The Red Book, page 21
Because I also want my being other, I must become a Christ. I am made into Christ, I must suffer it. Thus the redeeming blood flows. Through the self-sacrifice my pleasure is changed and goes above into its higher principle. Love is sighted, but pleasure is blind. Both principles are one in the symbol of the flame. The principles strip themselves of human form.240
The mystery showed me in images what I should afterward live. I did not possess any of those boons that the mystery showed me, for I still had to earn all of them.241
finis. part. prim. (End of part one)
1.Medieval manuscripts were numbered by folios instead of pages. The front side of the folio is the recto (the right-hand page of an open book), and the back is the verso (the left-hand of an open book). In Liber Primus, Jung followed this practice. He reverted to contemporary pagination in Liber Secundus.
2.In 1921, Jung cited the first three verses of this passage (from Luther’s Bible), noting: “The birth of the Savior, the development of the redeeming symbol, takes place where one does not expect it, and from precisely where a solution is most improbable” (Psychological Types, CW 6, §439).
3.In 1921, Jung cited this passage, noting: “The nature of the redeeming symbol is that of a child, that is the childlikeness or presuppositionlessness of the attitude belongs to the symbol and its function. This ‘childlike’ attitude necessarily brings with it another guiding principle in place of self-will and rational intentions, whose ‘godlikeness’ is synonymous with ‘superiority.’ Since it is of an irrational nature, the guiding principle appears in a miraculous form. Isaiah expresses his connection very well (9:5) . . . These honorific titles reproduce the essential qualities of the redeeming symbol. The criterion of ‘godlike’ effect is the irresistible power of the unconscious impulses” (Psychological Types, CW 6, §442–43).
4.In 1955/56, Jung noted that the union of the opposites of the destructive and constructive powers of the unconscious paralleled the Messianic state of fulfillment depicted in this passage (Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, §258).
5.In Goethe’s Faust, Faust says to Wagner: “What you call the spirit of the times / is fundamentally the gentleman’s own mind, / in which the times are reflected” (Faust 1, lines 577–79).
6.The Draft continues: “And then one whom I did not know, but who evidently had such knowledge, said to me: ‘What a strange task you have! You must disclose your innermost and lowermost.’ / This I resisted since I hated nothing more than that which seemed to me unchaste and insolent” (p. 1).
7.In Transformations and Symbols of the Libido (1912), Jung interpreted God as a symbol of the libido (CW B, §111). In his subsequent work, Jung laid great emphasis on the distinction between the God image and the metaphysical existence of God (cf. passages added to the revised retitled 1952 edition, Symbols of Transformation, CW 5, §95).
8.The terms hinübergehen (going across), Übergang (going-across), Untergang (down-going), and Brücke (bridge) feature in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in relation to the passage from man to the Übermensch (superman). For example, “What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in man is that he is a going-across and a down-going. / I love those who do not know how to live except their lives be a down-going, for they are those who are going over” (tr. R. Hollingdale [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984], p. 44, tr. mod; words are as underlined in Jung’s copy).
9.Jung seems to be referring to episodes that occur later in the text: the healing of Izdubar (Liber Secundus, ch. 9), and the drinking of the bitter drink prepared by the solitary (Liber Secundus, ch. 20).
10.The Draft continues: “Who drinks this drink will never again thirst for this world nor for the afterlife since he drank crossing and completion. He drank the hot melting river of life which congeals to hard ore in his soul and awaits new melting and mixture” (p. 4).
11.The calligraphic volume has: “this supreme meaning.”
12.The Draft continues: “He who knows understands me and sees that I am not lying. May each one inquire of his own depth whether he needs what I say” (p. 4).
13.Lit. Vermessener. This also carries the connotation of the adjective vermessen, that is, a lack or loss of measure, and thus implies overconfidence, presumptuousness.
14.A reference to the vision that follows.
15.The Corrected Draft has: “I Beginning” (p. 7).
