Carl Jung: The Black Books – Quotations

Black Books

Volume 1: A point exists at about the thirty-fifth year when things begin to change, it is the first moment of the shadow side of life, of the going down to death. It is clear that Dante found this point and those who have read Zarathustra will know that Nietzsche also discovered it. When this turning point comes people meet it in several ways: some turn away from it; others plunge into it; and something important happens to yet others from the outside. If we do not see a thing Fate does it to us. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 11

What of Jung’s fantasies did he regard as precognitive?

It is important to note that there were around twelve separate events:

1-2. October 1913: Repeated vision of flood and death of thousands, and the voice that said that this will become real.

3. Vision of the sea of blood covering the northern lands.
4. December 12, 1913: Image of a dead hero.
5. December 15, 1913: Slaying Siegfried in a dream.
6. December 25, 1913: Image of the foot of a giant stepping on a state, and images of murder and bloody cruelty.
7. January 2, 1914: Image of a sea of blood and enormous dying.
8. January 22, 1914: His soul comes up from the depths and asks him if he will accept war and destruction. She shows him images of destruction, military weapons, human remains, sunken ships, destroyed states, and so forth.
9. May 21, 1914: He hears a voice saying that the sacrificed fall left and right.

10-12. June-July 1914: Dream (repeated three times) of being in a foreign land and having to return quickly by ship, and the descent of the icy cold. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 38-39

I had achieved everything that I had wished for myself. I had achieved honor, power, wealth, knowledge, and every human happiness. Then my desire for the increase of these trappings ceased, the desire ebbed from me and horror came over me. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 11

The paintings from 1916 onward in the Red Book relate to Jung’s continued explorations in the later Black Books. Liber Novus and the Black Books are thus closely intertwined. The Black Books cover the period before, during, and after Liber Novus. ~ The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 12

Jung’s continued explorations of the visionary imagination in the Black Books from 1916 chart his evolving understanding and demonstrate how he sought to develop and extend the insights he had gained and embody them in life. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 12

His [Jung] retreat from the Burgholzli coincided with a shift in his research interests to the study of mythology, folklore, and religion, and he assembled a vast private library of scholarly works. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 13

He [Jung] found the mythological work exciting and intoxicating. “It seemed to me I was living in an insane asylum of my own making,” he recalled in 1925. “I went about with all these fantastic figures: centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, gods and goddesses, as though they were patients and I was analyzing them. I read a Greek or a Negro myth as if a lunatic were telling me his anamnesis.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 13

… Jung noted that the work [CW 5] was written in 1911, his thirty-sixth year: “The time is a critical one, for it marks the beginning of the second half of life, when a metanoia, a mental transformation, not infrequently occurs.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 15

He [Jung] was conscious of the loss of his collaboration with Freud and was indebted to his wife [Emma] for her support. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 15

One without a myth “is like one uprooted, having no true link either with the past, or with the  ancestral life which continues within him, or yet with contemporary human society.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 15

The study of myth had revealed to Jung his mythlessness. He then undertook to get to know his myth, his “personal equation.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 15

Jung used to say in later years that his tormenting doubts as to his own sanity should have been allayed by the amount of success he was having at the same time in the outer world especially in America” ~Barbara Hannah, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 19, fn 26

Permitting fantasy in myself had the same effect as would be produced on a man if he came into his workshop and found all the tools flying about doing things independently of his will. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 20

On September 20, 1910, at the age of twenty-three, Toni Wolff was brought by her mother to see Jung According to her sister Erna, he had successfully treated the son of a friend of her mother’s, who consequently recommended Jung. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 27-28

In November 1912, Jung returned from his New York lectures. In a diary entry of December 29, 1924, Toni Wolff noted that twelve years before, on Jung’s return from America, she went to him and “spoke of relationship.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 29

In the November 15, 1913, entry in Book 2, following his account of the dream around December 1912 of the dove that transformed itself into a small girl and then back into the dove, Jung noted, “My decision was made. I had to give all my faith and trust to this woman [Toni].” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 29

In March 1913 he went to America again for five weeks. Decades later, Toni Wolff noted in her diary, “The feeling is somehow similar to 1913, when C[arl] went to America and we separated-and yet we couldn’t do it afterward.” This suggests a separation may have taken place at this time. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 29-30

Years later, Jung spoke to Aniela Jaffe concerning the relationship with Toni Wolff He said that he was faced with the problem of what to do with her after her analysis, which he said he had ended, despite feeling involved with her. A year later, he dreamed that they were together in the Alps in a valley of rocks, and that he heard elves singing, and that she was disappearing into a mountain, which filled him with dread. After this, he wrote to her. He noted that after this dream, he knew that a relationship with her was unavoidable, and that his life was in danger. On a later occasion, while swimming, he found himself with a cramp and vowed that if it went away and he survived, he would give in to the relationship. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 30

In a diary entry of March 4, 1944, Toni Wolff referred to “31 years of relationship and 34 years of acquaintance.” This confirms that her relationship with Jung began sometime in 1913. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 30

At the beginning of her analysis T.W. had the most incredible fantasies, a whole eruption of the wildest fantasies , some even of cosmic nature. But at that point I was so preoccupied with my own material that I was scarcely able to take on hers. But her fantasies entered exactly into my line of thought. ~Aniela Jaffe, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 30

On April 26, 1936, Wolff noted in her diary: “I still transfer father symbols onto C.[Jung] That is why I am never entirely with myself and am no counter-weight to him” (Toni Wolff, Diary’ J, p. 101). ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 30, fn 86

Concerning her attraction to Jung, toward the end of her life Toni Wolff recalled that she had her first transference to Friedrich Schiller, in 1905, then to Goethe, and then to Jung, as a “productive genius.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 30

When C[arl] begins to participate with my psychic material perhaps I have got what I need- the nurturing and supporting substance? I suspect myself of having insufficient confidence in him, because my analysis back then was intermingled with his problems- although it was also good for me. ~Toni Wolff, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 31

At the inception of their relationship, Toni Wolff was not interested in marriage and having children. She was critical of what she had observed of marriage: it seemed to make men less active and less enterprising- merely content with being fathers. It made both men and women less interested in culture. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 31

After having children, women often didn’t need their husbands, and their own problems tended to return. Her mother hadn’t learned to work and had consequently plagued her children with unused libido. Toni Wolff was also critical of the bondage of marriage. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 31

