Conference hydra::dejavu

From the "Seven Sermons to the Dead" by C.G.Jung

_____________________________________________________________________________
                                
                                Sermo II

      
      In the night the dead stood along the wall and cried:
      We would have knowledge of god.  Where is god?  Is god dead?
      God is not dead.  Now, as ever, he liveth. God is creatura, for he
    is something definate, and therefore distinct from the pleroma.  God
    is quality of the pleroma, and everything which I said of creatura 
    also is true concerning him.
      He is distinguished, however, from created beings through this, that
    he is more indefinate and indeterminable than they.  He is less dis-
    tinct than created beings, since the ground of his being is effective
    fullness.  Only in so far as he is definate and distinct is he crea-
    tura, and in like measure is he the manifestation of the effective 
    fullness of the pleroma.
      Everything which we do not distinguish falleth into the pleroma and
    is made void by its opposite.  If, therefore, we do not distinguish 
    god, effective fullness is for us extinguished.
      Moreover god is the pleroma itself, as likewise each smallest point
    in the created and uncreated is the pleroma itself.
      Effective void is the nature of the devil.  God and devil are the 
    first manifestations of nothingness, which we call the pleroma.  It
    is indifferent whether the pleroma is or is not, since in everything 
    it is balanced and void.  Not so creatura.  In so far as god and 
    devil are creatura they do not extinguish each other, but stand one
    against the other as effective opposites.  We need no proof of their
    existence.  It is enough that we must always be speaking of them.  
    Even if both were not, creatura, of its essential distinctiveness,
    would forever distinguisheth them anew out of the pleroma.
      Everything that discrimination taketh out of the pleroma is a pair
    of opposites.  To god, therefore, always belongeth the devil.
      This inseparability is as close and, as your own life hath made you
    see, as indissoluble as the pleroma itself.  Thus it is that both
    stand very close to the pleroma, in which all opposites are extin-
    guished and joined.
      God and devil are distinguished by the qualities fullness and 
    emptiness, generation and destruction.  EFFECTIVENESS is common to
    both.  Effectiveness joineth them.  Effectiveness, therefore, stand-
    eth above both; is a god above god, since in its effect it uniteth
    fullness and emptiness.
      This is a god whom ye knew not, for mankind forgot it.  We name it
    by its name ABRAXAS.  It is more indefinate still than god and devil.
      That god may be distinguished from it, we name god HELIOS or Sun.
    Abraxas is effect.  Nothing standeth opposed to it but the ineffective;
    hence its effective nature freely unfoldeth itself.  The ineffective
    is not, therefore resisteth not.  Abraxas standeth above the sun and
    above the devil.  It is improbable probability, unreal reality.  Had
    the pleroma a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation.  It is the 
    effect itself, not any particular effect, but effect in general.
      It is unreal reality, because it hath no definate effect.
      It is also creatura, because it is distinct from the pleroma.
      The sun hath a definate effect, and so hath the devil.  Wherefore
    do they appear to us more effective than indefinate Abraxas.
      It is force, duration, change.


    The dead now raised a great tumult, for they were Christians.

____________________________________________________________________________

From the "Seven Sermons to the Dead" by C.G.Jung.


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                               Sermo III


      Like mists arising from a marsh, the dead came near and cried:
    Speak further to us concerning the supreme god.
      Hard to know is the deity of Abraxas.  Its power is the greatest, 
    because man perceiveth it not.  From the sun he draweth the *summum
    bonum*; from the devil the *infimum malum*; but from Abraxas LIFE,
    altogether indefinate, the mother of good and evil.
      Smaller and weaker life seemeth to be than the *summum bonum*;
    wherefore is it also hard to conceive that Abraxas transcendeth even
    the sun in power, who is himself the radiant source of all the force
    of life.
      Abraxas is the sun and the same time the eternally sucking gorge of
    the void, the belittling and dismembering devil.
      The power of Abraxas is twofold; but ye see it not, because for your
    eyes the warring opposites of this power are extinguished.
      What the god-sun speaketh is life.
      What the devil speaketh is death.
      But Abraxas speaketh that hallowed and accursed word which is life
    and death at the same time.
      Abraxas begetteth truth and lying, good and evil, light and darkness,
    in the same word and in the same act.  Wherefore is Abraxas terrible.
      It is splendid as the lion in the instant he striketh down his vic-
    tim.  It is beautiful as a day of spring.  It is the great Pan himself
    and also the small one.  It is Priapos.
      It is the monster of the under-world, a thousand-armed polyp, coiled
    knot of winged serpents, frenzy.
      It is the hermaphrodite of the earliest beginning.
      It is the lord of the toads and frogs, which live in the water and go
    up on the land, whose chorus ascendeth at noon and midnight.
      It is abundance that seeketh union with emptiness.
      It is holy begetting.
      It is love and love's murder.
      It is the saint and his betrayer.
      It is the brightest light of day and the darkest night of madness.
      To look upon it, is blindness.
      To know it, is sickness.
      To worship it, is death.
      To fear it, is wisdom.
      To resist it not, is redemption.
      God dwelleth behind the sun, the devil behind the night.  What god
    bringeth forth out of the light the devil sucketh into the night.  But
    Abraxas is the world, its becoming and its passing.  Upon every gift 
    that cometh from the god-sun the devil layeth his curse.
      Everything that ye entreat from the god-sun begetteth a deed of the
    devil.
      Everything that ye create with the god-sun giveth effective power to
    the devil.
      That is terrible Abraxas.
      It is the mightiest creature, and in it the creature is afraid of it-
    self.
      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.
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From the "Seven Sermons to the Dead" by C.G.Jung.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                  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 the two god-devils; the one is the BURNING ONE
    and the other is 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 divin-
    ity stand life and love opposed.
      Innumerable as the host of 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 the
    incompatable many by a single god.  For in so doing ye beget the tor-
    ment 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 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 infinit-
    ely 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 dimin-
    ish.  Measureless is the movement of both.

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From the "Seven Sermons to the Dead" by C.G.Jung.

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                                  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 dist-
    inguish 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 your-
    selves 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 qual-
    ities, 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 it is under the sign of the 
    Phallos.  No communion is suffering and sickness.  Communion in every-
    thing is dismemberment and dissolution.
      Distinctiveness leadeth to singleness.  Singleness is opposed to com-
    munion.  But because of mans 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 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.

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From the "Seven Sermons to the Dead" by C.G.Jung.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                    Sermo VI


      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 the earth.  He command-
    eth 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 cun-
    ning she lameth the phallic daemon, or else goadeth him on.  She yield-
    eth 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.

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From the "Seven Sermons to the Dead" by C.G.Jung.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                  Sermo VII


      Yet when night was come the dead again approached with lamentable mein
    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 smal-
    ler world.  Small and transitory is man.  Already he is behind you, and
    once again ye find yourselves in endless space, in the smaller or inner-
    most 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 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 hope-
    less 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 herds-
 man's fire, who through the night kept watch over his flock.



ANAGRAMMA:
                 NAHTRIHECCUNDE
                 GAHINNEVERAHTUNIN
                 ZEHGESSURKLACH
                 ZUNNUS.
                                       (Translated by H.G.Baynes)

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Come all you cipher's out there!  Can you solve the anagram?

:-)


Guy  
 

    
    Guy,
    
    Thanks for taking the time to enter those.
    
    One interesting thought I had, and perhaps someone can verify this, is
    that Robert Oppenheimer referred to himself once as 'I am the Death - 
    the destroyer of worlds' (or something close to this).  Might it have 
    come from Sermon VII, or is there another reference to this in some 
    other writing?
    
    Cindy

    I believe Oppenheimer was quoting from the Upanishads,
    after he witnessed the first a-bomb test.
    
    /bruce

    Re .-1
    Right, I believe.  I think it is from the Bhagavad Ghita(sp?).
    Dunno if that qualifies as the Upanishads or not.  It would be
    a delicate psychological question as to whether he was referring
    to himself, "us", or making an "erudite quote".
    
    quite appropriate, i would say
    
    thanks
    dave pierson

    
    I'm sure Jung probably read and was influenced by the writings
    mentioned.  I've read about half of my copy of the Upanishads and they
    seem to correlate with his ideas quite a bit.  It's amazing how much
    your understanding of something increases when you type it in line by
    line. :-)
    
    Thanks for the thanks, Cindy.  May you fare well in OZ...
    
    
    Guy
    

    These passages reminded me of something I read recently by David
    Bohm. Bohm is an English Physicist who worked with Einstein in
    attempting to uncover the "Unifying Force" [of nature]. His
    descriptions now are quite metaphorical and similar in denotation
    and connotation to Jung's sermons. Pleroma would be translated into
    "Implicate (or Superimplicate) Order", and Creature would be
    "Explicate Order". Strangely, this makes sense to me.
    
    See Bohm's recent book, "Science, Order and Creativity" (with F.
    David Peat). It's a marvelous work.
    
