Memories, Dreams, Reflections

by C. G. Jung

  It is the manifest opposition of creatura to the pleroma and its nothingness.

  It is the son’s horror of the mother.

  It is the mother’s love for the son.

  It is the delight of the earth and the cruelty of the heavens.

  Before its countenance man becometh like stone.

  Before it there is no question and no reply.

  It is the life of creatura.

  It is the operation of distinctiveness.

  It is the love of man.

  It is the speech of man.

  It is the appearance and the shadow of man.

  It is illusory reality.

  Now the dead howled and raged, for they were unperfected.

  Sermo IV

  The dead filled the place murmuring and said:

  Tell us of gods and devils, accursed one!

  The god-sun is the highest good; the devil is the opposite. Thus have ye two gods. But there are many high and good things and many great evils. Among these are two god-devils; the one is the BURNING ONE, the other the GROWING ONE.

  The burning one is EROS, who hath the form of flame. Flame giveth light because it consumeth.

  The growing one is the TREE OF LIFE. It buddeth, as in growing it heapeth up living stuff.

  Eros flameth up and dieth. But the tree of life groweth with slow and constant increase through unmeasured time.

  Good and evil are united in the flame.

  Good and evil are united in the increase of the tree. In their divinity stand life and love opposed.

  Innumerable as the host of the stars is the number of gods and devils.

  Each star is a god, and each space that a star filleth is a devil. But the empty-fullness of the whole is the pleroma.

  The operation of the whole is Abraxas, to whom only the ineffective standeth opposed.

  Four is the number of the principal gods, as four is the number of the world’s measurements.

  One is the beginning, the god-sun.

  Two is Eros; for he bindeth twain together and outspreadeth himself in brightness.

  Three is the Tree of Life, for it filleth space with bodily forms.

  Four is the devil, for he openeth all that is closed. All that is formed of bodily nature doth he dissolve; he is the destroyer in whom everything is brought to nothing.

  For me, to whom knowledge hath been given of the multiplicity and diversity of the gods, it is well. But woe unto you, who replace these incompatible many by a single god. For in so doing ye beget the torment which is bred from not understanding, and ye mutilate the creature whose nature and aim is distinctiveness. How can ye be true to your own nature when ye try to change the many into one? What ye do unto the gods is done likewise unto you. Ye all become equal and thus is your nature maimed.

  Equality shall prevail not for god, but only for the sake of man. For the gods are many, whilst men are few. The gods are mighty and can endure their manifoldness. For like the stars they abide in solitude, parted one from the other by immense distances. But men are weak and cannot endure their manifold nature. Therefore they dwell together and need communion, that they may bear their separateness. For redemption’s sake I teach you the rejected truth, for the sake of which I was rejected.

  The multiplicity of the gods correspondeth to the multiplicity of man.

  Numberless gods await the human state. Numberless gods have been men. Man shareth in the nature of the gods. He cometh from the gods and goeth unto god.

  Thus, just as it serveth not to reflect upon the pleroma, it availeth not to worship the multiplicity of the gods. Least of all availeth it to worship the first god, the effective abundance and the summum bonum. By our prayer we can add to it nothing, and from it nothing take; because the effective void swalloweth all.

  The bright gods form the celestial world. It is manifold and infinitely spreading and increasing. The god-sun is the supreme lord of that world.

  The dark gods form the earth-world. They are simple and infinitely diminishing and declining. The devil is the earth-world’s lowest lord, the moon-spirit, satellite of the earth, smaller, colder, and more dead than the earth.

  There is no difference between the might of the celestial gods and those of the earth. The celestial gods magnify, the earth-gods diminish. Measureless is the movement of both.

  Sermo V

  The dead mocked and cried: Teach us, fool, of the church and holy communion.

  The world of the gods is made manifest in spirituality and in sexuality. The celestial ones appear in spirituality, the earthly in sexuality.

  Spirituality conceiveth and embraceth. It is womanlike and therefore we call it MATER COELESTIS, the celestial mother. Sexuality engendereth and createth. It is manlike, and therefore we call it PHALLOS, the earthly father.

  The sexuality of man is more of the earth, the sexuality of woman is more of the spirit.

  The spirituality of man is more of heaven, it goeth to the greater.

  The spirituality of woman is more of the earth, it goeth to the smaller.

  Lying and devilish is the spirituality of the man which goeth to the smaller.

  Lying and devilish is the spirituality of the woman which goeth to the greater.

  Each must go to its own place.

  Man and woman become devils one to the other when they divide not their spiritual ways, for the nature of creatura is distinctiveness.

  The sexuality of man hath an earthward course, the sexuality of woman a spiritual. Man and woman become devils one to the other if they distinguish not their sexuality.

  Man shall know of the smaller, woman the greater.

  Man shall distinguish himself both from spirituality and from sexuality. He shall call spirituality Mother, and set her between heaven and earth. He shall call sexuality Phallos, and set him between himself and earth. For the Mother and the Phallos are superhuman daemons which reveal the world of the gods. They are for us more effective than the gods, because they are closely akin to our own nature. Should ye not distinguish yourselves from sexuality and from spirituality, and not regard them as of a nature both above you and beyond, then are ye delivered over to them as qualities of the pleroma. Spirituality and sexuality are not your qualities, not things which ye possess and contain. But they possess and contain you; for they are powerful daemons, manifestations of the gods, and are, therefore, things which reach beyond you, existing in themselves. No man hath a spirituality unto himself, or a sexuality unto himself. But he standeth under the law of spirituality and of sexuality.

  No man, therefore, escapeth these daemons. Ye shall look upon them as daemons, and as a common task and danger, a common burden which life hath laid upon you. Thus is life for you also a common task and danger, as are the gods, and first of all terrible Abraxas.

  Man is weak, therefore is communion indispensable. If your communion be not under the sign of the Mother, then is it under the sign of the Phallos. No communion is suffering and sickness. Communion in everything is dismemberment and dissolution.

  Distinctiveness leadeth to singleness. Singleness is opposed to communion. But because of man’s weakness over against the gods and daemons and their invincible law is communion needful. Therefore shall there be as much communion as is needful, not for man’s sake, but because of the gods. The gods force you to communion. As much as they force you, so much is communion needed, more is evil.

  In communion let every man submit to others, that communion be maintained; for ye need it.

  In singleness the one man shall be superior to the others, that every man may come to himself and avoid slavery.

  In communion there shall be continence.

  In singleness there shall be prodigality.

  Communion is depth.

  Singleness is height.

  Right measure in communion purifieth and preserveth.

  Right measure in singleness purifieth and increaseth.

  Communion giveth us warmth, singleness giveth us light.

  Sermo V
I

  The daemon of sexuality approacheth our soul as a serpent. It is half human and appeareth as thought-desire.

  The daemon of spirituality descendeth into our soul as the white bird. It is half human and appeareth as desire-thought.

  The serpent is an earthy soul, half daemonic, a spirit, and akin to the spirits of the dead. Thus too, like these, she swarmeth around in the things of earth, making us either to fear them or pricking us with intemperate desires. The serpent hath a nature like unto woman. She seeketh ever the company of the dead who are held by the spell of the earth, they who found not the way beyond that leadeth to singleness. The serpent is a whore. She wantoneth with the devil and with evil spirits; a mischievous tyrant and tormentor, ever seducing to evilest company. The white bird is a half-celestial soul of man. He bideth with the Mother, from time to time descending. The bird hath a nature like unto man, and is effective thought. He is chaste and solitary, a messenger of the Mother. He flieth high above earth. He commandeth singleness. He bringeth knowledge from the distant ones who went before and are perfected. He beareth our word above to the Mother. She intercedeth, she warneth, but against the gods she hath no power. She is a vessel of the sun. The serpent goeth below and with her cunning she lameth the phallic daemon, or else goadeth him on. She yieldeth up the too crafty thoughts of the earthy one, those thoughts which creep through every hole and cleave to all things with desirousness. The serpent, doubtless, willeth it not, yet she must be of use to us. She fleeth our grasp, thus showing us the way, which with our human wits we could not find.

  With disdainful glance the dead spake: Cease this talk of gods and daemons and souls. At bottom this hath long been known to us.

  Sermo VII

  Yet when night was come the dead again approached with lamentable mien and said: There is yet one matter we forgot to mention. Teach us about man.

  Man is a gateway, through which from the outer world of gods, daemons, and souls ye pass into the inner world; out of the greater into the smaller world. Small and transitory is man. Already is he behind you, and once again ye find yourselves in endless space, in the smaller or innermost infinity. At immeasurable distance standeth one single Star in the zenith.

  This is the one god of this one man. This is his world, his pleroma, his divinity.

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

  This Star is the god and the goal of man.

  This is his one guiding god. In him goeth man to his rest. Toward him goeth the long journey of the soul after death. In him shineth forth as light all that man bringeth back from the greater world. To this one god man shall pray.

  Prayer increaseth the light of the Star. It casteth a bridge over death. It prepareth life for the smaller world and assuageth the hopeless desires of the greater.

  When the greater world waxeth cold, burneth the Star.

  Between man and his one god there standeth nothing, so long as man can turn away his eyes from the flaming spectacle of Abraxas.

  Man here, god there.

  Weakness and nothingness here, there eternally creative power.

  Here nothing but darkness and chilling moisture.

  There wholly sun.

  Whereupon the dead were silent and ascended like the smoke above the herdsman’s fire, who through the night kept watch over his flock.

  ANAGRAMMA:

  NAHTRIHECCUNDE

  GAHINNEVERAHTUNIN

  ZEHGESSURKLACH

  ZUNNUS.

  (Translated by H. G. Baynes)

  Glossary

  Amplification. Elaboration and clarification of a dream-image by means of directed association (q.v.) and of parallels from the human sciences (symbology, mythology, mysticism, folklore, history of religion, ethnology, etc.).

  Anima and Animus. Personification of the feminine nature of a man’s unconscious and the masculine nature of a woman’s. This psychological bisexuality is a reflection of the biological fact that it is the larger number of male (or female) genes which is the decisive factor in the determination of sex. The smaller number of contrasexual genes seems to produce a corresponding contrasexual character, which usually remains unconscious. Anima and animus manifest themselves most typically in personified form as figures in dreams and fantasies (“dream girl,” “dream lover”), or in the irrationalities of a man’s feeling and a woman’s thinking. As regulators of behavior they are two of the most influential archetypes (q.v.).

  C. G. JUNG: “Every man carries within him the eternal image of woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definitive feminine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, an hereditary factor of primordial origin engraved in the living organic system of the man, an imprint or ‘archetype’ [q.v.] of all the ancestral experiences of the female, a deposit, as it were, of all the impressions ever made by woman … Since this image is unconscious, it is always unconsciously projected upon the person of the beloved, and is one of the chief reasons for passionate attraction or aversion.”

  (The Development of Personality, CW 17, p. 198)

  “In its primary ‘unconscious’ form the animus is a compound of spontaneous, unpremeditated opinions which exercise a powerful influence on the woman’s emotional life, while the anima is similarly compounded of feelings which thereafter influence or distort the man’s understanding (‘she has turned his head’). Consequently the animus likes to project itself upon ‘intellectuals’ and all kinds of ‘heroes,’ including tenors, artists, sporting celebrities, etc. The anima has a predilection for everything that is unconscious, dark, equivocal, and unrelated in woman, and also for her vanity, frigidity, helplessness, and so forth.”

