Visions Seminar

28 February 1934 Visions Seminar LECTURE VI

I want to show you a new book about Chinese mandalas to which Mrs. Schlegel has just called my attention.

It is written by Emperor Wilhelm. It is really amazing; you see he is exceedingly intuitive, he smelt a rat, he knew this thing was in the air.

Unfortunately he did not know Wilhelm’s and Zimmer’s books on the subject, but he got the gist of it all right. He is a dear old fellow.

Now here is a question by Mrs. Baumann: “There is a good deal of confusion about the meaning of your definition of being in the body as ‘here and now.’ Would you say it was a conscious realization of the present moment, being ‘all there,’ and including a responsible attitude, as opposed to the astonished awareness of floating on the river of life? Primitives and animals who go through extraordinary experiences are in their odies and are surely aware of the present moment in the ordinary meaning of the words; but they lack the responsible focus which would give any lasting meaning to these experiences.”

Yes, there is just that little difference between conscious life and unconscious life! I think you have answered this question yourself, I could not do it any better.

Animals and very low primitives, inasmuch as they have no Consciousness worth speaking of, are surely on the spot, they are here and now and nothing else, but there is no realization.

Of course inasmuch as there is consciousness at all, there is a certain realization,

consciousness is realization essentially; consciousness is not only the conditio sine qua non’! of realization, it is realization in itself, because it mirrors the here and now.

So a primitive is entirely under the spell of the here and now, but inasmuch as he has already a certain imaginative power, inasmuch as his consciousness is not only capable of mirroring the objective world, but is also creative, he creates a possibility of deviation; so even the primitive has the remarkable faculty of jumping out of the here and now, or even of denying it.

The most serious attempts are made to combat and overcome the here and now.

A certain tribe of Brazilian Indians, for example, assert that they are red parrots.

A German explorer argued with them that they had no feathers and were unable to fly, so they could not be birds, but they persisted that that was accidental and unessential-what was called accidensin old scholasticism.

You see, to suggest such an idea, the sameness of two things so utterly and obviously different, is a tremendous accomplishment.

It is like the belief that the totem animal, which was killed and eaten each year, was a certain bird.

There might be twenty-five villages in a tribe, and each one holds that they have killed and eaten that one particular totem bird.

They are not primitive in the sense of being nearly unconscious, they are already highly civilized and quite capable of knowing that there are really twenty-five birds, yet they assert it is one and the same.

It is like our Father Christmas, who is everywhere at the same time.

And only lately have people begun to puzzle and bother that Christ can be present in

the Host everywhere at the same time if he chooses, the so-called volipraesentia, the willed presence; so this attempt of the most unlikely assertion is still continued today.

This is really the secret way by which the detachment of human thought has been brought about, so that we are able to think abstractly.

As long as consciousness is primitive, the thought is absolutely identical with its object and cannot be detached from it, deconcretized.

So such attempts are educational and aim at producing differentiated thinking, which is impossible unless it can be detached and abstracted from the object; otherwise it remains merely representative and does not attain to the quality of thought.

Now, inasmuch as consciousness is not merely a mirroring, and not merely creative, inasmuch as it is a complete realization, it must have the element of responsibility; that is, the ethos must be connected with it, a certain attitude.

It is impossible to realize a thing without a certain attitude to which one can refer.

To realize a thing needs the existence of two points, not only an all-seeing eye, or an absolutely indifferent cup or vessel, so to speak, into which to pour the contents of the world; that cup must in a way react to the contents, it must have its own point of view, its own attitude.

So you should know the two things, the object itself or the situation, and yourself in that situation.

You can only formulate or perceive your realization if you know your own role, if you know how to react to it.

And to have a certain attitude is an ethical problem, it is the one most important ethical problem, because an attitude is always based on a certain principle; it is the standpoint you maintain against the flux of things.

You see, a constant movement of events suggests a continuous, almost sinuous movement of your own attitude; if you follow a long river of facts or events, you change as the river changes, and you never have a standpoint.