1. W. was experiencing a similar stream of images. I had evidently infected her, or was the declencheur [trigger] that stirred up her imagination. My phantasies and hers were in a participation mystique. It was like a common stream, and a common task. Gradually I became conscious and gradually I became the center; and in the measure to which I attained these insights, she also found her center. But then she got stuck somewhere along the way, I remained too much the center that functioned for her. Therefore I was never permitted to be other than she wanted me to be, or than she needed to have me be. At that time she was entirely drawn into this terrible process in which I was involved, and she was just as helpless as I was. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 31-32

In letters dated September and October Jung wrote to Sabina 10, 1917, Spielrein commenting on the significance of certain hieroglyphs in a dream she had sent him, saying that “with your hieroglyphics we are dealing with phylogenetic engrams of an historical symbolic nature. Referring to the contempt meted out to Transformations and Symbols the Libido by the Freudians, he described himself as “clinging to his runes,” which he would not hand over to those who would not understand them. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 116

Referring to the contempt meted out to Transformations and Symbols of the Libido by the Freudians, he described himself as “clinging to his runes,” which he would not hand over to those who would not understand them. ~Sonu Shamdasani, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 116

In the autumn of 1917, Jung’s soul forces the black magician Ha to read and explain a series of cryptic runes that he had sent.  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 115

In response to the request of Jung’s soul, Ha takes on the task of translating the runes, literally spelling them out. It is boot camp in Code City: he gives cues to Jung’s soul about how this or that shape corresponds to the sun, or a roof, or a tilted passageway, or even how one ought to feel physically while navigating this curve or that crevice.  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 116

Much of your [Jung] material you said has come to you as runes & the explanation of those runes sounds like the veriest nonsense, but that does not matter if the end product is sense.  ~Cary Baynes, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 116

A symbol in rune yoga is nearly the same as what it pictures, once it is understood as the mimicry of a right attitude on the levels of both spirit and instinct, both being archaically rooted.  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 117

Ezra Pound’s Chinese ideograms connect with Jung’s runes only for a moment, across a wide, swift stream; Jung’s magic/ runic dialect has no home among the living. The magician’s black rod becomes Jung’s Hermes-wand-an aid in navigating the way of life redeemed from redeemers, or saved from salvation; the signs, unlike “the solid letter” in Holderlin’s “Patmos,” a poem long close to Jung’s heart, bring up their own dark ground with them. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 117

The text [Secret of the Golden Flower] gave me an undreamed-of confirmation of my ideas about the mandala and the circumambulation of the center. This was the first event which broke through my isolation. I became aware of an affinity; I could establish ties with someone and something. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 104

On May 25, 1929, he [Jung] wrote to Wilhelm: “Fate appears to have given us the role of two bridge pillars which carry the bridge between East and West. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 104

Jung’s commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower was a turning point. It was his first public discussion of the significance of the mandala. For the first time, he anonymously presented three of his own paintings from Liber Novus as examples of European mandalas and commented on them. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 105

When I had arrived at this central point (Tao), the confrontation with the world began: I began to give many lectures and to write small essays. At that time I gave lectures in many places. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 105

Since I’m getting dangerously famous in this old continent I’ve no peace and leisure anymore. The Negro spiritual says, ‘Steal away to Jesus,’ and I say, ‘Steal away to Bollingen’ if I can help it. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 106

For example, Jung’s vision of the God Abraxas bore striking parallels to the figure of Mercurius in alchemy. He noted in retrospect that “my encounter with alchemy was decisive for me, as it provided me with the historical basis which I had hitherto lacked.”  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 108

The Gnostic material he [Jung] had studied had been too remote from the present, and he believed that alchemy formed the historical bridge between Gnosticism and the psychology of the unconscious. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 108-109

For something like fifteen years long I read books, to find a sort of clothing material for this primal revelation, that I myself could not manage. It cost me forty-five years, so to speak to bring the things that I once wrote down somewhat under control in the vessel of my work.  ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 110

While Liber Novus had been an attempt to present the meaning of the revelation, he [Jung] now had to come back from the “human side” -from science. The cost was considerable: “I paid with my life, and I have paid with my science.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 110

In his 1926 revision of The Psychology of the Unconscious Processes, he highlighted the significance of the midlife transition. He argued that the first half of life could be characterized as the natural phase, in which the prime aim was establishing oneself in the world, earning an income, and raising a family. The second half, the cultural phase, involved a reevaluation of earlier values.  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 99

When the conscious mind participates actively and experiences each stage of the process … then the next image always starts off on the higher level that has been won, and purposiveness develops. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 100

The first bearer of the soul-image is always the mother; later it is borne by those women who arouse the man’s feelings, whether in a positive or negative sense. Because the mother is the first bearer of the soul-image, separation from her is a delicate and important matter of the greatest educational significance. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 100

For a man, the mother “protects him against the dangers that threaten from the darkness of his soul.” Subsequently, the anima, in the form of the mother imago, is transferred to the wife: “his wife has to take over the magical role of the mother. Under the cloak of the ideally exclusive marriage, he is really seeking his mother’s protection, and thus he plays into the hands of his wife’s protective instincts.” What is ultimately required is the “objectification of the anima.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 100-101

…the overcoming of the anima as an autonomous complex, and her transformation into a function of relationship between consciousness and the unconscious. Through this process the anima forfeits the daemonic power of an autonomous complex; that means she can no longer exercise possession, since she is depotentiated. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 101

He [Jung] argued that one should treat the fantasies completely literally while one was engaged in them, but symbolically when one interpreted them. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 101

Jung noted that this process [Integration of Fantasies] had three effects:

The first effect is that the range of consciousness is increased by the inclusion of a great number and variety of unconscious contents. The second is a gradual diminution of the dominating influence of the unconscious. The third is an alteration in the personality.  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 102

Jung argued that when the anima lost her “mana,” or power, the man who assimilated it must have acquired this and so become a “mana-personality,” a being of superior will and wisdom. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 102

Thus in integrating the anima and attaining her power, one inevitably identified with the figure of the magician, and one faced the task of differentiating oneself from this.  ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 102

If one gave up the claim to victory over the anima, possession by the figure of the magician ceased, and one realized that the mana truly belonged to the “midpoint of the personality”-that is, the self. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 102

…[Jung] wrote a paper on “Soul and death,” characterizing religions as systems for the preparation for death. He argued that, given the collective soul of humanity, death might be regarded as the fulfilment of life’s meaning. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 103

