Active Imagination Encounters With The Soul

ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SOUL
Barbara Hannah
ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SOUL:

Active Imagination
As Developed by C. G. Jung
6
SIGO PRESS
Copyright <) 1981 Barbara Hannah
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Cover and Illustration on p. vi: The Inward Gaze is one of 39 plates in the book Light
From the DarknessThe Paintings o f Peter Birkhaser, with an introduction by
Eva Wertenschlag and Kasper Birkhuser and commentaries by Marie-Louise von
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T ab le o f C ontents
THE INWARD GAZE.................................................................... vi

by Peter Birkhauser
COMMENTARY TO THE INWARD GAZE.................................. vii
INTRODUCTION....................................................................... 1
by Marie-Louise von Franz
Chapter One: CONFRONTING THE UNCONSCIOUS............... 3
Chapter Two: A MODERN EXAMPLE OF A MANS
ACTIVE IMAGINATION..................................................... 29
The Case of Edward
Chapter Three: ONE BEGINNING APPROACH TO
ACTIVE IMAGINATION .................................................... 52
The Case of Sylvia
Chapter Four: THE UNCONSCIOUS PREPARES FOR DEATH . . . 66
The Case of Beatrice
Chapter Five: AN ANCIENT EXAMPLE OF ACTIVE
IMAGINATION.................................................................... 83
The World-Weary Man and His Ba
Chapter Six: AN EARLY TWELFTH-CENTURY EXAMPLE OF
ACTIVE IMAGINATION .................................................... 106
Hugh de St. Victors Conversation with His Anima
Chapter Seven: ANNA MARJULA
The Healing Influence of Active Imagination is a
Specific Case of Neurosis
Introduction .................................................................. 133
Presentation of the Case History...................................... 141
by Anna Marjula
Epilogue......................................................................... 218
Chapter Eight: THE ETERNAL SEARCH FOR THE INNER,
GREAT SPIRIT..................................................................... 242
BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................... 252
THE INWARD GAZE Peter Birkhauser
VI
Commentary to The Inward Gaze
by Marie-Louise von Franz
If we look inward, the other looks at us too, but with a strange

faraway eye. The unconscious begins to unveil its secret play of fantasy:
images of seductive beauty and the most cruel abysses of nature. They
are framed above by a transparent snake, a symbol of spiritual power.
Often Peter Birhauser was persecuted in his dreams by a strange old
woman, an unrecognizable, terrifying enemy. This is the dark side of
nature, inertia and death, from which the creative artist has to wrestle
free again and again. The figure who sees this vision is colorlesshis
consciousness is drained of life, and the whole play of colors has gone
into the reality of his unconscious, where a frog rises from below, an old
symbol of resurrection.
Introduction
When C. G. Jung went on the quest of finding his own myth after his
break with Freud, he ventured into the realm of the collective uncon
scious, unguided and alone. In this unique confrontation he discovered,
by trial and error, a new way of coming to terms with the contents of the
unconscious within the unitary reality of creative fantasy. Jung later
called this method active imagination, and recommended it warmly
to many of his patients. He described active imagination as the only way
toward a direct encounter with the reality of the unconscious without
the intermediary use of tests or dream interpretation. Although he dis
cussed documents of active imagination in seminars, he did not publish
any of them, probably because he realized how far removed these
documents were from the collective, conscious views of his time.
A great change has taken place since then. In Europe as well as in the
United States, innumerable techniques have cropped up for releasing
some forms of unconscious fantasies in an awakened state of conscious
ness. All of them, however, are only forms of passive imagination, which
nevertheless have a salutary effect. Nowadays, there is practically no
mental hospital where painting, modeling, dance, music and writing are
not used to help patients express their problems. At the end of his life,
Jung remarked that passive imagination had been more or less under
stood by the world, unlike active imagination. In short, what is lack
ing is the active, ethical confrontation, the active entering of the
whole person into the fantasy-drama. But in my experience, this is very
difficult for people to understand in a practical way. Barbara Hannahs
book is therefore a unique help for understanding this point through
her well-chosen examples. Herpoint-by-point comments on every turn
l
2 INTRODUCTION
within the stories and dialogues were often surprising and most helpful
for me. The figures of the unconscious are powerful and weak, benevo
lent and insidious, and a very alert mind and heart are needed to avoid
the mass of possible traps into which one can inadvertently step when
dealing with them.
In a way, one must be potentially "whole already in order to enter
the drama; if one is not, one will learn to become so by painful experi
ence. Active imagination is thus the most powerful tool in Jungian
psychology for achieving wholenessfar more efficient than dream
interpretation alone. Barbara Hannahs book is the first and only book I
know of which can promote its understanding by illustrating, through
various examples, the steps, the pitfalls and successes of this method of
encountering the unconscious.
In contrast to the numerous existing techniques of passive imagina
tion, active imagination is done alone, to which most people must
overcome considerable resistance. It is a form of play, but a bloody
serious one. Perhaps, therefore, the resistance many people have against
it is sometimes justified, and one should not push anyone into it
thoughtlessly. Very often, a situation of utter despair (as that which the
World-Weary Man met) is needed to initially open the door. But I think
that nobody who has once discovered active imagination would ever
want to miss it, because it can literally achieve miracles of inner
transformation.
Barbara Hannah not only comments on several modern examples of
active imagination, but also on two most remarkable historical
examples. We also know that many alchemists used an imaginatio vera
et non phantastica in their work, which was a form of active imagina
tion. This gives us the satisfaction of knowing that we are dealing here
not with a weird innovation, but with a human experience which has
been lived through before. It is actually a new form of one of the oldest
forms of religio, in the sense of "giving careful consideration to the
numinous powers.
Marie-Louise von Franz
3
4 ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SOUL
other words, it is a method for exploring the unknown, whether we

think of the unknown as an outside godas an immeasurable infinite
or whether we know that we can meet it by contemplating our
unknown selves in an entirely inner experience. As Christ said, The
kingdom of heaven is within you, not somewhere outside, beyond
the sky.
The Easterner realizes this truth much better than we do. They
speak of the universal and personal atman as one and the same thing,
and they say of the purusha that he is a thumbling who dwells in the
heart of every man and yet he covers the universe and is smaller than
small and greater than great. In the same sense, microcosm and
macrocosm were terms which were generally understood by the
Western world in earlier days.
Naturally, dreams are the messengers par excellence from the
unconscious. But dreams use a symbolic language which is very diffi
cult to understand. This applies especially to our own dreams, which
always tell us something we do not know, and which is usually the last
thing we would expect. After his break with Freud, when he faced the
unconscious alone, Jung had many dreams. At the time, however, he
was unable to understand most of them; in fact, it was years before
their meaning became apparent.
Earlier, when Jung was still experimenting with the Freudian tech
nique of dream interpretation, with its facile explanations that every
dream is a wish fulfillment which is made incomprehensible by the
censor protecting our sleep, and so on, he, like all the psychologists of
that time, thought that when the analysis was over, the patient could
keep in adequate touch with the unconscious by understanding his
dreams. It was only when he was confronted with so many of his own
dreams which he could not understand that he learned how com
pletely inadequate the method really was, and was therefore obliged
to search further. He says of this time that all he possessed to help his
patients were a few theoretical prejudices of dubious value. This
ideathat I was committing myself to a dangerous enterprise not for
myself alone, but also for the sake of my patientshelped me over
several critical phases. 1
Carl Gustave Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (New York: Pantheon Books,
1973), p. 179.
CONFRONTING THE UNCONSCIOUS 5
It may be difficult for the unprepared reader to understand why

facing the unknown in ourselves is a dangerous enterprise. Only
experience can teach one what a terrifying enterprise it is to turn away
from the familiar affairs of our conscious world and face the entirely
unknown in the inner, unconscious world. When Jung first did so, he
was horrified to note that the visions which he saw and heard were
very similar to the fantasies he had seen overcome many of his patients
at the Burgholzli Mental Hospital. At first, he feared that they might
overcome him also, and he lived for many months with the fear of
madness hanging over his head. This was caused by a repeated vision
of great portions of Europe being bathed in a sea of blood. It was only
in August 1914, on the outbreak of war (which involved all the coun
tries he had seen submerged in blood), that he realized that his visions
of 1913 had been a forewarning of the First World War and did not
refer to his own psychology.
Thus freed from the terrible nightmare of possible madness, he was
able to turn quietly and objectively to the contents of his visions.
There, he discovered the empirical existence not only of the personal
unconscious of which both Freud and Adler had also been fully aware,
but of the collective unconscious behind it, with its archetypes and
infinite possibilities. This inner world is just as real as the outside
world, with which we are familiar; in fact, it is more real, for it is
infinite and everlasting and does not change and decay as the outside
world constantly does. To those who remember the world as it was
before 1914, the present world is so utterly changed that it seems to be
a different world altogether.
Jung once told me that the unconscious itself was not dangerous.
There was only one real danger, he said, but that was a very serious
one: panic! The fear that grips a person when something very unex
pected confronts him, or when he begins to be afraid of losing his
footing in the conscious world, can upset him so much that it is really
no wonder that so few people embark on the task. Indeed, it is neces
sary to have very secure roots and to be well established in the outer
world before it is wise to make any such attempt. We must remember
that Jung was a married man with several children, with his own house
and garden on the lake, and with unusual success in his profession,
before he undertook his own confrontation with the unconscious.
He points out in Memories, Dreams, Reflections that Nietzsche under
took the same journey when he wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra, and
was blown away like a leaf because he had no roots nor obligations in
the outer world.2
The fear that makes us dread this journey into the unknown and
which really makes it a dangerous enterprise is the fear of being
swamped by the contents of the unconscious. In themselves, they are
no more dangerous than the contents of the outer world, but just as
we can lose our orientation in a difficult outer interview, which we
could have managed easily had terror not overcome us, so we can do
the same in our confrontation with the unconscious, with even more
alarming consequences, because they are unknown. Properly used, the
method of active imagination can be of the greatest help in keeping
our balance and in exploring the unknown; but misunderstood and
indulged in, rather than regarded as a scientific piece of hard work, it
can release forces in the unconscious that can overcome us and even
land us in a psychotic episode.
Above all, we must realize that active imagination is hard work
probably the most tiring piece of work we have ever encountered. We
undertake it in order to open negotiations with everything that is
unknown in our own psyche. Whether we know it or not, our whole
peace of mind depends on these negotiations; otherwise, we are
forever a house divided against itself, distressed without knowing why
and very insecure because something unknown in us is constantly
opposing us. As Jung writes in Psychology and Alchemy: We know
that the mask of the unconscious is not rigidit reflects the face we
turn towards it. Hostility lends it a threatening aspect, friendliness
softens its features. 3
It is therefore of the utmost importance to feel friendly to the idea
that there is a great deal of a personal nature, and still more of an
impersonal one, that we do not know and which continues to exert a
compelling effect upon us. Once we realizepreferably from our own
experiencethat this is a fact which we cannot alter, there is really no
reason not to feel friendly towards it. If fate obliges us to live with a
companion or companions whom we would not have chosen for
ourselves, it is obvious that life will go much more smoothly if we turn
a friendly, rather than hostile, face towards them.
2Ibid., pp. I02f.
}C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, vol. 12, Collected Works (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1968), par. 29.
I remember a very wise woman telling me that, on a long tour

through countries she had always wanted to visit, she was forced to
share a room with another woman who was completely uncongenial to
her. At first she felt this would inevitably spoil the tour. Then she
realized that she would waste one of the most interesting and pleasur
able times of her life if she allowed her dislike to spoil it. Therefore,
she set herself to accept her uncongenial companion, detaching herself
from her negative feelings and from the woman herself, while being
friendly and kind towards her. This technique worked marvelously,
and she managed to enjoy the tour immensely.
It is just the same with elements from the unconscious that we
dislike and which we feel are very uncongenial to us. We spoil our
own tour through life if we allow ourselves to resent them. If we can
accept them for what they are and be friendly towards them, we often
find they are not so bad after all, and at least we are spared their
hostility.
The first figure we usually meet in the confrontation with the
unconscious is the personal shadow. Since she (or he) mainly consists
of what we have rejected in ourselves, she is usually quite as uncon
genial to us as the womans traveling companion was to her. If we are
hostile to the unconscious, however, it will become more and more
unbearable, but if we are friendlyrealizing its right to be as it is
the unconscious will change in a remarkable way.
Once, when I had a dream of a shadow who was especially obnox
ious to me but which, from previous experience, I was able to accept,
Jung said to me, Now your consciousness is less bright but much
wider. You know that as an indisputably honest woman, you can also
be dishonest. It may be disagreeable, but it is really a great gain.
The further we go, the more we realize that every widening of con
sciousness is indeed the greatest gain we can make. Almost all of our
difficulties in life come from our having too narrow a consciousness to
meet and understand them, and nothing helps us more in under
standing these difficulties than learning to contact them in active
imagination, as I hope our later examples will show.
As I mentioned before, active imaginationalthough it differs from
its predecessors is being more empirical and scientific in characteris
by no means a new method. One could even say that it is as old as the
earliest efforts of man to relate to forces greater and more eternal than
himself. When man tries to open negotiations with such powers, with
the idea of coming to terms with them, he instinctively discovers some

form of active imagination. If you read the Old Testament attentively
from this point of view, you will find that it is full of such attempts. I
remind you, as only one example among a multitude, of the way
Jacob shaped his whole life on what he heard the Lord speak to him.
It is true that, in Jacob's case, the will of the Lord was often revealed
in dreams, but by no means was this always the case. Jacob no doubt
had inherited a faculty for hearing what those forces said to him
whether they are named God or the unconscious in this special case,
makes no essential differencefrom his mother Rebecca. She went to
enquire of the Lord when the twins struggled in her womb, and
she shaped her rather dubious methods of dealing with her old
husband and her sons on His reply. Rather dubious methods they
certainly were, if we judge them from the standpoint of conventional
morality; but if we consider that she was carfying out the Lords will,
they take on a very different character.
The Lord himself tells us: I form the light, and create darkness, I
make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things. 4 If he
creates evil, he will certainly at times wish his creatures to do what we
regard as evil, but this was far more evident in the days of Rebecca
than it is today. The important thing is always to obey the will of the
Lord, to use the language of the Old Testament.
Good and evil are the pair of opposites that naturally come to mind
after 2000 years of Christianity. And these opposites are causing most
of our troubles today. This is aptly symbolized in the outer world by
the Iron Curtain, and this is the step which we are forced by circum
stances to take beyond the Christian teaching of constantly striving
after the good, and repressing the evil. Although this suppression was
necessary 2000 years ago, the appalling prevalence of evil today shows
us what inevitably happens when one opposite is repressed for too
long.
I remember vividly that when Jung was asked in a discussion if he
thought there would be atomic war, he answered: I think it depends
on how many people can stand the tension of the opposites in them
selves. If enough can, I think we shall just escape the worst. But if
not, and there is atomic war, our civilization will perish, as so many
civilizations have perished before, but on a much larger scale. This
^haiah 45:7.
shows the tremendous value which Jung set on standing the tension
between the opposites and, if possible, uniting them in ourselves. For
if we project the dark opposite beyond the Iron Curtain or onto the
terrorists, for example, we are failing to contribute the grain that we
might place on the positive side of the world scale of peace or war.
We can say that Rebeccas way of dealing with the puzzle set before
her by those twins struggling in her womb already contains our main
motive in turning to active imagination today. She could not under
stand what was happening to her and, as Jung often said, the only
unbearable suffering is suffering that we do not understand. So
Rebecca asked herself, If it be so, why am I thus? 5 and went "to
enquire of the Lord. In principle, this procedure was exactly the
same as ours today when something unbearable happens to us, or
when the apparent meaninglessness of life becomes more than we can
stand. It is then that we turn to something or someone who knows
more than we do, in order to understand or to learn what to do.
In the early days, when Jacob and Rebecca lived, man was still naive
and simple enough to go straight to what he knew to be the fountain-
head of knowledgein the case of the early Jews, the Lord and to
ask what he wanted to know. At that time, he was still able to hear
what his invisible counterpart said in reply. There are still people who
have retained this naive simplicity, but I must say that they are very
rare and seem to be becoming, alas, almost extinct. This characteristic
follows the principle of the Elgonyi primitives in East Africa, who
traditionally trusted their whole fate to the dreams of their medicine
men. But they told Jung sadly, in 1925: No, since the English came,
we have not had any more big dreams, for you see, the District
Commissioner knows what we should do. In these rational days, we
all, whether we know it or not, trust more and more in the District
Commissioner and everything he stands for. We have thus lost touch
for the most part completely forgottenthe superhumanly wise
guidance that exists in the unconscious, which Jung even called the
absolute knowledge in his essay on synchronicity.6 Earlier, mankind
usually gave a name to this absolute knowledge and called it God,
the Lord, the Buddha mind, ad infinitum.
Italics mine.
6C. G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, The Structure and
Dynamics ofthe Psyche, vol. 8, Collected Works (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1968), par. 948.
Laurens van der Post even attributes the ruthless extermination of

the Bushman race primarily to the fact that they were impossible to
tame. Or, in the language Jung used to describe the Elgonyi primi
tives, it was impossible to make them give up their dreams and trust
to the District Commissioner. Yet van der Posts whole account of
Hans Taaibosch, in his enthralling novel, A Mantis Carol,1 shows
vividly how much the better part the Bushmen chose when they
refused to give up the guidance of their god, Mantis, for the District
Commissioner.
In the very early days of analysis, just after the parting of the ways
between Jung and Freud, Jung went through a period of which he says
in Memories: [It was] a period of inner uncertainty for me. It would
be no exaggeration to call it a state of disorientation. I felt totally
suspended in mid-air, for I had not yet found my own footing. 8 He
felt that it was particularly necessary to find a completely new attitude
to his patients, for he no longer felt that methods he had used while
working in close connection with Freud were either valid or satisfac
tory. He said: I resolved for the present not to bring any theoretical
premises to bear on them [his patients], but to wait and see what they
would tell me of their own accord. My aim became to leave things to
chance. Later he saw that very little, if anything, happens by
chance ; what he had really done, as early as 1911, was to trust
himself and his patients to the unconscious. By doing so, he made the
discovery that by far the most fruitful way of interpreting dreams was
to take their own facts as the basis of their interpretation, and that
theory of any kind only distorts and obscures their meanings.
This method worked extraordinarily well with his patients, but Jung
felt that he still had not yet found the firm ground that he needed
under his feet, nor did he yet know and understand his own inner
myth. He had to admit that he no longer lived by the Christian myth
in which man has lived in the Western world for the past 2,000 years
and that, although he had written a long book about myths,9 he did
not yet know his own.
He had several very illuminating dreams at that time, but he says
that the dreams could not help him overcome his feeling of disorien
7Laurens van der Post, A Mantis Carol (London: Hogarth Press, 1975).
8Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 170.
9C. G. Jung, The Psychology o f the Unconscious, revised as Symbols o f the Transfor
mation, vol. 5, 2ded., Collected Works (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967).
tation. Since he did not understand them for many years, he was
forced to search further for depth. The reader can read for himself, in
the chapter on the Confrontation with the Unconscious in Mem
ories, Dreams, Reflections, the stepsdark and dangerous as they
often wereby which he found his own highly empirical path of
active imagination. It took Jung many years, for he was not satisfied
with learning to see the images of the unconscious or even with
actively dealing with them in his fantasies. He did not feel at ease
until he took the most important step of all: finding their place and
purpose in his own outer life. This, he says, the most important step
of all in active imagination, is what we usually neglect to do. Insight
into the myth of our unconscious, he continues, must be converted
into an ethical obligation. Not to do so is to fall prey to the power
principle, and this produces dangerous effects which are destructive
not only to others, but even to the knower.
(This rather curious word, knower, a literal translation of the
more usual German word, der Wissende, means the one who has
experienced insight into the unconscious. A man who has had this
most valuable insight and fails to draw conclusions from it regarding
its place in his outer life becomes the victim of the power principle,
which ultimately endangers him even more than his environment.)
Jung continues: The images of the unconscious place a great
responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand them, or a shirking
of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and imposes a
painful fragmentariness on his life. 10
I think I have said enough to make it very clear that active imagina
tion is no lighthearted pastime. It is a very serious step which should
never be undertaken lightly. It is true that it is not everyones fate to
face the unconscious as completely as Jung did; such an exploration of
it is a vocation and should never be undertaken unless it is approached
for this reason. Butand this is the reason I am beginning this book
by giving some idea of the depths to which it may go and the changes
in a persons whole life to which active imagination may leadthere is
never any guarantee, if we once start on this path, as to where it may
lead us. Above all, it should never be undertaken without a firm rela
tionship to someone who will understand, or at least sympathize, for it
sometimes leads into such cold and inhuman depths that human
,0Jung , Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 192f.

companionship is absolutely necessary to prevent us from becoming

entirely frozen and lost. Although it is essential to have a human
companion in whom one can confide, the actual active imagination is
a very individual and even lonely undertaking. At all events, I could
never do active imagination with anyone else in the room, however
well I knew the person.
There is another warning note I should like to sound from the very
.beginning, because I have met several cases where, to my surprise, I
found it was not generally known. That is: one should never take the
figures of living people into ones fantasies. As soon as there is any
temptation to do this, we should stop and very carefully inquire again
into our motives for the whole undertaking, for it is only too likely
that we are regressing into old, magical thinking; that is, trying to use
the unconscious for personal ends, and not really using it in the only
legitimate way: for exploring the unknown, in as scientific a way as
possible, with the motive of finding our own wholeness. Here, we
come to the great fundamental difference between using active imag
ination in the right or wrong way. The question is: Are we doing it
honestly to try to reach and discover our own wholeness, or are we
dishonestly using it as an attempt to get our own way? The latter use
may apparently be very successful for a time, but sooner or later it
always leads to disaster.
But if we honestly want to find our own wholeness, to live our indi
vidual fate as fully as possible; if we truly want to abolish illusion on
principle and find the truth of our own being, however little we like
to be the way we are, then there is nothing that can help us so much
in our endeavor as active imagination. Ultimately, it can lead to far
greater independence and free us from depending on analysis, or any
other outer help, than anything else that I knowbut I say ultimately
because it is the most difficult work that I know.
Jung once said to me that, in cases where his patient should do
active imagination, he even regarded it as the touchstone as to
whether he or she wanted to become independent, or whether the
patient wanted to remain dependent on him as a sort of parasite.
When I asked if I might quote this, he replied, Not only may you,
but 1 ask you to do so whenever you can.
The analyst should interfere with active imagination as little as
possible. When I was being analyzed by Jung, he always wanted to
hear if I had done any active imagination, but after listening carefully
to any that I had done, he never analyzed it or commented oh it at
all, except to point out if I had used it wrongly. Following that, he

always asked for dreams and analyzed them with the greatest care.
This was to avoid influencing the active imagination, which should
always be allowed to develop in its own way. The patient often finds
this very difficult, it is true; unfortunately, things are not so simple
and direct as they were in the days of Rebecca. Most of us must labori
ously clear away many layers of relying implicitly on the District
Commissioner and the purely rational security that represents, before
we can simply and trustfully enquire of the Lord to find our way to
the absolute knowledge in our own unconscious.
A disciple asked a learned Rabbi, not so very long ago, why it is that
God used to speak directly to his people so often, yet he never does so
now. The Rabbi, who was evidently a very wise man, replied, Man
cannot bend low enough now to hear what God says. That is exactly
it. We shall only hear what God or the unconscious says by bending
very low.
Seeing and, at all events, accepting to some extent our own shadow is
really a conditio sine qua non of experiencing the unconscious, for if
we are still indulging ourselves with illusions about who and what we
are, we have no chance whatsoever of being real enough to see the
images of the unconscious or to hear its voice. Nature and the uncon
scious always go straight to the point, which is usually very different
from what we expect. We need a very unbiased mind, which has
learned to value the truth above everything, in order to register and
value what we see and hear.
Therefore, I seldom encourage people who are working with me to
do active imagination in their early analysis; rather, I do my best to
focus their attention on the reality of the unconscious until I feel that
they really know from experience that they are dealing with something
which is just as real as the outside world. There are exceptions; a few
people who are naturally gifted in this respect may find active imagin
ation a great help, even in the earliest stages. Such people can use it
legitimately from the very beginning of their analysis, but they are
rare.
If active imagination seems to be a way that you can profitably
follow, and if you are fairly sure that your true motive is to know more
about yourself and more about the unknown part of man, the first
thing to realize is that it follows the principle of the Chinese rain
maker of Kiau Tchou. This story has been told very often, but Jung,
who gave us little direct advice, once said to me: Never give a
seminar (and not often a lecture) without telling the people this
story. At one of the very last Christmases shortly before his death,
when he attended the Club11 dinner, he told it to us again. Now there
was certainly no one in the room who did not know the story well, yet,
after he had told it, the whole atmosphere of the party changed. I
realized, as never before, why he had instructed me to repeat it so
often.
There was a terrible drought in that part o f China where Richard
Wilhelm was living.n After all the ways to bring rain that the people
knew had been tried, they decided to send for a rainmaker. This
interested Wilhelm very much, and he was careful to be there when the
rainmaker arrived. The man came in a covered cart, a small, wizened,
old man who sniffed the air with evident distaste as he got out o f the
cart, and asked to be left alone in a small cottage outside the village;
even his meals were to be laid down outside the door.
Nothing was heardfrom him for three days, then it not only rained,
but there was also a big downfall o f snow, unknown at that time of
year. Very much impressed, Wilhelm sought the rainmaker out and
asked him how it was that he could make rain, and even snow. The
rainmaker replied, "I have not made the snow; I am not responsible
for it. ' Wilhelm insisted that there was a terrible drought until he
came, and then after three days they even had quantities o f snow. The
old man answered, "Oh, I can explain that. You see, I come from a
place where the people are in order; they are in Too; so the weather is
also in order. But directly I got here, I saw the people were out o f order
and they also infected me. So I remained alone until I was once more
in Too and then, o f course, it snowed.''
The greatest use of active imagination is to put us, like the rain
maker, into harmony with the Tao, so that the right things may
happen around us instead of the wrong. Although speaking of the
Chinese Tao may perhaps impart a rather exotic flavor to what is really
a simple matter of everyday experience, we find the same meaning in
our most colloquial language: He got out of bed on the wrong side
this morning (or, as the Swiss say, with the left foot first ). This
expression aptly describes a psychological condition in which we did
not arise in harmony with our own unconscious. We are ill-tempered
and disagreeable, andit follows as the night follows the daywe
Zrich Psychological Club.

Richard Wilhelm, Sinologist, author and friend of C. G. Jung.
have a disintegrating effect on our environment, the exact opposite of

the effect which evidently emanated from the rainmaker of Kiau
Tchou.
One can see these effects very clearly in the two opposite activities of
prayer and black magic. The mystics bent their whole endeavor to
obtaining union with God or, as we would express it, in going into
themselves until the ego was replaced by the Self to a great extent.
There are a great many stories of effectseven described as miraculous
iwhich the mystics are again and again asserted to have had on their
environment. St. Gertrude, the Benedictine Abbess, for instance, was
supposed to be able to influence the weather.13 There are endless
stories of her ability to avert hail by prayer, to bring about a cessation
of a severe frost, to save the harvest at the last moment from storm,
and so on. It is interesting that in her recorded prayers she emphasizes
that she does not wish to impose her ego will on God, but would like
to draw His attention to the facts! That is, she attempts to produce a
complete harmony between herself and God; which will not be
disturbed whether he answers her prayer or refusp it.
We are not concerned with whether these effects, natural or miracu
lous, actually took place, but with the fact that] countless people have
believed that they did. This in itself is psychological evidence pointing
to a deep-rooted human conviction that harmofy with God or the Self
has an effect on the environment.
The same holds true of the widespread conviction that witches can
provoke storms. They were always supposed to do this in connection
with the devil or some demon; that is, with a disorderly power.
Supposedly, they went out of themselves, created a disorder like the ill
temper of which we have just spoken, and brought about the wrong
weather, in exactly the reverse sense to the rainmaker of Kiau Tchou.
Whether the state of one man can actually influence the weather
does not concern us, for it is impossible to prove it one way or the
other.14 I have only given these examples because they form extreme
and visible cases, believed in all times and places by a consensus
gentium, of the emanations which proceed from a harmonious or
disordered relation of man to his own unconscious. It is evident that
both the unio mystica of the saint and the witchs pact with the devil
1}St. Gertrude, Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude (London: Burns and Yates, 1870).
14C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion: West and Rost, vol. 11, 2d ed., Collected Works
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), par. 4.
are too one-sided: the one believes in a completely righteous God and
dismisses evil more or less as a privatio boni, and the other hopes that
the devil, the lord of this world, is the more powerful of the two and
therefore takes his side, hoping to get more out of him, so to speak.
Our task in coming to terms with the unconscious, therefore, is much
more difficult than the foregoing examples. We are obliged to deal
with both sides at once, which is characteristic of the problem of our
time.
Both the prayer and contemplation of the mystic and the witchs
pact with the devil are closely related to active imagination. That is,
both present an active attempt to come to terms with an invisible
force, to explore the unknown country of the unconscious. The reason
the effect of the mystic is more favorable than that of the witch can be
explained psychologically by the fact that the mystic attempts to give
up all ego demands, whereas the witch tries to use the forces of the
unconscious for his or her ego purposes. In other words, the mystic
tries to sacrifice the one-sided ego for the sake of the whole, whereas
the witch attempts to use forces which belong to the totality for the
sake of the partthe limited conscious ego.
As mentioned before, we have all experienced the fact that Ou
conscious intentions are constantly crossed by unknownor relatively
unknownopponents in the unconscious. Perhaps the simplest defini
tion of active imagination is to say that it gives us the opportunity of
opening negotiations, and in time, coming to terms, with these forces
or figures in the unconscious. In this aspect, it differs from the dream,
for we have no control over our own behavior in the latter. Of course,
with the majority of cases in practical analysis, the dreams are suffi
cient to reestablish a balance between conscious and unconscious. It is
only in certain cases (but we will consider this point in more detail
later) that more is required. But, before we proceed, I will provide a
short description of the actual techniques that can be used in active
imagination.
The first thing is to be alone, and as free as possible from being
disturbed. Then one must sit down and concentrate on seeing or hear
ing whatever comes up from the unconscious. When this is accom
plished, and often it is far from easy, the image must be prevented
from sinking back again into the unconscious, by drawing, painting or
writing down whatever has been seen or heard. Sometimes it is
possible to express it best by movement or dancing. Some people
cannot get into touch with the unconscious directly. An indirect
CONFRONTING TH E UNCONSCIOUS 17
approach that often reveals the unconscious particularly well, is to

write stories, apparently about other people. Such stories invariably
reveal the parts of the storytellers own psyche of which he or she is
completely unconscious. We shall see an excellent example of this
approach in The Case of Sylvia (Chapter 3).
In every case, the goal is to get into touch with the unconscious, and
that entails giving it an opportunity to express itself in some way or
other. (No one who is convinced that the unconscious has no life o f its
own should even attempt the method.) To give it this opportunity it is
nearly always necessary to overcome a greater or lesser degree of con
scious cramp and to allow the fantasies, which are always more or less
present in the unconscious, to come to consciousness. (Jung once told
me that he thought the dream was always going on in the uncon
scious, but that it usually needs sleep and the complete cessation of
attention to outer things for it to register in consciousness at all.) As a
rule, the first step in active imagination is to learn, so to speak, to see
or hear the dream while awake.
Ju n g writes in his commentary on The Secret o f the Golden
Flower :
Each time the fantasy material is to be produced, the activity o f con
sciousness must be switched off again.
In most cases the results o f these efforts are not very encouraging at
first. Usually they consist o f tenuous webs o f fantasy that give no clear
indication o f their origin or their goal. Also, the way o f getting at the
fantasies varies with individuals. For many people, it is easiest to write
them down; others visualize them, and others again draw or paint
them with or without visualization. If there is a high degree o f con
scious cramp, often only the hands are capable o f fantasy; they model
or drawfigures that are sometimes quite foreign to the conscious mind.
These exercises must be continued until the cramp in the conscious
mind is relaxed, in other words, until one can let things happen, which
is the next goal o f the exercise. In this way a new attitude is created, an
attitude that accepts the irrational and the incomprehensible simply
because it is happening. This attitude would be poison for a person
who is already overwhelmed by the things that happen to him, but it is
o f the greatest value for one who selects, from among the things that
happen, only those that are acceptable to his conscious judgment, and
is gradually drawn out o f the stream o f life into a stagnant backwater.15
15C. G. Jung, Alchemical Studies, vol. 13, Collected Works (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1968), pars. 21-23.
In other places, Jung includes movement and music among the ways
through which it is possible to reach these fantasies. He points out
that with movementalthough sometimes of the greatest help in dis
solving the cramp of consciousnessthe difficulty lies in registering
the movements themselves and, if there is no outer record, it is amaz
ing how quickly things that come from the unconscious disappear
again from the conscious mind.
Ju n g suggests the repetition o f the releasing movements until they
are really fixed in the memory and, even then, it is my experience that
it is as well to draw the pattern made by the dance or movement, or to
write a few words of description, to prevent it from disappearing alto
gether in a few days.
In the same commentary, Ju ng says of the types:
One man will now take chiefly what comes to him from outside, and
the other what comes from inside. Moreover, the law o f life demands
that what they take from outside and inside will be the very things that
were always excluded before. This reversal o f one's nature brings an
enlargement, a heightening and enrichment o f the personality, if the
previous values are retained alongside the changeprovided that these
values are not mere illusions. If they are not held fast, the individual
will swing too far to the other side, slipping from fitness into unfitness,
from adaptedness into unadaptedness, and even from rationality into
insanity. The way is not without danger. Everything good is costly, and
the development o f personality is one o f the most costly o f all things.
It is a matter o f saying yes to oneself, o f taking oneself as the most
serious o f tasks, o f being conscious o f everything one does, and keeping
it constantly before one's eyes in all its dubious aspectstruly a task
that taxes us to the utmost.16
It takes, as a rule, a very long time many years, usually before
the two sides o f the personality, represented by conscious and uncon
scious, can be brought into Tao. Although, as mentioned before, this
term may have an exotic sound in Western ears, it is really the most
practical o f words. Concerning it, Ju n g says:
It is characteristic o f the Western mind that it has no word for Tao.

The Chinese character is made up o f the sign for "head" and the sign
for "going, " Wilhelm translates Tao by Sinn (Meaning). Others trans
late it as "way, " "providence, " or even as "God, " as the Jesuits do.
This illustrates our difficulty. "Head" can be taken as consciousness,
Ibid., par. 24.
and "going as travelling a way, and the idea would then be: to go
consciously, or the conscious way,17
There is another technique in dealing with the unconscious by
means of active imagination which I have always found of the greatest
possible help: conversations with contents of the unconscious that
appear personified. Jung used to say that, as a rule, this was a later
stage in active imagination, and I did not even realize the possibility
until I worked with Jung himself. It is indeed recommended in the
early Two Essays, 18 and those who have read the chapter on the
Confrontation with the Unconscious in Memories19 will recall that
he took to it fairly early in, although not at the beginning of, his own
experiments with the method. Those who have already read Anna
Marjula20 will remember that she eventually used this method almost
exclusively, although she used the painting methodthe visual in
contradistinction to the auditory methodfor many of her earlier
years, and at times, combined the two methods very successfully.
It is, of course, very important to know to whom one is speaking,
and not to take every voice as uttering the inspired words of the Holy
Ghost! With visualization, this is comparatively easy, as one sees in
the case of Edward (Chapter 2). He seems to have no difficulty in
knowing who is speaking to him, for he always sees, and usually
describes, the figure before he speaks to it, with the exception of the
voice he calls the Devil. But it is also possible when there is no
visualization, for one can learn to identify the voices, or the way of
speaking, so that one never need make a mistake. Anna Marjula often
had no visualization at all, and yet she learned to be sure who was
speaking. Moreover, these figures are very paradoxical: they have posi
tive and negative sides, and one will often interrupt the other. In this
case, you can judge best by what is said. And one should always
remember that it is very unwise to cling to the positive and minimize
the negative. Concerning this in his "Late Thoughts, Jung says:
We must beware of. thinking of good and evil as absolute opposites.
The criterion o f ethical action can no longer consist in the simple view
Ibid., par. 28.