    Richard

    
     If no one has any objections, I will turn this topic into the toxic
waste dump of Jung stuff.  In particular I would like, given time, to
post a particular section from "Man and His Symbols" by Jung that I seem
to keep reading over and over, getting more from it each time I read it.
Following this entry will be sections discussing the shadow, anima, animus,
and the Self.  I find these sections most useful in that many examples of
dreams and their interpretations are present (er...except *this* section).  

This particular section (including following ones) was actually written
by M.-L. von Franz, as commissioned by Jung in his last year or so of life.

Guy 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reprinted without permission.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Pattern of Psychic Growth - M.-L. von Franz
-----------------------------

  At the beginning of this book Dr. C.G.Jung introduced the reader to the 
concept of the unconscious, its personal and collective structures, and its
symbolic mode of expression.  One has seen the vital importance (that is the
healing or destructive impact) of the symbols produced by the unconscious,
there remains the difficult problem of interpretation.  Dr. Jung has shown
that everything depends on whether any particular interpretation "clicks"
and is meaningful to the individual concerned.  In this way he has indicated
the possible meaning and function of dream symbolism.
  But, in the development of Jung's theory, this possibility raised another
question:  What is the purpose of the *total* dream life of the individual?
What role do dreams play, not only in the immediate psychic economy of the 
human being, but in his life as a whole?
  By observing a great many people and studying their dreams (he estimated 
that he interpreted at least 80,000 dreams), Jung discovered not only that
all dreams are relevant in varying degrees to the life of the dreamer, but 
that they are all parts of one great web of psychological factors.  He also
found that, on the whole, they seem to follow an arrangement or pattern. 
This pattern Jung called "the process of individuation."  Since dreams prod-
uce different scenes and images every night, people who are not careful 
observers will probably be unaware of any pattern.  But if one watches one's
own dreams over a period of years and studies the entire sequence, one will
see that certain contents emerge, disappear, and then turn up again.  Many 
people even dream repeatedly of the same figures, landscapes, or situations;
and if one follows these through a whole series, one will see that they change
slowly but perceptibly.  These changes can be accelerated if the dreamers 
conscious attitude is influenced by appropriate interpretation of the dreams
and their symbolic contents.
  Thus our dream life creates a meandering pattern in which individual strands
or tendencies become visible, then vanish, then return again.  If one watches
this meandering design over a long period of time, one can observe a sort of
hidden regulating or directing tendency at work, creating a slow, imperceptible
process of psychic growth - the process of individuation.
  Gradually a wider and more mature personality emerges, and by degrees becomes
effective and even visible to others.  The fact that we often speak of "ar-
rested development" shows that we assume that such a process of growth and
maturation is possible with every individual.  Since this psychic growth can-
not be brought about by a conscious effort of will power, but happens invol-
untarily and naturally, it is in dreams frequently symbolized by the tree, 
whose slow, powerful, involuntary growth fulfills a definite pattern.
  The organizing center from which the regulatory effect stems seems to be a
sort of "nuclear atom" in our psychic system.  One could also call it the in-
ventor, organizer, and source of dream images.  Jung called this center the
"Self" and described it as the totality of the whole psyche, in order to
distinguish it from the "ego" which constitutes only a small part of the 
total psyche.
  Throughout the ages men have been intuitively aware of the existence of such
an inner center.  The Greeks called it man's inner *daimon*; in Egypt it was
expressed by the concept of the *Ba-soul*; and the Romans worshiped it as the
"genius" native to each individual.  In the more primitive societies it was
often thought of as a protective spirit embodied within an animal or a fetish.
  This inner center is realized in exceptionally pure, unspoiled form by the
Naskapi Indians, who still exist in the forests of the Labrador peninsula.
These simple people are hunters who live in isolated family groups, so far
from one another that they have not been able to evolve tribal customs or col-
lective religious beliefs and ceremonies.  In his lifelong solitude the 
Naskapi hunter has to rely on his own inner voices and unconscious revelations;
he has no religious teachers who tell him what he should believe, no rituals,
festivals, or customs to help him along.  In his basic view of life, the soul
of man is simply an "inner companion" whom he calls "my friend" or Mista'peo,
meaning "Great Man."  Mista-peo dwells in the heart and is immortal; in the
moment of death, or shortly before, he leaves the individual, and later rein-
carnates himself in another being.
  Those Naskapi who pay close attention to their dreams and who try to find
their meaning and test their truth can enter into a deeper connection with
the Great Man.  He favors such people and sends them more and better dreams.
Thus the major obligation of an individual Naskapi is to follow the instruc-
tions given by his dreams, and then to give permanent form to their contents
in art.  Lies and dishonesty drive the Great Man away from one's inner realm,
whereas generosity and love of one's neighbors and of animals attract him and
give him life.  Dreams give the Naskapi complete ability to find his way in 
life, not only in the inner world but also in the outer world of nature.  They
help him to foretell the weather and give him invaluable guidance in his hunt-
ing, upon which his life depends.  I mention these very primitive people because
they are uncontaminated by our civilized ideas and still have natural insight 
into the essence of what Jung calls the Self.
  The Self can be defined as an inner guiding factor that is different from the
conscious personality and that can be grasped only through the investigation of
one's own dreams.  These show it to be the regulating center that brings about
a constant extension and maturing of the personality.  But this larger, more
nearly total aspect of the psyche appears at first as merely an inborn pos-
sibility.  It may emerge very slightly, or it may develop relatively completely
during one's lifetime.  How far it develops depends on whether or not the ego 
is willing to listen to the messages of the Self.  Just as the Naskapi have
noticed that a person who is receptive to the hints of the Great Man gets bet-
ter and more helpful dreams, we could add that the inborn Great Man becomes
more real within the receptive person than in those who neglect him.  Such a 
person also becomes a more complete human being.
  It even seems as if the ego has not been produced by nature to follow its own
arbitrary impulses to an unlimited extent, but to help make real the totality -
the whole psyche.  It is the ego that serves to light up the entire system,
allowing it to become conscious and thus to be realized.  If, for example, I
have an artistic talent of which my ego is not conscious, nothing will happen
to it.  The gift may as well be non-existant.  Only if my ego notices it can
I bring it into reality.  The inborn but hidden totality of the psyche is not
the same thing as a wholeness that is fully realized and lived.
  One could picture this in the following way:  The seed of a mountain pine con-
tains the whole future tree in a latent form; but each seed falls at a certain
time onto a particular place, in which there are a number of special factors, 
such as the quality of the soil and the stones, the slope of the land, and its
exposure to sun and wind.  The latent totality of the pine in the seed reacts
to these circumstances by avoiding the stones and inclining toward the sun, 
with the result that the trees growth is shaped.  Thus an individual pine slow-
ly comes into existence, constituting the fulfillment of its totality, its 
emergence into the realm of reality.  Without the living tree, the image of the
pine is only a possibility or an abstract idea.  Again the realization of this
uniqueness in the individual man is the goal of the process of individuation.
  From one point of view this process takes place in man (as well as in every
other living being) by itself and in the unconscious; it is a process by which
man lives out his innate human nature.  Strictly speaking, however, the process
of individuation is real only if the individual is aware of it and consciously
makes a living connection with it.  We do not know whether the pine tree is
aware of its own growth, whether it enjoys and suffers the different vicissit-
udes that shape it.  But man certainly is able to participate consciously in
his development.  He even feels that from time to time, by making free decis-
ions, he can cooperate actively with it.  This co-operation belongs to the
process of individuation in the narrower sense of the word.
  Man, however, experiences something that is not contained in our metaphor of
the pine tree.  The individuation process is more than a coming to terms bet-
ween the inborn germ of wholeness and the outer acts of fate.  Its subjective
experience conveys the feeling that some supra-personal force is actively int-
erfering in a creative way.  One sometimes feels that the unconscious is lead-
ing the way in accordance with a secret design.  It is as if something is look-
ing at me, something that I do not see but that sees me - perhaps that Great
Man in the heart, who tells me his opinions about me by means of dreams.
  But this creatively active aspect of the psychic nucleus can come into play
only when the ego gets rid of all purposive and wishful aims and tries to get
to a deeper, more basic form of existence.  The ego must be able to listen
attentively and to give itself, without any further design or purpose, to that  
inner urge toward growth.  Many existentialist philosophers try to describe 
this state, but they go only as far as stripping off the illusions of conscious-
ness; they go right up to the door of the unconscious and then fail to open it.
  People living in cultures more securely rooted than our own have less trouble
in understanding that it is necessary to give up the utilitarian attitude of
conscious planning in order to make way for the inner growth of the personality.
I once met an elderly lady who had not achieved much in her life, in terms of
outward achievement.  But she had in fact made a good marriage with a difficult
husband, and had somehow developed into a mature personality.  When she comp-
lained to me that she had not "done" anything in her life, I told her a story
related by a Chinese sage, Chuang-Tzu.  She understood immediately and felt 
great relief.  This is the story:

