Carl Jung: “Children’s Dreams Seminar” – Quotations

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Around the eighth year there is a transition to ego consciousness, as we have already seen in previous children’s dreams. The child breaks away from the extremely close relatedness with the familial milieu; he has already acquired a certain experience of the world, and the libido, which had up to then been tied to the parents, detaches itself from them and often is introverted. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 323.

The father symbolizes the procreative, form-giving figure. He is the spiritual principle that gives meaning. He is the one who leads the child [ . . . ] into life. It is the father who, as pater familias, rules and leads the house, as pope the community of the faithful, as pater patriae the country and his people, and, finally, as God the Father the world. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 152

Significantly, the Pope has taken over the name of Pontifex Maximus, supreme bridge builder, which previously was carried by the Roman emperors. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 266

There was also a feast at which they changed places, the abbot and elder monks serving the young lay brothers; and a mock mass was celebrated, the youngest lay brother officiating, at which the songs and jokes were obscene, and they all drank the wine, not only the celebrant; then drunken orgies took place, and they all streamed out of the church into the street and upset the whole place. These feasts and the jeu de paume were stopped by the Pope in the thirteenth century because they went to such extremes. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 26

Yes the father is not enough, he wants to add a particular, symbolic form. The patient speaks Italian and he also knows Greek and Latin, so the word papa or papas suggests to him the Pope, the absolute Father. The cult of Attis had a temple on the site of St. Peter’s in Rome, and the high priest was called “Papas” so there was already a “Papas” several hundred years before there was a Pope in the Vatican. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 133

The principle that worked for two thousand years was that someone had the truth and could reveal it.

The backbone of the Catholic Church is the claim to the possession of the eternal truth.

It is invested in the Pope and you must simply accept it. But for us this does not settle it.

No one would say now that the truth has been revealed to him, we cannot build on revelation.

We believe in the honest attempt to understand psychological facts. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 184

Hermas was said to be the brother of the second pope’s a Christian, but at the time when Christianity was a mystery cult, and as the gods could not be named, he was simply called the Shepherd.

There was a time when Christ was represented as Orpheus, or as the good shepherd, with a lamb over his shoulder.

The custom then was to call this guiding principle the “Shepherd that was herding the flocks,” “The leader of men,” “The Fisher of men,” so Christ was identified with Orpheus and also with Bacchus. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 184-185

the Attis cult celebrated the taurobolium. initiate was put into a cauldron, a hole in the earth; a grating was put over it and there they killed a bull so that the blood of the sacrificed animal streamed down on him. Then he was pulled out, washed, clothed in white, and fed on milk for eight days, for he was a baby, his own youngest son. The high priest, now the Pope, was called Papas. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 329

As they would not allow the communion bread to be of any other kind of flour than wheat. And holy oil must be olive oil, and the candles must be made in a certain way. But the war brought a change; because of the scarcity of olive oil, by a special permission of the Pope they were allowed to substitute little electric bulbs, but that was only because of the misery of the times. The Catholic Church is very reasonable in such a case, but in the major things she would hold to tradition most faithfully. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 396-397

Then the Fish became the symbol. The Christian baptism in water has to do with this symbolism. The Pope still wears the fisher ring-a gem that represents the miraculous draught of fishes, symbolizing the gathering of all Christians into the womb of the Church. So a new psychology began to make itself felt. It was the dawn of Christianity, and we can follow its course in the astrological picture. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 422

He [Christ] was a man who wanted an increase of consciousness, a better understanding amongst human beings, more love and more knowledge of the heart. And see what the Church has done with it! If Jesus should come back today and have an audience with the Pope at the Vatican, they would say: “It is awfully nice, anything new, but it is really awkward!-With the best of will, we couldn’t change it.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 521

I consider myself above stealing my neighbour’s apples and I would not burn down his house, therefore I need no police. But the police are necessary because at least half of mankind is really rotten, and they need the Church because they would make bad use of their freedom. The majority of people must live in prison, otherwise they can’t live at all, and that is the reason for laws and organizations. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 521

The exclusion of the animal world. Animals were really excluded. There was no artistic appreciation of the animal till the ox and the ass came in at the margin of the picture perhaps. In the gospels there is no appreciation of the animal as a living being equivalent to the Rindoo attitude. For example, there is no cathedral where monuments of the horses who had fallen in carrying the stone were set up. In medieval times the animal was grotesque, half devil. The mental state of the first years of life does not differ from the collective unconscious; it is a world rich of images. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 182.

