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Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
13 December 1933 Visions Seminar LECTURE X
We were talking last time about the animus and the patient upon the back of the great snake, and among other parallels we mentioned the Christian symbolism where Christ was identified with the zodiacal serpent.
Also, in the Catholic church Christ symbolizes the course of the year, which is very much the same idea because the year is characterized by the division into the twelve months.
As the way of the sun through the twelve zodiacal signs would be the life of the year, so the life of Christ would be the totality of the year; he is born and dies with the course of the year.
That shows that this is the time serpent, which links it up at once with what mythological monster?
Miss Howells: The dragon.
Dr. Jung: And what unmistakable fact in the dragon myth substantiates this?
Dr. Reichstein: The immortality of the dragon?
Dr. Jung: Yes, but there is more drastic evidence contained in the belly of the dragon.
Answer: It contains the past and the future of the hero.
Dr. Jung: Not the future exactly, but it contains the past, which through the miracle of apokatastasis is brought back and forms the things of the future.
In all myths the dragon contains the hero, and also the parents and ancestors of the hero, the whole tribe, the whole nation, and finally trees and rivers and animals; everything that has disappeared in time falls into the belly of the dragon, the dragon carries them.
So when the hero is able to kill the dragon, he brings about that miracle of apokatastasis, the restoration of everything.
Christ is the typical dragon killer because through redemption he brings back all which has been lost in the past.
Apokatastasis means redemption; this idea is in the Epistles of St. Paul.
Then there is another aspect which is interesting from a psychological point of view.
The animus, who is always the psychopompos, the leader of souls, here appears as the one treading upon the zodiacal serpent, which means that he is the lord of the serpent, the lord of time.
Inasmuch as the serpent is the zodiacal way, the animus appears to be the sun; he takes on an almost astronomical aspect as if he were transplanted into the heavens.
What does that mean psychologically?
Dr. Reichstein: It is a most collective form, having to do not only with ourselves.
Dr: Jung: Yes, but would you say that this was a positive or negative aspect of the animus?
Dr. Reichstein: I should not use the determinations negative and positive at all here; it is not only a consideration for ourselves, but the problem of our present civilization.
Dr. Jung: Well, it is a problem of our present civilization, but it is also characteristic of a particular case.
Mrs. Sigg: It means that the animus is getting very powerful.
Dr. Jung: But the power is not necessarily evil.
Mrs. Crowley: It suggests the idea that he is more in contact with the Self than with the ego self.
Dr. Jung: And is that a positive fact or a negative one?
Mrs. Crowley: From one point of view very negative.
Mrs. Baumann: I should think it very negative, because he would then have consciousness instead of the patient, according to the discussion we had in the last seminar about his carrying the cross.
Dr. Jung: But do you think it necessarily negative when he carries a certain amount of consciousness?
Mrs. Baumann: If it is not under her control.
Dr. Jung: It couldn’t be entirely under her control because these things reach far beyond human consciousness.
I am rather inclined to think it is a positive symbol.
You see, she is accompanying him on the back of the dragon.
I think the animus takes on a positive aspect here, though it is not very obvious, I admit; this symbolism cannot be taken as a really satisfactory demonstration of the cosmic aspect of the animus, but there is a hint of it here.
You see the animus is meant to be cosmic.
It is a function which should widen out the spiritual or mental possibilities into infinite space, as it were, into the infinity of the collective mind.
Inasmuch as the animus is expanding into the great unconscious cosmos, he is really in his own element-there he belongs, that is his home.
If he should expand into collectivity he would be hopelessly personal; then our collectivity, social gatherings, societies and organizations, would all be run by a most hellish animus; it would be the aunt of a nation really, which is utterly negative.
But here there is no such thing, it is a proper animus performance, or at least on the way to the proper functioning.
This is only a faint allusion to it, but I take this opportunity to speak of that cosmic aspect of the animus because it is very important.
For the animus when on his way, on his quest, is really a psychopompos, leading the soul to the stars whence it came.
On the way back out of the existence in the flesh, the psychopompos develops such a cosmic aspect, he wanders among the constellations, he leads the soul over the rainbow bridge into the blossoming fields of the stars.