18C. G. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, vol. 7, Collected Works, 2d ed.,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), par. 322f.
1?Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
's'Anna Marjula: The Healing Influence of Active Imagination in a Specific Case of
Neurosis. Part 1 is reprinted in this volume (Chapter 7).
that good has the force o f a categorical imperative, while so-called evil
can resolutely be shunned. Recognition o f the reality o f evil necessarily
relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both into halves
o f a paradoxical whole.
In practical terms, this means that good and evil are no longer so
self-evident. We have to realize that each represents a judgment. In
view o f the fallibility o f all human judgment, we cannot believe that
we will always judge rightly. We might so easily be the victims o f mis-
judgment. The ethical problem is affected by this principle only to the
extent that we become somewhat uncertain about moral evaluations.
Nevertheless we have to make ethical decisions. The relativity o f
"good and evil by no means signifies that these categories are
invalid, or do not exist. Moral judgment is always present and carries
with it certain characteristic psychological consequences.21
It is never more necessary to remember these facts than in active
imagination, although they add considerably to the difficulties. How
ever, I would like to point out that, especially for introverts, active
imagination is a golden opportunity to realize these truths, which can
be a very great help when we are forced to face them outside, as we
constantly are in the modern world.
There is one very important rule that should always be retained in
every technique of active imagination. In the places where we enter it
ourselves, we must give our full, conscious attention to what we say or
do, just as muchor even morethan we would in an important
outer situation. This will prevent it from remaining passive fantasy.
But when we have done or said all that we want, we should be able to
make our minds a blank, so that we can hear or see what the uncon
scious wants to say or do.
Jung quotes a passage in the Psychology of Transference which
describes this blank very well. The description is in a letter of the
English alchemist John Pordage, to his soror mystica, Jane Leade. He
writes:
Therefore i f the human will is given over and left, and becomes
patient and still as a dead nothing, the Tincture [we should say the
Self) will do and effect everything in us and fo r us, i f we can keep our
thoughts, movements and imaginations still, or can leave o ff and rest.
But how difficult, hard, and bitter this work appears to the human
will, before it can be brought to this shape, so that it remains still and
calm even though all the fire be let loose in its sight, and all manner o f
temptation assail it.22
Here, Pordage is in exact agreement with the writings of Meister
Eckhart, who also makes the human will responsible for not realizing
the will of God. If we examine ourselves carefully, we shall see that
wanting our own way is indeed responsible when we cannot see or hear
what the unconscious wants to reveal to us. To reach the enduring
condition that Pordage describes is indeed a lifetimes work. I have
only seen it achieved once: by Jung himself. And even he did not
achieve it until after his long illness in 1944, when he was nearly
seventy. He says of this:
Something else too, came to me from my illness. I might formulate it
as an affirmation o f things as they are: an unconditional yes to that
which is, without subjective protestsacceptance o f the conditions o f
existence as I see them and understand them, acceptance o f my own
nature, as I happen to be.73
To reach this condition, however, for long enough to see or hear the
unconscious point of view is fortunately much easier, and it is abso
lutely essential in every technique of active imagination.
The technique for both the visual and the auditory methods consists
first of all in being able to let things happen in the way Jung describes
in the passages quoted from the Commentary on " The Secret o f the
Golden Flower. But images must not be allowed to change like a
kaleidoscope. If the first image is a bird, for instance, left to itself it
may turn with lightning rapidity into a lion, a ship on the sea, a scene
from a battle, or whatnot. The technique consists of keeping ones
attention on the first image and not letting the bird escape until it has
explained why it appeared to us, what message it brings us from the
unconscious, or what it wants to know from us. Already we see the
necessity of entering the scene or conversation ourselves. If this is
omitted after we have once learned to let things happen, the fantasy
will either change as just described, oreven if we hold onto the first
imageit will remain a sort of passive cinema, or we listen as if it were
the radio that speaks. To be able to let things happen is very neces
sary, but it soon becomes harmful if indulged in too long. The whole
C. G. Jung, The Practice of Psychotherapy, vol. 16, 2d ed., Collected Works
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), par. 512.
purpose of active imagination is to come to terms with the uncon

scious, and for that we must have it out with the unconscious (have an
Auseinandersetzung24 with it), for which it is necessary to have ones
own firm viewpoint.
Reading the Odyssey again from the point of view of active imagin
ation is enormously helpful in realizing the interplay between con
scious and unconscious in our own active imagination.25 The
standpoint of the unconscious in the Odyssey is wonderfully shown by
the behavior of the gods; its positive, helpful aspect is illustrated
particularly well by Pallas Athene, and its negative destructive side, by
Poseidon. The most powerful of all, Zeus, is sometimes on one side
' and sometimes on the other.
The conscious standpoint is equally well illustrated by the main
figure, Odysseus, and also in the sections in which Odysseus is absent
by such figures as Telemachus (Odysseuss son) or Menelaus. Although
Menelaus only comes in the fourth book of the Odyssey, it is he who
teaches us a particularly valuable lesson in the technique of active
imagination: the importance of sticking to one image. In fact, space
allows me to deal in detail with only this example, although it would
be possible and very fascinating to use the entire poem as a prototype
of active imagination. It would naturally be necessary to take it, as
Marie-Louise von Franz always takes myths and fairy tales, as a proto
type at the root of the later individual technique of active imagina
tion. It would in no way fit a personal application such as we shall use
in the examples of modern active imagination in later chapters, in the
cases of Edward and Sylvia, for example, but focusing on the Odyssey
in this manner would be very insightful.
While he was a boy, Telemachus, the son of Odysseus and
Penelope, watched helplessly while the infamous suitors of his mother
wasted his inheritance, and even pessimistically and obstinately
believed that his father, Odysseus, was dead. The latter was indeed
the last of the surviving conquerors of Troy to reach his home, and the
son he had left as a baby was grown to manhood before anything
definite had been heard of Odysseus. His nineteen years of wandering
at last moved all the gods of Olympus to pity, except Poseidon, who
This untranslatable German word means having it out with, discussing, analyzing,
all with a hint of an eventual coming to terms.
Homer, Odyssey (Penguin edition).
pursued the heroic Odysseus right to the end with relentless

malice.
But when Poseidon was visiting the distant Ethiopians, Zeus
decided it was time to intervene on Odysseuss behalf; he was sure
Poseidon could be brought to relent, for he could not hold out alone
against the united will of all the other gods. This was taken up
enthusiastically by his daughter, the bright-eyed Athena. Hermes,
the messenger, was sent to the sorceress, Calypso, who was holding
Odysseus on a distant island, to tell her that she must free her long-
suffering guest, for it was now the will of the gods that he should
at last return to his home. Athene herself undertook the task of
instilling a little more spirit into Telemachus, so that he would
finally call the suitors to order, and start off on a quest to gather
knowledge of his father, undeterred by the counterplots of the suitors.
Thus inspired, Telemachus defied the suitors. Without his mothers
knowledge, but with the reluctant help of his old nurse, he set off on
the ship arranged by the goddess, manned by gallant and loyal youths
of Ithaca, to seek knowledge of his father, or at least to hear how he
had met his end.
First, Telemachus went to the court of Nestor, the horse tamer,
but Nestor could give him no direct help, for he had been one of the
first to reach home and had no news of the men left behind. Nestor
sent Telemachus on to Sparta, to the court of Menelaus, who, he felt
sure, would be able to tell him more. One of Nestors sons drove
Telemachus there in a chariot drawn by the two swiftest of Nestors
wonderful horses.
Hospitably received by Menelaus and his wife, Helen of Troy, on
whose account the Trojan War had been fought, Telemachus was
immediately recognized as Odysseuss son. Then Menelaus could not
do enough for him, and though he, like Nestor, could not give him
direct news of his father, he gave him some helpful information. Par
ticularly, Menelaus told him how to deal with the immortalsin our
language, representatives of the unconscious or archetypal figures
which can still be of the greatest help to us in active imagination
today.
Menelaus told Telemachus how his anima had taught him to deal
with the situation when he was delayed on an island called Pharos, off
the mouth of the Nile, by contrary winds. He had reached the point
of despair (as it sometimes seems we have to do before we will face
active imagination in its inexorable reality), for he had used up all his
supplies. His whole crew, as well as Helen and himself, were faced
with starvation if the wind did not change.
One day, when he was walking on the shore in deep dejection, he
was approached by the beautiful Eidothea, daughter of the mighty
Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea. First, she chided him severely for
his lack of initiative in allowing himself to be cooped up on the island,
where they were all growing weaker every day. Menelaus assured her
that he longed to leave, but could only think he must somehow have
offended the immortals who were now denying him any favorable
wind. The friendly goddess told him that only her father, Proteus,
could tell them how they could get home. Menelaus must set a trap
for him and force him to explain the whole situation. Menelaus
begged her to tell him how to catch this mysterious old being, and
she then enlightened him as to what he should do.
The next morning he met her, with the three best men of his crew,
as arranged, at daybreak. They gathered at the mouth of the cave
where Proteus always went for a midday nap which he only took after
counting his seals, as a shepherd counts his sheep. The goddess then
covered all four men with the skins of four freshly flayed seals and laid
them in lairs that she had scooped out in the sand, filling all their
nostrils with a sweet-smelling stuff so that they could endure the
stench of the monsters of the deep. She then left them to carry out
her instructions by themselves. All morning, as she had foretold, the
seals came up thick and fast from the sea, and lay down in
companies all around them. At midday, the old man himself
emerged, found all of his fat seals awaiting him and counted the four
men, entirely unsuspiciously, among the rest. Then he went into the
cave for his midday sleep.
This was their moment. He was hardly asleep before the four men
jumped on him and held him fast. As Eidothea had warned Menelaus,
Proteuss skill and cunning had not deserted him and he trans
formed himself into a bearded lion and then into a snake and after
that a panther and a giant boar. He changed into running water too
and a great tree in leaf. But they set their teeth and held him like a
vice. Then, as the goddess had foretold, at last he tired of his magic
repertoire and took his own form again. Breaking into speech, he
asked questions and allowed Menelaus to question him.
He then revealed that Menelaus had blundered in leaving Troy so
quickly. He should have stayed and offered rich sacrifices to Zeus

and all the other gods if he wished to get home fast across the
wine-dark sea. Now he could only return to Egypt in order to make
ceremonial offerings to the everlasting gods. When Menelaus heard
he must take the long and weary trip over the misty seas to Egypt,
he was heartbroken but, knowing there was no escape, he promised
Proteus to do exactly as he advised.
Then he asked more questions, this time referring to the safety of
his countrymen, whom he and Nestor had left behind at Troy. After
warning him that his tears would flow, Proteus gave him the infor
mation he wanted, of which I will mention two examples. Agamem
non, Menelaus's brother, had been murdered an hour or two after
reaching his home by the treachery of his wife and her lover,
Aegisthus (Clytemnestra was Helen's sister, for the two brothers had
married two sisters). The second fate I will mention was the most
important to Telemachus. His father, Odysseus, was unhappily impris
oned on a distant island by Calypso, the witch.
After staying some time in great luxury with Menelaus, Pallas
Athene warned Telemachus that it was time he went home. She
guided him home by a circuitous route to avoid the trap to kill him
that had been set by the infamous suitors. Instead of letting him go
home, she guided him to his loyal swineherds cottage where he found
his father (who had at last returned to Ithaca after nineteen years of
wandering), disguised as a beggar.
My chief point in relating this material from the Odyssey is to show
the importance of clinging fast to the first image that appears to us in
an active imagination, not allowing it to escape us by quick transfor
mations, as it still will do if it is left to itself. But I have used a little
more of the Odyssey than that which I cited in another book,26 so as
to draw the readers attention to the importance of a collaboration
between the conscious and unconscious. If he had not been helped by
what we call the unconscious, which Homer depicts as the immortals,
what chance would either Menelaus or Telemachus have had of getting
back to his home? Without the knowledge that Proteus gave him,
would Menelaus ever have returned to Egypt, when he says it broke
his heart to do so? Yet only in Egypt could he get rich-enough sacri
26Barbara Hannah, Jung: His Life and Work; A Biographical Memoir (New York: G.
P. Putnams Sons, 1976), pp. 115f.
fices to appease the gods so that they would send him favorable winds.
And Telemachus would undoubtedly have been killed in the suitors
trap if he had not had the guidance of Pallas Athene.
All this is even clearer in the main story of the Odyssey, that of
Odysseus himself, but we have seen enough to be able to see how the
same immortals will still guide us today, though we call them by
different names in our modern material. I will try, in later chapters, to
point out the parallels between the ancient Odyssey and our own
efforts.
The only figure of the unconscious that we have mentioned so far is
! the shadow. This is indeed the figure nearest to consciousness and the
only one, in its personal aspect, that can be made entirely conscious.
[ Nevertheless, the dreams often make it necessary to deal with the
animus or anima simultaneously with, or even before, the shadow.
This is usually because the opinions of the animus would make it
impossible to see the shadow as it really is; in the case of the anima,
her tendency to make the man fall into moody discontent will prevent
him from seeing any value in realizing his own shadow qualities. But
the full Auseinandersetzung with the shadow must be undertaken
before it is possible to have it out with either the animus or anima.
Once when I was having great difficulty in analysis in realizing the
figures of my unconscious, Jung put the fingertips of both hands on
the table before him. Then he told me to imagine myself as a two-
dimensional being, a plane-being, so to speak, and to tell him how I
should then experience his hand. Naturally I should only have been
aware of the plane surface of his fingertips, and how should I have
known that in the third dimension they were attached to each other by
the hand? Obviously I could not have known it. I could only have
observed the plane surfaces of the fingertips, and slowly learned from
the way these appeared, the texture which belonged to each, and how
widely they were separated. If one hand, for instance, was widely
separated from the other hand by the extension of an arm, I would
experience the fingertips of the one hand as being closer together than
those of the other hand.
Jung then explained that we are exactly in the same position with
regard to the unconscious. We are only conscious of three dimensions,
whereas the figures of the unconscious approach us from an unknown
fourth.
One must never push such parallels too far, but this example may
serve to explain why it is necessary, in a real Auseinandersetzung with
the unconscious, first to become conscious of the personal shadow.

Everything we do not like is forgotten as quickly as possible, or in
terms of our simile, it is pushed into the next dimension and lost from
our sight. If the plane man, for instance, did not like the black in the
design on his plane, he could push it into the third dimension and
lose sight of it. However, any fingertips that approached him from
that third dimension would touch his plane covered with that rejected
black substance. It goes without saying how much that would disgust
him with his attempted Auseinandersetzung with the unconscious,
and shows us why it is wise to know the personal shadow as thoroughly
as possible before we try to face the more distant figures in our psyche.
We have already seen that the shadow can ref)resent the whole
unconscious while there are personal factors unknown to us, which
then become contaminated with the archetypal shadow. But the next
nearest figure to us, the animus or anima, only has a personal aspect
and is mainly a figure of the collective unconscious. This is the reason
that we can interpret the gods and goddesses in the Odyssey as animus
and anima figures. The conscious figures, such as Odysseus, Tele-
machus and Menelaus, had a much more ambivalent conception than
we have of humanity, and indeed, of their gods, who were both
positive and negative in about equal degrees. It was with the com ing^
of Christianity that the white opposite alone was accepted, while the
dark became more and more repressed and eventually was identified
with the devil. It was a necessary development at the time, but it led
to the repression of the personal shadow and to our present necessity
of rediscovering it.
Active imagination can be of great use in getting to know the ,
personal shadow and separating it from the collective shadow with j
which its unknown parts are contaminated. With the help of the
dreams, it is usually quite possible to get to know the personal shadow '
because it is material that, although painful, is not difficult to realize.
We all know both the positive and negative qualities of the human
being which belong in the personal sphere. We can also recognize
the opinions of the animus and the moods and other feminine traits
which are produced by the anima without too much difficulty, though
again it may be very disagreeable. But when it comes to an Auseinan
dersetzung with the animus or anima, we enter the unknown and then
the real difficulty begins. Jung even said that anyone who had succeeded
in the task could write master after his name.
It should be mentioned before continuing that, although the work
on the shadow must be done by the conscious ego, its successful con
clusion, so that we can face the figure of animus or anima, depends on
the intervention of one of these figures, or the Auseinandersetzung
between shadow and ego will end in a deadlock instead of a union of
opposites. One can see this particularly well in the case of Robert Louis
Stevensons Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as I hope I showed convincingly
in my account of that book.27 One sees exactly the reverse in Emily
Brontes Wuthering Heights, where t is the intervention of Heath-
clifPs anima, the elder Catherine, that saves a deadlock between the
opposites in that story.28
In the Auseinandersetzung with the animus or anima, active imag
ination is of the greatest posible help in a majority of cases. We shall
see this particularly clearly in the case of Edward (Chapter 2), although
that case is, in one way, an exception, in that the Auseinandersetzung
with the anima precedes the work on the shadow. In the case of Anna
Marjula (Chapter 7), Anna shows a more usual development for, as
she works on the animus, the shadow intervenes wherever she has not
yet seen it in her own psychology. The development also shows very
clearly that the Auseinandersetzung between the woman and animus
will also end in a deadlock if the help of the Self is not sought and
found. All Annas conversations with the Great Mother show the
helpful role played by this figure, although the main theme is the
Auseinandersetzung with a particularly destructive animus. In Annas
case, her later conversations with the Great Spirit (printed here for the
first time) show an unusually thorough Auseinandersetzung with the
positive side of the animus (again assisted by the figure of the Great
Mother). This was rewarded with a singularly peaceful and happy old
age, although most people in her present circumstances could find a
great deal about which to complain. Nevertheless, she has written to
me more than once to say that she is happier than at any previous
period of her life. Although there is still a great deal more to say, I
think it will be better said in connection with the actual material,
where it will be more evident and therefore more convincing.
Barbara Hannah, Striving Toward Wholeness (New York: G. P. Putnams Sons,
1971), pp. 38ff.
Ibid., pp. 190ff. especially pp. 247-250.
CHAPTER 2
A Modern Example o f a Mans Active Imagination

The Case of Edward
Jung often said that the first half of life should be devoted to estab
lishing one's roots in outer life. It is necessary to reach the place where
one belongs and to establish the outer conditions (in profession and
private life) that suit one, which generally include marriage and
founding a family. But when one reaches middle life, the direction
changes. One should begin to turn to the inner life, said Jung, for the
second half of life is inevitably directed toward old age and death. To
put it more simply, life is the goal of the first half of life; death, of
the second.
The example which we will examine first is a long active imagina
tion which took about a year and much hard work to accomplish. It
was undertaken by an author, who was in his early forties. At the
time, he thought he had a problem connected entirely with the first
half of life. Edward, as we will call him, was suffering from a tem
porary attack of impotence; naturally, he was willing to undertake
anything that could possibly cure it. He was, however, already over the
threshold of the middle of life and was an unusually thoughtful man,
with a strong spiritual destiny.
Edward, who was in analysis with one of Jungs assistants, also knew
29
Jung personally and had read many of his books. Therefore, when it was
suggested to him that he might gain some enlightenment on his
problem by means of active imagination, he was very willing to try. He
was looking eagerly for some point at which to start when he remem
bered a recent dream, dealing directly with his problem. He reported his
dream as follows:
I am wandering round in an unknown great city, where I suddenly find
myselfin a brothel. Atfirst I am in a kind of entrance, a bar, where 1 am
flirting with two pretty, young prostitutes. Then a woman of a very
different kind comes towards me. She is exceedingly beautiful, with a
serious, intelligent expression, her tall, well-made figure is entirely
swathed in black silk. Her coal-black hair is combed back severely and her
black eyes are flashing. She lowers her eyes till they meet mine, slowly
raises herglass, as if to drink to my health, andsays: ' ' bientt. '
Edward started his active imagination by taking up the situation
exactly as it ends in the dream. I will quote the first episode in full, so
that the reader may gain an impression of how these conversations go,
and of how other figures try to break in and interrupt the line of the
conversation.
Jung says of such conversations: Archetypes speak the language of
high rhetoric, even of bombast. It is a style I find embarrassing; it grates
on my nerves, as when someone draws his nails down a plaster wall, or
scrapes his knife against a plate. But since I did not know what was-
going on, I had no choice but to write everything down in the style
selected by the unconscious itself. 1 As the fantasy developed, this
became more and more the style forced on Edward.
The first episode begins with Edwards reaction to the last incident in
the dream. Highly astonished and impressed by the womans appear
ance, he silently raises his glass and drinks to her health. Then he
continues:
She: ' What are you doing here ?
I (embarrassed, I . . . well, really . . . I got here without
stuttering): meaning to. "
She (mockingly): "When one observes your desirous glances
toward the young girls, one is not inclined
wholly to believe you.
Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 178.

A MODERN EXAMPLE OF A MANS ACTIVE IMAGINATION 31
Yes, I expect you are right; the devil prob

ably led me here. But what are you doing
here? You really do not look as if you be
longed to this house! '
She (very quietly ' 7 am bewitched, cursed, exiled in this hell!
and sadly): (Sighing) How many years have I suffered in
this miserable prison. I must wait here till a
man comes who can liberate me. (Quickly,
with a trembling voice) I do not mean mater
ial liberation, marriage, or the like. No, no!
Someone must come who is different to all
the others who simply seek physical satisfac
tion. But is such a one likely to come to a
brothel? "
I (moved, ashamed): That must really be terrible for you. And
are you also obliged to take part here?'
She: Yes, to a certain extent. "
I (astonished): "And how could you remain so beautiful
and refined in this mudhole?
She (mysteriously, 1 have special qualities and possibilities,
almost in a poisons and antidotes. It is not easy to get me
whisper): down. (Looking at me withflashing eyes) But
still: how I must fear and wait; how depen
dent I am on a man who will take my part!
The more he would listen to me, the more I
could give him. (Excited) But when the men
only bring their primitive animal side, there
is nothing right that I can do with them
and I myself must always remain in this
prison!"
I (somewhat Yes, and what would that be?
incredulous):
She (impressively) To lead the man where he could see noth
ing, to lead him to things he has no idea of!'
(The strange, new quality in what she says is difficult to follow. I
feel tiredfora moment and, as if to recover, I find myselfglancing
with desire at her beautiful body with its tight-fitting frock of
black silk.)
The Devil (to me): That would be sweet, and how? Her chatter
is nice, but how much nicer to see her naked!
Ask her to go to bed with you! After all, you
are in a brothel, aren tyou?"
I: Be quiet! You know I am impotent. '
Devil: Have a try, perhaps it will work with her.''
I (furiously): "Holdyour tongue, you beast.
Devil (hisses): "You are an ass to let the best tid-bit escape
you.'
I shake my head.
Devil (furious): ' Neverfear, I will teach you. (Exit)
She (uneasy): "What is the matter with you, all o f a sud
den? Your expression is so rigid, and the
glitter in your eyes does not please me at
all. (She turns away with tears in her eyes.)
"Oh! Oh! How tragic. The usual thing is
happening. Lost again! Return to my prison!
And I was so hopeful. I had a better opinion
o f you. . . .
I (upset, ashamed, I 'Please forgive me; it only overcame mefor a
seize her arm and moment. I willpull myselftogether! '
turn her back):
She (freeing herself, "Really? You must keep a better hold on
sternly): yourself and not let every impulse pull you
away. I f you are not able to tame your heart
for a moment, you will never hear my
message. '
(I lead her to a table that stands apart, and order something to
drink.)
She (after a pause, "Now I must ask you again: What do you
urgently): want here? What are you hoping to find in
this dirt? Do you seriously believe you can
find pleasure as a gift in this miserable place?
You are not the man for that. Here in this
brutality, in this want and sickness? You
cannot deceive yourselfabout this! Have you
no scruples? Have you illusions when you
enter such a place? Does it not disgust you

with yourself?
I (touched, Yesit is true . . . it is as you describe it
stammering): . . . it is shameful.'' (After a pause) 'Perhaps
you willjudge me less severely when I tellyou
that, on one side, 1 am driven by an over
powering urge for sexual experience and, on
the other, I am impotent. This is such tor
ture, such a chastising tension which repeats
again and again that one grasps at a straw in
order to escape somehow, at leastfor a mom
ent. So I half hoped to see or experience
something here that might bring me a little
satisfaction . . . orperhaps even that I might
rediscover my potency!''
She (very much Oh! You miserable creature! You think you
can overcome your impotence in such a way?
In that you let yourself go entirely? No, in
this way you would only fall into complete
misfortune, into a place or rather a trap, from
which you would never escape. There is a
reason for your impotence, a spiritual reason!
You must search for this. Otherwise you are
lost!
Prostitute (her ripe, sensuous body only covered by a short skirt, she
approaches our table, presses against me and strokes my head in a
maternal way):
'' What sermon is shepreaching to you ? Is she
preparing you for confirmation? There is an
atmosphere here like in church! '
(1 try to escape her, but she sits on my knee and throws her bare
arms round my neck.)
Devil: "With your mother complex, you could
hardly find anyone better. Just like Rubens's
figures, isn Vshe? Have a try with her; she is
certainly not diseasedshe looks too appe
tizing! She could certainly teach you a thing
or two!
Prostitute (embracing and kissing me, whispers in my ear):

"Come upstairs to my warm, soft bed!
Come, my dear boy.
She (getting up in ' 'If that is how it is, I can go! (Exits)
a fury):
I (tearing myselfloose, pushing aside the struggling prostitute, I rush
out and canju st catch her in thepassage. I hold herfast.):
"Stop, stop! I have freed myself Come with
me, we will leave this infernal hole.
(Ipay quickly while she is putting on her coat; then we leave the
place.)
She does not go out into the street, however, but disappears through
a door in the passage. Edward, following her, finds himself on a dark
staircase that leads down into the depths.
It is the old motif of the Saviors coming from Nazareth, the most
despised place. The solution is right there, under her hated prison and
his most sensuous and lowest fantasies. Or rather, the inevitable starting
point is therethe only place that can eventually lead to the solution.
But the staircase, as it descends, is cut in the rock and dripping with
moisture, and Edward becomes more and more frightened as she hurries
down and he stumblingly follows. At last, he can bear it no longer and
calls to her to stop and tell him where they are going. She stops for a
moment, looks at him searchingly, but hurries on.
In the meantime, the temptation to turn back is almost irresistible,
and these doubts are supported by the devil. But the deep and favorable
impression she has made on him overcomes his doubts, and he decides
to follow her at all costs. At last, she stops for a moment and smiles at
him so encouragingly that he feels calmed and strengthened.
The devil evidently feels desperate and makes another determined
effort to turn him back. Indeed, he succeeds in making Edward feel he is
a fool to leave the warmth and comfort of the brothel to be caught in a
nocturnal maze, and makes him regard it as his punishment.
Still, he steadfastly refuses to turn back, and he hurries after her in spite
of the terrifying roar of water and the air that rapidly grows colder. As
the path becomes more and more difficult, however, she pauses and
helps him over the worst, until they come to a boat and a veiled male
boatman standing in it.
The devil makes a determined effort to stop him from embarking,
saying that it will lead to his certain death and asking him to consider
what will become of his family. (Edward is married and at the time had
two young children at school.) While he is hesitating, she speaks to him
for the first time on their descent and tells him he must now choose
between the betrayal of his better Self and an adventure with her. Like
Churchill, she promises him nothing but blood, sweat and tears, for
there is no safety where they are going; nevertheless, he must now
choose. Silently, he follows her and climbs into the boat with consider
able difficulty. The boatman pushes off and Edward is committed to an
adventure into the unknown.
The whole descent and embarkation are so very vividly described that
one realizes the experience was completely real to him and required a
courage which Edward entirely lacked in outer life. Apparently, this was
a turning point in his life. One feels that the Self, like Zeus, the chief of
the gods of Olympus, has decided that at last it is time to intervene on
behalf of a sorely tried human being. Exactly as in the Odyssey, this
cause is taken up enthusiastically by the anima. In Homers epic, the
anima is the goddess, Pallas Athene; in our fantasy, it is the superior
woman who so much impressed Edward in the brothel and who was
afterwards called the Guide. Just as Athene decided to instill a little
more spirit into the discouraged youth, Telemachus, so Edwards
anima decides to instill a little more spirit into Edward. She succeeds
in getting him to embark on an adventure at last, and, for the time
being at any rate, to give up his pessimistic despair. Just as Telemachus
could never believe that his heroic father, Odysseus, was still alive, so
Edward could not fully believe in life or in himself. In both cases,
however, the anima is very successful at instilling a little more spirit.
But Athene did not succeed in making Telemachus more optimistic
about his father, and Edward, though more enterprising than ever
before, still retained his easily discouraged and frightened nature
throughout this active imagination. This is one of many signs that the
whole experience is completely genuine. When someone shows a
heroism that is quite foreign to him, the fantasy is open to suspicion: it
is probably being unduly influenced by consciousness. But Edward has
to be rescued from his discouragement by other figures in his psyche
again and again, and one feels there is no wishful thinking at work.
Moreover, the unconscious is left completely free. Edward has evidently
mastered the first step in active imagination: the ability to let things
happen.
The fantasy is characterized with the fact that Edward is an introvert.

Such a fantasy would be useless to an extravert; in fact, he would never
have had it, for the extravert is quite enterprising enough in the outer
world and could respond to all the situations which frightened Edward
to death, with sufficient adequacy. An introvert, however, is anything
but enterprising in the outer world, and if one tries to improve him
outwardly, one only drives him deeper and deeper into the mire.
To make this point clearer, I will mention the case of a very intro
verted general practitioner. Never stating exactly what his trouble was,
he simply called it insuperable difficulties in the medical practice."
His analyst suggested that he take up the situation with a positive anima
figure of which he had dreamed. He agreed to this, but started off by
raping this figure! In response to his analysts protest, he at last defined
his difficulty: a terribly strong urge to rape all his younger female
patients. It had grown worse and worse, until he had begun to doubt his
ability to control it much longer. His analyst then withdrew his objec
tions, for he knew that, as an introvert, the physician would be able to
deal with the situation inwardly, bad as it turned out to be. Outwardly,
it would have spelt ruin to his whole profession and developed into a
situation entirely beyond his control.
Edward was equally incapable of outwardly dealing with his fear of
life. Good advice on the subject would have been worse than useless;
whereas inwardlyafraid though he washe learned to cope with his
fear and even to deal adequately with the most dangerous situations in
many of his adventures. This also had an outward effect, for, after three
months of working hard at this fantasy, he entirely and permanently
overcame his impotence. But we must now accompany him on his
adventures to see what it was that helped him so effectively. Anyone
who has seriously tried to do active imagination will know what it cost
Edward to get to the point we have reached, and those without experi
ence should read the chapter on the Confrontation with the Uncon
scious in Jungs Memories, Dreams, Reflections2 to get at least a
secondhand impression of what such a venture entails.
Before we follow Edward out of sight of land and onto the stormy
waters of the unconscious, I must explain his main problem. He had had
a very difficult childhood, unsupported by his cold mother and very
much disliking his coldly rational father. While he was still a young boy,
his mother died of cancer. Since her husband refused to let her go to the
*Ibid.,p. 170.
hospital, Edward was condemned to watching her die, inch by inch, in

their own home. The result of this experience was a profound distrust of
life. When he undertook this step into the unconscious at 42, he had
not yet really lived at all. He had, it is true, married and supported his
family by his efforts in his profession, but he had confined himself to
potboilers, colorless, dull efforts of his own, never letting his consid
erable creative powers loose in his writing. Therefore, he had a severe
feeling of inferiority and felt no joy in life whatsoever. As a deep intro
vert, he had no doubt of the reality of the collective unconscious; his
active imagination, with its adventures and hairbreadth escapes,
required an enormous effort, and sometimes it took him several days or
weeks before he could find enough courage to face the next step. He
was, however, committed to going through with it when he made his
choice and got into the boat.
Immediately, they pass out of sight of land, and are in the deepest
darkness. The only light faintly glows from a torch in the bow of the
boat, a torch which the boatman makes Edward renew with great diffi
culty from time to time. The beautiful womanwhom he subsequently
calls the Guide becomes more related to him, covering him with a
rug, feeding him occasionally, and, whenever he is completely
exhausted, even giving him an elixir which entirely renews him.
His first encounter is with a flock of vulture-like birds which are feast
ing on a corpse in the water. Edward exclaims in horror, but the Guide
merely tells him calmly that such things happen down here. She
adds, with flashing eyes and speaking severely, No more illusions! Its
a matter of life and death now. One is reminded of the alchemists
saying: Many have perished in our work.
Barely escaping destruction in a narrow, rocky gorge, they sail into
calmer water. Almost immediately, a beautiful golden butterfly lands
on the hand of the Guide. After a bit, it flutters off, and the Guide tells
the boatman to follow it. At first, the impenetrable darkness remains,
then a faint light appears on the horizon. They come upon a fairly-like
picture -an island with the most beautiful flowers imaginable. To
Edwards horror, they pass this heavenly place, but his protests are
brushed aside by the Guide, who tells him to be comforted and encour
aged by the beauty he has seen, but that a very long journey and many
tasks must be fulfilled before he will have earned landing in such
beauty.
Completely exhausted, Edward is given bread, smoked meat and
wine by the Guide, who allows him to fall into a deep sleep with his
head on her lap. He is awakened by a violent thunderstorm and he is
terrified as they steer straight toward it. The water turns reddish-yellow
and suddenly, as though out of a volcano, an enormous sheet of flame
shoots into the air and forms a wall in front of them. In the blinding,
white-hot center of this flaming wall, two stars appear and turn out to
be eyes. These blue eyes, which stare at Edward, belong to the Spirit of
Fire, Water, Wind and Ice. Edward throws himself in panic to the
bottom of the boat, shrieking, We are burning! We are on fire! But
the wall of fire lifts just enough for the boat to pass under it, through a
1wave of heat, light and steam.
One can compare this with the experience of Telemachus. Most of the
time, Pallas Athene appears as a helpful human being to him, but when
she appears as an Immortal, Telemachus is nearly as frightened as
Edward. One sees this particularly well in the scene in which Tele
machus meets his father in the swineherds cottage. Athene changes
Odysseus from his disguise as a dirty, old beggar, into such a heroic
figure that Telemachus cannot believe it is truly his father. He is sure
that Odysseus is an overpowering Immortal. It takes long persuasion to
convince Telemachus of the mans identity. If you re-read the Odyssey,
you will see that the same dread surfaces at times even with the heroic
Odysseus. After all, the Scriptures tell us that the fear of God is the
beginning of wisdom. Therefore, we cannot be surprised that Edward
is terrified when the Spirit of Fire appears to him.
Indeed, he feels as weak as though he had been through a long
illness, but the Guide gives him a drink that pours through his tired
limbs and gives him renewed strength. The Guide then rejoices in what
they have been through, saying that here at last she can breathe; she is
in her element and feels freed from the deadly imprisonment of his
brothel fantasy at last. She is also delighted that the spirit looked at
Edward as if he had a task in store for him. Edward finds this still more
terrifying, for this figure is so gigantic, so burning, he would be the
death of me. The Guide admits he is dangerous, warns Edward that he
should oppose him on no account, and assures him that, if he will adapt
to him with all the devotion of which he is capable, he will be given
strength that he could never find by himself. She then says that this
great fire spirit seeks people in order to express himself in the outer
world.
Although this active imagination was completed years before Jung
wrote his Memories, we find exactly the same idea here that Jung
expresses in analyzing his dream of the Yogi who had his own features
and whom he felt was asleep, dreaming Jungs life on earth. Or, Jung
says, To put it another way: it assumes human shape in order to enter
three-dimensional existence, as if someone were putting on a divers suit
in order to dive into the sea. . . . In earthly form it can pass through the
experiences of the three-dimensional world, and by greater awareness
take a further step towards realization.
Edward felt that it would destroy him entirely to serve this gigantic,
burning figure, whereas the Guide felt it was the greatest honor that
could befall him. This fire spirit is evidently a first appearance of the
Self, and Edward is faced with the task, so much praised by Meister
Eckhart, of giving up his own will so that Gods will, or in psychological
language, the Selfs will, can replace it.
In a long conversation between the Guide and Edward, we learn that
she feels he has entirely failed in the tasks of the first half of life, and she
reproaches him severely. He feels aggrieved, an attitude ably supported
by the devil, and tries, very unsuccessfully, to turn the tables on the
Guide. Edward now learns that he imprisoned her in the brothel
because the only fantasies which he ever permitted himself were of a
pornographic character. She had tried in every way to rouse him and
make him live at last. Finally, as a desperate last effort, she had made
him impotent. This horrifies Edward, but at last she persuades him that
his only chance is to try to make the best of the second half of life; to
accept all the dangers of the world to which she had brought him, and
do the best he can with it.
Until nowexcept for changing the torches when necessaryEdward
has taken no active part in the fantasy. Enduring the dangers has been
all that was asked of him, but now, as he changes the torch, the veiled
boatman hands him another torch and a high pair of boots. The Guide
informs him that he must now undertake a task entirely by himself: he
must free an imprisoned woman in a cave on the island which they have
just reached. She frightens Edward still more by telling him that he
must strike at the serpents immediately with the switch she gives him,
and that the fire in the torch must be used to frighten away the other
animals. Although afraid and feeling very inadequately armed, he again
decides to obey and lands by himself on the island.
Ibid., pp. 323f.

