Then the great voyages began, and the fact that the world was a globe was discovered.
That had been known in Greek times already, but it was forgotten in the meantime. So an entirely new world was created.
It was at last realized that the earth was not the center of the universe, but that it rotated round the sun.
This was a great shock, which changed our whole outlook; it was really the birth of natural science.
Now here (E) we get under a new ruling principle which is no longer female, it is Pegasus, and as we had there a triangulum, we have here a quadrangulum, the square of Pegasus.
That would be the sign which now rules this meridian; it would begin a bit before 1900 and we are now in 1932, so Pegasus is the ruling principle at this time.
And people are now tremendously busy with squares as they were busy with the trinity before; all the old gods of India and Egypt and Greece were trinities.
The interesting thing is that Pegasus is entirely symbolic, it is no longer a human principle, it is not a hero, nor is it a female principle, it is quite decidedly the animal principle.
We would say that the horse was a libido symbol, representing the animal part of man, and by pulling himself up upon it, by riding it, it thus becomes winged and divine; it is not only an ordinary animal, it is a divine animal.
So it would mean a time in which man discovers that the real guiding principle is the living libido, and that would be represented by a square.
How the people of that time could ever imagine that Pegasus should be represented by a square is a miracle to me, but they actually did.
Now why that square?
Mrs. Sigg: It is the four functions.
Dr: Jung: One might say the four functions.
It is simply the tetraktys, the number four, which is characterized by Pythagoras as the creative essence, or the process of the world, as it were.
Now this four is peculiar; it might be a continuation of the three; Aries was an intellectual age, and Pisces a decidedly feeling age, therefore Christianity is a feeling religion.
But this is something else, it has a different influence, it appears in the time when the principle of the Fishes is reversed.
After all the originally good and positive spiritual influences, beautiful feeling, comes the reverse feeling, the bitter bad feeling, the evil aspect, and then this square appears.
If you take that as a psychological process in an individual, it would mean a feeling personality, a perfectly human, nice person who had always had very nice feelings, and then suddenly they change to bitter feelings, hostility, envy, all sorts of resentments.
And that condition would amount to a sort of neurosis; people in such a condition are neurotic because they cannot understand how they could have lost their beautiful feeling values, the ideas they believed in, and how they could be so repulsive and disgusting.
They become absolutely dissociated from themselves, they cannot accept themselves, and in such a neurosis the square would appear as a leading principle.
That is merely a logical deduction; from all that we have been saying, one could prophesy that the square would appear as a most helpful symbol.
As in the age when the conscious intellect of man was threatened by the monster in the sea, a hero who could cut off the Gorgon’s head would come in very handy; for ordinary people could do nothing against that huge monster, they always had to sacrifice a soul to it, so a hero-redeemer was needed to be the helpful principle in the bitter struggle of mankind against the terrible danger of the unconscious.
And so in a neurosis, where there was still the danger of the whale from below, this square would be most useful.
It is possible that our patient, in this symbol of Pegasus, might have really nosed up the astrological symbolism from her unconscious where all projections take their start.
All these names and terms, descriptions, myths, originated in the unconscious; they are actually buried in us, and if anyone falls into such an archetypal situation he is apt to nose out this knowledge from below.
Of course, there is no doubt about her knowing that the horse is Pegasus, but I am convinced that she never thought of it as an astrological constellation, nor that Pegasus would be the leading principle at about this time.
When you understand analysis as an honest attempt to overcome certain evils of our time, you are not astonished to find that one of the fundamental concepts of the system is the idea of half-divine and half-animal libido which is one in itself, and therefore the medicine for an age that is not one in itself, that is suffering from a tremendous dissociation.
Also it is an age when the old triangle values, the Trinity idea, is being reversed, adding the fourth function to the three.
The Trinity consists of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; and the fourth is God the devil.
That makes the square. You see, this whole astrological picture, this ensemble, is exactly like the tissue of the unconscious, like one of these fantasies, or a dream.
There is now only one thing to do, and that is to try to make out what will happen next. ~Visions Seminars, Page 731-733