What God does not thirst after temples and altars?

What God does not thirst after temples and altars?

1. II. 18

I. My soul, speak, what do you see, and how do you see?

S. I see Ka and what he does. He is right there with you. He is doing you harm.

I. What is he doing?

S. He’s building a house, a palace, a temple, a dwelling or a tomb, a lodging for eternity. Does he want to build a temple for your God? Ka, tell me, what are you doing so mysteriously?

Ka: I am building a prison for God, an altar, such that one who touches it becomes one with it. The Gods should have me forget how to fly.

S. Do you want to capture the God of this man, deceitful one?

Ka. What, you call me deceitful? Didn’t I build Philemon’s fortress? Now that he has withdrawn from the circling of the wheel- it really didn’t please him-he no longer needs a palace. Now he practices what he otherwise advised man to take care of, namely abstinence. So I build a palace for man.

S. Why for men and not for yourself?

Ka: I want to see someone spellbound in my place, with feet bound in the maternal stone awaiting procreation in endless blissful agony, with only longing and unfulfillment.

S. Why do you want to thrust man into this torment? Is he made for it? No, you know this better than I, since your cunning is great.

Ka. I want to – and will. I must create from myself; I want to bury the living in marble and gold.

S. Do you believe that this God will let himself be buried?

Ka. What God does not thirst after temples and altars? And what man doesn’t want to see his God honored? Show me the God who won’t let himself be caught by temples!

S. But what if this God dispenses with temples and altars?

Ka. Then he is no God, and I call him a piece of lodestone, a fetish for negroes.

S. Can you deny that he is a God? That he should not be a God if he rejects your lure?

Ph. Consider, Ka: he is a new God-something new is truly new, although you grasp it ineptly.

It happened as you thought a thousand times, and it happened differently for the thousand and first time. You must build millions of temples, one for each man, to capture this God.

It is not for me to tell him the wisdom, nor for you to prepare a temple for him.

The time comes when father and mother no longer comprehend the son, when paternal wisdom and motherly understanding are at an end, and everything takes another way than one had previously thought. I fear that your temple is dedicated to you. ~The Black Books, Vol. VII, Page 174-175

Thursday. On this day, Jung noted the following in “Dreams”:

“Dream I discover that strange people are in my boat house. I enter threatening armed with a paddle. A tall fellow, dressed like a mechanic [?], talks to me. Later I hear from Toni that he intends to shoot me, he had been there for reasons of espionage. He wants to kill me for
metaphysical reasons, similar to Judas, for the truth to be fulfilled(?). I think that I need to accept the unavoidable” (pp. 22-23).

The next day, Jung wrote to Alphonse Maeder asking him to chair the session on Saturday- as he was ill with bronchitis (Maeder papers). ~The Black Books, Vol. VII, Page 174, fn 67

In “From the earliest experiences of my Life,” Jung recalled disillusionment with the church in his youth following his communion: “Why that is not religion at all. . . . It is an absence of God; the church is a place one should not go to. It is not life which is there, but death” (JA, p. 3 9).

He took up the theme of what he saw as the irreconcilable conflict between the living religious spirit and the institution of the Church in his discussion of the history of Christianity in his seminars at Polzeath, where he predicted the same fate for analytical psychology (Seminar- July 1923 by Dr. C.G. Jung Heldat Polzeath, Cornwall. Notes of Esther Harding, Kristine Mann Library, New York, p. 20). ~The Black Books, Vol. VII, Page 174, fn 68

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