In 1926, Christiana Morgan came to Jung for analysis. She had read Psychological Types and turned to him for assistance with her  problems with relationships and with depression.  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 92-93

Bollingen was a great matter for me, because words and paper were not real enough. I had to put down a confession in stone.” The tower was a “representation of individuation.”  ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 94

Why are there no worldly cloisters for men, who should live outside the times! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 95

A critical chapter in Jung’s self-experimentation was what he termed the integration of the anima. Toni Wolff saw this as one side of the story, as it also involved the process by which he had “introjected” her. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 95

In 1944, apropos a dream, she [Toni] noted that Jung placed undue stress on the subjective level, “because he had to realize the anima, but he thereby introjected me and took my substance.”  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 95

On January 5, 1922, Jung’s soul advised as follows: “You should not break up a marriage, namely the marriage with me, no person should supplant me, least of all Toni. I want to rule alone.” “You must let Toni go until she has found herself and is no longer a burden to you.” On the next day, his soul elucidated the symbolic significance of the relations between Jung, Emma Jung, and Toni Wolff in terms of Egyptian mythology. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 96

In contrast to a marriage, Toni Wolff saw her relationship with Jung as an “individual relation.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 96

Marriage is socially, legally, psychologically accepted. Nothing new can come from there; it can only be transformed, also individually, through individual relationships. That is why the individual relationship is a symbol of the soul.  ~Toni Wolff, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 96

On September 13, 1925, she [Toni] noted that their [w/Jung] relationship stood under the “sign of Philemon.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 96

What C. [Jung] has achieved now is all based on me. Through my faith, love, understanding and loyalty I have kept him and brought him out. I was his mirror, as he told me right at the beginning. / But my entire feeling, phantasy, mind, energy, responsibility worked for him. I have an effect-but I don’t have substance. I didn’t know how to “play.” I gave him his life. Now he should give me mine and be a mirror to me. ~Toni Wolff, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 96

“Through my medial side, I am like C.’s hollow form and therefore I always wanted to be filled in by him.” ~Toni Wolff, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 96

On April 10, 1926, she [Toni] noted, “Had a psychological scurvy through C.’s absence of vitamin C.  “It is the same with me as with the Elgonyi: C . is not only vitamin. Also, when I am with him the rising sun is good, relaxing, everything destructive has gone. When I am on my own, it eats away at me.”  The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 96-97

She [Toni Wolff] felt that his fame and success were increasingly taking him away from her and resented “his works, ideas, patients, lectures, E. [Emma], children.” This was cause for bitterness: “Again some resistance, when I think how he realized all his famous ideas through the relationship with me (which he only admits occasionally) and how famous he is now, and that E. is with him instead of me, and how I can never accompany him there.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 97

In dedicated copies of his books, Jung gave private acknowledgment of her involvement. Her copy of Psychological Types bears the dedication:

This book, as you know, has come to me from that world which you [Toni] have brought to me. Only you know out of which misery it was born and in which spirit it was written. I put it in your hands as a sign of gratitude, which I cannot express through words ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 97

Likewise, her [Toni’s] copy of Psychology and Alchemy (1944) bears a dedication to his “soror mystica.” In public, he acknowledged her active role in all the phases of analytical psychology in his introduction to her collected papers.  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 97

“Introduction to Toni Wolff, Studies in C.G. Jung’s Psychology” (1959 ) , CW 10, 887

The work on the unconscious has to happen first and foremost for us ourselves. Our patients profit from it indirectly. The danger consists in the prophet’s delusion, which often is the result of dealing ·with the unconscious. It is the devil who says: Disdain all reason and science, mankind ‘s highest powers. That is never appropriate even though we are forced to acknowledge (the existence of) the irrational” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 69, fn 205

He [Jung] also noted that the soul gave rise to images that were assumed to be worthless from the rational perspective. There were four ways of using them: The first possibility of making use of them is artistic, if one is in any way gifted in that direction; a second is philosophical speculation; a third is quasi-religious, leading to heresy and the founding of sects; and a fourth way of employing the dynamis of these images is to squander it in every form of licentiousness. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 75

On August 22, 1922, Jaime de Angulo wrote to Chauncey Goodrich issuing “a challenge to all brother-neurotics- go, my brethren, go to the Mecca, I mean to Zurich, and drink from the fountain of life, all ye who are dead in your souls, go and seek new life.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 81

Three days later, his soul informed him that the new religion expresses itself visibly only in the transformation of human relations. Relations do not let themselves be replaced even by the deepest knowledge. Moreover, a religion doesn’t consist only in knowledge, but at its visible level in a new ordering of human affairs. Therefore expect no further knowledge from me. You know everything that is to be known from the revelation offered to you, but you are not yet living out everything that is to be lived at this time. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 81

On November 25, 1922, Jung, Emma Jung, and Toni Wolff left the Club. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 82

There was heated discussion within the Club. In February 1924, Hans Trub stepped down as president, and a letter was sent to Jung asking him to return, which he did a month later. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 85

Around Eckhart grew up a group of Brethren of the Free Spirit who lived licentiously. The problem we face is: Is analytical psychology in the same boat? Are the second generation like the Brethren of the Free Spirit? If so, it is the open way to Hell, and analytical psychology has come too soon and it will have to wait for a century or two. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 83

As his soul had explained to him the previous year, this new religion would manifest itself through transformed human relations. Evidently Jung’s relations with his wife [Emma] and Toni Wolff, the “experimentum crucis,” was related to this. Decades later, he would write, “The unrelated human being lacks wholeness, for he can achieve wholeness only through the soul, and the soul cannot exist without its other side, which is always found in a ‘You.’ ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 83-84

In the mid-twenties, publication of Liber Novus seems to have been one of the foremost issues in Jung’s mind. At the beginning of 1924, he asked Cary Baynes to make a fresh typed transcription of the text and discussed publication. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 85

By contrast, the mythic and cosmological embeddedness of the Pueblo Indians showed us precisely what we had lost, he believed, and our spiritual poverty. Of the Pueblo Indian, he said, “Such a man is in the fullest sense of the word in his place.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 87

There are indications that he [Jung] was ambivalent about publication of the Sermones. Barbara Hannah claims that he regretted publishing it and that “he felt strongly that it should only have been written in the Red Book.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 88