The child has to step out of this primordial world, to be able to really enter into life. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 184.

I am all for sending kids to public elementary schools, therefore, by no means to exclusive private schools, so that they can ingest the necessary dirt. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 213.

Men are rarely split off from sexuality, because it is too evident for them, but what they lack is Eros, the relational function. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 313.

The mental state of the first years of life does not differ from the collective unconscious; it is a world rich of images. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 182.

The child has to step out of this primordial world, to be able to really enter into life. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 184.

Men are rarely split off from sexuality, because it is too evident for them, but what they lack is Eros, the relational function. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 313.

The relational function with the unconscious must not be transformed into a relational function with the conscious world! ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 317.

In the Old Testament it says: “Your old men shall dream dreams.” They had a wise anima who could open their inner ears. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 319.

Moreover, the unconscious has a different relation to death than we ourselves have. For example, it is very surprising in which way dreams anticipate death. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 343.

The four always expresses the coming into being of what is essentially human, the emergence of human consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 367.

Around the birth of Christ, there follows the Age of Pisces. Pisces is a water sign. That is probably why we have to look for the spirit in the water, in life’s flow of images, and in the unconscious. And now we are on the threshold of the sign of Aquarius. The air element is assigned to it, and it is symbolized by an angel or a human being, instead of an animal. Here the spirit is meant to become something subtle again, and man to become who he is. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Pages 354-355.

But there’s absolutely no way around it, because we can be sure: the simpler a dream is, the more we are confronted with general and fundamental problems. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 368.

In religious instruction, we more and more refrain from making children acquainted with these images, and instead offer them moral teaching, in which the devil is ignored altogether. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 369.

The infantile soul is no tabula rasa at all, as presumed by modern psychology, but the ancient images are always already there a priori. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 369.

Thus the devil is a preliminary stage of individuation, in the negative it has the same goal as the divine quaternity, namely, wholeness. Although it is still darkness, it already carries the germ of light within itself. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 372.

If a primordial image forces itself onto consciousness, we have to fill it with as much substance as possible to grasp the whole scope of its meaning. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 368.

The division into four is a principium individuationis; it means to become one or a whole in the face of the many figures that carry the danger of destruction in them. It is what overcomes death and can bring about rebirth. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 372.

Nobody will ever become conscious if he does not hit his head on something. Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 377.

Only when we bear our situation and accept our depression will it be possible for us to change internally. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.

As the unconscious has a tendency to project itself into the outer world, there is a danger that one might get dissipated in the environment, instead of staying with oneself. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.

In the process of individuation, too, new contents can announce themselves in this devouring form and darken consciousness; this is experienced as a depression, that is to say, as being pulled downward. – ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.

When the unconscious intrudes into spaces of consciousness, it is automatically split into its pairs of opposites. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 408.

The fact that deity and devil belong together also plays a great role in alchemy. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 373.

The real purpose of the religious ceremonial is to revivify. It was created to lift man out of the ordinary, to disturb his habitual ways, that he may become aware of things outside. ~Carl Jung, Dreams Seminar, Page 399.

Children also contain a future personality within themselves, the being that they will be in the following years. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 50.

There are good circumstances when a good smack, morally or physically, is the most effective way to counter the great fascination of the images. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 184

Four flows emanate from the navel, two air- and two blood-vessels, so to speak, through which the growing child receives its food, the blood, and the pneuma. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Pages 365-366.

The children already live in a tomorrow, only they are not aware of it. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 50.

It is no sign of culture if a woman is only a daughter, or only a pregnant mother, or only a whore. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 321

The dream represents that tendency of the unconscious that aims at a change of the conscious attitude. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 5.

