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18 January 1933 LECTURE I
Ladies and Gentlemen: I should like to speak again of the armor symbolism with which we were dealing at the end of our last seminar.
You remember, it was a square sheet of metal upheld by four gods, one at each corner.
We said that they were an Osiris, a Greek goddess, a Mexican god, and an Indian god, and I called your attention to the fact that there were three gods and only one goddess.
To what does that point?
Mr. Allemann: You said that the patient was identifying herself with that Greek goddess, Greek mythology being the most human of the four.
And the three gods were animi.
Dr. Jung: Yes, this is a strange assembly.
But often in dreams there is one woman in a room and three men, or one man and three women, which is this kind of arrangement.
Here at the top, let· us say, is the female and the three male figures make four, it is a square.
In this case it would be that square sheet of metal which is held at the corners by those three gods and one goddess.
And since we know that the patient is a female, I enclose it in a circle.
The point above is her conscious, because consciously she is all female, and then the males must necessarily represent the unconscious.
So it would be a system of four functions where the dividing line is a bit above the center.
The one function above is conscious whatever it is, intuition or sensation or thinking or feeling-and the three others are in the unconscious; and because they are in the unconscious they are with the animus and therefore male.
A woman who consists of one conscious function is counterbalanced in the unconscious by three male functions.
Now what kind of mental condition does that indicate?
You can make a definite diagnosis. What kind of gods are they?
Miss Hannah: They are all animal gods.
Dr. Jung: Oh no, Osiris is a very typical human god, the only very human god in Egyptian mythology.
Mrs. Crowley: They are of varied races.
Dr. Jung: Yes, but how would you characterize them? What would a missionary say?
Miss Hannah: Heathen!
Dr. Jung: Yes, think of any respectable Christian lady having three heathen gods in the unconscious, think of the terrible mess that makes!
The missionaries would be shocked, they would be after her right away.
Mrs. Sigg: The Mexican gods are also dying and rising gods, and as a very one-sided Christian it would be quite practical for her to see that.
Dr. Jung: Well, it is perfectly plain that one is a dying and resurrecting Osiris; of the other two we know nothing.
But we know something else which enables us to make a diagnosis of her actual mental condition.
Mrs. Crowley: Perhaps she is too Christian in the conscious.
Dr. Jung: Yes, in spite of everything she is obviously Christian, and therefore there is an exclusively heathen counterbalance in the unconscious.
Then, what more can you say about the psychology of these unconscious gods, and the point Mrs. Sigg insists upon, that one of them is surely a dying and resurrecting god?
Where would that come in? In what function would you put it?
You could give it a name and a particular place.
Mr. Baumann: I would put it at the bottom.
Dr. Jung: Why should it be there?
Mrs. Crowley: To compensate the Christian.
Dr. Jung: But would not any bloodcurdling beast of a Mexican god compensate the conscious better?
There is one definite reason.
Mrs. Sigg: It seems to me that she is just at the point where it is necessary to have a helping function, something helpful should arise from the unconscious.
Mrs. Fierz: Osiris is the most definite of those figures, the most developed, so he must represent the secondary function.
Dr. Jung: That would be in a line with the helpful idea, because the secondary function is the auxiliary function.
But are we sure that Osiris would be so particularly helpful?
Mr. Baumann: You explained to us once the series of the different animi, starting down below with the chthonic forces remote from humanity, so I suppose the real god must come from the earth.
Dr. Jung: Have you no psychological experience which would prove helpful in this case? For instance, the role of the least developed function?
That is always the one where the renewal starts, it is the resurrecting god.
Mrs. Crowley: That is why it should be at the bottom, to compensate for the conscious one.
Dr. Jung: Exactly, so we can put on our diagram the ego above, and the Osiris opposite, below; one could even speak of an Osiris function, namely, of a dying and resurrecting function as being always the one that is the least developed.
That is illustrated by the prophecy of Isaiah, that the Messiah would be despised and rejected by men and would come from an absolutely improbable place.
