by Brett King
Chapter Thirty-nine
Bollingen, Switzerland
12:40 A.M.
Wintry and silent, a lake road known as the Uznacherstrasse invited Cori Cassidy and Edgar Wurm to the sleepy Swiss village of Bollingen. Awaiting them near the shallow upper end of Lake Zurich, Bollingen consisted of scattered buildings, farmhouses, and a commanding white church. She didn’t see light in any windows as their chili red MINI Cooper passed through town. After taking a sharp turn, they drove under a railroad overpass and came to a small park with a playground.
The MINI’s GPS directed them along a narrow road. Paved at first, the Strandweg turned to gravel, then ran parallel to train tracks. Farther down the Strandweg, they pulled into a parking spot beside a shed. Wurm grabbed a backpack of supplies he had found in an equipment cabinet on the jet. The woodland quiet was both tranquil and eerie. They stepped over a wire fence near a grassy triangle, then walked southward into the dark woods. Thorn bushes cut at their legs.
Jung’s dream castle loomed ahead. Bollingen Tower was haunting. And haunted.
In his autobiography, Jung described the tower as “connected to the dead.” One evening in 1924, the sound of strangers prowling around the tower awakened Jung. When he opened the bedroom shutters, he saw nothing. Thinking it a dream, he returned to bed. Before long, laughter, singing, and music flooded the woods. Jung sensed dark figures parading around the tower. He hurried to the window and again found nothing more than a “deathly still moonlit night.” He learned later he was not the first to witness the Sälig Lüt. Known as the “departed folk,” in Swiss legend, the phantoms were said to be Wotan’s army of deceased souls.
Approaching the castle, they passed a row of woodpiles. Covered in snow, a deep trench ran straight toward the main structure. Jung had constructed high courtyard walls around Bollingen. Cori directed the flashlight at the vinecrossed wall. Odd dark stains marred the stone. The archways and turrets gave the look of a small medieval castle. They circled around the Bollingen complex, then made their way down to the gray lake. Moving past tall grasses and reeds along the rocky shore of the Obersee, they found the entrance. Above the entryway to Jung’s Tower, Wurm pointed to a Latin inscription carved in stone.
PHILEMONIS SACRUM—FAUSTI POENITENTIA
“The Shrine of Philemon—Repentance of Faust,” he told her.
Her mother’s journal mentioned Jung’s fascination with Faust. His grandfather, also Carl Jung, suggested he might be the illegitimate son of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the renowned German poet who wrote Faust. Maybe like his grandfather, Jung had identified with Faust, the necromancer in German literature who sold his soul to Mephistopheles for wisdom and power.
The Jung family had locked the 2,300-square-foot lakeshore facility. Jung would have approved. During his time at Bollingen, he had raised colored “mood flags” that signaled whether he wanted visitors or privacy.
Wurm picked the gate’s lock. He pushed open two doors on massive hinges. Twin towers dominated the stone courtyard. Jung had made four revisions to the complex over three decades, beginning in 1923 with his “maternal” tower. He had built it after his mother’s death. The fortresslike door to the maternal tower wasn’t locked. Cori led the way inside.
In silence, they wandered the timber-framed floor, discovering the tower’s primitive charm. Jung had refused the convenience of electricity or running water at Bollingen. He’d insisted on chopping wood and pumping water from a well. Inside the cramped kitchen, an oversized stone mantel crowned the fireplace. Pans and utensils clustered on a shelf. A wall peg displayed the leather apron Jung had used when dressing stone. Burlap swatches covered some wall paintings. She lifted one flap, finding Jung’s painting of a moon and stars.
Hanging onto a guide rope, they navigated narrow steps to the second floor. In an upstairs room, they discovered a large blue mandala—a “magic circle” that symbolized selfhood—painted above Jung’s bed. An enormous mural of Philemon spread across his bedroom wall. Jung had painted his spiritual guide with a flowing white beard, held aloft by blazing kingfisher wings. Philemon stared right at them.
The creepy part about the image? Philemon looked like Edgar Wurm.
“Let’s check the other tower,” Cori said, uneasiness seeping into her voice.
Moving outside, she watched as Wurm picked the lock leading to the second tower.