You see, the mythological idea was that man originally came down like a shooting star, a spark of fire, from the infinity of space, and fell into a created form and became a definite isolated little flame.
That gave rise to consciousness which is an isolated light in the night of the infinite spaces.
But when that creation of a human being is fulfilled, the animus does not press on to further generation or shaping of matter.
He begins to detach himself, to fall out again; he goes back to his origin, to the interstellar spaces where he once more walks among the stars.
We don’t know whether there is any definite abode there, but according to mythology, the testimony of the consensus gentium, the heavenly mansions, the abode of the souls of the deceased are somewhere out in interstellar space.
It is therefore quite natural that even in very modern people one still encounters the same symbolism-whatever it means.
It is of course metaphorical, but we have no other than symbolic means to express such an idea.
Mrs. Baumann: Then is it a positive sign that the animus is here carrying the symbol?
Dr. Jung: Of course. You see, the symbol always appears first in the animus, or in the anima in a man’s case.
The tremendous importance of the anima is that she carries the symbol.
Mrs. Baumann: But in the last seminar we said it was rather questionable whether she was not delegating the cross to him now, and whether she ought not to take it herself.
Dr. Jung: It is very questionable if she delegates the cross to him; if she does so, it is wrong.
But the question is whether she is mature enough to carry it.
There are definite reasons which make it probable that for her the time has not yet come; she is still deliberating whether the child that turned up in her paintings was a symbolic child or a real child.
She was young enough to be honestly in doubt whether it would not be advisable to extend in material space by means of more children.
Of course, there are people who begin the return already at twenty-five or even
younger, particularly people who are meant to die early; they may begin the return at twenty and die at twenty-five; it all depends upon the length of life.
Now we will continue our text.
She says: I seized the man by the arm and pulled him to one side so that we stood with our backs pressed against the towering rocks, and our feet on a narrow ledge of rock.
What is happening here?
Mrs. Fierz: She wants to escape.
Dr. Jung: Exactly. The animus made a vain attempt to walk on the zodiacal way, but she does not intend to go that way herself.
She pulls him off the snake and they stand against the rocks, which means a standstill.
On the back of the serpent, they are in movement because the serpent is alive, it is the serpent of Tao.
I must tell you something quite interesting which Miss Bekinsale, who has lived a long time in China, has just told me concerning that Tao symbolism of the serpent, in reference to what we were saying about the living way that leads somewhere and the way that leads nowhere.
It seems that the Chinese have the idea of the living way in their language: they call the street that goes nowhere in particular the lo street, as for instance Gemeindestrasse would be a lo street; it simply is, with houses on either side.
But a highway, a road like Forchstrasse which goes up to Forch, or Zollikerstrasse which goes to Zollikon, is a living way that is called the Tao road, meaning the street that leads one to a definite goal; it is the serpent street, the Tao road.
Now by pulling the animus down from the serpent, she actually stops that living road; they come to a standstill up against the rocks of the path.
Rock is of course very material, and here it is the definite boundary line of the path, the definiteness of the space in which one is confined.
So we may conclude that she is not willing to continue that road which would lead into infinity; she is now making for a standstill at a certain place in the material world.
We can deduce from this what will follow.
When you are in movement, on the way to a certain goal-which would be on the back of the serpent-what do you experience if you stop?
Answer: A shock.
Dr. Jung: Yes, if you have been feeling the energy of the movement.
But the energy is not then lost.
That it causes a shock means that the movement is going on by itself; you cannot really stop it, you can only change its course or transform its energy.
And very often, when you are not aware of the speed and intensity of the movement, you have only to stop it in order to discover its power.
Just as in order to know what energy a motor develops, you measure the energy which is needed to stop it.
So it often happens to me that patients complain: “Oh, we are getting nowhere! “-and they begin to lament. In fantasy they are playing how it would be if they stopped their analysis. I say: “That is perfectly true, and as you are tired of it just stop.”
Then instantly they feel the shock; with a thud it comes home to them that they are going at great speed, but they only feel it when they stop.
As in swimming you only feel the progress when you compare it with the bank; when swimming with the current in the sea, you think you are getting along very slowly and painfully, but in comparison with a fixed point, you see that you are moving rapidly, and
if you try to stop it, you feel the impact of the movement.