“What good can come out of Nazareth?”
Now how could the thing in a human being which he has repressed the most and is the most ashamed of be a saving function?
Why should just that yield the renewal of life?
Mrs. Baynes: Because it has the power to grow, we have to assume that it has the potential of making energy.
Dr. Jung: Why has it that potential?
Mr. Baumann: Because it holds most of the libido.
The libido in the inferior function is not used up.
Dr. Jung: Yes, it is a simple economic problem.
The ego function is completely worn out, and when a person’s convictions and ideas are
used up, his psychology naturally capsizes.
Then up comes the other side, because that is not dried up, it is full of the primitive life which has all run out of the ego function.
The thing which one has never seen or accepted, never lived, is as green and as fresh as spring.
That is just the horrible thing, you know; otherwise life would be comparatively simple.
For when that thing comes up, it means a complete reversal of the whole personality; the character which it yields means renewal of life, and therefore it is so particularly dangerous and attractive.
So the Osiris figure is by no means a mere accidental fact, it is full of meaning, and it is in accordance with the general rule.
Also the patient mentions it first in the text, she says “Osiris, a Greek goddess,” as if they were the main features, and then come the Mexican and Indian gods.
They are also parallels because they both originated in America.
It was probably a red Indian, though I am not so certain, it might be a Hindu god; at all events, they are farther away; the Mexican would represent the extreme West, and a Hindu god the extreme East.
You see it is the totality of this woman, the unconscious plus the conscious, that produces the armor.
So the armor, the four-cornered sheet of metal, symbolizes individuation.
Then we have already spoken of the metal as hard and used for the sake of protection.
Mr. Baumann: Metal protects one against fire better than wood.
Dr. Jung: Yes, wood would naturally not do, and also it would be too soft, easily broken, while metal suggests strength and a smooth unattackable surface.
Then we must speak of that other attribute, the red and green fire which leaps from the figures of the gods.
I read the vision of Ezekiel to you last time as a parallel to this one, and you remember the many allusions to fire.
In this case the fantasy of the red Indians is really nearer to the patient, and the gods in Indian folklore are as a rule also associated with fire, or with lightning.
Now what is the symbolic meaning when fire, or lightning, issues from the gods?
It is a very general quality or attribute in such visions.
Mrs. Adler: It is a symbol for special consciousness.
Mr. Allemann: It symbolizes energy, tension.
Dr. Jung: Fire and lightning mean intensity.
If it were consciousness it would be a light, but fire and lightning are chiefly energic phenomena; that is, there is a great deal of libido in those figures, they are full of meaning, in other words.
What happens here is an individuation symbol; the right protection against that wheel with the grasping hands would be individuation, that would make her unassailable.
The red Indians actually have peculiar ceremonies where they apply the same idea, individuation symbolism as a protection against the dangers of disease, etc., a sick man is cured of his ailment within a mandala.
In the reports of the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology, there are accounts of such healing ceremonies among the Navajos, a nomadic tribe living in Arizona and New Mexico.
In one of them the curing of a rich Indian is described in great detail.
It was a most elaborate ceremonial, and the writer, James Stevenson, comments
upon the number of participants and the time expended to restore the health of a single member of the tribe, as being probably due to the fact that the sick man was able to pay well for it.
So the medicine man and his attendants spared no pains.
The performance is called Hasjelti Dailj’is, meaning the dance of Hasjelti, ( the most important of their gods) and it lasts nine days.
A rectangular parallelogram is marked off on the ground, and the great central medicine lodge is placed exactly in the middle.
Then on four consecutive days, beginning at dawn on the second day, the so-called sweat huts are constructed at the four cardinal points, each one placed about four hundred feet from the central lodge and each one facing the east.
So underlying the whole performance is the mandala form as a foundation.
These huts, and the medicine lodge itself, are made of poles covered first with
Pin on boughs and sagebrush and then with thick sand.
