Carl Jung: My Tower Grew
I set foot on new land. Nothing brought up should flow back.
No one shall tear down what I have built. My tower is of iron and has no seams.
The devil is forged into the foundations.
The Cabiri built it and the master builders were sacrificed with the sword on the battlements of the tower.
Just as a tower surmounts the summit of a mountain on which it stands, so I stand above my brain, from which I grew.
I have become hard and cannot be undone again.
No more do I flow back. I am the master of my own self I admire my mastery.
I am strong and beautiful and rich.
The vast lands and the blue sky have laid themselves before me and bowed to my mastery.
I wait upon no one and no one waits upon me.
I serve myself and I myself serve. Therefore I have what I need.
My tower grew for several thousand years, imperishable. It does not sink back.
But it can be built over and will be built over. Few grasp my tower, since it stands on a high mountain.
But many will see it and not grasp it.
Therefore my tower will remain unused. No one scales its smooth walls.
No one lands on its pointed roof Only he who finds the entrance hidden in the mountain and rises up through the labyrinths of the innards can reach the tower, and the happiness of he who surveys things from there and he who lives from himself
This has been attained and created.
It has not arisen from a patchwork of human thoughts, but has been forged from the glowing heat of the innards; the Cabiri themselves carried the matter to the mountain and consecrated the building with their own blood as the sole keepers of the mystery of its genesis.
I built it out of the lower and upper beyond and not from the surface of the world.
Therefore it is new and strange and over the plains inhabited by humans.
This is the solid and the beginning. ~Carl Jung, Red Book, Pages 321-322.
Carl Jung: Death of his Mother and Bollingen Tower
After my wife’s death In 1955, I felt an inner obligation to become what I myself am.
So low, so hidden, was myself!
I could no longer hide myself behind the ”maternal” and the ”spiritual” towers. So, In that same year, I added an upper story to this section, which represents myself, or my ego-personality.
I had started the first tower in 1923, two months after the death of my mother. These two dates are meaningful because the tower, as we shall see, Is connected with the dead.
At Bollingen I am in the midst of my true life, I am most deeply myself. Here lam, as it were, the ”age-old son of the mother.”
To put it in the language of the Bollingen house, I suddenly realized that the small central section which crouched so.
That is how alchemy puts it, very wisely, for the ”old man,” the ”ancient,” whom I had already experienced as a child, Is personality No. 2, who has always been and always will be. He exists outside time and is the son of the maternal unconscious.
In my fantasies he took the form of Philemon, and he comes to life again at Bollingen. C.G. Jung, 1961 M.D.R.
Marie-Louise von Franz and Her Tower at Bollingen
Jung had let her build a tower at Bollingen like the one he owned on the lakeside, but it was to be built high up in the woods and to be different from his, which, as everyone knows, he had built with his own hands and which was a round tower. ~Iaregina Zoccoli, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 555
Compelled by an irresistible urge, I drove to Bollingen and went to Dr. von Franz’s tower hoping to find the answer to this mystery. ~Vreni Suter, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 527
My wife joined me in taking the train out to Bollingen, and we then gradually made our way up to her mountain retreat.
About halfway up, when we asked directions, we were told we were on the right path.
Some few hundred yards from the top, my wife chose to wait for me, sitting on a comfortable bench with a nice view.
I continued on, found Dr. von Franz’s house, and knocked, for a moment anxiously remembering that unhappy event in the past when she failed to appear (following the party).
Her companion answered the door, however, and immediately ushered me into Marlus’s presence (we had been on a first-name basis for some time, actually).
Dr. von Franz was almost crippled now, but still in fairly decent spirits. ~ J . Marvin Spiegelman, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 499.
She wanted to continue with her life even as everything became more difficult.
For example, three days before she died, with difficulty she was able to get up from her bed to eat a small amount of food in her bedroom.
In a strong, reproachful voice, she said, “Mary, my apero! ” I had thought she wouldn’t want one and had neglected to ask.
This was a valuable time for me in Kusnacht and Bollingen, where I grew very fond of her, and I am grateful for being able to have been there with her and for her. ~Mary Scheinost, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 478
I have many fond memories that I could go on with-small moments-like how she enjoyed her Cinzano before her meals and once told Miss Hannah, who was thinking of giving up her Dry Sack sherry, “not to castrate your pleasures”; or how she liked to leave her study and go outside to clean the leaves off the stairs or stack the wood at Bollingen herself; or how much she loved her frog pond at Bollingen. (I was forbidden to use any harsh cleaning fluids for the spring cleaning in order to protect the frogs’ waters.) ~Vicki Reiff, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 470
Another unforgettable humorous incident occurred before Miss Hannah died in the summer of 1985.