    A wandering carpenter, called Stone, saw on his travels a gigantic old 
  oak tree standing in a field near an earth-altar.  The carpenter said to
  his apprentice, who was admiring the oak: "This is a useless tree.  If 
  you wanted to make a ship, it would soon rot; if you wanted to make tools,
  they would break.  You can't do anything useful with this tree, and that's
  why it has become so old."
    But in an inn, that same evening, when the carpenter went to sleep, the
  old oak tree appeared to him in his dream and said: "Why do you compare me
  to your cultivated trees such as whitethorn, pear, orange, and apple trees,
  and all others that bear fruit?  Even before they can ripen their fruit,
  people attack and violate them.  Their branches are broken, their twigs are
  torn.  Their own gifts bring harm to them, and they cannot live out their 
  natural span.  That is what happens everywhere, and that is why I have long
  since tried to become completely useless.  You poor mortal!  Imagine if I
  had been useful in any way, would I have reached this size?  Furthermore,
  you and I are both creatures, and how can one creature set himself so high
  as to judge another creature?  You useless mortal man, what do you know
  about useless trees?"
    The carpenter woke up and meditated upon his dream, and later, when his
  apprentice asked him why just this one tree served to protect the earth-
  altar, he answered, "Keep your mouth shut!  Let's hear no more about it!
  The tree grew here on purpose because anywhere else people would have ill-
  treated it.  If it were not the tree of the earth-altar, it might have been
  chopped down."

  The carpenter obviously understood his dream.  He saw that simply to fulfill 
one's destiny is the greatest human achievement, and that our utilitarian not-
ions have to give way in the face of the demands of our unconscious psyche.  If
we translate this metaphor into psychological language, the tree symbolizes the
process of individuation, giving a lesson to our shortsighted ego.
  Under the tree that fulfilled its destiny, there was - in Chuang-Tzu's story -
an earth altar.  This was a crude, unwrought stone upon which people made sac-
rifices to the local god who "owned" this piece of land.  The symbol of the
earth altar points to the fact that in order to bring the individuation process
into reality, one must surrender consciously to the power of the unconscious,
instead of thinking in terms of what one should do, or of what is generally 
thought right, or of what usually happens.  One must simply listen, in order to
learn what the inner totality - the Self - wants one to do here and now in a
particular situation.
  Our attitude must be like that of the mountain pine mentioned above:  It does
does not get annoyed when its growth is obstructed by a stone, nor does it make
plans about how to overcome the obstacles.  It merely tries to feel whether it
should grow more toward the left or the right, toward the slope or away from it.
Like the tree, we should give in to this almost imperceptible, yet powerfully
dominating impulse - an impulse that comes from the urge toward unique, creat-
ive self-realization.  And this is a process in which one must repeatedly seek
out and find something that is not yet known to anyone.  The guiding hints or
impulses come, not from the ego, but from the totality of the psyche: the Self.
  It is, moreover, useless to cast furtive glances at the way someone else is
developing, because each of us has a unique task of self-realization.  Although
many human problems are similar, they are never identical.  All pine trees are
very much alike (otherwise we should not recognize them as pines), yet none is
exactly the same as another.  Because of these factors of sameness and differ-
ence, it is difficult to summarize the infinite variations of the process of
individuation.  The fact is that each person has to do something different, 
something that is uniquely his own.
  Many people have criticized the Jungian approach for not presenting psychic
material systematically.  But these critics forget that the material itself is 
a living experience charged with emotion, by nature irrational and ever-chang-
ing, which does not lend itself to systematization except in the most super-
ficial fashion.  Modern depth psychology has here reached the same limits that
confront microphysics.  That is, when we are dealing with statistical averages,
a rational and systematic description of the facts is possible.  But when we
are attempting to describe a single psychic event, we can do no more than 
present an honest picture of it from as many angles as possible.  In the same
way, scientists have to admit that they do not know what light is.  They can
say only that in certain experimental conditions it seems to consist of part-
icles, while in other experimental conditions it seems to consist of waves.
But what it is "in itself" is not known.  The psychology of the unconscious
and any descriptions of the process of individuation encounter comparable
difficulties of definition.  But I will try here to give a sketch of some of
their most typical features.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To be continued...

Part II - Selections from "Man and His Symbols" by C.G.Jung.

Reprinted without permission.

(This section actually written by M.-L. von Franz)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The First Approach of the Unconscious 

  For most people the years of youth are characterized by a state of gradual
awakening in which the individual slowly becomes aware of the world and of
himself.  Childhood is a period of great emotional intensity, and a child's
earliest dreams often manifest in symbolic form the basic structure of the 
psyche, indicating how it will later shape the destiny of the individual con-
cerned.  For example, Jung once told a group of students about a young woman
who was so haunted by anxiety that she had committed suicide at the age of 26.
As a small child, she had dreamed that "Jack Frost" had entered her room while
she was lying in bed and pinched her on the stomach.  She woke and discovered
that she had pinched herself with her own hand.  The dream did not frighten
her; she merely remembered that she had had such a dream.  But the fact that
she did not react emotionally to her strange encounter with the demon of the
cold - of congealed life - did not augur well for the future and was itself
abnormal.  It was with a cold, unfeeling hand that she later put an end to 
her life.  From this single dream it is possible to deduce the tragic fate of
the dreamer, which was anticipated by her psyche in childhood.
  Sometimes it is not a dream but some very impressive and unforgettable real
event that, like a prophecy, anticipates the future in symbolic form.  It is 
well known that children often forget events that seem impressive to adults
but keep a vivid recollection of some incident or story that no one else has
noticed.  When we look into one of these childhood memories, we usually find 
that it depicts (if interpreted as if it were a symbol) a basic problem of
the child's psychic make-up.
  When a child reaches school age, the phase of building up the ego and of 
adapting to the outer world begins.  This phase generally brings a number of
painful shocks.  At the same time, some children begin to feel very different
from others, and this feeling of being unique brings a certain sadness that is
part of the loneliness of many youngsters.  The imperfections of the world, 
and the evil within oneself as well as outside, become conscious problems; the
child must try to cope with urgent (but not yet understood) inner impulses as
well as the demands of the outer world.
  If the development of consciousness is disturbed in its normal unfolding, 
children frequently retire from outer or inner difficulties into an inner
"fortress"; and when that happens, their dreams and symbolic drawings of un-
conscious material often reveal to an unusual degree a type of circular,
quadrangular, and "nuclear" motif (which I will explain later).  This refers
to the previously mentioned psychic nucleus, the vital center of the personal-
ity from which the whole structural development of consciousness stems.  It is
natural that the image of the center should appear in an especially striking 
way when the psychic life of the individual is threatened.  From this central
nucleus (as far as we know today), the whole building up of ego consciousness
is directed, the ego being a duplicate or structural counterpart of the orig-
inal center.
  In this early phase there are many children who earnestly seek for some mean-
ing in life that could help them to deal with the chaos both within and outside
themselves.  There are others, however, who are still unconsciously carried 
along by the dynamism of inherited and instinctive archetypal patterns.  These
young people are not concerned about the deeper meaning of life, because their
experiences with love, nature, sport, and work contain an immediate and satis-
fying meaning for them.  They are not necessarily more superficial; usually 
they are carried by the stream of life with less friction and disturbance than
their more introspective fellows.  If I travel in a car or train without look-
ing out, it is only the stops, starts, and sudden turns that make me realize
I am moving at all.
  The actual process of individuation - the conscious coming-to-terms with one's
own inner center (psychic nucleus) or Self - generally begins with a wounding 
of the personality and the suffering that accompanies it.  This initial shock
amounts to a sort of "call," although it is often not recognized as such.  On
the contrary, the ego feels hampered in its will or its desire and usually 
projects the obstruction onto something external.  That is, the ego accuses
God or the economic situation or the boss or the marriage partner of being res-
ponsible for whatever is obstructing it.
  Or perhaps everything seems outwardly all right, but beneath the surface a 
person is suffering from a deadly boredom that makes everything seem meaning-
less and empty.  Many myths and fairy tales symbolically describe this initial
stage in the process of individuation by telling of a king who has fallen ill
or grown old.  Other familiar story patterns are that a royal couple is barren;
or that a monster steals all the women, children, horses, and wealth of the 
kingdom; or that a demon keeps the king's army or his ship from proceeding on
its course; or that darkness hangs over the lands, wells dry up, and flood
drought, and frost afflict the country.  Thus it seems as if the initial en-
counter with the Self casts a dark shadow ahead of time, or as if the "inner
friend" comes at first like a trapper to catch the helplessly struggling ego
in his snare.
  In myths one finds that the magic or talisman that can cure the misfortune
of the king or his country always proves to be something very special.  In one
tale "a white blackbird" or "a fish that carries a golden ring in its gills"
is needed to restore the king's health.  In another, the king wants "the water
of life" or "three golden hairs from the head of the devil" or "a woman's
golden plait" (and afterward, naturally, the owner of the plait).  Whatever it
is, the thing that can drive away the evil is always unique and hard to find.
  It is exactly the same in the initial crisis in the life of an individual.
One is seeking something that is impossible to find or about which nothing is 
known.  In such moments all well-meant, sensible advice is completely useless -
advice that urges one to try to be responsible, to take a holiday, not to work
so hard (or to work harder), to have more (or less) human contact, or to take 
up a hobby.  None of that helps, or at best only rarely.  There is only one 
thing that seems to work; and that is to turn directly toward the approaching
darkness without prejudice and totally naively, and to try to find out what
its secret aim is and what it wants from you.
  This hidden purpose of the oncoming darkness is generally something so un-
usual, so unique and unexpected, that as a rule one can find out what it is
only by means of dreams and fantasies welling up from the unconscious.  If one
focuses attention on the unconscious without rash assumptions or emotional
rejection, it often breaks through in a flow of helpful symbolic images.  But
not always.  Sometimes it offers a series of painful realizations of what is
wrong with oneself and one's conscious attitudes.  Then one must begin the
process by swallowing all sorts of bitter truths.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Guy  (the Jungian scribe)