Edward describes this venture very vividly and at considerable length,

so I have had to abbreviate it a great deal. First he has to face a snarling
pack of dogs which must be frightened away and even burned by the
torch. Then he meets a lot of poisonous snakes that he has to kill swiftly
with the switch, as they strike at him. To his horror, he finds he is on the
edge of a volcanos crater, which is evidently very near eruption. The
path leads down into this fearful crater and then, to his relief, up again,
where he reaches the comparatively cool temperature of a cave. There,
he finds that he has stumbled on the cave where the woman is
imprisoned.
She is anything but attractive, having been bound in the cave for a
long time. She is skinny and looks like a bundle of rags; horrified,
Edward sees that she has four eyes, all squinting horribly. She is bound
with very thick and resistant ropes, and he has the greatest difficulty in
cutting through them. The devil suggests that he save himself (for the
sound of the volcano is growing steadily more menacing), but resisting,
he at last frees the woman and carries her out of the cave. Freedom,
however, soon revives her, and she indicates the way to safety. Edward
has lost his switch and calls out to her to beware of the snakes. They,
however, are afraid of her four eyes; as long as she keeps the snakes in
sight, they only slither harmlessly away.
With the volcano erupting behind them and everything lit up by the
glare, they reach the boat and are helped in, but even the boat is
threatened by the eruption. Fortunately, the wind is with them and they
escape into calmer waters. Once they are safe, the Guide congratulates
Edward on his completion of a job which she had feared was beyond his
strength, and revives both him and the four-eyed woman with a draught
of her elixir. The womans squints at once disappear and all four eyes
glow in a victorious and enchanting fire: red, green, blue and yellow.
The Guide tells Four Eyes that they must now take care of Edward,
who is at the end of his strength. She prepares a comfortable bed for
him, where he can at last sleep soundly. Safe, happy and indescribably
tired," he sinks into unconsciousness, but still hears their conversation
as though from far away. We learn some very interesting facts from this
long conversation between these two aspects of his anima. Chief among
these is that this whole land, and Edward himself, are in the power of an
old witch, the terrible archetypal kernel of Edwards negative-mother
complex. His mother had died too early for Edward to have a personal
mother complex, but the place of this was filled, far more destructively,
A MODERN EXAMPLE OF A MAN'S ACTIVE IMAGINATION 41
by the archetype of the negative mother. Edward begins to sense her

image and later he sees, destroys and eventually transforms her. Often
the gap left when the mother dies in a boys childhood is partially filled
by a loving father, but Edwards father was a cold, rational man, who
gave the poor child no warmth or relatedness whatsoever, and thus left
him vulnerable to archetypal influence.
The archetype of the negative mother had been able to imprison both
these anima figures, but only because Edward was unable to resist it,
and he himself has been bound and imprisoned quite as badly as the
women. When he was still very young, the witch had weakened his
enterprising spirit and bound him to her with poisonous sweetness, till
she had him securely entangled in her net. He never turned on her until
the torment of his impotence drove him to rebel at last. By rebelling, he
has also freed these two anima figures to act, and they both promise
themselves that the witch will be entirely destroyed.
In this witch figure we find another parallel with the Odyssey. The
witch, Calypso, who holds Odysseus prisoner for so many years on a
distant island, was the chief cause of all the trouble in the Odyssey.
Such witch figures are always the result of a mother complex, either
personal or archetypal, and imprison not only the man but, as we have
already seen in Edwards case, also imprison the positive anima figures
which could help him. It was exactly the witchs doing that robbed Tele-
machus of his positive father image until he was already an adult, and
that plunged him and his mother, Penelope, into such endless diffi
culties with the infamous suitors. Edwards difficulty here, therefore, is
based on an archetypal pattern, and he cannot be held personally
responsible. But just as Odysseus had to build his own boat to escape
from the witchs island, so now Edward as to find his own way to save
himself from his destructive mother-witch. But both Odysseus and
Edward get a great deal of help from their animas and ultimately from
the highest God: in our language, the Self.
The Guide shows considerable feeling for Edward and is determined
that he shall not be broken, for then they would all be lost. She thus
reveals herself as Edwards own individual anima, whereas Four Eyes is a
far more archetypal figure. Four, as the complete number, is an attri
bute of the Self; therefore, this figure of the archetypal anima is
contaminated with the Self. Jung used to say that the overwhelming
power of the anima or animus only came when she or he was able to
stand between the Self and the human being. Edward had one glimpse
of the Self, it is true, when he saw the Spirit of Fire in the midst of the
storm. Since his only reaction was fear that approached panic, the anima
was easily able to stand between him and the Self, which we shall see
even more clearly in another aspect of the anima which appears at the
end of the fantasy. Edward has succeeded in establishing a relationship
with his individual anima, but the archetypal world of the collective
unconscious is still an alarming fact and quite undifferentiated by him.
There are only faint hints of this differentiation between the indi
vidual and the archetypal figures of the anima in the story of Odysseus,
for this differentiation developed very slowly in the course of history.
Jung once pointed out, in a discussion on the story of Amor and Psyche
in Apulieuss Golden Ass, that whereas Psyche became a goddessthat
is, a purely archetypal aspect of the animashe gave birth to a
daughter, not a son. The daughter represented another anima figure in
the birth of the individual aspect of the anima. This aspect is repre
sented by the Guide in Edwards fantasy. We must remember that
Apuleius lived about 1000 years after Homer and, though purely pagan
himself, was born synchronistically into a world where a new symbol of
the SelfChristalready had many hidden followers. The individual
aspect of the anima, the bridge between conscious and unconscious, has
developed enormously during the Christian era. (One example is the
figure of Beatrice in Dantes Divine Comedy). The work Jung did on the
anima finally brought it right into mans consciousness.
Fortunately, the Guide succeeds in holding back the impatience of
Four Eyes, who is thirsting for an immediate revenge on the witch who
had imprisoned her so painfully for so many years, and Edward is
allowed to sleep. When he wakes up, he is given a sustaining meal and
only then does he realize the significance of a second boat which was
tied to their own and had appeared mysteriously while he was away on
his quest. He and Four Eyes are to set out together for the lair of the
witch with the intention of destroying her.
This time, however, Edward is well-armed. He is given a pistol, with a
great many rounds of ammunition, and a still more deadly rifle. He is
also provided with very high rubber boots in which he can wade to a
considerable depth. He has already been provided with new clothes, for
his own had been burnt and torn to pieces during his adventure on the
volcanic island. Four Eyes has also been given some of the Guides elixir,
so that she can revive Edward in an emergency, but he does not know
this at the time.
The adventure which we have followed so far only represents eight

parts and took about two months in time, whereas his journey with Four
Eyes and all the dangers they meet consists of fourteen parts and occu
pied Edward for most of six months. He describes it very vividly and in
detail, and one sees that he was completely involved in it, but that he
often despaired of the outcome. Four Eyes remains much more impa
tient and demanding than the Guide, but she slowly realizes that, since
the outcome depends on Edwards survival, she must at least keep him
alive.
The witch has indeed established her lair in a well-defended place. To
begin with, the island is exceedingly difficult to land on and demands
endless patience in cutting away weeds to get their boat up the back
water. When they land, they are met by one deadly animal after
another, such as poisonous toads the size of a calf, serpents of every kind
and, worst of all, a praying mantis as large as a man. This especially
frightens Edward because of a dream he had had, many years before, of
such a creature. Usually, he shoots promptly and with perfect aim (like
all men of his country, Edward was an excellent shot), but Four Eyes has
to scold him before he takes aim at the praying mantis. He pulls himself
together in time, however, and the body of the praying mantis hurtles
down into the abyss.
In the course of these and many other adventures, they discover a
dove chained by the leg, which Four Eyes says is a prisoner of the witch
which must be freed. Edward, who has lost his knife on the volcanic
island, says it is an impossible task, but Four Eyes tells him to search in
the pockets of his new clothes. There he finds a knife, even better than
his own. It includes a saw which will cut through metal. It is, however, a
long and weary job; Edward would like to give up halfway through the
task, but Four Eyes will not hear of such faintheartedness. At last, he
frees the bird. After joyously circling over their heads, the dove sits on
Edwards shoulder, gratefully rubbing its head against his face. Four
Eyes remarks that before they have finished, they will have every reason
to be grateful to the dove.
This immediately proves to be the case, for the next obstacle they
come to is a high, wrought-iron gate. At first, this seems to be a fatal
obstacle; as usual, Edward thinks they are beaten, and for once, Four
Eyes is at a loss. But with a joyful cry, the bird flies over the gate. After
some time, it comes back with the key, although it is almost too heavy.
Thankfully, and after some difficulty, for the lock is very stiff and has
evidently not been used for years, they open the gate and stand on the
other side.
Apparently, however, they have gained nothing. The ledge upon
which they have been walking comes to an end, and the only way to
continue is on the other side of the abyss. Even Four Eyes is daunted at
first, but the dove comes to their rescue once more. With a tremendous
effort, it succeeds in bringing up the end of a rope. Hanging onto the
gate, Edward pulls up a narrow plank which is attached by an iron ring
to the rope; it just reaches across the abyss, and Four Eyes crosses by it at
once, lighting the darkness with her torch. Edward is, however, more
afraid than ever. The plank is not only narrow, but it also swings about
dangerously; moreover, he cannot bear heights. Spurred on by the
taunts of Four Eyes, he starts across, but his giddiness almost overcomes
him in the middle of the precarious bridge. He says afterwards that he
would certainly have crashed into the depths, but that the rays of her
four eyes seemed to draw him over, and he thankfully collapses on the
floor of a cave on the other side.
Four Eyes allows him no respite, however. They have to press on
through a narrow crevice in the rock. Edward can hardly squeeze
through, and just as it gets a little better, they hear a faint groaning.
Another prisoner of the witch, Four Eyes exclaims, and they see a
face pressed against a window in the rock: a terrible face which looks as if
the whole head had been split apart and had grown together again
badly. It is so pale that Edward is uncertain if he is looking at a corpse or
a very sick man. Another faint groan convinces him it is the latter. Their
combined efforts fail to move the door, but at last Edward smashes the
lock with the butt end of his gun. The cell is so small that the prisoner
could only kneel or sit. Edward pulls him out. He is very light, and they
see that he is a dwarfed hunchback with a clubfoot. He is hopelessly
cramped and his clothes are in rags. Four Eyes tries to pour her elixir
down his throat, but Edward stops her while the dwarf is completely
unconscious. The moment he gains consciousness, he eagerly drinks the
elixir, which has its usual revivifying effect.
The hunchback can hardly believe he is finally free, but he greets the
dove as an old friend that visited him dailyhis only consolation until it
was imprisoned itself. When he hears that his liberators are on their way
to kill the witch, he rejoices and tells them that he knows every inch of
the way and will guide them safely to her. When they get back to the
passage, he hurries ahead with the dove flying over him. Edward says
that they are the most curious pair he can imagine: the beautiful, white,
elegant dove and the hideous little hunchback, limping painfully after
it.
The hunchback stops them, saying that if they continue on the way,
the witch will see them coming, seize them in her octopus arms, and eat
them. He then shows them how to swing open a rock, revealing a low
tunnel. Edward must first crawl, then lie flat. Four Eyes takes his gun
and pistol, but even so, Edward soon becomes stuck, hopelessly, he
thinks, and he is terrified of the darkness and of suffocating. Four Eyes
and the hunchback ahead of him shout that the passageway improves,
but Edward cannot move. The hunchback comes back, however, and
fishes Edwards torch out of his pocket. Between being able to see and
the help of the hunchback, Edward at last emerges into a cave where he
can stand upright.
Four Eyes, as usual, is very impatient with him and accuses him of
never wanting anything but rest. Finally, she gives him her elixir, which
has all its old magical effect. The hunchback tells them they are now
near their goal and must creep noiselessly, for the witch will not expect
them from that side. Giving the dwarf the pistol and keeping the rifle
himself, Edward crawls after the hunchback, with Four Eyes behind
him. The devil makes a last effort and taunts him with his fear, but this
time, Edward knows it is too late to turn back and manages to repulse
him. Still, Edward is very afraid; although the hunchback and Four Eyes
attack every octopus arm, Edward is petrified by the Medusa-like stare of
the witchs eyes and fails to shoot at her head as he should. But the dove
attacks the eyes and, freed of this petrifying stare, Edward shoots her
through the head and she sinks down, at last lifeless, to the bottom of
the pool. The fearful noise of the battle is followed by a complete,
awesome silence.
After a pause, something white appears at the other end of the pool.
Edward is about to shoot when he realizes it is a very beautiful woman,
naked, with four breasts: the witch transformed into a positive mother
goddess! She thanks Edward for redeeming her and, as the ruler of that
land, arranges a glorious banquet, waited on by many beautiful, naked
girls. The Guide and the boatman, at last unveiled, come up from the
boat and all the figures we have met in Edwards adventures take part in
the feast.
This last scene is the only one in the whole fantasy that does not come
quite so genuinely and undoubtedly from the unconscious. One won
ders if Edward, feeling that nearly a year was long enough for any
fantasy to last, rather contrived this happy end, and if, thereforeas
indeed turned out to be the caseEdward still had a lot of work in front
of him before he would reach the degree of individuation which was his
own spiritual destiny, foreseen in the final banquet.
Nevertheless, the unconscious does break through very genuinely in
some places. Chief among these is in the figure of the boatman, who
was always veiled before the banquet, and who turns out to be a shadow
figure of whom Edward has often dreamed and whom he always
cordially disliked. The exact opposite of Edward, who is very good-
mannered and gentlemanly, the boatman is a very primitive person with
many animal qualities. He even eats at the banquet more like an animal
than a man, which revolts Edward terribly. He has more trouble in
making himself drink with the boatman than with any of the other
figures, and one is not quite sure of his eventual acceptance.
We must, however, not overlook the fact that the Guide, when she
brings the unveiled boatman to Edward, says that he is the counterpart
of the hunchback. Who, then, is the dwarf hunchback? From the
context of the Cabiri, those dwarf, creative gods, the hunchback clearly
represents Edwards creativity. As I mentioned before, Edward had
never been able to bring this creativity into his work. Therefore, he had
only produced very colorless efforts when he worked for himself. We
learn now why this was so: the witch had imprisoned his creativity in
such a narrow cell that it could only sit and kneel. Through this great
effort, Edward had freed his creativity; indeed, his work changed
entirely after this point. It became full of life and color, and Edward
thoroughly enjoyed it, instead of regarding it as a duty that must be
performed.
Marie-Louise von Franz, in her new book on projection, has a chapter
on demons entitled, Exorcism of Devils or Integration of Complexes
in which she points out that integration is always the most crucial point.4
We should certainly consider Edwards fantasy from that point of view.
The only figure that can be wholly integrated is obviously that of the
boatman, who is clearly Edwards own personal shadow. He is the exact
opposite of his conscious personality, and the one which Edward is obvi
ously going to have trouble integrating. But if he can accept his animal
like nature, it would make him a far more complete and efficient charac
ter. It is noticeable, for example, that whereas Edward himself was
4Marie-Louise von Franz, Projection and Re-Collection inJungian Psychology: Reflection
of the Soul, trans. William Kennedy (La Salle: Open Court Publishing Co., 1980),
pp. 95ff-
continually afraideven near to panic and despairthe boatman

accepted every danger that confronted them and always managed to
steer their boat, quietly and safely, through every peril, even aiming for
the center of the storm and straight at the curtain of fire. He took every
order of the Guides and efficiently carried it out, whereas Edward
himself was always protesting and really only succeeded in the end
through the efficiency of the other figures. So it would clearly have been
Edwards first and most urgent task, after the fantasy, to assimilate all
the qualities of his personal shadow.
One can never completely integrate ones own creativity; rather, one
must work with it and give it every chance to develop. Edward does this
in the fantasy when he lets the hunchback lead and help him when he
becomes stuck in the crevice of the rock; he is really already doing
inwardly exactly what must be done in ones outer creative work. It is
also very noticeable that once he gets used to his rather revolting appear
ance, Edward likes and trusts the hunchback and is very appreciative of
his help. There is none of the revulsion that he shows toward the boat
man. It is true that he notices the latters great skill and courage in
navigating their boat, but only while he is veiled and he can ignore his
personality. As I pointed out in Chapter 1, Edward was rather unusual
in that he met the anima problem before he had assimilated the
personal shadow.
In contradistinction to the personal shadow and the creative daimon,
we also have, on the masculine side, the figures of the devil and the
Spirit of Fire. The devil is evidently the great Tempter, Satan himself, a
purely archetypal figure, and Edward is quite right to repulse him, He
could not assimilate this figure without the most terrible negative infla
tion. It is very significant that the devil is the only figure that we have
met constantly who is not at the banquet.
The Spirit of Fire is also a very archetypal figure, who is also absent
from the banquet. He is very constructive, however, and we learn from
the Guide at the banquet that he has been helping Edward throughout
the journey, or he could never have succeeded. (He is really the counter
part of the devil, who could also be called his shadow.) Naturally, at this
stage of his development, Edward would be totally incapable of dealing
with sheer evil. Edward, as we have seen, was also terribly afraid of the
Spirit of Fire, which makes just one appearance. Afterwards, we only
hear of him twice: the Guide gets more consideration for Edward from
the impatient Four Eyes when she tells her that the Spirit of Fire is
interested in this quest; the second time is when the Guide says that it is
only through his help that Edward has succeeded.
We find the same split of positive and negative figures in the
Odyssey, in the highest representatives of all, whom Homer calls the
Immortals or gods. Poseidon played a negative role throughout the epic
poem, a role which is parallel to the role played by the devil throughout
Edwards fantasy. Just as the Guide tells Edward he could never have
succeeded without the help of the Spirit of Fire, so Telemachus, or even
Odysseus himself, could never have succeeded without the help of the
positive gods. Zeus himself tells us at the beginning that Poseidon, who
is pursuing Odysseus with relentless malice, cannot possibly hold out
against the united will of the immortal gods. He could, however,
presumably have held out forever, had Odysseus not received help from
the Immortals. Zeus intervenes in a very visible way, through Hermes
and Pallas Athene, whereas the positive aspect of the Self works entirely
behind the scenes, except for his one appearance to Edward in the
storm, and we only learn of what he has done through the Guide at the
final banquet.
This is a difference which makes it much more difficult for modern
man to relate to the Self than it was for the ancient Greeks to relate to
their gods. In fact, it is often only through the context found in the old
myths that we can see how much the unconscious is helping us, for it
certainly seems to work much more invisibly than it did in antiquity.
This is because modern man no longer bases his life on the order in the
unconscious, as the ancient Egyptians and Greeks did on the order of
V their godsonly to mention two examples among a multitude. We
believe that we can consciously invent our own order, although the state
of the world today should convince us that this is the most foolish
illusion. Therefore a figure, like Edwards Spirit of Fire, is obliged to
work invisibly, for, as we have seen, Edward only falls into a panic if
such a figure shows himself openly.
The Self is such an infinitely greater figure than the ego that there is,
of course, no question of integrating it. Jung used to say that the Self
was both individual, even unique, and universal, the central and presid
ing archetype of the collective unconscious. We have to relate to the
Self, doing our best to let it unfold its individual and unique pattern
that is our destiny to live, but we must also know that we shall never
comprehend it, for it stretches into infinity.
The reader may object that none of the figures in Edwards fantasy,
except perhaps the devil, corresponds to the popular idea of what a

demon is, but I used the word in the sense of daimon. In the ancient
view, every figure or image that was between God and man was
considered a daimon. In this sense, the anima is a daimon, and we must
consider her three aspects that appear in this fantasy in that light. Of
these three, by far the most individual and related to Edward is the
Guide. She can even be said to be the anima in her right place: the
function or bridge between conscious and unconscious. She leads
Edward out of his miserable outer life and into her own realm: the
unconscious. She looks after him there and, although she is often very
severe with him and critical of the way he has lived his life, she seems to
realize that everything depends on his survival and is careful to help him
to survive.
Four Eyes is also an anima figure and must have a connection to
Edward, or he would not have had the task of liberating her and she
would not have complained to the Guide that she was imprisoned
because he spinelessly gave in to the witch. But she is far more arche
typal in character than the Guide, and comes from such a deep level that
she has characteristics that really belong to the Self: her four eyes which
flash four colors, an attribute of wholeness. She is another aspect of the
anima, more related to the Guide than to Edward himself. It is the
Guide who knows where she is imprisoned and sends Edward to release
her, and it is only through the Guides intervention and her mention of
the Spirit of Fires regard towards Edward, who is an image of the Self,
that her impatience does not destroy him on their journey to find the
witch.
The transformed witch is also an aspect of Edwards anima, and even
more archetypal in character, with four breasts, and thus contaminated
with the Self. She is represented as the all-giving mother, the exact
opposite of the witch who deprived Edward of everything that makes life
worth living. Probably, as he gets more familiar with the unconscious,
all these aspects of the anima will turn out to be one and the same.
The fourth aspect of the anima is represented by the dove. Besides the
obvious relationship of the bird to the spirit, the Holy Ghost is often
called the vinculum amoris, the bond of love, between Father and Son.
Moreover, in an alchemical allegory by Philalethra, quoted at some
length by Jung in Mysterium Coniunctionis, 5 it is the doves of Diana
5C. G. Jung, Mysterium Coniuntionis, vol. 14, 2d ed., Collected Works (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1970), pars. 189ff.
that temper the malignity of the air. It is noticeable that the devil
only makes one rather weak effort to discourage Edward after they have
liberated the dove and that, besides fetching the key and the end of the
rope, it is the dove that makes it possible for Edward to shoot the witch
by tempering her Medusa-like, petrifying stare. The dove is so related to
Edward and Four Eyeshe sits on the shoulder of Edward or the hunch
back whenever he is not engaged in an invaluable jobthat he can be
said to represent Eros, the feminine principle. Moreover, while he had
his liberty, the dove was most related to the hunchback, visiting him
each day.
Since Edward was deprived of all relationship by his cold mother, it is
not surprising that the Eros principle should be the most unconscious
part of his feminine side. Jung used to say that when we dreamed of a
personified part of our psyche as an animal, it meant that this was still
* far away from us in consciousness. And indeed, the Eros principle was
still very far away from Edward. This is shown by his idea, in the dream
which began the fantasy, that he could find relationship in a brothel.
That is a typical masculine mistake; a man often confuses sexuality with
relationship. Jung even says in Woman in Europe : A man thinks he
possesses a woman if he has her sexually. He never possesses her less, for
to a woman the Eros-relationship is the real and decisive one. 6
Although Edwards reaction to life itself, to the food and drink and to
all joy, changes completely in the banquet scene, his reaction to sex
remains the same. During the banquet, Edward sees the unrebuked
boatman fondling the naked waitresses. He neglects his food and tries to
do the same. This immediately draws a rebuke from the Guide, who
tells Edward to leave the girls alone and to confine himself to the women
on earth. Evidently, the boatman is not yet enough of a part of Edwards
consciousness for him to be under the laws for mortal man. Both the
Guide and Four Eyes had complained earlier that it was Edwards sexual
fantasies that had imprisoned them, so one understands the horror of
the Guide when she realizes that Edward is still unchanged in this
respect. He casts the same glances at the waitresses as he did at the
prostitutes in the beginning of the fantasy. He has been deeply
wounded in this area, it seems, and still has a lot of work ahead of him
before this part of him can change. It is, however, very noticeable that
the whole land is changed after the witch is transformed.
6C. G. Jung, Civilization in Transition, vol. 10, 2d ed.. Collected Works (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1970), par. 255.
The country which has always been described as a rocky wilderness

abounding in poisonous animals, becomes green and fertile and over
flowing with food and wine of every kind. This is a clear reference to
Edwards environment, as well as to himself, being changed by this
fantasy.
The East has long been convinced that the inner efforts of the
individual have an effect on his whole environment, but this idea seems
very difficult for the West to grasp. I remind the reader of Wilhelms
story of the Rainmaker, told in Chapter 1 of this book. I also remind the
reader of what Jung said when asked if he thought there would be an
atomic war. He thought it depended on how many individuals could
stand the tension of the opposites in themselves. Nothing helps us more
to stand this tension than active imagination, and I am sure that a total
effort, such as Edward made in this fantasy, had a beneficial effect on
much more than himself.
CHAPTER 3
One Beginning Approach to Active Imagination

The Case o f Sylvia
In order to provide a contrast to Edwards case, the next example is

that of a woman, Sylvia, who is a painter. Like Edward, she was just past
the middle of life when she decided to make this considerable effort to
reach the unconscious. Sylvias effort, however, comes from an earlier
stage in active imagination than Edwards. Although it was by no means
her first attempt, it was the first time she managed to break through to
the depths of her central problem.
Sylvia had not been at all fortunate in her parents. Her father was a
classic example of a negative father; her mother, though good-natured
enough in herself, had never had the strength to stand up to her
husband, so she was no protection for the children. Jung says of the
fathers effect on the daughter in the Mysterium Coniunctionis:
Thefather is thefirst carrier o f the animus-image. He endows this virtual
image with substance and form, for on account o f his Logos he is the
source o f "spirit for the daughter. Unfortunately this source is often
sulliedjust where we would expect clear water. For the spirit that benefits
a woman is not mere intellect, it isfar more: it is an attitude, the spirit by
which a man lives. . . . Hence every father is given the opportunity to
corrupt, in one way oranother, his daughter's nature.1
J ung, Collected Works, vol. 14, par. 232.
52
ONE BEGINNING APPROACH TO ACTIVE IMAGINATION 53
Sylvias father had taken full advantage of this opportunity. He criti

cized his daughter constantly, and she grew up with the poorest opinion
of herself in every way, strongly supported in this devaluation by her
animus. She was unusually pretty, and had married when she was in her
late twenties. She had two sons whom she adored. Except for one short
coming, her marriage might have fully made up for her unsatisfactory
childhood and youth. Although a very nice man in most ways, her
husband had a very negative relationship with his own mother. This
unfortunate circumstance caused him to have fits of being as critical of
her as her own father, instead of giving her his steady support and the
confidence in herself which she so much needed. Therefore her low self-
image remained unchanged.
In her own eyes, nothing having to do with herself could be positive,
including her own unconscious. Therefore, she had great difficulty in
trusting, or even approaching, the unconscious. It was really a triumph
that she succeeded in carrying through this fantasy, but she was still a
considerable distance from the unconscious, as we shall see in the form
which this active imagination takes.
Sylvia relates the fantasy as someone elses story, taking place in the
time of her grandparents, because her father had faith neither in himself
nor in life. She therefore had to go back to her ancestors time and, as
we shall see, she had to go still further back, to so-called pagan times, in
order to find the solution to her problem. Just as she could not find it in
the father, neither could she find it in Christianity.
The fantasy is about a godmother who, although a rich woman, had

died a few years before leaving the goddaughter only one, apparently
insignificant, object: an old key. The goddaughter had kept it on her
writing table ever since, and somehow could not get it out of her mind.
To do so, she decided to write down the story which her godmother had
told her about the key when she gave it to her, shortly before her death.
The godmother had not been an attractive girl; very early she had
decided to put all thoughts of love and marriage aside and to devote
herself to excelling in her profession. She succeeded so well in this
endeavor that she found herself in one of the highest positions of a large
firm while she was still very young. She earned enough to afford
anything she wanted, and she never allowed herself to think of things
that would have been beyond her means.
The godmother lacked all zest for life and never really longed for
anything, but buried herself more deeply in her work. The only time she
noticed any deficiency in her lifestyle was during weekends. This led her
into her first indiscretion during one Saturday lunch at her usual
restaurant, which, in its turn, led to the whole adventure. Herr Schulze,
a strange man, who was not even congenial to her, invited her to drive to
Lucerne with him. Since it was a lovely day, she accepted. He possessed a
car of his own, which was a rarity in those days.
The drive itself was an enchanting event for the godmother; she often
felt as if they were actually flying, and the large old house in the old
quarter of Lucerne, to which he took her, was also very beautiful. She
did not wake up from her enchantment until Herr Schulze shut and
locked the door of the room they were in and began to make love to her.
When she rejected him, he became angry and tried to beat her. In a wild
panic, she seized an unusually sharp paper knife and stabbed him in the
back. To her horror, she found that she had killed him.
She subsequently discovered that he was using the beautiful old
house as a brothel, and that many young girls were his prisoners there.
Although she immediately gave herself up to the police and had to
stand trial for murder, she was entirely acquitted, for she had only acted
in self-defense. Since her would-be seducer had left no will and had no
family nor heirs, all of his money and the old house, named, suitably
enough, The House of the Golden Pig, were inherited by the girls by
whom he had earned his fortune. There were fifteen of them, mainly
still in their teens, so she found herself, with the help of a lawyer,
responsible for their futures.
To study this closer, we must remember that the fantasy is related by a

godmother who acts as a pseudonym for Sylvia. This first episode in her
adventures is very typical of a woman with such a negative father
complex, whose destructive effect has not been mitigated by the
mother. The fantasy showed that all the father could give Sylvia in
forming her spirit was business capacity and efficiency. Although the
godmother shows us that Sylvia could have excelled in this capacity, she
never tried to do so. Therefore, these elements worked in her as a
tendency to maneuver her life by rational calculation and to repress all
spontaneous feeling. The father figure also remained active in Sylvia as
an animus figure, which treated her just like the man who picked her
godmother up at that Saturday lunch. What little spiritual interest
Sylvias father had possessed and passed on to her showed itself in
conventional Christianity which, although she thought she believed in
it, was not really genuine. It was, at all events, not sufficient to fill the
godmothers free weekends. The mother had not given Sylvia any
genuine idea of relationship that would have warned her not to even
imagine going off with an uncongenial man, so the animus literally
caught her and flew away with her in fantasy. The animus had already
gained possession of the young girls, who symbolize her feminine
nature, and prostituted them.
Prostitution is often the result of such a father as Sylvias. I have
known more than one case of such girls becoming prostitutes, to the
horror of their highly respectable, hypocritical fathers. This was a fate
that might easily have overtaken Sylvia, but evidently, she had the
strength of mind to kill the temptation. It is clear from the fact that she
attributes the whole adventure to her godmother, that this situation is
fortunately being lived by the Self, who is able, in the old house which
is the Selfs own symbol,2 to put an end to the danger of Sylvias ego
becoming a prostitute.
As for the rest of the fantasy, everything happens to the Self, and the
ego is only the observer, until toward the endings enantiodromia. The
ego is a somewhat distant observer, as is shown by the fact that Sylvia
herself never enters or plays a role in the fantasy, as Edward, for
example, did from start to finish.
Her godmother is quite willing to take charge of the girls (the Self
naturally had always had a very different relationship to the feminine
principle, Eros, than Sylvia did herself) and asks them all to a meal in
the most beautiful room in the house. She tells them about their inheri
tance, which breaks through their previous apathy, and they can hardly
express their joy. They find it impossible to go back to their families or
to their previous lives, and they are all unanimous in not wanting to
continue as prostitutes. None of them wants to continue in the House
of the Golden Pig, so they decide to sell it profitably and invest the
money in buying a ruined castle in the woods near Lucerne.
They buy the old ruined castle and, except for the architect and the
necessary builders, they allow no man to come near them. The feminine
principle is segregated and kept from the animus. To prevent any man
from entering, they build an unscalably high wall around all the land
which they have bought. As far as possible, the girls help with the
2Author's note: My own godmother lived in a beautiful old Elizabethan house; I
frequently dreamed of this house and Jung always took it as the house of the Self.
construction; when it is finished, they manage it entirely by themselves.

