Carl Jung on “God” – The Black Books, Vol. I – 7 Anthology

Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group

Volume I

Salome was his daughter and that they had been companions since eternity.

Salome told Jung’s “I” that she loved him.

Elijah told him that Salome loved a prophet and announced the new God to the world. Jung’s ‘I’ was shocked at all this. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 24

In an active imagination on January II, 1926, Wolff’s “I” had a dialogue with Thot, the Egyptian God of writing.

Thoth instructed her how to invoke someone’s “Ka”: ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 32

Jung divided the material up into a series of books comprised of short chapters.

But whereas Zarathustra proclaimes the death of God, Liber Novus depicts the rebirth of God in the soul. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 40

He touched on madness, divine madness, and psychiatry, how the Imitation of Christ is to be understood today; the death of God; the historical significance of Nietzsche; and the relation of magic and reason. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 41

In a critical entry of January 16, 1916, his soul presented an elaborate thiogenic cosmogony.

She described her own nature, the nature of the daimons, the heavenly mother, and the Gods.

Of particular significance was Abraxas, the powerful and fearful self-renewing God of the cosmos.

She characterized the nature of man as striving for absolute individuality, through which he concentrated and countered the dissolution of the Pleroma, or the “all.” for fishes with hook and line in the middle of the picture.

On the left was the Devil saying something to the man, and your son wrote down what he said.

It was that he had come for the :fisherman because he was catching his fishes, but on the right was an angel who said, “No you can’t take this man, he is taking only bad fishes and none of the good ones.”

Then after your son had made that picture he was quite content.

The same night, two of your daughters thought that they had seen spooks in their rooms.

The next day you wrote out the “Sermons to the Dead,” and you knew after that nothing more would disturb your family, and nothing did.

Of course I knew you were the :fisherman in your son’s picture, and you told me so, but the boy didn’t know it. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 48-49

Everyone immediately looked to see who was there, but there was no one in sight. I was sitting near the door bell, and not only heard it but saw it moving.

We all simply stared at one another.

The atmosphere was thick, believe me! Then I knew something had to happen.

The whole house was as if there was a crowd present, crammed full of spirits.

They were packed deep right up to the door and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe.

As for myself, I was all a-quiver with the question: “For God’s sake, what in the world is thisr”

Then they cried out in chorus, “We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 49

The Septem Sermones ad Mortuos (Seven Sermons to the Dead) can be regarded as a culmination of the fantasies of this period.

It is a psychological cosmogony cast in the form of a Gnostic creation myth.

In Jung’s fantasies, a new God had been born in his soul, the God who is the son of the frogs, Abraxas.

Jung understood this symbolically.

He saw this :figure as representing the uniting of the Christian God With Satan, and hence as depicting a transformation of the Western God-image.

It was in 1952, in Answer to Job, that Jung elaborated on this theme. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 50

The Septem Sermones ad Mortuos (Seven Sermons to the Dead) can be regarded as a culmination of the fantasies of this period.

It is a psychological cosmogony cast in the form of a Gnostic creation myth.

In Jung’s fantasies, a new God had been born in his soul, the God who is the son of the frogs, Abraxas.

Jung understood this symbolically.

He saw this figure as representing the uniting of the Christian God with Satan, and hence as depicting a transformation of the Western God-image.

It was in 1952, in Answer to Job, that Jung elaborated on this theme. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 50

He noted that when individuals annexed the contents of the collective psyche and regarded them as personal attributes, they experienced extreme states of superiority and inferiority.

He borrowed the term “godlikeness” from Goethe and Adler to characterize this. This state arose from fusing the personal and the collective psyche, and represented one of the dangers of analysis. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 52

Two possibilities presented themselves: one could attempt to regressively restore persona, and return to the prior state.

However, it was impossible to get rid of the unconscious.

Alternatively, one could accept the condition of godlikeness. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 52

The vivid description of the vicissitudes of the state of “godlikeness” can be taken as representing some of Jung’s affective states during his self-experimentation. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 53

In Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, Jung had called the contents of this unconscious typical myths or primordial images.

He also called them “dominants”: “the ruling powers, the Gods, that is, images of dominating laws and principles, average regularities in the sequence of images, that the brain has received from the sequence of secular processes.” ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 57

The seventh sermon had culminated in an evocation of a star God: At immeasurable distance a lonely star stands in the zenith.

This is the one God of this one man, this is his world, his Pleroma, his divinity.

In this world man is Abraxas, the creator and destroyer of his own world.

This star is the God and the goal of man, this is his one guiding God, in him man goes to his rest, toward him goes the long journey of the soul after death, in him everything that man withdraws from the greater world shines resplendently.

To this one God man shall pray. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 59

in the last sermon you find the beginning of individuation, out of which, the divine child arises.

Please don’t speak of these things to other people. It could do harm to the child.

The child is fate and amor fati & guidance and necessity-and peace and fulfillment (Isaiah] 9.6). But don’t allow yourself to be dispersed into people and opinions and discussions.

The child is a new God, actually born in many individuals, but they don’t know it. He is a “spiritual” God.

A spirit in many people, yet one and the same everywhere.

Keep to your time and you will experience His qualities. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 59-60

From the beginning of August to the end of September, he drew a series of mandalas in pencil in his army notebook, which he preserved.

The first is titled “Phanes” and bears the legend “transformation of matter in the individual.”

This image may be seen as an attempt to depict the “newly arising God” and his relation to the individual. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 61

The realization of the significance of the self is portrayed in Scrutinies.

On September 18, 1915, Jung wrote, “Through uniting with the self we reach the God.”

In the autumn of 1917, he added, “I must say this not with reference to the opinions of the ancients or that authority, but because I have experienced it.”

This unshakable experience was nothing less than the experience of God: “The self is not God, although we reach the God through the self.”

He realized that he had to serve the self, and that this service was also service of God and of mankind. At the same time, he had to free his self from God, since “the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature.”

This description of Jung’s experience of God corresponds to the vision of Abraxas in the Sermones. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 68

In the Black Books, the main figure Jung’s “I” has dialogues with is his soul; in some sections of Liber Novus, it is the serpent or the bird.

In one conversation in January 1916, his soul explained to him that when the above and below are not united, she falls into three parts-a serpent, the human soul, and the bird or heavenly soul, which visits the Gods.

Thus Jung’s revisions, in which he now differentiated the soul into serpent, human soul, and bird, here can be seen to reflect his understanding of the tripartite nature of his soul. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 69

A major theme that Jung was preoccupied with here was finding the right relation to the higher powers, the Gods, and understanding the role of mankind in relation to them. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 70

A major theme that Jung was preoccupied with here was finding the right relation to the higher powers, the Gods, and understanding the role of mankind in relation to them.

He came to see that it was critical that one did not give oneself over to the Gods but maintained one’s human perspective.

On March l, 1918, his soul informed him that what was necessary was maintaining simultaneously a respect and disdain for the Gods, and that this began with respect and disdain for oneself.

This was critical not only for humanity; Jung now realized that “man would be the mediator in the transformation process of God.”

It was a cardinal insight, and it is the center of his later work Answer to Job.

Toward the end of his life, in a chapter of Memories entitled “late Thoughts,” he formulated it as follows:

That is the meaning of divine service, of the service which man can render to God, that light may emerge from the darkness, that the Creator may become conscious of his creation, and man conscious of himself. / That is the goal, or one goal, which fits man meaningfully into the scheme of creation, and at the same time confers meaning upon it. It is an explanatory myth which has slowly taken shape within me in the course of the decades. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 70-71

In this dream, the Arab youth was the double of the proud Arab who had ridden past us without a greeting.

As an inhabitant of the Casbah he was a figuration of the self, or rather, a messenger or emissary of the self.

For the Casbah from which he came was a perfect mandala: a citadel surrounded by a square wall with four gates. His attempt to kill me was an echo of the motif of Jacob’s struggle with the angel; he was to use the language of the Bible like an angel of the Lord, a messenger of God who wished to kill men because he did not know them.

Actually, the angel ought to have had his dwelling in me.

But he knew only angelic truth and understood nothing about man.

Therefore he first came forward as my enemy; however, I held my own against him.

In the second part of the dream I was the master of the citadel; he sat at my feet and had to learn to understand my thoughts, or rather, learn to know man.

Obviously, my encounter with Arab culture had struck me with overwhelming force. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 77-78

The dream continued to echo for Jung, and two years after his return to Europe, he would encounter the figure again, in a fantasy of January 6, 1922.

His soul saw and described the figure and informed his “I” that the figure was a God and that he would hear from him again.

The God needed to hear from him, as otherwise they both couldn’t live.

His soul informed his “I” that he would reach the God again through solitude, coupled with reverence for the

sun, moon, and earth, which stood for the masculine, the feminine, and the body, respectively. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 78

The dream continued to echo for Jung, and two years after his return to Europe, he would encounter the figure again, in a fantasy of January 6, 1922.

His soul saw and described the figure and informed his “I” that the figure was a God and that he would hear from him again.

The God needed to hear from him, as otherwise they both couldn’t live.

His soul informed his “I” that he would reach the God again through solitude, coupled with reverence for the

sun, moon, and earth, which stood for the masculine, the feminine, and the body, respectively. ~Sonu Shamdasani, Black Books, Vol. I, Page 78

“It seemed to me I [Jung] was living in an insane asylum of my own making,” he recalled in 1925.

“I went about with all these fantastic figures: centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, gods and goddesses, as though they were patients and I was analyzing them.” ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 13

Salome was his daughter and that they had been companions since eternity. Salome told Jung’s “I” that she loved him.

Elijah told him that Salome loved a prophet and announced the new God to the world. Jung’s ‘I’ was shocked at all this. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, 24

In an active imagination on January II, 1926, Wolff’s “I” had a dialogue with Thot, the Egyptian God of writing.

Thoth instructed her how to invoke someone’s “Ka”:

“So call loudly thrice, You Ka, you Ka, you Ka of so and so, come here and move into my heart. Space has been made for you.

Your Ba expects you and you should move in.” She followed his instructions: “You Ka, you Ka, you Ka of C., come here, move into my heart.

Space has been made for you. Your Ba expects you and you should move in. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, 32

Jung divided the material up into a series of books comprised of short chapters.

But whereas Zarathustra proclaimes the death of God, Liber Novus depicts the rebirth of God in the soul. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, 40

The overall theme of Liber Novus is how Jung regains his soul and overcomes the contemporary malaise of spiritual alienation.

This is ultimately achieved through enabling the rebirth of a new image of God in his soul and developing a new worldview in the form of a psychological and theogenic cosmology. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, 42

In this way salvation is given to us in the un-openable and un-sayable symbol, for it protects us by preventing the devil from swallowing the seed of life . . ..We must understand the divine within us, but not the other, insofar as he is able to go and stand on his own … . We should be confidants of our own mysteries, but chastely veil our eyes before the mysteries of the other, insofar as he does not need “understanding” because of his own incapability. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, 45-46

In a critical entry of January 16, 1916, his soul presented an elaborate thiogenic cosmogony.’ She described her own nature, the nature of the daimons,

the heavenly mother, and the Gods.

Of particular significance was Abraxas, the powerful and fearful self-renewing God of the cosmos.

On the left was the

Devil saying something to the man, and your son wrote down what he said.

Then after your son had made that picture he was quite content.

The same night, two of your daughters thought that they had seen spooks in their rooms.

The next day you wrote out the “Sermons to the Dead,” and you knew after that nothing more would disturb your family, and nothing did. Of course I knew you were the :fisherman in your son’s picture, and you told me so, but the boy didn’t know it. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 48-49

Everyone immediately looked to see who was there, but there was no one in sight. I was sitting near the door bell, and not only heard it but saw it moving.

We all simply stared at one another.

The atmosphere was thick, believe me! Then I knew something had to happen.

The whole house was as if there was a crowd present, crammed full of spirits.

They were packed deep right up to the door and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe.

As for myself, I was all a-quiver with the question: “For God’s sake, what in the world is this!”

Then they cried out in chorus, “We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 49

The Septem Sermones ad Mortuos (Seven Sermons to the Dead) can be regarded as a culmination of the fantasies of this period.

It is a psychological cosmogony cast in the form of a Gnostic creation myth.

In Jung’s fantasies, a new God had been born in his soul, the God who is the son of the frogs, Abraxas.

Jung understood this symbolically. He saw this :figure as representing the uniting of the Christian God With Satan, and hence as depicting a transformation of the Western God-image.

It was in 1952, in Answer to Job, that Jung elaborated on this theme. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 50

The Septem Sermones ad Mortuos (Seven Sermons to the Dead) can be regarded as a culmination of the fantasies of this period.

It is a psychological cosmogony cast in the form of a Gnostic creation myth.

In Jung’s fantasies, a new God had been born in his soul, the God who is the son of the frogs, Abraxas. Jung understood this symbolically.

He saw this :figure as representing the uniting of the Christian God With Satan, and hence as depicting a transformation of the Western God-image.

It was in 1952, in Answer to Job, that Jung elaborated on this theme. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 50

He noted that when individuals annexed the contents of the collective psyche and regarded them as personal attributes, they experienced extreme states of superiority and inferiority.

He borrowed the term “godlikeness” from Goethe and Adler to characterize this.

This state arose from fusing the personal and the collective psyche, and represented one of the dangers of analysis. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 52

Two possibilities presented themselves: one could attempt to regressively restore persona, and return to the prior state.

However, it was impossible to get rid of the unconscious. Alternatively, one could accept the condition of godlikeness. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 52

The vivid description of the vicissitudes of the state of “godlikeness” can be taken as representing some of Jung’s affective states during his self-experimentation. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 53

In Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, Jung had called the contents of this unconscious typical myths or primordial images.

The seventh sermon had culminated in an evocation of a star God: At immeasurable distance a lonely star stands in the zenith.

This is the one God of this one man, this is his world, his Pleroma, his divinity.

In this world man is Abraxas, the creator and destroyer of his own world.

This star is the God and the goal of man, this is his one guiding God, in him man goes to his rest, toward him goes the long journey of the soul after

death, in him everything that man withdraws from the greater world shines resplendently.

To this one God man shall pray. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 59

in the last sermon you find the beginning of individuation, out of which, the divine child arises. Please don’t speak of these things to other people.

It could do harm to the child. The child is fate and amor fati & guidance and necessity-and peace and fulfillment (Isaiah] 9.6).

But don’t allow yourself to be dispersed into people and opinions and discussions. The child is a new God, actually born in many individuals, but they don’t know it.

He is a “spiritual” God. A spirit in many people, yet one and the same everywhere. Keep to your time and you will experience His qualities. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 59-60

From the beginning of August to the end of September, he drew a series of mandalas in pencil in his army notebook, which he preserved.

The first is titled “Phanes” and bears the legend “transformation of matter in the individual.”

This image may be seen as an attempt to depict the “newly arising God” and his relation to the individual ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 61

The realization of the significance of the self is portrayed in Scrutinies.

On September 18, 1915, Jung wrote, “Through uniting with the self we reach the God.” In the autumn of 1917, he added, “I must say this not with reference to the opinions of the ancients or that authority, but because I have experienced it.”

This unshakable experience was nothing less than the experience of God:

“The self is not God, although we reach the God through the self.”

He realized that he had to serve the self, and that this service was also service of God and of mankind.

At the same time, he had to free his self from God, since “the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature.”

This description of Jung’s experience of God corresponds to the vision of Abraxas in the Sermones. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 68

In the Black Books, the main :figure Jung’s “I” has dialogues with is his soul; in some sections of Liber Novus, it is the serpent or the bird.

A major theme that Jung was preoccupied with here was finding the right relation to the higher powers, the Gods, and understanding the role of mankind in relation to them.

He came to see that it was critical that one did not give oneself over to the Gods but maintained one’s human perspective.

On March l , 1918, his soul informed him that what was necessary was maintaining simultaneously a respect and disdain for the Gods, and that this began with respect and disdain for oneself.

This was critical not only for humanity; Jung now realized that “man would be the mediator in the transformation process of God.”

It was a cardinal insight, and it is the center of his later work Answer to Job.

Toward the end of his life, in a chapter of Memories entitled “late Thoughts,” he formulated it as follows:

“That is the meaning of divine service, of the service which man can render to God, that light may emerge from the darkness, that the Creator may become conscious of his creation, and man conscious of himself. / That is the goal, or one goal, which fits man meaningfully into the scheme of creation, and at the same time confers meaning upon it. It is an explanatory myth which has slowly taken shape within me in the course of the decades. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 70-71

In this dream, the Arab youth was the double of the proud Arab who had ridden past us without a greeting.

As an inhabitant of the Casbah he was a figuration of the self, or rather, a messenger or emissary of the self.

For the Casbah from which he came was a perfect mandala: a citadel surrounded by a square wall with four gates.

His attempt to kill me was an echo of the motif of Jacob’s struggle with the angel; he was to use the language of the Bible like an angel of the Lord, a messenger of God who wished to kill men because he did not know them.

Actually, the angel ought to have had his dwelling in me. But he knew only angelic truth and understood nothing about man.

Therefore he first came forward as my enemy; however, I held my own against him.

In the second part of the dream I was the master of the citadel; he sat at my feet and had to learn to understand my thoughts, or rather, learn to know man.

Obviously, my encounter with Arab culture had struck me with overwhelming force. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 77-78

The dream continued to echo for Jung, and two years after his return to Europe, he would encounter the figure again, in a fantasy of January 6, 1922.

His soul saw and described the figure and informed his “I” that the figure was a God and that he would hear from him again.

The God needed to hear from him, as otherwise they both couldn’t live.

His soul informed his “I” that he would reach the God again through solitude, coupled with reverence for the sun, moon, and earth, which stood for the masculine, the feminine, and the body, respectively. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 78

The dream continued to echo for Jung, and two years after his return to Europe, he would encounter the figure again, in a fantasy of January 6, 1922.

His soul saw and described the figure and informed his “I” that the figure was a God and that he would hear from him again.

The God needed to hear from him, as otherwise they both couldn’t live.

Years later, recalling his encounter with this figure and describing it as a dream, Jung noted, “I suddenly knew: the Wild Huntsman had commanded it to carry away a human soul.”

A few days later he heard the news that his mother had died.

He realized that “It was Wotan, the god of my Alemannic forefathers, who had gathered my mother to her ancestors negatively to the ‘wild horde,’ but positively to the ‘salig hit,’ the blessed folk.” ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 79

Memories, p. 345. This was not Jung’s first encounter with Wotan, the storm God.

In a draft for her biography of Jung, Lucy Heyer narrated the event:

“This friendly and mildly temperate landscape was struck by a severe catastrophic storm, a rare natural event at this ferocity, just as the child was being taken for baptism in the church.

The home-borne young mother was anxious to see the young one safely brought through the ferocity and the eclipse.

In the family, this event fell into oblivion until fifteen years later the boy wrote a poem that described a storm catastrophe.

He dedicated it to his mother, and only at that moment she remembered again how threateningly the storm god had accompanied the baptism of her firstborn on that day of baptism in late summer 1875.

When Jung related this poem and his mother’s reaction, he noticed that he had often had such inspirations as this poem, contents foreign to consciousness that corresponded to an objective event, imposed themselves on him and sought expression.

That storm poem, which was a long time in the possession of the mother, was unfortunately later lost” (Lucy Heyer Grote papers, University of Basel Archives, “Biographie von Carl Gustav Jung,” “Kindheit,” p. 1).

On her biography, see my Jung Stripped Bare by His Biographers, Even (London: Karnac, 2005). ~Sonu Shamdasani, The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 79, fn 247

The reemergence of Wotan in the present was a phenomenon that he himself had directly experienced.

As further evidence for his hypothesis, he referred to Nietzsche’s elevation of Dionysus, claiming that biographical evidence suggested that the God he really had in mind was Dionysus’s cousin-namely, Wotan. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 80

He is the god of oracles, of secret knowledge, of sorcery, and he is also the equivalent of Hermes psychopompos.

And you remember he has, like Osiris, only one eye; the other eye is sacrificed to the underworld.

Therefore. he is an exceedingly apt symbol for our modern world in which the unconscious really comes to the foreground like a river, and forces us to turn one eye inward upon it, in order that we may be adapted to that side also; we feel now that the greatest enemy is threatening us, not from without but from within.

So on account of all his qualities, Wotan expresses the spirit of the time to an extent which is uncanny, and that wisdom or knowledge is really wild- it is nature’s wisdom.

Wotan is not the God of civilized beings but a condition of nature. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 80

Religious experiences led to new forms of personal relation.

Jung noted that “no individual can exist without individual relationships, and that is how the foundation of your church is laid.”

This, then, was the task that confronted analytical psychology: to form an invisible church, without succumbing to institutionalization.

Jung was also here drawing together the notion, from Liber Novus, that “the anointed of this time” was a God who would appear in the spirit, as opposed to the flesh-“through the spirit of men as the conceiving womb.” ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 83

See James Heisig, Imago Dei: A Study of Jung’s Psychology of Religion (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1979); Ann Lammers, In God’s Shadow: The Collaboration between Victor White and C.G.Jung (New York: Paulist Press, 1994); and Matei Iagher, “Theorizing Experience: Psychology and the Quest for a Science of Religion (1896-1936),” PhD thesis, University College London, 2016.

See also my” ‘ ls Analytical Psychology a Religion?’: In Statu Nascendi,” Journal of Analytical Psychology 44 (1999): 539 – 45 ~Sonu Shamdasani, The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 83, fn 259

The second was the role of the sun in Pueblo religion and cosmology:

“He said, pointing to the sun, ‘Is not he who moves there our father: How can anyone say differently: How can there be another god. Nothing can be without the sun.’ ” ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 87

Solar mythology plays a significant role in the Black Books.

It is likely that Jung would have been reminded of his dream of praying to the sun in his encounter with Ammonius, Izdubar’s longing for the sun and regeneration through becoming the sun, and the role of the sun God, Helios, in the Septem Sermones. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 87

After the assimilation of the personal unconscious, the differentiation of the persona, and the overcoming of the state of godlikeness, the next stage was the integration of the anima for men and of the animus for women. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 100

After one had achieved the integration of the anima, one was confronted with another figure-namely, the “mana personality.”

Jung argued that when the anima lost her “mana,” or power, the man who assimilated it must have acquired this and so become a “mana-personality,” a being of superior will and wisdom.

However, this figure was “a dominant of the collective unconscious, the recognized archetype of the powerful man in the form of hero, chief, magician, medicine man, and saint, the lord of men and spirits, the friend of gods.” ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 102

Of the self, he wrote:

“It might as well be called ‘god in us.’ The beginnings of our whole psychic life seem to be inextricably rooted to this point, and all our highest and deepest purposes seem to be striving toward it.” ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 102

His description of the self conveys the significance of his realization following his Liverpool dream:

The self could be characterized as a kind of compensation for the conflict between inner and outer . … the self is also the goal of life, because it is the most complete expression of that fateful combination we call individuality …. With the experiencing of the self as something irrational, as an indefinable being to which the I is neither opposed nor subjected, but in a relation of dependence, and around which it revolves, very much as the earth revolves about the sun then the goal of individuation has been reached. ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 102-103

At a historical level, the work had further significance, as the symbolic material was precisely what was excluded by ecclesiastical Christianity and thus had the function of a compensatory undercurrent.