The color blue cannot be found in alchemy, but it is found in the East, where it takes the place of black and actually represents a color of the underworld. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 366.

The human soul is something we only educate, but we are not interested at all in what it is!—Well, this is a critical age insofar as the child approaches school between the age of five and six. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 432

Yes, the lice are vampires, often also spirits. When a child is born in the Caucasus Mountains, they take a louse from the grandfather’s head and plant it on the head of the grandchild. By this the soul has been transferred, because in the primitive view the spirits always accompany us, buzz around us like bats or like vampires; they suck the blood from us. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 465

It is surely her duty to feed the little pigs, to take care, that is, of these very primitive needs, or, in other words: sacrifices have to be made also to Aphrodite and the chthonic gods in the hierarchy of the soul powers, because otherwise they can make themselves felt in a very unpleasant way. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 459

Yes, this is the deity. Ignatius of Loyola, too, had such visions in which a globe appeared. This is the all-round, cosmic being, the world soul, the rotundum, the round one. And what would you say about the fact that the ball in the dream is red? ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 441

A first step toward that has already been made; nevertheless, the child is still detained by a force effective in the unconscious, which probably does not originate in the child’s own soul alone, but creates an oppressive situation around him. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 428

Such events do not take place naturally, but are caused by the atmosphere resulting from the unresolved unconscious of the parents. A thick wall separates these persons from their own souls, and the child then falls into it, is born out of this atmosphere and then bewitched by it, possessed by the darkness of which the parents have never wanted to be aware—and also have not been able to. Such dreams result from such conditions. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 422-423

An anima type would probably develop, a woman who always knows how to twist the father round her little finger so that he opens his fatherly arms and protects the poor little soul from the world. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 418-419

What has happened by this? Well, look: for us the child is actually unity par excellence. With the eaten tiger, however, conflict moves into the soul of the child. The conflict had hitherto still been in the unconscious, but now it jumps at the child’s consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 416

Above there is the anima rationalis, to use the medieval term, and below the anima vegetativa, only life as such. The moment it becomes conscious, the two aspects will reveal themselves. So what enters into the soul of the child? A whole tiger or a half tiger? ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 416

In his book The “Soul” of the Primitive, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl gives a number of examples as evidence of the mystical view of primitives that certain humans and animals are actually one and the same. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 399

The child has been told a truth, the absolute, basic truth of humankind, for which there is no proof, of course. The proof lies in the truth itself. It is expressed by the soul and by what human beings have thought since time immemorial. These are the truths that live forever. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 378.

Thus our dream not only concerns the soul of this single child, but it pertains to much more, namely, to her parents, siblings, and the whole environment. I have to add that the child is from a German family, and that the father was very active politically. So there is no doubt that there is a great emphasis on the environment, and when exciting things happen there the child will be forced to take part in the emotional state of the family. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 371-372

The infantile soul is no tabula rasa at all, as presumed by modern psychology, but the ancient images are always already there a priori ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 369

The ancient historical images, so immensely attractive to children’s fantasy, no longer play any role at all today. This is a loss for our souls, because we don’t give the soul a language to give expression to its contents. In religious instruction, we more and more refrain from making children acquainted with these images, and instead offer them moral teaching, in which the devil is ignored altogether. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 369

Snakes, and particularly red ones, are not only spirits of the dead, but can also represent emotional states, as you have heard in the paper. They stand for the heat of the soul, the fire of passion, and thus represent a more intense stage of development. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 365

The gray mouse is, as Mrs. Brunner has mentioned, an animal that stands in connection to the darkness of the soul; it represents that fleetingly glimpsed, dark nature of man that makes itself unpleasantly felt from time to time, above all at night. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 363

Mrs. Brunner has given you enough evidence that the mouse is a soul animal. She has also quite correctly pointed to the transparency of the mouse and interpreted it as spirituality. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 363

