My mother says, “there’s one!” Namely a ghost.
16/17- Aug. 19.
Dreamt in Schmerikon: with my mother and many other unknown people in an unknown street.
There are 2 houses to the right, old dilapidated shacks, whose facade is completely pasted over with large yellow posters in many layers, like circus posters.
My mother suddenly steps back and says, “there’s one!” Namely a ghost.
I immediately think that she is truly hysterical to show off before other people with such things.
But immediately afterward I see how the façade of one of the houses suddenly moves and falls down into the street.
From this I see that the ghost had warned her that the house was about to fall on her head, if she went further.
I say to the people: “There you have seen it!” and go away.
One of them follows after me and says to me: “You now no longer need to help us further.”
As if the appearance of the ghost had been enough to secure their belief in the paranormal and that was enough for them.
I have then limited my practice, which was necessary in any case, so I could concentrate my time on ~The Black Books, Vol. VII, Page 203 ~The Black Books, Vol. VII, Page 202-203
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
The dogma of the Virgin Birth does not abolish the fact that “God” in the form of the Holy Ghost is Christ’s father. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 1619
Nectar, like soma, is the drink of fertility and immortality. The soul is fructified by the intellect; as the “oversoul” it is called the heavenly Aphrodite, as the “under-soul” the earthly Aphrodite. It knows “the pangs of birth.” It is not without reason that the dove of Aphrodite is the symbol of the Holy Ghost ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 198
Certain early Christian sects gave a maternal significance to the Holy Ghost (world-soul or moon) ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 198
The Holy Ghost of the New Testament appeared to the apostles in the form of flames, because the pneuma was believed to be fiery ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 149
Oannes’ name was brought into connection with John’s. With the rising of the reborn sun the fish that dwelt in darkness, surrounded by all the terrors of night and death, becomes the shining, fiery day-star. This gives the words of John the Baptist a special significance (Matthew 3:11): I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance; but he that cometh after me is mightier than I . . . he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 292
In the Old Testament the magic power glows in the burning bush and in the countenance of Moses; in the Gospels it descends with the Holy Ghost in the form of fiery tongues from heaven. In Heraclitus it appears as world energy, as “ever-living fire”; among the Persians it is the fiery glow of haoma, divine grace; among the Stoics it is the original heat, the power of fate ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 108
Let us take as an example the Christian dogma. The Trinity consists of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who is represented by the bird of Astarte, the dove, and who in early Christian times was called Sophia and thought of as feminine. The worship of Mary in the later Church is an obvious substitute for this. Here we have the archetype of the family `in a supracelestial place,’ as Plato expresses it, enthroned as a formulation of the ultimate mystery. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 336
The Trinity consists of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who is represented by the bird of Astarte, the dove, and who in early Christian times was called Sophia and thought of as feminine. The worship of Mary in the later Church is an obvious substitute for this. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 336.
The square divided into three stands for the Holy Ghost entering into the child. The procreative aspect of the Holy Ghost unites the Godhead with matter, as is clear from the sacred legend. The intermediate forms between spirit and matter are obviously the rotunda, early stages of animated bodies, filling the middle section of the square. There are thirty of them, and, however accidental this may be, the number 30 (days of the month) suggests the moon, ruler of the hylical world, whereas twenty-four (hours of the day) suggests the sun, the king. This indicates the motif of the coniunctio (* and *) an instance of that unconscious readiness which later came to expression in Cusanus’ definition of God as a complexio oppositorum ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 766
In the miniature the rotunda are fire-coloured, the fiery seeds from which human beings will sprout, a sort of pneumatic roe. This comparison is justified in so far as alchemy compares the rotunda to fish’s eyes. The eyes of a fish are always open, like the eyes of God. They are synonymous with the scintillae, “soul-sparks.” It is just possible that these alchemical allusions crept into Hildegard’s text via the atoms of Democritus (spiritus insert us atomis). Another such source may be responsible for the squareness of the Holy Ghost ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 766
This spirit, coming from God, is also the cause of the “greenness,” the benedicta viriditas, much praised by the alchemists. Mylius says of it: “God has breathed into created things a kind of germination, which is the viridescence.” In Hildegard of Bingen’s Hymn to the Holy Ghost, which begins “0 ignis Spiritus paraclite,” we read: “From you the clouds rain down, the heavens move, the stones have their moisture, the waters give forth streams, and the earth sweats out greenness” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 151
In his concluding chapter Jacobsohn draws a parallel between this Egyptian idea and the Christian credo. Apropos the passage “qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria virgine,” he cites Karl Barth’s formulation: “There is indeed a unity of God and man; God himself creates it. It is no other unity than his own eternal unity as father and son. This unity is the Holy Ghost” (P. 64 Barth, Credo, p. 70). As procreator the Holy Ghost would correspond to Ka-mutef, who connotes and guarantees the unity of father and son. In this connection Jacobsohn cites Barth’s comment on Luke 1: 35 (“The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God”): “When the Bible speaks of the Holy Ghost, it is speaking of God as the combination of father and son, of the vinculum caritatis” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 177
The divine procreation of Pharaoh takes place through Ka-mutef, in the human mother of the king. But, like Mary, she remains outside the Trinity. As Preisigke points out, the early Christian Egyptians simply transferred their traditional ideas about the ka to the Holy Ghost. This explains the curious fact that in the Coptic version of Pistis Sophia, dating from the third century, Jesus has the Holy Ghost as his double, just like a proper ka ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 177