For example, Jung’s vision of the God Abraxas bore striking parallels to the figure of Mercurius in alchemy.

He noted in retrospect that “my encounter with alchemy was decisive for me, as it provided me with the historical basis which I had hitherto lacked.” ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 108

1955, In Jung’s published anon SystemaMundiTotius.

SystemaMundiTotius was anonymously in a special issue of Du dedicated to the Eranos conferences.

In a 1955, letter of February to Walter Corti, Jung explicitly stated that he did II, (JA) not want his name to appear on it.

He added the following comments to the painting:

It portrays the antinomies of the microcosm within the macrocosmic world and its antinomies.

At the very top, the figure of the young boy in the winged egg, called Erikapaios or Phanes and thus reminiscent as a spiritual figure of the Orphic Gods. His dark antithesis in the depths is here designated as Abraxas.

He represents the dominus mundi, the lord of the physical world, and is a world-creator of an ambivalent nature.

Sprouting from him we see the tree of life, labeled vita (“life”) while its upper counterpart is a light-tree in the form of a seven-branched candelabra labeled ignis (“fire”) and Eros (“love”).

Its light points to the spiritual world of the divine child.

Art and science also belong to this spiritual realm, the first represented as a winged serpent and the second as a winged mouse (as hole-digging activity!).-The candelabra is based on the principle of the spiritual number three (twice-three flames with one large flame in the middle), while the lower world of Abraxas is characterized by five, the number of natural man (the twice-five rays of his star).

The accompanying animals of the natural world are a devilish monster and a larva. This signifies death and rebirth.

A further division of the mandala is horizontal.

To the left we see a circle indicating the body or the blood, and from it rears the serpent, which winds itself around the phallus, as the generative principle. The serpent is dark and light, signifying the dark realm of the earth, the moon, and the void (therefore called Satanas).

The light realm of rich fullness lies to the right, where from the bright circle fr(g-us sive amor dei [cold, or the love of God] the dove of the Holy Ghost takes wing, and wisdom (Sophia) pours from a double beaker to left and right.- This feminine sphere is that of heaven.-

The large sphere characterized by zigzag lines or rays represents an inner sun; within this sphere the macrocosm is repeated, but with the upper and lower regions reversed as in a mirror.

These repetitions should be conceived of as endless in number, growing even smaller until the innermost core, the actual microcosm, is reached (reproduced in Aniela Jaffe, ed., C.G.Jung, Word and Image [Princeton: Princeton University Press/ Bollingen Series, 1979 ], p. 75). ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 130

Image 113, LN. The legend reads:

“This is the image of the divine child. It means the completion of a long path. Just as the image was finished in April 1919, and work on the next image had already begun, the one who brought the 0 came, as [PHILEMON] had predicted to me. I called him [PHANES], because he is the newly appearing God.” ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 140

He added that at :first he did not recognize that the park in the dream was the same one he had depicted in the mandala, and commented:

“Now Liverpool is the center of life- liver is the center of life-and I am not the center, I am the fool who lives in a dark place somewhere, I am one of those little side lights.

In that way my Western prejudice that I was the center of the mandala was corrected- that I am everything, the whole show, the king, the god” (The Psychology ef Kundalini Yoga, ed. Sonu Shamdasani, p. 100 ).

In Memories, Jung added further details (pp. 223-24). ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 158-160

Painting of a medieval city with walls and moats, streets and churches, arranged quadratically. The inner city is again surrounded by walls and moats, like the Imperial City in Peking.

The buildings all open inward, toward the center, represented by a castle with a golden roof. It too is surrounded by a moat.

The ground round the castle is laid with black and white tiles, representing the united opposites.

This mandala was done by a middle-aged man …. A picture like this is unknown in Christian symbolism.

The Heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation is known to everybody. Coming to the Indian world of ideas, we find the city of Brahma on the world mountain, Meru.

We read in the Golden Flower:

“The Book of the Yellow Castle says: ‘In the square inch field of the square foot house, life can be regulated.’ The square foot house is the face. The square inch field in the face: what could that be other than the heavenly heart? In the middle of the square inch dwells the splendor. In the purple hall of the city of Jade dwells the God of Utmost Emptiness and life” (CW 9, pt. I, § 691). ~The Black Books, Vol. 1, Page 160

Volume II

I found you where I believed you the furthest away from me, where God forced me to surrender blindfolded and to lose myself-there you climbed out of golden shafts and I found you again.

You announced yourself to me in advance in dreams, which were dark to me, and which I sought to grasp in my own inadequate way.

You know these dreams, how they burned in my soul and drove me to all the boldest acts of daring, and forced me to push for the steepest summits, yes, even to rise above myself. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 149

Forgive me if I speak as in a dream, like a drunkard- are you- God?

Is God a child, a female child?

I must tell myself most clearly: does He use the image of a child that dwells in every man’s soul?

Were Horus, Tages, and Christ not children?’

Dionysus and Heracles were also divine children.

Did Christ, the God of man, not call himself the son of man?

What was his innermost thought in doing so? Should the daughter of man be God’s name? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 151

My child, you are not God, how could you be God?

You are my soul and I am not allowed-not yet-to know, why you call yourself “child” – and why a girl?

I despair-how can I manage it?-how and what should I express?? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 153

What is there, where there is no meaning? Only nonsense, or madness, it seems to me.

Or is there also a supreme meaning? Is that your meaning, my soul?

look, how I limp after you on crutches of understanding.

Forgive me, my light, I am a man and you stride like a God. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 154

Forgive the never-resting doubt in this hour chosen by you as your holy hour.

I disrupt your divine peace, but hear also my doubts, otherwise I cannot follow, since your meaning is a supreme meaning, and your steps are the steps of a God. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 154-155

The reference is to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and to Augustine’s Confessions (400 CE), a devotional work written when he was forty-five years old, in which he narrates his conversion to Christianity in an autobiographical form (Confessions, trans. H. Chadwick [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991]).

The Confessions are addressed to God and recount the years of Augustine’s wandering from God and the manner of his return.

Echoing this, in these opening sections, Jung addresses his soul and recounts the years of his wandering away from her and the manner of his return.

In his published works, Jung frequently. ~The Black Books, V. 2, Page 157, fn 45

“Pray to your depths,” it says in me. “Waken the dead,” it continues.

What foreign greed and restlessness disturbs me? Serenity has to be found again.

God, what do you want? I am not ready yet. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 150

Why is that? I have to be patient. My God, how difficult!

But you want me to go, even when I am blind. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 161

I have learned that one must give one’s heart to men, but one’s intellect to the spirit

of humanity, God.

Then its work can be beyond vanity, since there is no more hypocritical whore than the intellect when it replaces the heart. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 168

How frightful, forgive me, it sounds like nonsense.

Do you also demand this of me? Can you hear the uproar of outrage in me?

You overthrew the mighty Gods who are powerful and mean the most to us.

My soul, where are you?

Have I entrusted myself to a stupid animal, do I stagger like a drunkard to the roadside ditch in order to sleep off a wild intoxication? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 172

I am ready, ready, my soul, you who are a devil, to wrestle with you too.

You

donned the mask of a God, and I worshipped you.

Now you wear the mask of a devil- woe- a monstrosity- the mask of the banal, of the dunghill of words and phrases. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 173

Only one favor! Give me a moment to step back and consider! Is the struggle

with this mask worthwhile? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 173

Saturday. Liber Primus, chapter 8, “The Conception of the God” (LN, p. 164).

The previous evening, Jung gave a presentation to the Zurich Psychoanalytical Society on “The psychology of the unconscious.”

He discussed the relation to reality of primitives, noting in particular, “The finding of analogies is therefore a very important activity.

It suffices to talk the myth in order to reach the effect that the myth describes.

The myth was originally a healing formula through the power of the thought.

Magic of analogy to reach sublimation.”

Saturday. Liber Primus, chapter 8, “The Conception of the God” (LN, p. 164).

The previous evening, Jung gave a presentation to the Zurich Psychoanalytical Society on “The psychology of the unconscious.”

He discussed the relation to reality of primitives, noting in particular, “The finding of analogies is therefore a very important activity.

It suffices to talk the myth in order to reach the effect that the myth describes.

The myth was originally a healing formula through the power of the thought.

Magic of analogy to reach sublimation.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 176, fn 143

There are many uncertainties, not least of which is whether to keep this new life or this new world.

A new world is weak and artificial-artificial-a bad word, but I have learned that weak artificial beginnings, unsightly put together semi-unrealities developed into horrible realities.

The mustard seed that grew into a tree, the word that was conceived in the womb of a poor virgin, became a God with a two-thousand-year-old history. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 176-177

The air shook with the anthem of blaspheming souls, when the God plunged you into my heart.

Fear was is your herald, doubt stands to your right, disappointment to your left. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 177

The constellation of your birth is an ill and changing star.

These, Oh child of what is to come, are the wonders that will bear testimony that you are a veritable God. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 178

Elijah was one of the prophets of the Old Testament.

He first appears in l Kings 17, bearing a message from God to Ahab, the king of Israel.

In 1953, the Carmelite Pere Bruno wrote to Jung asking how one established the existence of an archetype.

Jung replied by taking Elijah as an example, describing him as a highly mythical personage, which did not prevent him from probably being a historical figure.

Drawing together descriptions of him throughout history, Jung described him as a “living archetype” who represented the collective unconscious and the self.

He noted that such a constellated archetype gave rise to new forms of assimilation and represented a compensation on the part of the unconscious (cw 18, §§ 1518- 31) ~The Black Books, V. 2, Page 180, fn 163

“Do not interrupt me, my son she loved the holy prophet of God, who announced the new God to his world. She loved him- do you understand that? For she is my daughter.” ~Elijah, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 181

You pose dreadful riddles.

How could it be that this unholy woman and you, the prophet of your God, could be one? “Why are you amazed. But you see it, we are together.”

What my eyes see is exactly what I cannot grasp.

You, Elijah, who are a prophet, the mouth of God, and she, a bloodthirsty, horny’-monster you are the symbol of the most extreme contradiction. ~Carl Jung/Elijah, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 182

I hear wild music, a tambourine-a sultry moonlit night- then the bloody-staring head of the holy one’-fear seizes me-I rush out, I am surrounded by the dark night, I am in the midst of boulders, in the distance water cascades over cliffs-who murdered the hero?

Is this why Salome loves me? Do I love her, and did I therefore murder the hero?

She is one with the prophet, one with John, but also one with me?

Woe, was she the hand of the God? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 182-183

I see in a fiery corona the mother of God with the child as if in an old painting.

Peter stands to her left, bowing.

Peter alone with the keys- the Pope with a triple crown in a festive audience – a

sitting Buddha appears in a circle of fire – now a many-armed Kali, – this bloody Goddess-now Salome herself desperately wringing her hands, now that white shape of a girl with black hair-my own soul-and now that white shape of a man, which also appeared to me at the time- it resembles Michelangelo’s sitting Moses- it is Elijah. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 186-187

He says: “This is the temple of the sun.”

This encircled place is a vessel that collects the light of the sun, the God.

As Elijah climbs down from the stone, I realize that his form has become smaller.

He has become a dwarf, who seems foreign to me. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 192

I would- before God-always like to be as serious and true to myself as I also try to be now. However, that certainly becomes difficult in your presence.

You are bring a certain gallows air with you.

You’re bound to be from the black school of Salerno, where pernicious arts are taught by pagans and the descendants of pagans. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 199

I know how to dance- yes, if only dancing could do it!

Dancing goes with the mating season.

I know that there are those who are always in heat, and those who also want to dance for their Gods; some are ridiculous jubilant old men and women and others posture at antiquity, instead of honestly admitting their utter incapacity for religious expression. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 202

Perhaps too there is a joy before God that one can call dancing. But I haven’t yet found this joy. I look out for things that are yet to come.

Things came, but joy was not among them. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 202

I am alone in the chamber of my tower. Rain pelts the window, a cold stormy night outside.

A small ruddy flame flits over my table top like a will-o’-the-wisp.

But it is a warm glow. A silent scent of roses fills the room.

It is around midnight. Joy? Was he joy? God help me, what shall come of this? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 202

Where shall I reach out my hand? What should it grasp?

To what vision is my gaze turning? The endless fullness is as good as the endless nothingness.

Not demanding nor beseeching, but praying, approaches the threshold of the vision.

Receive gratefully and in faith, never ask why?, never judge what has been placed in your hand. To you it may seem to be stones?

But even stones can turn into bread. Patiently wait on the word that your soul speaks. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 203

No, that must have been outside in the corridor-I roll over, firmly closing my eyes-I simply must sleep- wasn’t that the door just now?- My God, someone is standing there?

Am I seeing straight? A slim girl, pale as death, standing at the door?

I cannot speak out of fear and wonder. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 206

She falls to her knees at the foot of my bed, sobbing and holding her face in her hands.

My God, in the end is she really real, and do I do her an injustice?

My pity awakens. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 206

I scratch my head: is this not some hellish banality?

Word for word, pulp fiction from the lending library!

Oh you Gods, where have you led me! I hoped that this night in the forest might let me glimpse a spark of the light eternal and where did my praying and hoping lead me-?! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 207

By God, I love you- but- unfortunately I am already married. “So you see, even your … banal” reality is a redeemer. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 209

This appears to be a reference to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel 3), whom Nebuchadnezzar orders to be placed into a furnace for refusing to worship the golden idol that he has erected.

They are unscathed by the fire, which leads Nebuchadnezzar to decree that he will cut up anyone who henceforth speaks against their God. ~The Black Books, V. 2, Page 211, fn 316

God, where am I?

Are there also cases of death in Hell for those who have never thought about death?

I look at my bloodstained hands.

As if I were a murderer or sacrificer. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 2, Page 213

Volume III

Philo Judeaus, also called Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE- 50 CE), was a Greek-speaking Jewish philosopher.

His works presented a fusion of Greek philosophy and Judaism.

For Philo, God, whom he referred to by the Platonic term “To On,” ·was transcendent and unknowable.

Certain powers reached down from God to the world.

The facet of God which is knowable through reason is the divine Logos.

There has been much debate on the precise relation between Philo’s concept of the Logos and John’s gospel.

On June 23 , 1954, Jung wrote to James Kirsch, “The gnosis from which John the Evangelist emanated is definitely Jewish, but in its essence is Hellenistic, in the style of Philo Judaeus, from whom the conception of Logos also sterns” (Ann Conrad Lammers, ed., The Jung-Kirsch Letters, trans. Ann Conrad Lammers and Ursula Egli [London: Routledge, 2016] , p. 205 [tr. mod.]). ~The Black Books, V. 3, Page 103, fn 14

In 1957 Jung wrote:

“Until now it has not truly and fundamentally been noted that our time, despite the prevalence of irreligiosity, is so to speak congenitally charged with the attainment of the Christian epoch, namely with the supremacy of the word, that Logos which the central figure of Christian faith represents.

The word has literally become our God and has remained so” (Present and Future, CW 10, § 554) ~The Black Books, V. 3, Page 104, fn 17

John l:I-10:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.

He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.” ~The Black Books, V. 3, Page 104, fn 21

LN instead has: “‘And life was the light of men and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it.

But it became a person sent from God, by the name of John, who came as a witness and to be a witness of the light.

The genuine light, which illuminates each person, came into the world: He was in the world, and the world became through him, and the world did not recognize him.'”

LN continues: “-That is what I read here. But what do you make of this?” (pp. 245- 46). ~The Black Books, V. 3, Page 104, fn 22

I want to answer this question within the scope of your understanding: if for God the human had not become important above everything, he would not have appeared as the son in the flesh, but in the logos. ~Ammonius, The Black Books, V. 3, Page 105

In Greek mythology, Helios is the sun God and drives a chariot led across the sky by four horses. ~The Black Books, Vol. 3, Page 106, fn 38

Now I have prayed to the sun.

But the anchorite really meant that I should pray to God at the break of day.

He probably does not know-we have no more prayers.

How should he know about our nakedness and poverty? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 3, Page 107

In Synchronicity as a Principle of Acausal Connection, Jung wrote: “The scarab is a classical rebirth symbol.

According to the description in the ancient Egyptian book.

Am-Tuat, the dead sun God transforms himself at the tenth station into Khepri, the scarab, and as such mounts the barge at the twelfth station, which raises the rejuvenated sun into the morning sky” (CW 8, § 843). ~The Black Books, V. 3, Page 108, fn 44

Although these words at first seemed laughable to me, they still made an impression on me, and reluctantly I had to credit the old man, since he was right.

Then he said: [‘] Dear Ammonius, I have delightful tidings for you: God has become flesh in his son and has brought us all salvation.[‘]

‘What are you saying,’ I called, ‘you probably mean Osiris,’ “who shall appear in the mortal body?’

‘No,’ he replied, ‘this man lived in Judea. He was born from a virgin.[‘]

I laughed and answered:

‘I already know about this; a Jewish trader has brought tidings of our virgin queen to Judea, whose image of the temp appears on the walls of the temple in Luxor, and reported it as a fairy tale.[‘] ‘No, he was the Son of God,[‘] the old man said.

‘Then you mean Horus, the son of Osiris, don’t you?’ ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 3, Page 111

Osiris is the Egyptian god of life, death, and fertility.

His brother, Seth, the God of the desert, murders and dismembers him.

Osiris’s body is recovered and put back together by his wife, Isis, and he is resurrected.

Jung discussed Osiris and Seth in Transformations and Symbols of the Libido (CW 8, §§ 358ff.). ~The Black Books, V. 3, Page 111, fn 56

‘No, he was called Jesus Christ.’

‘Ah, you really mean this Jewish God, whom the peer vulgar honor at the harbor.’

‘No, he was a man and yet the Son of God.’

That’s nonsense, dear old man, I said, and showed him to the door. But like an echo from distant rock faces the words returned to me: ‘a man and yet the Son of God-.’

It seemed significant to me, and this phrase was what brought me to Christianity. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 3, Page 112

I: “Wherefrom, man of God? What outrageous fate has led you here, let alone in the company of the Red One?” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 3, Page 117

M: “I would prefer not to tell you.

But it does not appear to be a dispensation of God that one can escape.

So know then that you, evil spirit, have done me a terrible deed.

You seduced me with your accursed curiosity, desirously stretching fer my hand after the divine mysteries, since you made me conscious at that time that I really knew nothing about them.

Your remark that I probably needed the closeness of men to arrive at the higher mysteries stunned me like infernal poison.

Soon thereafter I called the brothers of the valley together and announced to them that a messenger of God had appeared to me-so terribly had you blinded me-and commanded me to form a monastery with the brothers.

When Brother Philetus raised an objection, I refuted him with reference to the passage in the holy scriptures where it is said that it is not good for man to be alone. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 3, Page 117

A reference to Genesis 2:18:

“And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”

There is one reference to a Philetus in the Bible, in 2 Timothy 2:17- 19:

“But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.

And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.” ~The Black Books, V. 3, Page 117, fn 82

There I attracted less attention than in the north and could mingle with the crowds.

In Naples I somewhat found my way again, and there I also found this ragged man of God. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 3, Page 118

Izd. So go away, sun, thrice-damned God, and wrap yourself in your immortality-He snatches the smashed piece of his axe from the ground and hurls it toward the sun.

Here you have your sacrifice, your last sacrifice, greedy choking dragon! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 3, Page 121

Izd. You Gods, help, here lies your son, cut down by the invisible serpent’s bite in his heel.

0h, if only I had crushed you when I saw you, and never heard your words! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 3, Page 122

In Babylonian mythology, Tiamat, the mother of the gods, wages war with an army of demons. ~The Black Books, V. 3, Page 122, fn 96

“I” Now you perhaps see that we had no choice.

We have to swallow the poison of science.

Otherwise we meet the same fate as you have-we will be completely lamed, if we encounter it unsuspecting and unprepared.

This poison is so insurmountably strong that everyone, even the strongest, and even the eternal Gods, perish because of it.

If our life is dear to us, we prefer to sacrifice a piece of our life force rather than abandon ourselves to certain death. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 3, Page 124

“Most terrible day of my life-unending- so long- so long- wretched magical art- our priests know nothing, or else they could have protected me from it- Even the Gods die, he said.

Have you no Gods anymore?[“]

No, words are all we have left.

Izd. But are these words powerful?

So they claim, but one notices nothing of this.

Izd.

We do not see the Gods either and yet we believe that they exist, and we recognize their workings in natural events. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 3, Page 125

Roscher notes, “As a God, Izdubar is associated with the Sun-God” (Ausfahrliches Lexikon der Griechlischen and Romischen Mythologie, vol. 2 , p. 774).

The incubation and rebirth of Izdubar follows the classic pattern of solar myths.

In Das Zeitalter des Sonnesgottes, Leo Frobenius pointed out the widespread motif of a woman becoming pregnant through Immaculate Conception and giving birth to the sun god, who develops in a remarkably short period of time.

In some forms , he incubates in an egg.

Frobenius related this to the setting and rising of the sun in the sea (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1904, pp. 223- 63). ~The Black Books, V. 3, Page 131, fn 124

For Jung’s commentary on this entry, see LN, pp. 308-14.

In Psychological Types, he wrote:

“The renewed God signifies a renewed attitude, that is, a renewed possibility for intensive life, a recovery of life, because psychologically God always denotes the greatest value, thus the greatest sum of the libido, the greatest intensity of life, the optimum of psychological life’s activity” (CW 6, § 301). Monday. Liber Secundus, chapter 12, “Hell” (LN, pp. 315ff.). ~The Black Books, V. 3, Page 132, fn 127

Volume IV

Oh, I just thought you might be because you are reading a small black book.

My mother, may God rest her soul, left me such a book.

I see, and what book might that be?
It is called The Imitation of Christ. It’s a very beautiful book. I often pray with it in the evenings.
You have guessed well. I too am reading The Imitation of Christ.
(smiling) I don’t believe that-a man like you would not read such a book-, unless you were a pastor.
Why shouldn’t I read it? It also does me good to read a proper book.
My mother, God bless her, had it with her on her deathbed, and she gave it to me before she died.

I browse through the book absentmindedly while she is speaking: My eyes fall on the following passage in the nineteenth chapter:

“The righteous base their intentions more on the mercy of God, which in whatever they undertake they trust more than their own wisdom.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 206

“The resolve of the upright depends upon the grace of God, not on their own wisdom; in him they trust, whatever they undertake; for man proposes, God disposes, and it is not for man to choose his lot” (The Imitation of Christ, Book 1, chapter 19, p. 54). ~The Black Books, V. 4, Page 206, fn 9

Anabaptists stressed the immediacy of the human relation with God and were critical of religious institutions.

The movement was violently suppressed and thousands were killed.

