Carl Jung Dreams of his Wife
After that I had this dream around l 1/2 years ago:
I am lying on a bed with my wife in a chamber with an open ceiling (similar to the roofless houses of Pompeii.)
All at once my wife startles and climbs the wall rapidly and disappears upward.
She wears a long white dress with mystical figures, such as witches or heretics, who are burnt at the stake. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 160
Hedwig Sturzenegger, nee Bendel (1876- 1912), was a first cousin of Emma Jung’s.
She died of leukemia.
In Memories, Jung wrote:
“I dreamed that my wife’s bed was a deep pit with stone walls.
It was a grave, and somehow had a suggestion of antiquity about it.
Then I heard a deep sigh, as if someone were giving up the ghost.
A figure that resembled my wife sat up in the pit and floated upward.
She wore a white gown into which curious black symbols were woven.
I awoke, roused my wife, and checked the time.
It was three o’clock in the morning.
The dream was so curious that I thought at once that it might signify a death.
At seven o’clock came the news that a cousin of my wife had died at three o’clock in the morning!” (p. 332). The Black Books, Page, 161, fn 55
Carl Jung: August 1919 Dream of Emma Jung
11, / 12. Aug. 1919
Dream:
Emma, the 2 oldest daughters and I are sort of guests of a rich peasant in southern Siberia or South Africa.
He practices ostrich breeding. low thatched building.
I prepare a lemonade with ice to combat the heat.
Emma reaches with her hand into it and spills the stuff.
I am furious and throw all the glasses against the wall.
They don’t break but fall like a rubber ball to the ground.
I leave the room and go into a type of barn.
There is a low wide table, on which remarkably old books lie.
I take one in brown leather: “Acta Thomasina.” The pages are of brown pressed leather.
In the middle of each page is an archaic figure of a prophet with his words in hieroglyphic signs alongside. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. VII, Page 202
What lies in between is in the dream book, but still more in the images of the Red Book.
23 II 1920.
What lies in between is in the dream book, but still more in the images of the Red Book.
What happens between the lover and the beloved is the total fullness of the Godhead.
That is why both are an unfathomable mystery to each other. Since who would understand the Godhead?
But the God will be born in solitude, from the mystery of the individual.
The separation between life and love is the contradiction between solitude and togetherness.
[The following are the entries in “Dreams” between these two entries:]
Aug. 1919.
Dream: I am in an anatomical museum, recently arranged by a great artist.
A great hall. On a massive table rest 4 enormous gloriously bound old books, presumably anatomical.
On the wall I see a prepared heart with a piece of tendon at the apex. Individual fingers in addition.
Lili wants to tear them down and play with them. I stop her.
Then I see in the middle of the room an old rotting ship’s cannon and read on a small board that it was discovered by 2 youths in a peculiar way (witching wand?).
They searched the foundations of old fortifications, but found the more interesting cannon. Then Emma entered, Franz behind her.
I see, she thinks that this is something more for Franz than for Lili. Franz has my American hat on and my old uniform shirt that reaches to his knees. In addition a child’s gun with a bayonet.
He seems hollow-cheeked and bent like a medieval scholar, overwhelmed by the impression, mouth and eyes wide open, completely dumb and stupefied.
Vision in the same night.
To the right of the bed of my wife there is a great angel of the most severe form in a praying position.
To the left of him is a dark transparent dangerous mass. I see only the following forms in it
,~~~, ~ / =;
Then I see the angel to the left of me. He indicates a bright spot (*) from which a deathly pale maiden with almost closed eyes, black hair, sharp southern features, around 28 years old (the same as on p. 26) steps forward.
She remains around 2 meters from my bed and excites an uncomfortable sexual feeling in me.
- II. Aug. 1919.
Dream: with a young man (tanned, smaller and younger than I), long adventurous journey on a light wagon with I horse.
Robberies, shooting, escape on winding country roads, through a tunnel where the stones of the vault threaten to fall.
Then a free fl.at landscape, where one escapes the enemy. Suddenly there is a palace with a doorway, where we enter.
My companion surprisingly strikes his hands together and calls “Ah.”
We understand at once that we have fallen into the 17th century into the palace of a small despot, who has taken us prisoner and wants to leave us to starve.
But we know that we will escape by trickery (Wells, Time machine). ~The Black Books, Vol. VII, Page 201-202
The reference is to H . G. Wells’s science fiction novel The Time Machine (London: William Heinemann, 1895).
Jung had some contact with Wells.
Wells and C. G. Jung,” Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought (1975) : 60-62.
Jung described his impressions of Wells to Aniela Jaffe (MP, p. 13). ~The Black Books, Vol. VII, Page 202, fn 143
