Carl Jung: Blake’s picture is very interesting.
To Piloo Nanavutty
Dear Misss Nanavutty, 11 November 1948
I’m sorry to be so late in answering your kind letter of October 19th. As you know I’m old and no more able to take care of my correspondence as I should.
There is no objection against your reading my volumes on Zarathustra.
They have nothing to do with Zarathustra the prophet, of course.
And they should be read with criticism, since they are merely notes taken by members of my audience which I never corrected.
They certainly contain quite a number of mistakes.
I should also prefer it if you would refrain from quoting the notes in your writings.
Thank you very much for your interesting offprint.
Blake’s picture is very interesting.
The caricature of the four zoa of Ezechiel in this form, which you supposed to be due to the peccatum originale, represents exactly what the Kabbala calls the four achurayim which form the outermost shells
of the world together with the septem reges lapsi-the fallen seven kings that mean aeons preceding the actual one.
They have the general meaning of impure spirits.
The Kabbala was accessible to non-Hebrew students through Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata of 1684, where you find the necessary data in the index latinus under ”cortices.”
I find Blake a tantalizing study, since he has compiled a lot of half- or undigested knowledge in his fantasies.
According to my idea, they are an artistic production rather than an authentic representation of unconscious processes.
He lived at a time when such incredible concoctions were fashionable.
I felt that I should know a great deal of that contemporary most unsavory literature if I made a serious attempt to get at the proper interpretation of his pictures.
I have had a letter from your sister and am just going to write to her.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 512-514.
