Venus in the IX house = Sapientia.
It ends with death, fraud, and murder.
A fine example of an individuation that did not come off.
Hoping to see you in summer again!
Yours cordially,
C.G. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 50-51.