They are dome-shaped and look very much like the ordinary adobe ovens where the bread is baked, which one sees irregularly dotted about in all Pueblo villages.
The sweat huts are the same shape but bigger, about six feet in diameter, big enough to hold a man when he creeps in through the low entrance.
Heated stones are put into them so that they are terribly hot and the patient inside sweats prodigiously, he is baked.
Then over these huts a rainbow stripe is painted, which represents the figure of a goddess; on one side are the head and arms, and on the opposite side the skirt and legs, and the bow.
The enormously elongated body of the rainbow goddess is stretched over the domed top of the hut.
So the man inside is as if he were sitting under the heavens, or as if he were in
heaven; he is covered by the rainbow and he is at the same time in the baking oven.
The main point is that he is in the oven in order to be made over.
It is, of course, rebirth symbolism.
The first day is taken up in careful preparations and in producing the many symbolic objects used in the ceremonies.
For example, twelve rings, six inches in diameter, are made of twigs and used in the ritual for the patient when he is brought into the main medicine lodge on the evening of the first day; they are supposed to give him strength and a good mind and heart; and at the end of the ceremony three are taken to the east, three to the west, three to the north, and three to the south, and deposited at the base of a pin on tree.
Another thing used in the rituals is a square made of willow-wands, with the under tailfeathers of an eagle projecting at the four corners; this symbolizes the concentration of the four winds.
Then three men impersonate three gods who bear the melodious names, Hasjelti, Hostjoghon and Hostjoboken, and a fourth man acts the part of the goddess Hostjoboard.
They are present in practically all the healing ceremonies, but not at the same time.
All sorts of incantations and manipulations are performed upon the sick man, differing entirely on the different days, and the whole procedure, all the complicated symbolism, is exactly according to tradition.
The number four, the idea of the four directions in space, constantly recurs.
And every detail of the intricate performance is directed by the chief medicine man himself, the song priest, although he has many attendant priests and helpers.
The first sand painting was made on the fifth day inside the central medicine lodge, and a new one was produced on each of the three following days.
Several artists worked on them at the same time, using for paint the colored sands from the bright-colored rocks in that region.
In the most remarkable one, a black equilateral cross is drawn upon the ground of common yellowish sand, which always forms the foundation color in such paintings, and at the central point is a small blue circle representing a rain pool.
The four arms of the cross are supposed to be logs, upon which four gods with their wives are symmetrically seated, and north, south, east, and west of them are four other symbolic figures.
Then over the whole is the arch of the rainbow goddess.
You see, this painting is also an individuation symbol, it is a mandala.
The difference between such things and the symbolism of our patient is that those have been conventionalized for untold centuries and always repeated in the same way; just as in the East it is extremely important that they should be done in a particular way and in no other.
But the mandalas that we find in dreams and fantasies are individual; they are law-abiding but they show very great individual variation.
The parallel of the Indian ceremony shows that individuation symbolism is an old means of curing disease or averting any particular danger.
Those symbolic ceremonies are used in any situation of life where there is a certain risk-as before going to war or even before going hunting-but particularly in healing and in cases of exorcism, which are practically the same, because diseases are usually thought of as being in consequence of possession by evil spirits.
Now concerning the red and green fire that issued from the gods in our patient’s fantasy, I forgot to ask you what those colors symbolized.
Mr. Baumann: Does not green stand for spiritual fire and red for chthonic fire?
Remark: Green means springtime.
Dr. Jung: Yes, green is a sign of new vegetation, and red can be associated with fire or with blood, it is a passionate or burning color.
Or if you want to be poetic about it you can call it what?
Mr. Baumann: Liebe und Hoffnung.
Dr. Jung: Yes, the fire of love and life and hope.
Where there is libido there is always hope; no matter to what hell it goes, it is at least life, and people often think, better a hot hell than nothing at all.
Well, this woman accepts the sheet of metal and is going to use it as an armor against those awful hands that try to pull her in.
