Dream Analysis Seminar

Miss Wolff: There is an old German poem where Christ is represented as the hero with a Sword, doing great deeds.

Dr. Jung: Yes, he is represented there as the healer and also as the hero and warrior.

It is peculiarly applicable to our Christian nations, just emerging from the Great War. We are most of us very unconscious about it.

To one born in the East it is convincing and impressive that a Christian people could use the sword to that extent.

It is the German warlike quality, the primitive berserker rage that is in the Western man in general.

So this man’s Christ is equipped with a long sword, that most peaceful redeemer Lord leading an armed host.

And the sword is detachable, an impression that would not originate in the Western Christian mind, only in one born outside, to whom the European is not the model of virtue.

As soon as I was outside our white civilization, I saw what Europeans are like. We look awful.

The Chinese call us devils and it is true, thin cruel lips, and our wrinkles are uncanny.

And we are always intent on something no devil can understand. What are we seeking? Why the devil should we be seeking at all?

To a Pueblo Indian, God in his completeness is walking over the heavens every day.

As you approach the coast of Europe from the great flats of Africa, and see the snow-capped mountains, the little bays, etc., you know that this is the country where the pirates live, where their raids start upon the quiet, cattle-like men on their grassy plains.

From Europe, that half-island, the white man came in ships, bringing awful diseases and fire-water, and even intentionally selling infected clothing to destroy the population, as they did in the South Seas.

Wherever the white man went, there was hell for the other nations; one has to be outside to understand.

The white man is a very beast devouring the earth, the whole world trembles at him. Such Christianity is a compensation, a hellish lie.

The missionaries told me how they shoot antelopes from their bedroom windows, and how they cheat the British Government for a game license.

They complain of their lot, when actually there is nothing more interesting than life among the primitive tribes.

Rockefeller has given a great deal of money to the missions, but the people of the countryside say, “Don’t employ a boy trained in the missions-they all lie and steal.”

How can these primitives be impressed with our religion?

They accept it as the old Britons accepted it, who took Christianity, trembling, from the lances of the Roman legions. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminars, Page 337-338