Marlus had gone alone to Bollingen for two weeks while Alison and I looked after Miss Hannah. ~Vicki Reiff, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 467
(Later, Franz took my wife, Delores, on a joyful tour of Jung’s tower at Bollingen, Jung’s “sacred place,” and through Franz’s endless stories, she learned things about Jung that are priceless.
Although I have been a guest in Mar Lou’s and Barbara Hannah’s home in Bollingen, I never had the pleasure of seeing Jung’s tower.) ~Tom Laughlin, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 321-322
I’ve been sitting here at my writing desk for the longest time, thinking . . . and remembering. I was thinking back to the last time I saw
Marie-Louise von Franz at Bollingen and remembering fondly the great fortune I had for all the time I got to spend with her for the almost twenty years we worked together and, more importantly, the friendship we developed that carved a deep groove in my heart.
Before she built her tower in Bollingen, she used to work analytically throughout the whole summer in her house in Kusnacht. ~Robin Lea Hutton, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 272
Rather, one day in October we had packed our bags and were preparing to depart from Bollingen.
The “changing of the guard” was necessary.
Marie-Louise was then dependent on caretakers and friends so that she could stay in her tower, and she wanted to spend one more week of autumn there. ~David Eldred, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 228
Many years later, my partner and I spent several summers and an autumn or two with Marie-Louise von Franz in her tower in Bollingen. ~David Eldred, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 226
Like all the really deeply serious people I have ever known, Marlus was blessed with a wonderful sense of humor and ability to enjoy the small as well as the great things of life. I have never laughed more than I did when staying with her in her Bollingen Tower. ~Andrea Dykes, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 223
The same atmosphere reigned in my subsequent meetings with Marie-Louise von Franz in her house in Kusnacht and in her tower in Bollingen.
Every time I left her venues, I was spellbound and a full man, having fully formed my concept about her existence: she was a simple,
an ordinary human being, thoroughly dedicated to “Bollingen,” to the inner world, ~Nikolas Dobarakis, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 207
I met with Marie-Louise von Franz only once.
On August 5, 1992, while on the way to a conference at Helsinki that concerned Pauli’s philosophical thought, I was able to spend an hour with her at her summer residence at Bollingen.
We sat by the hearth of a large stone fireplace, talking and sharing peach pie and tea. ~Charles R. Card, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 184
This is evident from her appointment book for the year 1957, one year before she built her country home.
In this sense, her tower was truly a rifugium. ~The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 82l, fn 4
Marie-Louise had a passionate interest in nature and gardening.
So it was not long after she moved to Lindenbergstrasse that she realized her hunger for nature was not stilled in the rather tiny garden there.
She thus acquired a piece of land on the borders of a large forest above Bollingen, which she came to know through her visits to Professor Jung there. ~Marie-Anne von Franz, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 137
I met with Marie-Louise von Franz only once.
On August 5, 1992, while on the way to a conference at Helsinki that concerned Pauli’s philosophical thought,
I was able to spend an hour with her at her summer residence at Bollingen.
We sat by the hearth of a large stone fireplace, talking and sharing peach pie and tea.
Although necessarily brief, my memories of our visit remain vivid. ~Charles A. Card, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 184
1958 She builds her tower in Bollingen. ~The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Chronology, Page xxxix
Marie-Louise van Franz’s tower in Bollingen was her “life’s elixir,” as she once said, and frogs and toads were her favorite animals. Like Jung, she considered animals as being naturally more sublime than human beings, who all too often disappointed, exploited, betrayed, or deceived her. ~The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Introduction, Page xxxii, fn 5
For her creative work she often retreated to her tower in Bollingen. Alfred Ribi, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Introduction, Page 20
Since 1972, she has lived in Bubikon, a small village near Bollingen, Switzerland, where Marie-Louise van Franz spent a great part of the year in her country house.
As Bubikon lies in the vicinity of both Bollingen and Kusnacht, Marie-Anne von Franz had easy access to both residences of her sister, with whom she had regular contact. ~The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Introduction, Page xxxii, fn 3
1985 From this point on, she begins to lead a more introverted life in her house in Kusnacht and retreats ever more frequently to her tower in Bollingen, where she spends up to five months a year. ~The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Chronology, Page xli
I felt she would have liked to die in Bollingen, which she loved, but that was not God’s will and so she died in her townhouse with all the good spirits of her past, and her students, analysands, and friends came to her, not forgetting her late dear friends, Barbara Hannah and Franz Riklin, and their regular gatherings together in that house. ~Anne McGuire, The Fountain of Love and Wisdom, Page 73
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