Part III - excerpts from "Man and His Symbols"

*reprinted without permission

(this section written by M.- L. von Franz)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Realization of the Shadow

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Whether the unconscious comes up at first in a helpful or a negative form,
after a time the need usually arises to re-adapt the conscious attitude in a 
better way to the unconscious factors - therefor to accept what seems to be
"criticism" from the unconscious.  Through dreams one becomes acquainted with
aspects of one's own personality that for various reasons one has preferred 
not to look at too closely.  This is what Jung called "the realization of the
shadow."  (He used the term "shadow" for this unconscious part of the person-
ality because it actually often appears in dreams in a personified form.)
  The shadow is not the whole of the unconscious personality.  It represents
unknown or little-known attributes and qualities of the ego - aspects that
mostly belong to the personal sphere and that could just as well be conscious. 
In some aspects, the shadow can also consist of collective factors that stem
from a source outside the individual's personal life.
  When an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of
(and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but
can plainly see in other people - such things as egotism, mental laziness, and
sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice;
inordinate love of money and possessions - in short, all the little sins about
which he might have previously told himself: "That doesn't matter; nobody will
notice it, and in any case other people do it too."
  If you feel an overwhelming rage coming up in you when a friend reproaches 
you for a fault, you can be fairly sure that at this point you will find a 
part of your shadow, of which you are unconscious.  It is, of course, natural
to become annoyed when others who are "no better" criticize you because of your
shadow faults.  But what can you say if your own dreams - an inner judge in 
your own being - reproach you?  That is the moment when the ego gets caught,
and the result is usually embarrassed silence.  Afterward the painful and 
lengthy work of self education begins - a work, we might say, that is the 
psychological equivalent of the labors of Hercules.  This unfortunate hero's
first task, you will remember, was to clean up in one day the Augean Stables,
in which hundreds of cattle had dropped their dung for many decades - a task
so enormous that the ordinary mortal would be overcome by discouragement at 
the mere thought of it.
  The shadow does not consist only of omissions.  It shows up just as often in
an impulsive or inadvertent act.  Before one has time to think, the evil remark
pops out, the plot is hatched, the wrong decision is made, and one is confronted
with results that were never intended or consciously wanted.  Furthermore, the
shadow is exposed to collective infections to a much greater extent than is the
conscious personality.  When a man is alone, for instance, he feels relatively
all right; but as soon as "the others" do dark, primitive things, he begins to
fear that if he doesn't join in, he will be considered a fool.  Thus he gives
way to impulses that do not really belong to him at all.  It is particularly
in contacts with people of the same sex that one stumbles over both one's shadow
and those of other people.  Although we do see the shadow in a person of the 
opposite sex, we are usually much less annoyed by it and can more easily pardon
it.
  In dreams and myths, therefore, the shadow appears as a person of the same
sex as that of the dreamer.  The following dream may serve as an example.  The
dreamer was a man of 48 who tried to live very much for and by himself, work-
ing hard and disciplining himself, repressing pleasure and spontaneity to a
far greater extent than suited his real nature.

    I owned and inhabited a very big house in town, and I didn't yet know all 
  its different parts.  So I took a walk through it and discovered, mainly in
  the cellar, several rooms about which I knew nothing and even exits leading
  into other cellars or into subterranean streets.  I felt uneasy when I found
  that several of these exits were not locked and some had no locks at all.  
  Moreover, there were some laborers at work in the neighborhood who could have
  sneaked in....
    When I came up again to the ground floor, I passed a back yard where again 
  I discovered different exits into the street or into other houses.  When I 
  tried to investigate them more closely, a man came up to me laughing loudly
  and calling out that we were old pals from the elementary school.  I remem-
  bered him too, and while he was telling me about his life, I walked along
  with him toward the exit and strolled with him through the streets.
    There was a strange chiaroscuro in the air as we walked through an enormous
  circular street and arrived at a green lawn where three galloping horses
  suddenly passed us.  They were beautiful strong animals, wild but well groom-
  ed, and they had no rider with them. (Had they run away from military from
  military service?)

  The maze of strange passages, chambers, and unlocked exits in the cellar 
recalls the old Egyptian representation of the underworld, which is a well-
known symbol of the unconscious with its unknown possibilities.  It also 
shows how one is "open" to other influences in one's unconscious shadow side,
and how uncanny and alien elements can break in.  The cellar, one can say,
is the basement of the dreamer's psyche.  In the back yard of the strange
building (which represents the still unperceived psychic scope of the dreamers
personality) an old school friend suddenly turns up.  This person obviously
personifies another aspect of the dreamer himself - an aspect that had been
part of his life as a child but that he had forgotten and lost.  It often 
happens that a person's childhood qualities (for instance, gaiety, irascib-
ility, or perhaps trustfulness) suddenly disappear, and one does not know
where or how they have gone.  It is such a lost characteristic of the dreamer
that now returns (from the back yard) and tries to make friend again.  This
figure probably stands for the dreamer's neglected capacity for enjoying 
life and for his extraverted shadow side.
  But we soon learn why the dreamer feels "uneasy" just before meeting this
seemingly harmless old friend.  When he strolls with him in the street, the
horses break loose.  The dreamer thinks they may have escaped from military
service (that is to say, from the conscious discipline that has hitherto
characterized his life).  The fact that the horses have no rider shows that 
instinctive drives can get away from conscious control.  In this old friend,
and in the horses, all the positive force reappears that was lacking before
and that was badly needed by the dreamer.
  This is a problem that often comes up when one meets one's "other side."
The shadow usually contains values that are needed by consciousness, but 
that exist in a form that makes it difficult to integrate them into one's
life.  The passages and the large house in this dream also show that the
dreamer does not yet know his own psychic dimensions and is not yet able to 
fill them out.
  The shadow in this dream is typical for an introvert (a man who tends to
retire too much from outer life).  In the case of an extravert, who is turned
more toward outer objects and outer life, the shadow would look quite differ-
ent.
  A young man who had a very lively temperament embarked again and again on
successful enterprises, while at the same time his dreams insisted that he
should finish off a piece of private creative work he had begun.  The fol-
lowing was one of those dreams:

    A man is lying on a couch and has pulled the cover over his face.  He 
  is a Frenchman, a desperado who would take on any criminal job.  An official
  is accompanying me downstairs, and I know that a plot has been made against
  me; namely, that the Frenchman should kill me as if by chance.  (That is 
  how it would look from the outside.)  He actually sneaks up behind me when
  we approach the exit, but I am on my guard.  A tall, portly man (rather rich
  and influential) suddenly leans against the wall beside me, feeling ill.  I
  quickly grab the opportunity to kill the official by stabbing his heart.
  "One only notices a bit of moisture" - this is said as a comment.  Now I am
  safe, for the Frenchman won't attack me since the man who gave him his orders
  is dead.  (Probably the official and the successful portly man are the same 
  person, the latter somehow replacing the former.)