See Daniel Liechty, ed., Early Anabaptist Spirituality: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1994). ~The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 207, fn 14

“For God’s sake, for God’s sake. Help-what’s wrong with you?

Are you in a bad way?[“] I look at her astonished and reflect on where I actually am.

soon strange people burst in-among them the librarian infinitely astonished-then laughing maliciously: “Oh, I might have known-Quick, the police!” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 208

You’re an ignoramus. I was supposed to marry Maria, the mother of God, long ago.

But the professor, i.e., the devil, has her in his power.

Every evening when the sun goes down he gets her with child.

In the morning before sunrise she gives birth to it.

Then all the devils come together and kill the child in a gruesome manner.

I distinctly hear his cries. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4, Page 213

You’re crazy and understand nothing of it. You belong in the madhouse.

My God, why does my family always shut me in with crazy people? (Crying) I’m the Redeemer! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 214

I find the treasures of all past cultures- magnificent images of Gods spacious temples- paintings-papyrus rolls- sheets of parchment with the characters of bygone languages-books full of lost wisdom- hymns and chants of ancient priests- stories told down the ages through thousands of generations. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 221

I bow, my soul, before unknown forces-I’d like to consecrate an altar to each unknown God. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 226

The figure of Hermes Trismegistus was formed through the amalgamation of Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth.

The Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of largely alchemical and magical texts dating from the early Christian era but initially thought to have been much older, was ascribed to him (Brian Copenhaver, ed. and trans., Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 ]). ~The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 230, fn 105

My soul-yes, you are the devil, but God has received you. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 238

When God did not proceed further, at least the devil progressed and vice versa.

How will it be, now that God and the devil have become one?

Are they in agreement to bring the progress of life to a standstill? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 240

A chair- the throne of the God- God Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit the Holy Trinity- the mother with the child-heaven and hell, with it Satan.

He comes at last, resisting, and clings to his beyond. He will not let it go.

The upperworld is too chilly for him. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 230

listen- something has just happened to us. We have united the opposites.

Among other things, we have bonded you with God. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 241

I am a poisoner who was condemned to the rope.
What did you do?
I poisoned my parents and my wife.
Why did you do that?
To honor God.
What? To honor God? What do you mean by that?
First of all, everything that happens is for the honor of God, and secondly,

I had my own ideas. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 245

For God’s sake-what should I do with Salome?

I am already married and we are not among the Turks or in other patriarchal circumstances. Salome retreats intimidated. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 250

I know where your serpent is. I have her.

My soul fetched her for me from the underworld. She gives me hardness, wisdom, and magical power.

We needed her in the upperworld, since otherwise the underworld would have had the advantage, to our detriment.

Woe betide you, accursed robber- may God punish you. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 254

Thank God, at least you think that I’m making some progress.

The word itself is already balsam to my ears. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 4 , Page 263

Volume V

In 1912 Jung cited the following lines from the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 4, verse 24 (in English in Edwin Arnold’s 1885 translation):

“All ‘s then God! The sacrifice is Brahm, the ghee and the grain / Are Brahm, the fire is Brahm, the flesh it eats / is Brahm, and unto Brahm attaineth he / Who, in such office, meditates on Brahm” (Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, CW B, § 242n.). ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 105, fn 4

My God, what inner solitude! Is this the way? What do you say? “I tell you: this is your way.

It is not easy and there is no other.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 206

burden is way too excessive. By all the Gods, I cannot cope with it. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 209

Yes, uncertain, by God. We have to speak of “uncertain.”

I think this is an important point. “Uncertain” is the word of words for everyone who must consort with his beloved and revered soul. I tend toward contempt of the soul. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 210

My God, what else do you want?

“I demand your life.”

Are you shooting off to God again, my soul? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 212

I feel the torment and the fear and the desolation of a pregnant woman.

Are you leaving me, my God?

“You have the child.”

My soul, do you still exist?

You, whom I ridiculed and abused, who appeared to me in a foolish form?

Woe betide those who have seen their soul and felt it with hands!

I am powerless in your hand, my God! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 213

At the entrance to his house, Jung had an inscription carved that read,

“Vocatus atque vocatus, deus aderit” (Called or not, God will be present).

He also used it on his bookplate.

The statement, from the Delphic oracle, is reproduced in the Dutch Renaissance humanist Erasmus’s work Collectanea adagiorum, a collection of proverbs from classical authors.

See my C.G.Jung: A Biography in Books, pp. 46ff. ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 213, fn 18

Where have you gone? Something has happened- I am as if lamed.

Has the God not le ft my sight?

How poor and desolate this country is! Where is the God?

What has happened? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 214

Should we all go into the desert and strew ashes on our heads, since the God has left us?

Alas, he has only disappeared for me.

All the others haven’t felt him, and thus he has not vanished for them. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 214

“To the greater glory of God.” This was the motto of the Jesuits. ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 216, fn 40

You call on God for help?

It’s good that the loving God is far off and cannot hear you; in the end he might have mercy on your worthlessness and spared me the entire execution by granting mercy.

But we are in a safe place, where no one can hear you. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 219

This preceding part of this sentence was replaced in LN by

“The dear old God has died, and it is good.

that way, otherwise he would have had pity on your repentant sinfulness” (p. 463). ~ The Black Books, V. 5, Page 219, fn 59

The preceding sentence was replaced in LN by:

“You must know that neither a God of love nor a loving God has yet arisen, but instead a worm of fire crawled up, a magnificent frightful entity that lets fire rain on the earth, producing lamentations.

So cry to the God, he will burn you with fire for the forgiveness of your sins” (ibid.). ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 219, fn 61

following was added here in LN: “Yes- others always do wrong- and you?

You are the innocent, the correct, you must defend your good right and you have a good, loving God on your side, who always forgives sins with pity.

Others must reach insight, not you, since you have a monopoly on all insight from the start and are always convinced that you are right.

And so cry really loudly to your dear God he will hear you and let fire fall on you.

Have you not noticed that your God has become a fiery worm with a flat skull who crawls red-hot on the earth?” (ibid.) ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 219, fn 62

You call on God for help?

It’s good that the loving God is far off and cannot hear you; in the end he might have mercy on your worthlessness and spared me the entire execution by granting mercy.

But we are in a safe place, where no one can hear you.

My soul has flown into the sky; thus we finally have an undisturbed opportunity to get thoroughly even with each other. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 219

The previous paragraph was replaced in LN by “Fill your beaker with the bitter drink of subjugation, since you are not your soul.

Your soul is with the fiery God who flamed up to the roof of the heavens”(ibid.). ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 224, fn 101

The preceding two sentences were replaced by

“I knew that the bird rose higher, above the clouds in the fiery brilliance of the outspread Godhead” (ibid.) ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 226, fn 114

“Let the bloody victims fall at your side. It is not you who are severe, it is necessarily severe and cruel.

The way of life is sown with fallen.”

By God, it’s a battlefield! My brother, what’s with you? Are you groaning? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 227

No, for the sake of your weakness, for the sake of your doubt, for the sake of your disbelief.

Stay on your way and don’t run away from yourself.

There is a divine and a human intention.

They cross each other in stupid and god-forsaken people, who also include you from time to time.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 228

The preceding line was replaced in LN by

“These words of my soul stung me. She spoke of compassion, she, who rose up following the God without compassion, and I asked her:” (p. 470). ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 228, fn 135

The preceding three paragraphs were replaced in LN by “I: Am I not earth?

Am I not excrement?

Did I commit an error that forced you to follow the God into the upper realms?” (p. 470). ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 228, 138 fn

Belief certainly may be something strong, but it is empty, and too little of the whole man can be involved, if our life with God is grounded only on belief.

Should we simply believe first and foremost? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 229, fn 142

Through uniting with the self we reach the God, who unites heaven and hell in himself.

The self is not God, although we reach the God through the self. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 239

The preceding clause was not reproduced in LN. Cf. Jung, “Transformation Symbolism in the Mass”:

“The self then functions as a unio oppositorum and thus constitutes the most immediate experience of the divine which is at all psychologically comprehensible” (CW II , § 396).

In LN, Jung added here a lengthy passage concerning his experience of God (pp. 480- 81) ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 239, fn 211

Jung defined the self as the archetype of order and noted that representations of the self were indistinguishable from God-images (chapter 4, “The self,” Alon, CW 9, pt. 2). ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 239, fn 212

The God has the power, not the self.

Powerlessness should thus not be deplored, rather it is the condition that should abide.

The God acts from within himself.

This should be left to him. What we do to the self, we do to the God.

If we twist the self, we also twist the God. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 240

Even closer? What? Even deeper into the grave of the God?

Is the place of our work in the vault itself?

The God should not live in us, but we should live in the God.

Apparently in the self and thus in God.

Dreams and long days of tranquility. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 240

In place of the next sentence, LN has:

“These words disturbed me since I had thought before precisely to free myself from the God.

But Philemon advised me to enter even deeper into the God.

Since the God has ascended to the upper realms, Philemon also has become different.

He first appeared to me as a magician who lived in a distant land, but then I felt his nearness and, since the God has ascended, I knew that Philemon had intoxicated me and given me a language that was foreign to me and of a different sensitivity.

All of this faded when the God arose and only Philemon kept that language.

But I felt that he went on other ways than I did.

Probably the most part of what I have written in the earlier part of this book was given to me by Philemon.

Consequently I was as if intoxicated.

But now I noticed that Philemon assumed a form distinct from me” (p. 483). ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 240, fn 218

Are you going to speak, shade?

“Let me speak: It was night when I died-you still live in the day-there are still days, years ahead of you- what will you begin-follies?

Let me have the word- oh, that you cannot hear! – My God, how difficult-so listen- I rattle, I groan, I burble-give me the word-” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 241

Oh God, if only I knew it!

“We need the symbol, we hunger for it, make light for us.”

Where from? How can I?

“You can, grasp it-upward-onward.”

A phallus

“That is it, that is the symbol of the middle. That’s what we wanted, what we needed.

It is terribly simple, initially stupid, naturally godlike, the God’s other pole.

This is precisely the pole we needed.”

Why do you need precisely that pole of God?

“He is in the light, the other God is in the night.”

Oh, what’s that, beloved? The God of the spirit is in the night?

Is that the son of the toads? Woe betide us, if he is the God of our day. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 242

In 1912, Jung discussed the Hecate mysteries that flourished in Rome at the end of the fourth century.

Hecate, the Goddess of magic and spells, guards the underworld and is seen as the sender of madness.

She is identified with Brimo, a Goddess of death (Transformation and Symbols ef the Libido, CW 8, §§ 586ff.) ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 45, fn 250

This phrase was replaced in by “the powerful HAP” (ibid.). ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 245, fn 250

In Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, Jung referred to Nut, the Egyptian sky Goddess, who arches over the earth, daily giving birth to the sun God (CW B, § 364). ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 245, fn 250

If Heaven becomes pregnant and can no longer hold its fruit, then it gives birth and a God-man appears from above and sets foot below.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 246

“The will of the God, that is stronger than you, bearer, slave. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 278

You have fallen into the hands of the greater. He knows no mercy.

The Christian shrouds have fallen. The God has become strong again.

You have conceived him anew. He is your son and the power is with him.

The yoke of men is lighter than the yoke of the God.

But he who does not fall into the hands of men falls into the hands of the God.

May he be well and may woe betide him! There is no escape.”

Is that freedom?

“The highest freedom. Only the God above you, through yourself.

Comfort yourself with this and that as well as you can. The God bolts doors that you cannot open.

Let your feelings whimper like puppies. The ears on high are deaf.”

Is there no outrage for the sake of the human?

“Outrage-I laugh at your outrage.” Are you God? “It is I, your self and yours and the God.”

How unsolemn-

“God is not solemn, he is terrible. Solemnity belongs to you, it is human, not divine. God has no need of theatre.

I am the highest of the dead and resurrected. I was dead, you gave me life, my life.”

Are you taking revenge for that on me? Revenge is human. God does not know revenge.

He knows only power and creation. He commands and you act.

anxieties are laughable, there is only one road, the military road of the Godhead. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 251-252

Saturday. Jung saw five patients. See Scrutinies {5} (LN, p. 494).

“When the dead one had uttered all these words, she disappeared. I sank into gloominess and dull confusion.

When I looked up again, I saw my soul in the upper realms, hovering irradiated by the distant brilliance that streamed from the Godhead.

And I called out:” was added here ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 257, fn 312

If this be your will, let the beaker of disgusting filth pass from me.

But if this be not your will, then climb, you my soul, past fiery Heaven and lodge your lament charges and topple the throne of God, on which the dreadful one sits, proclaim the right of men also before the Gods and take revenge on them for the infamous deed of humanity, since only Gods were able to spur on the worm to acts of colossal atrocity.

let my fate suffice and let men manage human destiny.

Oh my mother humanity, thrust the terrible, soulless God-slug, the cruel

strangler of men, from you.

Do not venerate him for the sake of his fertile poison. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 259

For if you do not see your soul, you see her in fellow men and this will drive you mad, since this devilish mystery and hellish spook can hardly be seen through.

Look at man, the weak one in his wretchedness and torment, whom the Gods have singled out as their quarry- tear to pieces the bloody veil that the lost soul has woven around you,

the cruel nets woven by the death-bringing, and take hold of the divine whore who still cannot recover from her fall from grace and in raving blindness craves filth in which to throw herself. Lock her up like a lecherous bitch who would like to mingle her blood with every dirty cur. Capture her, may enough at last be enough.

Let her for once taste your torment so that she will get to feel man and his hammer, which he has wrested from the Gods. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 259

May man rule in the human world. May his laws be valid.

But treat the souls, daimons, and Gods in their way, offering what is demanded. no man, demand nothing from him, with what your devil-souls and God-souls lead you to believe, but endure, suffer, and remain silent. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 259-260

In place of the preceding line, LN has: “Because there would be plenty to discuss concerning your own daimons.

But if you act on and think about the other without him soliciting your opinion or advice, you do so because you cannot distinguish yourself from your soul.

Therefore you fall victim to her presumption and help her into whoring.

0r do you believe that you must lend your human power to the soul or the Gods, or even that it will be useful and pious work if you want to bring the Gods to bear on others?

Blinded one, that is Christian presumptuousness.

The Gods don’t need your help, you laughable idolater, who seem to yourself like a God and want to form, improve, rebuke, educate, and create men.

Are you perfect yourself? – therefore remain silent, mind your business, and behold your inadequacy every day.

are most in need of your own help; you should keep your opinions and good advice ready for yourself and not run to others like a whore with understanding and the desire to help.

You don’t need to play God” (ibid.). ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 250, fn 239

Know that the daimons would like to inflame you to embrace their work, which is not yours. And, you fool, you believe that it is you, because you can’t distinguish yourself from your soul. But you are distinct from her, you are not a soul-God-Devil, but instead you are a powerless man who need not foster the regenerated Gods.

For you are the prison guard of your soul, the eunuch of your soul, who protects her from Gods and men.

You must equally protect men from her- yes, perhaps even the Gods.

Power is given to the man, a poison that paralyzes even the Gods, like a poison sting bestowed upon the little bee whose brute force is far inferior to yours.

But your soul, this extract of human essence, could by way of that poison endanger even the Gods.

So put the dangerous one under wraps, since not only your fellow men but also the Gods must live. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 260-261

The preceding two sentences were replaced in IN by:

“You should be the guard before the prison of your soul. You are your soul’s eunuch, who protects her from Gods and men, or protects the Gods and men from her” (ibid.). ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 261, fn 334

The preceding sentence was replaced in LN by “Your soul could seize this poison and thereby endanger even the Gods” (ibid.). ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 261, fn 335

Compassion? Have you ever had compassion for me?

You brute bestial tormentor, you’ve never gotten past compassionate moods.

You lived on human food and drank my vital powers.

Has it made you fat? Will you learn to revere the torment of the human animal?

What would you souls and Gods want without man?

Why do you long for him? You cannot be without him! Speak! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 263

You are blessed, virgin soul! Praised be your name. You are the chosen one among women.

You are the God-bearer.

Praise be to you! Honor and fame be yours in eternity, Amen. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 264

You carry us up as your soul and set yourself before the son of God, maintaining your immortal right as an ensouled being. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 264

You are lying. You want to cast suspicion on me, where you are at fault.

Those times when you could rob men are over.

Surrender everything that is their sacred inheritance and that you have rapaciously claimed.

You have stolen from the beggar and the vassal. God is rich and powerful, you can steal from him.

His kingdom knows no loss.

Shameful liar, when will you finally stop plaguing and robbing your humanity? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 265

Yet, you lie insufferably.

You possess not only that marvelous thing that belongs to me, but you also have access to the Gods and eternal fullness.

Therefore surrender what you have stolen, liar! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 265

Embellish yourself with the gold of the Gods, but not with the meager treasures of earthbound human beings.

May you taste heavenly poverty after you have preached earthly poverty to men for so long, like a true and proper cleric full of lies, who fills his belly and purse and preaches poverty.

“You torment me awfully. leave me just this one thing. You men still have enough.

I cannot be without this very one, this incomparable one, for whose sake even the Gods envy men.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 265

So, it is love that you claim as a natural right, although you still ought to beg for it. You get drunk on the blood of man and let him starve-love belongs to me.

You’ll crawl and beg for it like a dog. You’ll raise your hands. You will fawn, in order to get it.

I possess the key and I will be a more just administrator than you half-beings, you soulless souls and you godless Gods, and you godforsaken God.

You will gather around the source of blood, and you will come bearing gifts so that you may receive what you need.

Oh, men, protect the holy source so that no God can seize it for himself.

The Gods know no measure and no mercy. They get drunk on the most precious of draughts. They waste it in drunkenness, since they know neither God nor soul.

Presumptuousness and excessiveness, severity and callousness are their essence.

Greed for the sake of greed, power for the sake of power, pleasure for the sake of pleasure, immoderation and insatiableness, this is how you recognize the daimons.

Ha, you have yet to learn, you devils and Gods, to crawl in the dust for the sake of love so that from someone somewhere you snatch a drop of the living sweetness.

learn humility and pride from men for the sake of love.

You Gods, your first born son is man.

He bore a terribly beautiful-ugly son of God. But this mystery, too, is accomplished with you.

bore a son of men, no less splendid-terrible, and you will also serve under his rule.

Both God and man are disappointed victims of deception, blessedly J blessed, powerlessly powerful. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 266

The eternally rich universe should unfold again in the earthly Heaven and the Heaven of the Gods, in the underworlds and in the worlds above.

Separation once more comes to the agonizingly united and yoked.

Endless multiplicity takes the place of what has been forced together.

Since diversity alone is wealth, blossom, and harvest. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 267

Eternal fate presides over the Gods also, not only over mortals.

“Above all dedicate your prayer to me, so I can convey it to the distant God.

Prayer has magical power and compels the Gods.

Don’t you feel the influence of the Gods and the daimons? They also pray to you and by that they compel you.

Thus do likewise to them. I will lead through intercession.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 269

“You are ignorant of the power of matter, just as you know nothing of human power, not even your own. Matter is the counterpole to God. God lures the phallus out of himself.

Yes, he lures matter out of the devilish void, which is God himself.

You know that the power of the phallus is great.

Did you ever doubt it? Then know that the power of matter is even greater.

The earth is more powerful than the phallus, he is the transient son, she is the age-old mother. The hardest, most imperishable matter is the best. It needs to be built into this matter. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 269

The force of the God is frightful.

“You shall experience even more of it. You are in the second age.

The first age has been overcome. This is the age of the rulership of the son, whom you call the Toad God. A third age will follow, the age of apportionment and harmonious power.”

My soul, where did you go? Did you go to the animals?

I bind the Above with the Below. I bind God and animal.

Something in me is part animal, something part God, and a third part human.

Below you serpent, within you man, and above you God.

Beyond the serpent comes the phallus, then the earth, then the moon, and finally the coldness and emptiness of outer space. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 269-270

If I am not conjoined through the uniting of the Below and the Above, I break down into three parts: the serpent, and in that or some other animal form I roam, living nature daimonically, arousing fear and longing. The human soul, living forever within you. The heavenly soul, as such dwelling with the Gods, far from you and unknown to you, appearing in the form of a bird. Each of these three parts then is independent. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 270

In Alon (CW 9i, §§ 139ff.), Jung accords special significance to Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202), who spoke of a series of three states of the world of increasing spirituality: the Age of the Father, corresponding to the Old Testament, characterized by obedience to the rules of God; the Age of the Son, from the birth of Christ to 1260, corresponding to the New Testament, in which man becomes a son of God; and the Age of the Holy Spirit, when mankind comes into direct contact with God in a new dispensation of universal love proceeding from the Gospel of Christ but transcending the letter of it. ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 270, fn 385

In Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, Jung noted: “The phallus is the creature that moves without limbs, sees without eyes, and knows the future; and as the symbolic representative of ubiquitous creative power it claims immortality” (CW 8, § 209). He goes on to discuss phallic Gods. ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 270, fn 387

The heavenly world is illuminated through the spiritual sun. Its counterpart is the moon. And just as the moon is the crossing to the dead of space, the spiritual sun is the crossing to the Pleroma, the upper world of fullness. The moon is the God’s eye of emptiness, just as the sun is the God’s eye of fullness.

The moon that you see is the symbol, just as the sun that you see.

Sun and moon, that. is, their symbols, are Gods. There are still other Gods; their symbols are the planets.

The heavenly mother is a daimon among the order of the Gods, an inhabitant of the heavenly world.

The Gods are favorable and unfavorable, impersonal, the souls of stars, influences, forces, grandfathers of souls, rulers in the heavenly world, both in space and in force. They are neither dangerous nor kind, strong, yet humble, clarifications of the Pleroma and of the eternal emptiness, configurations of the eternal qualities. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 270-271

The Pleroma, or fullness , is a term from Gnosticism. It played a central role in the Valentinian system.

Hans Jonas states that “Pleroma is the standard term for the fully explicated manifold of divine characteristics, whose standard number is thirty, forming a hierarchy and together constituting the divine realm” (The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity [London, Routledge, 1992], p. 180 ). ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 271, fn 388

The distinction that Jung draws between the Pleroma and the creation has some points

of contact with Meister Eckhart’s differentiation between the Godhead and God. Jung commented on this in Psychological Types (CW 6, §§ 429ff.). The relation of Jung’s Pleroma to Eckhart is discussed by Christine Maillard, Au coeur du Livre Rouge. Les Sept Sermons aux Marts. Aux sources de la pense de C.G.Jung (Paris: la compagnie du livre rouge, 2017), pp. 118-120. In 1955- 56, Jung equated the Pleroma with the alchemist Gerhardus Dorn’s notion of the unus mundus (one world) (Mysterium Coniunctionis. ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 271, fn 388

“You are Gods”: see John I0:34: “The Jews answered him, saying, for a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?” ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 271 fn 391

The God of the frogs or toads, the brainless, is the uniting of the Christian God with Satan.

His nature is like the flame; he is like Eros, but a God; Eros is only a daimon. ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 271, fn 394

The one God, to whom worship is due, is in the middle.