The myth of Horus is the story of the newly risen divine light. It would have been told after the deliverance out of the primordial darkness of prehistoric times through culture, that is to say through the revelation of consciousness. Thus the journey from the interior of Africa to Egypt became for me like a drama of the birth of light, which was intimately connected with me, with my psychology. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 90

In Jung’s fantasies in 1922, Egyptian mythology had played a significant part in formulating the role and the tasks that he, his wife, and Toni Wolff had to fulfill. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 90

Arab Youth Spirit of Gravity

the figure of Atmavictu went through a number of incarnations, as an old man, a bear, an otter, a newt, a serpent, then simultaneously a man and an earth serpent. He was Izdubar, and became Philemon. The black magician, Ha, was the father of Philemon. Ka was the father of Salome, and also the brother of the Buddha. Ka was Philemon’s shadow. Philemon further identified himself with Elijah and Khidr and claimed that he would become Phanes. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 70

On March l, 1918, his soul informed him that what was necessary was maintaining simultaneously a respect and disdain for the Gods, and that this began with respect and disdain for oneself. This was critical not only for humanity; Jung now realized that “man would be the mediator in the transformation process of God.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 71

That is the meaning of divine service, of the service which man can render to God, that light may emerge from the darkness, that the Creator may become conscious of his creation, and man conscious of himself. / That is the goal, or one goal, which fits man meaningfully into the scheme of creation, and at the same time confers meaning upon it. It is an explanatory myth which has slowly taken shape within me in the course of the decades.  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 71

I am of the opinion that the union of rational and irrational truth is to be found not so much in art as in the symbol per se; for it is the essence of the symbol to contain both the rational and irrational. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 72

He [Jung] equated the Hindu notion of Brahman/Atman with the self. At the same time, he provided a definition of the soul. He argued that the soul possessed qualities that were complementary to the persona, and in that sense had what the conscious attitude lacked.  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 74-75

Now I was sure that no schizophrenia was threatening me. I understood that my dreams and my visions came to me from the subsoil of the collective unconscious. What  remained for me to do now was to deepen and validate this discovery. And this is what I have been trying to do for forty years.  ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 37-38

Thus Jung’s revisions, in which he now differentiated the soul into serpent, human soul, and bird, here can be seen to reflect his understanding of the tripartite nature of his soul. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 69

I can grasp for you only what you already have but don’t know. The beyond from which I bring knowledge to you is your beyond. I am able to grasp what you have. But you aren’t. That’s why you need me.  ~Jung’s Soul, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 70

Years later, recalling his encounter with this figure and describing it as a dream, Jung noted, “I suddenly knew: the Wild Huntsman had commanded it to carry away a human soul.” A few days later he heard the news that his mother had died. He realized that “It was Wotan, the god of my Alemannic forefathers, who had gathered my mother to her ancestors negatively to the ‘wild horde,’ but positively to the ‘salig hit,’ the blessed folk.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 79

Jung described Wotan’s attributes as follows: He is the god of oracles, of secret knowledge, of sorcery, and he is also the equivalent of Hermes psychopompos. And you remember he has, like Osiris, only one eye; the other eye is sacrificed to the underworld. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 80

The immediate sources that Jung drew on for his concept of the self appear to be the Atman/ Brahman conception in Hinduism, which he discussed in Psychological Types, and certain passages in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 66, fn 204

The Self also seeks with the eyes of sense, it listens too with the ears of the spirit. The Self is always listening and seeking: it compares, subdues, conquers, destroys. It rules and is also the l’s ruler. Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty commander, an unknown sage- he is called Self. ~Nietzsche, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 66, fn 204

I was already very interested in the concept of the self, but I was not sure how I should understand it. I made my marks when I came across these passages, and they seemed very important to me … . The concept of the self continued to recommend itself to me …. I thought that Nietzsche meant a sort of thing-in-itself behind the psychological phenomenon … . I saw then also that he was producing a concept of the self which was like the Eastern concept; it is an Atman idea. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 66, fn 204

I very much agree with you that we have to grapple with the knowledge content of Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism. These are the systems that contain the materials which are destined to become the foundation of a theory of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 67

Jung had some powerful experiences: on June 27, 1917, he wrote to Emma Jung that three days prior, he was on Pointe de Cray (a mountain just northwest of Chateau d’Oex), “It was a glorious day. On the summit I had a wonderful ecstatic feeling. Last evening I had a most remarkable mystical experience, a feeling of connection of many millennia. It was like a transfiguration. Today I’m probably going down to hell again for this. I want to cling to you, since you are my center, a symbol of the human, a protection against all daimons.” This letter underscores the centrality of Emma Jung in his life. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 68-69

From the beginning of August to the end of September, he [Jung] 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. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 61

Beginning on August 20 [1917], he [Jung] 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.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 61

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.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 64

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. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 66-67

The God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 68

Last evening I had a most remarkable mystical experience, a feeling of connection of many millennia. It was like a transfiguration. Today I’m probably going down to hell again for this. I want to cling to you [Emma Jung], since you are my center, a symbol of the human, a protection against all daimons. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 69

He [Jung] defined the anima as “how the subject is seen by the collective unconscious.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 53

There are few dreams noted in the Black Books. A recently recovered dream book contains a series of dreams from 1917 to 1925.  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 54

Jung described his technique for inducing spontaneous fantasies: “The training consists :first of all in systematic exercises for eliminating critical attention, thus producing a vacuum in consciousness.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 54

…man must necessarily stand upon firm feet in his I-function; that is, he must fulfil his duty toward life completely, so that he may in every respect be a vitally living member of society. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 57

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 Black Books, Vol. I, Page 59

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. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 59

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 (lsaiah 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. ~Carl Jung,The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 50-60

The outbreak of the war had given Jung a completely new understanding of his fantasies. In Liber Novus, he wrote: “And then the War broke out. This opened my eyes about what I had experienced before, and it also gave me the courage to say all of that which I have written in the earlier part of this book. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 39

But whereas Zarathustra proclaimes the death of God, Liber Novus depicts the rebirth of God in the soul. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 40

There are also indications that Jung read Dante’s Commedia, which also informs the structure of the work. Liber Novus depicts Jung’s descent into hell. But whereas Dante could utilize an established cosmology, Lib er Novus is an attempt to shape an individual cosmology. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 40

The overall theme of Liber Novus is how Jung regains his soul and overcomes the contemporary malaise of spiritual alienation. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 41