To have a standpoint is to have an attitude, and that is ethos, that is a moral question, of course not in the sense of traditional morality; it is the question of a certain attitude or a certain principle, without which you cannot value a situation in every detail.

You may be able to think it in detail, even nose up all the possibilities in the situation, and you still have not valued it; it is incomplete, a most essential item is lacking in it, it is an absolutely amoral realization.

It might be a sort of aesthetic realization, for instance, without putting yourself into the picture, and it is absolutely necessary that you should come into it in a responsible way; without valuing a situation, you simply are not in it, you could be a particularly good photographic apparatus just as well.

You see you really answered your own question, Mrs. Baumann.

Naturally, when you are sitting here and thinking of skiing or the movies or what the soup is doing at home, you are not here and now.

And the person who comes into analysis with one foot only, always standing on the other, has obviously no realization; nor the one who with one hand says: “Here you

have everything I possess,” while the other hand hides something behind his back.

That is not being in a situation, it is not here and now; it is here and there, or now and any other time.

We will go on to Mrs. Baumann’s next annotation: “With the red Pyramid and the blue and white rays we have the colors of the American flag, which must emphasize the patient’s American nationality-and yet it has been turned upside down. In the flag the blue represents the sky and the red probably blood. Here the red and blue colors are changing places. The airy spiritual qualities come down to earth and even turn into marble, while the earth is cracking and rising-but this may also be negative. It reminds me of the column in the black city, where the little figure of Neptune told her: ‘By that pillar you shall lose yourself.’ ”

That is a good parallel, such things really come into the picture in these unconscious creations as well as in dreams: one often observes the most amazing condensation of associations.

It is by no means far-fetched that she should have the colors of the American flag in this symbol.

Anyone who has really taken the trouble to go into the structure of such symbolism in detail reaches the conclusion that it is only sufficiently explained when one has been able to make out all the connections, even those which to the conscious are most improbable.

You see, it is very improbable that such a thing would be consciously invented, for this kind of creation is utterly strange to consciousness; consciousness is always working with exceedingly poor and meager materials, it has few tools, a few stones only.

The field of consciousness is extremely narrow and restricted, and can hold relatively few contents at the same time.

Experimental attempts have been made to define the number of contents that can be simultaneously in consciousness, and the conclusion was reached-of course, it can never be estimated accurately but a fair guess can be made-that a very small number are in the full light of consciousness at the same time.

Hysterical individuals, for instance, have an abnormally small faculty in that respect.

In Automatisme Psychologique by Janet, you will find beautiful examples of somnambulists who have two or three or even four unconscious personalities.

For example, we will represent the states of consciousness of the different personalities by circles of increasing size: No. 1 is the patient in the ordinary waking state, an exceedingly restricted consciousness, with, let us say, almost complete anesthesia of

the body, and perhaps entire paralysis of the limbs.

In No. 2 there would be a somnambulistic fit, a semitrance condition, in which the field of vision is increased; the anesthesis is then only partial and the paralysis confined to a hand or foot.

In No. 3 there is a much greater extension of consciousness, and the anesthesis is still

further decreased.

And in No. 4 the anesthesia is entirely gone, there is full sensation of pain and warmth and position, for instance, and there is no narrowing of the field of consciousness, the intelligence is more mature and brighter, more vital.

Now in No. 1, the everyday waking state, that whole period of life in Nos. 2, 3, and 4, is under a profound amnesia.

But in No. 4, everything that has happened in Nos. 1, 2, and 3 is remembered and included.

In No. 3 every fact that has occurred in No. 4 is forgotten, but those in Nos. 1 and 2 are remembered; this is the state of a fuller personality but the trance is deep.

In the fourth, it may be a complete and highly intelligent personality, but it only exists at times in a trance condition; it seems to be a perfectly normal individual and one might think such a case could be put into that state and enabled to live there; that has been tried but it did not work because the condition cannot be maintained, the person becomes utterly exhausted and then collapses and drops back into the first state.

You see, this is the least expensive; such people have not much libido, not enough strength to live for any length of time in the more exalted condition.

