Carl Jung: The Black Books, Vol. IV, Quotations
As I said, there seem to be all sorts of things in Christianity that maybe one would do well to keep.
Nietzsche is too oppositional. like everything healthy and long-lasting, truth unfortunately adheres more to the middle way, which we unjustly abhor. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 205
I have to crawl together out of many different corners in which I lost myself.
I return to the black serpent rod. It seems like a solid and mighty piece of death.
But death appears like a power belonging to me. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 227
Words of life, from the innermost and darkest life”-says another voice.
Vanity and seduction blended deceivingly, because power shimmers in many beguiling and seducing colors. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 227
Power likes to subjugate external things, to rope in humans, to accumulate wealth, to commit acts of violence.
Power wants to free itself from service, submission, and obedience, wants to harvest where it did not sow, to win where there is nothing to lose. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 227
I understand, it is the miracle of regeneration, the sinking into death, and the overcoming of death.
But what does this image aim at? Does it speak of immortality? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 228
The magical rod lies in a cupboard together with the 6 & 7th books of Moses and the wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 228
The sixth and seventh books of Moses (that is, in addition to the five contained in the Torah) were published in 1849 by Johann Schiebel, who claimed that they came from ancient Talmudic sources.
The work, a compendium of Kabbalistic magical spells, has proved to be enduringly popular. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 230, fn 104
If magic were still taught today at the university, I would have studied it there. But the last college of magic was closed long ago.
Today no professor knows anything anymore about magic. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 231
Ph. But stupidity would perhaps be progress on the way to magic. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 23
Ph. Well, that’s another advantage of magic, not even the devil gets the better of me.
You’re beginning to understand magic, so I must assume that you have a good aptitude for it. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 235
Banality is my element, a true point of tranquillity. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 236
Loving reaches up to Heaven and resisting reaches just as high.
They are entwined and will not let go of each other, since the excessive tension seems to indicate the ultimate and highest possibility of feeling. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 237
My understanding? It is ignorance, nonsense, and wisdom.
I no longer have any understanding. Perhaps it will return later, but today it is only a partial phenomenon to me and entirely unsatisfactory. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 238
When God did not proceed further, at least the devil progressed and vice versa.
How will it be, now that God and the devil have become one? Are they in agreement to bring the progress of life to a standstill? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 239
Satan: My reaction is far from personal. I am utterly restless, quickly hurrying life. I am never contented, never unperturbed. I pull everything down and hastily rebuild; I am ambition, greed for fame, lust for action; I am the fizz of new thoughts and action. The absolute is- as the name says already- boring and vegetative. ~Satan, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 243
Without knowing it you [Satan] enlighten me. You are personal life-but the apparent standstill is the forbearing life of eternity, the life of divinity. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 244
Jung: What is it, then, with this “personal quality”? Yesterday Satan made a most “personal” impression on me.
Soul: “I guess he does. Since he is the eternal adversary, and because you can never reconcile personal life with absolute life.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 247
I give you payment in images. Behold! ~Jung’s Soul, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 249
I Dear Salome, I thank you for your love. It is beautiful to hear love spoken of.
It is music and old, far-off homesickness. look, my tears are falling on your good words.
I want to kneel before you and kiss your hands a hundred times, because they want to give me the service of love. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 250
I am begging you [Jung’s Soul], be your own master and your own slave, do not belong to me but to yourself.
Do not bear my burden, but your own.
Thus you leave me my human freedom, a thing that’s worth more to me than the right of ownership over another person. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 252
I’m not sending you away. You must not be far from me.
But give to me out of your fullness, not your longing.
I cannot satisfy your poverty just as you
You possess nothing, so how can you give?
Insofar as you give, you demand.
Elijah, old man, listen you are a patriarchal Jew, you have an old-fashioned gratitude.
Do not give away your daughter, but set her on her own feet.
She might dance, sing or play the lute before people, and they might throw flashing coins at her feet and cannot still my longing. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 252
I know where your [Elijah] serpent is. I have her.
My soul fetched her for me from the underworld. She gives me hardness, wisdom, and magical power.