  (The Practice of Psychotherapy, CW 16, par. 521)

  “… no man can converse with an animus for five minutes without becoming the victim of his own anima. Anyone who still had enough sense of humour to listen objectively to the ensuing dialogue would be staggered by the vast number of commonplaces, misapplied truisms, clichés from newspapers and novels, shop-soiled platitudes of every description interspersed with vulgar abuse and brain-splitting lack of logic. It is a dialogue which, irrespective of its participants, is repeated millions and millions of times in all languages of the world and always remains essentially the same.” (Aion, CW 9, ii, p. 15)

  “The natural function of the animus (as well as of the anima) is to remain in [their] place between individual consciousness and the collective unconscious [q.v.]; exactly as the persona [q.v.] is a sort of stratum between the ego-consciousness and the objects of the external world. The animus and the anima should function as a bridge, or a door, leading to the images of the collective unconscious, as the persona should be a sort of bridge into the world.”

  (Unpublished Seminar Notes. “Visions” I, p. 116)

  Archetype. C. G. JUNG: “The concept of the archetype … is derived from the repeated observation that, for instance, the myths and fairytales of world literature contain definite motifs which crop up everywhere. We meet these same motifs in the fantasies, dreams, deliria, and delusions of individuals living today. These typical images and associations are what I call archetypal ideas. The more vivid they are, the more they will be coloured by particularly strong feeling-tones … They impress, influence, and fascinate us. They have their origin in the archetype, which in itself is an irrepresentable, unconscious, pre-existent form that seems to be part of the inherited structure of the psyche and can therefore manifest itself spontaneously anywhere, at any time. Because of its instinctual nature, the archetype underlies the feeling-toned complexes [q.v.] and shares their autonomy.” (Civilization in Transition, CW 10, par. 847)

  “Again and again I encounter the mistaken notion that an archetype is determined in regard to its content, in other words that it is a kind of unconscious idea (if such an expression be admissible). It is necessary to point out once more that archetypes are not determined as regards their content, but only as regards their form and then only to a very lim
ited degree. A primordial image [q.v.] is determined as to its content only when it has become conscious and is therefore filled out with the material of conscious experience. Its form, however, … might perhaps be compared to the axial system of a crystal, which, as it were, preforms the crystalline structure in the mother liquid, although it has no material existence of its own. This first appears according to the specific way in which the ions and molecules aggregate. The archetype in itself is empty and purely formal, nothing but a facultas praeformandi, a possibility of representation which is given a priori. The representations themselves are not inherited, only the forms, and in that respect they correspond in every way to the instincts, which are also determined in form only. The existence of the instincts can no more be proved than the existence of the archetypes, so long as they do not manifest themselves concretely.”

  (The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CW 9, i, pp. 79 f.)

  “… it seems to me probable that the real nature of the archetype is not capable of being made conscious, that it is transcendent, on which account I call it psychoid [q.v.].”

  (The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, CW 8, p. 213)

  Association. The linking of ideas, perceptions, etc. according to similarity, coexistence, opposition, and causal dependence. Free association in Freudian dream interpretation: spontaneous ideas occurring to the dreamer, which need not necessarily refer to the dream situation. Directed or controlled association in Jungian dream interpretation: spontaneous ideas which proceed from a given dream situation and constantly relate to it.

  Association test. Methods for discovering complexes (q.v.) by measuring the reaction time and interpreting the answers to given stimulus words. Complex-indicators: prolonged reaction time, faults, or the idiosyncratic quality of the answers when the stimulus words touch on complexes which the subject wishes to hide or of which he is not conscious.

  Complex. C. G. JUNG: “Complexes are psychic fragments which have split off owing to traumatic influences or certain incompatible tendencies. As the association experiments prove, complexes interfere with the intentions of the will and disturb the conscious performance; they produce disturbances of memory and blockages in the flow of associations [q.v.]; they appear and disappear according to their own laws; they can temporarily obsess consciousness, or influence speech and action in an unconscious way. In a word, complexes behave like independent beings, a fact especially evident in abnormal states of mind. In the voices heard by the insane they even take on a personal ego-character like that of the spirits who manifest themselves through automatic writing and similar techniques.”