So the next thing that happens in the vision is this:
I said: “Now, we will let the snake rise up.” (By stopping.) The man shook with fear. (That is the shock.) The great snake arched up its back, reared upward into the sky, then brought its head down close to us. It opened a great mouth.
When she stops the movement powerful and fearful things instantly begin to happen.
There we have the dragon myth; they have now encountered the dragon and it is a situation for St. George.
What would you call the serpent now?
This is not the zodiacal serpent any longer, it is becoming something else.
Mrs. Sigg: The Kundalini.
Dr. Jung: Of course, the Kundalini phenomenon is produced here.
If you ask how one can make the Kundalini serpent rise, I can tell you a very simple means: by stopping your analysis.
Then up comes the serpent, and it causes a tremendous shock, the poor animus shudders with fear.
You don’t notice it as long as it is going on, but stop it and you will see marvels.
Stopping that movement means stopping the visions or fantasies.
Or one can express it in a different way: When she does not follow the path of the libido, it instantly goes against her.
In ordinary circumstances people would then dream of a mad bull persecuting them, or an angry dog barking at them; or, as I have often seen, a train at full speed crashing into another train, or into a river; or an airplane falling down.
It is always something that symbolizes an actual catastrophe.
Now opening the mouth suggests what?
Mrs. Baumann: Devouring.
Dr. Jung: Then if it is the devouring snake, we have the different interpretation or a different name.
The Kundalini rises, it hisses and it terrifies but it does not devour, so it would again be the whale-dragon myth this serpent then takes on the aspect of the dragon.
It is the Kundalini but it doesn’t behave like the Kundalini, it is a new aspect; it becomes the belly of the unconscious, the mouth of death, for instance, or time that devours everything living.
So it seems to express the thought: If we stop, the snake will swallow us and that means death.
Therefore on stopping such a vital movement a person has a suicidal feeling; a disaster, self-destruction, would be symbolized by the devouring serpent.
But now something very strange happens; the serpent opens its mouth, not in order to swallow them but for them to look into it.
And she says: It had lungs of gold. Its tongue was split and was shaped on one side like a man, on the other like a woman. I looked far down into the belly of the snake and saw many men and women lying quite still, heaped up. They were gray, but I knew that they were not dead.
This is a very typical picture of the time serpent which contains a whole tribe.
Those gray forms of living beings are the shadowy souls of the dead.
But they are not dead, they are perhaps dormant, their life is a potential.
This is very peculiar symbolism. What about those lungs of gold?
Dr. Barker: The spirit is of great value, and the lungs contain the air, the spirit.
Dr. Jung: Gold always means great value.
Mrs. Sigg: It is a place where that which comes from outside is exchanged and used.
Mrs. Fierz: The lungs contain the heart.
Dr. Jung: And to what stage of what symbolism does all that point?
Mrs. Crowley: It suggests anahata.
Dr. Jung: Yes, here is the Kundalini aspect of the serpent again.
This is indubitable; that it rises proves that to be the real character of this serpent.
Instead of the devouring whale-dragon, it is the Kundalini serpent opening the mouth for inspection.
This is not contained in the Tantric yoga, it is a very Western version of the Kundalini yoga. What does it mean?
Mrs. Fierz: It means recognizing, understanding its nature.
Dr. Jung: Exactly. The Kundalini lives now, but in a more conscious condition.
And real consciousness begins in anahata, in the region of the air, in the lungs where the heart also belongs.
It is interesting that only the valuable lungs are mentioned, and nothing is said of the heart of gold which would seem to be more important.
Why is that?
Mrs. Brunner: Is it not the part of anahata that gives relation to the spiritual contents?
Dr. Jung: You mean it is that part of anahata which contains or symbolizes the relation to the spirit, which contains air, the spirit quality? Yes, that is true.
Mrs. Crowley: Or it could also be that it was still rather indistinct, just
on the borderline, that it has not yet reached her.
Dr. Jung: One could say that, because anatomically the lungs surround and cover the heart; when the thorax is opened, the heart is not at first visible because the greater part is more or less covered by the lungs.
So one could say the lungs are rather an external aspect, and I think the idea that the spiritual aspect covers up the feeling aspect is a point which should be taken into consideration.
Now in anahata there are two qualities which are here symbolized by the red and the smoke color; the red is fiery and denotes the warmth of the heart; the inner circle is rather like blood, but the color of the petals is like the orange color of manipura, and that denotes the intense heat of fire.
So the heart is still warm from the fire of manipura.
Professor Hauer tried to explain the very peculiar three-sided figure in the center of the manipura chakra as a sort of embryonic or misshapen swastika, in which the four legs always turn to the right in the way of the clock.
(In the German swastika they go the wrong way round, they turn to the left.)
His idea would be more like the Greek triskelos really, that figure composed of three legs running round in a circle, which is on the coat-of-arms of Sicily and on the old Sicilian coins of Greek times.
But to me that form always suggests a pot on the fire with handles on the two sides and on the lid.
This would also have an alchemistic connotation-it would be the fire of the passions which produces the jewel; and the word manipura means the fullness or the abundance
of jewels.
The fire is in the center in manipura and it throws out clouds of smoke; the smoke is there outside and it is just smoke, nothing else; it means nothing and has no value whatever.
But in the next transformation, in anahata, what has been first a by-product of no importance, the smoke which is thrown out into the air, vanishing at once, becomes the most important feature; it then becomes a spiritual symbol, and the warmth which has been in the center is now on the outside as if coming from the smoke. It is in the petals, which always mean emanation, unfolding.
You see the chakras transform according to the laws of enantiodromia, like the hexagrams of the I Ching.
For instance, in one movement we have such a figure:== and in the next it changes into this:== The Yang lines come up and transform into the Yin, or the other way round.
So the interesting thing is that in anahata, the lungs, the air, the spiritual quality, is in the center, as the important thing is always in the center, and the fire, the warmth, would be its emanation.
But, mind you, this philosophy was chiefly made by men; this is characteristic of masculine psychology where the spirit or the Logos element is always central, and that emanates the warmth, or the warmth is associated with it, and forms a sort of cover or periphery to the central spirit.
This is also obvious in the further development of the Tantric yoga system, or of any yoga system-the spiritual goal is always paramount to any other possibility.
Here the lungs really cover the heart, so that the outside seems to be the more important, as if the patient were a man; the smoke or the air, the subtle body, is for a man in the center, the main thing, and with her it is the same, and the heart is not even mentioned.
On the contrary, the lungs which are often grayish blue in color in a corpse, a somewhat
cloudy quality, are here golden.
And gold is more the color of fire and it shines like fire; pure gold, or any pure metal, suggests the action of fire, it has the eclat of light or fire.
For instance, bronze-not the bronze with a patina but the real ore-has a tremendous eclat-it reflects, it can be used for a mirror, as a mirror can be made of gold or silver also.
So these metals have the quality of fire.
Therefore this symbol, the lungs of gold, would be like anahata with the light round it.
You must always understand the chakras, not as two dimensional but like globes which emanate; so that chakra in space would be a ball surrounded by a fiery color as if
emanating warmth, or shining like gold or glowing ore, and nothing would be seen of the dark heart inside.
The only question is whether that is not a masculine formulation of anahata and that remains to be seen.
Mrs. Crowley: It would be more the animus then.
Dr. Jung: It would be anahata as understood by the animus.
Miss Wolff: It seems to me that the specific functions of the heart and lungs are important, and I think Mrs. Sigg’s point would be symbolic, that the heart functions in and for the body itself, whereas in the lungs there is an interchange with the outer world: they either take in air, or they give it out-they relate the subject to something outside.
Dr. Jung: Yes, that aspect comes in too.
But I am not quite certain whether it would not be the other way round, whether instead of golden lungs she should have a golden heart.
Miss Wolff: I mean the lungs might be emphasized because she is apparently still in the condition where she wants to get the spirit from outside, instead of having it in her own heart.
Dr. Jung: But I am not so sure that it is an attempt to get the spirit from outside.
It is true that the lungs have to do with the interchange with the outer world and the outer air, and it looks as if to her that would be the main aspect of anahata; that is quite possible.
But I am still doubtful; I think we shall get further light on it from the next symbol, the tongue of the serpent.
Dr. Adler: This possibility of looking into the mouth seems to me very positive, but I don’t understand why it happens to her just in the moment when she comes to a standstill.