“My childhood fascination with Harry Houdini inspired this skill,” he told her. “By the time I was five, there wasn’t a lock I couldn’t pick.”
She frowned at the thought of a five-year-old spending his days picking locks. Wurm must have been as bizarre a child as he was an adult.
“Jung’s Number Two personality inspired this tower,” he said.
Since childhood, Jung had believed he had competing sides to his personality. His “Number One” personality, as he called it, was grounded in logic and science. This side inspired Jung to become a man of science and the founder of a famous school of psychotherapy. His “Number Two” personality, by contrast, was drawn to mysticism and pagan spirituality. Moving away from psychoanalysis, his Number Two explored a psychology grounded in things like alchemy and Gnosticism. Like Jung’s father, Sigmund Freud adored the Number One personality, but detested Number Two. As Jung aged, he plunged into the mystical side of his Number Two personality.
Jung had built the first tower as a maternal structure, a tribute to his mother and his wife, Emma. In 1931, Jung began construction on a second tower. More slender than the original, the second tower became Jung’s “place of spiritual concentration.” Centered between the two towers, he constructed a second-story bedroom and office that he called the chapel. He kept the keys to his spiritual tower and the chapel around his neck at all times. No one entered without his permission.
Wurm waved his hand, inviting her to enter.
Jung’s spiritual tower was overwhelming, almost as if they had climbed inside his unconscious mind. Cori didn’t believe in ghosts, but a disquieting feeling came over her. She sensed Jung’s presence.
Wurm pulled battery-powered halogen lamps from his backpack. He flipped them on, blasting the room with light. Cori turned in a slow circle, taking it in. Jung had described the second tower as “my confession of faith in stone,” a confession to his faith in alchemy, Gnosticism, and pagan mythology. He had adorned the interior with graffiti representing his dreams and visions. Symbols and images crammed the curved walls, some painted in vibrant colors, others carved into stone. A wolf devoured a dead king. Mercury straddled the globe with winged feet. Beneath a galaxy, an Egyptian crescent ship sailed into the underworld. Jonah languished inside a whale. A green lion feasted on the sun.
“This place is surreal,” she said.
Jung had decorated the tower walls with more mandalas. He’d included geometrical symbols representing selfhood from Navajo Indian sand paintings and the Tibetan Wheel of Life. Inspired by alchemy, a menagerie of creatures prowled the tower walls. Dragons acted as silent sentries along with falcons, bulls, fishes, unicorns, and scarab beetles. Philemon made an appearance too, but rendered in small colorful tiles. The mosaic gallery also featured life-size images of Faust, a Christian saint, and a brown leathery dwarf.
Quotations from Goethe, Paracelsus, Dante, and Milton emblazoned the tower wall. Jung had memorialized their words in Latin, Greek, English, Old Swiss, German, and Sanskrit. Wurm pressed his face against the wall, running fingers into the engraved symbols. He looked like a veteran touching names etched into the granite skin of the Vietnam Memorial wall.
“There are answers in this room,” she whispered. “But where do we begin?”
“With the Tree of Life,” he answered, pointing. Protruding from the wall, a sculpture of a white oak climbed the tower. Albino serpents coiled up the tree like vines. Beneath a knothole, Jung had carved two words into the trunk: arbor philosophica.
“Tree of the Philosophers,” he announced. “Another name for the Tree of Life.”
She realized her
mother’s message about the tree of life blossoming in the land of the dead referred to this tree. Bollingen was a stone representation of Jung’s unconscious, the Land of the Dead. They’d found a tree inside a metaphor of Jung’s mind.
“Wotan hung from the World Tree to gain wisdom. Maybe we should try it.”
Cori stuck her foot into a knothole, climbing as she reached for the next one. She grabbed a stone serpent, then pulled herself to another foothold. Wurm trained his flashlight beam on her lithe body as she scaled the stone tree. She climbed up twelve feet.
“See anything?” he called.
“Words and images. Nothing jumps out.”
A tree branch reached out near the top. Looping her legs around it, she anchored her foot, then hung upside down. She’d executed this move a hundred times in gymnastics class, but not since middle school. Back then, golden hair had hung like a curtain around her face. Blood ran to her head now as she scanned the walls. “Shine the light over there.”