16.Jung discussed this vision on several occasions, stressing different details: in his 1925 seminar Introduction to Jungian Psychology (p. 44f), to Mircea Eliade (see above, p. 28), and in Memories (pp. 199–200). Jung was on the way to Schaffhausen, where his mother-in-law lived; her fifty-seventh birthday was on October 17. The journey by train takes about one hour.
17.The Draft continues: “with a friend (whose lack of farsightedness and whose improvidence I had in reality often noted)” (p. 8).
18.The Draft continues: “my friend, however, wanted to return on a small and slower ship, which I considered stupid and imprudent” (p. 8).
19.The Draft continues: “and there I found, strangely enough, my friend, who had evidently taken the same faster ship without my noticing” (pp. 8–9).
20.Ice wine is made by leaving grapes on the vine until they are frozen by frost. They are then pressed, and the ice is removed, leading to a highly concentrated delectable sweet wine.
21.The Draft continues: “This was my dream. All my efforts to understand it were in vain. I labored for days. Its impression, however, was powerful” (p. 9). Jung also recounted this dream in Memories (p. 200).
22.See introduction, p. 28.
23.In the Draft, this is addressed to “my friends” (p. 9).
24.Cf. the contrast to John 14:6: “Jesus said unto him, I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
25.The Draft continues: “This is not a law, but notice of the fact that the time of example and law, and of the straight line drawn in advance has become overripe” (p. 10).
26.The Draft continues: “My tongue shall wither if I serve up laws, if I prattle to you about teachings. Those who seek such will leave my table hungry” (p. 10).
27.The Draft continues: “only one law exists, and that is your law. Only one truth exists, and that is your truth” (p. 10).
28.The Draft continues: “One should not turn people into sheep, but sheep into people. The spirit of the depth demands this, who is beyond present and past. Speak and write for those who want to listen and read. But do not run after men, so that you do not soil the dignity of humanity—it is a rare good. A sad demise in dignity is better than an undignified healing. Whoever wants to be a doctor of the soul sees people as being sick. He offends human dignity. It is presumptuous to say that man is sick. Whoever wants to be the soul’s shepherd treats people like sheep. He violates human dignity. It is insolent to say that people are like sheep. Who gives you the right to say that man is sick and a sheep? Give him human dignity so he may find his ascendancy or downfall, his way” (p. 11).
29.The Draft continues: “This is all, my dear friends, that I can tell you about the grounds and aims of my message, which I am burdened with like the patient donkey with a heavy load. He is glad to put it down” (p. 12).
30.In the text, Jung identifies the white bird as his soul. For Jung’s discussion of the dove in alchemy, see Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955/56) (CW 14, §81).
31.The Corrected Draft has: “First Nights” (p. 13).
32.The Handwritten Draft has: “Dear Friends!” (p. 1). The Draft has “Dear Friends!” (p. 1). In his lecture at the ETH on June 14, 1935, Jung noted: “A point exists at about the thirty-fifth year when things begin to change, it is the first moment of the shadow side of life, of the going down to death. It is clear that Dante found this point and those who have read Zarathustra will know that Nietzsche also discovered it. When this turning point comes people meet it in several ways: some turn away from it; others plunge into it; and something important happens to yet others from the outside. If we do not see a thing Fate does it to us” (Barbara Hannah, ed., Modern Psychology Vol. 1 and 2: Notes on Lectures given at the Eidgenössiche Technische Hochschule, Zürich, by Prof. Dr. C. G. Jung, October 1933–July 1935, 2nd ed. [Zürich: privately printed, 1959], p. 223).
33.On October 27, 1913, Jung wrote to Freud breaking off relations with him and resigning as editor of the Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen (William McGuire, ed., The Freud/Jung Letters, tr. R. Mannheim and R.F.C. Hull [Princeton: Princeton University Press/Bollingen Series, 1974], p. 550).
34.November 12, 1913. After “longing,” the Draft has “at the beginning of the following month, I seized my pen and began writing this” (p. 13).