The psychological datum consists of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If we posit “Father,” then “Son” logically follows; but “Holy Ghost” does not follow logically from either “Father” or “Son.” So we must be dealing here with a special factor that rests on a different presupposition. According to the old doctrine, the Holy Ghost is “vera persona, quae a filio et patre missa est” (a real person who is sent by the Son and the Father). The “processio a patre filioque” (procession from the Father and the Son) is a “spiration” and not a “begetting.” This somewhat peculiar idea corresponds to the separation, which still existed in the Middle Ages, of “corpus” and “spiramen,” the latter being understood as something more than mere “breath.” What it really denoted was the anima, which, as its name shows, is a breath-being (anemos = wind). Although an activity of the body, it was thought of as an independent substance (or hypostasis) existing alongside the body. The underlying idea is that the body “lives,” and that “life” is something superadded and autonomous, conceived as a soul unattached to the body. Applying this idea to the Trinity formula, we would have to say: Father, Son, and Life the life proceeding from both or lived by both ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 197
The Holy Ghost as “life” is a concept that cannot be derived logically from the identity of Father and Son, but is, rather, a psychological idea, a datum based on an irrational, primordial image. This primordial image is the archetype, and we find it expressed most clearly in the Egyptian theology of kingship. There, as we have seen, the archetype takes the form of God the father, Ka-mutef (the begetter), and the son. The ka is the life-spirit, the animating principle of men and gods, and therefore can be legitimately interpreted as the soul or spiritual double. He is the “life” of the dead man, and thus corresponds on the one hand to the living man’s soul, and on the other to his “spirit” or “genius” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 197
We have seen that Ka-mutef is a hypostatization of procreative power. In the same way, the Holy Ghost is hypostatized procreative power and life-force. Hence, in the Christian Trinity, we are confronted with a distinctly archaic idea, whose extraordinary value lies precisely in the fact that it is a supreme, hypostatic representation of an abstract thought (two-dimensional triad). The form is still concretistic, in that the archetype is represented by the relationship “Father” and “Son.” Were it nothing but that, it would only be a dyad. The third element, however, the connecting link between “Father” and “Son,” is spirit and not a human figure ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 197
Now the important point is not that the New Testament contains no trinitarian formulae, but that we find in it three figures who are reciprocally related to one another: the Father, the Son, begotten through the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost. Since olden times, formulae for benediction, all solemn agreements, occasions, attributes, etc. have had a magical, threefold character (e.g., the Trishagion) ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 209
Although they [the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost] are no evidence for the Trinity in the New Testament, they nevertheless occur and, like the three divine Persons, are clear indications of an active archetype operating beneath the surface and throwing up triadic formations. This proves that the trinitarian archetype is already at work in the New Testament, for what comes after is largely the result of what has gone before, a proposition which is especially apposite when, as in the case of the Trinity, we are confronted with the effects of an unconscious content or archetype ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 209
This creed is still entirely on the level of the gospels and epistles: there are three divine figures and they do not in any way contradict the one God. Here the Trinity is not explicit, but exists latently, just as Clement’s second letter says of the pre-existent Church: “It was spiritually there.” Even in the very early days of Christianity it was accepted that Christ as Logos was God himself (John 1: 1). For Paul he is pre-existent in God’s form, as is clear from the famous “kenosis” passage in Philippians 2: 6 (AV): “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. “There are also passages in the letters where the author confuses Christ with the Holy Ghost, or where the three are seen as one, as in II Corinthians 3: 17 (DV): “Now the Lord is the spirit. “When the next verse speaks of the “glory of the Lord,” Lord” seems to refer to Christ. But if you read the whole passage, from verses 7 to 18, it is evident that the “glory” refers equally to God, thus proving the promiscuity of the three figures and their latent Trinity ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 212
It was, apparently, a Spanish bishop, Hosius of Cordoba, who proposed to the emperor the crucial word homoousia. It did not occur then for the first time, for it can be found in Tertullian, as the “unitas substantiae.” The concept of homoousia can also be found in Gnostic usage, as for instance in Irenaeus’ references to the Valentinians (140circa 200), where the Aeons are said to be of one substance with their creator, Bythos. The Nicene Creed concentrates on the father-son relationship, while the Holy Ghost receives scant mention ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 216
Here the Holy Ghost is given due consideration: he is called “Lord” and is worshipped together with Father and Son. But he proceeds from the Father only. It was this point that caused the tremendous controversy over the “filioque” question, as to whether the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father only, or from the Son as well. In order to make the Trinity a complete unity, the filioque was just as essential as the homoousia. The (falsely so-called) Athanasian Creed insisted in the strongest possible terms on the equality of all three Persons. Its peculiarities have given much offence to rationalistic and liberal-minded theologians ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 218
The life of Christ is on the one hand only a short, historical interlude for proclaiming the message, but on the other hand it is an exemplary demonstration of the psychic experiences connected with God’s manifestation of himself (or the realization of the Self). The important thing for man is not the and the (what is “shown” and “done”), but what happens afterwards: the seizure of the individual by the Holy Ghost ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 234