  The desperado represents the other side of the dreamer - his introversion -
which has reached a completely destitute state.  He lies on a couch (i.e. he
is passive) and pulls the cover over his head because he wants to be left alone.
The official, on the other hand, and the prosperous portly man (who are secretly
the same person) personify the dreamer's successful outer responsibilities and
activities.  The sudden illness of the portly man is connected with the fact 
that this dreamer had in fact become ill several times when he had allowed his
dynamic energy to explode too forcibly in his external life.  But this success-
ful man has no blood in his veins - only a sort of moisture - which means that
these external ambitious activities of the dreamer contain no genuine life and
no passion, but are bloodless mechanisms.  Thus it would be no real loss if the
portly man were killed.  At the end of the dream, the Frenchman in satisfied;
he obviously represents a positive shadow figure who had turned negative and
dangerous only because the conscious attitude of the dreamer did not agree with
him.
  This dream shows us that the shadow can consist of many different elements -
for instance, of unconscious ambition (the successful portly man) and of intro-
version (the Frenchman).  This particular dreamer's association to the French,
moreover, was that they knew how to handle love affairs very well.  Therefore
the two shadow figures also represent two well-known drives: power and sex.
The power drive appears momentarily in a double form, both as an official and
as a successful man.  The official, or the civil servant, personifies collective
adaptation, whereas the successful man denotes ambition; but naturally both 
serve the power drive.  When the dreamer succeeds in stopping this dangerous
inner force, the Frenchman is suddenly no longer hostile.  In other words, 
the equally dangerous aspect of the sex drive has also surrendered.
  Obviously, the problem of the shadow plays a great role in all political
conflicts.  If the man who had this dream had not been sensible about his
shadow problem, he could have easily identified the desperate Frenchman with 
the "dangerous Communists" of outer life, or the official plus the prosperous
man with the "grasping capitalists."  In this way he would have avoided seeing
that he had within him such warring elements.  If people observe their own 
unconscious tendencies on other people this is called a "projection."  Political
agitation in all countries is full of such projections, just as much as the 
backyard gossip of little groups and individuals.  Projections of all kinds
obscure our view of our fellow men, spoiling its objectivity, and thus spoiling
all possibility of genuine human relationships.

                        *    *    *

 (Note from your friendly scribe:
   
     A quote from Hitler concerning Churchill near an illustration of Hitler
     making a speech:
 
     "For over five years this man has been chasing around Europe like a
      madman in search of something he could set on fire.  Unfortunately
      he again finds hirelings who open the gates of their country to this
      international incendiary.")

     (This is an example of projection.) 
    
                       *    *    *

  And there is an additional disadvantage in projecting our shadow.  If we
identify our own shadow with, say, the Communists or the capitalists, a part
of our own personality remains on the opposing side.  The result is that we 
shall constantly (though involuntarily) do things behind our own backs that
support this other side, and thus we shall unwittingly help our enemy.  If,
on the contrary, we realize the projection and can discuss matters without
fear or hostility, dealing with the other person sensibly, then there is a 
chance of mutual understanding - or at least of a truce.
  Whether the shadow becomes our friend or enemy depends largely upon our-
selves.  As the dreams of the unexplored house and the French desperado both
show, the shadow is not necessarily always an opponent.  In fact, he is exactly
like any human being with whom one has to get along, sometimes by giving in,
sometimes by resisting, sometimes by giving love - whatever the situation
requires.  The shadow becomes hostile only when he is ignored or misunderstood.
  Sometimes, though not often, an individual feels impelled to live out the
worse side of his nature and to repress his better side.  In such cases the 
shadow appears as a positive figure in his dreams.  But to a person who lives
out his natural emotions and feelings, the shadow may appear as a cold and 
negative intellectual; it then personifies poisonous judgments and negative
thoughts that have been held back.  So, whatever form it takes, the function
of the shadow is to represent the opposite side of the ego and to embody just
those qualities that one dislikes most in other people.
  It would be relatively easy if one could integrate the shadow into the con-
scious personality just by attempting to be honest and to use one's insight.
But, unfortunately, such an attempt does not always work.  There is such a 
passionate drive within the shadowy part of oneself that reason may not pre-
vail against it.  A bitter experience coming from the outside may occasion-
ally help; a brick, so to speak, has to drop on one's head to put a stop to
shadow drives and impulses.  At times a heroic decision may serve to halt
them, but such a superhuman effort is usually possible if the Great Man within
(the Self) helps the individual to carry it through.
  The fact that the shadow contains the overwhelming power of irresistible
impulse does not mean, however, that the drive should always be heroically
repressed.  Sometimes the shadow is powerful because the urge of the Self is
pointing in the same direction, and so one does not know whether it is the 
Self or the shadow that is behind the inner pressure.  In the unconscious,
one is unfortunately in the same situation as in a moonlit landscape.  All
the contents are blurred and merge into one another, and one never knows 
exactly what or where anything is, or where one thing begins and ends. (This
is known as the "contamination" of unconscious contents.)
  When Jung called one aspect of the unconscious personality the shadow, he was
referring to a relatively well-defined factor.  But sometimes everything that 
is unknown to the ego is mixed up with the shadow, including even the most
valuable and highest forces.  Who, for instance, could be quite sure whether
the French desperado in the dream I quoted was a useless tramp or a most
valuable introvert?  And the bolting horses of the preceding dream - should
they be allowed to run free or not?  In a case when the dream itself does not
make things clear, the conscious personality will have to make the decision.
  If the shadow figure contains valuable, vital forces, they ought to be assim-
ilated into actual experience and not repressed.  It is up to the ego to give
up its pride and priggishness and to live out something that seems to be dark, 
but actually may not be.  This can require a sacrifice just as heroic as the 
conquest of passion, but in an opposite sense.
  The ethical difficulties that arise when one meets one's shadow are well 
described in the 18th Book of the Koran.  In this tale Moses meets Khidr 
("the Green One" or "first angel of God") in the desert.  They wander along
together, and Khidr expresses his fear that Moses will not be able to witness
his deeds without indignation.  If Moses cannot bear with him and trust him,
Khidr will have to leave.
  Presently Khidr scuttles the fishing boat of some poor villagers.  Then,
before Mose's eyes, he kills a handsome young man, and finally he restores
the fallen wall of a city of unbelievers.  Moses cannot help expressing his
indignation, and so Khidr has to leave him.  Before his departure, however,
he explains his reasons for his actions: By scuttling the boat he actually
saved it for its owners because pirates were on their way to steal it.  As it
is, the fishermen can salvage it.  The handsome young man was on his way to 
commit a crime, and by killing him Khidr saved his pious parents from infamy.
By restoring the wall, two pious young men were saved from ruin because their
treasure was buried under it.  Moses, who had been so morally indignant, saw
now (too late) that his judgment had been too hasty.  Chowder's doings had
seemed to be totally evil, but in fact they were not.
  Looking at this story naively, one might assume that Khidr is the lawless,
capricious, evil shadow of pious, law-abiding Moses.  But this is not the case.
Khidr is much more the personification of some secret creative actions of the 
Godhead. (One can find a similar meaning in the famous Indian story of "The 
King and the Corpse" as interpreted by Henry Zimmer.)  It is no accident that
I have not quoted a dream to illustrate this subtle problem.  I have chosen
this well-known story from the Koran because it sums up the experience of a 
lifetime, which would be very rarely expressed with such clarity in an indiv-
idual dream.
  When dark figures turn up in our dreams and seem to want something, we cannot
be sure whether they personify merely a shadowy part of ourselves, or the Self,
or both at the same time.  Diving in advance whether our dark partner symbolizes
a shortcoming that we should overcome or a meaningful bit of life that we should
accept - this is one of the most difficult problems that we encounter on the 
way to individuation.  Moreover, the dream symbols are often so subtle and 
complicated that one cannot be sure of their interpretation.  In such a sit-
uation all one can do is to accept the discomfort of ethical doubt - making no
final decisions or commitments and continuing to watch the dreams.  This
resembles the situation of Cinderella when her stepmother threw a heap of good
and bad peas in front of her and asked her to sort them out.  Although it 
seemed quite hopeless, Cinderella began patiently to sort the peas, and sud-
denly doves (or ants, in some versions) came to help her.  These creatures
symbolize helpful, deeply unconscious impulses that can only be felt in one's
body, as it were, and that point to a way out.
  Somewhere, right at the bottom of one's own being one generally does know
where one should go and what one should do.  But there are times when the
clown we "I" behaves in such a distracting fashion that the inner voice can-
not make its presence felt.
  Sometimes all attempts to understand the hints of the unconscious fail, and 
in such a difficulty one can only have the courage to do what seems to be right,
while being ready to change course if the suggestions of the unconscious should
suddenly point in another direction.  It may also happen (although this is un-
usual) that a person will find it better to resist the urge of the unconscious,
even at the price of feeling warped by doing so, rather than depart too far from
the state of being human. (This would be the situation of people who have to 
live out a criminal disposition in order to be completely themselves.)
  The strength and inner clarity needed by the ego in order to make such a
decision stem secretly from the Great Man, who apparently does not want to
reveal himself too clearly.  It may be that the Self wants the ego to make a
free choice, or it may be that the Self depends on human consciousness and its
decisions to help him to become manifest.  When it comes to such difficult 
ethical problems, no one can truly judge the deeds of others.  Each man has to
look to his own problem and try to determine what is right for himself.  As an
old Zen Buddhist Master said, we must follow the example of the cowherd who 
watches his ox "with a stick so that it will not graze on other people's mead-
ows."
  These new discoveries of depth psychology are bound to make some change in our
collective ethical views, for they will compel us to judge all human actions in 
a much more individual and subtle way.  The discovery of the unconscious is one 
of the most far-reaching discoveries of recent times.  But the fact that recog-
nition of its unconscious reality involves honest self-examination and reorg-
anization of one's life causes many people to continue to behave as if nothing
at all has happened.  It takes a lot of courage to take the unconscious ser-
iously and to tackle the problems it raises.  Most people are too indolent to
think deeply about even those moral aspects of their behavior of which they are
conscious; they are certainly too lazy to consider how the unconscious affects
them.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Whew!  My fingers are out of breath!  I need a break...