We can assume that the closeness of death has already cast its shadow on the soul of the child, and has raised questions in her such as: “Why did it come into being in the first place, if it will end anyway?” Or: “Why did it come into being? For what reason?” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 361

We can perhaps draw only one conclusion from the amplification for the inner situation of the girl: that her soul is thirsty—thirsty for living water. And this dream originates in the living water, only she is not able to grasp it. That is why she confides in the father: maybe he can grasp it. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 357

In our amplifications to the mouse we have heard that the soul leaves the body at night in the form of a mouse, to quench its thirst; it is said that in most cases this is the soul of a girl, and that if the mouse does not come back, the girl will die. In our dream, the girl sees her soul mouse, but it does not turn toward her. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 356

Although all the animals that appear in it are considered souls of the dead, they stand in logical connection with the inner development. What is alarming is only the absolute completeness of the archetypal vision, and this at an age when the archetypal images should be covered and suppressed by her own perceptions and experiences. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 356

We know that the little girl died one year after this dream. The dream does not reveal anything pathological to me, it has a lysis. Although all the animals that appear in it are considered souls of the dead, they stand in logical connection with the inner development. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 356

So this is a reversed Bardo Thödol, beginning with what is lowest and smallest, to bring all creatures home to the blessedness of the soul. The Tibetan teachings about the dead, however, incessantly remind us: “Realize that you are looking at yourself. This is you. Everything depends on your reality and that image becoming one.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 356

Through greed the soul becomes entangled in the world, it becomes earthen, dark, and evil. It is touched by the objects and the humans, and everything is gray and dark. Page 355

And about the final transformation: “When the soul has to realize that no creature at all can come into the Kingdom of God, it begins to feel itself, goes its own way and no longer seeks God. Only then does it die its highest death. In this death the soul loses all desire, all capability of thinking, all form, and is deprived of all essence. Now at last it finds itself in the highest primordial image, in which God lives and is active, where He is His own kingdom.” Here the soul has found out that it itself is the “Kingdom of God.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 355

The lowest of these mandalas is the earth lotus. It corresponds to the gray mouse. It is the place of the world-bound souls. In its center there is the lingam, colored like a fresh sapling, perhaps reminiscent of a worm. Coiled around the lingam, the Kundalini serpent sleeps. In it sleeps the essence of the highest experience. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 355

Where previously there was fighting and activity, now there is also feeding and passivity. In the blue mouse the soul becomes the anima, which mirrors the contents. Life flows in and assumes a solid form. The thoughts become cool and clear. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 352

Blue coats are worn by the wise women who, as swan virgins, are linked to the water, to the mist, and to the sky. Mist rises from the water, rises up into the blue sky, to fall back on earth as rain. In alchemy and tarot, blue is the color of the moon, of silver, and of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 351

Let us have a look at their mythology: In the fairy tale “The Fisherman and His Wife,” the flounder appears as a wish-fish. It fulfills all the wishes of Ilsebill.155 But when she wants to be God Himself, she plunges back into her old misery. In Hofmannsthal’s Woman without a Shadow, seven little fish are the souls of unborn children. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 350

The snake symbolizes the freeing of the energy, the aim at an object, aggressiveness, and drive. The turning red of the mouse shows that the heat of the soul develops out of the material soul, so that passionate wishing is no longer experienced as imposed by the outside, but as an inner compulsion. Before, the shadow entered into the mouse, now the animus is revived; the male instinctual force is awakened, which wants to conquer the world to possess it. And each new conquest feeds the fire and the heat. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 349

Regarding the appearance of the snake in mythology: you remember what Ms. von Franz told us about the snake as an earth demon, as soul of the dead or the heroes, as a dark god of the Ophites, as the snake of the river bed, as movement, as vital force, as time, and as the snake of salvation ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 348

The entering worms are the soul of the matter; they take their element, matter, into the transparent mouse. This means that the soul, driven by greed, begins to “eat the world,” to get entangled in the world. The subtle mouse becomes a real, gray mouse. Darkness, impurity, the gray shadow enter into the pure vessel. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 347