Wurm directed the beam higher on the wall. “What do you see?”
She grabbed the branch, tilting her flushed head upright to relieve the pressure. She pointed at four letters carved into the wall.
HSVS
Clinging to the branch, she turned upside down again.
Looking up, Wurm cocked his head, reading the words upside down. “What do you know? If you fill in the V to make it an A, you get S-A-S-H.” He chuckled. “Sash.”
Cori dangled from the tree carved into Jung’s second tower. One stone branch looked more straight and smooth than the others. She managed to unscrew it from the trunk. She studied the branch, then dropped it to Wurm.
“Jung engraved the word sash at the top of this tower,” she said, climbing down. “Does a sash have anything to do with the Scintilla?”
“Maybe it refers to the Holy Sash. Remember Thomas the apostle? He doubted Christ’s resurrection.”
“I remember,” she said, wiping dusty hands. “Doubting Thomas wasn’t there to see it, so he didn’t believe.”
“Turns out he wasn’t around when the Virgin Mother ascended into heaven, either. Interesting things always seemed to happen when the guy was out of the room.”
“Did he doubt Mary’s ascension?” she asked.
“Thomas needed proof. Know what convinced him? The Virgin tossed her glittering sash to him. That did the trick. For a time, the Church of France was said to have possessed the sash as a relic. Disappeared centuries ago.” Wurm’s voice trailed off as she walked to the wall.
Jung had portrayed four figures in mosaic. Faust and Philemon stood beside the mosaic saint, a bearded man with a halo. “This guy has a sash,” she said, pointing to rows of red tile encircling the saint’s waist. “Is he Thomas?”
“Christian iconography portrays saints with certain symbols. Judas is often dressed in yellow. Peter holds keys. Thomas wears a red sash.”
She ran her fingers around the border. Placing her hands on the red tiles, she pushed. A shallow drawer slid out.
“Hey,” Wurm chuckled. “How’d you know to do that?”
“Good guess.” She removed a leather bag from the drawer. A cgj monogram branded the bag. Untying the drawstrings, she pulled out a black, red, and gold sash. “I read about this on the plane. Jung’s grandfather attended an 1817 festival at the Wartburg Castle, near Eisenach. While demonstrating in favor of a national state, scores of university students wore sashes and marched with torches.”
He studied it. “Same colors as the German flag.”
“I read that later, when the German feudal states united, the black-red-gold scheme of the Wartburg festival sash was adopted for the flag.” She unfolded the sash. “Hmm. The Wartburg sash didn’t have letters,” she said, looking at two rows of faded letters embroidered on the front. “Someone stitched these words on the sash. Maybe Jung. Or maybe his grandfather.”
ALKAHEST 4 HORUSARGENTUM NEKYIATY RESYMBOLE LIXIR
As if she were looking at tickertape, Cori ran her hands across the sash as Wurm held it. “Alkahest,” she said, reading the first word. “That’s an alchemical term used to describe a universal solvent. And the next letters spell Horus. But what’s the symbol between them?”
“It’s a symbol for Jupiter, the chief god of the Roman state religion,” Wurm answered. “And that last word is argentum. That’s the Latin name for silver. The alchemists used it. Argentum inspired silver’s Ag’ title on the periodic table.”
“And Nekyia,” Cori said, looking at the next line. “It refers to the Greek poem, where Odysseus descended into the underworld. He journeyed into the Land of the Dead.”
“That next word doesn’t come from alchemy,” he said, “but Tyre is important for Freemasons. King Hiram of Tyre sent materials and workers to King Solomon to help build the temple. Freemasonry is called the royal art, because the kings of Israel and Tyre founded it.”
“There’s also symbol and elixir. The words on this sash come from alchemy, mythology, and Freemasonry,” she observed. “But what do they mean for us?”
She turned the sash, finding two additional rows of cryptic characters. The letters looked brighter. Although matched in style to the words on the opposite side, the characters were embroidered in a heavier thread. Cori guessed a different person had stitched this message.