35.This affirmation occurs a number of times in Jung’s later writings—see for example, Jane Pratt, “Notes on a talk given by C. G. Jung: ‘Is analytical psychology a religion?’ ” Spring Journal of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought (1972), p. 148.
36.Jung later described his personal transformation at this time as an example of the beginning of the second half of life, which frequently marked a return to the soul, after the goals and ambitions of the first half of life had been achieved (Symbols of Transformation [1952], CW 5, p. xxvi); see also “The turning point of life” (1930, CW 8).
37.Jung is referring here to his earlier work. For example, he had written in 1905, “Through the associations experiment we are at least given the means to pave the way for the experimental research of the mysteries of the sick soul” (“The psychopathological meaning of the associations experiment,” CW 2, §897).
38.In Psychological Types (1921) Jung noted that in psychology, conceptions are “a product of the subjective psychological constellation of the researcher” (CW 6, §9). This reflexivity formed an important theme in his later work (see my Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology: The Dream of a Science, §1).
39.The Draft continues: “a dead system that I had contrived, assembled from so-called experiences and judgments” (p. 16).
40.In 1913, Jung called this process the introversion of the libido (“On the question of psychological types,” CW 6).
41.In 1912, Jung had written, “It is a common error to judge longing in terms of the quality of the object .. . Nature is only beautiful on account of the longing and love accorded to it by man. The aesthetic attributes emanating therefrom apply first and foremost to the libido, which alone accounts for the beauty of nature” (Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, CW B, §147).
42.In Psychological Types, Jung articulated this primacy of the image through his notion of esse in anima (CW 6, §66ff, §711ff). In her diary notes, Cary Baynes commented on this passage: “What struck me especially was what you said about the “Bild” [image] being half the world. That is the thing that makes humanity so dull. They have missed understanding that thing. The world, that is the thing that holds them rapt. ‘Das Bild’, they have never seriously considered unless they have been poets” (February 8, 1924, CFB).
43.The Draft continues: “He who strives only for things will sink into poverty as outer wealth increases, and his soul will be afflicted by protracted illness” (p. 17).
44.The Draft continues: “This parable about refinding the soul, my friends, is meant to show you that you have only seen me as half a man, since my soul had lost me. I am certain that you did not notice this; because how many are with their souls today? Yet without the soul, there is no path that leads beyond these times” (p. 17). In her diary notes Cary Baynes commented on this passage: “February 8th [1924]. I came to your conversation with your soul. All that you say is said in the right way and is sincere. It is no cry of the young man awakening into life but that of the mature man who has lived fully and richly in ways of the world and yet knows almost abruptly one night, say, that he has missed the essence. The vision came at the height of your power, when you could have gone on just as you were with perfect worldly success. I do not know how you were strong enough to give it heed. I am really for everything you say and understand it. Everyone who has lost the connection with his soul or has known how to give it life ought to have a chance to see this book. Every word so far lives for me and strengthens me just where I feel weak, but as you say the world is very far away from it in mood today. That does not matter too much, a book can swing even a whole world if it is written in fire and blood” (CFB).
45.In 1945, Jung commented on the symbolism of the bird and serpent in connection with the tree, “The philosophical tree” (ch. 12, CW 13).
46.November 14, 1913.
47.The Draft continues: “which were dark to me, and which I sought to grasp in my own inadequate way” (p. 18).
48.The Draft continues: “I belonged to men and things. I did not belong to myself.” In Black Book 2, Jung states that he wandered for eleven years (p. 19). He had stopped writing in this book in 1902, taking it up again in the autumn of 1913.
49.Black Book 2 continues: “And I found you again only through the soul of the woman” (p. 8).
50.Black Book 2 continues: “Look, I bear a wound that is as yet not healed: my ambition to make an impression” (p. 8).
51.Black Book 2 continues: “I must tell myself most clearly: does He use the image of a child that lives in every man’s soul? Were Horus, Tages, and Christ not children? Dionysus and Heracles were also divine children. Did Christ, the God of man, not call himself the son of man? What was his innermost thought in doing so? Should the daughter of man be God’s name?” (p. 9).