As to the interpretation: for a naive observer, the worms eat earth and transform earth into life, into movement, into greed. They transform matter into soul. They are life originating in death. Worms symbolize the first, unreflected movements of the soul—contents that are still colorless, still completely undifferentiated and incoherent, without feeling, without reason, the stirrings of the blind life instinct. Worms are the most primitive forms of psychical reality, hidden in matter. They belong to an unconscious level, in which the soul is still completely projected onto the outside, onto objects, and in which we experience the world only by blind devouring, by the resistance of the matter, and by involuntary innervation. Soul is here still little more than a physical-chemical substrate. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 347

We may probably interpret the transparent mouse, therefore, as the subtle body of the dreamer. The girl sees her own, still hardly born soul. Transparent brings to mind glassy. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 346.

While the girl witch is dancing with Faust on the Brocken, a little red mouse jumps out of her mouth. Innocent children’s souls and the souls of the just appear as white mice, those of the godless as red ones. The souls of unborn children, too, appear as white mice. There is a very widespread notion that the soul leaves the human body during sleep in the form of a mouse, sometimes to quench its thirst, sometimes to cause nightmares in people, animals, and trees— in that case, it is usually the soul of a girl. If the mouse does not return, the girl will die. To whistle after mice means to lure the souls into the afterworld. Mice are often signs of death. Gray and black mice generally indicate disaster. They spread the Black Death and other diseases. The white mouse appears as a fever demon but, on the other hand, also attracts fever. It is said that mice are created out of earth or putrefaction, or are made by witches. Because of their gray color they are seen as tempest animals, coming from the clouds or the fog, or being brought by the wind. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 345

Yes, it’s the old story of the nixie or the mermaid who gets caught in his net. It is the being that has no soul and therefore strives after it. And that’s where the problem begins. In the dream, too, the boy’s fishing is a playful occupation with something of which he is not yet aware that this is an adventure and involves danger. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 333.

As Jung has explained in the definitions in Psychological Types, the soul, our inner attitude, is represented in the unconscious by certain persons who show the characteristics that are commensurate with the soul. The character of the soul would in general complement the outer character and contain all those attributes missing in the conscious attitude. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 329

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, this transitional stage is expressed by the symbolic forty-nine days, which is the period of time between death and rebirth. It is significant that the greatest chance of salvation occurs in the direct process of dying. So here we have to conceive of the dead body as the direct expression and the symbol of the magical transformational capacity of the soul, the anima. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 329

This nixie-elf-anima represents the soul in its entirety, uniting the good and the bad; it is moving, iridescent like a butterfly. The soul is a life-giving demon, and plays its elfish game beneath and above human existence. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 326

It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me. . . . Our concern with the unconscious has become a vital question, a question of spiritual being or non-being. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 325

Many anima types have something masculine about them. But then, it is after all the soul image of a man. It is probably the unconscious feminine side in man which, however, does not completely lack maleness. That’s why a man projects his anima onto a suitable woman who shows some male characteristics. For then she can also be a friend; the relationship is not just a heterosexual experience, but also friendship, and this is very important. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 321

It is strange that there are not many kinds of anima in a man’s soul, but only one anima. Women, on the other hand, have a multiplicity of animuses. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 317

The fatefulness of the soul image announces itself very early. Whenever the anima figure appears in a boy’s dream we have to be careful, because she represents life as such: that which moves herself as well as the dreamer. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 313

Yes, this girl has actually all the advantages of a soul image, and the noblest feelings have been associated with her. So it was impossible for him to associate her with the other side—his anima image would have been soiled. This is also the deeper reason for the anima to wash her hands. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 312

I have to point out that we have to be very cautious in the case of little children, when we think in terms of the personality and try to find a rational explanation. We must never forget that the infantile soul is no tabula rasa—this would be the greatest misconception—but we always have to keep a door open—to what? ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 311

We have to consider the claim, therefore, that the prima materia, that earth of paradise, that primordial chaos, is hidden in the fecal matter, as a significant contribution to the psychology of this place. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 308