Here, however, we run into a great difficulty. For if we follow up the theory of the Holy Ghost and carry it a step further (which the Church has not done, for obvious reasons), we come inevitably to the conclusion that if the Father appears in the Son and breathes together with the Son, and the Son leaves the Holy Ghost behind for man, then the Holy Ghost breathes in man, too, and thus is the breath common to man, the Son, and the Father. Man is therefore included in God’s sonship, and the words of Christ “Ye are gods” (John 10: 34) appear in a significant light ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 235
The doctrine that the Paraclete was expressly left behind for man raises an enormous problem. The triadic formula of Plato would surely be the last word in the matter of logic, but psychologically it is not so at all, because the psychological factor keeps on intruding in the most disturbing way. Why, in the name of all that’s wonderful, wasn’t it “Father, Mother, and Son?” That would be much more “reasonable” and “natural” than “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” To this we must answer: it is not just a question of a natural situation, but of a product of human reflection added on to the natural sequence of father and son. Through reflection, “life” and its “soul” are abstracted from Nature and endowed with a separate existence. Father and son are united in the same soul, or, according to the ancient Egyptian view, in the same procreative force, Ka-mutef. Ka-mutef is exactly the same hypostatization of an attribute as the breath or “spiration” of the Godhead ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 235
This psychological fact spoils the abstract perfection of the triadic formula and makes it a logically incomprehensible construction, since, in some mysterious and unexpected way, an important mental process peculiar to man has been imported into it. If the Holy Ghost is, at one and the same time, the breath of life and a loving spirit and the Third Person in whom the whole trinitarian process culminates, then he is essentially a product of reflection, a hypostatized noumenon tacked on to the natural family-picture of father and son. It is significant that early Christian Gnosticism tried to get round this difficulty by interpreting the Holy Ghost as the Mother. But that would merely have kept him within the archaic family-picture, within the tritheism and polytheism of the patriarchal world. It is, after all, perfectly natural that the father should have a family and that the son should embody the father. This train of thought is quite consistent with the father-world ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 236
On the other hand, the mother-interpretation would reduce the specific meaning of the Holy Ghost to a primitive image and destroy the most essential of the qualities attributed to him: not only is he the life common to Father and Son, he is also the Paraclete whom the Son left behind him, to procreate in man and bring forth works of divine parentage. It is of paramount importance that the idea of the Holy Ghost is not a natural image, but a recognition of the living quality of Father and Son, abstractly conceived as the “third” term between the One and the Other. Out of the tension of duality life always produces a “third” that seems somehow incommensurable or paradoxical. Hence, as the “third,” the Holy Ghost is bound to be incommensurable and paradoxical too. Unlike Father and Son, he has no name and no character. He is a function, but that function is the Third Person of the Godhead ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 236
He [the Holy Ghost] is psychologically heterogeneous in that he cannot be logically derived from the father-son relationship and can only be understood as an idea introduced by a process of human reflection. The Holy Ghost is an exceedingly “abstract” conception, since a “breath” shared by two figures characterized as distinct and not mutually interchangeable can hardly be conceived at all. Hence one feels it to be an artificial construction of the mind, even though, as the Egyptian Ka-mutef concept shows, it seems somehow to belong to the very essence of the Trinity ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 237
The Gnostic interpretation of the Holy Ghost as the Mother contains a core of truth in that Mary was the instrument of God’s birth and so became involved in the trinitarian drama as a human being. The Mother of God can, therefore, be regarded as a symbol of mankind’s essential participation in the Trinity. The psychological justification for this assumption lies in the fact that thinking, which originally had its source in the self-revelations of the unconscious, was felt to be the manifestation of a power external to consciousness. The primitive does not think; the thoughts come to him. We ourselves still feel certain particularly enlightening ideas as “influences,” “in-spirations,” etc. Where judgments and flashes of insight are transmitted by unconscious activity, they are often attributed to an archetypal feminine figure, the anima or mother-beloved. It then seems as if the inspiration came from the mother or from the beloved, the “femme inspiratrice” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 240
In view of this, the Holy Ghost would have a tendency to exchange his neuter designation for a feminine one. (It may be noted that the Hebrew word for spirit ruach is predominantly feminine.) Holy Ghost and Logos merge in the Gnostic idea of Sophia, and again in the Sapientia of the medieval natural philosophers, who said of her: “In gremio matris sedet sapientia patris” (the wisdom of the father lies in the lap of the mother). These psychological relationships do something to explain why the Holy Ghost was interpreted as the mother, but they add nothing to our understanding of the Holy Ghost as such, because it is impossible to see how the mother could come third when her natural place would be second ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 240
When Goethe says that the fourth was the one “who thought for them all,” we rather suspect that the fourth was Goethe’s own thinking function ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 244
It will have struck the reader that two corresponding elements cross one another in our quaternity schema (shown below). On the one hand we have the polaristic identity of Christ and his adversary, and on the other the unity of the Father unfolded in the multiplicity of the Holy Ghost. The resultant cross is the symbol of the suffering Godhead that redeems mankind. This suffering could not have occurred, nor could it have had any effect at all, had it not been for the existence of a power opposed to God, namely “this world” and its Lord. The quaternity schema recognizes the existence of this power as an undeniable fact by fettering trinitarian thinking to the reality of this world ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 264