This is applicable to so-called normal people.

There are many more people than we think living in No. 1 or No. 2 who are capable of the third state or perhaps even more, but they prefer not to rise to the possibility because they simply have not the power to be so wakeful or intelligent all the time, they prefer the penumbra in which they drift along.

It is really an economic, not a moral question, it is a question of economy of force.

But in other cases it is a moral question, and those people prefer a narrow consciousness simply because they hate an effort, which they should make, mind you; or they repress something which seems to be incompatible because it would upset them, thereby repressing a certain part of their personality.

Those are Freudian cases.

In order not to be forced to live in a rather more expensive style they remain where they are.

Now those people get a tangible neurosis, whereas the people who have not the power to live in a higher consciousness are not really neurotic; they are only neurotic if they are put up against a certain task, say just this task of reaching a higher condition which would enable them to overcome a particular difficulty.

You see, many people who are supposed to be neurotic are not exactly that, they suffer from nothing in particular, they are just not efficient.

And then something comes along and they are upset because they are called upon to make an effort to reach the more comprehensive consciousness which they ought to reach.

So that is also a question of the economy of force.

Then there is another possibility: if persons who are capable of such an extension of consciousness have not enough libido to live No. 4 without a considerable effort on their part, so that they prefer to live in the second or third condition, they then leave a great deal of specific energy in the field of No. 4 as a sort of potential-there is the potentiality of a greater personality.

In that case this energy is usually consolidated into a personification, into an animus, say; such women are ridden by an animus, and the men by an anima, that lives in no-man’s-land and eats up all the libido which is left unoccupied.

Those are the devils of the fields that are always dancing in the deserted places-“and the satyr shall cry to his fellow,” to use the word from Isaiah-they enjoy themselves and

cause all sorts of troubles in the field just round the consciousness of the fourth circle.

Such people would be capable of widening out and claiming all that as their own thought, but they prefer to lament that such a thought comes to them.

Or they even represent it as not their own, but an authoritative thought which they repeat.

It is not I say, but it is said, and that gives the emphasis to the animus.

So you see consciousness is restricted and works with restricted means.

If you were given the task, for instance, of consciously creating a symbol of the psychological phenomena which are likely to take place when you return to your ordinary life in America, you would start with a general idea-which is an exceedingly poor thing-and you would try to enlarge upon that idea.

You might say to yourself: “If I go back into my former way of life there is the possibility of a regression, I may fall again under the spell of things as they used to be.”

That is of course perfectly true, but that sentence is only an abstraction of the whole analysis, whatever you have learned, it is an abstract empirical idea with no flesh and bones to it.

You start from that and enlarge upon it, you make a picture of somebody falling into a serpent’s mouth, say, or of a dragon coming along and eating up some poor shivering little object.

This again is exceedingly poor and empty, because this is the dragon myth you have read about in my books, and you simply depict it by a conventional symbol, a hieroglyph; that is, it is what Freud would call a symbol, but it is not a symbol, it is merely a sign, a token, a sort of allegory.

You see, a symbol is something unspeakably rich, a symbol always comes out of the

fullness of the psychic material present, part of which you know, part of which you do not know.

I am by no means sure whether the patient knew what this pyramid was pointing to, most probably not, yet the unconscious is bringing in any amount of material, allusions quite out of reach of consciousness; consciousness would never be able to discover such

analogies.

Just as the dream can fetch the most astonishing analogies from the farthest ends of the world.

Naturally anybody who is not familiar with these matters will say that American flag association is exceedingly farfetched.

Of course it is farfetched, the unconscious is far and wide and gets its contributions from we don’t know where, we are never quick enough to measure the extent of its marvels.

A symbol is so great and so rich that our consciousness never suffices to fill it or to be equal to it in any way; we have never finished with its meanings.

There are plenty of old symbols to chew over through eternity, and we cannot be sure that they won’t return, as full of meaning, as pregnant as ever.

Who in the world would ever have thought that a whole nation would choose the swastika as its national emblem?