In this way salvation is given to us in the un-openable and un-sayable symbol, for it protects us by preventing the devil from swallowing the seed of life…We must understand the divine within us, but not the other, insofar as he is able to go and stand on his own … We should be confidants of our own mysteries, but chastely veil our eyes before the mysteries of the other, insofar as he does not need “understanding” because of his own incapability. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 45-46

I must find the way through the unconscious. People who have trusted me need my insight, not only I myself. Therefore I had to exclusively dedicate myself to this work, which was very time-consuming and terribly demanding. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 46

Jung had come to see that chaos was not formless but filled with the dead, “not just your dead, that is, all the images of the shapes you took in the past, which your ongoing life has left behind, but also the thronging dead of human history, the ghostly procession of the past.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 47

When the time has come and you open the door to the dead, your horrors will also afflict your brother, for your countenance proclaims the disaster.  Hence withdraw and enter solitude, since no one can give you counsel if you wrestle with the dead. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 47

In a critical entry of January 16, 1916, his soul presented an elaborate thiogenic cosmogony.’ She described her own nature, the nature of the daimons, the heavenly mother, and the Gods. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 48

In early 1913, he [Jung] read Dieterich’s Abraxas, still from the perspective of his libido theory. In January and October 1915, while doing military service, he studied the works of the Gnostics intensively. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 50

“This little book [Septem Sermones], that I entrust to your well meaning and friendly forbearance, brings a wish with it: it would like to have a good cover in this cold world weather./ The non-author and copyist.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 50

I could not presume to put my name to it, but chose instead the name of one of those great minds of the early Christian era which Christianity obliterated. It fell quite unexpectedly into my lap like a ripe fruit at a time of great stress and has kindled a light of hope and comfort for me in my bad hours. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 51

Philemon brought with him an Egyptian-Gnostic-Hellenistic atmosphere, a really Gnostic hue, because he really was a pagan. He was simply a superior knowledge, and he taught me psychological objectivity and the actuality of the soul. He had showed this dissociation between me and my intellectual object …He formulated this thing which I was not, and formulated and expressed everything which I had never thought. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 34

In Memories, he [Jung] recalled that he felt that he was in an exposed position at the university, and that he had to find a new orientation, as it would otherwise be unfair to teach students. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 34

During 1913 and 1914, he [Jung] had between one and nine consultations per day, five days a week, with an average of five to seven patients. He also worked on Saturdays, having no or few patients on Thursdays. In 1918, he switched his free day to Saturday. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 35

In Memories, Jung recalled that during this period [1914] his family and profession “always remained a joyful reality and a guarantee that I was normal and really existed.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 36

Attempting to understand Goethe’s Faust using Freud’s method would be like trying to understand a Gothic cathedral through its mineralogical aspect. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 36

The meaning “only lives when we experience it in and through ourselves.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 36

As a psychiatrist I became worried, wondering if I was not on the way to “doing a schizophrenia,” as we said in the language of those days . … I was just preparing a lecture on schizophrenia to be delivered at a congress in Aberdeen, and I kept saying to myself: “I’ll be speaking of myself! Very likely I’ll go mad after reading out this paper.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 37

In 1954, while discussing active imagination, Jung said that “the reason why the involvement looks very much like a psychosis is that the patient is integrating the same fantasy material to which the insane person falls victim because he cannot integrate it but is swallowed up by it.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 38

“And then the War broke out. This opened my eyes about what I had experienced before, and it also gave me the courage to say all of that which I have written in the earlier part of this book.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 39

“I wanted to understand it all as personal experiences within me, and consequently I could neither understand nor believe it all, since my belief is weak.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 39

The sequence of Liber Novus nearly always corresponds exactly to that of the Black Books. Jung maintained a “fidelity to the event.” What he was writing was not to be mistaken as fiction.  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 39

In November 1914, Jung closely studied Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-91), which he had first read in his youth. He later recalled that “then suddenly the spirit seized me and carried me to a desert country in which I read Zarathustra.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 40

An important figure in Jung’s fantasies was that of Ka, from Egyptian mythology. Wolff had her own figure of Ka, and also had dialogues with Jung’s Ka. In an active imagination on January 11, 1926, Wolff’s “I” had a dialogue with Thot, the Egpytian God of writing.  ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 32

Thoth instructed her [Toni] how to invoke someone’s “Ka”: “So call loudly thrice, You Ka, you Ka, you Ka of so and so, come here and move into my heart. Space has been made for you. Your Ba expects you and you should move in.” She followed his instructions: “You Ka, you Ka, you Ka of C., come here, move into my heart. Space has been made for you. Your Ba expects you and you should move in.” ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 32

On January 30, she [Toni] noted: earlier:

C.’s [Carl’s] Ka to me mine not received by him C.’s Ka speaks about the abyss and the death he sees.

I want to let myself drop down. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 32

Wolff, Diary E, January 11, 1926, p. 17. Regarding the Egyptian concept of the Ba, E. A. Wallis Budge noted, “To that part of man which beyond all doubt was believed to enjoy an eternal existence in heaven in a state of glory, the Egyptians gave the ·name ba, a word which means something like ‘sublime,’ ‘noble’ and which has always hitherto been translated by ‘soul.’ The ba is not incorporeal, for although it dwells in the ka, and is in some respects, like the heart, the principle of life in man, still it possesses both substance and form: in form it is depicted as a human-headed hawk, and in nature and substance it is stated to be exceedingly refined or ethereal. It revisited the body in the tomb and re-animated it, and conversed with it; it could take upon itself any shape that it pleased; and it had the power of passing into heaven and of dwelling with the perfected souls there. It was eternal” (The Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum [London: Longmans & Co, 1895], p. lxiv). ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 32, fn 93

On several subsequent occasions, Toni Wolff referred to their [w/Carl]relationship as an “experimentum crucis.” As such, it was clearly linked to Jung’s self-experimentation. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 33

At the same time, Emma Jung continued to play a central role in Jung’s life. She ran the household, raised their children, and maintained the human dimension for him, while also facilitating and accompanying him in his self-experimentation. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 33

In 1910, she [Emma] began an analysis with Jung, and she worked with Leonhard Seif in 191197 and later with Hans Trub (who was married to Toni Wolff’s sister Susanne). ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 33

She [Emma] played an active role in the Association for Analytical Psychology and later practiced analysis, also studying physics, mathematics, Greek, and Latin. the languages later enabled her (in contrast to Toni Wolff) to accompany Jung in his explorations into alchemy. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 33