The lifting up of the chalice in the air prepares the spiritualization (i.e., volatilization) of the wine. This is confirmed by the invocation to the Holy Ghost which immediately follows (Veni sanctificator), and it is even more evident in the Mozarabic liturgy, which has “Veni spiritus sanctificator.” The invocation serves to infuse the wine with holy spirit, for it is the Holy Ghost who begets, fulfils, and transforms After the elevation, the chalice was, in former times, set down to the right of the Host, to correspond with the blood that flowed from the right side of Christ ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 317
He [the Holy Ghost] will be for the disciples what Christ was for them. He will invest them with the power to do works greater, perhaps, than those of the Son (John 14:12). The Holy Ghost is a figure who deputizes for Christ and who corresponds to what Christ received from the Father. From the Father comes the Son, and common to both is the living activity of the Holy Ghost, who, according to Christian doctrine, is breathed forth (“spirated”) by both. ~Carl Jung, CW 11 Para 204
As he is the third term common to Father and Son, he puts an end to the duality, to the “doubt” in the Son. He is, in fact, the third element that rounds out the Three and restores the One. The point is that the unfolding of the One reaches its climax in the Holy Ghost after polarizing itself as Father and Son. Its descent into a human body is sufficient in itself to make it become another, to set it in opposition to itself. Thenceforward there are two: the “One” and the “Other,” which results in a certain tension. This tension works itself out in the suffering and fate of the Son and, finally, in Christ’s admission of abandonment by God (Matthew 27:46). ~Carl Jung, CW 11 Para 204
Although the Holy Ghost is the progenitor of the Son (Matthew 1:18), he is also, as the Paraclete, a legacy from him. He continues the work of redemption in mankind at large, by descending upon those who merit divine election. Consequently, the Paraclete is, at least by implication, the crowning figure in the work of redemption on the one hand and in God’s revelation of himself on the other. It could, in fact, be said that the Holy Ghost represents the final, complete stage in the evolution of God and the divine drama. For the Trinity is undoubtedly a higher form of God-concept than mere unity, since it corresponds to a level of reflection on which man has become more conscious ~Carl Jung, CW 11 Para 205
Third: the Trinity lays claim not only to represent a personification of psychic processes in three roles, but to be the one God in three Persons, who all share the same divine nature. In God there is no advance from the potential to the actual, from the possible to the real, because God is pure reality, the “actus purus” itself. The three Persons differ from one another by reason of the different manner of their origin, or their procession (the Son begotten by the Father and the Holy Ghost proceeding from both procedit a patre filioque). ~Carl Jung, CW 11 Para 288-289
The homoousia, whose general recognition was the cause of so many controversies, is absolutely necessary from a psychological standpoint, because, regarded as a psychological symbol, the Trinity represents the progressive transformation of one and the same substance, namely the psyche as a whole. The homoousia together with the filioque assert that Christ and the Holy Ghost are both of the same substance as the Father. But since, psychologically, Christ must be understood as a symbol of the Self, and the descent of the Holy Ghost as the Self’s actualization in man, it follows that the Self must represent something that is of the substance of the Father too. This formulation is in agreement with the psychological statement that the symbols of the Self cannot be distinguished empirically from a God-image. Psychology, certainly, can do no more than establish the fact that they are indistinguishable. This makes it all the more remarkable that the “metaphysical” statement should go so much further than the psychological one. Indistinguishability is a negative constatation merely; it does not rule out the possibility that a distinction may exist. It may be that the distinction is simply not perceived. ~Carl Jung, CW 11 Para 289
The dogmatic assertion, on the other hand, speaks of the Holy Ghost making us “children of God,” and this filial relationship is indistinguishable in meaning from the(sonship) or filiatio of Christ. We can see from this how important it was that the homoousia should triumph over the homoiousia (similarity of substance); for, through the descent of the Holy Ghost, the Self of man enters into a relationship of unity with the substance of God. As ecclesiastical history shows, this conclusion is of immense danger to the Church it was, indeed, the main reason why the Church did not insist on any further elaboration of the doctrine of the Holy Ghost. Its continued development would lead, on a negative estimate, to explosive schisms, and on a positive estimate straight into psychology. ~Carl Jung, CW 11 Para 289
Moreover, the gifts of the Holy Ghost are somewhat mixed: not all of them are unreservedly welcome, as St. Paul has already pointed out. Also, St. Thomas Aquinas observes that revelation is a gift of the spirit that does not stand in any clearly definable relationship to moral endowment. The Church must reserve the right to decide what is a working of the Holy Ghost and what is not, thereby taking an exceedingly important and possibly disagreeable decision right out of the layman’s hands. That the spirit, like the wind, “bloweth where it listeth” is something that alarmed even the Reformers. The third as well as the first Person of the Trinity can wear the aspect of a deus absconditus, and its action, like that of fire, may be no less destructive than beneficial when regarded from a purely human standpoint. ~Carl Jung, CW 11 Para 289
But God, who also does not hear our prayers, wants to become man, and for that purpose he has chosen, through the Holy Ghost, the creaturely man filled with darkness—the natural man who is tainted with original sin and who learnt the divine arts and sciences from the fallen angels. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 746.
The future indwelling of the Holy Spirit amounts to a continuing incarnation of God. Christ, as the begotten son of God and pre-existing mediator, is a first-born and a divine paradigm which will be followed by further incarnations of the Holy Ghost in the empirical man. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para. 693.
The Christian Church has hitherto [recognized] Christ as the one and only God-man. But the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the third Divine Person, in man, brings about a Christification of many, and the question then arises whether these many are all complete God-men. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 470.
