Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – Quotations

” also think that it would not be bad if you read some more serious things during this time, because such things are not only educational for the mind, but sometimes also good for the heart. For example, I would recommend you read the sermons of Meister Eckhart.”— Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 10

“I am “Kusnacht-Zurich 21 IV 1942.

glad to hear that you have understood Meister Eckhart correctly. If you would like some further serious reading matter, I would recommend the Sermons of the Buddha. There is a German translation by [Karl Eugen] Neumann: ‘Die Reden Gotamo Buddhos’ [The Speeches of Gotamo Buddhos] 3 vols.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 10

“Only suffering, or the suffering of love, drowns out, in a redeeming way, the quieter or more audible grunts from the underworld. Indeed, Tristan and Isolde are as one with the snails, and between them, they form a heaven.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 14

“Life has more than one meaning. For a woman, however, suffering love is probably of the very greatest meaning, far into the afternoon of her life. But then, one starts to notice something.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 14

“The phenomena you are suffering from are the well-known symptoms of back-flooding which occur when the River Jordan flows backwards (as it did at the time of Christ’s baptism), that is, when the flow of libido is suddenly interrupted.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 14

“You were right when you said in your letter that one must live in two worlds. It is, actually, quite natural for a person to live in two worlds. If one tries to live in only one, both can easily bite the dust.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 17

“The dreams of the four points, and of the Chinese man, indicate ‘wholeness,’ (that which is ‘Chinese’ wants to unite with you) as an ordering principle, which is superior to the ego. You are still a chaos from which order must emerge.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 29

“The black eagle or vulture (‘lambs’ – is good!) has, unimportantly, to do with the parents. More importantly, he is the animus of your own ucs. [unconscious], the ucs. spirit, which swoops down on you so devastatingly. It is the ucs. out of which you paint, and which simultaneously hinders you the most, and will continue to do so until you can understand it.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 19

“But once you stand on your own two feet, you will gradually realize that you carry the whole parental web within you, and not only that, but also the web in which your parents and your forebears already wriggled themselves to death.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 20

“Who wouldn’t look back? That’s what at least half of life is about, isn’t it? But you must not look back yet, because you have not yet reached your full potential; behind you are too many hooks still waiting for you.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 20

“I never throw anyone out who is serious and well-intentioned, so I could never bring myself to force you to do anything, as it were, against your will, and of which you are not convinced. I would never have suggested for you to go to Boss if I had not had this dream, and if you had not had signs pointing in a similar direction at the same time.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 22

“For I have discovered that something is only meaningful if you don’t know what it means. So, don’t fret too much about not knowing the meaning of meaningful things; leave well-meaning and providential secrets up to nature.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 23

“I suspect you are a nun contre coeur, one who belongs to the order of the Vita contemplativa and who has a secret passion for the confessional as a prelude to God’s love. These highest forms of culture always shock me, as, hitherto, they have invariably been followed by the dulling of the mind, or mockery, or barbarian invasion.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 23

“It’s simply something making a strange detour so that the iron bands can fall off you. The unconscious is not as foolish as conscious man. For now, one gropes in the dark, and one must do so with patience until one once again reaches the light.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 25–26

“Zimmer’s death [allusion to Michael Servetus] filled me with sorrow. My best friends died young or relatively early, as if the imminence of their deaths spurred on their understanding. Accordingly, A. K. will go on living for a long time in order to outlive himself. You have already understood a lot about me; God grant that you may also understand the mere-human about me.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 29

“During the night of 29th-30th, in Geneva, I had a dream that suddenly explained to me where my historical fantasy of 1843 and 1743 came from. In fact, it has to do with my great-grandmother and Mr. von Goethe. My last letter to you was already overshadowed by the dark doom that has been weighing on my soul up to now.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 29

“Do you think I ‘experiment’ with people for whom I must sweat blood? I just have to be real and, God knows, those around me have to be real, too, because life has to be genuine down to its last fiber; otherwise, it’s all substitution and loss.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 29

“But in the darkness, one ultimately encounters the light. This just happened in my dream. You have helped me, unknowingly, onto the right path, and I would not have thought of it if I had not, despite death and the devil, admitted my century fantasy to you.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 29

“In 1794, my ancestor [Jung’s great-grandmother] conceived a son by Goethe. She appeared in the dream and was crazy, thinking I was the Redeemer. I understood only afterwards that I am her redeemer.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 32

“Since you are so insistently interested in my health, I am happy to confirm, ‘upon receipt of your honored from the x’h yz,’ that I am well. I have dug up and planted 250 square meters of heavy soil and, like a Saturnus, fertilized it with manure, lime and phosphates. I have been able to drink wine again and have done so rigorously.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 33

“At the beginning of my vacation, I was overcome with fatigue; the suffering of the world, small, large, near, far, sank like a lead-laden iron ship to the bottom of my sea, leaving the world empty, a stomping ground for ancestral souls and field spirits that hopped around like goats in ruins.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 33