Some of them find employment in the kitchen and house. Several
devote themselves to surrounding it with a most beautiful garden,
where they find delight in growing rare plants. Four are very musical
and form a quartet, practicing indefatigably and delighting them all
with a concert every night. A few devote themselves to Sylvias own
pursuit, painting, and several beautiful carpets are woven.
One of the girls, who is called Erica (heather), finds a block of stone in
the garden and spends a long time sculpting it into a statue of a beauti
ful youth. This piece of work arouses the interest of all the other girls
and, as the statue approaches completion, Erica finds herself constantly
surrounded by a group of enthusiastic onlookers.
It is rather interesting that Erica is the only one of the girls who is ever
mentioned by name. Erica, which means heather (Heiderkraut) , is a
plant that, according to the lexicon of German superstition, is sacred to
the mother goddess. It is said that it should therefore bloom at every
womens festival.3 White heather is known to be very discouraging to
the devil, and a wreath of it placed round a mirror is said to keep the
house from all misfortune. As we shall see, it is just this statue, sculpted
by Erica, that inspires the household to its first festival. Therefore, it is
significant that the creators name should be the same as the name of
the plant of the mother goddess and credited with the power to banish
the devil.
It is very interesting, but not surprising, that all the girls, whom the
animus had imprisoned for so long, should find interest in fields where
the father cannot follow them, as indeed Sylvia herself had done when
she took up painting. Evidently, the feminine nature has been preserved
intact and is now in the hands of the Self. All the arts, the garden, and
the household are far from the interests of the father, and all these fields
of endeavor are shown as possibilities for Sylvia. It is also very significant
that it is the statue, which reveals itself later as clearly being the god
Eros, which is the one place that draws all their interest. Eros, relation
ship, is the principle of women, so this is really the most favorable
circumstance in the whole fantasy. Jung used to say that women who
had found their own principle, could do everything for love of a man,
whereas women who could do much for love of a thing are rare. In fact,
one could say that the unconscious produced this fantasy for the purpose
'Handwrterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, s.v. Heiderkraut.

of showing Sylvia her own principle, which had been barred to her by
her unsatisfactory parents.
The musical quartetwhich delights them every eveningis also
quite related. Music symbolizes feeling, a function which has been the
most difficult one for Sylvia, due to the constant rational calculation of
her animus: he always managed to repress her spontaneous feeling, as
we have already seen. Sylvia is actually very fond of music, which has
evidently been some compensation to her for her stifled feelings.
Here, Sylvias consciousness already fails to note that the one thing
which attracts the interest of all the fifteen girls is the statue of a youth
of unearthly beauty. Her godmother lends herself to the organization of
a wonderful celebration for the baptism of this figure, which the girls
carry to an island in the center of a small lake in the garden. For days,
the kitchen is full of preparation for the feast, and the garden is lighted
by innumerable Chinese lanterns. The statue itself is decorated with
flowers. When the moon is full, all the rejoicing girls dance and sing
around the statue and, calling out that his name is Ulysses, they sprinkle
him with water. When the apparently happy girls fall into melancholy,
each retires alone into silence.
For the first time, Sylvias consciousness has received a clear warning.
Although these fantasies will sometimes roll on for a considerable length
of time, with consciousness only watching as an observer, it is then a
matter of passive, not active, imagination. It is more like watching a
cinema than like an attempt to bring about a reconciliation between
conscious and unconscious. The fact that the girls call the statue Ulysses
should have penetrated to Sylvias consciousness and warned her that a
long and painful journey had to be undertaken, right into antiquity and
the time of the Greek gods, in order to find the treasure of her missing
Eros. But she fails to register the warning; therefore, the next event in
the fantasy takes her entirely by surprise.
The god-like statue comes to life and, singing most beautifully, passes
out of a previously unseen door in the wall, followed in single file by all
fifteen rejoicing girls.
Even now, Sylvias consciousness fails to wake up in time. It just
watches the inexplicable event in a benumbed state, from which it
arouses itself only too late.
The last girl disappears through the door into a beautiful light, which
is shining in the wood beyond. By the time she gets to the door to call
the girls back to her, it has become an old iron door covered with ivy,
shut in her face, with only a large keyhole visible. The restored castle has
also disappeared; only the old ruin it had been when they bought it,
remains.
We have already met with Ulysses (or Odysseus, in the Greek form) as
an archetypal image or foundation for the journey that Edward under
took. Indeed, Edwards whole active imagination could be called an
odyssey. Naturally, since Sylvia is a woman, Ulysses appears very dif
ferently here: as a magnet that draws all the girls who represent her
feminine nature. Most unfortunately, however, he draws them away
from Sylvia herself, which the animus will always do if it is not suffi
ciently recognized by the woman. As we have seen, there have been
several indications that something of the kind might happen.
This part of the fantasy shows very vividly what eventually happens to
fantasies if the conscious ego is only a spectator and takes no active part.
It is an interesting contrast to Edwards active imagination. Because his
conscious ego always took an active part, the fantasy developed for
nearly a year and never showed any signs of disappearing. Sylvias, on
the other hand, was passive imagination; she only watched it as if she
were in the auditorium of a cinema and wrote it as if it were a story.
Therefore, the girls, who symbolize her feminine nature, disappear
again into the unconscious, leaving her only a keyhole for which she
must find the key.
The beautiful statue of the god-like figure is clearly the god Eros, the
treasure she needs above all, but, as mentioned previously, the name
given him by the girls shows her that a long and arduous journey, with
many more adventures, must be undertaken before she can reach her
goal. This goal lies in antiquity, for the feminine principle has been too
much neglected in the Christian era for her to be able to find it there.
With Edward, we saw how much clearer the interaction of conscious
and unconscious is in the stories of the antique gods, such as Homers
Iliad or Odyssey, than we find it now. Christianity has not only
repressed the eros principle by its purely masculine God, but it has also
repressed the dark side, while trying only to differentiate the light. This
was necessary at the time, but it is sad that we now, after 2000 years,
have to return to so-called pagan times to find both the dark and the
light in equal measure. During the Christian era, the light opposite was
differentiated for a long time, but the modern world shows us daily how
dangerous it is to repress evil for too long. Like the gods in the Far East,
the Greek gods were both positive and negative, so it is only logical that
both our fantasies have turned our thoughts back to the ancient gods.
Although the fantasy disappears, Sylvias effort has not been in vain.
She has accomplished the first stage in active imagination, and she has
allowed things to happen in her unconscious. Indeed, her fantasy does
not end with the disappearance of the god and the girls.
Jung often mentioned the legend of the treasure that rises to the sur
face during nine years, nine months and nine days. If a conscious person
is there to take it, well and good; if not, it will sink down again and take
another nine years, nine months and nine days before it appears again.
Sylvia missed that moment when she did not follow the treasure out of
the door in time. Such fantasies will never stay very long if the conscious
ego does not take partif it does not realize that they must be brought
up into consciousness, into actual life.
The godmother, symbolically the Self, has shown Sylvia the very heart
of her problem and what she will have to do to attain its solution.
Though the fantasy continues, Sylvia still lets it happen to her god
mother, who has now clearly become an image of the limited conscious
ego that has no idea of what has happened to it.
When the godmother discovers that all that has been done to the ruin
and its environment has disappeared, she sadly leaves Lucerne and
returns to the town she calls X, where she works. To her great astonish
ment, no one at the office has noticed her absence; in other words, the
fantasy, though it seemed to cover many months or even years, has all
taken place during the weekend, and she has returned to work as usual
on Monday morning. Although at first the godmother could work as was
customary, the fantasy had left its mark upon her. This secret, which she
could share with no one, made her feel as if she were isolated and
rejected by everyone.
Jung speaks of the effect of such fantasies early in the second part of
Psychology and Alchemy. He says:
Such invasions have something uncanny about them because they are
irrational and incomprehensible to the person concerned. They bring
about a momentous alteration o f his personality since they immediately
constitute a painfulpersonal secret which alienates and isolates him from
his surroundings. It is something that we e'cannot tell anybody. ' We are
afraid o f being accused o f mental abnormalitynot without reason, for
much the same thing happens to lunatics. Even so, it is a far cryfrom the
intuitive perception o f such an invasion to being inundated by it patho
logically, though the layman does not realize this. Isolation by a secret
results as a rule in an animation o f the psychic atmosphere as a substitute
for loss o f contact with otherpeople.4
This is exactly what happens to the godmother, as Sylvia continues
the story. The godmother does not understand the experience in the
least, so it manifests itself in her body, as such things often do. She is
frequently unwell, although previously she had always been healthy,
and finds herself unable to work. Finally, she becomes really ill. She
runs a very high temperature for many weeks, after which the doctor
orders her a holiday in the mountains. This at last gives her time to
consider what has happened to her. She undertakes several long walks
alone and decides to take the last few days of her sick leave in Lucerne to
try to discover what has really happened.
As mentioned before, Sylvia still sees all this as happening not to

herself, but to her godmother, and it becomes increasingly clear that
this figure is no longer the Self, but Sylvias ego, which is blindly
groping after the truth.
The godmother goes into the old quarter of Lucerne and easily finds
the old house, The Golden Pig. It has been renamed The Golden
Boar, however, and the ground floor has become a first-class restau
rant. It is early afternoon and she is almost alone in the restaurant, but,
after ordering a simple meal, she manages to make some inquiries of the
manageress. She learns, to her amazement, that the restaurant has been
there for many years and that the whole house belongs to a Frulein
Altweg, who lives in the top story.
After her meal, the godmother climbs the stairs to Frulein Altwegs
apartment, for she longs to know more of the houses history. She is
received most hospitably and, though hesitantly, she begins to pour out
her story. The godmother begins by saying that she had known the
house before, when it was the property of a Herr Schickeigrber, the
lawyer to whom her girls had sold the house. Frulein Altweg is obvi
ously utterly amazed and says that Schickeigrber is the name of her
grandfather, who was one of the most famous lawyers of Lucerne, and
from whom, through her mother, his only child, she had inherited the
4Jung, Collected Works, vol. 12, par. 57.

house. But she says, It is impossible that you knew him; he died sixty
years ago and you are much younger than I am. Frulein Altweg
notices the godmothers inner distress and begs her to tell her the whole
story. I know you will be telling the truth, she adds. To her unutter
able relief, at last she is able to break her isolation and share everything
with Frulein Altweg.
After she has finished, Frulein Altweg eagerly searches through all
her old documents, and they find that quite a lot of what the godmother
had experienced is founded on fact. Herr Schickeigrber had actually
bought the house from Herr Schulzes heirs, and letters reveal that the
latter had been murdered. At this point, both the women have the
feeling that Sylvia had experienced a vision of a time long past.
Early in the twentieth century, a book containing the account of such
an experience was very widely read in England, for its authors were two
women whose veracity could not be doubted and, although they
published under noms de plume, their real identities were known from
the beginning. The first was Miss Ann Moberly, daughter of the Bishop
of Salisbury, who became the first principal of St. Hughs College for
women in Oxford and built it up so successfully that by about 1907, it
had become one of the four leading womens colleges in Oxford. Her co
author and friend was Miss Eleanor Jourdain, who had been vice
principal of St. Hughs for some years. At the time of their experience,
she was head of a large school for girls in England, with an affiliate
branch for her elder girls in Paris. Both, therefore, were very well-known
women.
In 1901, they visited Versailles and found Trianon exactly as it was in
the time of Marie Antoinette. Not only were the people they met
dressed in the costumes of 1789, but the grounds were also as they had
been then, which, in many respects, differed from the way they really
were in 1901. They spent the next ten years in research to verify the
accuracy of what they had seen, and in investigating every possibility
that there had been any cinematographic photography, or anything of
the sort going on at that time, to account for what they had seen. Only
when they were fully satisfied that their experience had been completely
genuine did they publish their book.5
5It was published in 1911, under the title, An Adventure, by the pseudonyms of Miss
Morison and Miss Lamont, and became famous at once. I vividly remember reading it as
a girl of twenty, and how it was being discussed everywhere. It was reprinted many times
and went into several editions. As far as I know, it was reprinted for the last time about
1947 by Faber & Faber, Ltd., London. This edition is long since sold out, but it is still
possible to obtain a secondhand copy. I found it extremely interesting.
Jung describes a somewhat similar experience which he and Toni

Wolff had at Ravenna in his Memories, Dreams, Reflections,6 I have
heard both Jung and Wolff speak of it as one of the most mysterious
events that had ever happened to them. In fact, I had the impression
that Toni Wolff was never really convinced that she had not actually
seen those frescoes in everyday reality, although it was fully proved that
they had not been in existence for centuries.
I had a similar experience myself in Paris in the spring of 1913. I was
dining at a restaurant with my father, sister and uncle, when the scene
abruptly changed and, although the restaurant remained the same, the
whole atmosphere of it and the people in it were transformed. They all
became extremely anxious and turned eagerly to everyone who came in,
as if asking for the latest news. After a few minutes, it changed back to
the original scene. Everything was normal and extremely cheerful, but it
left me profoundly disturbed.
The next morning, we went down by train to spend a few days in the
forest of Fontainebleau. The King of Spain was to arrive there later in
the same day. As our train passed through a cutting, several soldiers
came over the top to see that nothing suspicious had been thrown from
our train. (It was the time when many successful and unsuccessful
attempts were made to assassinate royalty.) The conviction shot through
my mind: What I experienced last night was a state of war, and it is
very close. Although I tried not to believe it, I was, in some small
corner of myself, certain during all the sixteen intervening months that
we should have a war and, though horrified, was not really surprised
when it broke out in August of 1914. With few exceptions, everyone at
that time was convinced that we had become much too civilized for such
a barbarity to befall us!
The godmother, however, was not to find matters so relatively simple.

For one thing, it was very strange that Herr Schulze should have had a
motorcar, for surely they did not exist over sixty years before the year
1930, in which she claims to be living. And how could she have killed
Herr Schulze, as she clearly remembered doing, so many years before
she was born? However, the worst of her isolation is over, now that she
has found such a sympathetic companion as Fraulein Altweg, and the
two sit up most of the night puzzling over all these questions.

The next day, they decide to go to the woods where the old ruin is
located. It is a very hot July day and the godmother says that, on account
of the heat, they both are transported into a state between outer reality
and dream. Everything is just as it was before the girls rebuilt the ruin,
and in the trance-like condition they are in, they are hardly surprised to
see a hairy, satyr-like being, half human and half goat, waving
frantically to them and trying to draw their attention to an object he is
holding in his hands. At last, he throws this object over the rushing
water of the stream. When they pick it up, they discover the old key, the
object that the goddaughter in the fantasy had received later from her
godmother. When they attempt to wave and announce the safe arrival
of the key, they find that the old Pan has disappeared. The ruin also
seems to recede to a great distance; all that they can see is a rainbow,
forming a bridge over the rushing stream. They find the rainbow bridge
very reassuring.
Sylvia now had to realize that, through the fantasy, she had been
deep into the unconscious where, as Jung often used to say, there is no
time, or a totally different time from our own. In her fantasy she had
experienced the present day, the last century and antiquity long before
the time of Christ, all in a bewildering mixture.
As Marie-Louise von Franz pointed out to me, the name Schickcl-
graber reminds one of the original name of Hitler (Schiickelgruber),
which shows us what happens if we contact these depths in the uncon
scious with no understanding of what we are doing. Just behind the
antiqueEros, Ulysses, Pan and so onlies primitivity. As Jung has
noted, it was only Nietzsches classical education which made him speak
of Dionysius, when he touched these depths in his writing. Jung said
that Nietzsche really meant Wotan and his wild horde, which were only
asleep in the German unconscious. And when Hitler and his Nazi
followers took over the idea of the superman from Nietzsche, they were
at once possessed by Wotan and all the primitive forces which were
never very far from the surface in Germany. Jung used to say that the
veneer of Christianity was much thinner in Germany and the other
Nordic lands; the Germans had not been converted as other national
ities had been, but were forced to accept Christianity, This is probably
the underlying cause of all the wild and primitive things that happened
in a civilized country like Germany during Hitlers time.
Therefore, when Sylvia is confronted with Ulysses, the god Eros and
old Pan in her fantasy, she is projecting her own longing for paganism
and wild primitivity into classical antiquity. This is the real reason the
problem of love is so difficult in these so-called civilized days, for it
leads us far beyond the realm of Christian values, and even beyond
classical times, into a dangerous, primitive wildness which we fear and
which we have no idea how to touch. Nevertheless, the truth is that
women must face these wild, primitive forces in themselves (and the fact
that human nature is really capable of all the atrocities that happened in
Germany during the Nazi regime, and are still happening on a world
wide scale today) before they can find the missing Eros and the feminine
principle in themselves.
Sylvia finishes the fantasy by saying that unfortunately Frulein

Altweg died not long afterwards, so the godmother was once more
alone. But the godmothers experience did not leave her in peace; for
some time, she spent all her spare moments in those woods, without
ever seeing another trace of the old iron door where the key must have
belonged, of Pan, of the old ruin, or of anything else that she had seen
in her vision and with Frulein Altweg. She bequeathed the key to her
goddaughter, Sylvia, in the hope that she would one day find the
mysterious door which she now had the means to unlock.
A rather ominous note is struck in the last sentence of the fantasy.

The writer claims to be a much occupied business? who has no time
for such things. Now, the whole story has been told from the feminine
point of view, and it is concerned from start to finish with Eros and the
feminine principle; in other words, with the heart of Sylvias problem as
a woman. Therefore this sudden change to the masculine sexwhose
principle is Logos and actionpoints to the danger of once more falling
a victim to the animus image imprinted on her by her father, and thus
of losing the impetus to find the right use for the key.
Apart from this danger, however, one feels that Sylvia has gained a
great deal from this fantasy. Above all, it has set her a task: to rediscover
the god Eros and all the girls who made up her totality, her process of
individuation. It has shown her the most worthwhile goal for her entire
life.
Marie-Louise von Franz pointed out to me the extraordinary similarity
in the motif of the key in Sylvias fantasy and an important scene in the
second part of Faust, where Faust is engaged in the search for the
Mothers. 7 Mephistopheles gives him a key which he disdainfully calls

this little thing. Mephistopheles tells him not to despise it, for it will
scent out the way and lead him to the Mothers. To Fausts amaze
ment, the key grows in his hand, becomes luminous and flashes forth
light. Mephistopheles tells him to follow it down, then adds, I could
just as well say up. This sentence, often quoted by Jung, shows a
complete harmony between the oppositesa vital factor in the process
of individuation.
As we have seen in her fantasy, Sylvia also despised her key. She com
plained that her godmother, a rich woman, had only left her an insig
nificant object the old key. Yet in reality, her godmother had left
her the most valuable possession that exists for women: the key which
can lead her to the god Eros and to her totality. If she, like Faust, can
hold it in her hand, light will come out of the darkness left her by her
father, and, in the second half of life, she will be able to find the confi
dence and security in the Self that she was denied during the first part
by her apparently unsatisfactory parents. I say apparently, for people
with satisfactory parents and a happy first-half of life seldom have the
incentive to look deeper, and often lose their way in futilities.
As Jung says in Memories, The decisive question for man is: Is he
related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his
life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite
can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities and upon all kinds of
goals which are not of real importance. 8 Sylvias key has given her a
unique chance to answer the telling question of her life in the affir
mative, for it is just the infinite to which her key will lead her if she can
cease despising it and trust herself to its guidance.
7Goethe, Faust, part 2, act 1.
8Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 325. *
CHAPTER 4
The Unconscious Prepares for Death

The Case o f Beatrice
The case of Beatrice is a more advanced instance of active imagination

than either of the foregoing examples. It shows that this form of active
meditation can prepare those who use it correctly for the most unex
pected criseseven for death itself. The following material comes from
the last seven months before Beatrices death, and shows how she was
drawn gradually toward the center, and how she left the standpoint of
the ego and learned to adopt the standpoint of the Self.
Beatrice had been in analysis for many years and was already analyz
ing very successfully herself. She was not destined to have a long life.
Dr. Jung had warned her analyst that he thought an early death was
most probable, and indeed, she only reached her middle fifties.
Beatrice had already done a great deal of active imagination by the
time our material begins; she found it more and more of a refuge when
things went wrong. Discretion prevents me from describing these diffi
culties more explicitly, so I will only say that they were typical of a
married woman of her age. Her children were growing up and leaving
home, which of course left her with more difficulties with her husband
than had hitherto been the case. She was exceedingly fond of him, but
inclined to be more anxious about him than was necessary. She was also
66
THE UNCONSCIOUS PREPARES FOR DEATH 67
a good deal tortured by unfounded jealousy, though she had the

redeeming virtue of being conscious of this fact. She was what Jung, in
his article on Marriage as a Psychological Relationship, calls the
container 1 in a marriage. Jung further defined the container as the
partner in a marriage who had the most facets, whose feeling was not
contained totally within the marriage, or the partner who looks out of
the window. In her own practice, she was also inclined to develop
countertransferences to her men analysands, and one of these was
distressing her when our material begins.
Beatrice had a very positive animus who guided her in her active
imagination; in addition, the image of a flower in a deep wood was
becoming more and more important to her. This was roughly the
starting point of our material.
She addresses this flower:
You, marvelous gold and silver flower, are like a shining center in me,
out o f which I am learning to live. I can no longer live out o f myself, but
must live from this other center where my divine spirit man also lives.
The mystery o f the flower unites me with timelessness, even with
eternity.
It is clear that this flower is Beatrices symbol for the Self. It is the
center that is drawing her to it. This material shows us how aptly Jung
described this center in Psychology and Alchemy:
We can hardly escape the feeling that the unconscious process moves
spiral-wise round a centre, gradually getting closer, while the character
istics o f the centre grow more and more distinct. Orperhaps we couldput
it the other way round and say that the centreitself virtually unknow
ableacts like a magnet on the disparate materials and processes o f the
unconscious and gradually captures them as in a crystal lattice. . . .
Indeed, it seems as if all the personal entanglements and dramatic
changes o f fortune that make up the intensity o f life were nothing but
hesitations, timid shrinkings, almost like petty complications and metic
ulous excuses for not facing the finality o f this strange and uncanny
process o f crystallization. Often one has the impression that the personal
psyche is running round this centred point like a shy animal, at once
fascinated and frightened, always in flight, and yet steadily drawing
nearer.2
>C. G. Jung, The Development of Personality, vol. 17, Collected Works (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1954) pars. 331c ff.
Beatrice is doing her best to approach this center of which Jung

speaks. Indeed, she even hopes to live from it instead of from the
conscious ego. Yet, like all of us, she is shyer of it than she realizes, and
she still runs away from it from time to time, as we shall see.
Beatrice continues:
The flower is the house that I have built for myself in eternity. I have
already moved into this house in order to have a place for my soul to live
when my body decays. It is a piece ofthe heavenly garden o f paradise.
Here, Beatrice was probably influenced by an article of Richard
Wilhelms on Death and Renewal in China, 3 in which he explains
that the Chinese do not prize life as we do. Some of the oldest Chinese
documents point out that the greatest good fortune which a man can
meet is to find a death that crowns his life, and the greatest misfortune
is to find an untimely death, rather than his own specific death. The
Confucians believe that one should prepare for that event; in the course
of life, one should try to build a body, a kind of subtle body of a
spiritual nature, made of thoughts and worksa body that gives con
sciousness a support when it must leave its former assistant, the physical
body. Beatrice is evidently hoping that this flower will develop into a
subtle, spiritual body that will support her consciousness when she dies.
I do not know ifJung had told her of his premonition that she would die
young; nevertheless, she must have felt it herself, for she was unusually
interested in building this support at a relatively young age. She was
very right to do so, as we shall see.
From the material that follows, one feels that Beatrice was overly
optimistic, or rather that she was anticipating the future, when she says
she has already moved into the house. She has realized its objective
existence, however, and it is obviously her goal to move into it.
Like many of us, Beatrice was very anxious about world events. She
decided to talk to her positive animus, to her spirit man, about this. She
says:
Great Spirit Man: Help mankind that we do not destroy each other and
that we do notfounder. Help us against the dark demons that are threat
ening us. Help us against the evil god that would destroy us and that
thinks out more evilthan we are up to.
Richard Wilhelm, Spring: A Magazine of Jungian Thought, Analytical Psychology

Club of New York (1962).
He replies:
Think of theflower, for everything is one in it.
Then she sees a white bird. It flies into the flower, bathes in its light,
and then flies out, into the world.
Her spirit man is right to draw her attention to the united opposites
in the flower, for the only hope for our torn world is that the warring
opposites would unite. This was the main endeavor of alchemy. The
alchemists were always trying to marry the opposites to each other, for it
is only when opposites are united that true peace is to be found. When
we examine the state of the world, as Beatrice was doing here, we find
that everywhere, one opposite is trying to gain power over the other.
Collectively we cannot do anything, for, as Jung constantly said, the
only place one can do anything is in the individual, in ourselves. It
follows the principle of the rainmaker (see Chapter 1): if the individual
is in Taoa place where the opposites are unitedhe has an inexplic
able effect on his surroundings.
Whether Beatrice realized it or not, she was doing all she could for the
state of the world when she obeyed her spirit man and went to the
flower. The bird which she watched fly into it and fly out again into the
world gives us the key: we cannot hope to be freed permanently of the
warring opposites in this world, but we can realize that there is a place in
us where they are united, and we can learn to visit it, thereby enabling
its light to fly out into the world. If enough people realize the impor
tance of this and go to this inner place, they will be able to stand the
tension of the opposites outside, as Jung said was essential for the avoid
ance of atomic war (see Chapter 1). The bird shows us how to do this.
Beatrice left a record of her visits to this flower, which occurred at least
twice a month. She probably had it in mind most of the time, and
indeed, her visits become progressively more frequent.
In her next record of visiting her flower, she has realized the united
opposites in it more clearly than ever before. She says:
I go to the miraculous flower and contemplate it. In it, something has
become one that was two opposites. That is the miracle. Perhaps the spirit
o f this flower could heal the world and protect it from war. I pray it to
do so.
And a fortnight later:
I go to the place where two have become one, where gold and silver, sun
and moon, have united, and where man also can become one with
himselfand with each other.
In alchemy, the sun and moon represent the extreme opposites. Jung
goes into this in considerable detail in the Mysterium Coniunctionis.4
The sun, of course, represents the masculine opposite, and the moon,
the feminine. To marry these two was to unite the two most extreme
opposites. From this fantasy, Beatrice can realize that the Self in her is
standing the tension of the most extreme opposites, which the ego by
itself would be quite unable to do. Gold and silver are also a generally
used pair of opposites in alchemy: gold is always attributed to the sun,
and silver, to the moon.
Next, Beatrice complains that her countertransference is disturbing
her profoundly. She is unable to understand its meaning, so she goes to
the wood and tells her spirit man how sad this is making her. She accuses
him of appearing in the man and asks him not to be so cruel.
More and more, we see that she is taking her outer troubles to the
flower or to the spirit man; a fortnight later she is walking in what she
has named her fairy-tale wood, calling him repeatedly. At last he
comes, walks beside her and takes her to the flower. They stand silently,
before it, hand in hand, and contemplate the great miracle of unity.
She asks him if there is a fire that burns without consuming itself and
destroying everything it reaches. He tells her to look at the flower and
witness how brightly and warmly it burns without consuming itself or
destroying anything else. He tells her that the flower is the symbol and
the child of their love and of all the love she has ever given to anyone.
Then he chides her for being sad and tells her to suffer her counter
transference gladly, because it belongs to her psychology and is right.
This infuriates Beatrice, and she angrily claims the right to weep and
to be sad. She accuses him of cmelty, telling him that her love for him
has changed to hate, that he is a monster and she wants nothing more to
do with him.
Such sudden revulsions are not uncommon in deep plunges into the
unconscious. In a difficult outer situation, one suddenly loses the belief
in ones whole fantasy, or believes one has made it all up. I have found
that the best way to combat this problem is to think of how objectively
active imagination has helped me in the past, until slowly I trust it
again.
4Jung, Collected Works, vol. 14, pars. 110-133 and 154-233.

But sometimes the unconscious itself does something to bring one to

ones senses, and this is what happens to Beatrice here. She cannot shake
off the fantasy, however much she tries; she is still in the wood, but it
has become pitch dark. Both the flower and her spirit man have disap
peared; she is afraid that she will fall into an abyss if she takes a step in
any direction.
She sinks down in despair, but it is too cold to remain lying on the
ground. She decides to walk slowly on, even if she should fall into the
abyss, for she thinks it could not be worse than her present fear. She
thinks of her husband and home, and decides that she has lost every
thing through her love of her spirit mana love which has now turned
to hate. Touching the bottom of despair, she even accuses her beautiful
flower of deceiving her, for it has claimed to be eternal and yet it has
now disappeared.
Beatrice, like a shy animal, is indeed in flight from her center. But
such darkness as she is experiencing is what St. John of the Cross called
the dark night of the soul. What Beatrice seems to have entirely
forgotten is that she has brought it on herself by blaming her spirit man
for all her troubles, and that she still blames him. One wonders whether
the old mystics also brought their dark nights of the soul on themselves
and forgot what they themselves had done. As I tried to make very clear
in my book on the life of Jung, as long as a person forgets his own
original trespass, every kind of misfortune can come upon him until he
remembers and suffers its guilt.5 But Beatrice is still projecting all
blame; therefore, the pitch darkness persists.
At this point, something very important happens: she realizes that,
dark though it is, her slow walk is going well and she asks in surprise,
Perhaps the darkness itself is nourishing me?
This is exactly what she has failed to realize in the outer world. She
has rebelled against the suffering and obscurity of her countertrans
ference; she can see no good in her suffering. Her love of her spirit man
has turned to hate because she suspects him of having been the cruel
cause of it all and then of not even allowing her to weep. As an intro
vert, it is naturally not easy for her to see value in outer suffering. The
unconscious quite often does what it has done to Beatrice: it creates the
rejected obscurity and darkness inwardly, where it is much easier for an
introvert to see its value and to realize that it actually nourishes her.
'H annah,/g: His Life and Work, pp. 42ff, 82f.

But she is still very lonely and afraid the situation will never change.
She wonders if repentance would change the relationship, making it as
good as it was before. She continues:
But I cannot repent; he has hurt me too much. Why should I repent? I
cannot love him again, yet I have lost everything I had with him. I know
he was my god, my light and my warmth, but he was also my torture and
despair. Therefore I can no longer love him. I prefer this darkness.
Then she bumps her foot against something hard and, reaching out
with her arms, she finds a curious wall of books. She throws the books
away, one by one, and stumbles through them.
Evidently, Beatrice has come to the place described by the alchemists:
Tear up the books that your hearts be not broken. Reading books
one book opens another B-is recommended again and again in
alchemy as the way par excellence to understand our art, but
suddenly, everything Beatrice has learned secondhand has become a
hindrance. Only ones own experience is vital, for ones own way is
always unique, although up to a late stage in the individuation process,
books containing other peoples experience can show one the way to go.
At this point, Beatrice can only stick to the fact that she has experienced
the darkness as nourishing her, and that she must therefore accept her
whole suffering as a necessary part of life. Suffering is the fastest horse
that leads to perfection, as Meister Eckhart tells us.
Throwing away the books has an immediate effect on Beatrice. She
sees something like a distant lighta dim glow, less dark than its sur
roundings. She stumbles in its diretion. To her surprise, she sees some
one walking beside her. When she asks who he is, he answers, Your
friend. Although she is glad to be no longer alone, she defiantly
replies, I have no friend. They go on in the darkness, side by side. At
first they are silent, then he tells her that she only thought she was
alone. He is always there, he says, for he is her fate; it is useless to fight
against him, for the two of them are one. Without reproach, he shows
her that sometimes he comes to her from outside, as he has now in this
countertransference which she hates to accept. She objects that the man
is so strange to her that he is surely not part of herself. He asks her, Do
you then know who you are? She admits that she has never known her
identity, and that sometimes she thinks she is an incomprehensible
person, with an incomprehensible fate. Even as a child, she sometimes
wondered about this and said to herself, There is that peculiar woman,
Beatrice, as she is called. Who is she really? She asks if she must go
through much more suffering with him. He replies, But now you
know we belong together; surely that diminishes the suffering and
makes it bearable. Then the man quickly quotes John Gower: A
warring peace, a sweet wound, an agreeable evil. Jung quotes this
same passage at the beginning of his introduction to Psychology of the
Transference. 6
Beatrice has now accepted the fact that she brought the darkness on
herself by refusing her outer suffering and by blaming her spirit man for
everything that has happened to her. Jung used to say that whereas men
overcome by actionby killing the dragonwomen overcome by
keeping still and accepting their suffering. This is the last time Beatrice
fights her fate; from now on, she accepts her suffering in a far more
feminine way.
This new state of acceptance makes the dim light become a little
brighter, and a geometric form begins to appear. She asks her spirit man
if it is the eight-petalled flower seen from above, the child of their love,
the fruit of much torture and pain. He assents and she says, Everything
has become one in it, you and I, within and without.
It is a great improvement when Beatrice sees her flower as a mandala
the foundation which man has always used to express the inexpres
sible, whether he has called it God or, as we do, the Self. She also
realizes her whole fate as one, whether within or without.
Again, she is very impressed by the warmth of the fire which her
mandala radiates, without consuming itself or hurting anything. When
the spirit man says that she must pass through this fire or she cannot
become fireproofable to endure everythingshe consents at once. He
gives her his hand and leads her into the fire. When they feel its heat,
she is afraid, but she also feels an incomprehensible determination to go
through with it, no mater how much it hurts her, because she cannot go
on as before. They walk on the glowing embers and are surrounded by
flames, but they do not wound her; on the contrary, she feels bathed
and penetrated by the fire, as if it were burning away all her futilities.7
When she is in the center of the fire, she faints; she does not sink to the
ground, however, for she has been holding the spirit mans hand all the
time. She realizes slowly that doing so has left her very strong and no
6Jung, Collected Works, vol. 16, p. 167.

Jfung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 325.
longer subject to decay. She is reminded of the diamond body. But she
is no longer quite in it, although she is nowhere else, and she objectively
watches her spirit man embracing and kissing another woman in the
center. As they both leave the fire slowly and with bent heads, she goes
with them.
Here the fantasy takes an unexpected, but very right, turn. The ego
/cannot identify with the Self without getting disastrously inflated.
Beatrice sees the royal pair objectively and herself only as the observer,
just as Jung watched them in the visions which he had during his 1944
illness. He says of this: I do not know what part I played in them. At
bottom it was I myself. I was myself the marriage. And my beatitude
was that of a blissful wedding. 8 It is a complete paradox: they are
oneself and they are not, and one cannot identify with either opposite.
To walk through the fire is a condition of many, if not all, rites of
initiation, and it always occurs for the purpose of shedding superfluities.
Beatrice is slowly establishing her relation to the infinite and having her
attachments to futilities burnt away.
In actual life, the fire consists of going through equally intense suffer
ing. Beatrice had already seen the value of this suffering when she
realized that the darkness was nourishing her. But naturally, she must
experience it in many different forms, for the mystery of eternity is so far
beyond our comprehension that we can only get a feeling of rapport
with it through the most diverse experiences. As we saw when Beatrice
had to throw away the books, intellectual realization no longer suffices.
She speaks again of the mystery of love and of the pain it gives her.
But she is greatly helped by what he tells her about always following the
numinous, whether it appears to her from within or without. She
always felt disturbed by her excessive anxiety about her husband and at
the apparent senselessness of her countertransference and the strange
ness of the man in whom it appeared. As an introvert, it is meaningful
to her to learn that it had always been her spirit man, whether it was
walking through the fire inwardly with him, or appearing to her in an
outward projection. He also tells her that when one is in the fire,
inwardly or outwardly, one naturally does not see its basic pattern. For 1
that, the observer needs distance, such as they had when they
approached the flower from the dark and she saw it for the first time as a
mandala.
Ibid., p. 294.
The next time she takes up the fantasy, her spirit man has become a
bear man. Jung speaks in a letter of a vision in which the Swiss saint,
Niklaus von Fliie, saw the figure of a pilgrim clothed in a bear skin that
contained a golden luster.9Jung says that, on the one side, he saw this
pilgrim as Christ and, on the other, as a bear, and that this is as it should
be: the superhuman needs the subhuman to balance it. This is probably
the same reason that Beatrices spirit man became a bear. She had
gotten too high up and, as we shall see later, was repressing too many
emotions that she thought she ought not to have. For example, it is very
difficult for any mother when the children grow up and leave the home.
But Beatrice was so determined not to be a devouring mother and to
leave her children quite free, that she did not allow herself to realize
how miserable it had made her. These emotions were therefore
repressed and, as Niklaus needed the brutal coldness of the subhuman
animals cold feeling to leave his wife and family in order to become a
hermit, so Beatrice needs something of the same kind to enable her to
concentrate all her energy and interest on her inner life, as the uncon
scious seems to increasingly demand of her.
She evidently feels that this coldness is demanded of her, for in the
next part of her vision the fire is replaced by snow. Welcoming the
strength and warmth of the bear, she says to him:
My spirit man, my God, my great, strong bear, take me in your arms
and carry me through the cold snow. I have become tired and weak and I
cannot walk any longer. With your help and protection, I was not burnt
in thefire. Now carry me through the snow that I do notfreeze.''
He bends down and lifts me carefully, without scratching me with his
claws. He is enormously strong and I feel all the strength ofa wild animal
in him. Also, he warms me with his bodily warmth and his thick, softfur.
lam happy with him; myfear has left me.
Oh, do notput me down on the cold ground again. Carry me to our
home where the miraculousflower blooms. I see it from afar, glimmering
through the cold night. It is my goal and my indestructible order. My
spirit man, I know that under your skin you are a king, a god. But your
animal warmth protects me, and I also need your strength and
knowledge.
He replies, I needyou also, you poor little human being.
C. G. Jung, C. G. Jung: Letters, 2 vols., eds. Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffe
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), vol. 1, pp. 364ff. Cf. also Marie-Louise
von Franz, Die Visionen des Niklaus von Fliie (Zrich: Rascher Verlag, 1959), pp. 83ff.
Like Niklaus von Flue, Beatrice sees her spirit man as a god, so that it
is appropriate that she also sees him as a bear, for we must go as low as
we go high, and vice versa, in order to keep the opposites balanced. She
needs her animal instinct, for the bear is an excellent mother while her
cubs are small, but ruthlessly kicks them away from her as soon as they
are able to fend for themselves. Then she devotes herself to her own
concerns, as the unconscious is demanding that Beatrice should do.
Beatrice realizes that she needs the bears warmth and strength to help
her in perhaps the most difficult journey in life: the journey from ego to
Self. It is sometimes a very cold journey, as it is here, and sometimes
leads through the fire of suffering, as it did previously. But the uncon
scious is giving her its full support by providing her with the right
companion for each trial. If one can trust it and meet its demands, the
unconscious always plays fair; as her spirit man told her, however, when
you are in the fire (or in the snow), you cannot see the basic pattern.
Later, she continues:
I am always searching for the center as a protection from my emotions.
But, on the other hand, it is just emotion, jealousy and my counter
transference that lead me to the center. Without them I should never go
there, fo ri should not beforced to go.
That she realizes the value of her emotions is certainly the effect of the
bear. Before he had appeared, she was continually trying to rise above
them. To do so is also necessary, for we cannot be constantly swayed,
this way and that, by our emotions. But they should not be repressed, as
Beatrice was evidently trying to do; rather, they should be accepted.
And we must learn to stand the pain and fear that they cause.
Trying to understand the center, she admits that, like all of us, she
does not understand it at all, but realizes more and more that it is a
complete paradox. She says she lives near the fire and the Self protects
her from the Self. And she realizes that when she is farthest from God,
she is also nearest to him: she is farthest from him in emotion, but that
is when she needs him most and searches most earnestly for him. He is
the wild, terrible fire of her passion and he is redemption from it.
As Jung writes in Psychology and Alchemy:
Has it not yet been observed that all religious statements contain logical
contradictions and assertions that are impossible in principle, that this is
in fact the very essence o f religious assertion? Ar witness to this we have
Tertullians avowal: And the Son o f God is dead, which is worthy of
belief because it is absurd. And when buried He rose again, which is

certain because it is impossible. . . . Hence a religion becomes inwardly
impoverished when it loses or reduces itsparadoxes; but their multiplica
tion enriches because only the paradox comes anywhere near to compre
hending the fulness of life. Non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are
one-sidedand thus unsuitedto express the incomprehensible.10
Beatrice never seems to have fully realized this principle until her
spirit man became a bear, at which time the full necessity of the paradox
dawned on her and filled her.
The next time she goes to the flower through active imagination,
Beatrice finds it surrounded by high walls; it is in a temenos. It has four
doors on all sides, facing east, south, west and north. The bear man has
the golden keys. He opens one of the doors and they pass through it.
Immediately she feels happy and protected and asks her bear man:
Why? He replies, Because the walls keep out all demons. She tells
him repeatedly how happy she is there, for the flower shines with a
wonderful, healing light. She emphasizes that she is not in the flower,
but stands beside it, in its protection and its mild warmth.
She asks the bear man, Who built the wall? He replies that God
built it as a protection against himself, but that it is also he who makes
the flower grow. Overcome once more by the paradox, she cries,
Terrible, good, helpful God!
Here she realizes that good and evil also must be united and are
united in God. Good and evil are the most burning pair of opposites
that exist for us, at all events for all of us who were brought up in
Christian morality. Christian morality had the great disadvantage of
repressing evil, with the result that evil has now broken its bonds and is
blindly possessing more and more people to live evil with no sense of
what they are doing. Moreover, they are repressing good, the light
opposite, quite as badly as Christianity repressed evil, the dark opposite.
We can no longer afford to repress either opposite; we must see them
both and live them consciously and responsibly, as Beatrice was genu
inely trying to do. Unfortunately, very few people are conscious of this
fact.
At this point of her life, Beatrice is doing active imagination much
more frequently and goes to her temenos as often as possible. Once
there, she sees a star shining in the black night. She asks herself who she

is. Is she the star? She thinks it is a curious fate, if so; still, all her interest
and passion are in the star. If there is a man, then only for the sake of
the star, she says.
In the seventh of his Seven Sermons to the D ead, Jung writes:
When night was come the dead again approached with lamentable mien
and said: There is yet one matter we forgot to mention. Teach us about
man.
Man is a gateway, through which from the outer world o f gods,
daemons, and souls ye pass into the inner world; out o f the greater into
the smaller world. Small and transitory is man. Already he is behindyou
and once again ye find yourselves in endless space in the smaller or inner
most infinity. At immeasurable distance standeth one single Star in the
zenith.
This is the one god o f this one man. This is his world, his pleroma, his
divinity.
In this world is man Abraxas, the creator and destroyer o f his own
world.
This Star is the god and the goal o f man.
This is his one guiding god. In him goeth man to his rest. Toward him
goeth the long journey o f the soul after death. In him shineth forth as
light all that man bringeth back from the greater world. To this one god
man shallpray.
Prayer increaseth the light o f the Star. It casteth a bridge over death.
It prepareth life for the smaller world and assuageth the hopeless desires
of the greater.
When the greater world waxeth cold, burneth the Star.
Between man and his one god there standeth nothing, so long as man
can turn his eyesfrom theflaming spectacle o f Abraxas.
Man here, god there. . .
Here nothing but darkness and chilling moisture.
There wholly sun.11
This makes it very clear why all of Beatrices interest and passion has
suddenly been transferred to this star, for she is rapidly approaching her
death. It is clear that her impending death was known in the uncon
scious, and that the Self was preparing Beatrice by showing her the star,
the one god and goal of each of us, to which the soul takes its long
journey after death.
nJung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Septem Sermones ad Mortuos, Sermo VII

(1916), p. 389.
The star makes an immense impression on her. But evidently, she

identifies with it a little too soon, deciding that she can leave her earthly
emotions entirely and can immediately become sober and objective.
This goads the bear man to fury, a real berserker rage, and he throws
himself on her as if to tear her to pieces. She has no time to escape from
him, so she falls to the ground before him and submits entirely as if I
were praying to a god. That appeases him and he does not attack. She
asks him, What had I done to you that you were suddenly so angry and
wanted to kill me? He replies, I cannot stand such an abstemious
attitude. She then promises him that she will no longer repress
emotions for the sake of being reasonable. Then they go together to
the center: the flower.
Evidently, our instincts forbid us to ignore them while we are in our
bodies, and indeed Beatrice was still often torn by her emotions because
of her outer difficulties, jealousy and a wish to rebel against the outer,
incomprehensible strangeness of her countertransference. I once told
Jung of a man who had come back to life only after the doctors had
thought he was dead. He reported that during that time he had been in
a place more familiar to him than his own house and garden. He was
immeasurably surprised that this familiar place was death. Jung said
that was how he himself expected death to be. But, he added, The ego
wont like it. One must expect a protest from that side.
The bear man seems to be drawing Beatrices attention to this protest,
and she duly attends to what he says. But she is increasingly drawn to
her temenos; at the end, she goes to it each day. One feels that when
Beatrice passes over, it will indeed be more familiar to her than her own
home, a blessing which she certainly owes to devoting more and more
time and energy to active imagination.
Very shortly before her death, she is in the center and says:
I must now always stay in the center or the problem can never be solved
on both sides. Perhaps I am the center. The mystery o f the flower is in
me; I am it and it is me. It has entered me and become a human being. I
am two: ordinary human being and the mystery o f the flower. I have
grownfrom the center. My roots are in the black, forest earth, deep in the
earth. Here 1grew up. My petals have unfolded and then the miraculous
flower is in the center, four golden petals and four silverpetals. I am this
shining flowerfrom which a spring also bursts out. I flower brightly in the
middle o f the dark wood. Am I indeed the flower?
This is the first time Beatrice has entered the flower, but by no means
the first time she had wanted to do so. She repeatedly expressed this
wish to her spirit man in whatever form he was presenting. But he
always forbade her entrance, telling her it was dangerous, for it was
often impossible to get back. This time, however, he makes no protest;
the right time has come for her own specific deathshe will no longer
be able to find her way back to her earthly body, but may enter the
subtle body which she has taken such pains to build.
Although the imagery is totally different, Beatrice is really describing
the same experience that Jung met, after his illness in 1944, when he
had the dream of the Yogi. He says:
In that. . . dream I was on a hiking trip. I was walking along a little road
through a hilly landscape; the sun was shining and I had a wide view in
all directions. Then I came to a small wayside chapel. The door was ajar,
and I went in. To my surprise there was no image o f the Virgin on the
altar, and no crucifix either, but only a wonderfulflower arrangement.
But then I saw that on the floor in front o f the altar, facing me, sat a
yogiin lotus posture, in deep meditation. When I looked at him more
closely, I realized that he had my face. I started in profoundfright, and
awoke with the thought: 'Aha, so he is the one who is meditating me.
He has a dream, and I am it. 1 knew that when he awakened, I would
no longer be.12
He then comments that evidently at his birth, Jungs Self retired into
deep meditation and meditates his earthly form. He continues:
To put it another way: it assumes human shape in order to enter three-
dimensional existence, as if someone were putting on a divers suit in
order to dive into the sea. When it renounces existence in the hereafter,
the Selfassumes a religious posture, as the chapel in the dream shows. In
earthlyform it canpass through the experiences of the three-dimensional
world, and by greater awareness take afurther step towardrealization.'*
Beatrice regards the flower as the Self; here, she puts her experience
into words: 1I am an ordinary human being but also the mystery of the
flower ; just as the yogi in Jungs dream had Jungs features, so he
himself was the mystery of the yogi in meditation, and also an ordinary
human being on a hiking trip. He is simultaneously only an observer of
the beautiful flower arrangement on the altar, and the meditating yogi
as well.
,2lbid.,p. 323 .
'Ibid., pp. 323-324.
But Beatrice has entered the flower and even feels herself putting
down her roots into the dark earth. Since there is no protest from her
spirit man, who usually looks after her so carefully, we may expect that a
great change is coming. She was, however, allowed to return to her
earthly body for a very short time.
The next day she writes:
I go to the wall. The bear, my great, powerful companion, opens one o f
the four doors. We go in and he locks the door behind us. As soon as we
are within the walls, he takes human shape. It is my royal spirit man with
a golden, white mantle. I contemplate theflower. Ar I meditate upon it,
I become, as I did yesterday, the flower itself, rooted, growing, radiant,
timeless.
Thus I take on the form o f immortality. Then I feel quite well, and
protectedfrom all attacksfrom outside. It also protects me from my own
emotion. When I am in the center, nobody and nothing can attack me.
They can still attack and hurt me in my human form and I know that I
must spend most o f my time there. But I shall always have the opportun
ity now and then to become theflower. lam very happy about that, fo ri
have onlyjust realized that this is possible. I have long known the flower
as an object, but now I know that I can also be it.
Beatrice was right that she still had her human form, but mistaken in
thinking that she had to continue spending most of her time there. She
died of a sudden and unexpected thrombosis the day after this last entry
in her book of active imagination. As her spirit man had always warned
her, if one enters the flower in ones lifetime, it may become impossible
to return to ones human form. Therefore, Beatrice was only allowed to
enter it on the last two days of her life. It is, however, very clear that the
temenos is already more familiar to her than her own house and
garden on earth. Moreover, she has reached the goal of our next
example, the Egyptian World-Weary Man. She has a common home
with her spirit man.14
In this final excerpt, her spirit man has become the Self, royally
adorned with a golden mantel. He has shed his bear form, for it is no
longer necessary to Beatrice. She may at last leave behind all the things
that attack her from outside, as well as her own wild emotions. She may
enter her haven of peace and become the flower itself, rooted,
growing, radiant and timeless her image of immortality.
I4See below, p. 105.

Consciously, she does not yet know that she is at the end of her life,
for she still fears she will have to pass most of her time in her human
body, tormented by her emotions and by attacks from other people. It is
clear that she is now much happier as the flower. Active imagination has
led to complete independence and she no longer relies on any outer
support. Therefore, one feels that the Chinese would call her happy; she
has built her subtle body, and the right moment has come for her to die
her own specific death. Sudden though her death was, from the
conscious point of view, one cannot doubt that death found her fully
prepared. Naturally, her husband, children and friends felt the sudden
shock most terribly, but although she died apparently prematurely, one
feels she must have been spared all the resentment that Jung used to say
people who died young usually seem to feel. This is usually clear in the
dreams of their family and friends, and I, at all events, have heard of
nothing of the kind in the case of Beatrice. As far as one dare suggest
anything about the Beyond, one feels that Beatrice had reached all the
fulfillment that the unconscious had asked of her on earth, and could
therefore find full support in the subtle body that had become even
more real to her in her active imagination during the days before her
death.
T think we are very privileged to have been able to study such a docu
ment, and I must end by thanking her husband most deeply for allow
ing me to include Beatrices experiences in this book.
CHAPTER 5
An Ancient Example o f Active Imagination

The World-Weary Man an d H is Ba
The best two examples of the so-called auditory method of active

imagination1 that I know come from long ago. The first is over 4000
years old, circa 2200 B.C. A figure of the unconscious breaks in on a man
in such an unusual way at that time that at first he is completely shat
tered. Eventually, however, he proves himself capable of dealing with
the situation in a manner that few, if any, of us could attain today.
The second example (Chapter 6) comes from the first half of the
twelfth century A.D. and forms a complete contrast to the first. The
conversation is begun by the man himself, who has evidently been much
hampered in his conscious program by the interference of his anima. All
we know of the World-Weary Man comes from the text itself and
from the comments on the text by the Egyptologist Helmuth Jacobsohn;2
the second example, however, is written by a very famous man, Hugh de
St. Victor, of whom we know much more.
I have already contrasted these two texts in my first seminar on active
imagination (1951), but, at that time, in spite of its excellence, I had to
overcome considerable feelings of inferiority about using the first
'Conversation with a figure or figures of the unconscious.
2Helmuth Jacobsohn, Timeless Documents of the Soul (Evanston: Northwestern Univer
sity Press, 1968).
83
example because of my ignorance of Egyptology and of the Egyptian

language. It was only the fact that it was Jung himself who had handed
me the text which Jacobsohn had just sent him in manuscript, and the
good fortune that Jacobsohn was himself in Zurich during the time that
I was giving the course, that enabled me to overcome my scruples. I
must express my gratitude to them both for the generous help they gave
me, without handing either of them any responsibility for what I say.
I have used the English translation I made myself at that time from
the German original because I am more accustomed to it. I have com
pared it with an excellent newer translation by Richard Pope,9 and there
are no major differences.
The text had been translated many times before, but no one came
anywhere near understanding it until Jacobsohn took it in hand. Those
who know Legges translation of the I Ching4 and have compared it with
Cary Bayness more recent, excellent translation of Wilhelms text5 will
know just what I mean. A comparison of the earlier translations of our
Egyptian text with Jacobsohns yields exactly the same result. It is
impossible to translate such texts without some psychological know
ledge, and Dr. Jacobsohn has a natural understanding of the psychology
of the old Egyptians which it is difficult to praise too highly. I regret that
space will not allow me to quote many more of his comments, but they
can all be found in Timeless Documents o f the Soul.6
It was ignorance of both the empirical existence of the unconscious
and the fact that it appears in personified forms which hampered the
earlier translators, who thought the two speakers were simply a conscious
device for the author to express two tendencies of the time. Dr. Jacob
sohn comments that if we give up all such preconceived opinions in
considering the text:
We are confrontedabove all with a human tragedy offar greater dimen
sions than anyone has yet admitted. It is not only the man who cannot
find his bearings in the time in which he lives and is therefore driven to
the verge o f suicide: that is just the theme, the starting point. But it is
also the man who lives far removed from God and who has lost every
support and who now discovers something whichaccording to the
3Ibid., pp. 1-54.

*1Ching, trans. James Legge, 2ded. (New York: Dover Press, Inc., 1899).
>The I Ching, or Book of Changes, trans. Richard Wilhelm, Cary F. Baynes, 3rd ed.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967).
6Jacobsohn, Timeless Documents of the Soul.
AN ANCIENT EXAMPLE OF ACTIVE IMAGINATION 85
existing evidencehad never yet been discovered by any Egyptian. He

discovered that the Baman's own ' soul' represents a power already
in man's lifetime, a power which, on the one hand, man cannot escape
by means o f his conscious will and which, on the other hand, he cannot
yet understand with his conscious mind, so that at first he must try again
and again to resist thispower within himself. It is the tragedy ofhelpless
ness, not only in regard to the world but also in regard to oneself. This
tragedy can only be experienced by someone who does not live as ' a
pious man' among godless people, but who has suffered himselffrom
the terror and despair of being far removedfrom God. What happened
to the World-Weary Man at the hands ofhis Ba in this hopeless situation
must not be anticipated here', it is the real theme o f the following
research.7
We must remember that what we call the individual, only came into
existence after death for the religious Egyptian of those days. The reader
who is familiar with The Book o f the Dead8 already knows that every
element of the individual was projected into the Beyond and that over
whelming importance was attached to the funeral and subsequent rites
for the dead.
Although the text is separated from us by over 4000 years, it is curi
ously close to us in many ways. This is probably because it arose in a time
when Egypt was in a state that was very similar to the predicament in
which we find ourselves today. It was the time of the disintegration of
the old kingdom, of the first revolution in history, a prototype which
ranks with our modern revolutions: the priests were attacked and even
murdered; the pyramid graves and temples were thrown down; the poor
robbed the rich and tried to exterminate them; every little prince
intrigued to become the Pharaoh. Suicide was so common that the
crocodiles in the Nile could no longer cope with the corpses.
For a religious Egyptian, such as our World-Weary Man, this was an
overwhelming psychological shock. Everything material and spiritual
was crumbling around him, very similar to what is happening to us
today.
The title of the text is The World-Weary Man and His Ba. The
Ba is always translated Soul. Dr. Jacobsohn tells us in his intro
duction to the text that we do not know much of what the Ba meant
to a man of that time, but the Pyramid Texts teach us that he repre
7Ibid.
8E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1953).
sented a psychic being, divine in nature,9 connected with the appear

ance of the individual and incarnated form of a god. The reader of The
Book o f the Dead10 already knows that after death, all Egyptians who
passed the tests became Osiris. The Ba of a human being also has
something to do with the individual, manifested form of a particular
human being and thereforein contrast to the Kait could settle down
on the mummy in a mans tomb. In other words, the Ka is a double, the
vitality of a person; the Ba is the kernel, the divine spark of a person.
The Ba is represented in Egyptian art as a human-headed bird and is
often depicted as hovering over the mummy in the tomb. It is important
for us not to forget that the Ba was entirely connected with the post
mortal state in the dogma of that time. The facts that he is connected
with the incarnated form of a god and that he is male, not female,
already point more to the Self than to the soul or the anima. This is
confirmed at the end of the text. The Ba really represents the whole
unconscious to the man.
Unfortunately, the beginning of the text is lost, but an incompre
hensible fragment and the subsequent reply of the World-Weary Man
make it quite clear that the Ba had frightened him nearly out of his wits
by a most unexpected speech. We must keep in mind what a shock it
must have been to a man of that time that the Ba should play any role at
all while he was still alive. The Egyptians of that time saw themselves
only as a fragment of a collective state and religion, and any indi
viduality was projected into the Beyond.
In the first preserved speech, the man says:
Then I opened my mouth to my Ba, in order to answerwhat he had said!
The fact that the Ba has a different opinion from his own shocks the
World-Weary Man beyond what exaggeration could represent. Has his
Ba become indifferent? He should always be there, attached to the
mans body by bond and rope. But now the Ba is attacking him because
the man wants to die before his time. Then the man begs the Ba to
desist and make the West, i.e., the land of death, agreeable to him, and
to overlook his sins during the short time he will still live. He ends with
an unconfident appeal to several of the gods to help him.
Translated into modern terms, the World-Weary Man has made a
Pyramid Texts are a collection of Egyptian mortuary prayers, hymns and spells intended
to protect a dead king or queen and insure life and substance.
Budge, Book of the Dead.
discovery that we still make with horror today: that he is not the master
in his own house, but that there is something in his own unconscious
that crosses his conscious intention. This discovery confronts us in many
ways, but often in active imagination, just as the World-Weary Man
encountered it all those years ago.
Jung once analyzed a German doctor who was anxious to discover the
method of active imagination for his patients, but who had never prac
ticed it himself. Jung explained to him that it was unwise to recommend
it without some personal experience, so the physician consented to try.
After a bit, he saw a rocky cliff in the mountains and an ibex standing
on it. Jung encouraged him to keep this image in mind. Two or three
days later, the man arrived with a white face and reported that the ibex
had moved its head! After that experience he flatly refused to do any
more active imagination. Something had happened in his psyche
without his conscious intention and this was a shock which he could not
take. It is noteworthy that this doctor was the only one of Jungs patients
to become a Nazi later!
Jung also had a case of a girl, in the very early days of his practice, who
was engaged to a man stationed in the Far East. She convinced Jung that
only outer difficulties were holding her back from joining him there, so
Jung helped her to remove them. But instead of going to her fianc, the
girl became insane! The outer difficulties had only been projections of
an immense inner resistance to the marriage. Jung always said that this
case taught him a great deal.
The idea that the Ba should be attached to him by bond and rope is
fundamentally an image of the way man tries to prevent these disturb
ing invasions of something autonomous from the unconscious. He tries
to talk down the Ba with dogmatic opinions. We can see the same
tendency in modern psychology: the Freudians already have a highly
finished dogma and very little of the water of life, and although Jung
himself remained open to correction from the unconscious until the end
of his life, the same tendency is very visible in many of his followers. To
a certain degree, it is inevitable; one must have breakwaters to prevent
inundation, but it must never go too far or the living water of life will be
excluded. As in the Odyssey, it is a matter of steering between Scylla
and Charybdis.
In active imagination, we can constantly catch ourselves at the same
game. We find it very difficult to regard it as a Just-So Story to
watch it objectively and then enter the game ourselves with the same
naive simplicity. We constantly try to correct the paradoxical uncon

scious with our one-sided, conscious understanding and to keep animus
or anima bound with rope and bond, just as the World-Weary Man
tried to do.
In regard to the mans idea of suicide, which apparently has been
opposed by the Ba, we must not forget that suicide was common in his
day. The era was a turning point in history, for there was no individual
conscience at that time. The so-called negative confessionwhich had
to be recited by mans spirit when he first reached the Beyondis a long
declaration of all possible sins, but the deceased must declare that he has
not committed any of them." The ancient Egyptian identified with
Maat, the goddess of justice, and left it at that. The idea was that it
would be a sacrilege to think that the human being had the power to
commit sin; such an assumption would be a hubris and an insult to the
gods.
This reveals a very primitive state of consciousness, but we can still
find many traces of it today. We all know people who simply cannot
admit that they are wrong. They are fearfully annoying, but it is always
possible that they really cannot afford it.
Jung once had a patient who evidently had relations with several
women. Jung counted them silently; they amounted to five. Then he
mentioned the word polygamy. The man immediately retorted that
that was something of which he had a horrorhe was strictly monoga
mous! Jung reminded him of his secretary. He replied, Oh, but that is
quite different. It is simply that the work goes so much better if I take
her out to dinner sometimes! And afterwards? Oh, yes, something
sometimes just happens.
Since this did not enlighten him at all, Jung further mentioned a Mrs.
Green. Oh, that is just a matter of exercise. We play golf together and,
as her house is close to the links, I go back to talk with her, and, oh yes,
something sometimes happens afterwards. At about the third, the
penny at last dropped and he cried in horror, Yes, you are right, I am
polygamous! The shock made him impotent for many months and
Jung had a very difficult job to set him right. He had kept all his affairs
in separate compartments, such as work, and exercise. When the
compartments at last fused, he was absolutely horrified. Jung learned
about compartmental psychology from that case and about the dangers
of fusing such compartments with each other too suddenly.
Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 355-377.

Similarly, all the old Egyptians had transgressed the laws of Maat, but
at that time, they simply could not afford to know it. As we shall see,
the Ba made our man face individual guilt, but he must have been one
of the first men in history to do so, and we must never forget what an
unusual experience it was for him.
Suicide is not mentioned in the negative confession, which is prob
ably why our man hoped to get away with it. But he is evidently uneasy
and very busy with an intellectual justification of his purpose. This was
not difficult in those days, when the Beyond was regarded as a perfect
life, exactly like a completely happy human life. Why not go there a bit
ahead of time? It was really a rational idea in those days, but it is
difficult to put ourselves in his position.
The Ba then replies:
Are you not then the man? Are you alive at all? What then is your goal
that you look after the goodn like a steward o f treasures (i.e., one who
caresfor his treasures) ?
The Ba goes straight to the point. Are you alive at all? What is your
goal? The Ba attempts to tear away the mans illusions, his excuses, his
unreality, at one stroke. Nothing is more direct than the unconscious.
This speech reveals a stage in active imagination when the man had
really seen nothing of what the Ba was; he was just projecting his own
dogmatic ideas onto him. The Ba is evidently annoyed at the way the
man is childishly trying to throw responsibility for the suicide onto him.
As Jung has often pointed out, the unconscious is not in our space and
time, and therefore takes relatively little notice of death. But what does
interest it is whether or not we live our lives fully, enabling the Self to
manifest on earth.
The question, What is then your goal? is asked to make the man
think. It is like the dream of Monica, St. Augustines mother, in which
an angel asked her why she was so unhappy about her son. St.
Augustine comments that of course the angel knew, but that it had
asked her in order to make her think.
In Woman in Europe, Jung says: Masculinity means knowing
what one wants and doing what is necessary to achieve it. 19 The Ba is
evidently disgusted with the mans feminine attitude. He wants to
drift toward death, as he expresses it, in a completely passive way.
12Erman (an early translator) understood correctly here: the good is certainly meant in
a moral sense.
The Ba accuses him of looking after the good like a stewardone

feels he means like a miserafter his treasures. After all, good and evil
are only human abstractions, and the man is projecting human stan
dards onto the Ba, who understandably enough refuses this appeal to
overlook what the man regards as his sins, or rather he dismisses it as
unimportant. As we shall see, the World-Weary Mans only idea of sin is
failing to observe the rites prescribed by dogma, and the Bas interests
lie elsewhere, which becomes increasingly clear as the text continues.
The man, who does not yet understand the Ba, seems only to hear this
reference to the "good and he answers, Yes, that is exactly what I am
interested in: the good. He sees this as equivalent to the correct
funeral rites and an ordered existence in the Beyond. He declares that he
has not yet entered the Beyond precisely because this question is not
setded. The man emphasizes that he is no robber, there is nothing
brutal about him, and goes on with an attempt to bribe the Ba to
consent to the suicide by promising him the most punctilious fulfill
ment of the funeral rites, so that his Ba will be envied by all the other
Bas. He threatens the Ba with having no home in the Beyond if he lets
the man be driven to death without helping him.
The modern equivalent to this speech would be one of us telling her
animus or his anima that if he or .she would only consent to do some
thing just our way, he would at once be in such a lovely position that the
animus of Mrs. Smith or the anima of Mr. Jones would be green with
envy!
The World-Weary Man is again trying to control his Ba with dogmatic
opinions about the Beyond. Since the Ba belongs to the unseen reality,
it is obvious that the man is teaching his grandmother to suck eggs. He is
hopelessly mixed up: he wants the Ba to settle the question of suicide,
which is a question of this world where he must take the responsibility
himself, and he wants to dictate to the Ba about the next world, which is
a reality entirely beyond his comprehension.
On the other hand, and I want to emphasize this, the man is exceed-
ingly right to defend his conscious point of view to the last ditch and not
to give in to the Ba until he is really convinced. He went too far, but we
can only learn by trial and error. The main reason that this text is so
valuable, from the standpoint of modern active imagination, is that it
represents a real Auseinandersetzung between conscious and uncon
scious.14 Both defend their own standpoint with the greatest energy.
14Having it out with and beginning to come to terms.

The Ba answers:
When you think o f the funeralthat is sentimentality; it is producing
tears in making people unhappy, basically it is fetching man out of the
house in order to throw him on the hill. . . then you can no longer rise
upwardin order to see the light of the sun.
The Ba goes on to tell the man that the dead who had every rite
fulfilled and beautiful granite pyramids built are not necessarily one bit
better off than the weary ones; that is, those who die on the bank of the
river and decay there without survivors or any funeral rites.
The Ba ends:
Now listen to me! Behold, it is good when men listen. Follow the beauti
ful day andforgetyoursorrow!
Evidently, the Egyptian religion was becoming stereotyped; the water
of life was no longer contained in it, for the Ba definitely states here that
the funeral rites alone are useless. He is not against them; he simply tells
the man that putting his whole faith in them is useless and ridiculous.
Dr. Jacobsohn points out that the Ba is voicing a doubt that was just
surfacing in the unconscious at that time: whether or not the traditional
ceremonies were still an absolute value.15 Probably it was this doubt that
was behind the whole upheaval of the time, just as a doubt whether the
Christian attitude to evil is still valid might be said to be behind most of
our own modern disturbances. Fundamentally, the Ba spoke of theF
danger of depending on things outside ourselves.
I wish to remind you that active imagination represents a sort of give-
and-take between conscious and unconscious. In our text, it is definitely
the Ba who wishes to teach the man something he does not know. In the
next text, this is reversed: it is the man who wishes to teach the anima.
The World-Weary Man, as we have seen, tries to teach his Ba, but his
efforts are to a great extent a failure, for it is the Ba who has the greater
truth.
The sting of the Bas sarcasm in his comments about the sentimen
tality of the mans attitude must have been a considerable shock to the
World-Weary Man. The Ba is telling the man that he is practicing the
wrong kind of active imagination; he is indulging in sentimentality and
self-pity. This gives us a valuable hint as to the danger of this kind of
indulgence, for the Ba says outright that if he goes on like this, he is
already dead in this life and will never be able to come up again into the
15Jacobsohn, Timeless Documents o f the Soul.
light of the sun. The point is that you bewitch yourself by such
indulgence in the wrong kind of fantasy; you lose touch with reality and
you have a bad effect on yourself and other people. If the man had not
eventually listened to the Ba, he would have spun himself into these
unreal fantasies and inevitably, he would have perished. Moreover, we
must not forget that the man emphasized that he declares that he is not
j brutal, yet he planned to kill himself. The opposite of brutality is always
I sentimentality.
Rauschning tells us in his book Hitler Speaks that Hitlerwho could
sign orders for the entire population of villages to be shotcried for a
whole afternoon over the death of his favorite canary.16 And the pictures
of him kissing babies, which were sometimes published in the Swiss
papers, were absolutely sickening.
The final sentences of the Bas speech are particularly impressive:
Now listen to me! Behold it is good when men listen. Follow the
beautiful day and forget your sorrow.
This insistence on listening is very positive and useful to us today. We
still find it difficult to listen to the real voice of the unconscious. We
always deceive ourselves, thinking that it does not want to talk to us, but
far more often we do not want to listen. We have our pet fictions about
ourselves, which we do not want to give up, and basically we simply lose
our nerve, for it requires real heroism to face the inexorable reality of the
unconscious.
When the Ba says, Follow the beautiful day and forget your sor
row, he is drawing attention to the vital importance of the here-and-
now. There is a wonderful description of this here-and-now in Jungs
seminar on Thus Spake Zarathustra.17 I can only mention briefly what
Jung saidthat when we are really in the here-and-now, we are
complete, and that is the most difficult and the most terrifying thing to
be, but also the most worthwhile. The World-Weary Man evidently has
no idea of the importance of the here-and-now or he could not even
think of throwing his life away. The Ba challenges him first to become a
man and then to become whole.
Either the Ba gave the man no time to reply to this speech or he did
not react to it, for the Ba goes on to tell him two parables. These are very
interesting and meaningful, so I will quote them in full.
,6Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks (London: Thornton Butterworth, Ltd., 1939)-
17C. G. Jung, Psychological Analysis of Nictzches Thus Spake Zarathustra" (Private
seminar given in Zurich during the 1930s).
The First Parable of the Ba

A man cultivates hisplot o f land. Then he ships his harvest and begins his
voyage. His festival approaches after he has seen a storm come up one
night (and after he) has kept watch on the ship at the time of sunset and
(after he) has escaped with his wife, while his child has perished on the
water that was treacherous in the night of the crocodiles. For at the end
(of this experience) he sat there, recovered his speech and said: I have
not wept on account of the girl. She cannot return again from the West
to the earth. But I mourn for her children who were (already) broken in
the egg and who have seen theface o f the crocodile god even before they
have lived. 'ls
In this case, the Ba uses symbolical language to help the man see what
he could not directly understand. These parables are like the cinema
flashes which suddenly break in on our own active imaginationtoo
suddenly for us to play a partor a dream which comes to correct or
elucidate our active imagination.
Because there are no associations, such as there would be with a living
dreamer, we must take up the context of the themes; space, however,
forbids me to do this as thoroughly as I should. I will only mention that
since Egypt was an agricultural land, the harvest is an especially impor
tant symbol there. As is well known, the god Osiris was very much
connected with the crops. Africa is the land of storms, so when an
African speaks of a storm, he means something terrific. The ship repre
sents something built by human skilla human way of getting about.
One still speaks of the ship of the Church, for example.
The crocodile god plays a great role in the Egyptian religion. It is a
most paradoxical god, highly positive in the days of our World-Weary
Man, though afterwards it was identified with both Osiris and Set, his
destroyer. One meaning of Sobek, the crocodile god, which is particu
larly important for us is that he gathers up the scattered pieces of the
dead Osiris and united them again into a whole. The crocodile itself, on
the other hand, was a great danger to the Egyptian of every age.
Evidently, the man in the parable is meant as an image of the World-
Weary Man himself. Presumably, he is represented as a merchant
because he has a one-sided attitude: he looks after the good as a steward
after his treasures. The man is shown as having loaded all his harvest
onto one boat; i.e., put all his eggs in one basket. Since the symbol of
,8Jacobsohn, Timeless Documents o f the Soul.

grain is so closely connected with Osirisand the deceased were said to

be reborn as Osiris in the Beyondthe Ba is evidently showing the
World-Weary Man that he is risking the other world as well as this one
by his attitude.
The storm is evidently an allusion to the tremendous emotional
upheaval that the man is undergoing. The wind is the cause, and, as a
symbol of mind and spirit, a brainstorm is probably a correct interpre
tation of its meaning. The man thinks he is making a calm and stoic
decision to leave this life, but the real state of affairs in his unconscious is
shown in the parable. The same idea is reinforced later in his grief,
which even bereaves him of speech.
He is escaping with his wife, whom Dr. Jacobsohn takes as the Ba.
This hypothesis is confirmed in the second parable. Since the Ba is a
masculine figure in Egypt, he must have a reason for representing
himself as a woman. As previously mentioned, the Ba is always trans
lated as the soul, and though, as we shall see, he turns out to be
much more than the mans anima, he is perhaps introducing the World-
Weary Man to the idea that the human soul is feminine. In fact, as
Marie-Louise von Franz first pointed out to me, we can go further and
say that the Ba is introducing the man to the whole principle of relation
ship and that he appears as a woman to show the man how he could
relate to the Ba. Moreover, our man is blind to the feeling values; he is,
for example, quite blind to the value of life which the Ba understands so
well. And he is showing the man that not only can the Ba have a totally
different opinion, but that he is as different from a human being as a
woman is from a man.
We cannot consider the wife in the parable without the daughter,
who perished in the shipwreck. This daughter seems to represent a more
individual aspect of the anima; she is the mans daughter as well as the
Bas. The Ba was a recognized figure in the Egyptian religion and
therefore, to some extent a collective figure, whereas the daughter is
more representative of the mans own anima. She symbolizes the possi
bility of a truly individual realization and is in the greatest danger from
the mans unrealized emotions. This is the moment of possible renewal,
so it is terribly dangerous for him to be unaware of what is happening.
The man does not think of suicide as death, but as moving on to a
certain and better life; the Ba, however, is saying; No more illusions;
this is real, for heavens sake; look out!
The night of the crocodiles could be compared to Jacob meeting the

dark side of God at the ford. Jacob held on until the light side appeared
and blessed him.19 It is a common idea with primitives that a dark and
evil god rules the night and a light and benevolent god, the day.
We find the same idea in a magic papyrus translated by Preisendanz:
the sun god rises as a scarab, flies upward as a hawk, and turns every
hour into a new symbol, ending, as the sun sets, with the crocodile.20
But it is not the loss of the harvest, nor even of the daughter, which
drives the man in the parable to despair, but the loss of the unborn
children already broken in the egg.
We should undoubtedly interpret these children as a yet-unborn
possibility, as Jacobsohn himself does, which is in the greatest danger.
The Ba, as the wife in this parable, represents the eternal, universal Self,
which can never be destroyed. The girl is the individual field between
man and Ba, produced by their contact. The Self can be born in the
individual, and the children represent the seed of the whole process of
individuation. This symbol contains the essence of the parable: the Ba
has been constellated in this life and that is a great deal to accomplish,
but not enough. This parable shows us very beautifully that everything
will be lost if this unknown product of man and Ba cannot come into
existence.
The Ba tears the veils away from the World-Weary Mans eyes: while
he is chattering about funeral rites and about other Bas being jealous of
his, the result of his whole life is in danger and will certainly be lost
unless he can come to his senses before it is too late.
But all the same, the parable does not end on a wholly pessimistic
note. We must remember that the crocodile god was an exceedingly
positive deity in the time of the World-Weary Man, with the attribute
of being able to gather the scattered pieces and join them into a whole
again. Egyptologist Brugsch tells us that its figurative meaning is that of
pulling oneself together, becoming quiet and relaxed, gathering up
ones courage.21
When Jung arrived in East Africa, an old settler approached him at a
railway station and, after asking if Jung were new to Africa, offered to
19Genesis 32:22-28.
Karl Preisendanz, ed., PapyriGraecaemagicae, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1973).
2IH. Brugsch, Geographtscbe lnschriften Altagyp/ische Denkmaler (Ger.) I860 texted.
give him a piece of advice. When Jung accepted gratefully, he said,

This is Gods country, not mans country, and if things go wrong, just
sit down and dont worry.
If the man can see his own wild emotions, understand the parable
and, above all, give up the wrong way and learn the right way of doing
active imagination, there is still a good chance that he may be able to
rescue the situation, if, in the words of the old settler in Africa, he can
sit down and not worry.
The Second Parable o f the Ba
A man asks his wife for an evening snack, but his wife says to him:
' Comefirst to supper.'' Upon which he goes out in order to sulk(?) for a
time and then returns home in that he is like another while his wife is
experiencedfor him: namely, that he is not capable o f hearing her, but
just sulked, with a heart emptyfor messages.22
This parable seems simple, but I found it exceedingly difficult to
understand. It begins at the end of the first parable, where only the man
and his wife were saved.
I must anticipate here and tell you that in the concluding speech of
the Ba, it becomes clear that the Bas goal is to teach the man to estab
lish a common home for them both. This parable is the first appearance
of this home, depicted in simple, domestic language. Evidently, it
represents the limits of the mans individual existence; the frame in
which man and Ba, ego and Self, can meet. A house, particularly an old
house, is a very common symbol of the Self in dreams. It is the intimate
realm, the introverted side, yet it also reaches into the outer world.
The bone of contention is surprising: the man wants a tidbit, while
his wife insists on a whole supper. He behaves like a child who insists on
the dessert at the beginning of the meal. It is possible that the Ba is
referring to his idea of suicide, of wanting the joys of the Beyond ahead
of time. This impatience in the matter of waiting until things have had
time to ripen in our unconscious is often very evident in our own active
imagination. As the Rosarium says: All haste is of the devil 23words
which Jung frequently quoted. Moreover, the man would eat the snack
alone, whereas he would eat the supper with his wife, which brings in
the idea of communion, of relationship, of eros.
This parable shows the situation between conscious and unconscious
22Jacobsohn, Timeless Documents of the Soul.
^Rosariumphilosophorum, Artis auriferae, vol. 2 (Basel, 1593) pp. 204-384.
in a very meaningful way. The unconscious prepares the supper, the

cibus immortalis, the whole and eternal food, whereas the conscious
always looks at this food in a one-sided way and wants silly snacks
instead of eating the whole supper of a meaningful life. We are inclined
to covet reasonable, rational things, whereas the roots of the Self are
usually highly irrational.
The going out to sulk is a wonderful picture of what we always do
when the unconscious serves us a supper which we do not like. We go
out of ourselves; we leave our home, our mandala. We get emotional
and are beside ourselves.
Jung often said that basically, we are always deceiving ourselves when .
we say we do not know what to do about this or that. Somewhere we! |
know quite well, but we do not want to do it. It took me years to see that '
this is the truth, for the idea that we do not know is deeply rooted. As
the Chinese say: There is a sage in every one of us (the one who does
know what to do) but men will never steadfastly believe it, so the whole
thing has remained buried. The supper is there for us, as it was for the
World-Weary Man, but we still do not want to eat it.
The phrase, while his wife is experienced for him, is, as Dr. Jacob-
sohn says, quite true in outer life.24Just where a man is weak, his wife is
usually strong. This may be even truer of the unconscious: where we are
weak, it is strong. It is in finding the compensating truth in the uncon
scious that active imagination is of the greatest use. But the mans diffi
culty is seeing the wifes point of view, just as we have the greatest
difficulty in seeing the completely different point of view of the
unconscious.
The parable ends by pointing out that the man was not capable of
hearing his wife, having a heart empty for messages. The reader will
remember that the Ba had previously drawn his attention to this theme:
"Behold, it is good when men listen." Fundamentally, the parable
ends with a direct appeal to the man to continue his active imagination,
but with a different attitude: to practice true active imagination, to
make a tremendous effort to listen to the voice of the unconscious. He is
told that his indulgence is merely sentimental and unreal, and this is
having a terrible result: he cannot hear the truth and he has a heart
empty for messages.
The World-Weary Man replies:

Then I opened my mouth to my Ba in order to answer what he had said:

Behold, stinking is my nameforyour sake (more literally: because o f your
existence), more than the stink o f guano (bird manure) (?) on summer
days when the sky glows.
The beginning of his reply is then repeated in order to express his
horror at himself. The parables have at last opened his eyes andin a
typical enantiodromiahe takes the opposite viewpoint. At first, he
thought that the Ba was doing something more horrible than exaggera
tion could represent; now he sees himself as entirely in the wrong. This
is a very common reaction when we first see our shortcomings and
mistakes; we are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath
water.
The interesting point, however, is that the man gets away with it. He
is able to see himself with his name defiled without breaking down
because of the existence of the Ba. The name meant even more to the
ancient Egyptians than it does to us, as Dr. Jacobsohn points out, for
when the name was destroyed on a monument, it was believed that the
very substance of the deceased was wiped out.25 The World-Weary Man
was evidently a man who could see his dark side without collapsing. It is
very interesting that he always says * for your sake, which could also
as Dr. Jacobsohn saysbe translated as on your behalf or because
of your existence. 26 It is absolutely amazing that this manbrought
up in the traditional Egyptian religion, over 4000 years agoshould
realize the' essence of Jungian morality today; namely, that we are
i responsible for knowing of the Selfs existence within us. Not knowing
v i this is really the arch sin. As the reader will remember, the Ba was not
interested in the mans ordinary sinsthat turns out to be a projection
of the individual, dogmatic conscience onto the Babut the Ba is vitally
interested in being recognized and understood. He wants the World-
Weary Man to listen to him. And throughout this speech, it is clear that
the World-Weary Man has at last gotten the point.
The first five analogies, which the man uses to show that he realizes
he has defiled his name, have all to do with fishing or manure. This is
I psychologically of the greatest interest, for it is in manure, in the
products which we have not been able to assimilate, that the seed of the
Ibid.
Ibid.
Self can grow. Moreover, it is often said in alchemy that the philosophi
cal gold, the lapis, the precious thing, is to be found on the dunghill. As
you know, dreams of feces and lavatories are very common and often
refer to creative material that has not been properly realized. These
sentences, therefore, anticipate things which are appearing again today,
thousands of years later.
The similes which concern fishing are also highly psychological, for
when we see and accept our shortcomings and mistakes, as the World-
Weary Man does, and above all when we realize the empirical existence
of the unconscious, we are at last in a position to fish up contents of the
unconscious which we did not know existed before.
The following similes are also highly interesting. The World-Weary
Man compares the bad smell of his name to lies that are being circulated
about a woman. The Ba has represented himself as a woman, even as the
mans wife; therefore this simile presumably refers to the Ba. We must
remember that, in the days of the World-Weary Man, the dogma
declared that the Ba played no role at all in a mans life until after his
death. Therefore, our man is in a most vulnerable position, such as that
which a woman often meets in her most precious relationship: she may
find lies being circulated about her at any moment. It would be said of
him, for example, that he is crazy, because he thinks he can talk to his
Ba during his lifetime, and even claims to have an intimate relationship
with him, such as a man has with a woman. Therefore it is very necessary g
for him to keep the whole relationship secret, just as Jung says we are |
still forced to do when we experience the unconscious at a deep level.27
The World-Weary Man then compares himself to a defiant child who
is forced to belong to someone he hates, a comparison that exactly
describes his first attitude toward finding that he already belonged to
the Ba in this world.
In his last simile he speaks of a treacherous and rebellious city seeing
itself from outside, which is fundamentally a comparison of the mans
own attitude to the Ba. So far, he has been an unconscious inhabitant of
this rebellious city, but at last he begins to see himself objectively. Yet
paradoxically enoughfor the city is also a symbol of the Selfhe is still
outside the home, like the man in the second parable.
Regarded as a piece of active imagination, this speech, with all its
27Jung, CollectedWorks, vol. 12, par. 57.

similes, shows an enormous advancement when one compares it with

the previous speeches of the man. These former utterances showed
complete ignorance of the Bas point of view, or even that he had one at
all, and were in no sense active imagination; the man simply instructed
the Ba and projected his own dogmatic opinions onto him. The chief
merit in the first part of the textand this is an enormous meritis that
the man succeeded in objectifying his Ba and in recording what he had
said. This corresponds to the first part of the work necessary in active
imagination: collecting material from the unconscious and learning to
let things happen.
But in the speech which we have just been considering, the matter is
entirely different. Not only has he obviously allowed the astonishing
material in the parables to work on him and transform him, for his
whole attitude is fundamentally changed, but he is also allowing the
unconscious to penetrate his own statements, as we can see in the extra
ordinary meaningfulness of the similes which he employs, similes which
took thousands of years to mature and which are still relatively unknown
today. If this speech were a part of our own active imagination, it would
|take us a long time to digest it, for it comes from both the conscious and
the unconscious. It is a classic example of active imagination as it should
be done.
In this advanced stage of active imagination, the conscious attitude
keeps its line; he wishes to tell the Ba that he has realized his sins toward
him, not toward collectivity, and that he is completely ashamed of
himself. This attitude is actively and undeviatingly retained. Every
sentence begins with it. But when he searches in his mind for new
comparisons to explain his horror, it is clear that he allows the uncon
scious to pour in, for the conscious could never find such meaningful
parallels that had taken thousands of years to mature.
If this were an active imagination produced by one of us, we would
have to think very carefully about it before we could begin to under
stand it. It is excellent material with which to lay the foundation of the
transcendent function, for it comes from both conscious and
unconscious.
The World-Weary Man has assimilated something of the Ba here, for
his style has become more like the latters; he lets meaningful analogies
pour out in a sort of parable form. Moreover, he has gained something
of the objective spirit of the Ba, and the transcendent function is clearly
forming between the two.
Dr. Jacobsohn ends his comment on the first reply by emphasizing

that the World-Weary Man has gained confidence in his Ba, as well as a
new sense of responsibility toward him, and that he goes on in the next
speech to explain why he does not yet see a possibility of renouncing his
wish to commit suicide.
The man begins this speech by saying:
To whom shall I still speak today ? The brethren are evil, the friends o f
today are without love.
Each subsequent section also begins with the words: To whom shall
I still speak today? and goes on to complain that everyone is avaricious,
insolent, evil, a robber, unjust and so on. He can find no one who is
mild and good, so he has no confidant and is lonely beyond measure.
No doubt there is still a certain amount of inflation and projection in
this speech, but we must remember the days in which he lived and not
judge him by modern standards.
The loneliness presumably comes from the invasion of the Ba, for as
Jung points out in Psychology and Alchemy, Such invasions are
uncanny . . . They bring about a serious alteration in the personality
because they immediately form a painful personal secret which alienates
the human being from his environment and isolates him. 28
The Ba has put an end to greed and power as goals worth living for,
but the man is not yet sufficiently liberated from them to prevent him
from resenting the same things in other people. Even 2000 years later,
Christianity preached leaving the world, so we would be seeking an
impossibility of our man if we expected him to stand the impact of the
world with impunity.
But the fact that he explains his outer conditions to the Ba is very
important to us, for we still find ourselves obliged to tell the uncon
scious about our outer conditions, and in extremity, to explain that we
have reached the limit of our endurance. If we say this too soon, woe
betide us, but if we are really at the limit of our endurance, the uncon
scious will hear us and often change its course. We must never forget
that active imagination is a give-and-take; we must both listen to our
unconscious Behold, it is good when men listen and give it the
necessary information from our conscious side.
That this is absolutely necessary was once demonstrated to me during
Ibid., cf. R. F. C. Hull translation.

a conversation with my animus. He suddenly said, to my great surprise:

We are in a very awkward position, linked together like Siamese twins,
|yet in totally different realities. He then explained to me that our
I reality is as invisible to him as his is to us. Therefore, in our efforts to see
I the reality of the unconscious, we must never forget to help it to see
ours. Just as the man could not see the Bas point of view at first, so the
Ba also was unable to see why outer life had become so intolerable to our
man, until it was explained to him in the next two replies. Jung also
sometimes had to call a halt when the creative urge pushed him too far
to a point that was more than his health could stand.
In his third reply to the Ba, the World-Weary Man explains that
death is standing today before his eyes like returning health to a sick
man, like the scent of the lotus, like the end of bad weather, like a
return from war, like a liberation from prison, and so on.
He then makes several profound statements as to the condition of the
deceased in the Beyond, of which I will only quote the first:
Whoever is there, he will surely be a living god, and ward o ff the sacrilege
o f those who commit it.
This is a most profound psychological statement, although we should
no longer entirely project it into the Beyond, for it can be realized to
some extent in this world. In psychological language, it would depict a
condition of exchanging the ego for the Self, or, in the language of
Jung, submitting our lives to our Number Two personality, instead of
shortsightedly always wanting the way of the ego (the snacks) preferred
I by Number One.29 The Self has divine qualities in which we can partici-
ipate, but with which we must never identify.
The fact that the man speaks of actually becoming a living god
belongs to the Egyptian dogma, which taught that everyone whose heart
passed the test of being weighed became an Osiris in the Beyond. The
danger of inflation was much less in those days, when ego personality
was less developed, and the fact that it was entirely projected into the
Beyond was a safeguard in this respect. In modern times, however, it is
.1 necessary for man to remember that he is only the stable in which the
| ' god is born, as Jung put it.
Although the World-Weary Man uses such strong images to depict
how he feels about death, basically he remembers the Bas earlier
29Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, passim.

advice: he follows the beautiful day and forgets his sorrow. However, he
still projects it all into the Beyond. He has burst the bonds of his narrow
consciousness, but whether he can sacrifice his idea of suicide is another
matter, to which we shall return later.
I will quote the whole of the Bas short concluding speech, for it is
vitally important:
Now leave the complaint to itself, you, who belong to me, my brother!
You may weigh down (further) the basin o f firei0 or you may embrace
(more literally, snuggle up to) life again, whicheveryou would now say:
Wish that I may remain here when you have refused the West, or wish
also that you reach the West andyour body goes to the earth, and that I
may settle down after you have died: in any case, we shall have a home
together.
Here the Ba reveals himself beyond all doubt as the individual essence
of this particular man; as the Self. It seems to me that the World-Weary
Mans terrific effort to explain himself to his Ba in his last three replies
have had an effect on the Ba. In one point, indeed, the Ba remains
adamant: "Leave the complaint to itself. If the man regressed into a
sentimental, self-pitying indulgence in the wrong kind of fantasy, he
could still lose all he had gained, which applies to us today. Self-pity is
in itself an involuntary and erroneous kind of imagination; funda
mentally everything that we meet on our way through life belongs to our
totality, to the whole of our supper, and must be accepted as such.
Undoubtedly, the Ba has also been affected by the man; for the first
time, he accepts the possibility that it may be impossible for the man to
continue his life. As Dr. Jacobsohn points out, it is true that one feels
the Ba would greatly prefer the man to go on living; in fact, there is no
alternative unless it is really impossible. But, at all events, the one vitally
important point is that the Ba and the man should be together, whether
in this world or the next.31
The development of the Ba in the Pyramid Texts, and which is also
clearly visible in our text, reminds one of the development which is
often to be seen in the psychic material of a present-day individual.
When we first confront the unconscious, everything is contaminated
with everything else; "all cats are grey in the dark, as Jung used to say.
30That is: die of your sorrow. Just the "weighing down the basin of fire shows
clearly that it is a matter of a figurative expression.
Then, as we grow accustomed to the dark, we begin to discern one figure

from another. In our text, the figure of the Ba was at first anima, soul
and Self. But at the end, he is clearly the Self, the Number Two
personality.
When we face the unconscious for the first time, one of the most
bewildering things is the contamination between shadow, animus or
anima, and the Self. In fact, the animus or anima really owes its autono
mous power entirely to the fact that it is able to stand between our
consciousness and the Self.
In this early text, however, there is really no sign of the anima as a
possessing daemon. Our mans horrified reaction to his first two
speeches, however, shows that his initial feelings about the Ba were like
those we have when the animus or anima interferes and brings our
conscious plans to naught. In the Pyramid Texts, moreover, the Ba only
reveals his true nature as the Self after his union with the universal
knowledge.
In his Commentary On The Secret of the Golden Flower, Jung
points out that his experience in analyzing had taught him that the
problems of his patients were seldom solved on their own terms, but
that he had seen many patients who simply outgrew their problems.32
The problems just faded out in contrast to a new, higher and wider
interest. They appeared in a different light and now seemed like viewing
a storm in a valley from a mountain top. But since, in respect to the
psyche, we are both mountain and valley, it would be a vain illusion to
feel ourselves above human emotions. We are still tormented by them,
although we are no longer identical with them, for we have become
aware of a higher consciousness which can look at the situation objec
tively and say:1I know that I suffer.
It seems to me that the net result of this old Egyptian piece of active
imagination is just this: the man grew above his problem. It is not solved
on its own terms, for he is still suffering from the conflict in his last
speech. But he has become aware of a higher consciousness within him.
The Ba emphasizes the far more urgent need to wish for a common
home, whether it be here or in the Beyond. He evidently feels that he
will no longer go out to sulk, as in the second parable. The daughter and
the unborn children in the first parable are not mentioned again, for
they were an anticipation of a remote future of mankind. I feel that the
MJung, Collected Works, vol. 13, pars. 1-82.

man would have done the most he could do if he had succeeded in

establishing the common home for himself and his Ba. Moreover, the
fact that he recorded this piece of active imagination was a notable
achievement at that timeor, in fact, at any timewhich can hardly be
exaggerated.
A very instructive contrast to our text can be found in a little-known
book by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, entitled The Memoirs and
Confessions o f a Justified Sinner.33 Like our text, it is the story of a man
who is confronted by a superhuman figure. In Hoggs book, the figure is
called Gil Martin, who first appears in the exact likeness of himself. But
Robert, the representative of the ego in the story, has a most despicable
character from the beginning; he is mean, a liar and intolerably
inflated, in contrast to the World-Weary Man who, although he did not
understand the Ba at first, was obviously a most honorable man of
complete integrity. Therefore Gil Martin, unlike the Ba, becomes more
and more negative, even infernal, as the story progresses. He ends by
possessing Robert entirely, persuading him to commit several murders,
culminating in that of his brother and later of his mother. But Robert
and this is the point that I want to emphasizemakes no attempt to
take a stand even against the suggestion of murder. He cannot say, as he
is most certainly obliged to do, that as a human being he cannot possibly
put an end to another human life. Apparently, Gil Martin gets it his
own way, but that this is not at all what he really wants is shown in the
most interesting sentence in the book. When Roberts sins catch up with
him and he sees no possible solution but suicide, Gil Martin says to him;
I have attached myself to your wayward fortune, and it has been my
ruin as well as thine.
Jung called Hoggs book the British Faust' !
33James Hogg, The Memoirs and Confessions o f aJustified Sinner (London: The Cresset
Press, 1947).
CHAPTER 6
An Early-Twelfth Century Example o f

Active Imagination
Hugh de St. Victor's Conversation with His Anima
Before we begin with our material, I would like to make it clear that I
will be concerned with this text only from the standpoint of active
imagination. I will not touch upon its theological aspects, for that would
not only lead me out of my own depths but also away from that which I
feel is the main psychological interest of the material.
As I mentioned before, I originally worked on this text for my first
seminar on active imagination in 1951, at which time I compared it with
the conversation between the World-Weary Man and his Ba (see
Chapter 5). The two texts form a most interesting contrast: the one
shows how a man can hold his ground when something overwhelming
breaks in on him from the unconscious, the other, how it is possible to
influence the unconscious when one is wholly convincedas Hugh de
St. Victor evidently wasthat this is necessary.
In the Egyptian case, consciousness was still extremely weak. The ego
was just emerging from a complete participation mystique with the
collective pattern. In our medieval text, the ego is infinitely stronger; in
fact, it would be possible to contend that the ego is too strong and wins
too complete a victory over the soul. We suffer today from both tenden
106
AN EARLY TWELFTH-CENTURY EXAMPLE OF ACTIVE IMAGINATION 107
cies; therefore, I regard both these texts as enormously valuable parallels

in considering active imagination. On the one hand, when we touch
archetypal material directly, we are always in danger of being drowned
in it, thereby losing our hard-won consciousness; on the other, our ego is
inclined to be far too stiff and unbending in our attitude toward the
unconscious.
Our text comes from the early twelfth century and is a conversation
between a monk, Hugh de St. Victor, and his soul. I must mention his
background very briefly. In 1108, William de Champeaux, a well-
known Parisian theologian, wearied by his quarrels with his pupil, the
famous Abelard, retired from his professorship in Paris and restored a
ruined monastery on the Seine which was dedicated to St. Victor of Mar
seilles. Champeaux originally intended to devote himself and his monks
entirely to the love of God and to have nothing more to do with
scholastic science. But he was soon persuaded that science was also one
of the highest services of God, and St. Victors flourished as a center of
science and religion.
Three monks who were particularly famous were Richard de St.
Victor, Adam de St. Victor, and Hugh de St. Victor. Richard de St.
Victor, a Scotsman, was the subject of a lecture by Jung in 1940.* In
Richards interesting Benjamin Minor, he compares knowledge of
oneself to the Mountain of Transfiguration, for he, like all the Victor-
ines, regarded knowing oneself as the summit of knowledge. 2 Adam
de St. Victor, a Frenchman from Brittany, wrote some very beautiful
spiritual poems. Hugh de St. Victor, a German from Saxony and the
most famous of all, left a great many writings, including our text of his
conversation with his soul.
Very little is known of Hugh de St. Victors early life. Until the
eighteenth century, his origin had been forgotten and legend had
attributed him a French, Flemish and even a Roman ancestry. In 1745,
his real background was rediscovered in the Halberstadt manuscripts.
(His uncle was Bishop of Halberstadt.) Hugh belonged to the German
aristocracy, being the son, or possibly the nephew, of the Saxon Count
of Blankenburg. When he was still under 20 years of age, Hugh left a
Germany that had been torn by the dissentions between Emperor and
Pope, and went to France, where he remained for the rest of his life. He
'Eidgenssische Technische Hochschule (E.T.H.) Lectures (1933-1941), 6 vols. Privately
printed. Vol. 5, pp. 23-28; 1st ed., pp. 18-23.
Richard de St. Victor, Benjamin Minor.
studied first in Paris, then went to St. Victors at Marseilles. The exact
year that he moved to St. Victor on the Seine is unknown, but he was
given a professorship in 1125, and in 1133, the whole of the studies at
the monastery was placed under his care. He died in February 1141, at
the age of 44.
He was not only an exceptionally learned man, but he was also very
good at getting along with his fellow men. His friends said with pride
that religion and life were wonderfully united in him, but we also hear
that he was exceedingly critical. Evidently, he found St. Pauls admoni
tion to suffer fools gladly by no means congenial! Although he knew
so much, we are told that he regarded knowledge as the vestibule of
the mystic life. 3 But Paul Wolff tells us that in the case of the Vic-
torines, it is really not possible to separate the mystic from the theolo
gian and philosopher, for the Victorine idea of the term mystic was very
much wider than was the case with the mystics of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries.4 Everything that was symbolic or hidden in a symbol
was called mystical at St. Victor. They regarded the whole world and
everything that was in it as a symbol of God. Hugh used to exhort his
students to learn everything they could, assuring them that in later life,
they would find that nothing was superfluous.
Hugh began contemplation with the world because, as he says, the
eternal word is revealed by contemplation of creation. The word itself is
invisible, but it has become visible and can be seen in the works of the
creator. The world is a book written by the finger of God, and each
creature is a letter of God, so to speak. Therefore, mortal man, when he
\ looks at the world, is like an illiterate man who looks at a printed page,
Ifor it conveys no sense to him. He only sees the outer forms, but has no
j eyes for the eternal idea expressed in it. It is, therefore, mans duty to
'.learn to read the book of the world.
According to Hugh, nature and grace are the two ways by which man
can reach God: the sign of nature is the visible world; the sign of grace is
the incarnation of the eternal word. Man stands between angel and
animal; the former sees only the spiritual side of reality, and the latter,
only the outer reality. Man alone can see both. Soul and body are
attached to each other by sense perception; the soul participates in the
spiritual life of God through the idea.
The Victorines were both mystical and scientific. Hugh in particular
3EncyclopediaBritannica, llthed .,s.v. St. Victor.
4Paul Wolff, Die Viktoriner; Mystische Schriften (Vienna: Thomas Verlag Jakob
Hegner, 1936), p. 16-
was always anxious to keep philological exactness and mystical interpre

tation together, for the latter would become altogether too speculative if
the exact text were ever overlooked.
I have only related a bare minimum from the life and teaching of
Hugh de St. Victorjust enough to give some idea of the soil from
which our text arose, for it is the active imagination itself which is the
most important thing for us.
In medieval times, the existence of the soul as an autonomous,
independent being is no longer a shock, as it was to the World-Weary
Man, for the soul has emerged from the unconscious and was an estab
lished fact for the twelfth century monk. The Selfor at all events, the
light side of the Selfappears separated from the soul, as her bride
groom, Christ. The soul is regarded as entirely feminine, so it can be
said to be identical with the psychological anima.
Such conversations are a form which is by no means rare in the Middle
Ages. But, as far as my limited knowledge goes, they are usually an
uninteresting, conscious device. It is quite possible that part of the
answers of the soul in our conversation also arises from theological
assumptions concerning the anima naturalis, and are therefore not
wholly genuine. But the conversation takes so many unexpected turns
that it seems impossible to doubt that the anima often slips in spon
taneous material from the unconscious.
In the Egyptian text, it was the Ba, representing both the soul and the
Self, who played the leading role and who changed the man, whereas in
this text, it is the man who plays the leading role and who changes the
soul. The man places himself on the side of the Self, of Christ, and is
thus able to convince his soul to a great extent. She is allowed, however,
and this is very unusual in such texts, to talk quite freely. She expresses
her doubts as to the truth of his statements, as well as her extreme
dislike to them. Hugh has a very definite programthe program of the
Victorinesto disentangle his soul from the world and to make her one-
pointed toward God. That the text strives only upward toward the light
belongs to the time; it was the age when Norman architecture, with its
comparatively low, rough arch, was giving way to the high, pointed arch
of the Gothic style.
The text gives us a very graphic picture of how man can influence the
unconscious. Jung once pointed out that the practice of any kind of
magical influence or suggestion is only in its right place when used on
our own unconscious. The people of Hughs age were much more
conscious of magical effects than we are-^they did not doubt that words
and thoughts had an effect both on themselves and on their environ

ment. Therefore, Hugh attempted to use the magical effect which
necessarily emanates from thought and word, in the service o f God to
prevent it from becoming-daemonic, as it will when it is used consciously
or unconsciously in the service of the ego. Psychologically, this is obvi
ously exceedingly sound; it is using the forces of our psyche for the sake
of the whole, instead of making the partthe egothe enemy of the
whole psyche by its personal greed.
Naturally, from our point of view, the dark is too repressed, although
it is by no means wholly lacking. Medieval man was much nearer to the
instincts than we are, and the way to greater consciousness therefore
naturally led upward. Hugh of St. Victors great insistence on philo
logical accuracy gives us a hint of how there could have been no science,
for instance, if man had not learned to be accurate and undeviatingly
honest.
Every movement becomes one-sided if it is persisted in too long, but
we must not let the fact that the cause of wholeness in the modern world
demands an attitude which includes much more of the dark side of
man, prejudice us in considering this texta text which follows the
Christian program of differentiation of the white in accordance with the
age to which it belongs. Incidentally, we can also get a startling idea
from it of how much we all still think in medieval terms. What was
natural for Hugh in the twelfth century has, to a great extent, become a
lazy habit with many of us today.
Summary o f Text and Commentary
The title of the text is:
DE ARRHA ANIMAE
Conversation Concerning
the Betrothal Gift (or Dowry) of the Soul
Dialogue Between a Man and His Soul5
The man opens the conversation; it is undertaken at his initiative. He

tells his soul that their conversation will be entirely confidential, so that
Only the main points in the text ate given, translated from the German in Die
Viktoriner: Mystische Schriften. An English translation by Sherwood Taylor also exists,
but there are no striking differences between the German and English translations.
he will not be afraid to ask the most secret things and she will not be
ashamed to answer quite honestly.
Hugh goes on to ask her what it is that she loves most. He knows that
she cannot live without love, but what has she chosen as the most worthy
object of love? He goes through a long list of all the beautiful things of
the world, such as gold, jewels, colors, and so on. Does she love any one
thing above everything else? Or has she put such things behind her, in
which case she must love something else, and if so, what?
This opening speech seems to show that Hugh is on much firmer
ground than most of us would be when we speak to our anima or
animus, for he has not only realized his soul as a vis--vis, but also that
her field is eros, relationship and love, and that his own is logos, dis
crimination and knowledge. He speaks as a man would speak to a
woman. He knows that she must attach herself to something, that she
must love, and that she will remain in a complete participation mystique I
with the outer world unless he does something about it.
It would be rare, I think, to find a man today who had objectified his
eros side and personified her to this extent, and who could set out to use
his mind to differentiate his feeling by beginning such a conversation
with his anima! It would be rare to find such a man, and almost impos
sible to find a woman who could achieve this differentiation between
her own field and that of her animus. The fact that our civilization is
patriarchal obviously makes it more difficult for women. We speak a
masculine language and are so accustomed to saying, I think, that it
is very difficult to objectify the animus and to realize that often we
should be much nearer the mark if we said, He thinks in me. It is not
difficult to know this theoretically, but it is very hard to put it into prac
tice. If we can do so, however, we are for the first time in a position to
consider whether we really say Yes or No to our own thoughts and
words.
Jung recommended this as an actual technique for women who were
trying to know their animus. He told me to think over any important
conversation at a later time, trying to remember exactly what I had said,
and then to consider if I would say the same again. If not, I should
determine what had made me give an opinion, or say this or that, which
was not what I really had thought. Further, I should try to catch the
thoughts that passed through my mind and apply the same procedure to
them.
I do not know whether he recommended the same technique to men
with regard to their feeling. Men probably say, I feel, much less often
than women say, I think, but they certainly also identify with their
feeling exactly as women do with their thought.
Therefore it is striking that Hugh marks such a clear line between the
realm of his thought and the realm of his anima, and sticks to this firm
piece of ground throughout the text. We can learn a great deal from
him which could be of the greatest use in our own active imagination.
The soul replies that she cannot love what she does not see; she has
never been able to exclude anything which she can see from her love,
but she has not yet found anything to love above everything else. Then
she complains that she has already learned that the love of this world is
disappointing; either she loses what she loves through its decay, or
something she likes better comes in between and she feels bound to
change. Thus, her desire still vacillatesshe can neither live without
love nor find the true love.
It was clear from Hughs first question that his mind had already
learned to see the eternal ideas behind the visible object. Remember, he
taught that the world was Gods book and that the human being is illi
terate when he cannot read this book. It is clear from her answer that his
own soul belongs to the illiterate and that she is caught in the concu-
piscentiashe has, as yet, no individual qualities, constancy or discrim
ination. Naturally, Hughs feeling life would lack the differentiation of
his mind.
This reply reveals a man whose anima would project herself indiscrim
inately, from one woman to the next. If he had not been a monk with a
fixed program and, above all, if he had not made this amazing effort to
objectify his anima, Hugh would obviously have been possessed by her
and would have followed her peregrinations in a completely unconscious
way. Presumably, this tendency was one of the reasons that drove him
into this conversation. She is, however, not quite identical with this
condition; she is rather an old soul, so to speak, and has already learned
something from disillusionment.
Jung always said that there was not enough scientific proof of reincar
nation for us to be sure there was any such thing. It was certainly a fact,
however, that peoples souls were of very different ages. Many people
had to spend their whole lives learning things that were self-evident to
others. Hughs soul already knows that the love of temporal things is
disappointing, which is something that many souls do not seem to
know at all. In these materialistic days, I am afraid one could say that it
is something the vast majority does not know, either in the conscious
mind, where Hugh had evidently known it for years, or in the uncon
scious soul.
Hugh seizes on this point and tells her in his next speech that he is
glad she is not entirely imprisoned in the love of worldly things. It
would be worse if she had made her home in them, for now she is only a
homeless wanderer and can still be recalled onto the right path. But she
will never find eternal love while she yields to the attraction of the
visible.
Hugh makes his philosophy very clear, calling forth an indignant
protest from the soul: how can anything invisible be loved? If there is no
true, eternal love in tangible and visible things, then every lover is
doomed to eternal misery. How could anyone be called a man who,
forgetting his human nature and disdaining the bond of community,
only loved himself in a lonely and deplorable manner? Therefore, she
says, Hugh must either consent to her love of the visible or produce
something better.
This seems to be a strikingly clear descriptiongiven by the soul
herselfof the way the anima is entangled in the external world: the
Indian Maya, the dancer. It agrees with Jungs latest description of the
anima in Aion.6 The anima is an autonomous figure in Hugh and does
not scruple to attack him in a way that reminds one of the Bas remark:
"Are you alive at all? There is, of course, a lot to be said for her point
of view; to a great extent, monastic life is a denial of the outer realiza
tion of the anima. We know nothing of Hughs mother, but the
mothers of his two great contemporaries, Norbert and Bernard of Clair-
vaux, certainly played a role in their sons becoming monks . During her
pregnancy, Norberts mother dreamed that she gave birth to a great
archbishop, and Bernards mother, that she gave birth to a dog that
filled the world with its barking. A Churchman interpreted this dream
to her at the time, saying that her son would be a great preacher. Since
Hugh became a monk before he left Germany, when he was still under
20, we may be sure that he also had a significant mother complex.
Comparing the Bas and the souls attacks on the two men, we find
that the Ba protests in a wholly constructive manner against the man
throwing away his individual life, whereas the soul speaks from a more
collective standpoint, saying "Dont do anything about yourself; it is
C. G. Jung, Aion: Researches Into the Phenomenology of the Self, vol. 9> part i,
Collected Works (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), pars. 20-26.
morbid. It is therefore a more destructive nuance, for the general idea

is that looking inwardly at yourself is morbid.
But at the end, she challenges him, as we read in Aion that the anima
always challenges a man with her dangerous quality, in an effort to
bring out his greatness.7 He must produce something better if he wants
her to give up the world.
Very intelligently, Hugh meets this danger by turning the tables and
telling her that her own beauty transcends by far that of the world; if she
could only see herself, she would see how foolish it is to love anything
outside; and he sings a hymn of praise to her beauty.
This clever, if somewhat unscrupulous, appeal to feminine vanity is
evidently partly designed to take the wind out of her sails by suggesting
that he is autoeroticthat he only loves himself with a lonely and
deplorable love. (One should remark in passing that it is possible, since
he is so impressed by her beauty, that this active imagination was visual
as well as auditory; i.e., that Hugh may have seen his soulwith the
eyes of his mind, as Dorn expresses it8while he was talking to her.)
If Hugh had been talking to an exterior woman, this speech would
certainly have been unscrupulous, because of the dangerous magical
effect which emanates from flattery. But, as Jung has pointed out,
magicwhich certainly includes flatteryis only in its right place when
used on our own unconscious, and Hugh was talking to his anima.
But he evidently spreads the butter too thickly, for she is in no way
impressed (in German, er redet an ihr vorbei). She replies coldly that
one can see everything except oneself and that she is justified in calling
anyone foolish who wishes to enjoy his love by looking in the mirror. He
must give her a different kind of mirror if he wants anything of that
kind. Love cannot endure in loneliness and is not love at all if it is not
poured on a suitable companion.
It is becoming very clear that the soul is as extraverted as he is intro
verted, as is indeed only to be expected. It is useless to talk in the way
Hugh is talking to an extravert, for at first all looking within strikes
them as purely morbid and autoerotic. Moreover, from her point of view
she is quite right; relationship to other people is indispensable. They
might have argued this point forever, like the Gnostic text translated by
7Ibid.
Gerhard Dorn, "Speculativa philosophia, Theatrum Chemicum, I, p. 275.
Mead in which Christ and John the Baptist can never reach a decision as
to whether the mysteries should be given to the world or not.5
The important point in this speech seems to be that the soul asks him
for a different kind o f mirror, for this amounts to a confession that she
requires the light of his consciousness; if he does not give it to her, she
will remain stuck fast in the world. This point is of the greatest impor
tance to the theme of active imagination, for it shows us that passive
watching and listening are wholly insufficient. Only if we give the
utmost from the conscious as well, can anything significant be achieved.
We find the same realization of the anima needing human conscious
ness in the Devatas (anima figures) of Buddha. I will quote two short
examples:10
Sutra Three: Standing at the side, the Devata repeated the following
lines to the Blessed One (Buddha):
Existence passes, short are lifes days,
No furtherprotection has he who approaches
old age.
So keeping the danger o f death before one's
eyes,
Surely one should workfor merit and
happiness to arise.
The Blessed One replies:

Existence passes, short are lifes days,
No furtherprotection has he who approaches
old age.
So keeping the dangers o f death before one's
eyes,
One should surely look on eternalpeace and
avoid the lures o f the world which entice!
George Robert Stow Mead, ed. and trans., Thrice Greatest Hermes, 3 vols. (London:
1949).
George Robert Stow Mead, A Mithraic Ritual, (Echoes of the Gnosis Series), (London:
1907).
10Jung, E. T. H. Lectures, vol. 3, pp. 86ff; 1st ed., pp. 98ff.
Note the difference in the last lines. Buddha is saying much the same
to his Devata as Hugh does to his soul.
In Sutra Two we find:
One Devata says to Dost thou not know, fool, the word o f the
another (who has Perfect One?
spoken ignorantly): Transient verily are allforms,
They are subject to the laws o f appearance
and disappearance;
They arise and vanish again;
To bring them to an end is blessed.
,It is interesting that Buddha, some 1600 years before, should have to
\j teach his anima very much as Hugh does in our text, and as any man
who held such a conversation today with his anima would still have
to do.
Hugh takes up the souls challenge in a very long speech. He begins
with the statement that no one is lonely if God is with him, and that
love is only strengthened when the desire for worthless things is
subdued. Then he insists on the necessity for self-knowledge, and that
she must first realize her own value in order not to dishonor herself by
loving anything less worthy. He tells her that she knows love is fire, and
that everything depends on what fuel is thrown on this fire, for she will
inevitably become like everything which she loves.
Then Hugh takes over a bit of her own style and tells her bluntly that
her face is not invisible to herself and that her eye can see nothing until
it can see itself; only the transparency necessary for this self-contempla-
tion will prevent delusive phantoms from darkening her vision of
everything else.
These statements are a sort of prologue to Hughs real thesis. He tells
her some profound psychological truths, presumably hoping that some
of the seed will fall on fertile ground and take root later, for, if he had
stopped here, I doubt that she would have been more impressed than
before. As you know, we often do not understand a psychological truth
when we first hear it; we store it somewhere, however, and it will often
emerge, even years afterward, and very frequently as our own idea! For
the most part, it seems that Hugh merely throws his bread on the
waters.
In the last sentence, Hugh insists that the soul can see herself and that
her eye will never see anything clearly until she does. He is evidently
warning her against the danger of projection. We might further suggest
that he tries, like an alchemist, to force his extraverted anima to become
the transparent lapis, to internalize her forces and thus to transform
them, by coagulation, into the indestructible crystal or diamond.
He goes on to tell her that if she cannot see herself, she should
consider an outside opinion. (He plays on a previous remark of hers
that, while rejecting the idea of being able to see herself, man learns to
know his own face by the ear rather than by the eye. ) Then, for the
first time, he mentions her bridegroom and tells her that though she has
not seen him, he has seen and loved her. He loves her with a unique
love, Hugh says, but she ignores and despises it. If she cannot see him,
she should consider his gifts as her dowry. He then enumerates these
gifts: everything that she loves in the visible world.
Then he scolds her severely for taking the visible gifts and ignoring
the concealed giver. She must beware or she will rightly be called a/ */
whore and not a bride, he says, if she accepts presents and does not
return them with loveif she prefers the gifts to the love of the giver.
She must either refuse the gifts or reciprocate by giving a unique love to
the bridegroom who gives them. This is the only pure love.
Hugh accepts her challenge of providing a different mirror. He is
wisely giving her an object to love and trying to prove His existence by
showing Him as the invisible giver of all things that she can see and
appreciate.
In Church language, this bridegroom is Christ or God; in psycho
logical language, the Self. Hugh is doing that which we can do to
depotentiate a too-powerful anima or animus: he is doing his utmost to
place her in the service of the Self. Fundamentally, the conflict between
a man and his anima, or a woman and her animus, is insoluble, for
they represent the most basic pair of opposites: male and female.
Therefore, almost the only hope of a solution is to grow above the
problem, as is so particularly expressed in The Secret o f the Golden
Flower, mentioned at the end of The World-Weary Man, Chapter 5.
In Jungs commentary, we hear that an insoluble problem is seldom
solved on its own terms; rather, it loses its urgency through the dawning
of a new way of life. Hugh is attempting such a solution, just as the Ba
did not solve the World-Weary Mans problem on its own terms, but
showed him something more important: a common home with the Ba.
Hugh and his soul can only be reconciled in the Self: God is a union of
opposites, as Nicholas Cusanus says.11
Hugh de St. Victors mind is well aware of this fact, but his anima is
not. She is too deeply entangled in the world of the senses, so his only
hope is to use a language which she can understand, slowly.bringing her
to the knowledge of the existence of a uniter of opposites. Very wisely,
he gives up all attempts to take away the world she loves, but makes use
of it to prove his point by representing it as the gift of a bridegroom who
loves her with a unique love.
At this point, 1 would like to mention a modern dream which shows
the same problem from the womans point of view. It is part of a very
interesting series which illustrates the conflict between the collective
point of view of the animus and the intensely personal standpoint of the
shadow. It is worth mentioning that the dreamer was not in analysis,
which means that the material is then often more naive and complete.
This dreamer was constantly torn in two between an inexorably severe
animus who usually appeared in her dreams as a monk or a priest, and a
passionate, childish shadow who appeared as a child or an excitable,
emotional woman. On the one side, she had to accept all the remon
strances of the just, but inexorable, animus; on the other, she had to
lower herself to the level of the shadow, against the express orders of the
priest.
In the dream, she was obliged to remain standing in the presence of
the priest, but nevertheless sank down onto a bench beside the despair
ing woman. She says that she did not forget her clearly realized obliga
tion to remain standing, nor did she act from defiance, but she was
compelled by a compassion greater than herself to sit down beside this
woman. When she looked at the priest, she saw mercy in his face, but
she knew he would punish her severely for what she had done. When
the tension was at its height, she found herself in a great cathedral with
the priest behind her and the woman whom she had befriended in front
of her. Evidently, they were awaiting some sort of judgment or decision.
At last a voice was heard, coming from behind and above the priest.
They all listened in both fear and gladness to this voice, which was as
majestic as the cathedral itself. The voice was full of compassion, yet the
judgment was severe: If the child (or passionate woman) recovered from
her wounds, the dreamer might go her way in peace, but if not. . . . The
"Jung, Collected Works, vol. 8 par. 406. Cf. vol. 14 par. 200.
dreamer could not hear the alternative, but the inference was that it was
a sentence of death. Severest justice was thus tempered with mercy in a
way which could be accepted by them all.
To return to our text, we come now to the Souls answer. She tells
Hugh that the sweetness of his words have set her on fire, although she
has never seen this bridegroom whom he praises so highly. From his
description alone, however, she almost feels obliged to love him. But
there is a drawback which will dampen her happiness unless it can be
removed by his consoling hand.
Hugh has produced an almost magical effect on the soul. His words
have set her afire. She does not yet grasp the great psychological truth
which he has told her about the Self, for she is still a superficial extra-
vert; she is charmed by the words themselves and not by the idea behind
them. However, she also seems to see the danger of their magic, which
she turns back on him. She emphasizes the charm of his words and his
consoling hand in an effort to inflate him, a favorite trick of both anima
and animus for which we must always be on guard in active imagina
tion. As autonomous daimons, they keep their power largely by produc-j^
ing inflation and inferiority; they use these weapons ruthlessly and in a
way that is difficult to detect. If she manages to inflate Hugh, so that he
begins to think, / am doing it; what a fine fellow/am, she will have
him in her pocket, and that is a power which the anima and animus
as far as my experience goesnever quite surrender. At the slightest
provocation, they try it again.
Hugh says he is wholly confident that there is nothing in the love of
her bridegroom which could possibly diminish her pleasure, but in order
that it shall no longer seem as if he wanted to deceive her, he begs her to
reveal her difficulties to him.
Hugh is no fool. He avoids her trap very cleverly; he admits that it
might seem as if he were deceiving her for his own ego purposes. In fact,
I have the feeling that he probably examined his own conscience on the
subject very carefully at this point.
One must not forget that, although the conversation is written as if it
took place at one sitting, this is by no means the case. These conversa
tions demand the whole man and need a great deal of thought. I some
times continue them over a considerable period of time and often
contemplate a move of my vis--vis for quite some time before I can see
what he is driving at, or before I can see the right answer.
As Jung has often pointed out, there is either no time or a completely
different concept of time in the unconscious, so that it is often possible

to take up the same theme with the same vis--vis later. But these things
have a tendency to sink down again into the unconscious, so that any
unnecessary delay or excuse is always fatal. I want to emphasize that such
a conversation requires ones utmost effort, however we give it. It was
only by reducing himself to his human dimensions, by seeing the
danger that he might deceive her for his own purposes, that Hugh
avoided his animas trap. We must constantly remember how small we
are in such conversations with these more or less eternal figures.
The soul then explains her difficulty at considerable length. Although
. she admits the gifts of the bridegroom are great, she sees nothing
/ 1 unique about them, for she must share them with other people and
\ even with the animals. It is very unfair to expect her to love her bride
groom exclusively when there is no sign that he exclusively loves her. She
says that Hugh knows this perfectly well and must show her where the
uniqueness exists.
This is an example of highly feminine psychology. Every woman, and
presumably every anima, harbors this demand for exclusiveness. (Jung
used to tell the story of an insane woman at Burghlzli who shouted in
chapel: He is my Christ and you are all whores! ) Any woman who is
honest with herself can find this same demand somewhere within
herself, although it is usually projected onto a real man who then has to
suffer, in some way or other, from her exclusive possessiveness.
This speech confirms our suspicion that the anima was trying to lead
Hugh down the garden path with her flattery, for at this point, she
clearly loves her own way a great deal more than her bridegroom. This
/ demand to be the only loved one is fundamentally one of power, not
love. To some extent, Hugh has clearly sacrificed a conscious ego-power
will, but here he discovers that his eros, his feeling life, his anima, is
going on in the same old way. People often tell you, if you suggest that
they are clinging passionately to this or that, Oh, no, I have sacrificed
it completely. This may be quite true on the conscious level, but this
example shows us that if we think that is enough, we have made out the
bill without the host. By his intelligent handling of the situation, Hugh
is finding out just what the anima is.
, Hugh answers his anima very cleverly again by telling her that he is
not angry with her, for evidently she is really searching for perfect love.
He does not criticize the negative in her speech, but emphasizes the
positive, like a husband might say, Darling, you are quite right; I see
your motives are above reproach, as a prologue to a large BUT. If

Hugh had not been a monk, he seems to have had some qualifications
for being a successful husband!
Hugh continues with a long attempt to bring some discrimination
into his feeling life, dividing the bridegrooms gifts, for instance, into
three classes: those that are common to all; those that are special gifts
shared with a limited number of other people; and those that are
unique gifts. But this speech cuts no ice with the anima, who tells him
he has rejected, rather than uprooted, her difficulties, so I mention it
only to show the extraordinary complexity of such conversations. Hugh
tries an approach with purely rational arguments, which does not
impress her at all. She is no longer under the magic spell of his words
and, like a woman, insists on facts.
He continues, however, along the same lines, in spite of her protest.
He only begins to impress her when he starts a descriptionfounded on
factabout what this unique love really is. I will quote the two most
important passages in full:
Love may be happiness alone, but it is far greater if one can rejoice in the
happiness o f many. For spiritual love becomes greater in the individual
if it is common to all. It does not decrease when it is shared, for its fruit
is to befound unique and undividedin every individual.
In other words, her exclusive right to unique love sets no limits to the
amount of people with whom she shares this spiritual love. She need not
fear that the heart of her bridegroom will be torn apart, as in human
passion, for it is whole and undivided everywhere. Hugh continues:
All must therefore love the one with a unique love, for all are loved
uniquely and should love each other12 in the one as if they were one and
through the love o f the one they should become one.
Alchemy is full of references to the subject of one, but space forbids
me to repeat them here. Basically, the One in alchemy and the
One to which Hugh refers here are, of course, symbols of the
archetype of the Self.
In Psychology of the Transference, Jung quotes Origen as saying:
Thou seest that he (man) who seemeth to be one is not one, but as
many (different) persons appear in him as he hath velleities (self-willed
^Alternative translation: should love themselves.

impulses). Therefore the goal of the Christian, according to Origen, is

to become an inwardly united man; to become one.15
There is also a parallel in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad that is so
near to our text that I cannot resist quoting a few lines from it:
Yagnavalkya says:
Verily, a husband is not dear that you may love the husband; but that
you may love the Self therefore a husbandis dear.
Verily, a wife is not dear that you may love the wife; but that you may
love the Self therefore a wife is dear.
This is then repeated of all the things which men love and the passage
ends: Verily, everything is not dear that you may love everything; but
that you may love the Self, therefore everything is dear. 14
To us, the meaning of this text is found mainly in our experience. It is
most evident, especially for women and also in our text, in relationship.
We all know that no human relationship is total. We can share this or
that with so-and-so, something else with someone else, and so on. We
often feel split up, faithless, or torn between our relationships. But
when we begin to feel a certain loyalty to our own unconscious, to
something that is infinitely larger than our ego, we begin to realize
something of this loyalty to the One, to the Self, which Hugh describes
in religious language as loyalty to the bridegroom of the soul, and we
begin to see that he is simply describing a psychologicalfact.
This is sometimes very clear in the transference. All the worst diffi
culties in the transference are usually signposts that lead toward the
experience of the psychological Self. The analyst has the task of standing
firm and, through consultation with his own unconscious, giving each
patient what belongs to him or her in the One, no more and no less.
And the patient has the task of accepting the suffering involved in the
sacrifice of his egotistical demands, possibly and instead of learning to
know, the One in whom alone the solution of the problem can be found.
And very often, the most help can be found by both sides in active
imagination.
At the beginning of her reply, the soul again refers to the charm of
Hugh's explanations. She says that for their sake, she begins to feel
more ardor in pursuit of this love which, without them, was beginning
to sicken her. Then she becomes more practical and says that she must
I5Jung, Collected Works, vol. 16, par. 397.
'*The Upanishads (Oxford: Oxford University Press), vol. 1, pp. 109f.
be shown that this love is truly effective. She will doubt it no longer if
she can see from its practical effect that it is genuine.
Although she still feels the charm of his words, they no longer satisfy
her. They had their use in inducing her to listen at all, but now Hugh
must produce facts. This reaction of the soul exactly agrees with our
experience of the unconscious: it has an exceedingly empirical stand
point, and suggestion has no lasting effect on it. It does indeed at times "
react to suggestion, but it will always turn around in the end and
demand facts.
The main point which Hugh makes in a very long reply to the soul is ^
that the bridegroom has not only given her existence, but a beautiful
and formed existence, and moreover, a resemblance to himself.
This is an exceedingly important point which contains the whole idea
of individuation. This beautifully formed existence is presumably,
the unique form which each of us has the chance of bringing into ('
reality. It is indeed given to us, yet we have the choice of whether we
bring it into reality or not. Jung compared it more than once to the
framework of a crystal, but whether this framework hardens into a
crystal depends, to some extent at least, on ourselves.
There is a passage in Jacob Bhme in which he speaks of God having a
subtle body, but that Lucifer lost this body when he fell from
heaven. Jung once said of the passage that one can take this idea of a
body symbolically as meaning an individual shape or form. According to
Bhme, the devil has renounced his individual form; that is, he will not
submit to the process of individuation. Therefore, in our text it would
be fatal if the soul followed the devils example and renounced this gift
of the bridegroom, this beautifully formed existence ; in other words,
it would be fatal if she refused the process of individuation.15
The next point which Hugh makes is that not only has the bride
groom given her a beautifully formed existence, but also a resemblance
to himself.
In Psychology and Alchemy, Jung says:
The intimacy of the relationship between God and the soul excludes
every depreciation of the latter from the outset.16 It wouldperhaps be
going too far to speak o f a kinship, but in any case the soul must have a
,5The Works o fJacob Behmen, trans. and ed. by G. Ward and T. Langcake, 4 vols.
(London 1764-81).
The fact that the devil can also take possession of the soul does not lessen its signifi
cance in any way.
means of relating (in other words, something which corresponds to the

Divine Being) in itself, or a connection could never take place.17Formu
lated psychologically, the corresponding factor is the archetype o f the
image o f God.18
This something in ourselves which corresponds to the Divine Being
is formulated by Hugh de St. Victor as the resemblance of the soul to
God. In this text, we touch on the terrific paradox of our close relation
ship to the divine aspect of the Self with which we can never identify
without the most disastrous inflation. There was perhaps less danger of
this inflation in Hughs time, for throughout the text all the action is
attributed to God, and the soul is the mere recipient of His gifts.
The alchemistic idea that the redemption of something divine
depends on man is by no means wholly lacking in our text, although the
main emphasis is naturally always put on the efficacy of God. But one
could also say that the goal of this whole conversationfreeing the soul
from her entanglement in, or even identity with, the worldis the basic
goal of the alchemists: liberating something divine from the darkness of
matter. This idea is particularly clear when the soul is reminded of her
likeness to God. We owe this suggestion of the alchemistic side of this
idea to Hughs exceedingly scientific mind, which did not hesitate to
admit the actual state of his soul as revealed in this conversation.
He continues by telling her that, by means of this love, she has been
given four gifts. Interestingly, these four gifts are an exact description of
the four functions. The two rational functions are even so described in
words: feeling and discrimination, /th e chief quality of the
I thinking function! Suitably enough, the two irrational functions are
,/ described more irrationally: sensation. as her being decked outwardly
Iwith the jewels of the senses, and intuition. as her inward garment
of wisdom.(This seems to be yet another proof of the archetypal
character of Jungs four functions: Hugh clearly discovered them in the
twelfth century in this most genuine talk with his soul.)Then, quite
suddenly, Hugh turns on his soul and scolds her, telling her she has
deserted her bridegroom, degraded her love with strangers, squandered
his giftsin short, she is no longer a bride; she has become a whore.
,7Therefore, psychologically it is wholly inconceivable that God could be a "totally

different entity, for a totally different entity" could never be as close to the soul as
God actually is. Only paradoxes, or rather antinomies, are psychologically correct as
expressions for the image of God.
l8Cf. Hulls translation in Jungs Collected Works, vol. 12,par. 11.
Up to this point, the soul has said nothing for pages, except most
appreciatively begging him to continue, so this sudden, violent attack
gives one quite a shock. Presumably, Hugh realizes that she is not
understanding him. In passages too long to quote, he has been getting
more and more into a "you-should tone; probably he feels insecure
and therefore challenges the resistance of his soul with considerable
emotion. Perhaps he had risen a bit above himself with his contempla
tion of the Divine and is suddenly furious that he cannot control half of
his functions.
In a confession which he makes later, Hugh identifies himself with his
soul and takes some of the blame for her shortcomings. Therefore, his
sudden and unexpected burst of fury may be anger at his own failings.
Violent emotion concerning the faults of others is practically always
caused by a projection, for the weakness that really gets under our skin is
always our own.
We should perhaps consider for a moment what it was in everyday life
that induced Hugh to begin this conversation with his soul. She is repre
sented as entangled in the world, so worldly aims and ambitions prob
ably played a considerable part in Hughs psychology and were obvi
ously incompatible with his inward goal. In spite of, or perhaps because
of, the rather condescending tone which Hugh sometimes uses toward
his soul, especially in this outbreak of emotion, one can detect the man
who is terrified of being possessed by his anima. One could imagine that
he constantly caught himself in littleor bigplots with a worldly aim.
There must have been some powerful motivating force behind such a
genuine attempt to come to terms with his anima. He forms an interest
ing contrast in this respect to Father Joseph in Huxleys Grey Eminence,
who could never sacrifice his animas lust for worldly power.19
On the other hand, it is possible that Hugh is intentionally letting out
anger which he could control, in order to give his soul a shock aimed at
waking her from her unconsciousness. In an interesting discussion on
this point, Jung said that the game was always lost if one lost ones
temper in a discussion. Mrs. Jung retorted that sometimes anger was the
right reaction and that he had said so himself. Jung replied that that was
quite true, but only if one could just as well control ones anger. If one
let the anger get the upper hand, it was always a mistake. We can only
judge this point by the effect of the outbreak on the soul.
She replies to Hugh in a way that shows she is deeply offended. She
AldousL. Huxley, Grey Eminence (New York & London: Harper & Brothers, 1941).
had hoped that his hymn of praise was leading to another goal, but she
sees that he only undertook it to create an opportunity to show her how
hateful she is. Therefore she wishes that the conversation had never
taken place and that it should now be shrouded in forgetfulness if suspi
cion has no pity on the guilty.
Hugh has nearly lost everything he has gained, for the soul begins to
wish that the whole conversation could be forgotten; in other words, she
is thinking of returning to the unconscious. In our own active imagina
tion, we can never afford to forget how easily such figures disappear,
and from the standpoint of feeling, Hugh has made a big mistake. He
was getting perilously near an animus language: you should and you
should not. Evidently, the anima resents this even more than a woman
would; in fact, when one remembers how near the anima is to nature,
the wonder is that she stood so much.
We are touching on the problem of our whole Christian inheritance
from the Middle Ages. Medieval man was forced, from the absolute
necessity of differentiating the white at all costs, to be very hard on
himself. A great many modern people still function in exactly the same
way; they find it very difficult to forgive themselves anything. But it is
dangerous not to be able to forgive yourself. Christ said, Love your
neighbor as yourself and we cannot really love or forgive our neigh
borsno matter how we may deceive ourselves on this pointuntil we
can love and forgive ourselves. The animus is a great deceiver on this
point and loves to emphasize how unpardonably we have behaved. I
found I had to learn to say to him often: Dont be in such a hurry;
perhaps I was wrong, but let us wait and see how the situation develops
before I worry too much about it.
Hughs outburst was certainly threatening, for he is in danger of
losing all contact with the anima. All the same, it may have been neces
sary to take energetic measures in order to wake her up to her own short
comings for, since she did not see her own beauty, presumably she was
also blind to her own ugly qualities. Such things are sometimes inevi
table, but it is a case of Scylla and Charybdis: if we say too much, we
break the contact, and if we say too little, we have no chance of influ
encing or changing these figures.
It is clear from his extensive reply that Hugh saw the danger of losing
her, for he hastens to assure her that he had no intention of heaping
Italics mine.
blame upon her, and that he only spoke for her instruction. His inten
tion was to show her how great the love of her bridegroom was, for it was
in no way affected by her faults. On the contrary, when her bridegroom
saw her lost in sins, he descended to the human level himself in order to
redeem her.
Hugh thus cleverly turns the tables on the soul. By emphasizing how
greatly she is loved, she falls under the fascination of this idea again,
and we hear no more about her desire to forget the conversation.
Psychologically, the ego once again abdicates in favor of the Self. Hugh
sacrifices his all-too-human anger at the shortcomings of his anima,
placing the matter in the hands of the Self.
The soul replies by saying that she is beginning to love her guilt, and
even blesses it, for she sees that it has drawn forth the love which she
now so passionately desires in order to wash it away. Then she turns from
Hugh and addresses her bridegroom directly for the first time, asking
him what he found in her to love her even to death.
The soul thereby compensates Hughs purely moral standpoint, and
it seems that her wisdom greatly exceeds his. He has put the whole
emphasis on the white, but she sees that such a total love could only be
constellated by both opposites, and that it was the black in her that
called it forth. It seems highly significant that she turns for the first time
to her bridegroom as if it were something one could hardly expect Hugh
to understand.
We find this same idea in the works of Meister Eckhart, nearly a
hundred years later. He emphasized that the grace of God could only be
experienced by those who know the whole misery of being lost in sin,
and he pointed out that all the apostles were therefore particularly great
sinners. This idea was evidently already in the air in the time of Hugh de
St. Victor, though we do not know how far it really broke through into
his consciousness. At all events, in his blessedly scientific accuracy, he
faithfully records what his soul says, although at first only as a sort of
conversation among archetypes.
Once the soul has gained this firm piece of ground, she quite calmly
allows Hugh to scold her as much as he likes, which he does at consider
able length. She gets a bit bored only occasionally and interrupts him
from time to time to beg him to tell her more about this fascinating
love.
The dialogue is interrupted by a very interesting confession which
Hugh addresses directly to God and in which he makes himself respon
sible for all the sins he has hitherto attributed to the soul. He gives
thanks for the unique gifts which have been given to him, saying, for
instance, that God has left many of his contemporaries in the darkness
of ignorance, whereas Hugh has been especially favored with illumina
tion by which he can recognize Gods wishes. He has thus been able to
know God more truly and to love Him more purely, believe in Him
more honestly and follow Him more ardently than his contemporaries.
He gives thanks for the special gifts he has received: susceptible senses,
great intelligence, good memory, ease and charm of speech, convincing
knowledge, success in his work, charm in dealing with his fellow men,
progress in his studies, persistence, and so on.
Since this confession begins by acknowledging as his own the sins
which his anima committed, Hugh is very wise to draw his attention to
the corresponding positive qualities. When we realize our negative
qualities, we are too apt to forget their opposites. Yet the human psyche
like everything elseis always double: positive and negative.
After this confession, the soul makes a long speech in which she recog
nizes the right of this love to be called unique, even though it is simul
taneously universal. It even seems to her as if her bridegroom had
nothing else to do than look after her salvation. She makes a concession
to Hughs point of view by regretting her sins, and she sees that they
have now become a hindrance in learning to be a receptacle for this
longed-for love.
Then one of the most interesting things in the whole text happens.
Hugh announces that a miracle has occurred and says:
I see how yousince the beginning of our talkhave put much that
seemed opposed to love in the center and have thus not weakened the
power oflove but increasingly strengthenedit.
No sooner does she give in than Hugh also takes over something of
her point of view; now it is no longer a conversation among archetypes,
but a direct admission on Hughs part that all he has so disliked in her
has strengthened, and not weakened, this love. Just as the World-Weary
Man took over something of the Ba in his last speeches, so Hugh
though to a much smaller degreetakes over something of his soul.
Putting things in the center has, of course, the significance of making
them conscious, giving them to the Self, instead of keeping them in a
corner as private sins, and in time, forgetting them altogether.
These mutual concessions have an immediate practical effect, for the
soul asks him one last question: Is it her bridegroom who touches her
tangibly at times, so tender and yet with such strength that she feels
completely changed?
This subtle substance which touches the soul is very often mentioned
in alchemy. The Rosarium Philosopborum, for instance, tells us that
some masters have seen the secret and even touched it with their
hands.21 And the alchemists frequently say that we speak of what we
know and bear witness to what we have seen. Jung has often pointed
out that the alchemists only wrote for those who have experienced such
things and made no attempt to explain the matter to those who have
not. This passage in our text touches on this whole problem and on the
problem of rebirth, but it would lead us too far off our path to do more
than mention this fact.
Hugh answers by telling his soul that it is indeed her bridegroom who
thus touches her, but only as a foretaste of what is yet to come. He is still
intangible and invisible to her and she often even believes him to be
absent, so she cannot yet possess him. Hugh then implores her to recog
nize, love, follow, grasp and possess the One. The text ends with the
souls declaration that this is now her greatest wish.
Conclusion
The text ends with an almost complete victory of the man over the
soulsuch a complete victory that one is left with a lurking doubt as to
whether it is not a bit too good to be true. Undoubtedly, this is largely a
matter of the time when the direction toward consciousness led upward
toward the light. Nevertheless, there were very negative elements about
in the twelfth century: among others, the struggle between Emperor and
Pope, which involved the destruction of whole cities; the amazing para-
psychological phenomena which took place during the founding of the
Premonstratention Order near Laon, only about eighty miles from St.
Victor; and the actual murder of the Prior Thomas at St. Victor, all
during Hughs residence there.
Naturally, the ego of a man of Hughs Christian convictions was one
sided concerning the opposites. He must have believed in doing good
and avoiding evil. But the Self in all ages contains both opposites, as the
God of the Old Testament shows clearly. God is a union of oppo
21Rosariumphilosopborum, p. 205; Jung, Eranos 1938, p. 46.
sites, as Nicholas Cusanus says.22 The deepest reason that the Ba was so
successful in the Egyptian text, and Hugh so successful in this conversa
tion, was that both were on the side of the totality of the human person
ality, of the Self. The Ba did all he could to persuade the World-Weary
Man to give up his attempt to separate himself from the totality by a
foolish and ill-considered suicide. He forced the man into increasing
misery until he was able to see that the totality, the union with his Ba,
was the only important issue and to grow above the problem of life or
death.
With Hugh de St. Victor, it was the man who was on the side of this
totality, which was really the sole reason for his success. He never per
sisted in putting an ego demand on his soul. As we saw, the whole thing
was in danger at the slightest suggestion of him doing so. According to
his knowledge and as far as as he could see at that time, he used his
brilliant mind to detach his undifferentiated feeling from its split-up
condition in the world, where no doubt it worked itself out as the self-
willed impulses which Origen had already seen as the great barrier to
man becoming one with the Self.
Just as the Egyptian text shows us how a man can behave when some
archetypal figure from the unconscious breaks in on his consciousness,
whether he likes it or not, and how he can have it out and eventually
come to terms with it, so the Hugh de St. Victor text shows us how it is
possible to intervene, by means of active imagination, when we are
constantly tripped up by some unconscious tendency of our own. In
spite of, or perhaps because of, the very condescending tone which
Hugh sometimes uses towards his soul, it is easy to detect the man who
is terrified of being possessed by his anima. But, and this cannot be
emphasized too often, he was successful only because he always sacri
ficed his own ego-power wishes. I remind the reader, for instance, of the
time when he was so angry that he could not control his soul and
suddenly criticized her unmercifully. If he had continued in such a
power attitude, he would have lost her altogether. There is nothing the
unconscious resents more than a power attitude on the part of the ego.
When we consider how much was said by his contemporaries, and in his
own confession, about Hughs charm with his fellow men, we realize
that getting his own way must have been childs play to him. Therefore,
Jung, Collected Works, vol. 8 par. 406. Cf. vol. 14 par. 200.
it is all the more meritorious that he sacrificed it so completely in this

conversation.
In this connection, we must also not forget the early age at which
Hugh died, hinting that his life may have been based on the pattern of
Abels, the light son of the Father,23 and that his destiny thus spared
him anything like the confrontation with evil which dogged the foot
steps, for instance, of his great contemporary Norbert.24 We need to
know more than we do concerning why Hugh died so early.
When Hugh admitted that everything he had so much disliked in his
soul had strengthened, rather than weakened, the power of love, he had
perhaps made the utmost concession which could have been expected of
him and, as pars pro toto, he thus opened the way to a genuine recon
ciliation between man and anima. We must not forget that Hugh was a
very critical man and therefore probably inclined to negative assump
tions concerning imperfectionsby negative assumptions I mean over-
hasty judgments which do not wait to see how a situation will develop,
but which immediately assume the worst. We have seen this tendency at
work in the conversation between Hugh and his soul: at the beginning,
for instance, the anima assumed that Hugh was autoerotic and that the
Victorine insistence on self-knowledge was merely morbid. Hugh con
stantly assumes the worst about his soul; not only does he liken her to a
whore more than once, but there are pages of negative criticism, some
times based on what seems to be very insufficient evidence. All good
to God and all evil to man or, in this case, to mans soul.
The opposite of negative assumptions is giving credit, the benefit of
the doubt, as we say. (Jung even once defined love as giving credit. )
This cannot have been easy for a critical man like Hugh, particularly in
regard to his own soul. Since he talks so much about love, we may be
fairly sure that it is no natural gift in him, but something which he tries
to attain with great effort. It seems to me that he does attain it
himselfprobably for the first time in the conversationwhen he gives
his soul the credit for having increased this love by putting things which
he personally dislikes in the center. This may appear to be a small
concession to the dark side butperhaps on account of his early death
it seems to have been sufficient, for it is followed immediately by the
Genesis 4:1-16.
24Micropaedia, vol. 7 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. 1943-73).
tangible evidence of the bridegrooms existence, which finally convinces

