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The Emergence of Phanes
The seventh sermon had culminated in an evocation of a star God: At immeasurable distance a lonely star stands in the zenith.
This is the one God of this one man, this is his world, his Pleroma, his divinity.
In this world man is Abraxas, the creator and destroyer of his own world.
This star is the God and the goal of man, this is his one guiding God, in him man goes to his rest, toward him goes the long journey of the soul after death, in him everything that man withdraws from the greater world shines resplendently.
To this one God man shall pray.
The entries from the autumn of 1916 further elaborate on this figure, who is revealed as Phanes. Phanes first emerged as a golden bird from the tree of light.
Jung’s soul identified him as the “ultimate and highest.”
In the autumn of 1917, Philemon described his luminous splendor in entries that could be considered as further sermons.
In 1919, Jung painted his portrait in Liber Novus as a divine child, noting, “I called him PHANES, because he is the newly appearing God.”
He considered the emergence of this figure as denoting a spiritual transformation that was occurring in the world. In 1919 he wrote to an English pupil, Joan Corrie:
in the last sermon you find the beginning of individuation, out of which, the divine child arises. Please don’t speak of these things to other people.
It could do harm to the child.
The child is fate and amor fati & guidance and necessity-and peace and fulfillment (Isaiah] 9.6).
But don’t allow yourself to be dispersed into people and opinions and discussions.
The child is a new God, actually born in many individuals, but they don’t know it. He is a “spiritual” God.
A spirit in many people, yet one and the same everywhere. Keep to your time and you will experience His qualities.
During this period, Jung’s soul sought to instruct him with regard to his relations with women. Between 1916 and 1918, reference is made to the “white one” and the “black one,” respectively.
The contexts seem to suggest that these refer to Maria Moltzer and Toni Wolff, respectively.
In an entry in his dream book of July 2, 1917, Jung referred to his “impersonal love” of both women and noted that with them his soul was “complete, fulfilled.”
On September 27, 1916, his soul advised as follows: “let the black one go. No excessively deep relation.
She is also empty and lives through you. She can’t give to you what you need.” The following day, his soul added, apropos the black one:
I understand that you love her, but I would like to get rid of her …. Women are my most dangerous opponents, since they have my qualities. That’s why you can confuse me so easily with the black one. I also have golden goat eyes and a black coat. I place myself between her and you. The white one is less dangerous to you, since she is completely unlike me and of such an adverse nature that you
can’t at all lose yourself there.
A year later, his soul had shifted her position with regard to the black one.
On October 22, 1917, she advised: “love less. The knife, do you hear, you need the knife. Cut off what is no good. Not the black one-she is good for you. She is quiet and accompanies you. She is necessary for you. She can be happy, if things go well with you.”
She advised the opposite concerning the white one.
On February 28, 1918, she said, “For a long time I had already advised you to separate from the white one.”
What was emerging during this period was +Jung’s understanding of the figure of the anima, man’s feminine soul, and the
necessity of recognizing the anima as an internal component rather than seeing
her in women.
In technical terms, he referred to this as withdrawing and integrating the projection of the anima from women.
Between June II and October 2, 1917, Jung was on military service in Chateau d’Oex, as commander of the English military war internees.
A round August, he wrote to Smith Ely Jelliffe that his military service had taken him completely away from his work, and that on his return he hoped to finish a long paper about the types.
He concluded: “With us everything is unchanged and quiet. Everything else is swallowed by the war. The psychosis is still increasing,
going on and on.”
From the beginning of August to the end of September, he drew a series of mandalas in pencil in his army notebook, which he preserved.
The first is titled “Phanes” and bears the legend “transformation of matter in the individual.”
This image may be seen as an attempt to depict the “newly arising God” and his relation to the individual.
These mandalas are linked to the concurrent fantasies noted in the Black Books.
A number featured complex hieroglyphics that emerged and were in turn elucidated in dialogues with the black magician Ha in the autumn of 1917-
Jung then painted them in the calligraphic volume of Liber Novus, but they bear no relation to the text.
They more properly accompany the autumn dialogues in the Black Books.
Jung later recalled that he did not understand these mandalas but felt that they were very significant.
Beginning on August 20, he drew a mandala on most days.