The swastika has returned as full of meaning as before, it has lost nothing, we had not finished with that symbol.

We thought: “Oh yes, the sun wheel, a vortex, the being with the four legs that runs over the sun, the Platonic monad, or the Chinese monad of the Emperor Wilhelm.”

But all that doesn’t exhaust it, it is still full of potentiality.

And to the end of our days, we shall never be able to exhaust the symbolism of the cross; meanings continue to appear which in former times were not dreamed of.

If the people of the second or third century could listen to our discussions of the symbol of the cross, they would be amazed.

It meant similar things to them but we have found still more of which they had no

notion whatever, and if we think we have exhausted that symbolism it is an illusion; people will find meanings in the future which we would be just as astonished to hear.

So I am inclined to accept the possibility you mentioned; it is quite probable that the American colors are included.

Of course, it cannot be proven in the ordinary sense of invoking some particular method which would show the interpretation to be absolutely watertight.

But there is justification for the method through the results.

By applying this method to the material, something is got out of it which is tangible and makes sense; if this interpretation were nonsensical, the result would be an absurdity, hors concours.

Quite the contrary, however; the general result is a pretty intelligent understanding of the way things are working, and if that is applied to other cases, the hypothesis also fits; things can be understood and explained which escaped us completely before.

It is like graphology, for instance, or the diagnosis of character from the lines of the hand; it cannot be proven, but a person experienced in those matters can tell you the most astonishing things.

It is the same with astrology: it is absolutely impossible at present to invent a method by which to prove a single fact in astrology, but apply one test often enough and a good deal can be learned.

This is a sort of intuitive knowledge which simply does not follow the ordinary rules of natural science.

It is quite possible, however, that in the future complicated methods will be invented which will enable us to establish a certainty.

I have mentioned before the researches of a Frenchman, Paul Flambart, who classified the birthdays of mentally prominent men.

In the division of the zodiac into the twelve zodiacal signs, the twelve constellations, the three signs, Libra, Aquarius, and Gemini are in such a position that they form an equilateral triangle, called the aerial trigon because those particular signs have the qualities of air.

Flambart arranged the birthdays of one hundred prominent men on the zodiacal circle, making a little dot wherever there was a birthday, and found that there was a large accumulation around those three signs at the points of the triangles, showing that statistically, mentally prominent people are apt to be born in the aerial trigone.

Some might be born in between the aerial signs, but if those cases were investigated further, it is quite possible that the moon, or the rising sign, for instance, might be found somewhere in the aerial trigone.

So this shows a certain justification for his theory, but of course with great possibilities of failure and mistake.

The special case that is under examination may be just the fellow who is born quite out of that scheme, and then where is your justification?

Of course one could say the exceptions prove the rule but in these matters people are awfully impatient. Well, this leads us directly into the discussion of the pyramid.

Why should it be a pyramid, Mrs. Baumann?

Mrs. Baumann: I have been trying to compare it with the column in the black city in a former vision; she came to that because she had refused to enter the feminine pool in the white city. The column was the phallic symbol, and I thought this might be an analogy.

Dr. Jung: There are peculiar laws of mirroring and of compensation here.

The pool is a hollow form, a sort of bowl or cup, and the pillar is erect, it protrudes as the pyramid protrudes, it is the opposite of the pool.

So there is a positive and a negative; the pyramid would be the masculine and the pool would be the feminine.

The symbolism of the Holy Grail is a female symbol, for instance; it is like that attribute of Mary in the Lorettanian Litany: Vas insigne devotionis, the excellent vase of devotion; she is like a cup or bowl, which she offers or in which she receives.

This pyramid which suddenly comes up through the earth has a masculine Yang aspect, then, and can therefore be compared to the pillar, as the obelisk is also a sort of pyramidal structure, a very elongated pyramid, a long shaft ending in the little pyramid on top.

So they have very much the same meaning.

Now the pyramids surely symbolized something.

People have wondered a great deal why the old Egyptians heaped up those stones-such an expensive business.

