In the third night, deep longing to continue experiencing the mysteries seized me.
The struggle between doubt and desire was great in me.
But suddenly I saw that I stood before a steep ridge in a wasteland.
It is a dazzling bright day I catch sight of the prophet high above me.
His hand makes an averting movement, and I abandon my decision to climb up.
I wait below, gazing upward. I look: to the right it is dark night; to the left it is bright day
The rock separates day and night.
On the dark side lies a big black serpent, on the bright side a white serpent.
They thrust their heads toward each other, eager for battle.
Elijah stands on the heights above them.
The serpents pounce on one another and a terrible wrestling ensues.
The black serpent seems to be stronger; the white serpent draws back. Great billows of dust rise from the place of struggle.
But then I see: the black serpent pulls itself back again.
The front part of its body has become white. Both serpents curl about themselves, one in light, the other in darkness.
Elijah: “What did you see?”
I: “I saw the fight of two formidable serpents. It seemed to me as if the black would overcome the white serpent; but behold, the black one withdrew and its head and the top part of its body had turned white.”
E: “Do you understand that?”
I: “I have thought it over, but I cannot understand it. Should it mean that the power of the good light will become so great that even the darkness that resists it will be illumined by it?”
Elijah climbs before me into the heights, to a very high summit; I follow. On the peak we come to some masonry made of huge blocks. It is a round embankment on the summit Inside lies a large courtyard, and there is a mighty boulder in the middle, like an altar. The prophet stands on this stone and says:
“This is the temple of the sun. This place is a vessel, that collects the light of the sun.”
Elijah climbs down from the stone, his form becomes smaller in descending, and finally becomes dwarflike, unlike himself.
I ask: “Who are you?”
“I am Mime, and I will show you the wellsprings. The collected light becomes water and flows in many springs from the summit into the valleys of the earth.”
He then dives down into a crevice. Ifollow him down into a dark cave. I hear the rippling of a spring.
I hear the voice of the dwarf from below:
“Here are my wells, whoever drinks from them becomes wise.”
But I cannot reach down. I lose courage. I leave the cave and, doubting, pace back and forth in the square of the yard. Everything appears to me strange and incomprehensible. It is solitary and deathly silent here. The air is clear and cool as on the remotest heights, a wonderful flood of sunlight all around, the great wall surrounds me. A serpent crawls over the stone. It is the serpent of the prophet. How did it come out of the underworld into the world above? I follow it and see how it crawls into the wall. I feel weird allover: a little house stands there with a portico, minuscule, snuggling against the rock. The serpents become infinitely small. I feel as if I too am shrinking. The walls enlarge into a huge mountain and I see that I am below on the foundation of the crater in the underworld, and I stand before the house of the prophet. He steps out of the door of his house.
I: “I notice, Elijah, that you have shown me and let me experience all sorts of strange things and allowed me to come before you today. But I confess that it is all dark to me. Your world appears to me today in a new light. Just now it was as if I were separated by a starry distance from your place, which I still wanted to reach today. But behold: it seems to be one and the same place.”
E: “You wanted to come here far too much. I did not deceive you, you deceived yourself He sees badly who wants to see; you have overreached yourself”
I: “It is true, I eagerly longed to reach you, to hear more. Salome startled me and led me into bewilderment. I felt dizzy; because what she said seemed to me to be monstrous and like
madness. Where is Salome?”
E: “How impetuous you are! What is up with you? Step over to the crystal and prepare yourself in its light.”
A wreath of fire shines around the stone. I am seized with fear at what I see: The coarse peasant’s boot? The foot of a giant that crushes an entire city? I see the cross, the removal of the cross, the mourning. How agonizing this sight is! No longer do I yearn-I see the divine child, with the white serpent in his right hand, and the black serpent in his left hand. I see the green mountain, the cross of Christ on it, and a stream of blood flowing from the summit of the mountain-I can look no longer, it is unbearable-I see the cross and Christ on it in his last hour and torment-at the foot of the cross the black serpent coils itself-it has wound itself around my feet-lam held fast and I spread my arms wide. Salome draws near. The serpent has wound itself around my whole body, and my countenance is that of a lion.
Salome says, “Mary was the mother of Christ, do you understand?”
I: “I see that a terrible and incomprehensible power forces me to imitate the Lord in his final torment. But how can I presume to call Mary my mother?”
S: “You are Christ.”
I stand with outstretched arms like someone crucified, my body taut and horribly entwined by the serpent: “You, Salome, say that I am Christ?”