You should worship only one God. The other Gods are unimportant. Abraxas is to be feared. Therefore it was a deliverance when he separated himself from me.

You do not need to seek him. He will find you, just like Eros.

He is the God of the cosmos, extremely powerful and fearful.

He is the creative drive, he is form and formation, just as much as matter and force, therefore

he is above all the light and dark Gods.

He tears away souls and casts them into procreation. He is the creative and created.

He is the God who always renews himself, in days, in months, in years, in human life, in ages, in peoples, in the living, in heavenly bodies.

He compels, he is unsparing. If you worship him, you increase his power over you.

Thereby it becomes unbearable. You will have dreadful trouble getting clear of him.

But you have in you the one God, the wonderfully beautiful and kind, the solitary, starlike, unmoving, he who is older and wiser than the father, he who has a safe hand, who leads you among all the darknesses and death scares of dreadful Abraxas.

He gives joy and peace, since he is beyond death and beyond what is subject to change.

He is no servant and no friend of Abraxas.

He himself is an Abraxas, but not unto you, but in himself and his distant world, since you yourself are a God who lives in faraway realms and who renews himself in his ages and creations and peoples, just as powerful to them as Abraxas is to you.

You yourself are a creator of worlds and a created being.

You have the one God, and you become your one God in the innumerable number of Gods.

As a God, you are the great Abraxas in your world.

But as a man you are the heart of the one God who appears to his world as the great Abraxas, the feared, the powerful, the donor of madness, he who dispenses the water of life, the spirit of the tree of life, the daimon of the blood, the death bringer.

You are the suffering heart of your one star God, who is Abraxas to his world.

Therefore because you are the heart of your God, aspire toward him, love him, live for him. Fear Abraxas, who rules over the human world.

Accept what your God will suffer, just as the one God of Christ suffered the heaviest in his

death.

The suffering of mankind is without end, since its life is without end.

Since there is no end where none sees an end. If mankind has come to an end, there is none who would see its end and none who could say that mankind has an end.

So it has no end for itself, but it certainly does for the Gods.

As there is also The death of Christ took no suffering away from the world, but his life has taught us much; namely, that it pleases the one God if the individual lives his own life against the power of Abraxas.

The one God thus delivers himself from the suffering of the earth into which his Eros plunged him; since when the one God saw the earth, he sought its procreation, and forgot that a world was already given to him in which he was Abraxas.

So the one God became human. Therefore the one in turn pulls man up to him and into him, so that the one becomes complete again. ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 273-276, fn 393

You ask, why is all this so? I understand that it seems questionable to you.

The world is questionable.

It is the unending infinite folly of the Gods, which you know is unendingly wise.

Surely it is also a crime, an unforgivable sin, and therefore also the highest love and virtue. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 277

You need to recognize the multiplicity of the Gods. You cannot unite all into one being.

As little as you are one with the multiplicity of men, just so little is the one God one with the multiplicity of the Gods.

This one God is the kind, the loving, the leading, the healing. To him all your love and worship is due.

To him you should pray, you are one with him, he is near you, nearer than your soul. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 277

I, your soul, am your mother, who tenderly and frightfully surrounds you, your nourisher and corrupter; I prepare good things and poison for you.

I am your intercessor with Abraxas. I teach you the arts that protect you from Abraxas.

I stand between you and Abraxas the all-encompassing.

I am your body, your shadow, your effectiveness in this world, your manifestation in the world of the Gods, your effulgence, your breath, your odor, your magical force.

You should call me if you want to live with men, but the one God if you want to rise above

the human world to the divine and eternal solitude of the star.

I, your soul, am your mother, who tenderly and frightfully surrounds you, your nourisher and corrupter; I prepare good things and poison for you.

I am your intercessor with Abraxas. I teach you the arts that protect you from Abraxas.

I stand between you and Abraxas the all-encompassing.

I am your body, your shadow, your effectiveness in this world, your manifestation in the world of the Gods, your effulgence, your breath, your odor, your magical force.

You should call me if you want to live with men, but the one God if you want to rise above the human world to the divine and eternal solitude of the star. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 277

They do not see the fire, but they see me and suspect that l am the messenger.

of the burning agony. What fire? they ask. What fire?

I stutter, I stammer what do I know about the fire?

I looked at the embers, I saw the blazing flames.

Help us, my God, and carry us over.

My God, prepare me; is it death, is it something immortal?

My God, why have you forsaken me?415 Oh, horrendous silence! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 279-280

My God, my wonderful light! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 280

That this wicked herd can break into my garden?

Should I be plundered and thrown out onto the rubbish?

You make me into an ape and a child’s plaything.

When, oh my God, shall I be saved from this Hell of fools?

I am longing for death, for the innermost cold. Should that be the devil?

He’s somewhere in the neighborhood. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 281

“Spirits will do the work, not you. Be quiet and let us take charge. We will strike for sure.

Dwell quietly, calmly. We’ll poke the embers.

Build calmly stone by stone. We will do our bit. Don’t worry. The fire glows already.”

My God, you can see the sacrilege. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 282

In 1932, Jung wrote: “the Gnostic symbol Abraxas, a made-up name meaning three hundred and sixty-five …. the Gnostics used it as the name of their supreme deity.

He was a time god. The philosophy of Bergson, la duree creatrice, is an expression of the same idea.”

And: “just as this archetypal world of the collective unconscious is exceedingly paradoxical, always yea and nay, that figure of Abraxas means the beginning and the end, it is life and death, therefore it is represented by a monstrous figure.

It is a monster because it is the life of vegetation in the course of one year, the spring and the autumn, the summer and the winter, the yea and nay of nature.

So Abraxas is really identical with the Demiurgos, the world creator.

And as such he is surely identical with the Purusha, or with Shiva” (November 16, 1932, VS, vol. 2, pp. 806- 7).

He added: “Abraxas is usually represented with the head of a fowl, the body of a man, and the tail of a serpent, but there is also the lion-headed symbol with a dragon’s body, the head crowned with the twelve rays, alluding to the number of months” (June 7, 1933 , VS, vol. 2,

I041- 42).

According to St. Irenaeus, Basilides held that “the ruler of them is named Abrasaks, and that is why this (rule1) has the number 365 within it” (Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, p. 425).

Abraxas featured in Albrecht Dieterich’s Abraxas. Studien Zur Religiongeschichte des spaten Altertumus (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1891).

Jung closely studied this work early in 1913, and his copy is annotated.

He also had a copy of Charles King’s The Gnostics and Their Remains (London: Bell and Daldy, 1864), and there are marginal annotations next to a passage discussing the etymology of Abraxas on p. 37. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 274, fn 395

The more concentrated the Pleroma becomes, the stronger the star of the individual becomes. It is surrounded by shining clouds, a heavenly body in the making, comparable to a small sun.

It emits fire.

Just like the sun, which is also such a star, which is a God and grandfather of souls, the star of the individual is also like the sun, a God and grandfather of the souls.

He is visible from time to time, just as I have described him.

His light is blue, like that of a distant star.

He is far out in space, cold and solitary, since he is beyond death.

To attain individuality, we need a large share of death.

Therefore it is called since just as an innumerable number of men rule the earth, so a countless number of stars and of Gods rule the heavenly world.

To be sure, this God is the one who survives the death of men.

To him for whom solitude is Heaven, he goes to Heaven; to him for whom it is Hell, he goes to Hell.

Whoever does not follow the principium individuationis to its end becomes no God, since he cannot bear individuality.

He is the God of the cosmos, extremely powerful and fearful.

He is the creative drive, he is form and formation, just as much as matter and force, therefore

he is above all the light and dark Gods. He tears away souls and casts them into procreation. He is the creative and created.

He is the God who always renews himself, in days, in months, in years, in human life, in ages, in peoples, in the living, in heavenly bodies. He compels, he is unsparing.

If you worship him, you increase his power over you.

Thereby it becomes unbearable. You will have dreadful trouble getting clear of him. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 272

Only by living life can you free yourself from it. So live it to such a degree that it befits you.

To the degree that you live it, you also fall victim to the power of Abraxas and his dreadful deceptions.

But to the same degree the star God in you gains in pew longing and power, in that the fruit of deception and human disappointment falls to him.

Pain and disappointment fill the world of Abraxas with coldness, all of your life’s warmth slowly sinks into the depths of your soul, into the midpoint of man, where the far blue starlight of your one God glimmers.

If you flee Abraxas from fear, you escape pain and disappointment and you remain terrified, that is, out of unconscious love you cling to Abraxas and your one God cannot catch fire.

But through pain and disappointment you redeem yourself, since your longing then falls of its own accord like a ripe fruit into the depths, following gravity, striving toward the midpoint, where the blue light of the star God arises. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 276

0h, my God, I call you, force my soul to provide answer to the things that besiege me! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 278

My God, deliver me from fear. Give me the redeeming vision, into your hands l commit my spirit. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 279

Cf. Matthew 27:46: “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 280, fn 415

Sunday. This entry ·was not reproduced in LN.

On January 27, 1916, there was a presentation to the Association for Analytical Psychology by Adolf Keller concerning Theodore Flournoy’s “Une mystique moderne.”

Jung had two copies of this work, both of which ·were annotated.

In the discussion, Toni Wolff noted, “In analysis one can also reach God through love and will, not by overpowering, as K. thinks.”

Jung replied, “In analysis we rather get prepared for it. If not, overpowering happens.”

Schneiter commented, “The unio mystica of the mystics is love,” and Jung commented, “The experience of the devil is missing.”

Emma Jung commented, “The concept of God does precisely not match a known image or an imago,” to which Jung replied, “That is already the case with the primitives (the God is not the father, but the Grandfather, etc.).

This shows that it is not a revaluation of the father and that it is only concept by proxy that could be replaced by any other.

God is everything that and creates emotion.”

Further on in the discussion, Jung commented: “First God is felt traditionally, conventionally,

then dynamically, then felt into humanity (as magical effect of the person).

But this results in a God beyond good and evil. It leads to the devil (as war.)

It is a primitive thought: everything alien is magical. Also medieval.

Mlle V shows us that she experiences God as a subjective dynamis, and between men it is the personal.

A God beyond good and evil questions the human relationship . . . a God beyond good and evil is not Christian either.

The Christian is only an etiquette. – If she was to continue consequently, she would come between the poles.

At the end she takes the view, according to which she turns into a Christ herself.

This is already analytical. The Christians become christiani, not christoi” (Map, pp. 99ff.).

Jung’s comments concerning a God beyond good and evil converge with the conception of Abraxas that he was elaborating in these entries. ~The Black Books, V. 5, Page 280, fn 470

In 1917, Jung wrote a chapter on “The sexual theory” in The Psychology of the Unconscious Processes, which presented a critique of the psychoanalytic understanding of the erotic.

In his 1928 revision of this chapter, retitled “The Eros theory,” he added: “‘The Erotic’ belongs on the one hand to the original drive nature of man.

On the other hand it is related to the highest forms of the spirit. It only thrives when spirit and drive are in right harmony. .

‘Eros is a mighty daemon,’ as the wise Diotima said to Socrates.

He is not all of nature within us, though he is at least one of its essential aspects” (CW 7, §§ 32-33).

In the Symposium, Diotima teaches Socrates about the nature of Eros.

She tells him,” ‘He is a great spirit, Socrates. Everything classed as a spirit falls between god and human.’

‘What function do they have?’ I asked.

‘They interpret and carry messages from humans to gods and from gods to humans.

They convey prayers and sacrifices from humans, and commands and gifts in return for sacrifices from gods.

Being intermediate between the other two, they fill the gap between them, and enable the universe to form an interconnected whole.

They serve as the medium for all divination, for priestly expertise in sacrifice, ritual and spells, and for all prophecy and sorcery.

Gods do not make direct contact with humans; they communicate and converse with humans (whether awake or asleep) entirely through the medium of spirits'” (trans. C. Gill [London: Penguin, 1999 J, pp. 202e- 203a) .

In Memories, Jung reflected on the nature of Eros, describing it as “a kos111ogo11os, a creator and father-mother of all consciousness” (p. 387).

This cosmogonic characterization of Eros needs to be distinguished from Jung’s use of the term to characterize women’s consciousness.

See Book 2, p. 183 , n. 182. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 5, Page 274, fn 394

Volume VI

The dead: We want to know about God? Where is God? Is God dead?

God is not dead. He is as alive as ever.

God is creation, for he is something definite, and therefore differentiated from the Pleroma.

God is a quality of the Pleroma, and everything I have said about creation also applies to him.

But he is distinct from creation in that he is much more indefinite and indeterminable than the creation.

He is more closely related to the Pleroma than to creation.

Moreover, he is the Pleroma itself, just as each smallest point

in the created and uncreated is the Pleroma itself.

Whereas the essence of the creation is differentiation, the essence of God is effective fullness.

Effective emptiness is the essence of the devil.

God and devil are the first manifestations of the unimaginable nothingness which we call the Pleroma.

It makes no difference whether the Pleroma exists or not, but it is in since it cancels itself out completely.

Not so creation.

Insofar as God and the devil are created beings, they do not cancel each other out, but stand one against the other as effective opposites.

We need no proof of their existence, since it is enough that we have to keep speaking about God and the devil. ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 210-211, fn 31

In Jung’s discussion of this, see “Psychology and Religion” (CW II , §§ 142ff.). Jung wrote: “When Nietzsche said: ‘God is dead ,’ he expressed a truth which is valid for the greater part of Europe” (ibid ., § 145).

He added, “However, it would be more correct to say: ‘He has discarded our image, and where will we find him again?” ‘

He goes on to discuss the motif of the death and disappearance of God in connection with Christ’s crucifix ion and resurrection. ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 211, fn 32

The preceding sentence was replaced in LN by the following: “But he is distinct from creation in that he is much more indefinite and indeterminable.

He is less differentiated than creation, since the ground of his essence is effective fullness.

Only insofar as he is definite and differentiated is he creation, and as such he is the manifestation of the effective fullness of the Pleroma.

Everything that we do not differentiate falls into the Pleroma and is cancelled out by its opposite.

If, therefore, we do not differentiate God, effective fullness is canceled out for us” (ibid.). ~The Black Books, V. 6 Page 211, fn 33

They are both manifestations of the non-existent qualities of the Pleroma.

Even if both were not, creation would forever distinguish them anew out of the Pleroma on account of their distinct essences.

Everything that differentiation takes out of the Pleroma is a pair of opposites, therefore the devil always belongs to God.

This inseparability is most intimate and, as you know from experience, as indissoluble in your life as the Pleroma itself, since both stand very close to the Pleroma in which all opposites are canceled out and united.

Fullness and emptiness, life and de generation and destruction, are what distinguish God and the devil. Effectiveness is common to both. Effectiveness joins them. Effectiveness, therefore, stands above both, and is a God above God, since it unites fullness and emptiness through its effectuality.

This is a God you knew nothing about. We call him Abraxas. He is even more indefinite than God and the devil.

Nothing stands opposed to him but the ineffective; He is the unc hence his effective nature unfolds itself freely.

He is complete effect, since the unreal neither exists nor resists.

Abraxas stands above God and devil.

He is improbable probability, that which takes unreal effect.

If the Pleroma had an essence, Abraxas would be its manifestation.

He is the effectual itself, not any particular effect, but effect in general.

He takes unreal effect, because he has no definite effect.

He is also creation, since he is distinct from the Pleroma.

God has a definite or determinable effect, and so does the devil.

Therefore they appear to us more effective than the indefinite Abraxas.

He is force, duration, change. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 211-212

“To distinguish him from God, we call God HELIOS or sun” was added here in LN (ibid.).

Jung discussed solar mythologies in Transformations and Symbols of the Libido; see CW B, §§ 177ff., and his talk on Opicinus de Canistris at the Eranos conference in Ascona in 1943 (Riccardo Bernardini, Gian Piero agliano, and Augusto Romano, eds., C.G. Jung,

The Solar Myths and Opicinus de Canistris: Notes of the Seminar given in Eranos in 1943 [Einsiedeln: Daimon, 2015]). ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 212, fn 39

My soul, if you are the intercessor for the dead, my God, if you hear me, end this torment that I endure from men.

I can’t bear it anymore. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 213, fn 44

So, my listeners, you who are standing in dark rows along the walls let’s speak further about God.

Abraxas is the highest God who is difficult to grasp. His power is greatest, because man does not see it.

From God he draws the summum bonum; from the devil the infimum malum, but from Abraxas life, altogether indefinite and indeterminable, the mother of good and evil. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 213

Instead of this sentence, LN reads: “The following night, the dead approached like fog from a swamp and exclaimed, ‘Tell us more about the highest God.’

And Philemon stepped forward and began to speak (and this is the third sermon to the dead):” (p. 520). ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 213, fn 46

Aristotle defined happiness as the supreme good (summum bonum).

In his Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas identified this with God. Jung saw the doctrine of the s111nna1111 bonum as the source of the concept of the privatio boni, which in his view had led to the denial of the reality of evil.

See Aion, GW 9, pt. 2 , §§ 80, 94.

Hence it is counterbalanced here with the infimum malum. ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 213, fn 49

In his later writings, Jung argued that the Christian God-image was one-sided in that it left out the factor of evil.

studying the historical transformations of God-images, he attempted to correct this (especially in Aion and Answer to Job).

In his note on how Answer to job came to be written, he wrote that in Aion he had “criticized the idea of the privatio bani as not agreeing with the psychological findings.

Psychological experience shows us that whatever we call ‘good’ is balanced by an equally substantial ‘bad’ or ‘evil.’

If’ evil’ is non-existent, then whatever there is must be ‘good.’

Dogmatically, neither ‘good ‘ nor ‘evil’ can be derived from Man, since the ‘ Evil One’ existed before Man as one of the ‘Sons of God.’

The idea of the privatio boni began to play a role in the Church only after Mani.

Before this heresy, Clement of Rome taught that God rules the world with a right and a left hand, the right being Christ, the left being Satan.

Clement’s view is clearly monotheistic, as it unites the opposites in one God.

Later Christianity, however, is dualistic, inasmuch as it splits off one half of the opposites, personified in Satan. …

If Christianity claims to be a monotheism, it becomes unavoidable to .assume the opposites as being contained in God” (1956, CW II,§§ 357- 58). 213-214. ~The Black Books, V 6. Page 56, fn 50

Life seems to be smaller and by far weaker than the summum bonum; therefore it is also hard to conceive that Abraxas’s power transcends even God’s, who is the radiant source of all vital force.

Abraxas is also God, and at the same time the eternally sucking gorge of emptiness, of the diminisher and dismemberer, the devil.

Thus the power of Abraxas is twofold; but you do not see it, because in its- your eyes the warring opposites of this power are canceled out.

What the God speaks is life, what the devil speaks is death, but Abraxas speaks that hallowed and accursed word that is at once life and death.

Abraxas produces truth and lying, in the same good and evil, light and darkness, in the

same word and in the same act. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 214

To fear him is wisdom.

Not to resist him is redemption.

God dwells behind the sun, the devil behind the night.

What God brings forth out of the light, the devil sucks into the night.

But Abraxas is the world, its becoming and its passing.

Upon every gift that comes from God the devil lays his curse.

Everything that you request from God produces a deed from the devil.

Everything that you create with God gives effective power to the devil.

Because God That is terrible Abraxas. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 215

“Now the dead howled and raged , for they were incomplete” was added here in LN (ibid.). In 1942, Jung noted: “the concept of an all-encompassing God must necessarily include his opposite.

The coincidence of course must not be too radical , otherwise God would cancel himself out. The principle of the coincidence of opposites must therefore be completed by its opposite in order to attain full paradoxicality and hence psychological validity” (“The Spirit Mercuri us ,” CW 13 , § 256).

For Philemon’s commentary on this sermon, see LN, pp. 522- 23. ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 215, fn 58

Oh man, don’t forget your divine weapon, your wit. Y

ou, the weakling, were given a dread venomous sting with which you could also lame Gods.

You dead ones, I had to interrupt my address to you. What else do you want to hear [?]

The dead: “Tell us about Gods and devils!”

God is the highest good, the summum bonum, the devil the opposite.

But there are many high good things and many great evils.

Among these are two devil Gods; one is the Burning One, the other the Growing One.

The burning one is Eros, in the form of a flame. It shines by consuming. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 219

In their divinity life and love stand opposed.

The number of Gods and devils is as innumerable as the host of stars.

Each star is a God, and each space that a star fills is a devil.

But the empty fullness of the whole is the Pleroma.

Abraxas is the effect of the whole. Only the ineffective opposes him.

4 is the number of the principal Gods, as 4 is the number of the world’s measurements.

I is the beginning, the God.

2 is Eros, for he spreads himself out in brightness.

3 is the Tree of life, for it fills space with bodies.

4 is the devil, for he opens all that is closed, he dissolves everything formed and physical; he is the destroyer in whom everything becomes nothing.

The dead: “You are a pagan, a polytheist!”

Happy am I who can recognize the multiplicity and diversity of the Gods.

But woe unto you, who replace this incompatible multiplicity with a single God!

In so doing you produce the torment of doubt for the sake of the one

God and the mutilation of the creation whose nature and aim is differentiation.

How can you be true to your own nature when you try to turn the

many into one? What you do unto the Gods is done likewise unto you.

You all become equal. And thus your nature is maimed.

Equality prevails not for the sake of God, but only for the sake of man.

For the Gods are many, while men are few.

The Gods are mighty and endure their manifoldness. like the stars they abide in eternal solitude, separated by vast distances.

Men are weak and do not bear their manifoldness, therefore they dwell together closely and need communion, so that they can bear their singularity. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 220

The dead: [“]For redemption’s sake continue to teach us!”

For redemption’s sake I teach you the reprehensible, for whose sake I was rejected.

The multiplicity of the Gods corresponds to the multiplicity of Gods men.

Numberless Gods await the human state. Numberless Gods have been men.

Man shares in the nature of the Gods.

He comes from the Gods and goes unto the Gods the God.

Thus, just as it is no use to reflect upon the Pleroma, it is not worthwhile to worship the multiplicity of the Gods.

Least of all does it serve to worship the first God, the effective fullness, and the summum bonum.

By our prayer we can add nothing to it, and take nothing from it; because effective

emptiness gulps down everything. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 220-221.

The following was added here in LN:

“That night Philemon stood beside me and the dead drew near and lined the walls and cried out:” (p. 515)

For Nietzsche’s discussion of the death of God, see The Gay Science, sections rn8 and 125, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, section 4, “Retired from Service” (pp. 271ff.). ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 210, fn 31

The bright Gods form the heavenly world. It is manifold and extends and increases infinitely. The spiritual sun is the supreme lord of the world.

The dark Gods form the earthly world.

They are simple and they lessen and diminish themselves infinitely.

Their nethermost lord, namely the devil, is the moon spirit, satellite of the earth, smaller and colder than the earth.

There is no difference between the might of the heavenly and earthly Gods.

The heavenly Gods magnify, the earthly Gods diminish.

Both directions are immeasurable.