Guy

Excerpts from "Man and His Symbols" by C.G.Jung

Reprinted without permission.

This section again by M.-L.von Franz...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Anima:  The Woman Within

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Difficult and subtle ethical problems are not invariably brought up by the
appearance of the shadow itself.  Often another "inner figure" emerges.  If 
the dreamer is a man he will discover a female personification of his uncons-
cious; and it will be a male figure in the case of a woman.  Often this second
symbolic figure turns up behind the shadow, bringing up new and different prob-
lems.  Jung called its male and female forms "animus" and "anima".
  The anima is a personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a 
man's psyche, such as vague feelings and moods, prophetic hunches, receptive-
ness to the irrational, capacity for personal love, feeling for nature, and -
last but not least - his relation to the unconscious.  It is no mere chance 
that in olden times priestesses (like the Greek Sibyl) were used to fathom the
divine will and to make connection with the gods.
  A particularly good example of how the anima is experienced as an inner 
figure in a man's psyche is found in the medicine men and prophets (shamans)
among the Eskimo and other Arctic tribes.  Some of these even wear women's 
clothes or have breasts depicted on their garments, in order to manifest their
inner feminine side - the side that enables them to connect with the "ghost
land" (i.e. what we call the unconscious).
  One reported case tells of a young man who was being initiated by an older
shaman and who was buried by him in a snow hole.  He fell into a state of
dreaminess and exhaustion.  In this coma he suddenly saw a woman who emitted
light.  She instructed him in all he needed to know and later, as his protect-
ive spirit, helped him to practice his difficult profession by relating to him
the powers of the beyond.  Such an experience shows the anima as the person-
ification of a man's unconscious.
  In its individual manifestation the character of a man's anima is as a rule
shaped by his mother.  If he feels that his mother had a negative influence on
him, his anima will often express itself in irritable, depressed moods, uncer-
tainty, insecurity, and touchiness.  (If, however, he is able to overcome the
negative assaults on himself, they can serve to reinforce his masculinity.)
Within the the soul of such a man the negative mother-anima figure will end-
lessly repeat this theme:  "I am nothing.  Nothing makes any sense.  With 
others it's different, but for me...I enjoy nothing."  These "anima moods"
cause a sort of dullness, a fear of disease, of impotence, or of accidents.
The whole of life takes on a sad and oppressive aspect.  Such dark moods can 
even lure a man to suicide, in which case the anima becomes a death demon.
She appears in this role in Cocteau's film "Orphee".
  The French call such an anima figure a femme fatale. (A milder version of
this dark anima is personified by the Queen of the Night in Mozart's "Magic
Flute".)  The Greek Sirens or the German Lorelei also personify this danger-
ous aspect of the anima, which in this form symbolizes destructive illusion.
The following Siberian tale illustrates the behavior of such a destructive
anima:
    
    One day a lonely hunter sees a beautiful woman emerging from the forest
  on the other side of the river.  She waves at him and sings:

      Oh, come, lonely hunter in the stillness of dusk.
      Come, come!  I miss you, I miss you!
      Now I will embrace you, embrace you!
      Come, come!  My nest is near, my nest is near.
      Come, come, lonely hunter, now in the stillness of dusk.  

    He throws off his clothes and swims across the river, but suddenly she
  flies away in the form of an owl, laughing mockingly at him.  When he tries
  to swim back to find his clothes, his drowns in the cold river.

  In this tale the anima symbolizes the unreal dream of love, happiness, and
maternal warmth (her nest) - a dream that lures men away from reality.  The
hunter is drowned because he ran after a wishful fantasy that could not be
fulfilled.
  Another way in which the negative anima in a man's personality can be reveal-
ed is in waspish, poisonous, effeminate remarks by which he devalues everything.
Remarks of this sort always contain a cheap twisting of the truth and are in 
a subtle way destructive.  There are legends throughout the world in which "a
poison damsel" (as they call her in the Orient) appears.  She is a beautiful
creature who has weapons hidden in her body or a secret poison with which she
kills her lovers during their first night together.  In this guise the anima
is as cold and reckless as certain uncanny aspects of nature itself, and in 
Europe is often expressed to this day by the belief in witches.
  If, on the other hand, a man's experience of his mother has been positive,
this can also affect his anima in typical but different ways, with the result
that he becomes effeminate or is preyed upon by women and thus is unable to
cope with the hardships of life.  An anima of this sort can turn men into 
sentimentalists, or they may become as touchy as old maids or as sensitive as
the fairy-tale princess who could feel a pea under 30 mattresses.  A still more
subtle manifestation of a negative anima appears in some fairy tales in the 
form of a princess who asks her suitors to answer a series of riddles or, per-
haps, to hide themselves under her nose.  If they cannot give the answers, or
if she can find them, they must die - and she invariably wins.  The anima in 
this guise involves men in a destructive intellectual game.  We can notice the
effect of this anima trick in all those neurotic pseudo-intellectual dialogues
that inhibit a man from getting in touch with life and its real decisions.  He
reflects about life so much that he cannot live it and loses all his spontaneity
and outgoing feeling.
  The most frequent manifestations of the anima takes the form of erotic fan-
tasy.  Men may be driven to nurse their fantasies by looking at films and strip-
tease shows, or by day-dreaming over pornographic material.  This is a crude,
primitive aspect of the anima, which becomes compulsive only when a man does 
not sufficiently cultivate his feeling relationships - when his feeling attitude
toward life has remained infantile.
  All these aspects of the anima have the same tendency that we have observed in
the shadow: That is, they can be projected so that they appear to the man to be
the qualities of some particular woman.  It is the presence of the anima that
causes a man to fall suddenly in love when he sees a woman for the first time
and knows at once that this is "she."  In this situation, the man feels as if
he has known this woman intimately for all time; he falls for her so helplessly
that it looks to outsiders like complete madness.  Women who are of "fairy-like"
character especially attract such anima projections, because men can attribute
almost anything to a creature who is so fascinatingly vague, and can thus pro-
ceed to weave fantasies around her.
  The projection of the anima in such a sudden and passionate form as a love
affair can greatly disturb a man's marriage and can lead to the so-called "human
triangle," with its accompanying difficulties.  A bearable solution to such a
drama can be found only if the anima is recognized as an inner power.  The 
secret aim of the unconscious in bringing about such an entanglement is to force
a man to develop and to bring his own being into maturity by integrating more 
of his unconscious personality and bringing it into his real life.
  But I have said enough about the negative side of the anima.  There are just
as many positive aspects.  The anima is, for instance, responsible for the fact
that a man is able to find the right marriage partner.  Another function is at
least equally important: Whenever a man's logical mind is incapable of discern-
ing facts that are hidden in his unconscious, the anima helps him to dig them 
out.  Even more vital is the role that the anima plays in putting a man's mind
in tune with the right inner values and thereby opening the way into more pro-
found inner depths.  It is as if an inner "radio" has been tuned to a certain
wavelength that excludes irrelevancies but allows the voice of the Great Man to
be heard.  In establishing this inner "radio" reception, the anima takes on the
role of guide, or mediator, to the world within and to the Self.  That is how
she appears in the example of the initiation of shamans that I described ear-
lier; this is the role of Beatrice in Dante's Paradiso, and also of the goddess
Isis when she appeared in a dream to Apuleius, the famous author of "The Golden
Ass," in order to initiate him into a higher, more spiritual form of life.
  The dream of a 45-year-old psychotherapist may help to make clear how the 
anima can be an inner guide.  As he was going to bed on the evening before he
had this dream, he thought to himself that it was hard to stand alone in life,
lacking the support of a church.  He found himself envying people who are prot-
ected by the maternal embrace of an organization. (He had been born a Protestant
but no longer had any religious affiliation.)  This was his dream:

    I am in the aisle of an old church filled with people.  Together with my
  mother and my wife, I sit at the end of the aisle in what seem to be extra
  seats.
    I am to celebrate the Mass as a priest, and I have a big Mass book in my
  hands, or, rather, a prayer book or an anthology of poems.  This book is not
  familiar to me, and I cannot find the right text.  I am very excited because
  I have to begin soon, and, to add to my troubles, my mother and wife disturb
  me by chattering about unimportant trifles.  Now the organ stops, and every-
  body is waiting for me, so I get up in a determined way and ask one of the 
  nuns who is kneeling behind me to hand me her Mass book and point out the 
  right place - which she does in an obliging manner.  Now, like a sort of
  sexton, this same nun precedes me to the altar, which is somewhere behind me
  and to the left, as if we approaching it from a side aisle.  The Mass book
  is like a sheet of pictures, a sort of board, three feet long and a foot wide,
  and on it is the text with ancient pictures in columns, one beside the other.
    First the nun has to read a part of the liturgy before I begin, and I have
  still not found the right place in the text.  She has told me that is is 
  Number 15, but the numbers are not clear, and I cannot find it.  With deter-
  mination, however, I turn toward the congregation, and now I have found Num-
  ber 15 (the next to last on the board), although I do not yet know if I shall
  be able to decipher it.  I want to try all the same.  I wake up.

