Most people do not have sufficient range of consciousness to become aware of the opposites inherent in human nature.
The tensions they generate remain for the most part unconscious, but can appear in dreams.
Traditionally, the snake stands for the vulnerable spot in man: it personifies his shadow, i.e., his weakness and unconsciousness.
The greatest danger about unconsciousness is proneness to suggestion.
The effect of suggestion is due to the release of an unconscious the opposites are so to speak united, but with a visible seam or suture, namely the symbol of the hermaphrodite.
This mars the idea of the lapis just as much as the all-too-human element mars Homo sapiens.
In the higher Adam and in the rotundum the opposition is invisible.
But presumably the one stands in absolute opposition to the other, and if both are identical as Indistinguishable transcendental entities, this is one of those paradoxes that are the rule: a statement about something metaphysical can only be antinomial.
The arrangement in the uroboros gives the following picture:
Anthropos-Rotundum
Lapis
Homo
Serpent
This arrangement shows the stronger tension between Anthropos-rotundum and serpens on the one hand, and the lesser dynamic, and the more unconscious this is, the more effective it will be.
Hence the ever-widening split between conscious and unconscious increases the danger of psychic infection and mass psychosis.
With the loss of symbolic ideas the bridge to the unconscious has broken down.
Instinct no longer affords protection against unsound ideas and empty slogans.
Rationality without tradition and without a basis in instinct is proof against no absurdity. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Page 247
Most people do not have sufficient range of consciousness to become aware of the opposites inherent in human nature.
The tensions they generate remain for the most part unconscious, but can appear in dreams.
Traditionally, the snake stands for the vulnerable spot in man: it personifies his shadow, i.e., his weakness and unconsciousness.
The greatest danger about unconsciousness is proneness to suggestion.
The effect of suggestion is due to the release of an unconscious dynamic, and the more unconscious this is, the more effective it will be.
Hence the ever-widening split between conscious and unconscious increases the danger of psychic infection and mass psychosis.
With the loss of symbolic ideas the bridge to the unconscious has broken down.
Instinct no longer affords protection against unsound ideas and empty slogans.
Rationality without tradition and without a basis in instinct is proof against no absurdity. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Page 247, fn 79