Dr. Jung: But only when at a standstill is it possible to look into the mouth of the serpent.
As long as one is in movement one cannot be aware of it or realize it; one must first stop.
That is simply a psychological law.
Dr. Adler: But she stops because she is afraid of the way.
Dr. Jung: That is a suspicion, a hypothesis.
Of course it is quite possible that she is afraid of the way, but there is also perhaps a legitimate reason for stopping, perhaps for the time being she could not continue her way.
There is still the problem in her mind whether it should be a real child or a spiritual child.
And one cannot have a real child with the same attitude as a symbolic child, it makes all the difference in the world.
Frau Durer: How can one stop a thing when one is not aware of it?
Dr. Jung: One cannot of course.
But she is sufficiently aware of it to have that fantastic path under her feet, she knows she is having these visions-that is something which she might imagine stopping.
As one might stop one’s analysis, if one can.
But sure enough, when one is not conscious of a movement there is no possibility of stopping it.
That is just the trouble.
People may be in a certain movement of which they are unconscious, and then it simply has to take its course.
Mrs. Sigg: I don’t understand about the way of the snake. It seems to be the way right out into the infinite, but if one thinks of the zodiac it is a circular movement.
Dr.: Jung: That is a problem in itself, which we had better not touch now.
It is true that it is a circular movement, and it is a straight way, and it is also a spiral; it is bordering on non extension and there all the spatial qualities lose their meaning.
But we are concerned here with this symbol of the serpent’s tongue which is split into man and woman.
Mrs. Crowley: That suggests the next chakra, vishuddha, does it not?
Dr. Jung: Yes, there it is.
In vishuddha is there anything of that peculiar symbolism, man and woman being part of the one being? How could you bring such a symbol into vishuddha?
Mrs. Fierz: It would then be the overcoming of the separation of herself and the animus.
Dr. Jung: Exactly. It is the union of the animus and the ego personality, the union of the male and the female, “when the two shall be one neither male nor female.” Where does that quotation come from?
Question: Is it not like the primordial man of Plato?
D1: Jung: That is the same idea.
Miss Howells: In one of the Gnostic sayings it is quite definitely mentioned where Salome asks how long these things shall be.
Dr. Jung: That is it. It is one of the extracanonical sayings of Jesus, in that precious bit saved by Origenes from the Evangel of the Egyptians, which was lost unfortunately.
But he had copied at least two fragments from it and one of them is a conversation between Christ and a woman named Salome-not the daughter of Herodias, of course.
She asked him when the things of which she inquired should be known, and the Lord said: “When ye trample upon the garment of shame, and when the two become one, and the male with the female neither male nor female.”
That is the idea of Plato’s primordial man, which was a round ball with four arms and four legs; it was both male and female and then God cut the two parts asunder because he took pity on the misshapen thing.
Of course, Plato does not call it misshapen, but they had their backs turned to one another and were cut in two so that they could see each other.
So the original state becomes the symbol for the future state.
A cabalistic legend contains the same idea: when the first parents sinned, God locked
up paradise and removed it into the future.
The totality which was in the beginning was in the form of a mandala.
In the center was the tree of life, and out
of that Garden of Eden the four rivers flowed.
Then this symbol was removed from the past and put into the future; itis also a symbol of the complete man, of man beyond the separation of the sexes.
The same symbolism is in the text of the Holy Mass, in the ceremony of the Sabbathus Sanctus, when the fertilization of the baptismal font takes place.
There it is said that the water will give rebirth to all those who are separated either by sex or by age; they shall be reborn into a new state of spiritual and eternal infancy, which is the restoration of that which has been but in a new form.
It will be different from the original totality.
There is discrimination and separation and all the misunderstanding which goes on in the course of history, there is hostility between the woman’s seed and the man’s seed; there is strife and battle and conflict; Cain murders Abel; and there is the great heteraglossia, the confusion of tongues in building the Tower of Babel, and the dispersion of the peoples.
This is the myth of man’s consciousness, how man’s consciousness came into existence, how from the original totality it was split into the consciousness of itself.
For there can be no consciousness without discrimination, and this discrimination goes on into practical deeds and becomes a sort of wound, like the wound of Christ, the wounded hero.