  This dream expressed in a symbolic way an answer from the unconscious to the
thoughts that the dreamer had had the evening before.  It said to him, in ef-
fect: "You yourself must become a priest in your own inner church - in the 
church of your soul."  Thus the dream shows that the dreamer does not have the
helpful support of an organization; he is contained in a church - not an ext-
ernal church but one that exists inside his own soul.
  The people (all his own psychic qualities) want him to function as the priest
and celebrate the Mass himself.  Now the dream cannot mean the actual Mass, for
its Mass book is very different from the real one.  It seems that the idea of
the Mass is used as a symbol, and therefore it means a sacrificial act in which
the Divinity is present so that man can communicate with it.  This symbolic
solution is, of course, not generally valid, but relates to this particular
dreamer.  It is a typical solution for a Protestant, because a man who through
real faith is still contained in the Catholic Church usually experiences his
anima in the image of the Church herself, and her sacred images are for him the
symbols of the unconscious.
  Our dreamer did not have this ecclesiastical experience, and this is why he
had to follow an inner way.  Furthermore, the dream told him what he should do.
It said: "Your mother-boundness and your extraversion (represented by the wife
who is an extravert) distract you and make you feel insecure and by meaningless
talk keep you from celebrating the inner Mass.  But if you follow the nun (the
introverted anima), she will lead you as both a servant and a priest.  She owns
a strange Mass book which is composed of 16 (four times four) ancient pictures.
Your Mass consists of your contemplation of these psychic images that your 
religious anima reveals to you."  In other words, if the dreamer overcomes his
inner uncertainty, caused by his mother complex, he will find that his life 
task has the nature and quality of a religious service and that if he meditates
about the symbolic meaning of the images in his soul, they will lead him to this
realization.
  In this dream the anima appears in her proper positive role - that is, as a
mediator between the ego and the Self.  The four-times-four configuration of
the pictures points to the fact that the celebration of this inner Mass is 
performed in the service of totality.  As Jung has demonstrated, the nucleus
of the psyche (the Self) normally expresses itself in some kind of fourfold
structure.  The number four is also connected with the anima because, as Jung
noted, there are four stages in its development.  The first stage is best
symbolized by the figure of Eve, which represents purely instinctual and bio-
logical relations.  The second can be seen in Faust's Helen: She personifies
a romantic and aesthetic level that is, however, still characterized by sexual
elements.  The third is represented, for instance, by the Virgin Mary - a
figure who raises love (eros) to the heights of spiritual devotion.  The fourth
type is symbolized by Sapientia, wisdom transcending even the most holy and the
most pure.  Of this another symbol is the Shulamite in the Song of Solomon.
(In the psychic development of modern man this stage is rarely reached.  The
Mona Lisa comes nearest to such a wisdom anima.)
  At this stage I am only pointing out that the concept of fourfoldness freq-
uently occurs in certain types of symbolic material.  The essential aspects of
this will be discussed later.
  But what does the role of the anima as guide to the inner world mean in prac-
tical terms?  This positive function occurs when a man takes seriously the feel-
ings, moods, expectations, and fantasies sent by his anima and when he fixes
them in some form - for example, in writing, painting, sculpture, musical com-
position, or dancing.  When he works at this patiently and slowly, other more
deeply unconscious material wells up from the depths and connects with the ear-
lier material.  After a fantasy has been fixed in some specific form, it must
be examined both intellectually and ethically, with an evaluating feeling reac-
tion.  And it is essential to regard it as being absolutely real; there must be
no lurking doubt that this is "only a fantasy."  If this is practiced with dev-
otion over a long period, the process of individuation gradually becomes the 
single reality and can unfold in its true form.
  Many examples from literature show the anima as a guide and mediator to the 
inner world: Francesco Colonna's "Hypnerotomachia", Rider Haggard's "She", or
"the eternal feminine" in Goethe's "Faust".  In a medieval mystical text, an 
anima figure explains her own nature as follows:

    I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys.  I am the mother
  of fair love and of fear of knowledge and of holy hope....I am the mediator of
  the elements, making one to agree with another; that which is warm I make cold
  and the reverse, and that which is dry I make moist and the reverse, and that
  which is hard I soften....I am the law in the priest and the word in the 
  prophet and the counsel in the wise.  I will kill and I will make to live and
  there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

  In the middle ages there took place a perceptible spiritual differentiation in
religious, poetical, and other cultural matters; and the fantasy world of the 
unconscious was recognized more clearly than before.  During this period, the 
knightly cult of the lady signified an attempt to differentiate the feminine 
side of man's nature in regard to the outer woman as well as in relation to the
inner world.
  The lady to whose service the knight pledged himself, and for whom he perform-
ed his heroic deeds, was naturally a personification of the anima.  The name of
the carrier of the Grail, in Wolfram von Eschenbach's version of the legend, is 
especially significant: Conduir-amour ("guide in love matters").  She taught the
hero to differentiate both his feelings and his behavior toward women.  Later,
however, this individual and personal effort of developing the relationship with
the anima was abandoned when her sublime aspect fused with the figure of the 
Virgin, who then became the object of boundless devotion and praise.  When the 
anima, as Virgin, was conceived as being all-positive, her negative aspects 
found expression in the belief in witches.
  In China the figure parallel to that of Mary  is the goddess Kwan-Yin.  A more
popular Chinese anima-figure is the "Lady of the Moon," who bestows the gift of
poetry or music on her favorites and can even give them immortality.  In India
the same archetype is represented by Shakti, Parvati, Rati, and many others;
among the Moslems she is chiefly Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed.
  Worship of the anima as an officially recognized figure brings the serious
disadvantage that she loses her individual aspects.  On the other hand, if she
is regarded as an exclusively personal being, there is the danger that, if she
is projected into the outer world, it is only there that she can be found.  This
latter state of affairs can create endless trouble, because man becomes either
the victim of his erotic fantasies or compulsively dependent on one actual 
woman.
  Only the painful (but essentially simple) decision to take one's fantasies
and feelings seriously can at this stage prevent a complete stagnation of the
inner process of individuation, because only in this way can a man discover 
what this figure means as an inner reality.  Thus the anima becomes again what
she originally was - the "woman within," who conveys vital messages of the Self.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


There you go, Marcia!  You inadvertently gave me a boot in the rear!

:-)

Guy

Excerpts from "Man and His Symbols" by C.G.Jung.

Reprinted without permission.

Copyright 1964 Aldus Books, Limited, London

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The Animus: The Man Within

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The male personification of the unconscious in woman - the animus - exhibits
both good and bad aspects, as does the anima in man.  But the animus does not
so often appear in the form of an erotic fantasy or mood; it is more apt to
take the form of a hidden "sacred" conviction.  When such a conviction is 
preached with a loud, insistent, masculine voice or imposed on others by means
of brutal emotional scenes, the underlying masculinity in a woman is easily
recognized.  However, even in a woman who is outwardly very feminine the animus
can be an equally hard, inexorable power.  One may suddenly find oneself up 
against something in a woman that is obstinate, cold and completely inacces-
sible.
  One of the favorite themes that the animus repeats endlessly in the rumina-
tions of this kind of woman goes like this: "The only thing in the world that
I want is love - and he doesn't love me"; or "In this situation there are only
two possibilities - and both are equally bad." (The animus never believes in
exceptions.)  One can rarely contradict an animus opinion because it is usually
right in a general way; yet it seldom seems to fit the individual situation. 
It is apt to be an opinion that seems reasonable but beside the point.
  Just as the character of a man's anima is shaped by his mother, so the animus
is basically influenced by a woman's father.  The father endows his daughter's
animus with the special coloring of unarguable, incontestably "true" convictions
 - convictions that never include the personal reality of the woman herself as
she actually is.
  This is why the animus is sometimes, like the anima, a demon of death.  For
example, in a gypsy fairy tale a handsome stranger is received by a lonely 
woman in spite of the fact that she has had a dream warning her that he is
the king of the dead.  After he has been with her for a time, she presses him
to tell her who he really is.  At first he refuses, saying that she will die
if he tells her.  She insists, however, and suddenly he reveals to her that
he is death himself.  The woman immediately dies of fright.
  Viewed mythologically, the beautiful stranger is probably a pagan father-
image or god-image, who appears here as king of the dead (like Hades's abduc-
tion of Persephone).  But psychologically, he represents a particular form 
of animus that lure women away from all human relationships and especially
from all contacts with real men.  He personifies a cocoon of dreamy thoughts,
filled with desire and judgments about how things "ought to be," which cut
a woman off from the reality of life.
  The negative animus does not appear only as a death-demon.  In myths and
fairy tales he plays the role of robber and murderer.  One example is Blue-
beard, who secretly kills all his wives in a hidden chamber.  In this form
the animus personifies all those semiconscious, cold, destructive reflections
that invade a woman in the small hours, especially when she has failed to 
realize some obligation of feeling.  It is then that she begins to think about
the family heritage and matters of that kind - a sort of web of calculating
thoughts, filled with malice and intrigue, which get her into a state where
she even wishes death to others.  ("When one of us dies, I'll move to the
Riviera," said a woman to her husband when she saw the beautiful Mediterran-
ean coast - a thought that was rendered relatively harmless by reason of the
fact that she said it!)
  By nursing secret destructive attitudes, a wife can drive her husband, and
a mother her children, into illness, accident, or even death.  Or she may 
decide to keep the children from marrying - a deeply hidden form of evil that
rarely comes to the surface of the mother's conscious mind.  (A naive old 
woman once said to me, while showing me a picture of her son, who was drowned
when he was 27: "I prefer it this way; it's better than giving him away to 
another woman.")
  A strange passivity and paralysis of all feeling, or a deep insecurity that
can lead almost to a sense of nullity, may sometimes be the result of an
unconscious animus opinion.  In the depths of the woman's being, the animus
whispers: "You are hopeless. What's the use of trying?  There is no point in
doing anything.  Life will never change for the better."
  Unfortunately, whenever one of these personifications of the unconscious takes
possession of our mind, it seems as if we ourselves are having such thoughts
and feelings.  The ego identifies with them to the point where it is unable to
detach them and see them for what they are.  One is really "possessed" by the
figure from the unconscious.  Only after the possession has fallen away does
one realize with horror that one has said and done things diametrically op-
posed to one's real thoughts and feelings - that one has been the prey of an
alien psychic factor.
  Like the anima, the animus does not merely consist of negative qualities 
such as brutality, recklessness, empty talk, and silent, obstinate, evil ideas.
He too has a very positive and valuable side; he too can build a bridge to the
Self through his creative activity.  The following dream of a woman of 45 may 
help to illustrate this point:
  
    Two veiled figures climb onto the balcony and into the house.  They are
  swathed in black hooded coats, and they seem to want to torment me and my
  sister.  She hides under the bed, but they pull her out with a broom and 
  torture her.  Then it is my turn.  The leader of the two pushes me against
  the wall, making magical gestures before my face.  In the meantime his 
  helper makes a sketch on the wall, and when I see it, I say (in order to
  be friendly), "Oh! But this is well drawn!"  Now suddenly my tormentor has
  the noble head of an artist, and he says proudly, "Yes, indeed," and begins
  to clean his spectacles.

  The sadistic aspect of these two figures was well known to the dreamer, for
in reality she frequently suffered bad attacks of anxiety during which she was
haunted by the thought that people she loved were in great danger - or even 
that they were dead.  But the fact that the animus figure in the dream is 
double suggests that the burglars personify a psychic factor that is dual in
its effect, and that could be something quite different from these tormenting
thoughts.  The sister of the dreamer, who runs away from the men, is caught and
tortured.  In reality this sister died when fairly young.  She had been artist-
ically gifted, but had made very little use of her talent.  Next the dream
reveals that the veiled burglars are actually disguised artists, and that if
the dreamer recognizes their gifts (which are her own), they will give up 
their evil intentions.
  What is the deeper meaning of the dream?  It is that behind the spasms of
anxiety there is indeed a genuine and mortal danger; but there is also a 
creative possibility for the dreamer.  She, like her sister, had some talent
as a painter, but she doubted whether painting could be a meaningful activity
for her.  Now her dream tells her in the most earnest way that she must live
out this talent.  If she obeys, the destructive, tormenting animus will be
transformed into a creative and meaningful activity.
  As in this dream, the animus often appears as a group of men.  In this way
the unconscious symbolizes the fact that the animus represents a collective
rather than a personal element.  Because of this collective-mindedness women
habitually refer (when their animus is speaking through them) to "one" or
"they" or "everybody," and in such circumstances their speech frequently
contains the words "always" and "should" and "ought."
  A vast number of myths and fairy tales tell of a prince, turned by witch-
craft into a wild animal or monster, who is redeemed by the love of a girl -
a process symbolizing the manner in which the animus becomes conscious.  (Dr.
Henderson has commented on the significance of this "Beauty and the Beast"
motif in the preceding chapter.)  Very often the heroine is not allowed to 
ask questions about her mysterious, unknown lover and husband; or she meets
him only in the dark and may never look at him.  The implication is that, by
blindly trusting and loving him, she will be able to redeem her bridegroom.
But this never succeeds.  She always breaks her promise and finally finds her 
lover again only after a long, difficult quest and much suffering.
  The parallel in life is that the conscious attention a woman has to give to
her animus problem takes much time and involves a lot of suffering.  But if
she realizes who and what her animus is and what he does to her, and if she
faces these realities instead of allowing herself to be possessed, her animus
can turn into an invaluable inner companion who endows her with the masculine
qualities of initiative, courage, objectivity, and spiritual wisdom.
  The animus, just like the anima, exhibits four stages of development.  He
first appears as a personification of mere physical power - for instance, as
an athletic champion or "muscle man."  In the next stage he possesses initiat-
ive and the capacity for planned action.  In the third phase, the animus becomes
the "word," often appearing as a professor or clergyman.  Finally, in his 
fourth manifestation, the animus is the incarnation of *meaning*.  On this
highest level he becomes (like the anima) a mediator of the religious experience
whereby life acquires new meaning.  He gives the woman spiritual firmness, an
invisible inner support that compensates for her outer softness.  The animus
in his most developed form sometimes connects the woman's mind with the spirit-
ual evolution of her age, and can thereby make her even more receptive than
a man to new creative ideas.  It is for this reason that in earlier times women
were used by many nations as diviners and seers.  The creative boldness of their
positive animus at times expresses thoughts and ideas that stimulate men to 
new enterprises.
  The "inner man" within a woman's psyche can lead to marital troubles similar
to those mentioned in the section on the anima.  What makes things especially
complicated is the fact that the possession of one partner by the animus (or
anima) may automatically exert such an irritating effect upon the other that
he (or she) becomes possessed too.  Animus and anima always tend to drag conver-
sation down to a very low level and to produce a disagreeable, irascible, emo-
tional atmosphere.
  As I mentioned before, the positive side of the animus can personify an enter-
prising spirit, courage, truthfulness, and in the highest form, spiritual pro-
fundity.  Through him a woman can experience the underlying processes of her 
cultural and personal objective situation and can find her way to an intensified
spiritual attitude to life.  This naturally presupposes that her animus ceases
to represent opinions that are above criticism.  The woman must find the cour-
age and inner broadmindedness to question the sacredness of her own convictions.
Only then will she be able to take in the suggestions of the unconscious, 
especially when they contradict her animus opinions.  Only then will the manif-
estations of the Self get through to her, and will she be able consciously to
understand their meaning.
________________________________________________________________________________

    Thanks, Guy, for doing all that typing.  I really enjoyed that last
    piece.
    
    Cindy

    
    re:.17 (Cindy)
    
    Well, I thought you might like that!
    
    I figured if the female readers of this conference got as much out of
    the animus stuff as I got out of the anima stuff, we'd have a lot of
    inspired people on our hands...  
    
    You're quite welcome!
    
     Guy

    
    Re: 16
    
    Had a dream the other night where the animus was threatening (had
    a knife or weapon).  I didn't die or get hurt nor did I incorporate
    any good aspect.  No, not me, I materialized a bat and wacked him
    in the funny bone (elbow) and screamed for assistance.  Wonder what
    Jung would say.  Probably just a sign of the time.
    
    Joanne
    

    
    If he was plotting to kill you with the knife, he could represent
    the "Man of Action" who has the capacity for planned action.  This
    would put you in the second stage of development.  Actually I believe
    we all have the ability or tendency to regress to earlier states at
    times.  This dream could be predicting this regession.  What this
    would all mean to your life I have no idea...
    
    Guy

    Guy,
    
    Should have put a happy face in the reply.  I wasn't looking to
    be all that serious.  However, since I'm trying to regress (back
    to 28) I'll take that as a good omen. :^)
    
    Thanks,
    Joanne
    

    
    re:.21 (Joanne)
    
    Would it help if we all imagine you as 28 - or heck, why not 21?
    
    ;-)
    
    Guy   

    Guy,
    
    28 is betwix and between, the riping age, where one still has youth
    and at the same time maturity.  I couldn't even imagine being 21
    again and hanging where the kids go - besides that, I'd have to
    learn a whole new language, learn to appreciate some music I just
    can't get into, and dress ________.  
    
    As for the offer of help, Guy, Start Imagining!!!  I can use all
    the help I can get.
    
    Thanks for the offer,
    
    Joanne 8^)