Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume 2, 1951-1961
To Adolf Keller
Dear friend, 25 February 1955
It was very kind of you to take the time and trouble to react at such length to the article in Time.
our interpretation of my strange-looking visage is excellent.
The photographer, who bored me excruciatingly with his many exposures, must have caught me in an absentminded moment when I was sunk in my thoughts.
My thoughts about “this world” were not-and are not-enjoyable.
The drive of the unconscious towards mass murder on a global scale is not exactly a cheering prospect.
Transitions between the aeons always seem to have been melancholy and despairing times, as for instance the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt (“The Dialogue of a World; Weary Man with His Soul”) between Taurus and Aries, or the melancholy of the Augustinian age between Aries and Pisces.
And now we are moving into Aquarius, of which the Sibylline Books say: Luciferi vires accendit Aquarius acres (Aquarius inflames the savage forces of Lucifer).
And we are only at the beginning of this apocalyptic development!
Already I am a great-grandfather twice over and see those distant generations growing up who long after we are gone will spend their lives in that darkness.
I would accuse myself of senile pessimism did I not know that the H-bomb is lying ready to hand-a fact that unfortunately can no longer be doubted.
Only a Herostratus in the Kremlin is needed to push the button.
And if we are lucky enough to escape that, what about the overpopulation problem?
Best greetings,
Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 229-230