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Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
The hero who sets himself the task of renewing the world and conquering death personifies the world-creating power which, brooding on itself in introversion, coiled round its own egg like a snake, threatens life with its poisonous bite, so that the living may die and be born again from the darkness ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 592
The term tapas is to be translated, according to Deussen, as “he heated himself with his own heat,” in the sense that “he brooded his own brooding,” brooder and brooded being conceived not as separate, but as one and the same thing ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 589
Hesitantly, as in a dream, the introspective brooding of the centuries gradually put together the figure of Mercurius and created a symbol which, according to all the psychological rules, stands in a compensatory relation to Christ. It is not meant to take his place, nor is it identical with him, for then indeed it could replace him. It owes its existence to the law of compensation, and its object is to throw a bridge across the abyss separating the two psychological worlds by presenting a subtle compensatory counterpoint to the Christ image. The fact that in Faust the compensatory figure is not, as one might almost have expected from the author’s classical predilections, the wily messenger of the gods, but, as the name “Mephistopheles” shows, a familiaris risen from the cesspits of medieval magic, proves, if anything, the ingrained Christian character of Goethe’s consciousness. To the Christian mentality, the dark antagonist is always the devil. As I have shown, Mercurius escapes this prejudice by only a hair’s breadth. But he escapes it, thanks to the fact that he scorns to carry on opposition at all costs. The magic of his name enables him, in spite of his ambiguity and duplicity, to keep outside the split, for as an ancient pagan god he possesses a natural undividedness which is impervious to logical and moral contradictions. This gives him invulnerability and incorruptibility, the very qualities we so urgently need to heal the split in ourselves ~Carl Jung, CW 13 Para 295
The circular movement thus has the moral significance of activating the light and dark forces of human nature, and together with them all psychological opposites of whatever kind they may be. It is nothing less than self-knowledge by means of self-brooding (Sanskrit tapas). A similar archetypal concept of a perfect being is that of the Platonic man, round on all sides and uniting within himself the two sexes. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 39
Brooding is a sterile activity which runs round in a circle, never reaching a sensible goal. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 16
In India the sweating corresponds to the tapas. This is a kind of self-brooding. By the concentration of the soul powers on this one point, on the central point of the self, it is hatched like an egg. One is enclosed in it oneself, as in the retort or in the uterus. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 298-299
Later my mother told me that in those days I was often depressed. It was not really that; rather, I was brooding on the secret. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 42
The following paragraph was not reproduced in LN. Instead, Liber Secundus ends with: “Now shut, you bronze doors I opened to the flood of devastation and murder brooding over the peoples, opened so as to midwife the God. / Shut, may mountains bury you and seas flow over you. / I came to my self, a giddy and pitiful figure. My I! I didn’t want this fellow as my companion. I found myself with him. I’d prefer a bad woman or a wayward hound, but one’s own I – this horrifies me. / An opus is needed, that one can squander decades on, and do it out of necessity. I must catch up with a piece of the Middle Ages within myself. We have only finished the Middle Ages of- others. I must begin early, in that period when the hermits died out. Asceticism, inquisition, torture are close at hand and impose themselves. The barbarian requires barbaric means of education. My I, you are a barbarian. I want to live with you, therefore I will carry you through an utterly medieval Hell, until you are capable of making living with you bearable. You should be the vessel and womb of life; therefore I shall purify you. / The touchstone is being alone with oneself. / This is the way” (pp. 457- 58). The Black Books, Vol. V, Page 215, fn 28
Jung was humble before the ineffable mystery of each variant self that faced him for the first time, as he sat at his desk, pipe in hand, with every faculty attuned, brooding on the portent of what was being said to him. ~Henry A. Murray, A Memorial Meeting, New York Dec. 1, 1961, Page 18