“The ground then closed”-the earth has given up her secret-“and where it had opened appeared a pool of blood.”
Now what is that? Something comes up out of mother earth, and then there is a pool of blood.
Mrs. Sigg: It is a birth.
Dr. Jung: Exactly, the birth of the individual, or the birth of the Self, the totality of the individual, and naturally it leaves a pool of blood.
But that is of course symbolic, it completes the symbolism of the birth of the Self.
For what does the blood mean?
Remark: Does it not mean sacrifice?
Dr. Jung: Yes, it is the sacrificial blood.
The earth has brought forth something healing, helpful, redeeming, but a pool of blood remains.
When something has happened in reality which leaves a pool of blood, one assumes that a disaster has occurred, somebody has been bleeding, life substance has been lost; and a pool of blood in the earth would mean that the earth is wounded and bleeding.
Mrs. Crowley: It is a symbol for all the libido that she has spent in producing her individuation.
Dr. Jung: Well, the blood in the body is the life of the earth, and if that blood is lost, it is a sacrifice for the sake of producing something more valuable, namely, the protectective armor of complete individuation.
Now this would mean an injury if it were not a natural function of the earth.
It is like the birth of a child.
A child is the life of the mother, and it drains that life away; the blood left after the birth is sacrificed for the sake of the child, and in a way it is a wound, destruction.
So the birth of the Self that takes place at the expense of the earth, the living body, is at
a considerable expense of natural biological life; looked at from that side it is waste.
For the living body needs the blood; if blood is spent it isa loss.
To the body the armor and the four gods mean nothing, they are just something awkward. Yet individuation is not achieved without the body, it is born out of the body; but the body has to pay for it, it means that life is spent.
Therefore when people go through the process of individuation, they don’t come out of it looking younger; as a rule they look very much older, they may get grey hair from the experience.
Well, our patient put on the armor and got past the wheel safely.
She says: “As I passed, the hands on the wheel hit the metal with a hollow sound.” You see that hints at something.
Mrs. Sigg: It seems to be a hint that there is something hollow, as if the armor had no real body inside.
Dr. Jung: There is that suspicion.
If a dream ended with such a remark, you would cock your ears and think that hollow sound was rather suspicious.
Mrs. Fierz: Could one not conclude that something was already going wrong on account of those figures in the mandala picture?
There is too little consciousness, with only one woman figure and all the rest unconscious.
Dr. Jung: You are quite right, and there is something else which I forgot to mention.
Mrs. Fierz: The whole thing seemed to me wrong.
Dr. Jung: It is not all wrong, we won’t exaggerate, but for an up-to-datefemale of today, that one figure is too little, we should have two hermaphrodites at least, or perhaps another woman and two men, that would be better.
But then it would no longer be Christian.
You see, those three hidden gods are maintaining the substance of the Trinity in the
unconscious, the Trinity here consists of three pagan gods.
Now that is exactly the Christian condition, only with the difference that as long as
one doesn’t know about the unconscious, one believes that the Trinity is up in the heavens; naturally you do not, but there are still people in whom that conviction is alive; they may think they don’t believe it but they do.
Of course, all people who believe in an extramundane absolute god that cannot be reached have an exceedingly simple psychology.
They don’t know the unconscious, they don’t know that that triangle in heaven is by no means the loving father and the loving son and a lovely dove.
In reality it is rather awful, exceedingly chthonic.
I must call your attention to a little book by a friend of mine, a theologian; it is not translated into English but I hope it will be.
It is called: About the Unknown God, and it is written by Professor Keller under the pseudonym of Zenos.
In that book he tentatively speaks of the god that is not known.
There he has the idea of what is behind the Trinity.
It would not be interesting if! should present such ideas, but when a theologian does so,
it becomes interesting.
Now under those conditions-one female and three males-it is very questionable whether that symbol of totality can really come off, it might be that it remains an intuition again.