He wanted to teach them how to pray and said to them: “Our Father which art in heaven . . .” They said, however: “Our Father which art not in heaven . . . ”—They simply could not repeat it otherwise. So he had to dismiss them again. And that is why they never received immortal souls. We have to imagine the girl in the dream as such an elfish being. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 305

We have shown the connection between the nature of the girl and the elves. Elves don’t have souls. In her playful way, the girl now does something very significant: she washes her hands. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 302

Yes, there is a split. The dreamer has never really known who he is, where he actually belongs. You will find such a doubleness in those numerous people in whose soul prenatal remnants still exist. These may rise in visions or dreams, but mostly sink back into the unconscious again. It is only in a psychological treatment that these images are again remembered. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 298

The infantile soul is no tabula rasa at all, as presumed by modern psychology, but the ancient images are always already there a priori ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 369

Through greed the soul becomes entangled in the world, it becomes earthen, dark, and evil. It is touched by the objects and the humans, and everything is gray and dark. Page 355

The faithfulness of the soul image announces itself very early. Whenever the anima figure appears in a boy’s dream we have to be careful, because she represents life as such: that which moves herself as well as the dreamer. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 313

The dreamer has never really known who he is, where he actually belongs. You will find such a doubleness in those numerous people in whose soul prenatal remnants still exist. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 298

When he was told the meaning of the dream, both currents flowed together. Up to then they had never come together, and he had never really known: am I in this one or in the other one? Now he became a whole. He had found his soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 298

In India the sweating corresponds to the tapas. This is a kind of self-brooding. By the concentration of the soul powers on this one point, on the central point of the self, it is hatched like an egg. One is enclosed in it oneself, as in the retort or in the uterus. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 298-299

Thus we may hope that this tension between the two souls will lead the dreamer—or has led him already—to the place where he will be able to tolerate the dichotomy, that is, to himself. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 290

Then, in the revealing look up to the high ego on the pyramid, however, he will be fascinated like a Narcissus by his own mirror image and by inner reality, blinded by the boundless possibilities of the soul. In fantasies and daydreams he will, for instance, climb heights that are denied to him by reality. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 290

From the image, in which he sees this soul out there, far away, split off from him, and nearly unreachable, we might conclude that later on in life he will identify too one-sidedly with the conscious ego. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 290

When, in the development of this child, the great amnesia will have obscured the Bardo world with its primeval images, such a dream will shine like a spark from the lost paradise, and remind him that he, who lives down on earth, also has an immortal, versatile soul of divine nature. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 290

Basically, however, his adaptation to reality is only superficial, a pseudo-adaptation, because his soul is somewhere else entirely. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 289

The result is an image of the insoluble tension between limitedness and eternity, reality and dream, actuality and ideal, body and soul, mortality and immortality. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 287

When we apply this to our dream we could say that the Ka soul, the sidereal or subtle body of the child, sits on top of the pyramid: in general terms, the desire for perfection and boundlessness, for salvation and immortality, embodied in the dreamer. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 287

“The soul is an example of this: it too imagines many things [ . . . ] outside the body, just as God does.” ~Carl Jung citing Ruland, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 287

The Egyptians, according to whose belief the soul consisted of about fourteen parts or forces, know a part of the soul they called the Ka soul. It was immortal and its body, conceived as half physical and half spiritual, was absolutely identical with the person, even after his death. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 286

In fairy tales this vessel also appears as a glass casket, in which the soul slumbers, waiting for salvation (Snow White in the casket of glass). In the Visio Arislei, an alchemical text, a triple glass house is the place where the heroes are condemned to death in great heat, only to find new life again. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 284

To conclude, the symbol of the pyramid provides the following indications for our dream: it is an archetypal image, a body mandala, in whose depths the body of the king rests as a mummy, and at whose summit the glorification of the soul takes place. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 282

Often the tops of Egyptian pyramids were gilded or made of a specially gleaming stone. It was assumed that after the Pharaoh’s death his soul, that is, his image, the Ka soul, would travel through the underworld and then be transformed into the god Osiris, or rise to Atum, the highest god of light, exactly at this top of his grave. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Pages 281-282

