And there was a baby in it, bandaged up in medieval fashion.
I remember another instance of the too-perceptive eye: I was on a walking tour in Alsace when I was a student.
That was forty years ago and in those days it was very medieval-well, it is still.
Those little villages in the country were absolutely medieval and they still used funny old implements.
I came upon a sort of perambulator in which I am sure Noah or Methuselah must have traveled.
It was a huge kind of basket with four big wheels each consisting of one piece of solid wood, and the whole thing was painted in the most gorgeous colors; it was a piece for a museum.
And there was a baby in it, bandaged up in medieval fashion.
I had never seen anything like it except in storybooks, so I looked at it attentively.
A little boy was wheeling it and he instantly turned it away from me and I couldn’t understand why.
But then he held out his hand against me and I realized that he was afraid of the evil eye.
My eye was simply fixed and very interested. I noticed the same thing with the Pueblo Indians.
When I looked at them with interest, they instantly turned away or shut their eyes.
My piercing look, which is merely the intellectual look, made them feel pinched.
The Dionysian’s were seeking that effect; the idea was that the blood of Dionysus was circulating in every living being, that everything contained a piece of Dionysus; so if they were quite identical in every experience, they were in every thinkable form of existence, which means naturally a strengthening of the participation mystique.
But of course it killed individuality.
It was the first appearance of the being in man that reaches beyond man, but the shot went too far.
They identified with it and were torn to pieces, they no longer existed, they were completely shattered, so
nothing remained but the reminiscence of the divine moment.
Therefore it became necessary for the sake of the individual to sacrifice the participation mystique.
That they did not exist as human beings is shown by the fact that they had no human feeling.
Think of all the horrible things they did in the circus!
That would not have been possible if they had had a living feeling for humanity.
Then, since they had no individuality, they had to worship one individual human being.
Thus the Caesars were deified, and after/ death they became stars.
The astrologer always discovered a new star in the heavens when a Caesar died.
And in Egypt the pharaohs were deified.
We don’t understand that language, but if we should succeed in getting the entrails up out of the darkness we would know what they meant to say, and since they would arise out of the natural mind, it would be horrible, insupportable even.
Yet one discovers when one examines them that they are really exceedingly precious.
So the inferior function is precious on account of the life it contains.
The superior function is like fine old material, a bit worn out, though highly differentiated, while the inferior function is very crude, a rough diamond but full of promise.
It is very probable that the thinking type gets a bit dry and sterile in his thinking, but when it comes to feeling, he is still young and fresh; nothing has been used up, there is a lot of life in it which is of immense value. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 232
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog