​

 

1. TAGS: Fire, beginning of mankind

The domestication of fire-that is, the possibility of producing, preserving, and transporting it-marks, we might say, the definitive separation of the Paleanthropians from their zoological predecessors.The most ancient" document" for the use of fire dates from Choukoutien (about 600,000 B.C.), but its domestication probably took place much earlier and in several places.

 

2. TAGS: Fish

a cosmogonic myth brings on the stage the primordial Waters and the Creator, the latter either as

anthropomorphic or in the form of an aquatic animal, descending to the bottom of the ocean to bring back the material necessary for the creation of the world.

 

Mircea Eliade: History of religion, part I

 

3. TAGS: Fire, Christ, Apocalypse

But Christ will come and will purify the \Vorld by fire. As Ephraim the Syrian expresses it : "The sea shall roar and be dried up . . . the heaven and earth shall be dissolved, and darkness and smoke shall prevail. Against the earth shall the Lord send fire, which lasting 40 days shall cleanse it from wickedness and the stains of sins."31

 

Quote from Mircea Eliade: Myth and reality, Bible

 

4. TAGS: Fire, womb, mother

A text from modern syncretistic Taoism runs : "That is why the ( Buddha ) Ju-lai ( = Tathagata ) , in his great mercy, revealed the method for the ( alchemical ) work by Fire and taught man to re-enter the womb in order to reconstitute his ( true ) nature and ( the fullness of) his portion of life."11

 

Quote from Mircea Eliade, Houei-ming-king by Lieou Houayang

 

5. TAGS: Fire, mother, embrzyo

The comparison of human work, in which fire was used (metallurgy, forging, cooking, etc.), with the

growth of the embryo inside the mother, still survives, obscurely, in European vocabulary (cf. Mutterkuchen, placenta, Kuchen, gateau).

 

6. TAGS: Cosmogenic myth, fire

The ritual production of fire reproduces the birth of the world. Which is why at the end of the year all fires are extinguished (a re-enactment of the Cosmic night), and rekindled on New Year's Day.

 

7. TAGS: Fire, Master of fire

The first potter who, with the aid of live embers, was successful in hardening those shapes which he had given to his clay, must have felt the intoxication of the demiurge: he had discovered a transmuting agent. That which natural heat-from the sun or the bowels of the earth-took so long to ripen, was transformed by fire at a speed hitherto undreamed of. This demiurgic enthusiasm springs from that obscure presentiment that the great secret lay in discovering how to 'perform' faster than Nature, in other words (since it is always necessary to talk in terms of the spiritual experience of primitive man) how,

without peril, to interfere in the processes of the cosmic forces. Fire turned out to be the means by which man could 'execute' faster, but it could also do something other than what already existed in Nature. It was therefore the manifestation of a magico-religious power which could modify the world and which, consequently, did not belong to this world. This is why the most primitive cultures look upon the specialist in the sacred-the shaman, the medicine-man, the magician as a 'master of fire'.

 

8. TAGS: Fire, women, genitals, master of fire,

to produce fire in one's own body is a sign that one has transcended the human condition. According to the myths of certain primitive peoples, the aged women* of the tribe 'naturally' possessed fire in their genital organs and made use of it to do their cooking but kept it hidden from men, who were able to get possession of it only by trickery.2 These myths reflect the ideology of a matriarchal society and remind us, also, of the fact that fire, being produced by the friction of two pieces of wood (that is, by their 'sexual union'), was regarded as existing naturally in the piece which represented the female. In this sort of culture woman symbolizes the natural sorceress. But men finally achieved 'mastery' over fire and in the end the sorcerers became more powerful and more numerous than their female counterparts.

 

Mircea Eliade: THE FORGE AND THE CRUCIBLE

 

9. TAGS: Initiation, mother, growing-up, child

In fact, in the case of nearly all Australian tribes the mothers are convinced that their sons will be killed and eaten by a hostile and mysterious divinity, whose name they do not know, but whose voice they have heard in the terrifying sound of the bull-roarers. They are assured, of course, that the divinity will soon resuscitate the novices in the form of grown men, that is, of initiates. But in any case, the novices die to childhood, and the mothers have a foreboding that the boys will never again be what they were before initiation: their children.

 

10. TAGS: Initiation, growing-up, child, mother, night, darkness, secret

As for the novices, their experience is still more decisive. For the first time they feel religious fear and terror, for they are told beforehand that they will be captured and killed by Divine Beings. As long as they were considered to be children, they took no part in the religious life of the tribe. If by chance they had heard references to the mysterious Beings, and scraps of myths and legends, they did not realize what was in question. They had perhaps seen dead people, but it did not occur to them that death was something that concerned themselves. For them, it was an exterior "thing," a mysterious event that happened to other people, especially to the old. Now, suddenly, they are torn from their blissful childhood unconsciousness, and are told that they are to die, that they will be killed by the divinity. The very act of separation from their mothers fills them with forebodings of death-for they are seized by unknown, often masked men, carried far from their familiar surroundings, laid on the ground, and covered with branches. For the first time they face an unfamiliar experience of darkness. This is not the darkness that they have known hitherto, the natural phenomenon of night-a night that was never wholly dark, for there were the stars, the moon, fires-but an absolute and menacing darkness, peopled with mysterious beings and above all made terrifying by the approach of the divinity announced by the bull-roarers. This experience of darkness, of death, and of the nearness of Divine Beings will be continually repeated and deepened throughout the initiation. As we shall see, a considerable number of initiation rites and ordeals reactualize the motif of death in darkness and at the hands of Divine Beings. But it is important to emphasize that the very first act of the ceremony already implies the experience of death, for the novices are violently flung into an unknown world, where the presence of Divine Beings is sensed through the terror that they inspire.

(…)

The central mystery of the initiation is called "Showing the Grandfather”

(…)

Then two old men say to them: "You must never tell this. You must not tell your mother, nor your sister, nor any who is not jeraeil," that is, who is not initiated. They are shown the two bull-roarers--one of which is larger, the other smaller, which are called "man" and "woman"-and the headman tells

them the myth of the origin of the initiation.

(…)

The men whirl bull-roarers and point with raised arms to the sky; this gesture signifies "the Great Master" (biamban ) , the Supreme Being, whose real name-unknown to the uninitiated and to women-is Daramulun.

 

11. TAGS: No sleep, night

This last detail is important-the Wiradjurl novices must not go to bed until late in the night. This is an initiatory ordeal that is documented more or less all over the world, even in comparatively highly developed religions. Not to sleep is not only to conquer physical fatigue, but is above all to show proof of will and spiritual strength; to remain awake is to be conscious, present in the world, responsible.

 

Mircea Eliade: Rites and symbols of initiation

 

12. TAGS: Mother, mother-love

This is the mother-love which is one of the most moving and unforgettable memories of our lives, the mysterious root of all growth and change; the love that means homecoming, shelter, and the long silence from which everything begins and in which everything ends. Intimately known and yet strange like Nature, lovingly tender and yet cruel like fate, joyous and untiring giver of life—mater dolorosa and mute implacable portal that closes upon the dead. Mother is motherlove, my experience and my secret. Why risk saying too much, too much that is false and inadequate and beside the point, about that human being who was our mother, the accidental carrier of that great experience which includes herself and myself and all mankind, and indeed the whole of created nature, the experience of life whose children we are?

 

13. TAGS: Opposites, primal sin, unconsciousness, matricide

There is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites. This is the paternal principle, the Logos, which eternally struggles to extricate itself from the primal warmth and primal darkness of the maternal womb; in a word, from unconsciousness. Divine curiosity yearns to be born and does not shrink from conflict, suffering, or sin. Unconsciousness is the primal sin, evil itself, for the Logos. Therefore its first creative act of liberation is matricide, and the spirit that dared all heights and all depths must, as Synesius says, suffer the divine punishment, enchainment on the rocks of the Caucasus. Nothing can exist without its opposite; the two were one in the beginning and will be one again in the end. Consciousness can only exist through continual recognition of the unconscious, just as everything that lives must pass through many deaths.

 

14. TAGS: Female principle, emptiness, mystery

Finally, it should be remarked that emptiness is a great feminine secret. It is something absolutely alien to man; the chasm, the unplumbed depths, the yin. The pitifulness of this vacuous nonentity goes to his heart (I speak here as a man), and one is tempted to say that this constitutes the whole “mystery” of woman. Such a female is fate itself.

 

15. TAGS: opposites

How else could it have occurred to man to divide the cosmos, on the analogy of day and night, summer and winter, into a bright day-world and a dark night-world peopled with fabulous monsters, unless he had the prototype of such a division in himself, in the polarity between the conscious and the invisible and unknowable unconscious?

 

16. TAGS: mother, Isis

We are all wrapped as her children in the mantle of this great Isis.

 

Carl Gustav Jung: 4 Archetypes, Mother

 

17.  TAGS: Ending, darkness, death

2 Cf. the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, verses 480–82: “Blessed is he among men who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiate and has no part in them, never has lot of like good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom.” (Trans. by Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, p. 323.)

 

18. TAGS: Death, blessing

And in an Eleusinian epitaph we read: “Truly the blessed gods have proclaimed a most beautiful secret:

Death comes not as a curse, but as a blessing to men.”

 

19. TAGS: Persona

The garment of Deianeira has grown fast to his skin, and a desperate decision like that of Heracles is needed if he is to tear this Nessus shirt from his body and step into the consuming fire of the flame of immortality, in order to transform himself into what he really is. One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.

 

20. TAGS: Shadow, anima, posession

The darkness which clings to every personality is the door into the unconscious and the gateway of dreams, from which those two twilight figures, the shadow and the anima, step into our nightly visions or, remaining invisible, take possession of our ego-consciousness. A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps. And if there is no doorstep for him to stumble over, he manufactures one for himself and then fondly believes he has done something useful.

 

21. TAGS: mass psychology, theatre, audience

The psychology of a large crowd inevitably sinks to the level of mob psychology.20 If, therefore, I have a so-called collective experience as a member of a group, it takes place on a lower level of consciousness than if I had the experience by myself alone. That is why this group experience is very much more frequent than an individual experience of transformation. It is also much easier t achieve, because the presence of so many people together exerts great suggestive force. The individual in a crowd easily becomes the victim of his own suggestibility. It is only necessary for something to happen, for instance a proposal backed by the whole crowd, and we too are all for it, even if the proposal is immoral. In the crowd one feels no responsibility, but also no fear. Thus identification with the group is a simple and easy path to follow, but the group experience goes no deeper than the level of one’s own mind in that state. It does work a change in you, but the change does not last. On the contrary, you must have continual recourse to mass intoxication in order to consolidate the experience and your belief in it. But as soon as you are removed from the crowd, you are a different person again and unable to reproduce the previous state of mind. The mass is swayed by participation mystique, which is nothing other than an unconscious

identity. Supposing, for example, you go to the theatre: glance meets glance, everybody observes everybody else, so that all those who are present are caught up in an invisible web of mutual unconscious relationship. If this condition increases, one literally feels borne along by the universal wave of identity with others. It may be a pleasant feeling—one sheep among ten thousand! Again, if I feel that this crowd is a great and wonderful unity, I am a hero, exalted along with the group. When I am myself again, I discover that I am Mr. So-and-So, and that I live in such and such a street, on the third floor. I also find that the whole affair was really most delightful, and I hope it will take place again tomorrow so that I may once more feel myself to be a whole nation, which is much better than being just plain Mr. X. Since this is such an easy and convenient way of raising one’s personality to a more exalted rank, mankind has always formed groups which made collective experiences of transformation— often of an ecstatic nature—possible. The regressive identification with lower and more primitive states of consciousness is invariably accompanied by a heightened sense of life.

 

Carl Gustav Jung: 4 Archetypes: Rebirth

 

22. TAGS: spirit, father

The figure of the wise old man can appear so plastically, not only in dreams but also in visionary meditation (or what we call “active imagination”), that, as is sometimes apparently the case

in India, it takes over the role of a guru. The wise old man appears in dreams in the guise of a magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any other person possessing authority.

 

23. TAGS: ego, inferiority, arrogance, animal

In certain respects the animal is superior to man. It has not yet blundered into consciousness nor pitted a

self-willed ego against the power from which it lives; on the contrary, it fulfils the will that actuates it in a well-nigh perfect manner. Were it conscious, it would be morally better than man. There is deep doctrine in the legend of the fall: it is the expression of a dim presentiment that the emancipation of egoconsciousness was a Luciferian deed. Man’s whole history consists from the very beginning in a conflict between his feeling of inferiority and his arrogance.

 

24. TAGS: war, ratio, question, spirit, mocking

I put it to the enlightened rationalist: has his rational reduction led to the beneficial control of matter and spirit? He will point proudly to the advances in physics and medicine, to the freeing of the mind from medieval stupidity and—as a well-meaning Christian—to our deliverance from the fear of demons. But we continue to ask: what have all our other cultural achievements led to? The fearful answer is there before our eyes: man has been delivered from no fear, a hideous nightmare lies upon the world. So far reason has failed lamentably, and the very thing that everybody wanted to avoid rolls on in ghastly progression. Man has achieved a wealth of useful gadgets, but, to offset that, he has torn open the abyss, and what will become of him now—where can he make a halt? After the last World War we hoped for reason: we go on hoping. But already we are fascinated by the possibilities of atomic fission and promise ourselves a Golden Age—the surest guarantee that the abomination of desolation will grow to limitless dimensions. And who or what is it that causes all this? It is none other than that harmless (!), ingenious, inventive, and sweetly reasonable human spirit who unfortunately is abysmally unconscious of the demonism that still clings to him. Worse, this spirit does everything to avoid looking himself in the face, and we all help him like mad. Only, heaven preserve us from psychology—that depravity might lead to self-knowledge! Rather let us have wars, for which somebody else is always to blame, nobody seeing that all the world is driven to do just what all the world flees from in terror.

 

Carl Gustav Jung: 4 Archetypes, Spirit

 

25. TAGS: Trickster, shadow

I have, I think, found a suitable designation for this character component

when I called it the shadow. On the civilized level, it is regarded as a personal “gaffe,” “slip,” “faux pas,” etc., which are then chalked up as defects of the conscious personality. We are no longer aware that in carnival customs and the like there are remnants of a collective shadow figure which prove that the personal shadow is in part descended from a numinous collective figure. This collective figure gradually breaks up under the impact of civilization. But the main part of him gets personalized and is made an object of personal responsibility.

 

26. TAGS: Trickster

He is a forerunner of the saviour, and, like him, God, man, and animal at once. He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being, whose chief and most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness. Because of it he is deserted by his (evidently human) companions, which seems to indicate that he has fallen below their level of consciousness. He is so unconscious of himself that his body is not a unity, and his two hands fight each other. He takes his anus off and entrusts it with a special task. Even his sex is optional despite its phallic qualities: he can turn himself into a woman and bear children. From his penis he makes all kinds of useful plants. This is a reference to his original nature as a Creator, for the world is made from the body of a god.

On the other hand he is in many respects stupider than the animals, and gets into one ridiculous scrape after another. Although he is not really evil, he does the most atrocious things from sheer unconsciousness and unrelatedness. His imprisonment in animal unconsciousness is suggested by the episode where he gets his head caught inside the skull of an elk, and the next episode shows how he overcomes this condition by imprisoning the head of a hawk inside his own rectum. True, he sinks back into the former condition immediately afterwards, by falling under the ice, and is outwitted time after time by the animals, but in the end he succeeds in tricking the cunning coyote, and this brings back to him his saviour nature. The trickster is a primitive “cosmic” being of divine-animal nature, on the one hand superior to man because of his superhuman qualities, and on the other hand inferior to him because of his unreason and unconsciousness. He is no match for the animals either, because of his extraordinary clumsiness and lack of instinct. These defects are the marks of his human nature, which is not so well adapted to the environment as the animal’s but, instead, has prospects of a much higher development of consciousness based on a considerable eagerness to learn, as is duly emphasized in the myth.

 

27. TAGS: Trickster, animal, transformation, civilization

Apparently Radin has also felt this difficulty, for he says: “Viewed psychologically, it might be contended that the history of civilization is largely the account of the attempts of man to

forget his transformation from an animal into a human being.”

 

28. TAGS: Trickster, shadow, Other

The trickster is a collective shadow figure, a summation of all the inferior traits of

character in individuals. And since the individual shadow is never absent as a component of personality, the collective figure can construct itself out of it continually. Not always, of course, as a mythological figure, but, in consequence of the increasing repression and neglect of the original mythologems, as a corresponding projection on other social groups and nations.

 

Carl Gustav Jung: 4 Archetypes, Trickster

 

29. TAGS: psychiatrist, mad professor

But of course I am prejudiced. I am a psychiatrist, and that implies a professional prejudice with regard to all manifestations of the psyche. I must therefore warn the reader: the tragicomedy of the average man, the cold shadow-side of life, the dull grey of spiritual nihilism are my daily bread. To me they are a tune ground out on a street organ, stale and without charm. Nothing in all this shocks or moves me, for all too often I have to help people out of these lamentable states. I must combat them incessantly and I may only expend my sympathy on people who do not turn their backs on me.

 

30. TAGS: Ideals, darkness, shadow side, Moses

For the man who is dazzled by the light the darkness is a blessing, and the boundless desert is a paradise to the escaped prisoner. It is nothing less than redemption for the medieval man of today not to have to be the embodiment of goodness and beauty and common sense. Looked at from the shadow-side, ideals are not beacons on mountain peaks, but taskmasters and gaolers, a sort of metaphysical police originally thought up on Sinai by the tyrannical demagogue Moses and thereafter foisted upon mankind by a clever ruse.

 

31. TAGS: madness, night-world

It is true indeed that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. However dark and unconscious this night-world may be, it is not wholly unfamiliar. Man has known it from time immemorial, and for primitives it is a self-evident part of their cosmos. It is only we who have repudiated it because of our fear of superstition and metaphysics, building up in its place an apparently safer and more manageable world of consciousness in which natural law operates like human law in a society.

 

32. TAGS: fish, unborn child

the sun mounts like a goat to the tops of the highest mountains, and then plunges into the depths of the sea like a fish. The fish in dreams occasionally signifies the unborn child, because the child before its birth lives in the water like a fish; similarly, when the sun sinks into the sea, it becomes child and fish at once. The fish is therefore a symbol of renewal and rebirth.

 

33. TAGS: anima, snake, shadow, wise old man,

The significance of the snake as an instrument of regeneration is unmistakable. As the horse is the brother, so the snake is the sister of Chiwantopel (“my little sister”). Rider and horse form a centaur-like unit, like man and his shadow, i.e., the higher and lower man, ego-consciousness and shadow, Gilgamesh and Enkidu. In the same way the feminine belongs to man as his own unconscious femininity, which I have called the anima. She is often found in patients in the form of a snake. Green, the life-colour, suits her very well; it is also the colour of the Creator Spiritus. I have defined the anima as the archetype of life itself. Here, because of the snake symbolism, she must also be thought of as having the attribute of “spirit.” This apparent contradiction is due to the fact that the anima personifies the total unconscious so long as she is not differentiated as a

figure from the other archetypes. With further differentiation the figure of the (wise) old man becomes detached from the anima and appears as an archetype of the “spirit.” He stands to her in the relationship of a “spiritual” father.

 

34. TAGS: dreams, civilization, Nietzche

In this regard, Nietzsche takes up an attitude well worth noting: In sleep and in dreams we pass through the whole thought of earlier humanity.… What I mean is this: as man now reasons in dreams, so humanity also reasoned for many thousands of years when awake; the first cause which occurred to the mind as an explanation of anything that required explanation was sufficient and passed for truth.… This atavistic element in man’s nature still manifests itself in our dreams, for it is the foundation upon which the higher reason has developed and still develops in every individual. Dreams carry us back to remote conditions of human culture and give us a ready means of understanding them better. Dream thinking comes so easily to us now because this form of fantastic and facile explanation in terms of the first random idea has been drilled into us for immense periods of time. To that extent dreaming is a recreation for the brain, which by day has to satisfy the stern demands of thought imposed by a higher culture.…

 

Carl Gustav Jung: Symbols of transformation

 

35. TAGS: welfare, responsibility

The steady growth of the Welfare State is no doubt a very fine thing from one point of view,but from another it is a doubtful blessing, as it robs people of their individual responsibility and turns them into infants and sheep. Besides this, there is the danger that the capable will simply be exploited by the irresponsible

 

36. TAGS: wise man speak, civilization, destruction      

Look at all the incredible savagery going on in our so-called civilized world: it all comes from human beings and their mental condition! Look at the devilish engines of destruction! They are invented

by completely innocuous gentlemen, reasonable, respectable citizens who are everything we could wish. And when the whole thing blows up and an indescribable hell of devastation is let loose, nobody seems

to be responsible. It simply happens, and yet it is all man-made. But since everybody is blindly convinced that he is nothing more than his own extremely unassuming and insignificant conscious self, which performs its duties decently and earns a moderate living, nobody is aware that this whole rationalistically organized conglomeration we call a state or a nation is driven on by a seemingly impersonal but

terrifying power which nobody and nothing can check.

 

37. TAGS: destruction, civilization, terror

The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions

which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche. This is the World Power that vastly exceeds all other powers on earth. The Age of Enlightenment, which stripped nature and human institutions of gods, overlooked the God of Terror who dwells in the human soul.

 

38. TAGS: evil, man-kind, normality

The evil that comes to light in man and that undoubtedly dwells within him is of gigantic proportions, so that for the Church to talk of original sin and to trace it back to Adam's relatively innocent slip-up with Eve is almost a euphemism. The case is far graver and is grossly underestimated.

Since it is universally believed that man is merely what his consciousness knows of itself, he regards himself as harmless and so adds stupidity to iniquity. He does not deny that terrible

things have happened and still go on happening, but it is always "the others" who do them. And when such deeds belong to the recent or remote past, they quickly and conveniently sink into the sea of forgetfulness, and that state of chronic woolly-mindedness returns which we describe as "normality." In shocking contrast to this is the fact that nothing has finally disappeared and nothing has been made good. The evil, the guilt, the profound unease of conscience, the dark foreboding, are there before our eyes, if only we would see. Man has done these things; I am a man, who has his share of human nature; therefore I am guilty with the rest and bear unaltered and indelibly within me the capacity and the inclination to do them again at any time. Even if, juristically speaking, we were not accessories to the crime, we are always, thanks to our human nature, potential criminals. In reality we merely lacked a suitable opportunity to be drawn into the infernal melie.

 

39. TAGS: shadow, light, self, completeness

To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times

what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle.

 

40. TAGS: Jesus, fire, burning, Bible

Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" (Isaiah 33:14), and of the saying of Jesus: "He who is near unto me is near unto the fire."

 

41. TAGS: Jesus, Lucifer, flame

The scattered flames could therefore signify the "enthusiasm" of the Holy Ghost as well as the fire of evil passions— in other words, the extremes of emotion and affect which human nature is capable of, but which in ordinary life are prohibited, suppressed, hidden, or altogether unconscious. It is probably not without good reason that the name "Lucifer" applies to both Christ and the devil.

 

42. TAGS: fiery figure, uniting symbol

The fiery figure is ambiguous and therefore unites the opposites. It is a "uniting symbol," a totality beyond human consciousness, making whole the fragmentariness of the merely conscious man.

43. TAGS: fire symbol, water symbol

Fire symbolizes dynamism, passion, and emotion, whereas water with its coolness and substantiality represents the passive object, detached contemplation

 

Carl Gustav Jung: Civilization in transition

 

44. TAGS: human being, disease

And this is the story of Zarathustra’s conversation with the fire hound.

“The earth,” he said, “has a skin; and this skin has diseases. One of

these diseases for example is called: ‘Human being.’

45. TAGS: shadow, sun

And only when he turns away from himself will he leap over his own shadow – and truly! into his own sun.

 

46. TAGS: poets, fish, water

I became weary of the poets, the old and the new; superficial they all are to me and shallow seas.

They did not think sufficiently to the depths, therefore their feeling did not get to the bottom.

A bit of lust and a bit of boredom – that so far has been their best contemplation.

Ghost whispers and whisking I consider all their harp jingle jangle; what have they ever known of the ardor of tones! –

Nor are they clean enough for me; they all muddy their water to make it seem deep.

And though they gladly pose as reconcilers, to me they remain middlemen mixers and half-and-halfs and unclean! –

Indeed, I cast my net into their seas and wanted to catch good fish; but always I hauled in an ancient god’s head.

 

Friedrich Nietzche: Thus spoke Zarathustra

 

47. TAGS: music, drama

Fundamentally, the relationship of music to drama is the exact reverse of this: music is the true idea of the world, drama only a reflection of that idea, an isolated, shadowy image of it.

 

Friedrich Nietzche: The birth of tragedy from spirit of music

 

 

48. TAGS: sacrifice, Abraham, Isaac

And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son ; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife ; and they went both of them together.

And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father : and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood : but where is the lamb for a burnt offering ?

And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering : so they went both of them together.

And they came to the place which God had told him of ; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.

And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham : and he said, Here am I.

And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him : for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.

 

 

49. TAGS: fire, altar

The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar ; it shall never go out.

 

50. TAGS: fire, offering, Lord

but ye shall offer a burnt offering, a sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord

 

51. TAGS: Lord, voice, fire, heaven

And ye came near and stood under the mountain ; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness.

And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire : ye heard the voice of the words

 

52: TAGS: water, baptism, fish speaks

I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance : but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear : he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire

 

53. TAGS: Hell, the son of man, Jesus, apocalypse, fire

The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity ; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire : there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

 

54. TAGS: Jesus, cure, child, devil, exorcism

Lord, have mercy on my son ; for he is lunatic, and sore vexed : for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him.

Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you ? how long shall I suffer you ? bring him hither to me.

And Jesus rebuked the devil ; and he departed out of him : and the child was cured from that very hour.

 

55. TAGS: apocalypse

and I will show wonders in heaven above,

and signs in the earth beneath ;

blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke :

the sun shall be turned into darkness,

and the moon into blood,

 

56. TAGS: fire, achievement

every man’s work shall be made manifest : for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire ; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.

If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.

If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss : but he himself shall be saved ; yet so as by fire.

 

57. TAGS: God, fire

we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear : for our God is a consuming fire.

 

58. TAGS: Fire, sin

Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.

 

59. TAGS: apocalypse

And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks ; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.

His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow ; and his eyes were as a flame of fire ; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace ; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars : and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword : and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not ; I am the first and the last : I am he that liveth, and was dead ; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen ; and have the keys of hell and of death.

And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.

The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth : and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea : and the third part of the sea became blood ;and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died ; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters ; and the name of the star is called Wormwood : and the third part of the waters became wormwood ; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars ; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone

not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.

And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound !

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth : and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit ; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace ; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth : and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree ; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months : and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it ; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle ; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.

And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron ; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months. And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon. One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.

And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand : and I heard the number of them. And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone : and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions ; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.

By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths. For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails : for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt.

And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood ; which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk : neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud : and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire : and he had in his hand a little book open : and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth, and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth : and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices.

 

BIBLE

 

56. TAGS: man ohne schatten

 

"Wo hat der Herr seinen Schatten gelassen?" und gleich wieder darauf von ein paar Frauen: "Jesus Maria! der arme Mensch hat keinen Schatten!" Das fing an mich zu verdrießen, und ich vermied sehr sorgfältig, in die Sonne zu treten.

 

"Herr Professor," fuhr ich fort, "könnten Sie wohl einem Menschen, der auf die unglücklichste Weise von der Welt um seinen Schatten gekommen ist, einen falschen Schatten malen?" - "Sie meinen einen Schlagschatten?" - "Den mein' ich allerdings." - "Aber," frug er mich weiter, "durch welche -16- Ungeschicklichkeit, durch welche Nachlässigkeit konnte er denn seinen Schlagschatten verlieren?" "Wie es kam," erwiderte ich, "mag nun sehr gleichgültig sein, doch so viel," log ich ihm unverschämt vor: "in Rußland, wo er im vorigen Winter eine Reise tat, fror ihm einmal, bei einer außerordentlichen Kälte, sein Schatten dergestalt am Boden fest, daß er ihn nicht wieder losbekommen konnte." "Der falsche Schlagschatten, den ich ihm malen könnte," erwiderte der Professor, "würde doch nur ein solcher sein, den er bei der leisesten Bewegung wieder verlieren müßte - zumal, wer an dem eignen angebornen Schatten so wenig fest hing, als aus Ihrer Erzählung selbst sich abnehmen läßt; wer keinen Schatten hat, gehe nicht in die Sonne, das ist das Vernünftigste und Sicherste." Er stand auf und entfernte sich, indem er auf mich einen durchbohrenden Blick warf, den der meine nicht ertragen konnte. Ich sank in meinen Sessel zurück und verhüllte mein Gesicht in meine Hände.

So fand mich noch Bendel, als er hereintrat. Er sah den Schmerz seines Herrn und wollte sich still, ehrerbietig zurückziehen. - Ich blickte auf - ich erlag unter der Last meines Kummers, ich mußte ihn mitteilen. "Bendel," rief ich ihm zu, "Bendel! du einziger, der du meine Leiden siehst und ehrst, sie nicht erforschen zu wollen, sondern still und fromm mitzufühlen scheinst, komm zu mir, Bendel, und sei der Nächste meinem Herzen. Die Schätze meines Goldes hab' ich vor dir nicht verschlossen, nicht verschließen will ich vor dir die Schätze meines Grames. - Bendel, verlasse mich nicht. Bendel, du siehst mich reich, freigebig, gütig, du wähnst, es sollte die Welt mich verherrlichen, und du siehst mich die Welt fliehn und mich vor ihr verschließen. Bendel, sie hat gerichtet, die Welt, und mich verstoßen, und auch du vielleicht wirst dich von mir wenden, wenn du mein schreckliches Geheimnis erfährst: Bendel, ich bin reich, freigebig, gütig, aber - o Gott! ich habe keinen Schatten!"

"Keinen Schatten?" rief der gute Junge erschreckt aus, und die hellen Tränen stürzten ihm aus den Augen. - "Weh' mir, daß ich geboren ward, einem schattenlosen Herrn zu dienen!" Er schwieg, und ich hielt mein Gesicht in meinen Händen.

 

Peter Schlehmil

 

57. TAGS: projections

Although, with insight and good will, the shadow can to some extent be assimilated into the conscious personality, experience shows that there are certain features which offer the most obstinate resistance to moral control and prove almost impossible to influence. These resistances are usually bound up with projections, which are not recognized as such, and their recognition is a moral achievement beyond the ordinary. While some traits peculiar to the shadow can be recognized without too much difficulty as one’s own personal qualities, in this case both insight and good will are unavailing because the cause of the emotion appears to lie, beyond all possibility of doubt, in the otherperson. No matter how obvious it may be to the neutral observer that it is a matter of projections, there is little hope that the subject will perceive this himself. He must be convinced that he throws a very long shadow before he is willing to withdraw his emotionally-toned projections from their object.

​

 Let us suppose that a certain individual shows no inclination whatever to recognize his projections. The projection-making factor then has a free hand and can realize its object—if it has one—or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power. As we know, it is not the conscious subject but the unconscious which does the projecting. Hence one meets with projections, one does not make them. The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face.

 

58. TAGS: shadow, moral

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance

 

59. TAGS:

Although, with insight and good will, the shadow can to some extent be assimilated into the conscious personality, experience shows that there are certain features which offer the most obstinate resistance to moral control and prove almost impossible to influence. These resistances are usually bound up with projections, which are not recognized as such, and their recognition is a moral achievement beyond the ordinary. While some traits peculiar to the shadow can be recognized without too much difficulty as one’s own personal qualities, in this case both insight and good will are unavailing because the cause of the emotion appears to lie, beyond all possibility of doubt, in the otherperson. No matter how obvious it may be to the neutral observer that it is a matter of projections, there is little hope that the subject will perceive this himself. He must be convinced that he throws a very long shadow before he is willing to withdraw his emotionally-toned projections from their object.

 

Carl Gustav Jung: Man and his symbols

 

60. TAGS: shadow of the sun, enlightenment

the alchemists spoke of a black shadow of the sun, or even of a "pitch black sun," with very negative and destructive qualities. This stands in contrast to the moon, which is always a bit light and always a bit dark; it is full, then it is half, then it is new, and then it is a full moon again. The sun principle is the archetype of consistent consciousness. It is the Logos principle, for a masculine rather than a feminine consciousness. But because it is so extremely bright, it builds up an extremely black shadow.

The moon, on the other hand, with its ever dim and changing light, is identified with the conscious attitude or principle of feminine consciousness. It tends to be not so overly bright and clear but more vague and more poetically dim, so to speak. Yet because of this, it does not carry with it such a black shadow.

Think of it: after more than two hundred years of the Age of Enlightenment, we have practically destroyed the surface of the earth. We have practically annihilated most of its animal and plant life, and we are on the way toward annihilating ourselves. To what or whom do we owe that? why, to our enlightened consciousness! It's like this: If a plant doesn't grow, you dump fertilizer into the ground and, enlightened, the plants grow well. But after a few years you realize what you have destroyed. You see, to the extent that we carry on with our light of consciousness, to that same extent we refuse to tolerate ambiguity or inconsistency or discontinuity.

 

61. TAGS: God

"God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."

 

62. TAGS: play, civilization

Play is certainly the beginning of all spiritual and civilizing conscious occupations.

 

63. TAGS: dance

Even in the apocryphal Gospel of St. John, Jesus dances a mystical dance with his apostles while his body is crucified on Golgatha.

Dance represents or reproduces a cosmic rhythm. Throughout the Middle Ages and until the rise of modern astronomy, the turning of all the heavenly spheres and of the planets around the sun were considered to be parts of a great cosmic dance. Very often it was believed that those bodies did not move on their own accord, but were moved by some angel or by a planetary or cosmic soul. Together with the music of the spheres, they were all performing a huge dance around the center of the cosmos or the deity. Therefore, most ritual dances, with their circular movement, expressed the image of the deity or of the Self in its eternal rhythmical manifestation. The Self is not static. Although it is sometimes represented by a crystal or a diamond, which stresses its eternal nature and its indestructibility, it is more often represented by some moving or dancing body. The Self is in constant movement.

 

64. TAGS: dark side, creativity, opposites

We must always keep in mind the opposite of what we believe in, the opposite of our highest ideals, even of our most serious and holiest convictions for all of these have another side. We should always be able to think in terms of paradoxes and opposites, what both is and is not. Those clowns do that; they keep people aware of the opposites. They also keep the door open for the unconscious and thus for creativity, because without this natural dark side of the unconscious, there is no creativity. Every renewal comes from that side, not from above.

 

Marie Louis Von-Franz: Archetypal patterns in fairy tales

 

 

65. TAGS: Light, darkness, dance, ecstasy

 

Ecstasy mingles shadows and sparks in a weird dance; it weaves a dramatic vision of fugitive glimmers in mysterious obscurity, playing with all the nuances of light through total darkness. The height of ecstasy is the final sensation, in which you feel you are dying because of all this light and darkness. ecstasy wipes out surrounding objects, familiar forms of the world, until all that is left is a monumental projection of shadow and light. Demonism is inherent in any ecstatic exaltation. The absolute is inside oneself, not outside, and ecstasy, reveals only inner shadows and glimmers of light. Next to them, the charm of light and day fades quickly. Ecstasy partakes of essence to such an extent that it gives an impression of metaphysical hallucination.

 

E. Cioran: On the heights of despair

 

66. TAGS: Madness

Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you.

Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law.

 

C. G. Jung: The Red Book: A Reader's Edition