When that armor passes the wheel perhaps nobody is inside, it may be only a sort of wraith passing by.
Yes, if one were individuated, one would be able to pass, that would be an armor, one would be protected.
But whether one will put on that armor is another question.
Most of us are in about that condition, most of us think, “Yes, that would probably be the thing that could carry me across,” yet it is quite questionable whether I shall step into it.
We come now to the next series of visions. The title is: “The Egg of Granite.” She says: I passed the wheel and came to a great egg.
Snakes guarded the base of it. I approached the egg and stood before it.
What is the connection between the wheel and the egg of granite?
Mrs. Sigg: They are very opposite, the wheel is in movement and the egg of granite is very stable.
Dr. Jung: Very stable indeed, exceedingly heavy.
It is difficult to see how, after that big wheel, she suddenly arrives at the idea of an egg.
That she arrives at the idea of something heavy and immovable is quite natural by the law of enantiodromia, just as the hexagrams of the I Ching always change into their opposite.
But why it should be an egg is not to be understood without further preparation.
Dr. Reichstein: The egg is often used as a symbol of individuation.
Dr. Jung: It appears very often in mandalas but I would not call it a symbol of individuation, in spite of the fact that it contains part of the symbolism of the individuation process.
But it is only an initial stage.
Mr. Allemann: It is the promise of rebirth.
Dr. Jung: The egg symbolizes a latent condition; something may be hatched out of it but perhaps it will not be; it has the meaning of possible life, but the birth is not yet accomplished.
The question is: are we allowed to assume that it is granite throughout, or is it hollow with something living inside?
It might be a very hard shell; we have heard nothing about the contents of the egg, but it seems to have a certain connection with our doubts as to the complete validity of passing by the wheel.
The egg is always part of the individuation or rebirth process, but it symbolizes particularly the suspended condition, which might or might not lead to rebirth.
It might be left in that state forever, especially if it consists of granite throughout, which we do not know.
Now what about the snakes that are guarding the egg?
Mrs. Sigg: There is again a great contrast between the static egg and the life and movement in the snakes. It might be a world egg, the very beginning of things.
Dr. Jung: It is obviously the Orphic symbolism, the egg out of which the world is meant to come, but it is in its suspended condition; there is only the germ, and that is surrounded by snakes.
Something is evidently to be hatched out of the egg by a serpent.
In the Kundalini yoga, the lingam in muladhara is encircled by the serpent, but this text says: “snakes guarded the base of it.”
According to the yoga it should be one egg and one serpent, but here it is one egg and many serpents.
And what is the peculiarity of this egg?
The world egg is supposed to be a real living productive egg, but that there is a multitude of serpents points to what?
Suppose an individual in a dream is represented by several individuals, for instance.
Mrs. Crowley: It is a disintegration.
Dr. Jung: And that could be caused by what?-according to the real unconscious logic, which is of course not logic in our surface sense.
Mrs. Fierz: The lack of life in the egg.
Dr. Jung: Exactly. If it were a real egg, there would probably be one living serpent.
But that is not a living egg necessarily, and in that case the life left over would go into the snakes.
When too much libido is put into a psychological content, it immediately disintegrates.
That is a law everywhere-whenever there is exaggerated power it disintegrates.
That is true of ideas and convictions, and one sees it in history and in politics.
For example, in the history of the German Social Democratic party: the moment the Social Democrats came into power, the party split.
Or in the history of great empires: after growing slowly for centuries, when they reached the summit they began to disintegrate.
There was too much of it, it became hypertrophic, and anything in that condition dissociates, it is so full of energy that each part proceeds by itself. If the human being were filled with an abnormal amount of energy, every part of the body would walk off by itself, there would be a sort of functional explosion.
You see such a disintegration indicates that there is a plurality of something which really ought to be single.
One serpent is entirely sufficient one egg, one serpent-and if that serpent is multiplied for no apparent reason, it means a disintegration, it means that the serpent has been
filled with too much life and energy, so it has multiplied, reproduced itself in many exact replicas, and that surplus of life might come from a lack of life in the egg.