The world of the Gods is made manifest in spirituality and in sexuality.

The heavenly ones appear in spirituality, the earthly in sexuality.

Spirituality conceives and embraces.

It is womanlike and therefore we call it mater coelestis, the heavenly mother.

Sexuality engenders and creates.

It is manlike, and therefore we call it phallus, the earthly father. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 223-224

Man shall differentiate himself both from spirituality and sexuality.

He shall call spirituality mother, and set her between Heaven and earth.

He shall call sexuality Phallus, and set him between himself and earth.

For the mother and the Phallus are superhuman daimons that reveal the world of the Gods. They affect us more than the Gods since they are very closely akin to our essence.

The mother is the grail. The phallus is the spear.

If you do not differentiate yourselves from sexuality or from spirituality, and do not regard them as things-in-themselves, you are delivered over to them as qualities of the Pleroma. Spirituality and sexuality are not your qualities, not things you possess and encompass.

Rather, they possess and encompass you, since they are powerful daimons, manifestations of the Gods, and hence reach beyond you, existing in themselves.

No man has a spirituality himself or a sexuality unto himself.

Instead, he stands under the law of spirituality and of sexuality.

Therefore no one escapes these daimons.

f You shall look upon them as daimons, and as a common task and danger, a common burden that life has laid upon you.

Thus life, too, is for you a common task and danger, as are the Gods, and first and foremost terrible Abraxas.

Man is weak, and community is therefore indispensable.

If your community is not under the sign of the mother, it is under the sign of the Phallus. Absence of community is suffering and sickness.

Community in everything is dismemberment and dissolution.

The essence of your being is differentiation. It leads to singleness.

Singleness is opposed to community.

But because of man’s weakness with regard to the Gods and daimons and their invincible law, community is necessary.

Therefore: community, as much as possible, not for man’s sake, but because of the Gods.

The Gods drive you to community.

Insofar as the Gods impose community upon you, it is necessary; more is bad.

~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 224-225

The bird is masculine, and has is effective thought.

He is chaste and solitary, a messenger of the mother.

He flies high above the earth and lifts up and brings down.

He commands singleness.

He brings knowledge from the distant ones, who have departed before and attained perfection.

He bears our word up to the mother, who intercedes, who warns, but who is powerless against the Gods. She is a vessel of the sun. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 226

The dead: “Now that you have taught us about the world of the Gods, the daimons, and the souls, teach us about men.”

Man is a gateway, through which you pass from the outer world of Gods,

daimons, and souls into the inner world, out of the greater into the smaller

world.

Small and inane is man, a point, already he is behind you, and

once again you find yourselves in endless space, in the smaller or inner infinity.

At immeasurable distance a star stands radiating blue light in the zenith.

This is the one God of this one man, this is his world, his Pleroma, his divinity.

In this world, man is Abraxas, the creator and destroyer of his own world.

This star is the God, the goal of man.

6 This is his one guiding God. In him man goes to his rest.

Toward him goes the long journey of the soul after death.

In him everything that man withdraws from thew greater world shines resplendently.

To this one God man shall pray.

Prayer increases the light of the star, it throws a bridge across death, it prepares

the life of the smaller world, and assuages the hopeless desires of the greater.

When the greater world turns cold, the star shines.

Nothing stands between man and his one God, so long as man can turn away his eyes from the flaming spectacle of Abraxas.

Man here, God there.

Weakness, nothingness here, eternally blessed creative power there.

Here nothing but darkness and clammy cold, there total sun.

Before Hercules incinerated himself and was placed among the Gods, he became the child of Omphale.

That is what happened to him.

So, my mother, you who stand in the higher circle and shroud me and protect me from the Gods: I want to become your child.

May you accept my birth. May you renew me.

I need a new shadow, since I have recognized the terrible Abraxas and have drawn myself back from him.

The cold grew and my star blazed brighter.

Yes, I do need the bond of childhood, sublime mother, otherwise I cannot endure the childish and foolish hell of the human world.

You gave birth to the terrible God, release him, accept me as your son.

I am a man, a child that needs his mother.

Take the human son instead of the God and grant him your maternal help.

Mother: I cannot take you as a child, unless you cleanse yourself first.

What is my impurity?

Commingling. Abstain from human suffering and joy. Remain secluded until abstinence is complete, and you are freed from the touch of man.

Then I will accept you as my child.

I thank you, mother. So be it. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 227-229

The following was added here in LN: “But when Philemon finished, the dead remained silent.

Heaviness fell from them, and they ascended like smoke above the shepherd’s fire, who watches over his flock by night” (p. 535).

For Philemon’s commentary on this sermon, see LN, pp. 535 – 36.

On February 29, 1919, Jung wrote a letter to Joan Corrie and commented on the Sermones, with particular reference to the last one:

“The primordial creator of the world , the blind creative libido, becomes transformed in man through individuation & out of this process which is like pregnancy, arises a divine child, a reborn God, no more (longe1) dispersed into the millions of creatures, but being one & this individual, and at the same time all individuals, the same in you as in me. Dr. Long has a little book: VII sermones ad Mortuous.

There you find the description of the Creator dispersed into his creatures, & in the last sermon you find the beginning of individuation, out of which, the divine child arises .. ..

The child is a new God, actually born in many individuals, but they don’t know it.

He is a ‘spiritual’ God.

A spirit in many people, yet one and the same everywhere.

Keep to your time and you will experience His qualities” (copied in Constance Long’s diary, CLM, pp. 21- 22). ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 227-228, fn 107

In LN, this sequence follows on directly from the passage cited in footnote 87 above (p. 223) and is linked in the following way: “And when I had beheld it, Philemon said:”.

The next three paragraphs are presented in Philemon’s voice:

‘”Mother, you who stand in the higher circle, nameless one, who shrouds me and him and protects me and him from the Gods: he wants to become your child./ May you accept his birth. / May you renew him. I separate myself from him'” (p. 538).

The third-person pronoun is substituted for the first-person pronoun in the remainder of this entry.

The remainder of this paragraph was not reproduced in LN. 2 ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 228, fn 112

Instead of this paragraph, LN has “You gave birth to the godly serpent, you released it from the pangs of birth; take this man as your son, he needs the mother” (p. 539) . ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 228, fn 113

We want to be grateful to you and take your burden upon ourselves and want to give you rest. When we take up your work, your work will be completed and you will lay your hands in your lap after a long day’s hard burden.

Blessed is the dead one, who rests in his God, from the completion of his work. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 234

The preceding clause was replaced in IN by” ‘But, my master and my brother, I believe you have completed your work, since the one who has given his life, his entire truth, all his love, his entire soul, has completed his work. /

When Philemon had finished, I looked up and saw that the place where the shade had stood was empty.

I turned to Philemon and said, ‘My father, you spoke of men. I am a man. Forgive me!’ /

But Philemon dissolved into the darkness and I decided to do what was required of me.

I accepted all the joy and every torment of my nature and remained true to my love, to suffer what comes to everyone in their own way.

And I stood alone and was afraid” (ibid.).

This was followed by an enigmatic speech of Philemon’s concerning the relation of the service of the God and murder (pp. 543 – 44).

These passages first occurred in “Dreams” after entries for the middle of July 1917, introduced by the statement: “Fragments of the next book:,” indicated that he intended to recopy them into what became the third book of Liber Novus, Scrutinies (p. 18). ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 234, fn 147

First it was about a knife cutting something or perhaps harvesting, perhaps the grapes that go to the wine press.

Perhaps the one wearing the red robe treads the winepress from which the blood flows. Thereupon it was about gold that lies below, and that kills whoever touches it.

Then a word of fire that burns terribly and that should flare up in our time.

What else, speak Elijah! Why did you think that you were erring and that a sick voice spoke to you?
Precisely because it spoke confused and blasphemous things.
Blasphemous? What was it?
About the death of God. Can God die?
But there was a new one, not one, many.
Many? You are blasphemous. There is only one God.
I am astonished, Elijah. Do you not know what happened?

Do you not know that the world has put on a new garb?

That the one God and the one soul have gone away and in turn a multitude of Gods and soul daimons have moved back into the world? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 236

I have already uttered the words.

The image that I saw was crimson, fiery colored, a gleaming gold.

The voice that I heard was like distant thunder, like the wind roaring in the forest, like an earthquake.

It was not the voice of my old God.

It was a thunderous pagan roar, a call my ancestors knew but which I have never heard.

It sounded prehistoric, as if from a forest on a distant coast; it rang with all the voices of the wilderness. It was full of horror yet harmonic.

My good father, surely you heard what I thought. How wonderful!

Shall I tell you about it?164 What do you think, Salome? What do you want, Elijah? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 237

After all, I told you that the world has acquired a new face, a new cover was throw over it. How odd that you didn’t know! Old Gods have become new.

The sole God is dead-yes, truly, he died, he kept too many different things inside of him, thus he disintegrated into a multitude.

Thus the world became rich overnight.

Even the soul, the unique one, lost her powerful singleness, she also disintegrated into a multitude.

Therefore men became rich overnight. How is it possible that you didn’t know this!

What else? Ah, it is so much!

The sole God became two, again a single one and a multiple one, whose body consists of many Gods.

But the single one’s body is only a man and is bigger than the sun. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 238

In LN the dialogue continues in the following way: “But Salome turned to Elijah and said, ‘Father, it seems to me that men have outstripped us.

He is right: the many is more pleasurable.

The one is too simple and always the same.’ / Elijah seemed saddened and said, ‘What about the one in this case?

Does the one still exist if it stands next to the many?’ / I answered, ‘That is your old and ingrained mistake, that the one excludes the many.

But there are many individual things.

The multiplicity of individual things is the one multiple God from whose body many Gods arise, but the uniqueness of the one thing is the other God, whose body is a man but whose spirit is as large as the world.’ / But Elijah shook his head and said, ‘That is new, my son.

Is the new good? What was, is good; and what was, will be. Is that not the truth?

Has there ever been anything new? And was what you call new, ever good?

Everything remains the same if you give it a new name.

There is nothing new, there can be nothing new; how could I then look ahead?

I look at the past and therein I see the future , as in a mirror.

And I see that nothing new happens, everything is but mere recurrence of what has been since time immemorial.

That is your being? An appearance, a darting light; tomorrow it is no longer true.

It is gone; it is as if it never was. Come, Salome, let us go.

One is mistaken in the world of men.’ / But Salome looked back and whispered to me while leaving, ‘Being and multiplicity appeal to me, even if it is not new and not eternally true.’ / Thus they disappeared into the dark night and I returned to the burden signified by my existence.

And I sought to do everything correctly that seemed to me to be a task and to take every way that seemed to me to be necessary for myself.

But my dreams became difficult and laden with anxiety, and I did not know why” (p. 546).

This continuation may have been written on a separate piece of paper; or it may have been added in the autumn of 1917, when Jung composed the manuscript of Scrutinies (evidently the case with the last paragraph here).

In Memories, Jung stated:

“The figures of the unconscious are uninformed too, and need man, or contact with consciousness, in order to attain to ‘knowledge.’

When I began working with the unconscious, I found myself much involved with the figures of Salome and Elijah.

Then they receded, but after about two years they reappeared.

To my enormous astonishment, they were completely unchanged; they spoke and acted as if nothing had happened in the meanwhile. The most incredible things had taken place in my life. I had, as it were, to begin from the beginning again, to tell them all about what had been going on, and explain things to them.

At the time I had been greatly surprised by this situation.

Only later did I understand what had happened: in the interval the two had sunk back into unconscious and into themselves- I might equally put, into timelessness.

They remained out of contact with the I and the I’s changing circumstances, and therefore were ignorant of what had happened in the world of consciousness” (p. 337).

This appears to refer to the conversation with these figures in this entry of Book 6. ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 239, fn 174

You said: [“] My God my God, why have you forsaken me,” when you hung on the cross in the final torment. Likewise we lose heart because we are not pure. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 240

Matthew 27:46:

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?

that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 240, fn 176

Luke 23:39- 43:

“And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. /

But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God,

seeing thou art in the same condemnation? /

And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss./

And he said unto Jesus, lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. /

And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 240, fn 177

[“]Yes, it is. Therefore your dreams are difficult, since you feel the torment of the depths, the suffering of the Gods.”

Can I help? Or is it superfluous that a man elevates himself to being a mediator of the Gods?

Is it presumption or should a man become a redeemer of the Gods, after men are saved through the divine savior? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 182

It is true, we need the human mediator and rescuer, because man is not only soul to us, but also God.

Since these, who are Gods to you here, are men craving for your help there, where you are God.

You must already build your divinity here and now in order to prepare the way to the crossing over.

We really need your help.

I gave you the dark and horrible dream so your face would turn toward us, and through me to the Gods.

I let their torment reach you so that you would remember the suffering Gods.”

What is their suffering? And how can I help?

“You do too much for men, rather let go of men and turn toward the Gods since they are the masters of the world, where you as a man live.

In effect you can help men only through the Gods, not directly.

The burning torments of the Gods needs to be alleviated. Men look after themselves.”

So tell me, where do I begin?

I feel their torment and mine at the same time, and yet it is not mine, both real and unreal.

“That is it; and this is where separation should occur.”

But how? My wits fail me. You must know how.

“Your wits fail quickly, but we need precisely your human wits.”

And I the wits of the Gods, and thus we both run aground and sit helplessly on the sand.

“Not entirely so. I am always a bit different from you. You are too impatient.

Comparison provides a solution, not one side taking a quick decision.

Thus it requires work and patient equalization.”

What do the Gods suffer from?

“Well, you have left them with your torment, and since then they have suffered.”

Rightly so, they have tormented men enough, now they should get a taste of it.

“But if the torment also reaches you, what have you gained then?

You cannot leave everything to the Gods or else they will draw you into their torment, if they cannot cope with it anymore on their own.

After all, they possess the power to do so, in so far as you are a man.

But men too possess a wondrous power over the Gods through their wits.”

I recognize that the torment of the Gods reached me.

Therefore I also recognize that I must yield to the Gods. What is their desire?

“They want obedience.”

All right, I will, but I fear their desire, therefore I say: I want to do what I can.

On no account will I take back onto myself all the torment that I had to leave to the Gods.

I reserve conditions for myself, as you can do in relation to someone who depends upon your help.

The Gods should recognize this and direct their desire accordingly.

There is no longer any unconditional obedience, since man is no longer a slave, but also a God of the Gods.

He demands respect, since he belongs to the world of the Gods and he is a limb that even

the Gods cannot do without. Falling to pieces before the Gods is no more.

So let their wish be heard. I shall willingly hear it out, but I shall also speak my will.

The confrontation will sort things out, each having their fitting portion.

“The Gods want you to do for their sake what you know you do not want to do.

I thought so! Of course that is what the Gods want. But do the Gods also do what I want?

I want the fruits of my labor. Where is the acknowledgement that I need?

Where is the appreciation of men? What do the Gods do for me?

They want their goals to be fulfilled, but what about mine?

“You are unbelievably defiant and rebellious.

Consider the fact that the Gods are strong.”

196I know. But for once they ought to use their strength for me.

They also want me to place mine in their service. What is their payment in kind?

Their torment?

Man suffered agony and the Gods were still not satisfied, but remained insatiable in their devising of new torments-they allowed man to become so blinded that he believed that there were no Gods at all, or that there was only one God who was a loving father, so that today someone who struggles with the Gods is even thought to be crazy.

They have thus prepared this shame too for those who recognize them, out of boundless greed for power, since leading the blind is easy. They will corrupt even their slaves.

“You do not want to meet the Gods halfway?”

I believe that has already gone on more than enough.

I rather think that the Gods are insatiable, because they have received too many sacrifices. Dearth makes for satisfaction, not abundance. May they learn dearth from me.

Who does something for me? That is the question that I must pose.

Do you really want to do anything for the Gods?

In no case will I take upon myself what the Gods would have to do.

Ask the Gods what they want, what they think of this suggestion.

“They think that it’s unheard of that you don’t want to obey.

That is why they sent their messenger before, as you will have realized.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 241-243

In LN the next three paragraphs were replaced by the following:

“‘You speak the truth,’ my soul replied, ‘the Gods need a human mediator and rescuer.

With this man paves the way to crossing over and to divinity.

I gave you a frightening dream so that your face would turn to the Gods.

I let their torment reach you so that you would remember the suffering Gods.

You do too much for men since they are the masters of your world.

You can in effect help men only through the Gods, not directly.

Alleviate the burning torment of the Gods'” (p. 548) ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 241, fn 183

The following paragraph was replaced in LN by the following:

“Then my soul divided herself.

As a bird she swooped up to the higher Gods and as a serpent she crawled down to the lower Gods.

Soon afterward, she returned and said, troubled, ‘The Gods are outraged that you do not want to be obedient’ “(p. 550). ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 243, fn 202

That bothers me not a whit. I have done everything to placate the Gods.

May they do their share now. I can wait.

I shall speak to you tomorrow again to hear what your opinion is.

I want to be acknowledged by you.

I’ll have no one telling me at leisure what to do, but the Gods may inform me what they’ll give me for my efforts on their behalf. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 244

Well, my soul, what say the Gods? It was indicated that I looked like a devil.

I want to see clearly. Speak! “The Gods give in.

You have broken the compulsion, therefore you look like the devil as he got around the edicts of the Gods.

He is the rebel against the eternal law, to which, thanks to the devil, there are also exceptions.

Thus one does not necessarily have to. The devil is helpful in this respect.

He helps you to come to yourself. You think that this is a detour.

The detour via the Gods is necessary, since they are and need to be taken into consideration,

otherwise you will fall prey to their law.

At least you should sacrifice to the Gods.[‘] ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 245

The remainder of this entry was replaced in LN by the following:

“I will let no one tell me what to do. The Gods may devise a service in return. You can go.

I will call you tomorrow so that you can tell me what the Gods have decided” (ibid.) ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 245, fn 204

The preceding sentence was replaced in LN by

“therefore I painted you as a devil, since he is the only one among the Gods who bows to no compulsion” (ibid.). ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 245, fn 207

The previous line was not reproduced here in LN, and the following was added:

“Here the soul drew near to my ear and whispered, ‘The Gods are even happy to turn a blind eye from time to time, since basically they know very well that it would be bad for life if there were no exception to eternal law.

Hence their tolerance of the devil.’ / She then raised her voice and cried loudly, ‘The Gods have mercy upon you and have accepted your sacrifice!’ / And so the devil helped me to cleanse myself from commingling in bondage, and the pain of one-sidedness pierced my heart and the wound of being torn apart scorched me” (p. 551). ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 245-246, fn 210

-P-h-<D: You are, Oh master, in my garden. Helena and I are your servants.

You can find accommodation with us, because Philemon and Baucis have become what Simon and Helena were.

We are the hosts of the Gods. We granted hospitality to the terrible worm.

And since you came forward, we took you in. It is our garden that surrounds you. ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 246

<D: You are, Oh master, here in the world of men. Men have changed.

They are no longer the servants and no longer the swindlers of the Gods, but they grant hospitality to the Gods.

Your brother came before you, Oh master, the terrible worm, whom you dismissed, when he gave you clever counsel on the mountain in the desert with a tempting voice.

You took the counsel, but dismissed the worm. He found a place with us.

But where he is, you will be also, since he is your immortal brother.

When I was Simon, I sought to escape him with the ploy of magic and thus I escaped you.

Now that I gave the worm a place in my garden, you come to me. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 247

My God, what uncertainty! What paralysis! If I err, let it become clear!

My soul, speak to me. Is it fatigue? Is it too much? It overcame me suddenly. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 248

Tuesday. On July 14, Conrad Schneiter presented “On .the Symbol” to the Association for Analytical Psychology.

In the discussion, Jung commented,

“Godlikeness is a belated condition and can only develop once man as someone different aspires to Godlikeness-equates himself with nature.

Deification plays an important role in the Mysteries, it is done intentionally.

According to the ancient belief deification happened after death.

Yet in the teachings of the Mysteries it can be reached already in one’s life-time.”

To this Hans Trib asked, “What is the difference between the mysteries and abnormal mental states?”

Jung replied, “These are particular strong feelings, which are not general ( = normal). E.g. Schopenhauer: The world is my representation.

Nietzsche’s overman: the world comes from his will. His highest principle is his own will.

It is not that explicit in the case of patients in analysis, rather symptomatically implied.

The Godlikeness can be made intentionally or one can be seized by it [‘being chased by God’].” ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 248, fn 234

My God, I want from myself what is right.

“Do you really want it?”

Why do you doubt? My soul, why do you not help? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 249

Once more I forgot that post-Christianity has begun: when souls enter the cloister and tie cords and fast.

God have mercy!

Yes, my dear fattened Christian soul, I realize that my virtues hinder you from the cure of the soul.

Become good, Christianity has fully made you into a monster.

The witch trials could already have taught us that.

Damned foolishness of these people: they should have roasted their souls, instead they grilled their own flesh and with this they fed the paunch of their souls.

My God, let it not come to pass that my work, my goal, is devoured by souls. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 252

Why are the bird, the heavenly mother, and heaven missing?

They are all enclosed in the star.

When you look toward the star, you will look through them. They are the bridges to the star.

They make up the single 7th light, the highest, the floating, which rises with roaring flapping of

wings, released from the embrace of the tree of light with 6 branches and I blossom, in which the star God lay slumbering. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 254-255

Cf. Jean Paul, “Good women must always bear and hold the ladder to heaven, on which men ascend into the heavenly blue and sunset.”

Blumen-, Frucht- 1wd Dornenstiicke oder Ehestand, Tod und Hochzeit des Annenadvokaten F. St. Siebenkiis, in Jean Paul, Siimtliche Werke, ed. Norbert Miller (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1959- ), vol. 1/ 2, p. 98.

Jung had a copy of Jean Paul’s Titan (1803), a novel.

Genesis 28:12 recounts Jacob’s dream: “And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.” ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 255, fn 256

In 1925 Jung discussed the role of the anima and animus in relationships in his paper “Marriage as a Psychological Relationship” (CW 17, §§ 324ff.).

On the background to this, see Martin Liebscher, “Eros und Distans bei Platon, Weininger und Nietzsche,” in The Racehorse <if Genius: Literary and Cultural Comparison , ed. Martin Liebscher, B. Schofield, and G. Weiss-Sussex (Munich: Iudicium, 2009). ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 255, fn 257

In the Orphic theogony, Aether and Chaos are born from Chaos.

Chronos makes an egg in Aether.

The egg splits into two, and Phanes, the first of the Gods, appears.

K. C. Guthrie ·writes,

“He is imagined as marvelously beautiful, a figure of shining light, with golden wings on his shoulders, four eyes, and the heads of various animals.

He is of both sexes, since he is to create the race of the gods unaided” (Orpheus and Greek Religion :AStudyoftheOrphicMove111ent [London: Methuen, 1935], p. 80). In Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, while discussing mythological conceptions of creative force, Jung drew attention to the “Orphic figure of Phanes, the’ Shining One,’ the first-born, the ‘Father of Eros.’