She [Emma] undertook her own research, which culminated in her work on the Grail legend. From around 1914, she began to do active imagination in the form of dialogues, paintings, and poems. ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 33

Ximena Roelli de Angulo, Cary Baynes’s daughter, recalled, “I think that Emma must have always played just as large a part in his creative life as Toni did- just a different part” (interview with Gene Nameche, Jung biographical archive, CLM, p. 54). ~The Black Books, Vol. I, Page 34

Volume II:

Without talking back from now on, I will continue to tell you [Jung’s Soul] how I caught sight of a woman [Toni Wolff] three years ago, whose soul seemed to me more valuable than my marital anxiety. I conquered my fear out of love for her. But you wanted it that way and gave me a dream, which rendered a decision…: ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 155

A huge task lay before me—I saw its enormous size—and its value and meaning escaped me. I got into the dark, and I groped along my path. That path led inward and downward. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 149

The more uncommon these highest truths are, the more inhuman must they be and the less they speak to you as something valuable or meaningful concerning human essence and being. Only what is human and what you call banal and hackneyed contains the wisdom that you seek.  ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 208

One must not improve others, it seems. To do things oneself in minutest detail, that is what is needful. No longer should it be said, “you should,” but rather “I should” if I have not already thought “I will.”  ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 209

What a burden and danger is vanity! There is nothing about which one could not be vain. Nothing is more difficult than to define the limits of vanity. One who creates should be especially wary of success, though needs it. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 209

My soul, you are terribly real. You have set me with hard thrust on the sharp stones of misery and death. I grow weak and miserable-my blood, my precious lifeblood trickles away between these stones. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 214

What shadows over the earth! All lights gutter out in final despondency and loneliness. Death has entered, and there is no one left to grieve. This is a final truth and no riddle. The most extreme human truths are no riddles. Why did we think they were riddles What delusion could make us believe in riddles? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 214

This night begins with the feeling of ignorance and incapacity. Only expectancy is on the lookout as if from a high tower that dominates the surrounding country. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 197

What shadows over the earth! All lights gutter out in final despondency and loneliness. Death has entered, and there is no one left to grieve. This is a final truth and no riddle. The most extreme human truths are no riddles. Why did we think they were riddles What delusion could make us believe in riddles? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 214

This night begins with the feeling of ignorance and incapacity. Only expectancy is on the lookout as if from a high tower that dominates the surrounding country. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 197

Death, does it not uncover the terrible deceit of life? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 213

Do you believe that all that struggle and all these blood sacrifices left no mark on the soul of the Christian? And do you believe that one who has not experienced this struggle most intimately can still partake of its fruit? No one can flout the spiritual development of many centuries and then reap what they have not sowed. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 201

I know that there are those who are always in heat, and those who also want to dance for their Gods; some are ridiculous jubilant old men and women and others posture at antiquity, instead of honestly admitting their utter incapacity for religious expression.  ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 201

The more uncommon these highest truths are, the more inhuman must they be and the less they speak to you as something valuable or meaningful concerning human essence and being. Only what is human and what you call banal and hackneyed contains the wisdom that you seek. ~Scholar’s Maiden, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 208

After that I had this dream around l 1/2 years ago: I am lying on a bed with my wife [Emma] 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

You may call us symbols for the same reason that you can also call your real fellow men symbols, if you wish to. But we exist and are just as real as your fellow men. You invalidate nothing and solve nothing by calling us symbols. ~Elijah, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 189

It seems as if compulsory realities exist here. What forced me to come here if not those “other” realities? Apparently they are somehow superior to me as I did not know anything about them, whereas they knew about me and forced me-could force me-to come to them on a way unknown to me, that I must have flown through unconsciously. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 190

I11trod11ctio11 toju11gia11 Ps}’c’1ology, 191 fn

I see around me the mighty walls that form the horizon-jagged crenellations. Gray and yellow lichen grows on the stones, apart from this not a blade of grass. What is it with this place? I think it could be a Druidic sacred place of worship. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 192

Your work is fulfilled here. Other things will come, of which you do not know yet. But seek untiringly, and above all write exactly what you see. ~Elijah, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 196

I am the one who, when love

Breathes on me, notices, and in the manner

That he dictates within, I utter words.”

Dante. Purgatorio.

And then, in the same manner as a flame

Which follows whatever shape it takes,

The new form follows the spirit exactly.

Dante. [Purgatorio]. ~Dante, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 197

So, I have come to absolutely the right place. I have wandered a long time through the world, seeking those like you who sit upon a high tower on the lookout for things unseen. ~The Red One, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 198

I believe I have learned that no one is allowed to avoid the mysteries of the Christian religion unpunished. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 200

I thought after waking: a men’s cloister. Ever since then many new thoughts about new forms of society.  ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page163

The air shook with the anthem of blaspheming souls, when the God plunged you into my heart. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 177

You new spark of an eternal fire, into which night, into what kind of mud. were you born! Fires of madness are blazing toward you as sacrificial fires. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 177

You will wring truthful prayers from your believers, and they must invoke your glory in tongues that are atrocious to them. You will fall on them in the hour of their disgrace and humiliation, and will become known to them in what they hate, fear, and abhor. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 178

Oh I know that the salvation of mercy is given only to those who believe in the highest and faithlessly betray themselves for thirty pieces of silver. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 178

You do me wrong, Elijah is my father, and he knows the deepest mysteries, the walls of his house are made of precious stones, his wells hold healing water and his deep eye sees the things of the future-And what wouldn’t you give for a single look into the infinite unfolding of what is to come? Are these not worth a sin for you?” ~Salome, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 181

We [Elijah/Salome] are really together and are not symbols. We are real and together. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 182

I do not love her, I fear her. My knees tremble.  A voice says: “Therein you acknowledge her divine power.” Must I love Salome? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 183

Turn all your anger against yourself, because only you can hinder yourself from looking. The mystery play is delicate as air and thin smoke and you are brutal matter that itself is already disturbingly heavy. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 185

Yet let all your hope, which is your greatest good and highest ability, precede and serve you as a leader in the world of the dark, because it is of similar substance as the creations of this world. let your hope swell toward it into the indeterminable. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 185

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour” (Auguries of Innocence).  ~William Blake, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 185, fn 186

You have not forgotten it. It burned deep inside you. But you are afraid of megalomania? Are you that cowardly? Or can you not differentiate this thought from your own self, from your human nature, enough so that you wished to claim it for yourself? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 188

