The unconscious expresses itself chiefly in quaternities.
To Adolf Keller
Dear friend, Easter Monday [ 26 March 1951]
At the end of this week I am spending April in Bollingen, where I have all sorts of work to attend to.
So this week is still open should you be here again.
Best thanks for your two letters!
They swarm with questions and possible misunderstandings which we can only settle by talking.
Otherwise I would have to write whole treatises.
I would only remark now that I haven’t become “more Christian,” it’s just that I now feel better prepared to contribute something to the psychology of Christianity.
Dreams can be many things, but we have only one theoretical premise for their explanation.
The scientific axiom principia explicandi non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem should be taken very seriously.
We must therefore try to get as far as we can with the compensation theory.
The quaternity is an empirical fact, not a doctrine.
Until now Christianity, like so many other systems, had 4 metaphysical figures: Trinity and the “fiery god, the fourth by number,”.
The unconscious expresses itself chiefly in quaternities, irrespective of Christian tradition.
The quaternity is of Old Testament as well as Egyptian origin.
Vishnu has four faces, etc.
Theologia naturalis must take account of this fact, or it will make no contact with psychology.
The quaternity is not a doctrine that can be discussed but a fact which, ut supra demonstravimus, also underlies dogmatics.
Since the incarnatio Dei conveys nothing intelligible to modern man, “became flesh” has to be translated for better of worse, e.g., “has assumed definite empirical form.”
This formula would serve as a bridge to psychology.
Meanwhile best greetings,
CARL ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 13.