In Orphic terms, Phanes also denotes Priapos, a god of love, androgynous, and equal to the Theban Dionysus Lysios.

The Orphic meaning of Phanes is the same as that of the Indian Kama, the God of love, which is also a cosmogonic principle” (CW B, § 223).

Jung also noted here that “Agni, the fire, was worshipped as a golden-winged bird”(§ 295).

The attributes of Phanes here match the classical depictions, and he is described as the brilliant one, a God of beauty and light.

Jung’s copy of Isaac Cory’s Ancient fragments ef the Phoenician, Chaldean, Egyptian, Tyrian, Carthaginian, Indian, Persian, and Other ·writers; ·with an Introductory Dissertation; And an Inquiry into the Philosophy and Trinity of the Ancients, has underlinings in the section containing the Orphic theogony, and a slip of paper and mark by the follo-wing statement: “They imagine as the god a conceiving and conceived egg, or a white garment, or a cloud,

because Phanes springs forth from these” (London: William Pickering, 1832, p. 310).

Jung titled his first mandala sketch, dated August 2 , 1917, “[Phanes] (LN , appendix A).

In April 1919 he painted a portrait of Phanes in LN (Image u3; see appendix, p. 141).

In his inscription to the image, he described Phanes as “image of the divine child …. I called him [Phanes], because he is the newly appearing God” (p. 358).

Jung also painted two portraits of Phanes, giving one to Emma Jung and one to Toni Wolff (The Art of C. G. Jung, cats. 50, 51, pp. 122- 23).

Phanes also figures in two further paintings (Ibid. , cats. 52, 53, pp. 124- 25).

In cat. 53, the background figures on the left and right respectively are Ka and Philemon. ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 260, fn 267

“I believe that you should pray.”

To whom?

“To your God, that he bring you the light, otherwise it can’t come along.

It needs the bridge of prayer.

You ought to leave no means untried. Where nothing helps, prayer helps.

Prayer helps your God. He has the light, I don’t have it.

I can see only from the distance, through you. But you don’t see it.”

I’ll do that. ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 264

By God, a corpse! Stop- oh God- it is I myself. I, a dead man, who buried the flame under himself?

Did you weep over my death, Salome? How did I die? Who killed me?

Did someone murderously shed my blood?

My brother, self, how did it come about that you died?

That you buried the flame under you? Did grief kill you? Did age [132/!33] spirit you off? Dreadful hour! I myself lie among the dead! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 267

“Temples in deserts? Secret societies? Ceremonies? Rituals? Colorful robes?

Golden images of Gods of terrible aspect?

None of them-those branded by the spirit of love, burnt by the fire recognize each other and speak the same language in hidden places.

Small indications of the spirit placed here and there, hidden fire in hearts and minds.”

What the world recognizes turns to water. The genuine is rare and unrecognized.

But it works from the few to the many, who do not recognize it.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 268

Bastard, soul daimon, why are you tugging at me? I spoke to the Gods. Will you speak of men? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 272

You gave stolen goods. Doesn’t Godliness also belong to man?

He will claim what is his own. He won’t resemble you daimons, but his inner humanity

is equal to the Gods.

It will not serve. It will demand.

“You want to deify man?”

Not man, but man’s primordial kernel. That deserves worship.

I gave you enough. I want to give you some more, as much as you deserve.

But I deserve human freedom. You should give it to me. Man deserves it.

You Gods want slaves. But man wants to be a law himself.

This must be. This will be accomplished. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 273

In Greek mythology, Prometheus creates mankind out of clay.

He steals fire from the gods to give to mankind, for which he is chained to a rock, where an eagle feeds on his ever-renewed liver.

In 1921, Jung wrote an extended analysis of Carl Spitteler’s epic poem Prometheus and Epimetheus (1881) and Goethe’s Prometheus Fragment (1773) (Psychological Types, CW 6, chapter 5). ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 275, fn 298

What is it that fills me with anxiety and horror?

What death rattle is in the air? What is falling down from high mountains?

What load will crush and smother us? What shadows of what things fall on us?

Speak, my soul!

“Help the Gods, sacrifice to the Gods; the worm crawled up to heaven, it starts to cover the stars.

It eats the dome of the sevenfold blue heaven with a tongue of fire. It plots its way with blood, it strews the bones of the heavenly ones over fields.

What are you talking about?

“Open your ears, let my words in: you too are being devoured. The fire is licking you.

Stick -to the stone; crawl into the stone and wait in the narrow enclosure until the torrent of fire is past.

Snow falls from the mountains, because the wind of fire bowls down high over the clouds. Hence the snowfall. I told you long ago.

Worms of fire, rings of flames travel over earth and sky. Hold your breath, so that you don’t breathe in poisonous smoke.

Contain yourself and sacrifice to the Gods. Men begin to rave. The God comes.

Prepare yourself to receive him; but hide yourself in stone for he is total radiance, totally frightful fire.

Why torment yourself now with silly human thoughts?

Open your eyes wide, prick up your ears, look and see how a God arrives.

The firmest devotion is essential, otherwise you will burn. listen to me, listen to me, the God comes.

Just this once, hold yourself, be silent, look within, listen within, so that the God doesn’t consume you in flames.”

What else?

“Nothing further, enough.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 276

“// I am alone-god-forsakenly alone-in an abyss of solitude-a sea of nothingness around me-a frozen ice-cold nothingness.

Black and blue misty skies hang over it. A graphite colored ocean with stiffened horrors.

A sun left me and now lights far-off mankind.

They celebrate the morning, I mourn the night.

My husband left over distant seas, the spouse who never embraced me-a bride of God in the empty bed of the ice-cold night.

I send up a cry that cuts through the clouds like a keen spear. But no one hears me. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 277

In his fantasy of December 28, 1913, the figure from the novel whom he encountered informed him, “Only what is human and what you call banal and hackneyed contains the wisdom that you seek” (Book 2 , p. 208).

In the opening section of LN, Jung wrote, “But the small, narrow, and banal is not nonsense, but one of both of the essences of the Godhead. / I resisted recognizing that the everyday

belongs to the image of the Godhead” (p. 121). ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 277, fn 302

I am alone- the Gods stroll on high paths over the earth and moon. My bosom wails.

My heart does not love and will not be loved.

The human daimons stole from me and live from my joy and my smiles.

I am robbed and impoverished, abandoned. Was it you who stole from me?’

Was it the Gods?’ Who took my sun from me?’

Who prevented the flourishing of my life?’

I remain in empty space, I moan and my spouse shines over the human race.

May you be cursed, you men, you stole the fire.

You piled up sun torches above your houses, you filled your air with solar radiance.

Why should men live?’ And I go hungry.

I pleaded to the Gods, for them to ruin men with the fire which they stole from my heaven.

You have gone over to the horde of the thieves, the rebels who secretly stole the fire.

May my curse strike you, you dupers and soul tormentors.”

You are full of revenge and hate.

But I say to you, gone are the days of human torment.

Know now what being abandoned by God means. What is your complaint now?’

“I have no house to live in. My God has left me. Didn’t I give my gift to men?’

Didn’t they thank me for it?’ Now they robbed me, those ungrateful and shameless ones.

They left me laments and tears and delight themselves with plunder.

You should know that you stole it from me.

The fire that burns over your heads belongs to me.

Borrowed, stolen radiance-radiant light which belongs to me, a wedding gift of my husband. Oh, but he too left me.

His golden barque rose on the blue palaces of the sea bed, where our celebration was laid out, a celebration of the Gods and daimons.

Where does he wander, the faithless one?’ ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 278

Your lamentation makes me want to yawn.

I regret that you feel so forlorn, since the God appeared to men.

You held him back too long. You are just a daimon, why do you want to love Gods?

Get used to your love for me. For you must live with me and not with the God.

I am your daimon, to whom you belong.

Why do you want to stage pastoral plays with Gods? Come with me.

Bad things will happen to you only if you blink at the sun. You have to take my path.

The godforsaken may turn to men. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 279

“What are you thinking of? He is the Abraxas of the earth.

No one bestows joy on the earthly ones as he does.

He is the hermaphrodite, who for joy unites what is separated.

He makes you strong and happy on earth. He preserves the life and happiness of men.

How could you grow without him? You poor fools!

If you don’t know how to serve the Gods, at least serve yourselves.” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 279

You are not the only one who must do this.

Many must do the same, so that Phanes becomes a kind God of beauty, light, and joy. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 282

!. I prayed for you to the inner God, to the shining one, so that he can carry forth a torch. Do you see, do you have light? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 285

Serp. The history of men and Gods, necessary errors that once lived and still obscure the view. An old hoe, useful for cultivation, not a plough that quickly turns the soil.

An old instrument, you understand, once good, but now replaced by something better. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 293

Phil. He is earth, he will live. He has fulfilled everything.

He has seen everything, he has come close to the eternal fire. He is fulfilled.

Peace will be granted him. He is released, since I have released myself from him.

He remains in himself and covers his world. It is not wanting in nourishment.

He received his life from the God, it turns back there. I carry it further.

Hail to him who can sink into himself; he is fulfilled.

The uplifting force has released itself from him. The golden bird spread out its wings.

It draws this man neither toward the below nor toward the above.

He is earth-he floats in the middle. He sees the sun, I see the God. His shadow became fire.

He is content and kisses the earth. His star shines from afar.

His star is my brother, a distant God, whom I don’t serve.

This man was my vessel, a my gate of entrance and ascent.

I am not his soul and am not his God.

His interior is foreign to me, a foreign star seed, which fell into this world.

Through him I grew. I was born when I was old and reach my youth in old age, and finally dissolve myself in the maternal body of God, when this man dies.

This man is a star seed-where did he come from? He fell from the indeterminate.

He is earth but yet does not belong to the earth. He is foreign.

Therefore man will never incline to the law of the earth.

He changes Abraxas, but his star never mixes itself with it.

He is no child of the sun, but its brother. He put on a sun dress and

covered his distant blue light in solar colors. I was hidden in his mantle and I am released from his mantle. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 296

(to Ph). Sublime one, you who sit in the fire, in the glow of eternal bliss, listen to this request and teach us about you and your God.

Phil. This man would like to know who I am. Did I not tell him who I was and who I am?

I did not say who I will be. I will be Phanes.

I will dissolve myself in his splendor when this man dies.

I do not die, I am already Phanes, not a man but a flame of God. I was more earthy than earth. I was subterranean, I grew upward, I grew through this man. I overcame him.

I am his work, what he has lived. He is not I. He belongs to earth. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 6, Page 297

In the autumn of 1917, in the manuscript of Scrutinies, Jung wrote, concerning his changing relation to Philemon: “Since the God has ascended to the upper realms, Philemon also has become different.

All of this faded when the God arose and only Philemon kept that language.

But I felt that he went on other ways than I did.

Probably the most part of what I have written in the earlier part of this book was given to me by Philemon.

Consequently I was as if intoxicated.

But now I noticed that Philemon assumed a form distinct from me” (LN, p. 483). ~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 297, fn 343

Cary Baynes ·wrote about a discussion with Jung on January 26, 1924, in which he described the Red Book in the following way:

“There were various figures speaking, Elias, Father Philemon, etc. but all appeared to be phases of what you thought ought to be called ‘the master.’ You were sure that this

latter was the same who inspired Buddha, Mani, Christ, Mahomet- all those who may be said to have communed with God.

But the others had identified with him.

You absolutely refused to. It could not be for you, you said, you had to remain the psychologist- the person who understood the process” (LN, p. 68).~The Black Books, V. 6, Page 298, fn 345

Volume VII

There is an undated typed insert at the beginning of Book 7 that appears to be remarks on a dream:

“Remarks: / The felling of the tree (Nebuchadnezzar) has to do with the felling of the spruce in the Attis myth. / The giant is also Izdubar, who is actually the rising sun, hence a demi-God.

I even had the idea that he is Christ as “novus sol,” or Mithras, who also is a rising sun.- The sun personified by a man is the pope (vicar of Christ in the church) .

This is the big tree that develops.

That would mean:

my work consists of the felling of a powerful and acknowledged, shining man, who is seen everywhere (i.e., papacy or church) – and what does the church say to that? / What does the woman who interferes with me signify?-She seemed to me like the Vetula, the old.

One can see how the church interferes: it sets harder conditions, it wants to slay me, and then I must be brought into an impossible situation in order for it to have a legitimate reason to proceed against me.

And finally a secret assembly is convened.

But it is already too late, because at the moment, when I enter through the rear door, it has already become known to the entire world, and the Americans weigh in, and the world’s delegate appears in the consistory.”

On Izdubar, see January 8, 1914, Book 3, pp. 119ff.

Jung commented on the dream of Nebuchadnezzar on several occasions (“The Transcendent Function,” 1916, CW 8, § 163; “General Aspects of Dream Psychology,” 1928, CW 8, § 484; “On the Nature of Dreams,” 1945, CW 8, § 559). “Vetula” is Latin for “old woman.” ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 147, fn 1

Patience, you are still too dark and have given us nothing, but just begged.

Ha. I don’t know anything beyond Philemon. He is not a man-why then does this man care? I too am not a man-I’m just a remnant.

Why do you hesitate? Out with it.

Ha. leftovers aren’t so tasty. leftovers stink to heaven. The Gods be damned! What torment!

Come to yourself and leave the Gods out of it.

Ha. Yes-to my self-to be it, yes- but to say it-I could strangle you.

You couldn’t try it even once. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 151

Phanes is the God who rises agleam from the waters.

Phanes is the smile of dawn.

Phanes is the resplendent day.

He is the eternal undying present.

He is the gushing of the streams.

He is the soughing of the wind.

He is hunger and satiation.

He is love and lust.

He is mourning and consolation.

He is promise and fulfilment.

He is the light that illuminates every darkness.

He is the eternal day.

He is the silver light of the moon.

He is the flickering of the stars.

He is the shooting star that flashes and falls and lapses.

He is the stream of shooting stars that returns every year.

He is the returning sun and moon.

He is the trailing star that brings wars and noble wine.

He is the boon and fullness of the year.

He fulfils the hours with life-filled enchantment.

He is love’s embrace and whisper.

He is the warmth of friendship.

He is the hope that enlivens the void.

He is the magnificence of all renewed suns.

He is the joy at every birth.

He is the blooming flowers.

He is the velvety butterfly’s wing.

He is the scent of blooming gardens that fills the nights.

He is the song of joy.

He is the tree of light.

He is perfection, everything done better.

He is everything euphonious.

He is the well-measured.

He is the sacred number.

He is the promise of life.

He is the contract and the sacred pledge.

He is the diversity of sounds and colors.

He is the sanctification of morning, noon, and evening.

He is the benevolent and the gentle.

He is salvation. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 151158

In his first sermon, the Dhamma-Kakka-Ppavattana Sutta, the Buddha articulated the middle way (or path), also known as the eightfold path:

“There are two extremes, 0 Bhikkhus, which the man who has given up the world ought not

to follow- the habitual practice, on the one hand, of those things whose attraction depends upon the passions, and especially of sensuality- a low and pagan way ( of seeking satisfaction) unworthy, unprofitable, and fit only for the worldly-minded- and the habitual practice, on the other hand, of asceticism (or self-mortification) , which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. / “There is a middle path, 0 Bhikkhus, avoiding these two extremes, discovered by the Tathagata- a path which opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which leads to peace of mind, to the higher wisdom, to full enlightenment, to Nirvana! .. . it is this noble eightfold path, that is to say:

‘Right views; Right aspirations; Right speech; Right conduct; Right livelihood; Right effort; Right mindfulness; and Right contemplation'” (Buddhist Suttas, Muller, Sacred Books of the East, vol. II, trans. T. W. Rhys Davids, 1881, p. 147).

In LN, in the “Incantations,” Izdubar, the “God in the egg,” is referred to as the “light of the middle way” (LN, p. 300 ).

In Psychological Types, Jung noted that

“the religions of India and China, and particularly Buddhism which combines the spheres of both, possess the idea of a redemptive middle way of magical efficacy which is attainable by means of a conscious attitude.”

He termed this “redemptive principle from the problem of opposites” the “uniting symbol” and commented on its articulation in Hinduism and Taoism (CW 6, §§ 326ff.). ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 159, fn 18

Do not wish to be perfect like the Gods, but attend to your poverty and nakedness,

so that the imperfect and weak in you does not completely perish. Your perfection

would be obnoxious and an unfair burden for your neighbor.

Consider bearing your poverty yourself rather than burdening your neighbor with

the sham of your perfection. Do not forget to give alms to your poverty.

But when you pray, do not beg the Gods, but wish that the glory of God perfects itself, that his law which is laid up in you fulfils itself, that you are able to bear your poverty in modesty, so that the light that illumines the darkness of your path may stream brighter. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 160

Therefore I say unto you: care for your life, what you eat and drink, and also for your

body and what you put on. Isn’t the dish as important as life?

And doesn’t your body also need clothing?

Shouldn’t your body also be healthy and your life secured, so that you don’t become a burden to your brothers?

Aren’t they also as poor as you?

Look at the birds of the sky: don’t they carry plumage for their protection?

Don’t they build warm nests? Don’t they seek their nourishment with luck and hard work? Have you ever seen a raven feed others?

Therefore serve your body, the patient servant, so that it remains healthy.

Serve Help your soul, the arrogant daimon, so that all false godliness and higher humanity fall from her, so that you may look at God.

Nothing will come to you that you have not earned with honest effort.

Do penance for every unearned gift that heaven has sent you, so that you don’t contaminate yourself with godliness. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 160

In Memories, Jung recalled:

“Later, Philemon became relativized by yet another figure, whom I called Ka.

In ancient Egypt the ‘King’s Ka’ was his earthly form, the embodied soul.

In my fantasy the ka-soul came from below, out of the earth as out of a deep shaft.

I did a painting of him, showing him in his earth-bound form , as a herm with base of stone and upper part of bronze.

High up in the painting appears a kingfisher’s wing, and between it and the head of Ka floats a round, glowing nebula of stars.

Ka’s expression has something demonic about it- one might also say Mephistophelian.

In one hand he holds something like a colored pagoda, or a reliquary, and in the other a stylus

with which he is working on the reliquary.

He is saying, ‘ I am he who buries the Gods in gold and gems.’

Philemon has a lame foot, but was a winged spirit, whereas Ka represented a kind of earth demon or metal demon.

Philemon was the spiritual aspect, ‘the meaning,’ Ka, on the other hand was a spirit of nature like the Anthroparion of Greek alchemy- with which at that time I was still unfamiliar.

Ka was he who made everything real, but who also obscured the kingfisher spirit, the meaning, or replaced it by beauty, the ‘eternal reflection.’

In time I was able to integrate both figures through the study of alchemy” (pp. 209- 10 ) ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 163, fn 36

On October 15, 1920, he discussed a painting with Constance Long, who was in analysis with him.

The painting appears to be cat. in The Art of C.G. Jung (p. 126).

Her notes shed light on Jung’s understanding of the relation of Philemon and Ka:

“The 2 figures on either side are personifications of dominants ‘fathers .’

The one is the creative father, Ka, the other, Philemon that one who gives form and law (the formative instinct) Ka would equal Dionysus & P = Apollo.

Philemon gives formulation to the things within elements of the collective unc. .. . Philemon gives the idea (maybe of a god) but it remains floating, distant & indistinct because all the things he invents are winged.

But Ka gives substance & is called the one who buries the gods in gold & marble.

He has a tendency to imprison them in matter, & so they are in danger of losing their spiritual meaning, & becoming buried in stone.

So the temple may be the grave of God, as the church has become the grave of Xt.

The more the church develops, the more Xt dies.

Ka must not be allowed to produce too much- you must not depend on substantiation; but if too little substance is ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 163, fn 36

In Liber Secundus chapter 21, “The Magician,” Jung wrote:

“But what mystery are you intimating to me with your name, Oh ? Truly you Philemon are the lover who once took in the Gods” (LN, p. 407) ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 165, fn 43

Ka. What magnificent words! Do you believe that you can hoodwink me with them?

The red of your mantle is blood, living human blood.

It testifies against you from eternal justice. It cries of crimes against the innocent.

Human blood will do just fine to stain your mantle.

Phil. Truly, you speak spoke no lie. I am a crime of the Gods against man.

His betters commit crime against him. My hand is red from the blood of the guiltless.

I tore the eternal good from his flesh. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 166

In Scrutinies, following the ascent of the son of the frogs to heaven, Jung wrote: “You must know that neither a God of love nor a loving God has yet arisen, but instead a worm of fire crawled up, a magnificent frightful entity that lets fire rain on the earth, producing lamentations” (IN, p. 463). ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 166, fn 48

Cf. Kena Upanishad, 1,”By whom impelled, by whom compelled, / does the mind soar forth? / By whom enjoined does the breath, / march on as the first? By whom is this speech impelled, / with which people speak? / And who is the god that joins / the sight and hearing? / That which is the hearing behind hearing, / the thinking behind speech.

/ the sight behind sight- / It is also the breathing behind breathing-/ freed completely from these, / the wise become immortal, / when they depart from the world” (trans. Patrick Olivelle [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996], p. 227). ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 169, fn 52

And the speck of dust is as vast as a heaven, as many heavens, numberless worlds, since where is infinity limited by a border?

If Philemon goes to the great Gods and you sit small and solitary in the shadow of the earth-where does your I go, the living I, which you yourself are and without which you cannot be? Why do you feel the eternity of your I? Indeed, why do you want the eternity of your I?

And why is it a sick relinquishment not to want eternity?

The light of the day blinds you, it indicates the opposite to you.

You see with eyes of the day, listen with ears of the day, wish with a heart of the day and therefore want to go up with Philemon to the great Gods and but you are not the sum of the great Gods you can see the deceptive appearance of this hope exposed daily.

You lie to your own face, if you believe such.

See with my eyes, listen with my ears! A laughable and serious mystery!

Why am I damned to trail after Philemon?

He is the worthy and beautiful radiance, only my shadow-he speaks great works, he is a mountebank of beauty and truth-but my truth makes one laugh-the Gods laugh at the mere mortals-you did not laugh when the great God Man was spoken of- you shuddered out of respect-your Christ even called himself his Son and you found it so beautiful and worthy-but that your immortal I-son will be a dwarf, who wouldn’t laugh?

The great God Man laughed at his laughable immortality.

But the dwarf thought that the great God takes satisfaction in him.

The tree becomes a leaf. The leaf is the I, as well as the whole tree.

The I of the tree becomes manifold in the leaves and each leaf is the whole tree-I.

Yes, it is smaller than the whole tree and yet not less than the I. Is not every cell of the tree-! an I, and again every grain in the cell an I of the cell, the I of the leaf, the I of the tree?

How many worlds does a tiny grain contain?

What is the smallest unit of life? How great must something be, that it can still live?

And how small should something be, that it can no longer live?

As the Son of Man was shrouded in the great God Man before his appearance and was one with him, so in you is the Son-I enclosed in the smaller world, your I not less than you yourself. It is infinitely much smaller than you-but what is small? What is great?