“I am now turning 69, and there are still things to be destroyed in me that I cannot master. Arrow wounds heal. The modern cannon shot has a more lasting effect – and it is indescribably painful. Un coup de grâce [death blow] – this is how ‘transferences’ are resolved, and never have they been resolved otherwise, except in the sackcloth and ashes of one’s own accursedness.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 34

“The monstrous pain of all living beings is the inexorability of their death. For God’s sake, is there no gentle shroud that one could spread over the carrion of beauty biting the dust?” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 34

“Both the slayer and the slain are one and the same. I ask you and I ask myself not to carry through with the slaying, but for your sake, for my sake, for the sake of the eternal divinity, let us rise again, because one must prove oneself to oneself despite oneself.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 34

“I am not angry with you, for I do not believe I am a truly evil person, but I find being a human being a heavy burden, and, as a mere human, I must seek an opportunity of finding meaning that is more than senseless desolation.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 34

“I am unable to forget the time that we are living in, the immensity of the suffering! Why do you wage war against me? I know you are under attack by the devil and that you feel abandoned … but no one can protect us from our own hell. Only the ability to suffer can help, namely to defy all longing to suffer.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 35

“The ghost woman is the mother-anima of your father. This reveals the key parallel with my ‘guru’ who called himself Philemon. He is equivalent to the father-animus of my mother, who had a pronounced father complex.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 35

“Philemon is the sage who is in possession of the secret of the self. The key is to open the ‘introitum ad occlusum Regis palatium’ [entrance to the locked palace of the king], that ‘castrum sapientiae’ [house of wisdom] which is the seat of the self.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 35

“The figure of your grandmother likewise fetches the keys from the ‘father’ (who is indeed the representative of sapientia) in order to open the gate to the self. She is the father-anima form of your self, which wants to free itself from the form of the father-anima.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 35

“In reality, it is a desperate attempt to hold on to Ariadne’s thread of consciousness in overwhelming darkness. These things are demonic, fateful, and of incalculable danger.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 36

“I know from my own innermost experience how terrible these forces can be, and therefore, whenever I see these ‘super-personal personalities’ or whatever one wishes to call them – at work, I try to help. No knowledge, no art helps; only one’s own humanity, which one lays on the scales, fully conscious of the danger of doing so.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 36

“One can only hope and pray that everything will turn out well. It’s not a ‘love affair’ that you could whisper about with your girlfriends, but a diabolical test of whether you can ultimately stand and bear yourself.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 36

“I don’t want to acquire or buy you, as it were; I simply want you to blossom like the woodruff, or to become what you are. I cannot stand by and watch plants that could bear beautiful flowers or fruit wither away. Mere weeds are of no interest.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 36

“Bearing a likeness to God is an extremely benevolent thing, but less beneficial when it comes to the love of one’s neighbor. That’s why God himself had to become man, to see how it is if one may not be satisfied with oneself but always has to integrate a further piece of humanity.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 37

“I am constantly crushed by the enormity of the things I cannot master. Because I see too much and too many monstrous things, I must constantly struggle with the overwhelming sense of my ineptitude.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 37

“It is frightening, as it were, to see the ways and methods the dream uses to educate us to be honest. One realizes that one’s rough-and-ready existence was only possible because, up to now, one was blissfully unaware of oneself and one’s immediate truths and possible truths.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 38

“Life’s outer circumstances and moral values do not change. Also, a brave person with a herd mentality lacks chronic holiness or Luciferian criminality which would allow them to live permanently beyond collective law.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 38

“The most difficult thing is to be neither god nor pig, and then to have no illusions about one’s ‘decency.’ For as high-standing as truth is, there is a diabolical twist to it, especially when it is completely true.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936 – 1956, Page 38

Projection always goes hand in hand with inflation! One’s judgment is faulty because one lacks any inner counterpoint.

Nature itself makes it all so seemingly easy and then, with an almost diabolical reversal of viewpoint, later presents the bill. Faint (?) portents of
this earthquake are already vibrating in your diary entries and especially in your points of view.

Where, for example, do you get the idea from that you have beguiled my mind? A woman can beguile my heart, but a whole world cannot beguile
my mind.

“I do think of you, but it’s a long way from there to a letter, and everything goes slowly for me now. The world seems clouded, and it is only in the world of thought that the sun shines.”  Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, p. 52

“Instead of painting from eternity, these devils paint from our time; and instead of painting from the soul, they paint from the world.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, p. 52

“It was very kind of you to paint this beautiful canister for me and to fill it with inner sweetness, a sensitive and meaningful gift!” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, p. 52

“But what if nature is by nature taboo? Must not nature then also be kept secret? You know that it is not out of sheer prudishness that I do not believe in taboos where there are none.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, p. 53

“Nature is an ἄρρητον [not to be spoken of]. Speaking about it unleashes its demonic aspect, and this harms the one who is giving voice to it. Nature wants to be, but not to be spoken of, named, designated, pointed to.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, p. 53