The pyramid of Cheops is 143 meters high, about 529 feet, and the size of the blocks is almost incredible.

And this pyramid must also symbolize something, we must go into its meaning.

You see, our patient is all by herself.

In what state of mind would she be when left to herself? When the animus and the Self are left behind, what remains?

Mrs. Crowley: The ego.

Dr. Jung: Yes, only the ego, as naked as an ego can be, and that is restricted and full of fear.

She is going down because she has been up in the air; now comes the descent into America, and in approaching the earth, this pyramid in American colors comes up from below.

What does that suggest? Why did they make pyramids?

Mrs. Sigg: They were monuments of the dead kings.

Dr. Jung: Yes, they were burial mounds really.

You know in the south of Egypt, in the northern part of central Africa towards Joruba Land and the Gold Coast, a relatively short time ago they still had-under European

influence it may have changed-the custom of burying their chiefs under rectangular mounds called mastabas, sort of enlarged coffins with the burial chamber on one side.

The mastaba was the earliest form of burial in Egypt, then the next stage was the step pyramid of Saqqara, and the next was the pyramid with an absolutely smooth polished surface.

Now who were the Egyptian kings psychologically?

Answer: They were gods.

Dr. Jung: Yes, there are a number of temples in Egypt in which one can see the so-called birth chamber, with the divine creation depicted on the walls, the divine generation of the king as a god.

The king was the twice born.

He was first generated by his father, and given birth to and cared for by his earthly mother; and at the same time he was also generated by the god, carried and given birth to by the goddess, the god-mother, and born as a god himself, the life of the god was bestowed directly upon him.

So the pharaoh was really the god-man, the superior man, and therefore he represented what psychologically?

Mrs. Crowley: Individuation.

Dr. Jung: Yes, he was the symbol of individuation, he represented the superior divine man who was equal to Osiris; his immortal substance was called the Osiris of the king.

It was supposed in very early times that only the king had an Osiris, but in the later centuries of Egyptian history-in the last millennium-slowly, the princes and the distinguished people of the nobility acquired souls too, and finally in the Ptolemaic period every

Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith had his respective Osiris, they were all just as good as the king.

That was the time when the mystery rites were coming to the surface, and soon after Christianity formulated that teaching.

The true forerunner of Christ was the king of Egypt, the pharaoh.

The pyramid, then, symbolizes the metaphysical significance of the king, the king as the superior man, the Self of a nation.

There was no superior man on the individual plane.

An ancient nation was identical with the king, he was the culmination and represented the whole nation.

Egypt was the pharaoh and the pharaoh was Egypt.

This kind of psychology still exists, you can read it in the newspapers.

Adolf Hitler is Deutschland and Deutschland is Adolf Hitler.

Mr. Baumann: Like Louis XIV.

Dr. Jung: Yes, he was the divine Self of France.

You see, this kind of psychology is archetypal, which explains how a whole people can project the idea of the individual Self into one ideal which becomes personified.

In the Christian church the individual Self was projected into Christ.

And that is still going on in the psychology of the Oxford Movement, the idea of the guidance and the surrender is very much the same, Christ gives guidance and information.

We call it the unconscious in order not to give it a name, not to prejudice it, and surely the voice of the unconscious is the Self.

If you follow the voice of the unconscious-if you go carefully enough-you come in the end necessarily to what you are meant to be.

Of course, there is the great danger that someone might become a Messiah, but that is immediately checked by the consensus of other people.

Nobody can become king except the one who is supposed to be king, the one who contains the idea of the Self.

That is Christ according to the still generally prevailing Christian idea, and from such

a standpoint any attempt at getting at individuation would be heretic, as it has always been; it has always been the party of the left hand and a crime.

Christ himself was accused of heresy, and quite justifiably.

John the Baptist and his school called Jeshu ben Miriam-the son of Miriam the deceiver, the traitor, because he had betrayed the mysteries; he became an individual, the son of God, and received immediate revelation, and that was an awful sin and the real cause of his death.