And because he is enclosed shrouded in you till the final hour, so he is called the shrouded one or he who is enclosed in the egg.

Yes, he flies away like a bird at the hour of death. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 169-170

Ka: Do you recognize me?

I built the temple, full of eternal beauty, the palaces of death, the grave chambers of the Gods.

Do you see my beauty, my art? My thoughts, which have become gold and precious stones? Where is truth now? Speak! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 171

One cannot bypass hell, instead one must experience a part of it and accept God in the depths and the fight with the evil.”

Jung then followed with a lengthy intervention:

“The parallel with Dante is very good as an educational introduction to analysis:

The Inferno and Purgatorio are the place below- the repressed unconscious.

Once purified through knowledge one is freed from the compulsive conditions of the ucs. = the ascent to the mountain of salvation, = the union with the soul = the liberated individual can

accept his essence (his soul). / But for us, does the soul correspond to Dante’s Beatrice? Through the incorporation of the hitherto repressed components, the individuated man becomes different from his former person (which had been a compromise formation between the environment and his own, and a possibility for a good adaptation with repression).

But together with the repressed elements collective elements emerge from the ucs. as well. When the union with the soul arises, man is also united with the unconsciously mirrored cosmos.

Hence he becomes godlike and not concrete.

The individual aspect is felt, but man is not differentiated from the world, in mystical participation with it.

/ At first the soul is a collective content- the figure that comprises the collective psyche into one.

Since in the medieval understanding the collective psyche (God) is beautiful, it is the soul at first.

But we see from that, that God is a duality.

Luther speaks from the deus manifestus and the deus absconditus, who is entirely different

from the other.

God is a daimon in the collective psyche, beyond good and evil.

/ The manifestation of the collective

psyche confronts us in the form of the concept of the soul, which is daimonic for the primitives.

Only in the Christian understanding does it becomes beautiful (because God imputes the attributes of the summum bonum).

When we discover the image of the soul in analysis, it might have sublime features – or its opposite.

(In Spitteler’s Prometheus the soul is a sublime woman- and a tiger at the same time, and Pr.’s connection with his soul is not a state of paradise, but of torture.)

This is where the parallel with Dante can cause misunderstandings.

The initial union of the individual with the collective psyche is a sublime moment- but also a torture and danger as the psychological reality is equally real as the outer world- even more so for the primitive.

The collective psyche is a real power as is the external world.

The coll. ucs. appears to us at first as projected on to the external world.

Thus the identity with the coll. ucs. is an identity with the surrounding world.

The relatedness is a pantheistic feeling (a mystical feeling).

But for contemporary man the loss of the I is so vast, that he cannot bear it.

(The Indian solution of Tat-Tvam-Asi [Chandogya Upanishad, 6.8.7: “That you are”], expressing the identity of the self and ultimate reality is no solution for us.)

The sensation of a universal connectivity is a paralysis and asks for contestation.

Otherwise we are in Heimarmene.

Already the meaning of the ancient mysteries intended to free oneself from it. – This is why the usage of a new function is necessary.

The problem is: in relation to the world the restoration of the persona appears ( the former compromise formation) but- in front of itself- differentiated from it.

In relation to the coll. ucs. there must also be a differentiating and connection function- the ucs. – persona: the soul.

/ The question of the Christian view in practical analysis: for the l. part of analysis the psychology of the Christian view is useful.

At later stages we encounter the problem of a one-sided definition of the concept of God.” Heimarmene is the Stoic concept of fate.

In 1944, Jung described this as “the dependence of character and destiny on certain moments in time” (Psychology and Alchemy, CW I2, § 40). ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 171, fn 57

My friend: and I? You forgot mine. I praise your God.

I praise the luminous one, the guider, the consoler.

I praise the light that receives you, that leads you up, that illumines you. That is my truth.

That is the third principle: I follow the inner light, as I obey the sun that illumines my day.

Ka: The God of the grain of sand?

Yes, truly, the God of the grain of sand.

Ka. You base yourself on a nothing.

I am, that is something.

Ka: I cannot deny you, yet you are so small.

All the greater is my God.
What are you saying? Do you really believe in this God?
What, did you not just praise him?
True, but my feeling quickly changed.
That’s why you are my soul, a changing moon. Your light is borrowed.

You will wax again tomorrow. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 172

Ka: You are thinking of that piece of heavenly lodestone that fell from I know not

where-from somewhere into procreation? Has the rust still not eaten your iron fetish?

That is your God, is it not? The same, about whom Philemon poured out great words?

“I” You speak the truth.

The little something that is solid, which I was yesterday and still am today and tomorrow will always still be, that is my God, my guide, a flickering fire of light on an inhospitable sea.

Ka. You truly see what sits in the heart for you-God knows from where it fell-on the horizon?

“I” I’m sure that what sits in my heart also appears on the horizon.

It will manifest itself somewhere.

Ka. Found-called the people-the one, the most precious and largest pearl-is a sickness of the mollusk. In what way does your God differ from the pearl? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 172

Can you deny that your God is a sickness?

The infirmity of the I, which ends when death breaks the shell?

You still know that I agree with Philemon that the obliteration of the I, the pulverizing of that something that still lies uncrushed and undissolved between the hammer and anvil, would be the worthiest thing men could wish for?

Hot, unforgiving light above, red suffocating glow of coals below-and why?

Only because the fetish-grain does not want to be released.

It would be better if you dissolved yourself in the light, but the very best would be if you became the lower glow yourself.

So what do you want: Philemon or Ka? Or if you prefer the day side-Christ or the Buddha?

May my God help me: I can only choose myself: I choose this grain of sand between the four sublime brothers.

Ka. Consider that with such a decision you have rejected the sublime ones and place yourself above them.

“I” You’re wrong, holy rebel; what is a grain of sand between the four noble ones?

May my God help me, so that I don’t choose a grain of sand instead of a sublime one out of

pride and self-presumption.

What is this seed to you?

It is a mere nothing to you, and yet it is my God, which I prefer to all Gods, since it is my God, my fetish stone; not better than others, simply better for me, since it is my God.

I concur. I can feel your words.

Ka. How? You renounce salvation? Holiness? Eternal truth?

The communion of the holy teaching?

“I” I don’t mean rebellion against that, nor ingratitude.

Praised be the sublime ones for the sake of their wisdom; However, my God wants something else, to be the grain of sand between the four sublime ones.

Ka. Strange-I really know nothing of this God.

My darkness doesn’t seem to illumine him properly-I see only a grain of meteoric iron-come here, Philemon, and tell me now how you see this fetish stone.

Ph. Now truly, he is a God, his light fills the immensity of space. So I see him.

Water flows away from he who sits at the source of the stream. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 174

My soul, speak, what do you see, and how do you see?
I see Ka and what he does. He is right there with you. He is doing you harm.
What is he doing?
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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 174-175

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, V. 7, Page 174, fn 68

None other than yourself. You painted his image.

“You should make no image, not even a likeness,” said Yahweh-preferably not, since just that enchants the enchanter and all false Gods.

However the image isn’t the only reason for the imprisonment.

The essential thing is that Ka has been accepted by us.

Where there is shadow, the light cannot be far.

The shadow casts out light and light casts out shadow.

Yes, <D is captured and Ka no less. Therefore they quarrel. What is it with sublimity?

When one looks at it closely? Yes, Ka is held captive. Who caught light and shadow?

Who else than you? You call them the blessed ones?

Did you see the “blessed ones” caught, creeping around, peering at holes through which one could escape into a distant twilight?

But they do harm to you, because you still empower them and call them the blessed ones.

So they claim for themselves what belongs to you. You will be robbed.

Both are cunning, clever beyond all measure.

One gives you a false splendor and the other gives you a false shadow.

Do you now see, who the master is?

Where does the upper blessed come together with the lower blessed one?

In the mediating everyday, it seems to me. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 176

But tell me more. What else did you see?

Your God is the one that keeps both of them captive and imprisoned. He is powerful.

A God above the Gods.

Why am I inhibited when I think of him?
You must be inhibited, since you have nothing to think about him.
But the same happens with feeling.
So must it be. He is not to be felt, nor touched.
But then in what relation am I to him? How do I perceive him? How do I speak to

him? What is he to me?

You are embedded in him, you swim in him, like the earth and its air in the world

aether, the contradictory and incomprehensible thing. Just so is the God, your God.

You are in God, when you are in yourself. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 176

Jung devoted a chapter of Psychological Types to a discussion of what he called “the relativity of the God concept in Meister Eckhart,” which he described in the following way: “Under the ‘relativity of God’ I understand the view according to which God is not ‘absolute,’ i.e., wholly ‘cut off’ from the human subject and existing outside and beyond all human conditions, but in a certain sense dependent on him; and that there is a reciprocal and essential relation between man and God, whereby one can understand on the one hand man as a function of God, and on the other hand God as a function of man” (CW 6, § 412).

He also cited the following lines from the Cherubinic Wanderer of Angelus Silesius, the pen name of Johann SchefHer (1624- 1677):

“I am not outside God and God is not outside of me” (CW 6, § 432).

For Jung’s annotations in his copy, see my C.G.Jung: A Biography in Books, p. 139.

In a lecture at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology, Jung discussed Eckhart’s sermon, “Letting go of things” from his Counsels of Discernment, and commented:

“This is indeed a fair exchange and an honest deal: By as much as you go out in forsaking

all things, by so much, neither less not more, does God go in, with all that is his, as you entirely forsake everything that is yours. Undertake this, and let it cost you everything you can afford. There you will find true peace, and nowhere else” (ed. Martin Liebscher, forthcoming from Princeton University Press in the Philemon Series). ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 176-177, fn 76

There are many statements in the Bible concerning the omniscience of God- for example, Psalms 147:4- 5:

“He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names. / Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.” ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 177, fn 77

Eduard von Hartmann had criticized the dogma of the “conscious God”: given his [von Hartmann’s] conception of the unconscious, to regard God as conscious would constitute a limitation (Philosophy of the Unconscious, trans. W. Coupland [London: R. Paul, Trench & Trubner, 1900/ 1931], Book 2, p. 247).

The theme of God’s unconsciousness featured prominently in Jung’s Answer to job (cw n). ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 177, fn 78

I have nothing against that.

But you can’t do your work as long as Ph. and Ka are the ‘sublime ones’ and you are just the seed between two magnets.

Your God is a

world. He forms the world and the Gods, grant him the power.

But if you look toward the world, then the Gods rule and your God is weak.

But your God is strong if you stay by him, if you give him the force of your longing.

Your God is both powerful and weak. If you give him force, you draw his world power to yourself.

If you give him no force, his world power leaves you and turns itself against you.

Respect for and disdain of the Gods-that is the mystery.

Whoever fails to grasp this mystery travels the four false ways, either in the world, or to the daimons, or in the past and the Below, or in the future and the Above.

Respect for and disdain of the Gods begins with respect for and disdain of oneself and takes string precedence over respect and disdain of men, animals, plants and lifeless objects.

Instead of respect and disdain you may above all also say love and hate, since some enclose love in respect and hate in disdain, whereas others however enclose respect in love and disdain in hate.

No foggy language. Your speech is slippery.

God is like a best friend, a beloved, someone who understands, and if he a man does

not understand and yet loves and thus always does the wrong thing and so torments and

ruins others, he behaves like God.

God is all-knowing, therefore he is not conscious of his own knowledge.

Since he is the world power, he is unconscious of his power.

Since he is every single being, he is not conscious of his being.

Since man is conscious of his self by virtue of his limitedness and separateness, God can also reveal the fullness of his being only if he is drawn by individual men, breathed, eaten, and drunk.

Then the God, with human nature added, can so behave and appear that one can say nothing

other than that he is conscious of himself as a single man would be, that he loves me as

my friend, my brother, my father, my son.

But the arcane seed that lay between the Above and the Below is always revolving, revealing a new incomprehensible side.

So it must be-so life advances.

Then my friend, my brother, my father, and my son no longer understand me and wound me, because he loves me.

You could also say, because he hates me, or equally well: disdains me.

So it is, because the deepest mystery is: respect of and disdain for the Gods.

If God no longer understands me, I must recede into remoteness from God.

I must protect myself from his loving vengeance.

Remoteness from God is procession along the 4 false ways, it is crucifixion, it is Abraxas.

The 4 false ways are: being one with the outer worldly being, & being one with the soul, being one with splendor, <1>, being one with the shadow, Ka.

That’s why you must strive to reach God.

He has not changed, since he is eternally the same.

He is the All, past and future, he understands nothing, since he is All and differentiated

from nothing.

He is changeless, partly apprehensible to you, and partly not.

But tell me, you have always spoken of God as the one who becomes and alters.
Why not? I have described him from the other side. God is also the seed that turned and whose new side you fail to grasp. But your essence is God. God does not understand himself, as I told you.
Yes, but who am I then?, Who if God is All?
You are, and God is. If you were not, how could God be
But there are other men apart from me.
They belong to the totality of God, as do you.

That’s why it is said that God was scattered through all men, and why the Egyptians also said that the Mother gathered all the pieces of the God with great care, to put him together again, and just as the Greeks said that the God of the God swallowed him m and completely rebirthed him.

God is the seed and God is the whole essence of man.

If I look with the eyes of man, then God changes, since man does not understand how God changes himself.

But if I speak from the essence of God- and I did exactly this-then God is unchangeably

the same, and he doesn’t understand himself as a seed, since above all he is incapable

of understanding himself as a singularity, since his essence is totality, and generality,

From a passage written in the autumn of 1917 in the manuscript of Scrutinies:

“I must free my self from the God, since the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than

omnipresence, he is also my creature” (LN, pp. 482-83).

In his presentation in October 1916 at the Psychological Club on “Individuation and Collectivity,” Jung stated:

“The individual must now consolidate himself by cutting himself off from the divine and becoming wholly himself.

Thereby and at the same time he also separates himself from society.

Outwardly he plunges into solitude, and inwardly into hell, distance from God” (CW 18, § no3) ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 178, fn 81

In 1921 Jung cited the following lines from Silesius’s Cherubinic Wanderer:

“I know that without me God cannot live for a moment; / Were I to die, he must from necessity give up the ghost” (CW 6, § 432). ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 178, fn 83

he does not know from omniscience, just as he also does not know himself as existing

from universal essence.

Therefore if the seed turns, he does not understand what it is.

He loves his totality, therefore also his seed.

But when he cannot reach his seed, he does not suffer from that, but the seed does, as it fails to gam attain totality.

God truly loves the seed, but he doesn’t see that it has turned and he wants to grasp it, as he always has done, wounding and damaging it.

=F-he And the seed must struggle against God, it must will remoteness from God.

Therefore and in as much as the seed is God himself, the seed opposes God and sets itself in God’s place.

Therefore Christians say that God sent his son to save his creation from the misery in which he himself brought them forth and abandoned them.

But the son taught men that it is better good to turn one’s eyes away from the created, that it is better to procreate no longer, and that the best thing is to wait for the imminent end and the fulfilment.

But the son was a man and the seed in him rebelled against the law of the world creator.

But the love of God followed him and embraced him in bloody death.

Thus the seed was damaged. Why? It didn’t seek the remoteness from God.

It was not allowed to seek it, since that age was not allowed to know about remoteness from God.

Each age of the world has something that it must know above all, and something that it is not allowed to know above all.

This is all so difficult that it can hardly be thought about. Truly, I don’t follow.
Now, it is graspable. We also approach the limits of what is currently understandable

and knowable.

But you now understand why God is both changing and unchanging?

It all depends from where one speaks.

When you speak of yourself out of yourself it is somewhat different from when you speak of yourself from the outside, from the world, with the eyes of the world.

Even so the two statements contradict each other, so you still are, and the beholding world also is.

The same way with God. Seen from your standpoint, he is changeable.

Seen in himself, he is unchanging.

He knows nothing of change since he does not know himself as a seed.

But the seed turns. But what is a seed as a whole? Nothing.

Therefore it: the totality does not feel it.

But surely the seed feels it, since it feels abandoned and misunderstood by the totality.

But the totality does not understand the individual.

Therefore the individual must seek the way to God. He must thus draw God into himself.

But how does this happen?

This can only happen by his clearly showing God how he has turned, how he has changed.

He must explain himself to him. He must find words and expressions by which he can reach God.

Man, who must always work as the mediator for the part of God in him and the seed, can never do this through conscious devising or puzzling out, but only through the help of his soul, or through the help of someone who still has the soul of the other in them.

The seed must always turn, since that is the godhead of life.

Life is movement in its I. But if the seed is God, and the whole world we is God, “where and what is man?

I tell you, man is completely in God. He is the mediator between God as world and God as seed.

Philemon sees God only as goal, Ka only as ground.

You see him through me as seed and world.

Since as a being God is the greatest and the smallest.

Therefore man would be the mediator in the transformation process of God.
And not even the only mediator, as animals and plants also have their role in this

work.

Truly a Danaid’s barrel of endlessness and meaninglessness …
Therefore we should rightly remain silent.

What should one actually say about “end” and “meaning”?

How many hundred worlds have been built or hung above one another?

How much sense and nonsense do they contain? So no pointless asides!

Have you understood, that God is someone who becomes and who is?

I believe so.
So now hear about another redeemer.

He also taught that it is good to avert one’s eyes from the created, that it would be better to procreate no longer and that the best thing would be to bring the suffering of the world to an end.

He rebelled against the creator of the world and his law of continuously engendering life.

He sought remoteness from God and received it, since God always loves the seed, whether it be close to or distant from him.

And so he also was again in God, but not crucified, since the seed was not damaged. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 179-180

In “Late Thoughts” in Memories, Jung wrote:

“That is the meaning of divine service, of the service which man can render to God, that light may emerge from the darkness, that the Creator may become conscious of his creation, and

man conscious of himself. / That is the goal, or one goal, which fits man meaningfully into the scheme of creation, and at the same time confers meaning upon it. It is an explanatory myth which has slowly taken shape within me in the course of the decades” (pp. 370-71). ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 180, fn 89

snow on the embers. God is in conflict with himself.

Both redeemers teach the good, the redemption from good and evil.

Yes, both know the good way, even when they contradict one another.

But they are one in the good.

Yes, if we went toward the good, we would know where and when.

For clear simple paths are mapped out for us by the masters, and travelled by countless people.

Why don’t we take them?

We shouldn’t strive toward the good, but toward life. life, so it is called in us, is higher than the good, since the good is just a fruit of life.

But nowhere is the fruit more valuable than the tree on which it grew. Yes, if we went toward the good!

But it is not our time, it does not want it, since it wants life, which is given to our time as more sacred, even certain evil actions appear better and more sacred than the merely good.

We cannot defend ourselves.

It takes the other road, the one toward life, since life for us is the good, since we know that

life can be good.

We cannot believe that life must die unlived.

We believe that life is a flame that burns in itself and radiates itself 2. III. r8. 94

My soul, you should help me obtain and keep that middle point where I am in God

and not in God, where I stand between the Gods.

So you mean the state of being hanged?

You call this the middle point between the Gods. You take too great a share in God’s process.

How can I take less, if I am still completely in God, inside and outside?
You are certainly in God inside and outside and yet you are you, with your truth neither inside nor outside, but in between, also neither above nor below, but in between.

You are not the seed, but its covering. Oh, that this speech were richer!

Or better perhaps, if it were poorer.

The wealth of the possibilities of representing and describing is a misfortune.

What is with you? What foreign spirit has struck you?
I am under a spell, a foreign power meddles. Science wants in, probably from you.

You have to take care of this. My work is done. Farewell. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 181

What good fortune that you freed yourself from Ka’s prison!
What do you mean? Explain it to me!
Ka builds temples and tombs for all living Gods. If you are in your self, you are in God.

And as God, you are in danger of being walled in and buried alive.

Why? I don’t understand.
A God reveals himself in divine and eternal effect and ossifies in it.

It is his grave. And so it must be-the unavoidable fate of each God.

But I should be in myself, and be with myself and so with God and in Gods.

Why should you always be with God and in God? Do you want to be God yourself?

And be buried? God is eternally force and spirit. But you have a body.

Your body suffers if you always want to be with and in God-

Your confusions are endless-though-what else do I want? Patience, hence I should also be outside of myself, outside of God? Where then? – in creation?
Certainly, outside with men, outside of yourself, with <D and K.

They are the hands that help the God to birth and to the grave.

What do you mean, outside with men?
In service to their God.

Phanes-the only one in you and everywhere and a million times in you and everywhere.

meet each other, and both need to be walked.

How should you live differently than one moment in God and the next moment outside of God?

If you are and remain inside God, you will be buried in his eternal effect.

If you are and remain outside God, you never come to yourself and you remain a shell of yourself, a mirage in your own

desert. So at any given time you should be with and in yourself and so with and in God.

But if you remain in yourself, the deadly shadow of God overwhelms you and wants to

bury you alive.98 Since God shines out of you and nourishes Philemon and Ka and goes

to men and is the nourishment of their God, in so doing he divests himself of himself.

So you should do just as God does. You will not live any other way.

But how can I live “outside of myself”?
Not “outside of yourself,” but outside with men with yourself. You are then not

only with you, if you are in you, but you can also be outside at yourself and with you, not

just within. likewise you are in God, when you are in you, and God is in you, if you are

outside with yourself.

What then is the I? Is it not the same as the self?
If you are in you yourself, then you cannot differentiate the I from the self

But if you are outside with yourself, then the self is different from the I.

Since the self is a great mystery, that I veil just as well as you.

If It is that smallest seed that fills all the heavens, em a grain of dead matter and God in all eternity.

Amen. I say “Amen,” since after such an implausible statement one must say “Amen” for confirmation.

But all mysteries are implausible.

I hate all mysteries, therefore I divulge them to you as much as possible.

It would be better if there weren’t so many mysteries, but they are not to be denied and finally-without mysteries, there would be no escape from the contradictions.

So,-if you are outside with yourself, then you feel your I differentiated from the self You feel your self either as a grain of dead matter full of revulsion, dread, and fear of death, or, if you accepted this inner death and held your last supper with this corpse and received the germ of God from this death, then you feel the self as the God in you.

But look, there comes Philemon. What does he want?

<D: listen, it seems to me as if that light that you call your God was also my light.

Previously it seemed to me as if that light emanated from me.

But now I see that it is my nourishment. It appears in <D, it has effects in K.

Appearance is visible, what has an effect is dark. The effective one is dark.

The one who appears is light.

What is effective does not appear and what appears does not have effect. That is my limitation.

Therefore my brother would need darkness, poverty, and miserable death in order to be effectual. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 182-183

You give yourself the impression that you didn’t know that it was the Christians who moved you out into the superhuman and exalted you to the black mother of God, to the hortus deliciarum. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 189

Sal. I lent him Simon my magic and Philemon he ruled me: but I broke his wing, the deceitful one. He couldn’t keep his mystery from you? Who are you? Are you a God?

Who gave you the power?

Necessity.

Sal. Necessity usually teaches begging-

Not me-it gave me power. And you shall feel my power. You will yield your mystery.