If God is born as a man and wants to unite mankind in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, he must suffer the terrible torture of having to endure the world in all its reality. This is the cross he has to bear, and he himself is a cross. The whole world is God’s suffering, and every individual man who wants to get anywhere near his own wholeness knows that this is the way of the cross. But the eternal promise for him who bears his own cross is the Paraclete. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 265
In view of this, the Holy Ghost would have a tendency to exchange his neuter designation for a feminine one. (It may be noted that the Hebrew word for spirit—ruach—is predominantly feminine.) Holy Ghost and Logos merge in the Gnostic idea of Sophia, and again in the Sapientia of the medieval natural philosophers, who said of her: “In gremio matris sedet sapientia patris” (the wisdom of the father lies in the lap of the mother). ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 240
Despite the fact that he is potentially redeemed, the Christian is given over to moral suffering, and in his suffering he needs the Comforter, the Paraclete. He cannot overcome the conflict on his own resources; after all, he didn’t invent it. He has to rely on divine comfort and mediation, that is to say on the spontaneous revelation of the spirit, which does not obey man’s will but comes and goes as it wills. This spirit is an autonomous psychic happening, a hush that follows the storm, a reconciling light in the darknesses of man’s mind, secretly bringing order into the chaos of his soul. The Holy Ghost is a comforter like the Father, a mute, eternal, unfathomable One in whom God’s love and God’s terribleness come together in wordless union. And through this union the original meaning of the still-unconscious Father-world is restored and brought within the scope of human experience and reflection. Looked at from a quaternary standpoint, the Holy Ghost is a reconciliation of opposites and hence the answer to the suffering in the Godhead which Christ personifies. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 260
The sending of the Paraclete has still another aspect. This Spirit of Truth and Wisdom is the Holy Ghost by whom Christ was begotten. He is the spirit of physical and spiritual procreation who from now on shall make his abode in creaturely man. Since he is the Third Person of the Deity, this is as much as to say that God will be begotten in creaturely man. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 692
For that purpose he has chosen, through the Holy Ghost, the creaturely man filled with darkness—the natural man who is tainted with original sin and who learnt the divine arts and sciences from the fallen angels. The guilty man is eminently suitable and is therefore chosen to become the vessel for the continuing incarnation, not the guiltless one who holds aloof from the world and refuses to pay his tribute to life, for in him the dark God would find no room. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 746
The light God bestrides the bridge—Man—from the dayside, God’s shadow, from the night side. What will be the outcome of this fearful dilemma, which threatens to shatter the frail human vessel with unknown storms and intoxications? It may well be the revelation of the Holy Ghost out of man himself. Just as man was once revealed out of God, so, when the circle closes, God may be revealed out of man. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 267
The Catholic Church, the direct heir and continuator of historical Christianity, proves to be somewhat more cautious in this regard, believing that with the assistance of the Holy Ghost the dogma can progressively develop and unfold. This view is in entire agreement with Christ’s own teachings about the Holy Ghost and hence with the incarnation. Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 655
The Christian solution has hitherto avoided this difficulty by recognizing Christ as the one and only God-man. But the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the third Divine Person, in man, brings about a Christification of many, and the question then arises whether these many are all complete God-men. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 758
This spirit was eventually interpreted as the Holy Ghost in accordance with the ancient tradition of the Nous swallowed up by the darkness while in the embrace of Physis with this difference, however, that the devourer is not the supreme feminine principle, earth, but Nous in the form of Mercurius or the tail-eating Uroboros. In other words, the devourer is a sort of material earth-spirit, and hermaphrodite possessing a masculine-spiritual and a feminine-corporeal aspect. Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 44
But, as alchemy shows, the unconscious chose rather the Cybele-Attis type in the form of the prima materia and the filius macrocosmi, thus proving that it is not complementary but compensatory. This goes to show that the unconscious does not simply act contrary to the conscious mind but modifies it more in the manner of an opponent or partner. The son type does not call up a daughter as a complementary image from the depths of the “chthonic” unconscious it calls up another son. This remarkable fact would seem to be connected with the incarnation in our earthly human nature of a purely spiritual God, brought about by the Holy Ghost impregnating the womb of the Blessed Virgin. ~Carl Jung, CW 12 Para 26
In alchemy she always appears as Sapientia Dei, and in the writings of the Church Fathers the south wind is an allegory of the Holy Ghost, presumably because it is hot and dry. For the same reason the process of sublimation is known in Arabic alchemy as the “great south wind,” referring to the heating of the retort ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 473
The Holy Ghost, too, is fiery and causes an exaltation. His equivalent, so to speak, is the hidden fire, the spiritus igneus dwelling in Mercurius, whose opposite poles are an agens (i.e., fire) and a patiens (i.e., quicksilver). When therefore Abu’l Qasim speaks of the fire as the “great south wind,” he is in agreement with the ancient Greek view that Hermes was a wind-god. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 473
This spirit was eventually interpreted as the Holy Ghost in accordance with the ancient tradition of the Nous swallowed up by the darkness while in the embrace of Physis with this difference, however, that the devourer is not the supreme feminine principle, earth, but Nous in the form of Mercurius or the tail-eating Uroboros. In other words, the devourer is a sort of material earth-spirit, an hermaphrodite possessing a masculine-spiritual and a feminine-corporeal aspect. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 447
Cold, inert metal certainly seems to be the direct opposite of spirit but what if the spirit is as dead and as heavy as lead? A dream might then easily tell us to look for it in lead or quicksilver! It seems that nature is out to prod man’s consciousness towards greater expansion and greater clarity, and for this reason continually exploits his greed for metals, especially the precious ones, and makes him seek them out and investigate their properties. While so engaged it may perhaps dawn on him that not only veins of ore are to be found in the mines, but also kobolds and little metal men, and that there may be hidden in lead either a deadly demon or the dove of the Holy Ghost ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 119
In the Rosarium the ablution of the lato occurs in variant form: it is cleansed not by water but by “Azoth and fire,” that is, by a kind of baptism in fire, which is often used as a synonym for water. The equivalent of this in the Catholic rite is the plunging of a burning candle into the font, in accordance with Matthew 3:11: “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire” ~Carl Jung, CW 14 Para 316