I think it would be obvious that your thoughts are just as much outside your mind: self as trees and animals are outside your body. ~Elijah, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 188

Keep interpretation far from me, that bad prison master of science who binds the soul and imprisons it in a lightless cell, but above all protect me from the venomous serpent of critique, which is a healing serpent only on the surface, yet in your depths is infernal poison and agonizing death. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 170

Book of my most difficult experiments, I open you with inner resistance! Everything in me balks at the immediacy of this experience! I want to coax myself like a nervous horse. I shy away from myself as if I were a nocturnal monster. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 171

But on the fourth night I cried, “To journey to Hell means to become Hell oneself.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 171

Anyone who fights with monsters should take care that he does not in the process become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes back into you. ~Nietzsche, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 171, fn 113

Perhaps I ensnare myself in self-deceit and hellish monkey business, and I am a rascal grinning at myself in a mirror, a fool in my own madhouse. Perhaps, my soul, you stumble over my folly. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 172-173

Gradually it dawned on me that the highest truth is one and the same with the absurd. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 175

The first step in individuation is tragic guilt. The accumulation of guilt demands expiation ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page on” 176, fn 142

This sounds like religion, but it is not. I am speaking just as a philosopher. People sometimes call me a religious leader. I am not that. I have no message, no mission; I attempt only to understand. We are philosophers in the old sense of the word, lovers of wisdom. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 98

With inner resistance I approach this book. I ceaselessly devalue it and yet something forces me to dive into it, actually into myself. Why?- It wants to follow this way. Strange- ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 163

What a deception! I have avoided myself, no, actually my self, the place of my soul, where she dwelled and lived. I have never returned to this place except while dreaming. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 164

Is it solitude, to be with oneself? Solitude is true only when the self is a desert. I hear the words: “An anchorite in his own desert.” The monks in the Syrian desert occur to me. My dream? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 164

Only life is true. And only life leads me into the desert, truly not my thinking, which would like to return to thoughts, to men and events, since it feels uncanny in the desert. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 164

I hear the cruel word “Wait.” This is the devil’s most horrible punishment of hell, he lets people wait. Torment belongs to the desert- I actually know it, but I didn’t want to know. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 165

After a hard struggle I have come a piece of the way nearer to you. How hard this struggle was! I had fallen into an undergrowth of doubt, confusion, and scorn. Only the love of those, to whom I gave love, saved me from the darkness. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 165

Do you still not know yet that the way to truth stands open only to those without intentions? Do you still not know that fulfilment comes only to the one who does not desire, to the one who is not greedy. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 166

Then, listen, you think little of me. Do you still not know that you are not writing a book to feed your vanity, but that you are speaking with me? How can you suffer from scorn if you address me with those words that I give you? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 167

I have learned that one must give one’s heart to men, but one’s intellect to the spirit of humanity, God. Then its work can be beyond vanity, since there is no more hypocritical whore than the intellect when it replaces the heart. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 168

I live first in the upper world, but in your inner world, my soul, I am like a shadow without substance, trembling and blown away by every breeze. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 170

Forgive me, my heart is full, because I have come from far wandering. wandered for eleven years, so long that I forgot that I possessed a soul that I could call my own. I belonged to men and things. I did not belong to myself. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 151

I am thinking of this first vision that you gave me in a dream, where I saw You [Jung’s Soul] hovering. (Is it 14 years since then?) ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 152

Life tore me away, and I deliberately moved away from you and I have done so for all these years. But I remained with you minimally until the love for women tore me completely off and away from you.  ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 152

My child, you are not God, how could you be God? You are my soul and I am not allowed-not yet-to know, why you call yourself “child” – and why a girl?  ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 153

Why must I tell you all that, my soul? Why do you chain me to this book? And why do you drive my pen so furiously, as if it had to go a long way and hurry to cover it? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 154

You [Jung] write to be printed and circulated among people. You want to cause a stir through the unusual. Nietzsche did this better than you. You are aping Saint Augustine. ~Jung’s Soul, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 157

What is it I shall do? Tell you more about my inner matters? Shall I overcome the daimon of my interior? Is it the hundred-headed dragon? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 159

My pen bristles-regardless. Oh what impotence of the intellect! Life pushes me beyond criticism. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 160

But one thing you must know, the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. This life is the way, the long sought after way to the unfathomable, which we call “divine.”  ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 149

My soul, I found you again, I would like to, no, I will stay with you. My journey should continue with you. I will wander with you and ascend to my solitude, no longer alone as before and greedy and impatient, but with comforting courage and quiet delight. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. II, Page 150

Volume III:

The inner voice speaks: “The evil one cannot make a sacrifice, he cannot sacrifice his eye. Victory is with the one who can sacrifice.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 133

Evil? I thought too little about evil. Evil exists, too. Evil, the abysmal evil is not to be forgotten. There is no scientific cover-up for it. Even the word “evil” is commonplace, but not the thing per se. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 133

There has been much debate on the precise relation between Philo’s concept of the Logos and John’s gospel. On June 23, 1954, Jung wrote to James Kirsch, “The gnosis from which John the Evangelist emanated is definitely Jewish, but in its essence is Hellenistic, in the style of Philo Judaeus, from whom the conception of Logos also stems” ~Sonu Shamdasani, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 103, fn 14

But Philo Judeaus, if this is who you mean, was a serious philosopher and a great thinker. Even John the theologian did not disdain including some of Philo’s thoughts in the gospel. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 103

“I want to answer this question within the scope of your understanding: if for God the human had not become important above everything, he would not have appeared as the son in the flesh, but in the Logos.” ~Ammonius, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 105

Let me give you a small example of my preoccupation. I’ve spent many years alone with the process of unlearning. Have you ever unlearned anything? — Well, then you should know how long it takes. And I was a successful teacher. As you know, for such people to unlearn is difficult or even impossible. ~Ammonius, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 107

But what did he [Ammonius] say? That the sequences of words have many meanings, and that John brought the Logos up to man, elevated it to man. But that does not sound properly Christian. Is he perhaps a Gnostic? No, that seems impossible to me, since they were really the worst of all the idolators of words, as he would probably put it. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 107

“Stranger, you may well stand by me, if it is not too cold for you. As you can see, I am cold and my heart has never beaten.” I know, you [Death] are ice and the end. You are the cold silence of the stones; and you are the most extreme highest snow on the mountains and the most extreme frost of outer space. I must feel this and that’s why I stand near you. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 114