This gave him the feeling that he had taken a photograph of each day, and he observed how these figures changed.
He recalled that he received a letter from “this Dutch woman”-Moltzer- “that got on my nerves terribly.”
Moltzer argued that “the fantasies stemming from the unconscious possessed artistic worth and should be considered as art.”
Modern painters were attempting to make art out of the unconscious, and Moltzer’s point troubled him because it was not stupid and made him question whether his fantasies were spontaneous and natural.
He drew a mandala the next day and a piece of it was broken off, and the symmetry was destroyed:
Only now did I gradually come to what the mandala really is: Formation,
transformation, / The eternal mind’s eternal recreation.
And that is the Self, the wholeness of the personality, which, when everything is well, is harmonious, but which can bear no self deception.
My mandala images were cryptograms on the state of my Self, which were delivered to me each day.
The mandala appears to be that of August 6, 1917.192
The citation is from Goethe’s Faust, 2, act 1, 11. 6287ff.).
Mephistopheles is addressing Faust, giving him directions to the realm of the Mothers:
MEPHISTOPHELES: A glowing tripod will finally show you
that you are in the deepest, most deepest ground.
By its light you will see the Mothers:
the one sits, others stand and walk,
as it may chance. Formation, transformation
the eternal mind’s eternal recreation.
covered in images of all creatures,
they do not see you, since they only see shades.
Then hold your heart, since the danger is great,
and go straight to that tripod,
touch it with the key!
The letter to which Jung referred has not come to light. However, in a subsequent letter, from November 21, 1918, sent from Chateau d ‘Oex,
Jung wrote that “M. Moltzer has again disturbed me with letters.”
He reproduced the mandalas in the calligraphic volume of Liber Novus.
A decade later, in 1929, he anonymously described this sequence in his “Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower”:
I know a series of European mandala drawings in which something like a plant seed surrounded by membranes is shown floating in the water.
Then, from the depths below, fire penetrates the seed and makes it grow, causing a great golden flower to unfold from the germinal vesicle.
There, he gave the following interpretation of this sequence:
This symbolism refers to a quasi-alchemical process of refining and ennobling.
Darkness gives birth to light; out of the “lead of the water region” grows the noble gold; what is unconscious becomes conscious in the form of a living process of growth. (Indian Kundalini yoga offers a perfect analogy.)
In this way the union of consciousness and life takes place.
On July 30, 1917, Fanny Bowditch Katz, who had analysis both with Jung and Moltzer, wrote notes of her discussion with Moltzer in which she spoke candidly of how Moltzer saw her relationship with Jung and their struggle, and how she had been to visit him in Chateau d’Oex during this period:
Of this hour it’s hard to write-I had perfect rapport and stayed hours with her- at the end of the time I felt lifted into another world and almost as if I had been in a divine presence.
She spoke wonderfully, as if inspired, and I saw more clearly than ever before what she is working for- what her struggle with Dr. Jung means.
How wonderfully she spoke of the work she felt she and Dr. J. were to do together, for which they are only the instruments. Small atoms in
the great universe- of our duty to life – of the subjection of self for the benefit of all- all these feelings are coming to me now as never before.
She spoke of the great struggle going on now in the world, the great agony, which is the collective expression of the individual struggle . . . . She spoke of Isis – whose son took her crown from her head and threw it on the ground- after which a new crown appeared on her head, a cow with the sun and moon between her horns- is this not what is happening to her through Dr. Jung’s treatment ….
The next day we talked for almost an hour in the dining room.
She in her pink kimono perched on the table. Shall I ever forget it?
She spoke of going to Chateau d’Oex to tell Dr. J. of his injustice to her- on one side he is so fine and on the other almost a charlatan playing to the gallery. / His attitude toward their differences is the attitude of the intellectual man- the historical man ….
Then she said- and oh how she said it-with that wonderful fat away look in her eyes, that she felt that somewhere way down deep there must be an affinity between her and me and that it is meant that I should do for R. what she is doing for Dr. J .! . ..
she evidently feels that R. has a great value which I can bring out.- and she spoke of her overcoming the personal in order to do this- she certainly has with Dr. Jung!
By early 1918, the difficulties between Moltzer and Jung had intensified.