Now that is only symbolism and what it means psychologically is a different question.
It might be worthwhile to enquire why the serpent symbol in the patient is supplied with libido, while the egg is apparently lifeless.
Mrs. Crowley: A few weeks ago you said that all her energy was then going into the inferior parts of her personality, so these numerous serpents might show that the activity is below at present.
Dr. Jung: Yes, we came upon that symbolism before, and I said the plurality indicated too much libido in the serpent world.
Now the serpent world is very clearly the intestinal life which psychologically means too much unconscious life.
And here is the same statement that there is too much unconscious life.
Therefore that symbol is unduly stressed, there are too many serpents, and the egg itself, the part that should really perform that evolution, seems to be lifeless.
Mr. Baumann: In a former vision she was going up to the eternal city with Pegasus. A woman was lying upon the earth crucified, and a voice said: “You have fructified the earth too long.”
Dr. Jung: That was another statement of the same sort.
There was too much emphasis on the lower regions.
Mrs. Crowley: And yet that was necessary because there had been too little before, it was all above, so it is a natural process.
Dr. Jung: That is quite true, but too much above does not justify too much below.
If there is too much libido above and it comes down with a rush, the cellar is filled and there is too much below.
Now she continues: A great crowd of people pressed close to me, threatening me. I
cried out: “This is an egg.” They answered: “It is only granite.”
What does the great crowd of people mean?
Mrs. Sigg: The collective unconscious.
Dr. Jung: But the collective unconscious can be expressed by many symbols, by the sea, by a wood, or the earth, for instance.
What does it mean when it is represented by a crowd of people?
Mr. Baumann: Public opinion.
Dr. Jung: Yes, in that case the collective unconscious does not appear in its natural form, but as projected into many people.
It often takes on the aspect of humanity itself, and then all reactions which would be
connected with natural phenomena are connected with human beings, so that they seem to function almost like waves of the sea, or like the winds, or lightning, or earthquakes.
The individual then reacts in a very peculiar way: he is overwhelmed, flattened out by collectivity; other people appear as if they were elementals, evil spirits, God knows what.
In this case it is obvious that the collective unconscious is projected into public opinion-other people-and they are apparently threatening her.
Now what is the threat?
Mrs. Sigg: “It is only granite.”
Dr. Jung: Yes, nothing but a point of view. Collective opinion says it is nothing but granite, nothing but matter; it has an egg shape but it is not an egg.
But she almost desperately clings to the hope or conviction that it is a real egg, opposing the deprecating public opinion that it is “nothing but” granite.
She says: They mocked at me and came nearer. I was afraid that they would crush me against the egg and put out the flame on my breast.
You see, this symbolism shows that she really does look at collectivity, humanity as a whole, as a sort of elemental power, like a wave that hurls one against the rocks, or a rolling stone that crushes one flat.
The throng is like rushing waters, it threatens to crush her against the egg, and thus put out the flame that is in her breast.
Now what about that flame? We spoke of it before.
Mr. Allemann: It is the beginning of consciousness, of individuation.
Dr. Jung: Yes, and it is the little red flame which one sees at the bottom of the triangle in the center of the anahata chakra; there consciousness
dawns, not as mere conscious reactions, but consciousness in its own right. I have often explained it in relation to our emotions.
When one is overwhelmed by emotion, identical with the emotion, one is in manipura; but if one can say, “I am angry,” or, “I am sad,” and draw conclusions from that, one behaves despite the fact of the emotion.
Then one is in anahata, and that is the beginning of independent consciousness, the beginning of human freedom.
Otherwise one is a victim, merely the prey of ill temper or a bad mood, one is just like an animal; only when one can stand up against it and assert one’s existence is one human.
Above the diaphragm, no matter to what extent one is an animal, one is conscious of what one does, and insofar as one knows, one is liberated; there is the first inkling, the first little flame of consciousness.
