To Cottie A . Burland
Dear Mr. Burland, 7 April 1958
I am most obliged to you for sending me your interesting account of the Fejervary-Mayer time-mandala.
As I am unfortunately a complete layman in rebus Mexicanis I can only admire your insight into old Mexican symbolism.
My general and non-specific knowledge of symbolism enables me however to appreciate the remarkable parallelism between old Mexico and the rest of the world, including the unconscious of modern European man.
The underlying scheme, the quaternio, i.e., the psychological equation of primordial dynamis (prima causa) with gods and their mythology, time and space, is a psychological problem of the first order.
I have tried to deal with it many a time and particularly in my book Aion (not yet translated into English).
The first steps in this direction you will find in The Secret of the Golden Flower.
It is a difficult subject, I admit, but it is the basic phenomenon in many religions.
I am glad to know that you appreciate the I Ching.
The European mind often finds it difficult to follow the movements of Tao.
In this respect dream analysis has helped me very much, as it has taught me to consider the psyche as an objective entity and not only as a willful product of my consciousness.
The summit of European hybris is the French phrase: “faire un reve.”
But in reality we seem rather to be the dream of somebody or something independent of our conscious ego, at least in all fateful moments.
Sincerely yours,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 426-427