Carl Jung and I Ching’s “Youthful Folly.”
To Michael Fordham
Dear Fordham, 3 January 1957
I am glad to hear that your two book are ready and going to press.
My congratulations!
I will write the introduction as soon as possible.
For the time being I am nailed down to a revision of a paper I wrote in spring 1956, which should appear this month but as soon as I have finished this work I shall try to fulfil my promise.
In view of my old age I don’t trust my powers any more.
I easily get tired and my creative ability, I am afraid, has become very faint indeed.
By the way, I have just read your paper on ” Synchronicity.”
I must say, this is the most intelligent thing that has been said hitherto about this remote subject.
I have enjoyed it very much.
The experience you had with the I Ching, calling you to order when trying to tempt it a second time also happened to me in 1920 when I first experimented with it.
It also gave me a wholesome shock and at the same time it opened wholly new vistas to me.
I well understand that you prefer to emphasize the archetypal implication in synchronicity.
This aspect is certainly most important from the psychological angle, but I must say that I am equally interested, at times even more so, in the metaphysical aspect of the phenomena, and in the question: how does it come that even inanimate objects are capable of behaving as if they were acquainted with my thoughts?
This is, as the above formulation shows, a thoroughly paranoid speculation which one had better not ventilate in public, but I cannot deny my fervent interest in this aspect of the problem.
My best wishes for the New Year,
Cordially yours,
C.G. Jung
Note: As he recounts in New Developments (p.49) , F. had consulted the I Ching
for clarification on a certain problem, and after getting an answer immediately consulted it again.
He obtained Hexagram 4, “Youthful Folly,” where The Judgment says:
” the young fool seeks me.
At the first oracle I inform him .
If he asks two or three times, it is importunity.
If he importunes, I give him no information.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 343-344