It is an old Jewish tradition also that he betrayed the mysteries and so had to suffer the death of a traitor.

In the literature of the Manichaeans, the disciples of John, there is a text containing a discussion between Christ and John the Baptist upon that question.

They both presented very good arguments.

Christ’s very practical argument was: “Do I not make the lame walk? Do I not restore sight to the blind?”

But John would not hear of that, he said that Christ betrayed the mysteries, he gave them out to the world, and that they would be destroyed by the world.

And the world did destroy them.

The projection of the Self belonged to the psychology of ancient times, when the chief or the king represented the whole people and had to suffer and to die for the people.

Then another old rite played a certain role in the history of Christ; it is to a great extent legend, but legends are so true that they repeat themselves literally in reality, real events are like legends.

You remember the prisoner Barabbas was released instead of Christ when he was taken to be crucified, which was according to an old custom in Babylon that each year one criminal was released and given the freedom of the city; he could steal what he pleased but he must clear out before sunset, he must then be far away from the town; if

caught within the city walls he would be put to death.

And this was a remnant of the old myth of the god king from the time when they had a

new king every year; if the year was good, he was confirmed as a god king, and if the year was bad he was put to death.

He was supposed to emanate the mana quality of fertility, which improved the crops, helped the procreation of the cattle, and so on.

The idea of the king as the superior man was taken very literally also, he was represented on the ancient monuments as several times bigger and taller than his subjects.

And as his burial mound must express his significance, they chose a pyramid, which is a perfect mathematical form.

But why would a pyramid be a particularly significant symbol for the superior man?

Mrs. Crowley: It is very much the same suggestion as that trigone in the heavens, the creative point at the top.

Dr. Jung: The ground plan of the pyramid would be rather this: IXJ And what would this symbolize?

Mrs. Crowley: The four sides are equal, each one coming to a point. I should call that the creative point. Or it would be individuation.

Dr. Jung: Of course, it is a mandala, the symbol of individuation, the four functions which come to the oneness of realization, of consciousness.

That is the mountain from which the four rivers flow; or the individual on the cross from which the streams of grace descend; like the Lamb in the Book of Revelations upon the hill in the center of the square city, the four rivers or the sources of creation issuing from the whole.

These are all symbols of the perfect or superior man.

And the same symbolism, pyramids or stupas coming together in one point, is in the

Tibetan mandalas, to aid the concentration or contemplation in which the identity of the mystei with the god is attained-he becomes his own superiority, the god in himself.

The Buddhist temple of Borobudur in Java has the same form.

From the great square base, the disciple winds up and up in a spiral through the scenes carved in stone of the lives of the Buddha, becoming more and more conscious that he is going through the same stages as the Buddha, making a circular way until he reaches the top, which consists of a series of stupas; and at the highest point is one single stupa, this same pyramidal form, where he is in complete identity with the lord Buddha.

It is like the Christian medieval idea of the Stations of the Cross on the way up to the chapel at the top of the hill; one contemplates the sufferings of Christ and gets an understanding of the way of the passion, the via dolorosa.

In the light of these examples, the pyramid in the vision suggests a burial monument. And who is buried there?

Miss Hannah: Is it not another form of the Self that has just vanished? Is it not the male side which is buried inside the monument, and is now coming up?

Dr. Jung: Exactly. The Self in the inner realization is to our patient a superior woman, a mana personality.

Now she vanishes and we don’t know where she has gone, and instead, that pyramid which signifies a buried king emerges from the earth, the external attribute of the king.

The sphinx is said to have the face of the king who built the first great pyramid, and the pyramid is itself the symbol of the king.

This was probably further substantiated through its very different aspect at that time.

It is today like an immense staircase, because the surface is broken off, but the top of the pyramid is still preserved quite intact in the museum in Cairo, and it is smooth and highly polished.

When the Egyptian sun was shining upon that enormous surface, it must have reflected the intense light, it must have been like a beacon, a lighthouse flashing its rays over half of Egypt, a really marvellous sight.