Sal. I can’t. I don’t even know it myself Does pleasure know itself, has blindness ever divined itself? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 190

If my work is to succeed and if everything is to reach its fulfilment, I must always submit myself first to you, my soul, so that you draw me toward that place where the God lives.

I am overly caught up in the impression of the solar world, therefore you must draw me to the other side, which you see.

Therefore tell me what you are looking at.

I see Salome at your side, freed from the human symbol.
What does she want?
She stands questioning or begging- I don’t know. Tell me, Salome, why are you standing there and what are you waiting for? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 190

In the autumn of 1917, Jung wrote the following in the manuscript of Scrutinies: “Philemon had intoxicated me and given me a language that was foreign to me and of a different sensitivity.

All of this faded when the God arose and only Philemon kept that language.

But I felt that he went on other ways than I did.

Probably the greater part of what I have written in the earlier part of this book was given to me by Philemon. (LN, p. 483) ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 190, fn 112

In Memories, Jung claimed that Freud had been fascinated by, but had failed to grasp the spiritual and numinous meaning of, sexuality:

“Sexuality is of the greatest importance as the expression of the chthonic spirit.

That spirit is the ‘other face of God,’ the dark side of the God-image” (Memories, p. 192). ~ The Black Books, V. 7, Page 191, fn 115

Sublime one, the 4 ways are accomplished, the 4 sufferings have been fulfilled borne, the 4 joys are fulfilled, the offering to the Gods of the 4 winds have been prepared.

The final work is accomplished:~ Salome became sighted.

The 4 winds rise up to you, the 4 streams flow to you.

The time has come where you alone speak, you God of all true and false Gods, you being of all non-being.

We are silent and await your speech.

I feel fear. Who will speak? From which depth or height, from which area of heaven

or earth will the voice come?

Do not worry. A choir speaks like one voice and the voice like a choir.

<l>A:120 The one voice of all beings speaks in you. The sun of all suns shines in you.

You go the way of all ways, alone with all.

My soul, this is hardly to be borne.
Be silent, do not resist.

<DA. This way shall lead out into the land of men, an assignment.

The mystery of the summer morning, the happy day, the completion of the moment, the fullness of the possible, born from suffering and joy, the treasure of eternal beauty, the goal of the 4 paths, the spring and the ocean of the 4 streams, the fulfilment of the 4 sufferings and of the 4 joys, father and mother of the Gods of the 4 winds, crucifixion, burial, resurrection, and man’s divine enhancement, highest effect and non-being, world and seed, eternity and rime instance, poverty and abundance, expansion, death and the rebirth of God, borne by eternally creative force, resplendent in eternal effect, loved by the two mothers and sisterly wives, ineffable pain-ridden bliss, unknowable, unrecognizable, a hair’s breadth between life and death, a river of worlds, canopying the heavens-I give you the love of men, the opal jug of water; he pours water and wine and milk and blood, food for men and Gods.

I give you the joy of suffering and suffering of joy.

I give you what has been found: the constancy in change and the change in constancy.

The jug made of stone, the vessel of completion.

Water flowed in, wine flowed in, milk flowed in, blood flowed in.

The four winds precipitated into the precious vessel.

The Gods of the four heavenly realms hold its curvature, both the mothers and both the two fathers guard it, the fire of the North burns above its mouth, the serpent of the South encircles its bottom, the spirit of the East holds one of its sides and the spirit of the West its other side.

Forever denied, it exists forever. Recurring in all forms, forever the same, this one precious vessel, surrounded by the circle of animals, denying itself, and arising in new splendor through its self-denial.

The heart of God and of man. It is the One and Many.

A path leading across mountains and valleys, a guiding star on the ocean, in you and always ahead of you.

Completed, indeed truly completed is he who knows this.

Completion is poverty. But poverty is means gratitude. Gratitude is love. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 192-193

My God, born from suffering and joy, immortal one, luminously you preside over your way! You middle path full of salvation and damnation, full of fortune and misfortune.

Your step beyond the mortal. lament is allocated for us and the smile of dawn.

Stay with us, redeemer from suffering-laden infinities, boundary setter, my fate. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 195

Cf. Isaiah 40:3- 5:

“The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. / Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: / And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 197, fn 133

<D, a mortal wants to know about Golgotha, his Golgotha.

<D: Is it curiosity? Or would you like clairvoyance?

Golgotha is death for the sake of the Gods. -?- What does this tell you?

I seek no death for the sake of the Gods, since I would like to live for the sake of men.

<D. But the Gods want your life back. You have given birth to the luminous one.

He who bore him will procreate no more. He will give his life to the Gods and not to men.

What are you pondering?

I am considering what it means to give one’s life to the Gods.

<D. Ask Ka, the shadow. He knows about this.

So answer me Ka, dark son of the earth.

Ka. How should I form my gem, how should I give form to the Gods, if you yourself go on the way of procreation?

Haven’t you drawn magical appearance from the black rod?

If you are not solid, the light that everyone thirsts for will extinguish.

Who should live from himself, if you don’t do it?

Will you borrow life from others through mixing?

All are drawn into procreation. Who possesses his soul?

You must be solid for everyone, unmixed and cut off. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 198

You know what hovers in the air. I will not ask you for a long time.

Tell me what you see or know.

I know something. ct> told it to me.
What did he tell you?
He has put on the purple mantle again. He wants to have a celebration.
What sort of celebration?
A triumph.
Over what?
Over men.
Damn-it’s worrisome if the demigods are pleased.
Don’t be hasty. They too want to live. He is pleased at your greater solitude.
What did he say?
He spoke sacred words; he spoke of fulfilment. He is pleased to cohabit.

The Gods always want to have a part in human life. They too must.

How else should God-men develop?

But Ka? What will he do?
He will spread superstitious shadows.
I feel that ct> fills me with his wishes. I can’t accept this.
If the treasure of Ka comes up then you won’t be able to avoid it.

Can you repudiate the treasures of Ka? No, you can’t.

So you also can’t reject ct>’s thoughts. The one begets the other question no further.

You touch on the boundless. Remain with yourself. Do what is yours. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 199

What lies in between is in the dream book, but still more in the images of the Red Book.

What happens between the lover and the beloved is the total fullness of the Godhead.

That is why both are an unfathomable mystery to each other.

Since who would understand the Godhead?

But the God will be born in solitude, from the mystery of the individual.

The separation between life and love is the contradiction between solitude and togetherness. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 201

Yes, the God will be born from solitude-this word strikes me.

Thus solitude is coming on. Solitude hasn’t even questions. It doesn’t ask.

It is empty and abysmal. You say that I am still on the surface?

There, where it is still loud, still too much noise. I need sharp ears? I lament my hearing.

I still speak too much about myself? How can I do otherwise?

One could also say that I speak too little, since the words that could describe the great pain do not want to cross my lips.

I understand that one should not speak about this-of the most holy, where the fullness of God shines. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 204

What tension between the farthest heavens and the deepest hells!

The sevenfold darkness-the jubilant heaven’s gold-what a speech! But I speak it.

I talk, you don’t talk. You shouldn’t talk. I know that I must talk or rather stammer.

I wanted to sing the praise of the marvelous God who appeared to me, I wanted to talk of the bliss of paradise, of the deep stillness of the peace of God, of all blessed and most blessed and

the highest raptures which trickled over me profusely by the mercy of that indescribable God-a praise I wanted to sing of the salvation of my heart-I wanted to give thanks to the glory of the thrice holy stellar one-but it is mere words and truly not these those words that are to be said. There are many darker words, kindled in the darkest depths, utterly primordial words, pressed out of the unbelievably ancient and originary.

Words without meaning and purpose, pregnant with all futures, sick from primordial

longings and impossibilities, quelled in the mud of the centuries, a mystery divined only

by someone who has the animal behind him. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 207

[I]. In that regard I don’t feel anything special. So speak of the depths, your visions.

I must have more clarity about what’s going on. Everything is so dark.

What does the darkness of the beyond hide? Tell me!

Three deer fled from the forest and the most beautiful hunter could not catch them.

He hunted with hounds and horses and bright spears and yet they escaped him.

They jumped into the river and swam through it and the dogs lost their trail.

The deer Goddess had rescued them-yes, Artemis. Isn’t she beautiful and chaste?

Do you know her? And do you know him? Why do you want to hunt on Sundays?

Why do you want to catch and kill the beautiful animals? That’s why her bear attacked you. That’s why you had to sacrifice to the beautiful moon Goddess, you fool.

[I]. I see now and humble myself

Yes, there are benevolent Gods and what loves lives in darkness. You felt this.

Whoever doesn’t feel this is contemptible.

[I]. But what has previously hindered my sleep? What did you see?

Three serpents that lie on a rock, coiled in a knot. A sword has hacked them.

A strong one-armed man wields the sword. His eyes flicker in chaotic passion.

It was probably a follower and pupil of Dionysus, who had lost one arm. Where did he lose it? He chopped it off because it seemed foul and inadequate, yes, he himself hacked off his right arm in a frenzy.

He no longer wanted to act, but simply to be driven. One also needs to be able to be driven. Why couldn’t he let the serpents sleep?

Who told him to set his dog on the devil’s dangerous hound that wanted to leave him?

His wild and untamed drive, which he called a sense of duty, had whispered the wrong thing to him.

He wanted to be alone, to rule alone, intoxicated in solitude far from Gods and men, a castrato of his God.

Why do you despise the loving darkness of the feminine, the cooling night?

The whisper among the trees, my dark, healing speech? Why did you not speak to me? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 207-208

In Greek mythology, Dionysus is the God of fertility, wine, ritual madness, and the theater.

The frenzy of his followers was famously depicted by Euripides in The Bacchae. ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 208, fn 161

This motif is reminsicent of the priests of Attis-Cybele, the Gallai, who were eunuchs.

Attis was a Phrygian vegetation God and the consort of Cybele, the Great Mother.

Jung commented on the death of Attis in 1912:

“Attis is the son lover of the divine mother, Attis Cybele …. Driven mad by the insanity-breeding mother enamored of him, he emasculates himself, and that under a pine tree” (Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, CW B, §§ 681:ff.). ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 208, fn 162

No, listen! You should not break up a marriage, namely the marriage with me, no person should supplant me, least of all Toni.

I want to rule alone.

[I]. So you want to rule? From whence do you take the right for such a presumption?

This right comes to me because I serve you and your calling.

I could just as well say, you came first, but above all your calling comes first.

[I]. But what is my calling?

The new religion and its proclamation.

[I]. Oh God, how should I do this?

Do not be of such little faith. No one knows it as you do.

There is no one who could say it as well as you could.

[I]. But who knows, if you aren’t lying?

Ask yourself if I am lying. I speak the truth.

[I]. But also tell me what I could do.

First let me get your mind off things.

[I]. So do that. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 211

In Egyptian mythology, Isis is the daughter of Geb, the earth God, and Nut, the sky Goddess. She is the sister of Osiris (who is also her husband), Nephthys, and Seth.

After Osiris is murdered by Seth, Isis finds and restores his body and brings him back to life, and then gives birth to their son Horus.

For the Egyptians, she was the epitome of the loving wife and mother.

Jung referred to Isis in Transformations and Symbols of the Libido (CW 8) and in subsequent

texts. ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 212, fn 170

It is the threefold house, it lies therein. Didn’t you think about buying a house in the south? What does that mean? Sun, peace, beauty, these are the 3 parts. And 2 palms

in the garden? That is you and your wife. And the fountain?

A source of love between the two. That is to be discovered. The God dwells in this house. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 213

In Egyptian mythology, Nut, the sky Goddess, swallows Ra, the sun God, each night. ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 214, fn 178

Nephthys is the sister of Isis and Osiris and the Goddess of the dead. ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 212, fn 180

[I]. So look around, gather all your visionary’s strength, reach through even the eternal

darkness a:ru:l for the sake of human suffering.

I will for your sake, but the gigantic cloud of eternal night is awful.

I see a yellow shining stroke from the top left of this cloud in the irregular shape of a streak of lightning, and behind it an indeterminate reddish light in the cloud.

It does not move.

Beneath the cloud I see a dead black serpent and the lightning stuck in its head like a spear.

A hand, as large as that of a God, has thrown the spear and everything has frozen into a

gloomy vivid image.

What is it trying to say?

Do you recall that image that you painted years ago, in which the black and red man with the black and white serpent is struck by the ray of God?

This image is connected to it, since you also later painted the dead serpent, and did you not behold a gloomy image this morning, of that man in a white robe with a black face, like a mummy?

[I]. What is all this?

An image of yourself.

[I]. But what is meant?

How shall I interpret it to you? It hangs deep in the dark cloud. Who can tear it out?

[I]. I say unto you once more, gather your strength, your boldness, your visionary’s defiance. Tonight’s miserable suffering is too deep.

Grasp the root of the mystery, as you’ve already done so often. You must.

My hand does not have the strength of the Gods. It can force daimons but not Gods, and truly a God sent this fate.

[I]. Then there will also be a divine good in it, since Gods cannot just be devils.

What kind of God?

Truly a God of ore, a servant of the Great Mother.

What man would be able to compete with the love and the severity of the Mother?

That is the gruesomeness of the eternal Mother.

You overcome the Mother only through submission. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 220

In 1921- 22, Jung painted Images 129,131, and 133 in the calligraphic volume of LN.

On November 25 he completed Image 135.

It bore the following inscription: “Completed on 25 November 1922.

The fire comes out of Muspilli and grasps the tree of life.

A cycle is completed, but it is the cycle within the world egg.

A strange God, the unnameable God of the solitary, is incubating it.

New creatures form from the smoke and ashes.”

In Norse mythology Muspilli (or Muspelheim) is the abode of the fire Gods.

On November 29, Jung was transcribing p. 134 in the calligraphic volume of LN.

He gave a lecture to the Society for German Language and Literature, “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetic Art Works,” on May 26 (CW 15), which he repeated at the Psychological Club on July 9.

From June 2 to 6 he was on holiday in Schmerikon.

On November 7, Emma Jung gave a presentation to the Psychological Club, “Considerations on a Word of Meister Eckhart.” ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 222

I didn’t teach you from myself, from my hubris, but the dream sent from the heaven of the Gods showed it to me. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 223

[I]. I will think this over. It seems to supply a hint. But go on describing him.

When I saw him for the first time, he was of terrifying beauty-a true God.

Picture Dionysus with all the force of your imagination. That will give you a faint idea.

The second time, he was completely different, again beautiful, inexpressibly beautiful, but of

phosphorescent deathly pallor, the appearance of the full moon on snow, eyes shining me

like the great stars on a winter’s night.

He was transparent, completely surrounded by a luminous white wrinkled coat, like a wisp.

A terrible death frost surrounded him. Good that you did not see him.

Words would have frozen on your tongue.

He seemed to be the 4tttal innermost meaning and the true quintessence of eternal death. [109/no] ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 227

[I]. What mighty one do you describe? I really feel the terror of his invisible presence.

Tell me, will he speak to me? Why does his appearance spread fright, he who was my friend?

He will speak to you.

He has laid the cruel bow on the ground and sheathed his flashing sword.

He is a red-haired bearded man, his body and his feet are wrapped in animal skins.

His eyes shine with the light of the Gods and his countenance has the marble pallor of the Godhead.

Yes, his gaze is fixed, it cannot be reached by human arts.

He clucks softly with his tongue and the terror shoots up, as if you stepped on a poisonous serpent.

A master-everyone is an unquestioning follower-since-who would even think of resisting?

Hold your tongue, what would you dare utter in his presence?

He is a mighty one-what fearful riddles has he brought us!

He will speak to you, but don’t speak first. He doesn’t look at you. He speaks softly from afar. You can’t hear him. He still hasn’t turned your way.

He addresses the far-off dawn-devising the gory work of the hunt-his hounds stand tense-who wants to resist his pack?

His gruesome whistle freezes the blood, and each of his hounds carries a whole man like a rabbit to its master’s feet.

What does he say to the dawn?

Verily a master, a mighty one, a terror before whom every question dies.

Now he looks toward you, indifferently according to the manner of a true God and says to you: ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 228

[I] You are verily a God, before whom everything wretched in us feebly falls into the dust.

You are a master, a mighty one, attended by fright, before whom everyone waits on each of your signs with mortal fear, with pricked-up ears, trembling like hounds, the human pack awaits you.

You are indubitably a God, a death terror would lame me if I spoke otherwise.

The terror emanating from you loosens bound tongues and compels true speech.

Who dared to play before you and dissemble?

How could I once have overcome you? I can’t understand how that was possible.

But a true dream told me that I did it. Yes, I have overcome a God without knowing it.

He: You could do this because you didn’t know it. Yet tell me, what is a God?

What do you call a God?

[I] . God is the almighty being, before whom there is no escape.

One falls to the ground in speechless horror. Nobody calls obedience into question.

One is captivated by his power. He who hears his whistle, his blood is frozen.

No one calls obedience into question.

The master of such a terror is truly a God and that you are, even if you are an apparition.

What difference does it make, whether an apparition is clothed in the mantle of a God or an actual being?

Who dares here to toy with a gold scale? No one thinks whether it is appearance or actuality.

A faint click of your tongue is enough, Oh hunter of men!

He. Tell me, overcomer, what does it mean that you have overcome a God?

[I]. It wasn’t a sacrilege, or something unwitting, it was the only thing I could do,

since I had to defend my life, even if a God attacked.

And apparently you wanted to spare me, otherwise you could have killed me easily.

I was then sick from an illness that had claimed the lives of many, but it quickly and easily went away.

I am aware that you saved me. Indeed you wanted to test my courage and determination.

Thus I interpret the overcoming to you: I couldn’t and didn’t want to leave you in a state of the

deepest unknowing.

You must learn wisdom, since what is a king with power only and no wisdom?

Isn’t his power badly directed, if it lacks wisdom? ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 228-229

[I] . What is right is what is in accord with the whole, and the whole leads to greater life.

He. That is also well spoken. I have promised you, overcomer, that I will learn.

My power needs wisdom. But why does a God born without wisdom still have power? Interpret this to me!

[I]. I told you, God is the overpowering being.

Wisdom is the opposite, it is mild, it is never violent, it does not shatter, nobody feels fear and grovels before it in the dust.

Because a God is a great power, he mostly lacks wisdom. So it is.

He. This is well spoken, but I don’t like what you said. Should wisdom destroy power?

Answer! ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 229

He leaves, he has turned his countenance away, he hunts for black clouds over the

mountain-truly a God, who aroused no suspicion in us.

[I]: I believe, my soul, that he first emerged not too long ago.

How could you and how could I know? One never knows the inconceivable.

Despite the fact that we have spoken for years of a God who is to come, when he came, he was shockingly new.

I confess that I’m as shocked as you, stunned-a God of fear and ruthless obedience, a fool with a lightning hammer, who would have thought it!

But a man, a master, a mighty one! It’s a pleasure to obey him. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 230

In 1915, Jung wrote in the prologue to Liber Primus:

“But the supreme meaning is the path, the way and the bridge to what is to come.

That is the God yet to come. It is not the coming God himself, but his image which appears in the supreme meaning” (LN, p. 120).

This section links this figure with Wotan (see below, n. 222). ~he Black Books, V. 7, Page 230, fn 219

Tuesday evening 6.40 my mother died in Kusnacht, Seestrasse.

Pulmonary and cerebral embolism. Almost 75 years old. The agony was short. 2 seizures.

She died on the 2nd. Her last words were: “Oh God, make it short!” ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 232

[I]. I have nothing to say from myself. Speak! What have you got to say?

All sorts of things seem to happen that I cannot grasp.

Much is going on. Disorder has arisen through the death of your mother.

Her spirit spurred us to create.

[I]. Why am I so unbearably tired?

Because the burden is difficult.

[I]. Speak clearly. You hold back.

I can’t. Nothing flows. Everything is frozen since the death of your mother.

And God himself is in the darknesses. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 233

You don’t know him, since he is not to be grasped, the supremely great one that passed

by and robbed me of speech.

And therefore I have to stammer to you and you will laugh and, alas-not understand what happened.

And yet he stood near us, so near, so tangible as never before.

He spoke to me, he filled me with the breath of eternity.

Why did he choose a stutterer? Why should I announce him?

The Gods sit down with the beggars, they come as guests to the hungry and celebrate the divine meal on empty tables.

I am transformed by this, isolated, silent. No words can express what happened, what :filled me. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 234

The years go by. I have been to Africa, seeking. Whom?

Probably him, the unknown one, the God or the fate-fortifying one. I didn’t find him there. What does the voice say? I never found him outside. Good, then I come back.

Was this a voice?

Should my soul not have become silent? Have you not become silent?

Hasn’t everything flowed into outer fate? Speak to me again!

You are held outside.

[I]. Yes, that I am, and must it not be so?

What must be?

[I]. It is so. Better if you give me light, where I don’t see- or let me dream. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 235

Zurcher Zeitung described him as a “very kind, very upright, farsighted businessman” (January 14, 1927).

In 1927 Jung painted an image of the map from his Liverpool dream in the calligraphic volume of LN to which he gave the following inscription:

“D. IX Januarius anno 1927 obiit Hermann Sigg aet.s.52 amicus meus.

[9 January 1927 my friend Hermann Sigg died aged 52 ]” (see below, p. 240 ).

At his tower in Bollingen, Jung painted a mural bearing a stone-carved inscription in Latin and describing the culmination of the process of the rebirth of the divine that forms a central theme of Liber Novus and the Black Books.

“This is where the God is buried,/ this is where he arose.

/ like the fire inside the mountains,/ like the worm from the earth,/ the God begins. / like that serpent from ashes, / like the Phoenix from the flames, / the God arises / in a wondrous way. / like the rising sun, / like flame from the wood, / the God rises above. / like ailment in the body,/ like the child in its mother’s womb,/ the God is born. / He creates divine madness,/ fateful errors,/ sorrow and heartache./ like a tree / man stretches out his arms / and sees himself/ as a heavenly man / that he did not know,/ facing the world’s orb / and the four rivers

of paradise.

/ And he will see the face / of the higher man and spirit, / of the greatest father / and the mother of God. / And in an inconceivable birth / the God frees himself/ from man / from image, / from every form, / while he enters / the unimaginable and absolute / secret./

In memory of Hermann Sigg, / my very dear friend,/ died on 9 January 1927.” ~The Black Books, V. 7, Page 232, fn 258

“I” You are right. I looked back too little. I hurried forward too breathlessly.

Why didn’t you call me?

I called you through destiny and dream.
So that was it. I understand. But why did I run forward too fast and far?
Destiny, necessity, ambition, desire.
Yes, more looking back-that would be smarter.
That means “wiser.” Why always forwards? What lies ahead? Something better?

All future like all past.

The look penetrates everywhere-the world of the past, the world of the future make the one, the object of the look, the mirror of Godhead. ~Carl Jung, The Black Books, V. 7, Page 247

Carl Jung Depth Psychology

For Educational Purposes Only

Carl Jung on “God” – The Black Books, Vol. I – 7 Anthology

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