“What leads you here to me?, you living matter? The living are never guests here. Well, they all flow past here in dense crowds, black, with mourning bands, all those above in the land of the clear day who have taken their departure, never to return again. But the living never come here. What do you seek here?” ~Death, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 114

We are in need of light. Of lights we have enough—will-o’-the-wisps—but too little light. How dark is the path of a man when he reaches the new world, the world in between! Beyond us there is unending darkness. Where is this “beyond”? Probably deep in ourselves. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Volume III, Page 116

The way of life leads farther beyond, even beyond the laws that were holy. The way is solitary and full of secret torment. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 119

1. Oh Izdubar, most powerful one, what you call poison is science. In our country we are nurtured on it from youth, and that may be one reason why we haven’t properly flourished and remain so dwarfish. When I see you, however, it seems to me as if we are all somewhat poisoned ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page. 250
2. We’ve grown accustomed to this over time, because men get used to everything. But we’re still somewhat lamed. On the other hand, this science also has great advantages, as you’ve seen. What we’ve lost in terms of force, we’ve rediscovered many times through mastering the force of nature. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 251
3. Now you perhaps see that we had no choice. We have to swallow the poison of science. Otherwise we meet the same fate as you have—we will be completely lamed, if we encounter it unsuspecting and unprepared. This poison is so insurmountably strong that everyone, even the strongest, and even the eternal Gods, perish because of it. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 251

Izdubar:  Most terrible day of my life—unending—so long—so long—wretched magical art—our priests know nothing, or else they could have protected me from it—Even the Gods die, he said. Have you no Gods anymore?

Jung: No, words are all we have left. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol III, Page 251

Jung:  Science has taken from us the capacity of belief.

Izdubar: What, you have lost that, too? How then do you live?

Jung: We live so-so, with one foot in the hot and one foot in the cold, and for the rest, come what may! ~The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 252

What lies in the middle is the truth. It has many faces; one is certainly comical, another sad, a third evil, a fourth tragic, a fifth funny, a sixth is a grimace, and so forth. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 130

It is a murderous task to write the wisdom of real life, particularly if one has committed many years to serious scientific research. What proves to be most difficult is to grasp the playfulness of life (the childish, so to speak). ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 130

All the manifold sides of life, the great, the beautiful, the serious, the black, the devilish, the good, the ridiculous, the grotesque are fields of application which each strive. We tend to wholly absorb the beholder or describer. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 130

Our time requires something capable of regulating the mind. Just as the concrete world has expanded from the limitedness of the ancient human out look to the immeasurable diversity of our modern outlook, the world of intellectual possibilities has developed to unfathomable diversity. Infinitely long distances paths, paved with thousands of thick volumes, lead from one specialization to another. Soon no one will be able to walk down these paths anymore. And then only specialists will remain. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 130-131

More than ever we require the living truth of the life of the mind, of some thing capable of providing firm guidance.  ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 131

You are right: It is to Philo’s credit that he furnished language like so many other philosophers. He belongs to the language artists. But words should not become idols. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 104

I take up my task. Pleasure is permissible. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 106

In the background to the right sits a small thin man of pale complexion about 40 years old, apparently the librarian- The atmosphere is troubling- scholarly ambitions-scholarly conceit-wounded scholarly vanity- scholarly anxieties of the malicious critic, the luckier competitor, and being wrong. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 137

I am a man: nothing human is alien to me. ~Terence As a medical psychologist I do not merely assume, but I am thoroughly convinced, that nil humanum a me alienumm esse is even my duty. ~Carl Jung  – The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 136

Damned one, where do you get such knowledge? So there is no immortal land where the sun goes down to be reborn? Are you speaking the truth? ~Izdubar, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 121

You call poison truth? Is poison truth? Or is truth poison? Do not our astrologers and priests also speak the truth? And yet theirs does not act like poison. ~Izdubar, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 122

Izdubar: Don’t you want to go to this town?

1. No, the enlightened live there. They’re actually dangerous, since they cook the strongest poisons from which even we must protect ourselves. ~The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 129

Slowly, with stifled breath, and with the great and anxious expectation of one gliding downward wildly on the foam and pouring himself into endlessness, I follow my brother, the sea. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 113

Stranger, you [Jung] may well stand by me, if it is not too cold for you. As you can see, I am cold and my heart has never beaten. ~Death, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 114

I know, you are ice and the end. You are the cold silence of the stones; and you are the most extreme highest snow on the mountains and the most extreme frost of outer space. I must feel this and that’s why I stand near you. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 114

What leads you here to me-?, you living matter The living are never guests here. Well, they all flow past here in dense crowds, black, with mourning bands, all those above in the land of the clear day who have taken their departure, never to return again. But the living never come here. ~Death, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 114

How dark is the path of a man when he reaches the new world, the world in between! Beyond us there is unending darkness. Where is this “beyond”? Probably deep in ourselves. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 114

I ask you, was this Logos a concept, a word? It was a light, indeed a man, and lived among men. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 104

Until now it always seemed to me as if it were exactly that which was meaningful in John, namely that the son of man is the logos, in that he thus elevates the lower to the higher spirit[,] to the world of the logos. But you lead me to see the matter conversely, namely that John brings the meaning of logos down to man. “I learned to see that John has in fact even done the great philosophical service of having brought the meaning of logos up to man.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 105

I’ve spent many years alone with the process of unlearning. Have you ever unlearned anything? -Well, then you should know how long it takes. ~Anchorite, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 105

It seems to me as if I had seen this white horse on the Eastern sky over the rising sun. The horse spoke to me: What did it say? “Hail him who is in darkness. The day is over him.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 106

Do not forget to say your morning prayer when the sun rises. ~Anchorite, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 107

Now I have prayed to the sun. But the anchorite really meant that I should ray to God at the break of day. He probably does not know-we have no more prayers. How should he know about our nakedness and poverty? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 107

“Dear beetle, where have you gone, I can no longer see you!?-Oh, you’re already over there with your mythical ball.” These little animals stick to things, quite unlike us-no doubt, no change of mind, no hesitation. Is this.so because they live their myth?

“Dear scarab, my father, I honor you, blessed be your work-in eternity. Amen.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, Vol. III, Page 108

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

1. 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
2. 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
3. What is it, then, with this “personal quality”? Yesterday Satan made a most “personal” impression on me.

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 upperworld, 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

1. 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
2. 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

1. 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