When this part of the soul becomes conscious it can cause immense disturbance. That is why one may touch this encapsulated world only with utmost caution, because otherwise there is the danger that all of a sudden a second personality erupts. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 254

It was also generally assumed that the souls of the dead would live on as chthonic snake gods, as inhabitants of the underworld where they became guardians of a treasure. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 244

The author goes on to say that the name lion was chosen because of the soul substance, and that dog or camel could have been chosen just as well, just as any other name of an animal, simply because it represents that living being which is drawn out of the first matter. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 226

One alchemical passage reads: “In this way the stone has been compared to the animals, because of the blood being their life substance, for the soul of each animal is in the blood.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 226

This snake simply replaces the source; it symbolizes the water of life. It is an alchemical idea that dragons or serpents—serpens mercurii—live in the middle of the earth, the imperfect metal, and are, so to speak, the anima, the soul of the metal. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 216

The child had a premonition of the instinctual hell into which she will enter. In alchemy, this state of instinctual hell is represented as a snake with three heads, the so-called serpens mercurii. It leads the soul into the afterworld, and is identical with the Gnostic Nous. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 203

This means: in our own nature, in the unconscious, in the natural soul, there is such a figure, and it is clearly expressed in our dream. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 198

Without doubt, the fairy is the superior, enigmatic, magical being, a kind of helpful spirit. Fairies, like elves, are beings of nature; they do not have Christian souls, but are beings of nature who come from nature and live in nature. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 198

In the visions of Zosimos, too, the philosopher is only a bystander, watching. There, too, the figure of the guide burns himself, to show the alchemist the way. The soul guide appears in the dream and shows him: this will have to happen to bring about what you are looking for. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 197

A very little child who dies before baptism is not condemned, not stigmatized as some hellish brute, but simply deprived of the Visio Dei. It is up to the mercy of God what to do with this unfinished soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 188

The Bardo lifespan is forty-nine days. The souls live, so to speak, in a collective world, and are confronted with spirits and other images of life, “images of all creatures,” as Goethe says in Faust. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 183

And if she lets herself be seized, and suffers the fire’s heat, the soul will be formed out of the unconscious body and spirit, the soul that is able to float, as the body’s essence of light, between heaven and earth with the wings of the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 178

In the mirror we see our true nature, the image of our soul; reflection brings about insight and knowledge.~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 176

In the hidden fire above heaven, all things are preserved. Through fire, which consumes the material form, the soul becomes the pure image, godlike and immortal. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 175

In Heraclitus we find the idea that the souls turn into water. In recent years, one Gurdjieff claimed that the moon was so fertilized by the many souls of soldiers killed during the last World War that a green spot appeared on it. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 167

The moon actually is sometimes the place of departed souls, absorbing the souls. If it absorbs many souls, it is said to become humid. The psyche is, after all, the humid breath—“psychros” is cold, and is related to “to blow.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 167

And it may come to mind that the same idea is found in Egypt, the idea of the burial chambers, above which there is the Ka, the semimaterial soul of the Egyptian. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 165

The motif of multiplicity indicates a splitting of the soul. We find this motif particularly often in the dreams of schizophrenics. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 156

All cults of cremation have an idea in common, to assist the dead person on his way to the hereafter, that is, to assist in resurrection by freeing the soul through destruction of the mortal remains: the soul can thus float into the next world, into heaven. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 154

After death follows the resurrection. It can take place only if the form of the deceased’s body has been preserved by embalming. Ba, the soul, often rendered as a bird, has to be able to visit the embalmed body; its way goes through the tomb shaft, situated in the pyramid. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 153

The pyramid [ . . . ] is entirely based on the Egyptians’ ideas on life after death: man is composed of at least three parts, the body, the soul (Ba), and the Ka, a being of its own, for whom it is hard to find a translation. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 153

At noon the shadow is shortest, giving rise to the fear that it might disappear altogether. This would be uncanny, for then one would have lost the shadow, the connection to the earth; one has suffered a loss of soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 129