Therefore it is exceedingly precious, and this woman, as you know, always has to shield that flame, which is so threatened by the winds of the world that it can be put out at any moment.
She is always anxious to keep it alive, to keep consciousness alive, against the terrible onslaught of the powers of manipura.
Anahata is also the place where one first beholds Ishvara, the Lord, the symbol of completion.
Psychologically, then, she is just painfully maintaining the hope of staying in anahata; but she is by no means clear of the fires of manipura, there is always the possibility of dropping back into the fire crater.
So that flame is her individual, independent consciousness which, according to the Tantric yoga, is meant to increase in independence and detachment, till it can finally be liberated from the laws of karma, from mere events.
That would amount to the complete detachment in ajna, the highest center, the detachment of consciousness which you may have read about in The Secret of the Golden Flower.
Now if public opinion, the projection of the collective unconscious into several
people, should overwhelm her, the nether regions below the diaphragm would put out the flame; her consciousness, inasmuch as it was an independent factor, would be engulfed by the fires concentrated in the abdomen.
That threat has a certain purpose.
There was that doubt, that hollow-sounding armor, for instance, so even to her the egg is not surely alive. She says it is an egg, meaning that she hopes it is an egg.
But her collective opinion is saying all the time: it is “nothing but,” that is dead matter, don’t worry about it, it is hopeless.
And if she believes it, the unconscious will close over her and bring her back into the reach of manipura, where animal life remains forever.
All primitives are in manipura, and anyone who is the prey of uncontrollable emotions and moods, who goes under and runs away from his emotional life, is in manipura altogether.
So to her it is absolutely essential that this vital flame should not be put out; it is in order to make her realize this that it is threatened.
She has the opportunity here to learn how important it is that this egg should not be made of granite, that it should be hollow and that life should be inside.
Now she goes on: I seized one of the threads which hung from the egg, and using it as a whip, I struck at the crowd. This is very peculiar, an ordinary egg has no such threads.
But do you know what eggs really have threads attached to them?
Answer: The eggs of fishes.
Dr. Jung: Yes, sharks’ eggs, for instance.
Here is a schematic drawing of a shark’s egg. These tails or threads are called whips.
And there are certain microbes that have about this form: like little snakes.
They are called Geissel-tierchen in German, which means little whip animals.
Our patient has an excellent zoological education so she naturally knows about fishes’ eggs, but why should this egg have threads?
Mrs. Sigg: Because it comes from the unconscious, the sea.
Dr. Jung: Yes, it has been a content of the sea, it is washed ashore from the sea of the collective unconscious.
She continues: They drew back. I turned again toward the egg, saying: “I hold them back. Open unto me.” The egg divided into four parts. The yellow yolk poured forth upon the ground and swept up, covering my entire body. Then I knew that I could not be hurt and I turned toward the people without any anger.
So she stands up for her own belief, she defends the egg, or herself, against the crowd, meaning that she defends her intuition against the creed of the crowd that believes it is nothing but granite, nothing but matter.
In this vision she holds to her highest conviction, and the effect of it is that the egg instantly shows life, spontaneous activity, it divides into four parts.
What does that mean?
Mrs. Baynes: It means that the process of maturation has begun.
Dr. Jung: Yes, the process of development begins in that way, and it is particularly visible in the eggs of lower animals.
It is the same in higher animals, but to demonstrate it in zoology the egg of the sea urchin is often shown, where it is possible to see how the center divides in a very
regular pattern.
This is perfectly known to her.
So that the egg shows signs of life is due to the change of her attitude.
First she was more or less convinced by collective opinion, but now she feels that if she should accent such a standpoint, the flame of anahata would be put out, so she clings to the flame and therefore the egg begins to develop.
She says: “Open unto me,” and the egg opens, enveloping her in the yolk.
It is as if she were received by the egg, as if she became the living germ inside,
and would eventually be reborn from it. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 863-876