The “sweet odour” of the Holy Ghost occurs not only in Gnosticism but also in ecclesiastical language, and of course in alchemy—though here there are more frequent references to the characteristic stench of the underworld, the odor sepulchrorum. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 701
Only the mystics bring creativity into religion. That is probably why they can feel the presence and the workings of the Holy Ghost, and why they are nearer to the experience of the brotherhood in Christ. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 530
The alchemists understood the return to chaos as an essential part of the opus. It was the stage of the nigredo and mortificatio, which was then followed by the “purgatorial fire” and the albedo. The spirit of chaos is indispensable to the work, and it cannot be distinguished from the “gift of the Holy Ghost” any more than the Satan of the Old Testament can be distinguished from Yahweh. The unconscious is both good and evil and yet neither, the matrix of all potentialities ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 253
The same is true of the synonyms for Mercurius, the green lion and the aqua permanens or spiritual water, which are likewise media of conjunction. The “Consilium coniugii” mentions as a connective agent the sweet smell or “smoky vapour,” recalling Basilides’ idea of the sweet smell of the Holy Ghost. Obviously this refers to the “spiritual” nature of Mercurius, just as the spiritual water, also called aqua aëris (aerial water or air-water), is a life principle and the “marriage maker” between man and woman ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 658
Since the peacock stands for “all colours” (i.e., the integration of all qualities), an illustration in Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum sapientiae logically shows it standing on the two heads of the Rebis, whose unity it obviously represents. The inscription calls it the “bird of Hermes” and the “blessed greenness,” both of which symbolize the Holy Ghost or the Ruach Elohim, which plays a great role in Khunrath. ~Carl Jung, CW 15, Para 391
Now is the stone shaped, the elixir of life prepared, the lovechild or the child of love born, the new birth completed, and the work made whole and perfect. Farewell! fall, hell, curse, death, dragon, beast, and serpent! Good night! mortality, fear, sorrow, and misery! For now redemption, salvation, and recovery of everything that was lost will again come to pass within and without, for now you have the great secret and mystery of the whole world; you have the Pearl of Love; you have the unchangeable eternal essence of Divine Joy from which all healing virtue and all multiplying power come, from which there actively proceeds the active power of the Holy Ghost. You have the seed of the woman who has trampled on the head of the serpent. You have the seed of the virgin and the blood of the virgin in one essence and quality. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 516
No wonder of wonders! You have the tincturing Tincture, the pearl of the virgin, which has three essences or qualities in one; it has body, soul, and spirit, it has fi re, light, and joy, it has the Father’s quality, it has the Son’s quality, and has also the Holy Ghost’s quality, even all these three, in one fixed and eternal essence and being. This is the Son of the Virgin, this is her first-born, this is the noble hero, the trampler of the serpent, and he who casts the dragon under his feet and tramples upon him. . .. For now the Man of Paradise is become clear as a transparent glass, in which the Divine Sun shines through and through, like gold that is wholly bright, pure, and clear, without blemish or spot. The soul is henceforth a most substantial seraphic angel, she can make herself doctor, theologian, astrologer, divine magician, she can make herself whatsoever she will, and do and have whatsoever she will: for all qualities have but one will in agreement and harmony. And this same one will is God’s eternal infallible will; and from henceforth the Divine Man is in his own nature become one with God. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 517
Now some Christian mystics have a different experience. For instance we have a Swiss mystic, Niklaus von der Flüe. He experienced a God and a Goddess. Then there was a mystic of the thirteenth century, Guillaume de Digulleville, who wrote the Pèlerinage de l’âme de Jésus Christ. Like Dante, he had a vision of the highest paradise as “le ciel d’or,” and there upon a throne one thousand times more bright than the sun sat le Roi, who is God himself, and beside him on a crystal throne of brownish hue, la Reine, presumably the Earth. This is a vision outside the Trinity idea, a mystical experience of an archetypal nature which includes the feminine principle. The Trinity is a dogmatic image based on an archetype of an exclusively masculine nature. In the Early Church the Gnostic interpretation of the Holy Ghost as feminine was declared a heresy. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 221
The “Bear-skinned” comes into the category of unorthodox beings, more specifically that of werewolves, “doctor animals,” leopard men, and “Beriserkr.” The man charged with mana, or numinous man, has theriomorphic attributes, since he surpasses the ordinary man not only upwards but downwards. Heroes have snake’s eyes (Nordic: ormr i auga), are half man half serpent (Kekrops, Erechtheus), have snake-souls and snake’s skin; the medicine-man can change into all sorts of animals. Among the American Indians, certain animals appear to the primitive medical candidate; there is an echo of this in the dove of the Holy Ghost at the unearthly baptismal birth (when the Christ came to Jesus). Another echo is the “Brother Wolf” of St. Francis. Characteristic of the Germanic mentality of Brother Klaus is the figure of the pilgrim reminiscent of Wotan, for whom “die Wütenden” [the raging ones], the Bear-skinned, are an excellent match. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 364
Actually it is not correct to say that there is no mother goddess in the Christian Trinity. The mother is simply veiled by the Holy Ghost (Sophia), which is the connecting link between Father and Son. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 90-93
Christ is the Anthropos that seems to be a prefiguration of what the Holy Ghost is going to bring forth in the human being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 157.
What was once called the “Holy Ghost” is an impelling force, creating wider consciousness and responsibility and thus enriched cognition. The real history of the world seems to be the progressive incarnation of the deity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 436.
The reader will remember the agony the boy Jung went through in trying to avoid the blasphemous thought. Yet it was just this thought that he had regarded as “the sin against the Holy Ghost, which cannot be forgiven,” which was followed by his first experience of the miracle of grace. ~Barbara Hannah, Jung: His Life and His Work, Page 243
Also those Evangels which were not accepted by the church, and therefore mostly destroyed, contained Gnostic teaching; we can substantiate this from the knowledge of the fragments which we still possess, the Gospel of the Egyptians, for instance, and among the Apocrypha of the New Testament, the Acts of St. Thomas, where the Holy Ghost is called Sophia and where she is the blessed mother. So already in its origins, Christianity was so closely surrounded by Gnostic and by Alexandrian wisdom that it is more than probable that Christ received a Gnostic initiation and possessed a rather profound understanding of the human soul and the peculiarities of spiritual development. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1031-1032.