And Amfortas in the legend of the Holy Grail is the wounded bleeding hero, man in the last extremity on account of that separation.
Then those wounds must be healed through the overcoming of the difficulties, through the miracle of apokatastasis, the restoration of all that has been.
Dr. Escher: Right and left of the center line in the system of the chakras are two lines, male and female, not touching the chakras, and they are in the end united.
Dr. Jung: Ah yes, the Nazis. They are united in the beginning and in the end.
They begin below in the genitals, the testicles, where creation takes place, and they end in the nostrils where the spirit enters; so the original condition is restored, the oneness of the two.
That is a very good example.
Those two lines are the sun and the moon, the male and the female principles.
So here the woman and the man being the divergent parts of the one tongue symbolize the primordial being that is neither male nor female, despite the fact that the two are still separate; it is the condition where Shiva is again united with Shakti.
They are separate because man’s consciousness does still exist, but they will in the end be one.
They become entirely one in ajna, where human consciousness comes to an end.
Human consciousness still exists in vishuddha as a separate unit, but it begins to detach itself from its individual or personal basis, it is already a sort of all-seeing eye, exceedingly detached and abstract.
That the condition of the vishuddha center is really meant by this symbol of the split tongue, the two being one, is supported by the fact that it is also in the right position. The throat and the mouth are in the region of speech and the tongue means speech, it is the region of the spoken ideas.
In the Bible that is called the Logos, the spoken word, the word of God, the idea that is more than man; man is an appendix of the idea, the living thing is the word and not the personal or individual man, the man of flesh.
Then lower down, in anahata, are the lungs, and still further down in the subconscious centers below the diaphragm are the dead; that is the past, the land of ghosts.
For in manipura and the still lower centers, you don’t live, you are lived, you are made to exist; there the inherited instincts, the ancestral souls move you and make you live.
Only in anahata do you reach a fairly conscious existence, there you become conscious of the split into right and left, male and female.
Those pairs of opposites, in which you are absolutely dissolved in manipura, then exist within yourself, and with that knowledge you have the basis for the next chakra, vishuddha, where the opposites, whatever they are, become reconciled.
You first behold the reconciling symbol in anahata, in vishuddha it begins to work, and in ajna it is fulfilled.
I think we are safe, then, in assuming that this symbolism of the split tongue really refers to vishuddha, and the grey figures down in the belly of the serpent are in the collective unconscious, which expresses itself fully in the lower centers despite the fact that in manipura there is already an ego.
The ego begins in svadhisthana, but it means nothing, it is swayed by currents caused by the ancestral spirits and by the samskaras.
We come now to the effect of this peculiar vision.
You could say she had seen a most comprehensive scene here, the building of the whole yoga tree of the chakras up to vishuddha, and vishuddha is at a cosmic level where one is not a separate human being.
Space doesn’t exist any longer, one sees with the eye of the moon or of the eternal stars, not with a human eye; one is in no way disturbed by human emotions, in that eye
there are no tears.
You see that is in accordance with what we have been saying about the way of the serpent, meaning the cosmic way, the zodiacal system.
Vishuddha represents the exteriorization of the human mind into the celestial spheres of the zodiac, it is cosmic consciousness.
Now one cannot assume that such a powerful vision, given in a few poor words, could be realized by the patient; it is apparently unnoticed.
Yet that vision does happen somewhere and someone must be affected by it; such a thing cannot happen without causing a certain atmospheric disturbance.
Now who would be affected?
It would be a disturbance like being in the neighborhood of a comet, as if a comet were crossing a group of meteorites; or like certain solar disturbances, say a huge protuberance in the sun which affects the earth.
There might then be an electromagnetic storm in the bowels of the earth, so that telegraph lines would be disturbed, but we would not notice it, we would only read about it in the newspapers.
But who would be affected?
Mrs. Crowley: The animus might react.
Dr. Jung: Yes, the animus is the informant about unconscious matters, he is the observation post in the world of the collective unconscious.
So we are quite safe in expecting some disturbance in the animus, and we find that to be true here.
She says: The man beside me shook and I saw drops of blood stand out all over his body like sweat.
He said: “I must enter the mouth of that snake, I cannot avoid it. If I remain here with you I will become black.” I said: “I thought you could be my guide but I see that you
are too weak.”
