I have shot down a proud enemy..~Carl Jung
Carl Jung Red Book Illustration 122.
Truly; I have shot down a proud enemy; I have forced a greater and stronger one to be my friend. Nothing should separate me from him, the dark one. If I want to leave him, he follows me like my shadow. If I do not think of him, he is still uncannily near.
He will turn into fear if I deny him. I must amply commemorate him, I must prepare a sacrificial meal for him. I fill a plate for him at my table.
Much that I would have done earlier for men, I now must do for him. Hence they consider me selfish, for they do not know that I go with my friend, and that many days are consecrated to him. But unrest has moved in, a quiet underground earthquake, a distant great roaring.
Ways have been opened to the primordial and to the future. Miracles and terrible mysteries are close at hand. I feel the things that were and that will be. Behind the ordinary the eternal abyss yawns. The earth gives me back what it hid. ~Carll Jung; Red Book.
Inscription: “4 December MCMXIX. [December 4,1919: This date seems to refer to when the image was painted.] This is the back side of the gem.
He who is in the stone has this shadow.
This is Atmavictu, the old one, after he has withdrawn from the creation.
He has returned to endless history, where he took his beginning.
Once more he became stony residue, having completed his creation. In the form of Izdubar he has outgrown and delivered Philemon and Ka from him.
Philemon gave the stone, Ka the 8.” The final character appears to be the astrological symbol for the sun. ~Red Book; Footnote 231.
232 On Atmavictu, see note to image II7- On May 20, 1917, Philemon said:
”As Atmavictu I committed the error and became human. My name was Izdubar? I approached him as just that. He paralyzed me.
Yes, man paralyzed me and turned me into a dragon’s serpent.
Fortunately, I recognized my error, and the fire consumed the serpent. And thus Philemon came into being. My form is appearance. Previously, my appearance was form” (Black Book 7, p. 195).
In Memories, Jung said: “Later, Philemon became relativized by yet another figure, whom I called Ka. In ancient Egypt the ‘ICing’s Ka’ was his earthly form, the embodied soul. In my fantasy the ka-soul came from below, out of the earth as out of a deep shaft.
I did a painting of him, showing him in his earth-bound form, as a herm with base of stone and upper part of bronze.
High up in the painting appears a kingfisher’s wing, and between it and the head of Ka floats a round, glowing nebula of stars. Ka’s expression has something demonic about it-one might also say Mephistophelian.
In one hand he holds something like a colored pagoda, or a reliquary, and in the other a stylus with which he is working on the reliquary.”
He is saying, ‘I am he who buries the Gods in gold and gems.’
Philemon has a lame foot, but was a winged spirit, whereas Ka represented a kind of earth demon or metal demon.
Philemon was the spiritual aspect, ‘the meaning: Ka, on the other hand was a spirit of nature like the Anthroparion of Greek alchemy-with which at that time I was still unfamiliar. Ka was he who made everything real, but who also obscured the kingfisher spirit, the meaning, or replaced it by beauty, the ‘eternal reflection.’
In time I was able to integrate both figures through the study of alchemy” (pp. 209-210). Wallace Budge notes that “The ka was an abstract individuality or personality which possessed the form and attributes of the man to whom it belonged, and, though its normal dwelling place was in the tomb with the body, it could wander at will; it was independent of the man and could go and dwell in any statue of him” (Egyptian Book of the Dead, p.lxv).
In 1928, Jung commented: ”At a rather higher stage of development, where the idea of the soul already exists, not all the images continue to be projected … but one or the other complex has come near enough to consciousness to be felt as no longer strange, but as somehow belonging.
Nevertheless, the feeling that it belongs is not at first sufficiently strong for the complex to be sensed as a subjective content of consciousness.
It remains in a sort of no-man’s-land between consciousness and the unconscious, in the half-shadow, in part belonging or akin to the conscious subject, in part an autonomous being, and meeting consciousness as such.
At all events it is not necessarily obedient to the subject’s intentions, it may even be of a higher order, more often than not a source of inspiration or warning, or of supernatural information.
Psychologically such a content could be explained as a partly autonomous complex that is not yet fully integrated. The primitive souls, the Egyptian Ba and Ka, are complexes of this kind” (The Relations between the I and the Unconscious, CW 7, §295).
In 1955/56, Jung described the Anthroparion in alchemy as “a type of goblin, that as 1tVEU!.HX napEopov [devoted spirit], spiritus familiaris, stands by the adept in his work and helps the physician to heal” (Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, §304). The Anthroparion was seen to represent the alchemical metals (“On the psychology of the Child archetype,” CW 9, I, §268) and appeared in the visions of Zosimos (CW 13, pp. 60-62).
The painting ofKa that Jung refers to has not come to light. Ka appeared to Jung in a fantasy on October 22,1917, where he introduced himself as the other side of Ha, his soul.
It was Ka who had given Ha the runes and the lower wisdom (see note 155, p. 292). His eyes are of pure gold and his body is of black iron.
He tells Jung and his soul that they need his secret, which is the essence of all magic. This is love. Philemon says that Ka is Philemon’s shadow (Black Book 7, p. 25ff).
On November 20, Ka calls Philemon his shadow, and his herald. Ka says that he is eternal and remains, while Philemon is fleeting and passes on (p. 34).
On February ro, 1918, Ka says that he has built a temple as a prison and grave for the Gods (p. 39). Ka features in Black Book 7 until 1923.
During this period, Jung attempts to understand the connection among Ka, Philemon, and the other figures, and to establish the right relation to them.
On October 15,1920, Jung discussed an unidentified picture with Constance Long, who was in analysis with him. Some of the comments she noted shed light on his understanding of the relation of Philemon and Ka:
“The 2 figures on either side are personifications of dominants ‘fathers.’
The one is the creative father, Ka, the other, Philemon that one whom gives form and law (the formative instinct) Ka would equal Dionysus & P = Apollo. Philemon gives formulation to the things within elements of the collective unc … Philemon gives the idea (maybe of a god) but it remains floating, distant & indistinct because all the things he invents are winged.
But Ka gives substance & is called the one who buries the gods in gold & marble.
He has a tendency to misprison them in matter, & so they are in danger of losing their spiritual meaning, & becoming buried in stone.
So the temple maybe the grave of God, as the church has become the grave of Xt.
The more the church develops, the more Xt dies. Ka must not be allowed to produce too much-you must not depend on substantiation; but if too little substance is produced the creature floats.
The transcendent function is the whole. Not this picture, nor my rationalization of it, but the new and vivifying creative spirit that is the result of the intercourse between the consc. intelligence and the creative side. Ka is sensation, P is intuition, he is too supra-human (he is Zarathustra, extravagantly superior in what he says & cold. (CGJ has not printed the questions he addressed to P nor his answers) … Ka & Philemon are bigger than the man, they are supra-human (Disintegrated into them one is in the Col. Unc)” (Diary, Countway Library of Medicine, pp. 32-33). ~Red Book; Footnote 232.