On April 14, 1918, Jung wrote to Josef Lang regarding a letter he had received from Moltzer in which she had accused him of trying to destroy her relationship with Lang in a “thirst for revenge.”
Jung asked Lang to indicate to Moltzer that he had not analyzed Lang’s relation to her and didn’t know or care about it.
He said that he had no desire for revenge, and that Moltzer simply couldn’t accept what he said.
He told Lang that he regretted that someone as valuable as Moltzer had such idiotic fantasies and had been projecting rubbish onto him. He said he had broken off relations with her months ago.
Moltzer, Jung told Lang, claimed that Jung had an unresolved transference to her.
This indicated to Jung that she was paranoid. He said that she also maintained that he couldn’t recognize her independence.
Jung considered that the problem was that she held a “deeply degrading” conception of human nature, and always imputed the basest motive-that was why he had drawn back from her.
Despite everything, she still wanted his friendship.
While Moltzer claimed that Jung was projecting onto her, Jung maintained that the opposite was the case: he had left her in peace, while she bombarded him with insults.
Soon after, Moltzer resigned from the Club.
This caused consternation and lengthy debate at a meeting on June r.
On receiving her letter of resignation, Emma Jung, the Club’s president, had tried to persuade her to remain, to no avail.
So had Adolf Keller.
Emma Jung noted that Moltzer had been critical of the Club for some six to eight weeks, an antipathy that actually dated from the previous summer.
Moltzer’s letter criticized the intellectualism of the Club, and the fact that it had been taken over by conflict over the question of types.
While regretting her departure, Emma Jung did not feel that the reasons Moltzer offered for leaving were the real ones.
Martha Sigg suggested that Moltzer had been influenced by her patients against the Club, which Jung thought was probable.
Some members thought that the reason for her withdrawal was the deficiency of her collective function.
Sarah Barker, one of her analysands, suggested that the fact that Moltzer found the Club “so unanalytical that she could no longer give it her sanction and support” was a serious matter.
She argued that it was a mistake to believe, as had been asserted, that “her attitude had been influenced by countless resistances brought about by her patients.”
Barker noted that from the outset, Moltzer had maintained that “the Club was not founded or conducted in accordance with analytical principles.”
In a letter of August l , 1918, Moltzer wrote to Bowditch Katz: Yes, I resigned from the Club. I could not live any longer in that atmosphere.
I am glad I did. I think, that in time, when the Club really shall become something, the Club shall be thankful I did.
My resignation has its silent effects.
Silent, for it seems that it belongs to my path, that I openly don’t get the recognition or the appreciation for what I do for the development of the whole analytic movement.
I always work in the dark and alone. This is my fate and must be expected.
On October 19, Jung informed Lang that he had fired Moltzer as his assistant and broken off all connection with her.
She had accused him of exploiting her and not recognizing her independence.
On his side, he felt that she was not capable of treating him as someone of equal standing and instead always regarded him as a little boy.
He had evidently followed the advice of his soul regarding the white one. Jung’s break with Moltzer was a significant turning point.
He later recalled to Aniela Jaffe: “I can say the air cleared when I showed the door to the Dutch woman who wanted to suggest to me that what I was making was art, and secondly when I started to understand the mandala drawings.”
It was during this period that a living idea of the self first came to Jung.
He recalled to Aniela Jaffe: “It is in accordance with the microcosmic nature of the soul and it seemed to me like the monad which I am, and which is my world. The mandala represents this self.”
He did not know where this process was leading, but he began to grasp that the mandala represented the goal of the process:
“Only when I began to paint the mandalas did I see that all the paths I took, all the steps I made, all led back to the one point, that is, to the center. The mandala became the expression of all paths.”
Moltzer continued to live and work in Zollikerberg and maintained her friendship with Lang. Years later, a rapprochement was attempted, with Lang and Moltzer inviting Jung for a meeting.
Jung thanked Lang for their invitation but declined it: “I know that one could look back with regrets or a certain longing on those unconscious times which were still pregnant with the future.
But those times have since given birth, the covers are torn, and new realities have come into being whose immediacy does not allow me to look backward.
Nothing from the past can be brought back unless it has been reborn in a creative life.” ~Sonu Shamdasani, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 59-67