The dream shows a typical process in the infantile soul that is so subtle, however, that the usual education does not notice it at all. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 123

For the monster is actually the soul of the doll/pupa in herself, the primal being, the dark abyss in man, which playfully creates life and creation. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 122

We also find this triad in the development of Goethe’s Faust: the boy charioteer, the homunculus, and Euphorion. The boy charioteer is the soul-guiding function. Here we find the motif of “puer aeternus.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 120

Just like a primitive man, the child brings the doll to life with the images of her unconscious, and so animates, “en-souls,” it. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 113

The problem is how to fill him with soul and thus make him into a real human being. But the vial of the homunculus is smashed to pieces on Galatea’s chariot and pours out into the sea waves, whereupon the homunculus rises again as a living man out of the waters of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 113

The notion of the soul is connected to the fur, the skin, the shirt, the outer form, for shirt (e.g., the swan shirt) and fur stand for a great potential of transformation in the Teutonic tradition. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 106

The staff represents guidance; it will become a guide as an inner law when someone came into the inner ring of fire and remains suspended in the soul fire. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 102

The soul oscillates between air and water. It is always the go-between for the two principles marking the extremes: below there is earth, the material matter; above there is pneumatikos (spirit), air, and fire. Dry, hot air—this is the spirit. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 101

The word “psyche” (soul) is connected to “physein” (Greek, to blow); psychos corresponds with psychros (Greek, cold, damp). “The soul of a drunkard is moist,” says Heraclitus. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 100-101

Here Hermes also has to be mentioned, the thief of the sun cattle of Helios, also the escort of the souls in the underworld. So the man mentioned in the dream can probably be interpreted as a fatherly archetype. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 93

A Celtic legend tells of a bridge of horrors, not broader than a string. Moreover, in a Persian collection of legends there appears the so-called Chinvat bridge, on which angels and demons fight over the souls of the people crossing it. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 90

If consciousness is weak, it can get into the wake of that content from the collective unconscious and be towed away by it. This is possession, “the peril of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 80

When you have pictures from your ancestors, you can single out parts of your face and detect them in the various pictures of the ancestors. The same is true for the whole body, and likewise with the soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 73

The student from Prague, who sells his own reflection to the devil, no longer has any image, that is, the soul has left the body, and this means disaster. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 67

That is why the primitives do not want to be photographed, out of fear that their double, their soul image, be taken away from them, thus causing a loss of soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 67

The ancient Greeks, too, found the mirror, when it appeared in a dream, uncanny. It meant the death of a person; this is so because the image one sees in the mirror is one’s own double. It is the Ka of the Egyptians. It is an image of the soul. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 67

That is why one avoids speaking about certain things or thinking of something particular—because then one can be robbed of one’s soul or devoured by the fantasies. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 66

We feel it may be justified to assume that this problem is not a conscious problem of the infantile soul, but rather a general one that finds expression in this dream: the fight of the spirit against physical matter, the longing of the creature to be saved from the bonds of the flesh, the fight of the higher against the lower powers. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 62

In Goethe’s poem Erlking, the king tries to lure the soul of a boy away from his real father, to become a playmate for his own daughters! In the end, he takes it with force. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 55-56

In Persia, the dog is the companion of the dead. To give it bread is a ceremony: one gives it bread instead of the body, meaning, don’t tear me apart, don’t tear my soul apart, but guide it to the destination through the desert of Hades. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 52

The inevitable inner growth of the animal soul creates the big, dark spots in human life: “To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us, To guilt ye let us heedless go.” ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 52

This is the great difficulty: that we have to reach, from the completely unconscious animal soul, the stairs on which we can ascend to the heights. The Pueblo Indians have a mythical image for this: in the development of mankind, one cave on top of the other has to be reached. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 52

We do not have to look far to find such universal images. They are already found in language, not to mention those that probably rest at the bottom of our souls. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 27

Carl Jung Depth Psychology

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Carl Jung: “Children’s Dreams Seminar” – Quotations

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