“That’s just it: you are such a very natural little woman. The raunchy color, fable, animal, and daemonic world of the great mother all belong to this being, which is a tremendum for the man and terrifies him in the same way a cobra slithering over his foot does.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, p. 53

“Your images divulge the feminine mysteries, the secrets of the man-bearing uterus and the gruesomely beautiful arcanum of the living protein, the warm blood and magical kitchen of the viscera. There, in that underworld, things still creep, slither, crawl, and swarm as they did in the carboniferous forests,” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, p. 54

“Your dream describes the nigredo which one always enters into if one does not simply marry and get caught up in procreation. Coal is a raw material out of which all sorts of things are created, including light.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, p. 55

“There are women who, despite all their temporality, have more to do with eternity. You are one of them. Anima means love and death and eternity.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, p. 55

“Your view of love is quite accurate, but it does not reckon with the anima of the man, or rather, with the animus of the anima, which Freud indeed represents.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, p. 57

“You should not doubt the nature of your love. This is one of the best things about you, which I would dearly like you to accept.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, p. 58

“You are quite right: love has the great disadvantage of not being complete without the other – you said it so much more beautifully!” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, p. 58

“The all-compassionate Tathagata [Buddha] has wisely worked out how to free oneself from being human. But the art of being thus has not yet been devised” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, p. 58

“There is only one thing to be done in the face of an anima obsession, namely, to not fall into the animus, in other words, to remain constant, conscious, devoted, selfless (among many other disagreeable things).” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 59

“Everyone is forged in their own particular way, whether they want it or not, whether they find it useful or not. We simply don’t know what came before this damned life, and what will come after.” — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 59

One prefers to look away and forget the gruesome and the abysmal that cruelly thrusts itself upon one in modern art. It catches up with me every day anyway in a different form, so I don’t want to see it hanging on walls. I don’t feel like going all the way into town to see Chagall’s psychic carved-up salad. — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 60

As a rule, one fares better with reason, and reasonable people know that a wall is harder than a head. Life, like politics, is the art of the possible. So why be blind when one has eyes in one’s head? — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 61

There are such phantasies and a bit high up too! The father-sorcerer would produce such miraculous solutions, but – I am afraid – in fairy tales only. In reality this most inconspicuous individual is getting older and older and celebrates birthdays in quick succession. — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 61

For the remaining part of life must be taken as medicine. If we have learned our school work well, that our life is existence in and of itself, then the long-term cure begins, that wants to rid us of this error and to teach us that one loses all bets in this game and that this is the prize. This involves living as much nonsense as possible. — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 62

One should never use an illness and filial piety as a lever to dislodge some of one’s offspring from their self-chosen holes. That is why our Creator has provided us with islands that you must, without fail, once see and experience. — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 63

At the risk of being the bad guy who leaves others in the lurch, I don’t wish to make any further comment on this subject. I have to leave a lot of people to their misfortune, for otherwise I would have no time to contemplate my own shadow and its blackness. — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 64

At my age, it’s almost impossible to get out of the deep ditch into which the carriage of life has sunk. My only consolation was not philosophy, but a stone slab that I chiseled. — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 64

As far as my health is concerned, I live dutifully, observing the rules of the game: no carbohydrates and not too much of anything at all, including the necessary transgressions, so that I do not constantly lose weight. Thirty pounds have already been written off, and, amid a flurry of sparrows and other songbirds, I look like a hungry, retired lamb-vulture. — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 64

It is alleged, among others also by me, to be good: a self-penned Chinese inscription; a branch of the ginkgo tree in autumn; a withered leaf falls to the ground; a little old man “in modest harmony with nature” observes it. The plate will be placed under a real ginkgo in my garden. On the reverse side, it says: D[iis] M[anibus] SACRO ARBORIS HUIUS NUMINI FEC. ET. POS. C.G. JUNG A[NN]O MCMLVI — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 65

Dedicated to the spirits of the ancestors [and] to the sacred divine being of this tree. C. G. Jung created and placed [this stone] in the year 1956. In memory of Toni Wolff. She died on March 21, 1953 at the age of 64. — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Pages 65-66

Old age does, indeed, have its own issues. My last book, Mysterium Coniunctionis vol. II, is presently being wrapped in its first diapers. Along with my head, my questions are up against the roof of the above-mentioned aviary. — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 66

Everything is moving very slowly for me now, and there are days when I don’t touch a pen, especially when bad weather is approaching. I have had a tough time recovering from the death of my wife. And from old age ailments of all kinds, altogether! I have pretty much had to pull the plug on any scientific work, because concentrated mental effort tires me beyond measure. — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 68

My only endeavor is to rest and to find time for resting. In truth, my only exertion is chiseling stones. I have prepared a memorial for my deceased ones in the form of an ancient tombstone and a slab with a ginkgo branch and a Chinese inscription. Right now, I am working on a lengthy Latin inscription concerning my family tree — Carl Jung, Letters to Hedy Wyss 1936–1956, Page 68