It is as if I stood alone on a high mountain with stiff outstretched arms. The serpent squeezes my body in its terrible coils and the blood streams from my body; spilling down the mountainside. Salome bends down to my feet and wraps her black hair round them. She lies thus for a long time. Then she cries, “I see light!” Truly; she sees, her eyes are open. The serpent falls from my body and lies languidly on the ground. I stride over it and kneel at the feet of the prophet, whose form shines like a flame.
E: “Your work is fulfilled here. Other things will come. Seek untiringly; and above all write exactly what you see.”
Salome looks in rapture at the light that streams from the prophet. Elijah transforms into a huge flame of white light. The serpent wraps itself around her foot, as if paralyzed. Salome kneels before the light in wonders truck devotion. Tears fall from my eyes, and I hurry out into the night, like one who has no part in the glory of the mystery. My feet do not touch the ground of this earth, and it is as if I were melting into air.
[2] My longing led me up to the over bright day; whose light is the opposite to the dark space of forethinking. The opposite principle is, as I think I understand it, heavenly love, the mother.
The darkness that surrounds forethinking appears to be due to the fact that it is invisible in the interior and takes place in the depths.
But the brightness of love seems to come from the fact that love is visible life and action. My pleasure was with forethinking and had its merry garden there, surrounded by darkness and night. I climbed down to my pleasure, but ascended to my love. I see Elijah high above me: this indicates that forethinking stands nearer to love than 1, a man, do. Before I ascend to love, a condition must be fulfilled, which represents itself as the fight between two serpents. Left is day; right is night. The realm of love is light, the realm of forethinking is dark Both principles have separated themselves strictly; and are even hostile to one another and have taken on the form of serpents. This form indicates the daimonic nature of both principles. I recognize in this struggle a repetition of that vision where I saw the struggle between the sun and the black serpent.
At that time, the loving light was annihilated, and blood began to pour out. This was the Great War. But the spirit of the depths wants this struggle to be understood as a conflict in every man’s own nature. Since after the death of the hero our urge to live could no longer imitate anything, it therefore went into the depths of every man and excited the terrible conflict between the powers of the depths. Forethinking is singleness, love is togetherness. Both need one another, and yet they kill one another. Since men do not know that the conflict occurs inside themselves, they go mad, / and one lays the blame on the other. If one-half of mankind is at fault, then every man is half at fault. But he does not see the conflict in his own soul, which is however the source of the outer disaster. If you are aggravated against your brother, think that you are aggravated against the brother in you, that is, against what in you is similar to your brother. As a man you are part of mankind, and therefore you have a share in the whole of mankind, as if you were the whole of mankind. If you overpower and kill your fellow man who is contrary to you, then you also kill that person in yourself and have murdered a part of your life. The spirit of this dead man follows you and does not let your life become joyful. You need your wholeness to live onward. If I myself endorse the pure principle, I step to one side and become one sided. Therefore my forethinking in the principle of the heavenly mother becomes an ugly dwarf who lives in a dark cave like an unborn in the womb. You do not follow him, even if he says to you that you could drink wisdom from his source. But forethinking appears to you there as dwarfish cleverness, false and of the night, just as the heavenly mother appears to me down there as Salome. That which is lacking in the pure principle appears as the serpent. The hero strives after the utmost in the pure principle, and therefore he finally falls for the serpent. If you go to thinking, take your heart with you. If you go to love, take your head with you. Love is empty without thinking, thinking hollow without love. The serpent lurks behind the pure principle. Therefore I lost courage, until I found the serpent that at once led me across to the other principle. In climbing down I become smaller.
Great is he who is in love, since love is the present act of the great creator, the present moment of the becoming and lapsing of the world. Mighty is he who loves. But whoever distances himself
from love, feels himself powerful.
In your forethinking you recognize the nullity of your current being as a smallest point between the infinity of what has passed and of what is to come. The thinker is small, he feels great if he
distances himself from thinking. But if we speak about appearances, it is the other way around. To whoever is in love, form is a trifling. But his field of vision ends with the form given to him.
To whoever is in thinking, form is unsurpassable and the height of Heaven. But at night he sees the diversity of the innumerable worlds and their never-ending cycles. Whoever is in love is a full and overflowing vessel, and. awaits the giving. Whoever is in forethinking is deep and hollow and awaits fulfillment.
Love and forethinking are in one and the same place. Love cannot be without fore thinking, and forethinking cannot be without love. Man is always too much in one or the other. This comes with human nature. Animals and plants seem to have enough in every way; only man staggers between too much and too little. He wavers, he is uncertain how much he must give here and how much there. His knowledge and ability is insufficient, and yet he must still do it himself Man doesn’t only grow from within himself for he is also creative from within himself The God becomes revealed in him. Human nature is little skilled in divinity; and therefore man fluctuates between too much and too little.