All these different personifications are always one and the same thing, the revelation of the thought that existed before man had the thought; and inasmuch as this thought is helpful, inasmuch as it reconciles a vital need of man to the absolute conditions of the archetypes, one could usefully say, “This is the Holy Ghost.” ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 971
The Holy Ghost creates that symbol, that situation, or that idea or impulse, which is a happy solution of the postulates of the archetypes on the one side, and the vital needs of man on the other side. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 971
So the Holy Ghost is like a devil and can fill the air with devils if you don’t obey, but the moment you obey, all the spooks collapse. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 972
So if I seem to avoid speaking of the Holy Ghost, it is not that I dis miss that idea entirely, but that we are living in this two-dimensional world where people are not up to archetypal experiences and therefore, instead of that language of the real life, one can only use the language of the two-dimensional paper life. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 972-973
We are always a bit between the devil and the deep sea, and therefore we always need the intervention of the Holy Ghost to tell us how to reconcile the most irrational and the most paradoxical. For man is a terror in that respect, the highest principle on the one side and a perfect beast on the other. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 974
So you can say everything of the self; you can say it is a devil, a god, nothing but nature. It is your worst vice, or your strongest conviction, or your greatest virtue. It is just everything-the totality. You can even say it is the Holy Ghost. It is the victory of the divine life in the turmoil of space and time. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 979
The spirit of God’s wisdom = the Holy Ghost. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 160.
Moreover the colour attributed to the Holy Ghost in the Middle Ages was green, because when the spirit of life is poured over the earth the latter becomes green. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 183.
Lord Jesus was to me unquestionably a man and therefore a fallible figure, or else a mere mouthpiece of the Holy Ghost. This highly unorthodox view, a far cry from the theological one, naturally ran up against utter incomprehension. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 98
Being the equivalent of the Son and the Holy Ghost, he is the sponsus bringing about the great solution through his union with Malchuth. ~James Kirsch, Jung-Kirsch Letters, Page 143
Even the Holy Ghost has to turn into a bird of prey in order to snatch the germ of life. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 140
We must look at these things from the standpoint of consciousness, and this woman’s consciousness would assume that spirit was above, and that there was no spirit in matter. Here for the first time she becomes aware of the fact that spirit can also come from the earth, and it is the same Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is by no means only an air bird, he is also a water bird. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 123
We are not used to thinking of the Holy Ghost as taking anything from the earth, as taking something from below, but always as bringing something down to the earth, such as the immortal feat, the miracle of transformation, the heavenly fire, or the generative power from God into man. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 136
They are the Yang and the Yin and they are necessary. Even the Holy Ghost has to turn into a bird of prey in order to snatch the germ of life. The content of life is not always above, sometimes it is below. That is the important truth. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 140
The unconscious is the illusion and he is in a state beyond illusion. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 90
The next thing is that the bird flies to the woman dressed in blue, who is sitting like an ancient statue, and settles down on her hands. You will remember the picture of it. The woman holds a grain of wheat which the bird takes in its beak and then flies again up into the sky. The woman dressed in blue is a peculiar mixture of the Christian celestial mother and, on account of the wheat, of Demeter and Isis. Inasmuch as the Host must consist of wheat, there is a connection with Christ as well as with Iacchus and Osiris (being the resurrected wheat). The scene of the white bird coming down upon the mother is an unmistakable parallel to the conceptio immaculata, since the Holy Ghost is depicted as a dove. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 141
As we are expecting the manifestation as the children of God, a revelation of the Holy Ghost within us, so all creation, even the animals and the plants, are waiting for it too; that spiritual miracle of redemption or completion which happens in man means the crowning of all nature at the same time. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 144
It shows the very interesting female nature, also a bit of the hidden story of the Holy Ghost. Her name was Sophia originally, and according to Gnostic teaching Sophia was the last form of a rather scandalous series of women. It has always been terribly shocking, but we must mention it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 476
Helen, then, was an adulterous woman, and if you look at it with unprejudiced eyes, Mary was an adulterous woman too; she had an illegitimate relation with the Holy Ghost, and Christ would be the illegitimate child. This story is found in old Jewish traditions about the origin of Jesus, in the Toldoth Jeshu, a book which was burned by the church a number of times in the Middle Ages because it was considered to be most blasphemous. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 479
Anything that is beyond the human is animal and divine, and neither animal nor divine: therefore the animal symbols for the divine, the Holy Ghost as a dove, for instance; all the antique gods have their animal counterparts. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 525
For snakelike means animal-like, and animal-like meant divine. It was not human, therefore it was represented as divine, as the Holy Ghost was represented by a dove, or the Evangelists by their animal emblems, only one of which was human. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 539
The idea is that all creatures are lying in fetters with us, and as we, the children of God, are expecting the revelation of the Holy Ghost within us, so the whole of nature is expecting that spiritual miracle; as man will be redeemed ultimately, so the nature of the animals will be redeemed too. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 698
And the fourth is always the devil; there is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, and the fourth figure in heaven is the devil. A hell, a separate asylum was made for him, and we always forget that he is an important member of that company in heaven. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 795