52.The Draft continues: “How thick the earlier darkness was! How impetuous and how egotistic my passion was, subjugated by all the daimons of ambition, the desire for glory, greed, uncharitableness, and zeal! How ignorant I was at the time! Life tore me away, and I deliberately moved away from you and I have done so for all these years. I recognize how good all of this was. But I thought that you were lost, even though I sometimes thought that I was lost. But you were not lost. I went on the way of the day. You went invisibly with me and guided me step by step, putting the pieces together meaningfully” (pp. 20–21).
53.In 1912, Jung endorsed Maeder’s notion of the prospective function of the dream (“An attempt at an account of psychoanalytic theory,” CW 4, §452). In a discussion in the Zürich Psychoanalytical Society on January 31, 1913, Jung said: “The dream is not only the fulfillment of infantile desires, but also symbolizes the future . . . The dream provides the answer through the symbol, which one must understand” (MZS, p. 5). On the development of Jung’s dream theory, see my Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology: The Dream of a Science, §2.
54.This echoes Blaise Pascal’s famous statement, “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing” (Pensées, 423 [London: Penguin, 1660/1995], p. 127). Jung’s copy of Pascal’s work contains a number of marginal marks.
55.In 1912, Jung argued that scholarliness was insufficient if one wanted to become a “knower of the human soul.” To do this, one had to “hang up exact science and put away the scholar’s gown, to say farewell to his study and wander with human heart through the world, through the horror of prisons, mad houses and hospitals, through drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling dens, through the salons of elegant society, the stock exchanges, the socialist meetings, the churches, the revivals and ecstasies of the sects, to experience love, hate and passion in every form in one’s body” (“New paths of psychology,” CW 7, §409).
56.In 1931, Jung commented on the pathogenic consequences of the unlived life of parents upon their children: “What usually has the strongest psychic effect on the child is the life which the parents . . . have not lived. This statement would be rather too perfunctory and superficial if we did not add by way of qualification: that part of their lives which might have been lived had not certain somewhat threadbare excuses prevented the parents from doing so” (“Introduction to Frances Wickes, ‘Analyse der Kinderseele,’ ” CW 17, §87).
57.In the 1925 seminar, Jung explained his thoughts at this time: “These ideas about the anima and animus led me ever further afield into metaphysical problems, and more things crept up for reexamination. At that time I was on the Kantian basis that there were things that could never be solved and that therefore should not be speculated about, but it seemed to me that if I could find such definite ideas about the anima, it was quite worthwhile to try to formulate a conception of God. But I could arrive at nothing satisfactory and thought for a time that perhaps the anima figure was the deity. I said to myself that perhaps men had had a female God originally, but growing tired of being governed by women, they had then overthrown this God. I practically threw the whole metaphysical problem into the anima and conceived of it as the dominating spirit of psyche. In this way I got into a psychological argument with myself about the problem of God” (Introduction to Jungian Psychology, p. 50).
58.In 1940, Jung presented a study of the motif of the divine child, in a collaborative volume with the Hungarian classicist Karl Kérenyi (see “On the psychology of the child archetype,” CW 9, 1). Jung wrote that the child motif occurs frequently in the individuation process. It does not represent one’s literal childhood, as is emphasized by its mythological nature. It compensates the onesidedness of consciousness and paves the way for the future development of the personality. In certain conditions of conflict, the unconscious psyche produces a symbol that unites the opposites. The child is such a symbol. It anticipates the self, which is produced through the synthesis of the conscious and unconscious elements of the personality. The typical fates that befall the child indicate the kind of psychic events accompanying the genesis of the self. The wonderful birth of the child indicates that this happens psychically as opposed to physically.
59.In 1940, Jung wrote: “an essential aspect of the child motif is its futural character. The child is potential future” (“On the psychology of the child archetype,” CW 9, 1, §278).