It is obvious that the animus is profoundly moved, but the fact that he is so affected shows what at the same time?
Mrs. Fierz: That she is not affected.
Dr. Jung: She is not touched in the least, she notices nothing.
There is an electromagnetic storm which only affects the telegraph wires and nobody else notices it, her conscious system is not touched at all; she does not realize that she has had a vision of extraordinary and far reaching importance.
She leaves all that emotion to the animus and thinks that he is just having a fit, that he is weak and hysterical; she does not realize that when her animus is affected she ought to know it.
We must not be too severe, however, we must be exceedingly tolerant with human blindness because we are all blind in such matters.
Anybody might dream that the animus or anima was deeply affected without being moved at all, for the same reason; we have not understood, we have not realized that something of great importance has occurred.
It is like a dream which we don’t understand and which apparently does not affect us, as if it had nothing to do with us.
It is not so rare that somebody has a dream of the greatest importance for the life of that individual, and I analyze it carefully and try to impress him with its meaning; then the next time I refer to it, he says blankly, “What dream?”
It has gone completely, he has not realized it in the least, only his anima was touched or moved but his conscious not at all. We are very much like the old Romans when the Vandals were besieging Rome.
The people were still watching the games and enjoying themselves in the circus and nobody would believe it possible that barbarians could conquer Rome; they were right under the walls, and the Roman soldiers had a hell of a time to keep them off, and of course in the end they did conquer Rome, killing and plundering right and left-just as before the war we did not dream that such a thing could be possible.
There were any number of articles in newspapers and books telling us that war was quite excluded in our times for ten thousand good reasons-that international finance, commerce and traffic, for instance, never would stand for a war-and then we had the most terrible war in history.
And we are the same in regard to ourselves, so we should not be too critical.
That our patient does not realize what it is all about is connected with the fact that she may not be meant to understand; if she were to have another child, a real one, it would be no good to understand these things.
They mean the return, and if you are going out into life, there is no use in returning, itis much better to think it is all rubbish.
That is one reason why these matters often look like incomprehensible rubbish, that is quite characteristic.
For instance, the Tantric texts, even in India, are thought of as mere rubbish, and immoral, indecent.
If you should speak of the Tantric yoga as characteristic of India, they would not accept the statement, because they are decent people who don’t believe such dirt.
Also the alchemistic symbolism looks like rubbish, one can only shake one’s head; show those books to any respectable citizen and he would say the same.
So it is no good talking too much psychology for the same reason, and the farther you go in it the more it looks so.
And it should look so to the young and inexperienced, it is not wholesome for them to understand these things.
They are misleading, and they tempt you to make a poisonous use of them, and thus to swindle yourself out of your own duties, even out of your own life.
Therefore I am against a missionary attitude, it is always wrong.
It is good that these things do exist, and it is exceedingly wrong to recommend them, for then they go bad in no time.
Now when the animus says he must enter the mouth of the serpent, it is true in the sense that he must enter the whale-dragon.
Then the Kundalini is not the luciferian snake that brings enlightenment, it is the devouring darkness, and into that darkness the animus has to disappear.
Why is that?
Miss Hannah: Because it is his realm.
Dr. Jung: That would be the positive aspect.
Remark.: Because she has no realization, he had better disappear.
Dr: Jung: Yes, for if she does not realize, what is the use of the animus experience at all? He had better be dropped, he must disappear.
He says: “If I remain here with you I shall become black”-if l remain with such an unconscious and unrealizing woman, that is.
Mrs. Crowley: Then he is no longer functioning?
Dr.: Jung: Oh, a black animus does function.
Mrs. Crowley: Black in the sense that he becomes tinctured with earth?
Dr.: Jung: He has to become a nigger.
For only a nigger can think on the level of such an unconscious woman; no use being a white man or a hero, he must think like a nigger.
The thinking needed for the extension of this life, for the further creating of bodies, is best when it is nil.
Don’t think too much about it.
Otherwise you will begin to discriminate too much, you will create fear and unwillingness to continue.
You might discover that the world is an illusion, so why should you bring forth children? It would be a great mistake.
Therefore it is best to think nothing, and in that case the animus is a nigger. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1227-1241