So the pyramid was the

living god that was still visible, it was the visible son of the sun, Ra, the sun reborn as god on the earth still shining over his two kingdoms.

The pyramid that comes up here is surely the equivalent of the vanished Self.

It is now the Self in its earthly form, the inner revelation of the Self being buried, and what has been female is now male.

There has been a peculiar transformation because the patient has passed from the

land of the ghosts, the land of the unconscious, into the land of the living, where she is her own mirror reflection in a way, but a compensatory mirror reflection, her own opposite; she becomes something like the pyramid, as if the body of the Self-if the Self has a body-were the pyramid and not human.

Just as the body of Christ is his church, and that is also a burial monument.

Christ is buried in the church; when Christ ceased to be, he became the church, and it is an important matter of discussion whether Christ is alive in the church or not.

There is a certain variation in the opinions about this; sure enough he has changed a great deal in becoming the church.

He became the cycle of the ecclesiastical year and was likened to the serpent of the zodiac carrying on his back the twelve constellations representing the twelve disciples.

And he is the church that is the center of the cycle of the ecclesiastical life, he is buried in that center; as precious relics of the Buddha were buried within the cloister, in the stupa, which is the center of the revolving cycle of the mandala.

The Christian symbolism is similar: Christ in the center of the circle is well-known symbolism.

We come now to the practical question: “What is likely to be the psychological equivalent of such a transformation in the unconscious?”

Our patient has no insight into the nature of the transformation, therefore the process is without the admixture of understanding.

Nevertheless it represents something which is happening within her, and that is surely

not without a certain influence. What would be the probable influence of such an event?

Dr: Reichstein: A kind of stabilization of her feeling?

Dr: Jung: I am not so sure.

We must be quite simple, to explain these things we must assume the attitude of the primitive.

When I put a certain form before a primitive, he instinctively knows or he does not know; he feels an influence greater than he can understand, or one which is in accordance with the obvious nature of the thing.

If I put a fluid before him-of course with the understanding that it is a magic procedure, a healing ceremony-it might mean to him something like this: it is of the nature of water, it quenches the thirst, it moves like water, it produces water. So if he suffers from dropsy, to put water before him would produce a magic effect upon him; it would release his body from the water.

Or if the land were suffering from drought, I would sprinkle a bowl of milk on the floor, thus suggesting rain to him.

Or I would imitate the whistling of the wind and the sound of the raindrops, and he would adduce the corresponding effect-the rain would fall. In India, according to the Rig-Veda, the priests sang the frog songs in the time of drought as a rain charm; when the frogs sing it means that rain has fallen, so when the priests sing rain will fall.

That is the way the primitive mind works.

So if I put before him a pyramid bursting through the earth, he would understand that it meant something rushing up, activity, a powerful uplift, and it would also suggest hardness and strength to him because he would notice the qualities of the object which I obviously put up for that purpose.

If I gave him the wings of the eagle as a charm, it would be in order to make him swift like an eagle, or able to soar on high like an eagle, because he is a king or a great chief.

Or I might give him the teeth or the mane of a lion that he may have the power of a lion,

I convey the power to him by giving him the thing which contains it.

Therefore Indians used to eat the heart of the enemy or the brains, in order to integrate either the courage of the enemy which is in the heart, or his cunning which is in the head.

This pyramid, then, suggests protruding; it pushes itself up as if the patient had been buried.

Having lost the Self, she has absolutely nothing, she is a mere shell, a crust, just an ego consciousness, exceedingly poor and helpless.

So she must make something of herself in order to appear at all.

You see, if you have nothing but the ego consciousness, the first thing you will do will be to buy a pair of new shoes and a suit of clothes and a becoming hat and look like a gentleman, so that everybody will think you are a nice man.

You buy a persona as soon as possible because you are nothing else.

So this symbolizes forcing her way up out of the ground, up into the conscious world.

She has been going down all the time, but that is the mirage; for going down can be coming up, and coming up is only a different going down. “Versinke denn, ich konnt auch sagen: Steige!”

That is what the devil says to Faust. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Page 1323-1336