Long before Hitler appeared people spoke of this dritte Reich, it is the kingdom of the Holy Ghost. The first Reich is the kingdom of the Father, which is identical with the Old Testament; then comes the Christian epoch, the Kingdom of the Son; and now, according to the mystical expectation, the time has come for the third kingdom, which is the kingdom of the Holy Ghost. So that political term coincides in the most uncanny way with the idea of the kingdom of the Holy Ghost. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 974
Therefore spirituality has to do with breathing. In any state of emotion the breathing is disturbed, you are strongly ventilated when you are agitated, the breath is moving through your body, you are filled with the wind of Pentecost; the Holy Ghost is a strong wind that fills the whole house, you pant with excitement. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1044
He discovered that the horoscope then in use was based on the zodiac of third-century-B.C. Babylonia. But this was a time when patriarchy had replaced matriarchy. So this zodiac is associated with the all-male Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost which, being three, is incomplete. ~Arthur I. Miller, Deciphering the Cosmic Number, Page 174
The preeminent importance of Sophia in Jung’s thinking leads Neumann, in his letter of 5 December 1951, to the following assessment: In reality, you believe in the feminine Sophia as the highest authority without admitting it. Perhaps it only seems to me to be so because this is how it is for me personally. Only the matriarchal psychology of the psyche and the Holy Ghost is comprehensible. ~Erich Neumann, Life and Work of Erich Neumann, Page 235
Without me, this I know, God cannot live one minute; I perish, and God must as soon give up God’s spirit. God would not make one worm without me; yet if I Don’t help God to preserve it, it rots immediately. I am as big as God, God is so small, like me. God cannot be above me, I cannot below God be. God is the fire in me and I in Him the shine; Are we not with each other, most inwardly entwined? God loves me above all; if I love Him the same, I give Him just as much as I receive from him. For me God’s God and man, I’m man and God, indeed, For God. I quench God’s thirst, God helps me in my need. God pleasures us. God is, for us, whate’er we would. Woe if we don’t become, for God, that which we should. God is what God is, I am what I am, you see? Yet if you knew one well, you’d know both God and me. I am not outside God, God is not outside me. God is my jewel, I God’s light and radiancy. I am vine in the Son, the Father plants, manures, The Holy Ghost’s the fruit which out of me matures. I am God’s child and son, and yet my child is He. How can it ever happen that both these things should be? Myself I must be sun, whose rays must paint the sea, The vast and unhued ocean of all divinity. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of Yoga and Meditation, Page 244-245
This spirit, coming from God, is also the cause of the “greenness,” the benedicta viriditas, much praised by the alchemists. Mylius says of it: “God has breathed into created things a kind of germination, which is the viridescence.” In Hildegard of Bingen’s Hymn to the Holy Ghost, which begins “0 ignis Spiritus paraclite,” we read: “From you the clouds rain down, the heavens move, the stones have their moisture, the waters give forth streams, and the earth sweats out greenness” ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 151
The doctrine that the Paraclete was expressly left behind for man raises an enormous problem. The triadic formula of Plato would surely be the last word in the matter of logic, but psychologically it is not so at all, because the psychological factor keeps on intruding in the most disturbing way. Why, in the name of all that’s wonderful, wasn’t it “Father, Mother, and Son?” That would be much more “reasonable” and “natural” than “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” To this we must answer: it is not just a question of a natural situation, but of a product of human reflection added on to the natural sequence of father and son. Through reflection, “life” and its “soul” are abstracted from Nature and endowed with a separate existence. Father and son are united in the same soul, or, according to the ancient Egyptian view, in the same procreative force, Ka-mutef. Ka-mutef is exactly the same hypostatization of an attribute as the breath or “spiration” of the Godhead ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 235
Although it is generally assumed that Christ’s unique sacrifice broke the curse of original sin and finally placated God, Christ nevertheless seems to have had certain misgivings in this respect. What will happen to man, and especially to his own followers, when the sheep have lost their shepherd, and when they miss the one who interceded for them with the father? He assures his disciples that he will always be with them, nay more, that he himself abides within them. Nevertheless this does not seem to satisfy him completely, for in addition he promises to send them from the father another paracletos (advocate, “Counsellor”) in his stead, who will assist them by word and deed and remain with them forever. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 691
Despite the fact that he is potentially redeemed, the Christian is given over to moral suffering, and in his suffering he needs the Comforter, the Paraclete. He cannot overcome the conflict on his own resources; after all, he didn’t invent it. He has to rely on divine comfort and mediation, that is to say on the spontaneous revelation of the spirit, which does not obey man’s will but comes and goes as it wills. This spirit is an autonomous psychic happening, a hush that follows the storm, a reconciling light in the darknesses of man’s mind, secretly bringing order into the chaos of his soul. The Holy Ghost is a comforter like the Father, a mute, eternal, unfathomable One in whom God’s love and God’s terribleness come together in wordless union. And through this union the original meaning of the still-unconscious Father-world is restored and brought within the scope of human experience and reflection. Looked at from a quaternary standpoint, the Holy Ghost is a reconciliation of opposites and hence the answer to the suffering in the Godhead which Christ personifies. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 260
Thus I am approaching the end of the Christian Aeon and I am to take up Gioacchino’s anticipation and Christ’s prediction of the coming of the Paraclete. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 138.
When we say, “Our Father,” the Father also symbolizes that self which is hidden in Heaven, in the unconscious. The Son (Christ) is the consciously achieved self. The Holy Spirit is the Paraclete promised by Christ in the Words “Ye are as gods,” or “Greater things will be done by you.” ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 35.
Christ is still the valid symbol. Only God … can ‘invalidate’ him through the Paraclete. ~Carl Jung, Spirit in Jung, Page 216
Dr. Temple, the current archbishop of Canterbury, confessed to me once that in his view the church had committed a sin of omission by not accepting the further elaboration of the doctrine of the paraclete, banning it in the church. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Keller Correspondence, Page 121