We needed her in the upper world, since otherwise the underworld would have had the advantage, to our detriment. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 254
Exactly, the commonplace is effectively true and thoroughly appropriate for you [Soul].
Don’t be so snobby. The commonplace is a rule of universal truth and a substantial certainty. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 263
Love is the most sensitive organ of perception. Only love lets you read your own soul and the souls of others.
Nothing else will do.
It is will be, it is, and it passes, hiding an infinite meaning in itself. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 274
It demands the sacrifice only of your male prejudices.
You need to intensify the longing in others.
That way they become modest. ~Jung’s Soul, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 276
. I must confess that I’m also somewhat surprised by this inspiration.
But recently I came across a short passage from Thomas a Kempis that made a particular impression on me; why, I can’t really say. It dealt especially with the problem of the Imitation of Christ. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 203
You know that I value science extraordinarily highly, but there are actually moments in life where science also leaves us empty and sick. In such moments a book like Thomas’s [Kempis] means very much to me since it is written from the soul. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 204
We haven’t come to an end with Christianity by simply putting it aside. It seems to me that there’s more to it than we see. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 204
Incidentally, a host of substitutes now exists for the loss of opportunity for prayer caused by the collapse of religion.
Nietzsche, for example, has written a more than veritable book of prayer. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 204
Perhaps from your standpoint you’re right, but I can’t help feeling that Nietzsche speaks for those to those who need more freedom, not to those who clash strongly with life, who bleed from wounds, who have been afflicted by actualities. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 205
I believe one can also follow one’s own nose, that would also be an intuitive method.
But the beautiful way in which the Christian does this must nevertheless be of special value. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 207
Let go, daimon, you did not live your animal! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 208
So long as we live here on earth, we cannot escape temptation?.
There is no man who is so perfect, and no saint so sacred, that he cannot be tempted on occasion.
Yes, we can hardly be without temptation. ~Thomas Kempis cited, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 208
To me: You see, nowadays, the “Imitatio Christi” leads to the madhouse. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 209
The problem of madness is profound-divine madness-a higher form of the irrationality of the life streaming through us-at any rate a madness that cannot be integrated into present-day society-but what if the form of society gave way to madness? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 210-211
Have you recognized your madness and do you admit it?
Have you noticed that you harbor your madness?
Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 211
Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner?
You wanted to accept everything that you find in yourself. So accept madness too.
Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you.
Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 211
Our life is the truth that we seek.
My life is the path for those who come after me.
Only my life is my truth, the truth above all. We create the truth by living it.
Only in retrospect life becomes truth.
We do not find truth first and then we live it, but the other way around. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 215
Life should proceed, from birth to death and from death to birth-from sense to madness and from madness to sense- unbroken like the path of the sun-Everything should proceed on this path. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 216
“My soul, in everything and yet beyond everything, you must find your rest in the lord, for he is the eternal rest of the saints.”
I read this sentence aloud-putting an astonished question mark by every word. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 217
I patiently take off my armor and go to the spring wearing a white penitent’s shirt, where I wash my hands and feet on my own and baptize myself in the name of the one that I am.
Then I take off my penitent’s shirt and put on my civilian clothes.
I walk out of the scene and approach myself-I who am still kneeling down, ossified.
I rise and become one with myself. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 219
Thereafter I walk on like a man who is tense, and who expects something new that he has never suspected before.
I listen to the depths-warned, instructed, and undaunted-outwardly striving to lead a full human life. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 220
I will gratefully accept what you give, my soul.
I do not have the right to judge or to reject.
Fate will separate the wheat from the chaff.
We have to subjugate ourselves also to the judgment of valuelessness and destruction in majorem vitae gloriam [to the greater glory of life]. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 220
I wanted to laugh, because so much alters in laughter, and resolves itself only there.
Here laughter dies in me. Its magic is as solid as iron and as cold as death. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 226
Waiting-I know this word.
Hercules also found waiting burdensome when he carried the vault of the heavens on his shoulders.
“He had to await Atlas’s return and carried the vault of the heavens for the sake of the apples.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. IV, Page 226