The spirit of this time has condemned us to haste. You have no more futurity and no more past if you serve the spirit of this time. We need the life of eternity. We bear the future and the past in the depths. The future is old and the past is young. You serve the spirit of this time, and believe that you are able to escape the spirit of the depths. But the depths do not hesitate any longer and will force you into the mysteries of Christ. It belongs to this mystery that man is not redeemed through the hero, but becomes a Christ himself The antecedent example of the saints symbolically teaches us this. Whoever wants to see will see badly: It was my will that deceived me. It was my will that provoked the huge uproar among the daimons. Should I therefore not want anything? I have, and I have fulfilled my will as well as I could, and thus I fed everything in me that strived. In the end I found that I wanted myself in everything, but without looking for ,myself Therefore I no longer wanted to seek myself outside of myself but within. Then I wanted to grasp myself and then I wanted to go on again, without knowing what I wanted, and thus I fell into the mystery:
Should I therefore not want anything anymore? You wanted this war. That is good. If you had not, then the evil of this war would be small. But with your wanting you make the evil great. If you do not succeed in producing the greatest evil out of this war, you will never learn the violent deed and learn to overcome fighting what lies outside you. Therefore it is good if you want this greatest evil with your whole heart. You are Christians and run after heroes, and wait for redeemers who should take the agony on themselves for you, and totally spare you Golgotha. With that you pile up a mountain of Calvary over all Europe. If you succeed in making a terrible evil out of this war and throw innumerable victims into this abyss, this is good, since it makes each of you ready to sacrifice himself For as I, you draw close to the accomplishment of Christ’s mystery:
You already feel the fist of the iron one on your back. This is the beginning of the way: If blood, fire, and the cry of distress fill this world, then you will recognize yourself in your acts:
Drink your fill of the bloody atrocities of the war, feast upon the killing and destruction, then your eyes will open, you will see that you yourselves are the bearers of such fruit. You are on the , way if you will all this: Willing creates blindness, and blindness leads to the way: Should we will error? You should not, but you do will that error which you take for the best truth, as men have always done.
The symbol of the crystal signifies the unalterable law of events that comes of itself In the little seed you grasp what is to come. I saw something terrible and incomprehensible. (It was on the night of Christmas day of the year 1913.) I saw the peasant’s boot, the sign of the horrors of the peasant war, of murdering incendiaries and of bloody cruelty: I knew to interpret this sign for myself as nothing but the fact that something bloody and dreadful lay before us. I saw the foot of a giant that crushed a whole city: How could I interpret this sign otherwise? I saw that the way to self-sacrifice began here. They will all become terribly enraptured by these tremendous experiences, and in their blindness will want to understand them as outer events. It is an inner happening; that is the way to the perfection of the mystery of Christ, so that the peoples learn self-sacrifice.
May the frightfulness become so great that it can turn men’s eyes inward, so that their will no longer seeks the self in others but in themselves. I saw it, I know that this is the way: I saw the death of Christ and I saw his lament; I felt the agony of his dying, of the great dying. I saw a new God, a child, who subdued daimons in his hand. The God holds the separate principles in his power, he unites them. The God develops through the union of the principles in me. He is their union. If you will one of these principles, so you are in one, but far from your being other. If you will both principles, one and the other, then you excite the conflict between the principles, since you cannot want both at the same time. From this arises the need, the God appears in it, he takes your conflicting will in his hand, in the hand of a child whose will is simple and beyond conflict. You cannot learn this, it can only develop in you. You cannot will this, it takes the will from your hand and wills itself Will yourself that leads to the way:
But fundamentally you are terrified of yourself and therefore you prefer to run to all others rather than to yourself I saw the mountain of the sacrifice, and the blood poured in streams from its sides. When I saw how pride and power satisfied men, how beauty beamed from the eyes of women when the great war broke out, I knew that mankind was on the way to self-sacrifice. The spirit of the depths has seized mankind and forces self-sacrifice upon it. Do not seek the guilt here or there. The spirit of the depths clutched the fate of man unto itself as it clutched mine. He leads mankind through the river of blood to the mystery: In the mystery man himself becomes the two principles, the lion and the serpent.
Because I also want my being other, I must become a Christ. I am made into Christ, I must suffer it. Thus the redeeming blood flows. Through the self-sacrifice my pleasure is changed and goes above into its higher principle. Love is sighted, but pleasure is blind. Both principles are one in the symbol of the flame. The principles strip themselves of human form. The mystery showed
in images what I should afterward live. I did not possess any of those boons that the mystery showed me, for I still had to earn all of them.
finis. part. prim. (End of part one) ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 251-254.