LIFE HERABE YAORCUS 26 IS ISSAL EVEWODANREX NIGHT SEATURM
“Life,” she started reading. “Hera. Beya, a figure in alchemy. What’s Orcus mean?”
“Orcus is a figure in Roman mythology,” Wurm said. “Like Pluto, he was the god of the underworld. The ruler of the Land of the Dead.”
“And maybe 26 refers to Jung’s July twenty-sixth birthday,” she continued. “After that, the Egyptian goddess Isis. Sal, the alchemical name for the ingredient salt. Eve. Wodan, a variation of Wotan. Rex, the Latin name for king, used by the alchemists. The night sea journey, same as Nekyia on the opposite side of the sash.”
“And Turm is the German word for ‘tower,’” Wurm added. “Der Turm was Jung’s name for this place. Perhaps these words can help us find the Scintilla.”
“Maybe the first letter of each word spells something.” She recited the first two rows as A-4-H-A and N-T-S-E. “No luck. Maybe it’s meant to be an acronym.”
“It isn’t an acronym.” Wurm studied the sash. “Ever hear of a scytale?” he asked, pronouncing it like Italy.
She shook her head.
“It’s a transposition cipher.” He wrapped the sash around his arm. “Goes back to the Spartans in the fifth century BCE. According to the Greek historian Thucydides, a general named Lysander created ciphers by wrapping a strip of leather or papyrus around a wooden baton.”
“Like a grip on a tennis racket?”
“Exactly. After wrapping it, you cut or burn letters into the belt.” He pointed to letters running in a vertical pattern down his arm. “Unwrap it from the baton, and you get a pattern of letters that appear random and meaningless.” Wurm unwrapped the sash. “However, the person receiving the scytale must have the same diameter of baton to line up the characters. If it’s a different size, it won’t make sense.”
“But wait. This sash must not form a scytale, because the characters are not random or meaningless. Like Nekyia. Jung used that term in his analytical psychology.”
Wurm nodded. “And yet, our faithful guide, Dr. Jung, has a history of subterfuge. Perhaps he concealed his scytale message inside the illusion of meaningful words.”
“Let’s say you’re right. Then our sash needs a baton.”
“Look for something like a staff, cane, or sword,” he said, searching the tower. “I have an idea. Bring the sash. Follow me.” He darted out the door.
She joined him outside. Wurm headed to a stone tablet across the courtyard. A crackling sound came from behind. In the pale moonlight, a figure darted past the courtyard door.
“Did you see that?” Wurm asked. “We have company.”
She thought about going back inside the towe
r, but decided to stick with him. Taking it slow, Wurm shone his flashlight across a trench outside the Bollingen complex. Cori shifted her gaze toward the forest and saw the fluttering branches of a Norway spruce. It wasn’t the wind.
Wurm darted to the tree, brushing past it. “Stop right there,” he shouted. “Anschlag.”
Staying back, she saw woodland shadows and nothing more.
“Whoever it is, I guess they’re gone,” he said, heading back. “You know those stone tablets in the courtyard? Let’s wrap the sash around the smaller one.”
“I have a better idea,” she said, heading for the tower.
Chapter Forty
Bollingen
1:05 A.M.
“I can solve the scytale,” Cori announced, back inside Jung’s tower. She grabbed the stone branch she’d removed from the Tree of the Philosophers.
“You’ve changed,” Wurm said. “You’re decisive and in control. So different from the patient I met in Baltimore.”
“Thanks,” she answered, guessing he was stingy with compliments. She held the branch upright, with hands positioned at top and bottom. Wurm wrapped the sash like a medic winding gauze around a soldier’s leg. She studied the embroidered white characters.
K
K
T
Y
U
M
E
L
“The scytale characters aren’t lining up,” he observed. “Not the right diameter.”
“Maybe the branch is right, but we have the wrong side of the sash.”
He unwrapped it, then flipped the sash. The letters on this side were sewn closer together. He centered a letter at top and wrapped the sash around the branch. The letters aligned in a vertical column.
I
V
H
O
A
N
Y
“They line up better,” he said. “Still doesn’t tell us anything.”
“There are two more sets of characters. I’ll rotate it.” She turned the branch to read the second sequence.