the soul.
But if it were a too one-sided solution, the matter would certainly
have come up again, at any rate had Hugh lived longer, as it always does
in our own active imagination when the solution is too superficial, or
when it does not allow enough room for one side or the other.
Whatever our opinion on these points may be, I hope that this
conversation illustrates the extraordinary difficulty of such talks with the
unconscious and the total effort which they require, as well as how
essential it is to work for the establishment of the totalityto put the
Self and not the ego in the center. The Ba expresses it as a common
home for conscious and unconscious; Hugh, as the soul giving herself as
a bride to Christ. Fundamentally, they are expressing the same thing:
the totality and unity of man.
CHAPTER 7
Anna Marjula
The Healing Influence o f Active Imagination
in a Specific Case o f Neurosis
Introduction
About ten years ago, a text entitled The Healing Influence of Active
Imagination in a Specific Case of Neurosis by Anna Marjula was
privately printed,* and since then I have received many requests to make
it more generally available. Jung had seen this piece of active imagina
tion and thought very well of it. He had even promised the author that
he would include it in a volume he thought of publishing, along with
some similar documents. Jung died, however, before he was able to
carry out this project. Anna was naturally disappointed, but I could not
publish her manuscript at that time because Jung had told me it should
on no account be published alone.
At the time, I compromised and, with the help of the Jungian clubs
and institutes, it was printed and privately circulated, under much the
same conditions as the Jung seminars. Copies were sold only to people
who had previous knowledge of Jungian psychology. I feel now,
1Anna Marjula, The Healing Influence of Active Imagination in a Specific Case of
Neurosis (Zurich: Schippert & Co., 1967).
133
however, that Jung would not object to its publication in this volume,
accompanied by several other examples of active imagination. It is
certainly an unusually good example, and I think it would be a great
pity if it disappeared.
I am presenting the first part of the original text, which consists
mainly of conversations with the Great Mother. The second part of the
text consists of drawings which Anna Marjula had created at the very
beginning of her analysis with Toni Wolff. The drawings themselves,
therefore, were a forerunner of her active imagination, but they would
be entirely incomprehensible by themselves. The interpretations which
appear in the booklet were made by Anna some time after her conversa
tions with the Great Mother, and, being conscious interpretations, have
nothing directly to do with active imagination. Nor has any effort been
made to bring the two parts together. It seems better, therefore, to omit
this section of the text, and to substitute a summary of some encounters
with the Great Spirit, which Anna had experienced after the booklet
had been printed. These seem to fit our material better; moreover, they
have never appeared before, even privately. I have also shortened my
introduction to her work, because all of the first part was on the general
subject of active imagination, which has been dealt with already in the
general introduction to this book.
The ways of doing active imagination are exceedingly varied and indi
vidual,2 but the visual and auditory methods are the two most usual.
Anna Marjula practiced both. In the visual method, which she used
first, she held fast to what she saw in pictures, a few of which appeared
in the second part of her manuscript. Of course, all of the material is
very condensed and shortened, but the fantasy of the tightrope dancer is
a good example of the visual method in movement, so to speak. How
ever, it was the auditory method, reported in the conversation, that
helped her most. Moreover, she achieved an unusually high level of
active imagination in these conversationsa level which takes an
unusual amount of work, concentration, honesty, courage and self-
criticism to attain.
Anna was never inclined to indulge in fantasy; on the contrary, she
had great difficulty in overcoming her resistances to doing active
imagination and enduring the very strange contents that the uncon
2Jung, The Transcendent Function,Collected Works, vol. 8, pars. I66ff. Cf. Also
Barbara Hannah, The Problem o f Contact with the Animus, Guild of Pastoral Psychol
ogy, Lecture 70, pp. 20-22.
ANNA MARJULA 135
scious produced. It can be seen that some of those contents were by no

means harmless; in that sense, one understands why so many people are
afraid of active imagination. But the contents were present from the
beginningthe most dangerous appeared (unrecognized by her at the
time, it is true) in the earliest picturestand naturally, the less they w ere^
seen, the more dangerous they actually were') One knew that there were
alarming megalomanic ideas at work, for instance, but they vanished
like smoke if any attempt was made to make them conscious: an enan-
tiodromia would immediately set in and dangerous feelings of inferior
ity would take their place.
Psychiatrists will certainly recognize themes and ideas that have led
many cases to the mental hospital, but this seems to add to the value of
the material. The way the Great Mother sometimes deals with this
explosive material shows that the unconscious itself possesses the anti
dote to its own poison. As Anna herself frankly admits, she was often
afraid of insanity, and her sisters suicide showed the possibility of an
inherited weakness in this respect. Moreover, for many yearsas she
herself describes ither own animus regularly destroyed any progress
that was made and did his best to support her tendency to panic.
Although I never thought she was likely to become insane, mainly on
account of her creative work in music and a sort of reassuring, innate
courage, I admit I did doubt for a long time whether or not it would be
possible to rescue her from the claws of her animus.3 This, in her case,
could only be achieved by the process of individuation. It soon became
clear that this was her destiny.
Thanks to Annas frankness and to her undeviating individual
honesty, I am able to be equally frank and admit freely that, even
though it was clear from the beginning that she was a valuable person
and could be even more so, she was a very wearing andfor many
yearsa discouraging case. Her negative father complex, reinforced by
the resistances to her Freudian analyst, made it impractical for her to
work with a man.4 From the beginning, Jung had the greatest respect for
The important aspect in which this courage showed itself was in her willingness to face
her shadow. This was obvious from the beginning, although for many years the animus
could still snatch such realizations away from her in order to keep the shadow for
himself. But slowly, particularly after the tightrope fantasy, Anna realized the value of
integrating her shadow, a realization which is really a conditio sine qua non for further
development.
4Anna frankly admits her difficulties with men, and the reader may see in some places
that she still had more work to do on her relationship to, and knowledge of, men.
her gifts and always kept a careful eye on her analysis; nevertheless, he
insisted on the main work being done by a woman. Anna is not Swiss
and always spent most of her time in her own country, so the treatment
was spread over a number of years.
In the early years, music was Annas great support, and naturally I did
all I could to encourage her in her profession. But from the beginning,
the animus had an ambivalent attitude toward this (see Annas own
account of her great vision ); increasingly, he tried to undermine it,
even persuading her at times that she must throw it out altogether. But
the first reassuring evidence that there was a power at work in Annas
psyche that was stronger than the animus, came in connection with one
of the worst of these animus attacks. Anna was in one of the moods she
describes when, despairing of ever being healed, she turned on me as
her analyst and on Jung as well, and decided to give up the profession
which was still an absolute conditio sine qua non at that time to the
continuation of her life. No one could shake her decision, and she left
for her own country more animus-possessed than ever before. This was
the only time I really despaired of the case; when she left, I feared the
battle was lost.
A few weeks later, however, I received a letter from her saying that the
most extraordinary thing had happened. All of her mail had been
forwarded to Zrich, but when she returned to her apartment in her
own country she found just one letter in the mailbox, which had unac
countably been thrown in there some weeks before. This letter
contained such a tempting professional offer that she felt it could not be
refused. But I would have refused it in Zrich, she wrote, for I was
quite determined then.
This incident changed my attitude toward the case. I saw that I was
only exhausting myself and doing no good trying to help Anna save
herself directly from her tyrannical animus. But, 1 asked myself, what
was it that saved the situation at the eleventh hour through a postmans
mistake? Of course, I could find no rational answer to my question, but
I decided to risk the hypothesis that there was something stronger than
the animus at work in Annas psyche and that this something did not
intend to allow the destruction of her process of individuation. In
Annas case, this was not an isolated synchronistic event. An even more
striking example occurred during another negative phase when Anna,
angry again at not being cured, turned against everything to do with
Jungian psychology. Then a strange accident happened to her. While on
ANNA MARJULA 137
a walk by the seaside, she was hit on the head by a ball, which necessi
tated a long hospital treatment. During this illness, she finally realized
that it was useless for her to try to escape the attempt to become whole,
for if she did, the round object (symbolpar excellence for wholeness)
would only pursue her.5
Jung often said to me that people rarely integrate what is told them
by anyone else, not even by an analyst to whom they may have a strong
transference. It is the things given them by their own unconscious that
make a lasting impression, Jung said. Anna Marjula taught me the
truth of this statement more vividly than anyone or anything else. In
the early years of her analysis, nothing made any lasting impression at
all. Even if there was apparent progress over a considerable period of
time, sooner or later the animus was able to destroy it, as she describes
very clearly herself. And the transference was a very unreliable factora
as she also saysbecause, however warmly Anna might have felt toward
her analyst, the animus held all the trump cards for many years, and
played them at every critical moment, transforming trust into distrust
and love into hate.
It was with Toni Wolff, her first Jungian analyst, that Anna Marjula
drew the strange pictures which appear in Part Two of her booklet. They
were already a precursor of her active imagination, in which the contents
that poured out from the unconscious were faithfully recorded in words.
Jung always taught us to be very sparing in our interpretations of active
imagination because it is so easy to stop the flow or to influence
elements that should take their own courses. This series of paintings
shows the wisdom of this attitude particularly clearly. As Anna herself
now sees, interpretation would have been no help at that time; more
over, considering the explosive material that Anna herself found so
much later in the pictures, it might well have triggered a disaster. Fur
thermore, the effort to understand the pictureswhich she undertook
nearly fifteen years laterwould have been hopelessly prejudiced by any
outside interpretation. Such ideas could only be accepted if they came
from her own unconscious.
A few months after she left Toni Wolff, Anna came to me and was
with mewith long pauses while she was in her own country or while
she was illuntil 1952, when I went to America for some months. This
On the same principle as Francis Thompson's Hound o f Heaven, (Boston: Branden

Press, n.d.).
was very fortunate for Anna, for she then went to Emma Jung, to whom
the full credit belongs for having turned the corner in this case. Coming
to it fresh, Emma Jung immediately saw that the animus was governing
Anna through her great vision and spiked his guns by depreciating it
as just a staggering animus opinion. Before he had had time to
recover, she sidestepped him with her suggestion to cease any more
direct conversations with the animus for the present (as Anna had been
attempting with me), and to apply active imagination directly to some
positive female archetype, such as the Great Mother, instead. It was
unlikely that I would have thought of this approach, for although
female archetypal figures had been very helpful to me in my own active
imagination, until that time they had always done so silently; only the
masculine figures or the personal shadow had been willing to talk. I
mention this because it shows that one can never take an analysand any
further in active imagination than one has gone oneself.
It is rather unusual in my experience for such a superior feminine
figure as the Great Mother in Anna Marjulas material to be willing to
carry on such long conversations. (I have met only one other such case,
where there was also an unusually strong animus.) It almost seemed to
me as if the Great Mother, an aspect clearly of the Self, got sick of our
fumbling efforts and decided to take the matter into her own hands. Be
this as it may, when Anna returned to me after Emma Jungs death, the
analysis was definitely in the hands of the Great Mother.
This did not mean that a human analyst had become superfluous.
Anna was still rather afraid of these conversations; she found her Great
Mother so very unexpected and disconcerting at times that for several
more years she would only undertake the conversations while she was in
Switzerland and when I was available after they were completed. This
was very wise of her, foralthough I think the conversations will con
vince the reader that no human being could have been so wise and
farsighted as the Great Mother herself proved to beshe is, of course, in
another reality and not always aware of human conditions and limita
tions. Therefore, a human companion is absolutely indispensable in
deep plunges such as those which Anna took into the unconscious. As
Jung once said, we need the warmth of the human herd when we face
the strange things which the unconscious produces.
I would like to mention that I had no influence on Anna Marjulas
document. I said one day that I thought she ought to see that her
conversations with the Great Mother were preserved. She replied that, in
ANNA MARJULA 139
the event of her death, she would see that they were not destroyed, but
sent to me. 1 heard very little more about it for a few years, until she
brought me this manuscript which, apart from some shortening, has
hardly been changed at all. I admit that I would have preferred a more
scientific form, with footnotes, references, amplifications, and so on,
but any such suggestion only disturbed and confused Anna. Soexcept
for a few triflesI decided to leave it untouched, to stand or fall as a
human document. But it is scientific in one important sense: it is
undeviatingly honest, and I can testify that nothing in it has been
twisted, changed or improved.
In reading Annas own interpretations, the reader should know that
she is a feeling type. Thinking is her inferior function, but it is neces
sarily used in her interpretations. Therefore, they often have the pecu
liarly apodictic and inflexible character that is characteristic of that type.
Anna wrote her account in the role of an imaginary lecturer in order to
give herself more distance from her material. Her interpretations,
therefore, have a subjective tinge: they are the interpretations that
helped her and they fit this special case. But no general conclusions as to
other cases should be drawn from them, for their value is specifically
individual. They bear witness to the truth of Jungs conviction that
people only get the essential things from their own unconscious. Annas
unconscious taught her like this, but yours or mine would teach us like
that, in the way that fitted our individual pattern; therefore, I do not
want to flatten this individual flavor by any general interpretation.
The reader should especially remember the subjective angle when
Anna is speaking of God: she always means the image of God in her
own soul. When she speaks of God, she means her subjective image of
this figure. She does explain this point herself, but if there were any
misunderstanding on this point, I could well imagine the reader being
justifiably shocked by some of the things which Anna says of God,
Christ and Satan.
In order to give the reader a better understanding of the personal and
psychological trauma which Anna was burdened with in her struggle to
become more conscious and to overcome her neurosis, the following is a
summary of her case history, which is covered in greater detail through
out the case study.'
During early childhood and adolescence, Anna, a gifted and intelli
gent child, suffered violations of her femininity by her totally uncon
scious and neurotic father. She also experienced the early, unnatural
deaths of all her family: first her mother, then her younger brother, her
sister and later, her father.
Her experiences with her father left her shy, insecure and incapable of
having normal encounters with young men as she matured. Unfor
tunately, this was followed by an ill-received love for her Freudian
analyst. She lived along with this distress till the middle of her life,
when she started Jungian analysis in Switzerland.
In conclusion, I think we owe Anna a debt of gratitude for permitting
the publication of this materiala generosity that is common to her
profession, for creative people in all the arts are constantly trained to
expose their innermost reactions to the critical eye of the public.
Presentation o f the Case History
by Anna Marjula
In the following pages I have attempted to describe the gradual

development of the individuation process in my own life. I chose the
lecture form in which to shape my case material because this gave me the
opportunity of objectifying the patient and enabled me to identify
myself with an imaginary lecturer.
Active imagination, according to the method developed by C. G.
Jung, and its healing effect on my neurosis are particularly emphasized
in this essay.
I wish to express my thanks to the following people, who have helped
me to prepare this manuscript for publication: Miss Barbara Hannah,
Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz, the late Mrs. Marian Bayes, and Miss Mary
Elliot.
I. Introduction to the Case

These lectures are meant to demonstrate the positive result which a
certain patient obtained through her genuine attempt to make
conscious and to assimilate shadowy parts of her psyche, parts that had
been forgotten, or repressed, or that had never been known to her, and
is^what is even more essentialto show the healing influence which she
experienced by means of her intentional and active contact with the
archetypal background of all human life, a contact with some of the
great unconscious forces which are contained in the collective, eternal
source of life, and which nourish, activate and influence all movements
of mankind or, in lesser waves, of every individual in his or her daily life.
141
The form chosen by the patient for her attempt at such contact is what
Jung calls active imagination. She first tried to let unconscious impulses
express themselves in drawings, and afterwards, she had a great number
of conversations with several figures of the unconscious. Since her case of
neurosis was an obstinate one, and since she had tried various kinds of
treatment before she came to Dr. Jung, it may be worthwhile to look at
a series of these conversations which in the end brought her the peace of
mind she had sought and striven for during what was actually a lifetime.
To begin with, an introduction to her outer history and her case of
neurosis will be necessary. A summary of her dialogues with archetypal
figures will follow, and we shall try to pursue the growing influence
which these dialogues had on the patient and, as a consequence, on the
healing process in her soul.
History of the Patient

The patient was born in Europe, toward the end of the last century.
Her father was a lawyer. The family consisted of father, mother, two
girls and one boy. The patient was the second daughter. She was a wide
awake child, had an aptitude for schoolwork, and was especially gifted
in music and poetry. When she was thirteen, she lost her mother and,
when she was twenty, her brother died; then several years later, her
sister committed suicide. Her fathers death occurred when she was
forty-seven. Thus, she was left as the only surviving member of the
family. Such, in brief, is her family history. She remained unmarried
and took up music as a profession. Her inner psychological history was
very much influenced by the fathers domineering character (which
brought about a negative father complex) and by the mothers early
death.
The patient was a nervous child, suffering from sleeplessness and a
lack of appetite. When she was still very young, her behavior was that of
an introvert. She made up poetry and composed tunes, usually in the
lavatory; these treasures she showed to no one except her dolls. She was,
however, full of life, quite a happy child, good at sports and games and
popular with her little comrades. It was a terrible blow to the girl when
her dearly loved mother died. It prevented her character from develop
ing harmoniously. She grew precocious in her inner world and extremely
shy in the outer world, especially with boys. Boys caused her panic and
in return did not like her, which hurt her pride terribly. She became
neurotic, but nobody seemed to notice this. Due to her shyness, all the
ANNA MARJULA 143
anguish and inferiority feelings were shut up inside herself as a thing to

be kept secret. She felt very much ashamed of this inferiority and tried
to compensate it with achievements at school and in music. She strove
with all her might always to be the best pupil, and she always was the
best pupil. Her ambition grew in an unfortunate way. Yet, notwith
standing the fact that her mothers death was a fatal event for her in
girlhood, the outbreak of neurosis was still somehow delayed for a
period of eight years. However, when she was twenty-one, the break
down came. It was heralded by a Vision, which later turned out to be
the focal point of her neurosis.
Her Great Vision

At the time the patient had this Vision, which was so important to
her, she was preparing for her examination as a concert pianist. Ambi
tion had forced her to work too hard and to overestimate the importance
of success or failure in the examinations. Exceedingly eager for artistic
triumph and terribly afraid of spoiling her chances of success by stage-
fright, she had worked herself into a condition of extreme nervous
tension. On the night before the examination, the unconscious flooded
her and produced a Great Vision or * Annunciation, as follows:
A Voice told her to sacrifice ambition during her examination by being
equally willing and ready to accept eitherfailure or success. After a hard,
inward struggle, the patient earnestly promised to obey this command.
Then her willingness to suffer a possible defeat brought her a kind o f
religious ecstasy. In that ecstasy, the Voice revealed to her that it was not
her vocation in life to become a famous person herself. Her real vocation
was to become the mother o f a man o f genius. In order to be able to
fulfill this vocation, she would have to sacrifice her normal wishes
concerning love and marriage, and look out for somebody suited to be
the father o f a genius. With this man she was to conceive a child in a
coitus totally devoid oflust. I f she could succeed in having no sensations
at all during the conception, and only ifthat condition could be fulfilled,
then her child wouldprove to be the genius she was called upon to bring
forth. Should the father happen to be a married man, she would have to
overcome herprejudices and bear an illegitimate child.
To the girl, this message was full of mana (numinous quality). She
felt it to be sacred. It was a religious experience, a command which had
to be obeyed, and which could never be set aside and forgotten. It
turned out to be the crisis of her life, with which it was very difficult to
come to terms. We shall have to dwell at length on this inner event,

because it meant so much to her. Her past life and her future met, so to
speak, in this culminating point, for this vision did not originate out of
nothing. It was prepared for by events in her childhood and early girl
hood and by developments in her character, which together had blocked
a normal unfolding of her sexuality. Because of all this, the command
ing voice that spoke so loudly in the Annunciation had ever been fed in
the unconscious. Its powers grew to gigantic proportions, until it was
able to flood the ego in that night before the examination, for the ego
was enfeebled just then by far too much nervous tension.
The first reactions of the girl to her Vision were wonderful. As long as
the ecstasy lasted, she lived on a higher level than any she had ever
before experienced. She passed her examination brilliantly and her
shyness totally disappeared. She felt very happy, not neurotic at all,and
this happiness augmented the mana of the voice. But the ecstasy could
not last forever; it died out little by little in ordinary, everyday life, and
all the more so as the future father of that child of genius failed to
appear. Gradually, she found herself back in the state of being an
ordinary girl, and she took this to be a defeat. Her shyness increased.
She felt ill and miserable, exhausted by inner suspense. Her health was
broken. Nevertheless, she somehow managed to keep her head above
water for another three years. However, as she was now at the age in
which other girls find a husband and get married, nature began to assert
itself and drove the unhappy girl into a series of unsuccessful attempts at
love affairs. These failures would have been difficult to bear even for a
normal young girl; for our patient, whose confidence was already under
mined, they meant a total breakdown. At the age of twenty-four, she
found herself physically ill in hospital, and after this came an analysis
with a Freudian.
Freudian Analysis
The Freudian analyst was a young doctor of thirty, only six years her
senior. He had been married, but was divorced and lived alone. He was
a nice man and very interested in music. The girl liked him immensely,
and what was to be expected, happened: she fell in love and wanted to
marry him. Circumstances were such that there seemed nothing against
a marriage, and their characters might have harmonized. But the analyst
preferred another girl, whom he then married. He brushed aside
the patients feelings by calling them a mere father transference, and he
ANNA MARJULA 145
did not in the least know how to lead that transference into a develop
ment that was acceptable and bearable for the patient.
The best solution might have been to stop the treatment, but the girl
was far too fascinated and also too weak in character to leave him; the
analyst underestimated the patients feelings for him and continued the
analysis because he hoped to heal the case. His Freudian method was not
entirely without result. Some of the symptoms did vanish and a certain
amount of energy was restored. Also, apart from the treatment, the girl
matured through the depths of her own love and the sorrow caused by
its being unrequited. If the doctor had only shown a bit of feeling and
understanding, he might have reached the result he was aiming for. But
being a Freudian by conviction, he totally repressed the very idea that he
might have a countertransference. So the two of them regressed together
into what one might almost call a sexual perversion, as we shall see later.
It took the girl eleven years to detach herself from this fascination;
that she could part from her love at all was due to the fact that in the
end, he really behaved badly and was rude to her, whereupon anger and
hatred rose up in her sufficiently to cause a final rupture. By insulting
her womanhood, he had called out her pride. Later, she always felt
thankful for the finality of that; it was the best thing he had done for
her.
The Years between Freudian andJungian Analysis

The patient was now thirty-three. Her neurosis was naturally by no
means healed. Though she determined, very humbly, to make the best
of the remainder of her life, her soul was not at peace. Indeed, she did
in some measure make a name for herself in the musical world, but she
knew all the time that although the work she achieved consisted of valu
able inspirations, it lacked the solid background of regular hard work
which would have been more than her damaged state of health could
stand.
The other, more feminine possibility, namely that of finding a good
husband and getting married, proved to be as remote as ever, and the
next best thing, a satisfactory love affair, was equally unobtainable.
There existed a sexual taboo which was not cured by her Freudian
analysis. Apart from this, further forces showed themselves to be at work
in her, forces that seemed to lead in unknown directions, for each time
an important musical success or a satisfactory love affair appeared to be
within her grasp, something from outsidesuch as the suicide of her
sister, the outbreak of war, the death of a partnerplaced itself in the

way of realization and proved to be an insurmountable obstacle. Obvi
ously, a concrete fulfillment was not permitted in her case. This psycho
logical fact became evident to her, and she struggled through life as well
as she could.
The First Years o f Jungian Analysis

Eighteen years later, at the age of fifty-one, she saw C. G. Jung about
her problems. Acting on his advice, she started analysis with one of his
prominent pupils, a woman, Toni Wolff, and subsequently with two
other analysts, also women. Jung himself supervised the course of the
analysis.
It was enormously difficult to get at the genuine data, because the
inner figure which had kept the patient going more or less during all
those terribly difficult years was in fact the animus. This animus was
able to exert such an influence on the patient because of the possibilities
which he opened for her in her musical work. As long as a woman is
unconscious of this animus figure in her psyche, he is too powerful a
master, able to fascinate her even so far as to gain complete possession of
her. In the case of this patient, the animus was an ambivalent figure,
and the fascination which he exercised upon herhelpful as well as
destructivewas an almost complete one. Although his musical inspira
tions did not bring about a true solution for her problemnamely what
she should do with the rest of her lifethese inspirations often (and
very helpfully) did mean a temporary way out of crisis and despair.
When the weight of her problems made her feel desperate, the animus
and his music seemed to be her only support. Therefore, she did not
care to displease him by becoming conscious of some other role which he
might possibly be playing in her life. In fact, she could not, for she was
afraid of going mad if she did. And from this great fear of hers we may
well conclude that the other role which the animus was playing in her
unconscious might be a very negative one. Consequently, it was by no
means an easy task in her analysis for her to look this overwhelming
personality in the face.
Another inner figure, the shadow, that dark counterpart of the
conscious ego, was almost totally repressed by the wilful, proud and
conceited character of the patient. As Jung explains to us, it is extremely
important that we should be as conscious as possible of our shadow, for,
if animus (or anima) and shadow are both unconscious, then the ego
ANNA MARJULA 147
fights an unequal battle against two opponents, and is probably not

strong enough to win. In the case of this patient, these two, animus and
shadow, had long ago gotten married in the unconscious and were
now inseparable. They committed all sorts of sins against the patient,
who at that time was unable to reach a true insight into her own
problems.
But she was persistent and tenacious; she did not give up analysis. Her
analyst advised her to try active imagination. She then made spontane
ous drawings. Several of them were very interesting and she liked doing
this. It fascinated her. Nevertheless, these drawings did not bring any
genuine change for the better. A certain point in the depths of her soul
stayed untouched, and as yet, she did not see this point.
The patient made a summary of the material of every analytical hour.
Consequently, she could survey the whole of the treatment later on.
When she re-read her notes, it struck her how favorable the dreams and
their interpretations looked. And the same could actually be said of the
whole treatment. In this early stage, her analysis seemed successful, but
somehow she never profited by it. Her animus was in the habit of
running away with every favorable result before the patient had inte
grated it. And he always impressed her with his opinions. He was too
powerful a figure to be resisted. However, in spite of despair, she did
not give in to him completely. The Jungian method had impressed her
even more than the objections made by the animus. She kept on.
One day, she discussed with her analyst (Mrs. Jung) the episode of the
vision which had occurred in her youth (the Voice and the message).
Concerning the second part of this Vision (her future female destiny),
the analyst suggested that the whole of that idea might be a staggering
animus opinion! She pointed out to the patient that an animus can be
a very bad adviser in feminine love matters; that in fact the word love
did not appear at all in the message of the mysterious Voice. And how
utterly unfeminine the contents of that message really were! So unfem
inine, in fact, that they could hardly be attributed to any other figure
than that of the animus! This interpretation "clicked with the patient
and did at last really change her attitude toward the authority of the
Voice. It broke the spell. To consider the remarks of the Voice as animus
opinions was for the moment a lifesaver that reduced the power which
the animus had over her. She almost went as far as to wipe out the whole
matter, and she felt very much relieved at doing so.
At a much later stage, the religious shading of the Vision had to be
restored, for looked at from a higher level, the mana and authority of
the Voice appeared to be justified, but in lower or more primitive
regions of the mind, they were utterly misplaced and, when taken
literally, came dangerously close to insanity. For some time to come, the
patient was not a bit on that higher level, and the first and most urgent
thing to do was most certainly to get rid of this compelling and devastat
ing animus idea. The analyst then advised her to break contact with the
animus as completely as she could, because he was really treating the
patient badly. The analyst further suggested that it would be better if
the patient were to try an approach to some positive female archetype;
for instance, the Great Mother. She was alluding to the figure which
Jungians usually call the chthonic Mother, but the patientnot
knowing anything about this figureevoked her own, personal Great
Mother, as we shall see.
She was profoundly impressed by the suggestion of her analyst, and
followed her advice, which worked out very favorably because she had a
highly positive mother complex. Her mothers premature death had
actually come about before she had ever criticized that dearly loved
being. And the aura of holiness surrounding death made the human
mother an almost archetypal figure: wise, loving and reliable. It was but
a little step for the patient to have a positive mother transference to the
real, archetypal mother figure, contained in the collective unconscious.
Moreover, this transference was helped and sustained by the patients
growing love for her motherly analyst (Mrs. Jung), with whom she had a
particularly close contact. As a consequence, she came to attribute to the
archetypal Great Mother the authority, wisdom and power of the Self,
that most commanding figure which stands as a symbol for the totality
of all the psychic entities. Thus equipped, our patient's Great Mother
might temporarily be looked upon as a suitable female parallel to God,
a substitute more easily reached in conversations than would have been a
masculine God, because this patient had a negative father complex as
well as a dangerous, unreliable animus. When her analyst made this
clear to her, the patient did not reject it, but she continued to call her
inner adviser Great Mother, just in order to feel nearer to her. Other
wise, she could not have approached the Self with such open-
mindedness and daring.
Now that the case has been introduced at some length, we are coming
to the point. We shall now try to reach an insight into the inner growth
ANNA MARJULA 149
or individuation resulting from the conversations which the patient had

with her Great Mother. After each conversation, we shall consider the
reactions of the animus (insofar as we can know them), paying particular
attention to the more or less clearly visible influence which both the
Great Mother and the animus had on the patient. It is important to
notice how the voice of the animus, at first so dominating, is silenced bit
by bit, and how this powerful ruler comes down from his elevated
position in the end and begins to develop into a more positive, in fact a
most potent, force. This evolution of what at first appeared to be a very
negative animus goes together, and is identical, with the healing process
in the soul of the patient. As her individuation was a slow and detailed
process, the material had to be considerably shortened before it could be
presented. Actually, the main points were chosen, while details of
perhaps lesser importance had to be omitted.
II. Initial Conversation

The first conversations with the Great Mother took place soon after
that eventful day, mentioned above, when the patient could understand
the Vision which she had had in her youth as an animus idea. She
started her contact with the Great Mother somewhat hesitantly, as if she
still found it difficult to part with her animus, even though by now she
had clearly recognized him as her tormentor. She tried to make contact
with the Great Mother in the following way.
First Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: My Great Mother, I want to approach you
and to speak to you, but I do not see you very
clearly. You are as i f under a veil. When I try
to remove the veilfrom you, it then envelops
the animus and makes him invisible to me,
which seems dangerous. Why is this?
Great Mother: Presumably, the animus threw his veil over
me the day he was unmasked by your analyst.
He did this because he has power over you
when I remain invisible. Speak with me in
spite o f my being veiled, and meanwhile
keep an eye on him.
Patient: Can you help me to educate him ?

Great Mother: We must educate youfirst; he willfollow.
Patient: I have inferiority feelings because I am an
unmarried woman. I still want terribly to
make up for my unlived life.
Great Mother: In reality it is thus: all life is lived. You lived
your neurosis. In the meanwhile, I lived by
proxy the life that was concealed behindyour
neurosis. You did not know this and there
fore you feel as if you had missed your life.
But your life is livedby me! Nothing can
fall totally out o f the psyche. At soon as you
are mature enough to receive your treasure, I
shallgive it to you. Neurosis is always smaller
than that which is hidden behind it. You
could not stand that hidden thing and you
repressed it. But you strengthenedyour cour
age while passively bearing your neurosis for
years and years. Compare this to a pair of
scales: when courage and strength are gath
ered and thrown onto one o f the scalesshall
we say onto the passive scale?then the
other one, the active scale, can rise. Then you
can seize the sum o f your unlived life that I
have lived provisionally for you. Nothing is
lost; all o f it is there. Try to take it bit by
bit. In this way you will still be able to
mature as a woman with afulfilled life.
Patient: But how can I ever be a woman with a ful
filled life if I have not got a normally func
tioning sexuality ?
Great Mother: It is not the sexual function that should be
your starting point, but the feelings that
possibly can lead in that direction, and for
which the sexual function might in the end
be an expression.
Patient: How can I regain those feelings? I lost them
long ago.
ANNA MARJULA 151
Great Mother: You repressed them. They can be exchanged

for courage.
Patient: You mention courage all the time. I dont
believe that courage was the thing I lacked.
Great Mother: You certainly have courage, but o f a dan
gerous kind. Your animus plays with your
courage, and as you are animus-possessed
and cannot stand his power, so your courage
becomes too passive. Your animus likes to
push you into psychic misery. This misery
you suffer courageously, but only because
you see in it an opportunity to feel yourselfa
heroine. This is your compensation for neu
rotic inferiority sensations. This kind o f cour
age does not function in the right way. It is
too passive.
Patient: The animus is to blame.
Great Mother: Yes, but ultimately, it is you who are respon
sible for your animus. In younger years, you
werefar too high up. Therefore your neurosis
was necessary. Now you should not hate
shadow and animus so bitterly. Their play
with you was monstrous, but necessary. You
brought it about yourselfby not being in any
way conscious o f the darkforces within you.
Patient: I feel ashamed.
Great Mother: Peel responsible! That should be the way to
activate courage.
When the patient read this conversation to her analyst, the latter was
very much impressed, and she warmly encouraged the patient to
continue her dialogue with her Great Mother, which the patient did,
even enthusiastically, over long periods of time. Her animus, however,
who loved his power over her very dearly and who did not in the least
intend to relinquish it, did not miss a single chance of telling her how
black things looked, how superfluous her efforts were, even how injuri
ous similar conversations were to her health! Patient and animus got
involved in a tedious and exhausting battle, of which only some of the
details can be given here. It might be enough to note that for a very long
time after that, the patient began all conversations with the Great
Mother with complaints about feeling ill and miserable, filled with
doubts, disbelief and fits of despair. These conversations were neurotic
hot-air talks, not worth repeating here.
The Great Mother patiently replied that disbelief and doubt belong
to the shadow, which had formed a partnership with the animus in the
unconscious, so to speak, where the two of them conspired against the
patient and had a grand time doing it. If the patient could take these
shadow parts into herself and feel responsible for her own despair, then
the animus might become less powerful, the Great Mother said. But for
the time being, the patient was far too unconscious of her shadow to
discriminate its qualities, and too much possessed by her animus to
stand up against his opinions. She remained their victim for a long while
yet. The words of the Great Mother were immediately shouted down by
animus opinions that were easier to believe. The following remarkable
dream came to the patient at this point in the midst of her distress.
Dream
Thepatient approaches a big building. A nun comes out o f it, welcomes
herandgives her a rosary which consists ofonly afew beads. Every bead is
a prayer. The nun tells her to thread more beads onto that rosary, black
beads, which will become brilliant and radiant as soon as she has
threadedthem.
Interpretation of the Dream

The patient gave associations to the beads, or prayers. She said that
they were called humility, poverty and fasting with the heart. Humility
speaks for itself. She associated poverty with the following words of the
poet Rilke, in his Stundenbuch: "Armut ist ein Glanz aus Innen
( Poverty is a glow from within ). Fasting with the heart was recom
mended by Meister Eckhart as a means of attaining spiritual life. After
amplification, the nun was interpreted as representing the spiritual
woman, which this patient (who was, moreover, a Protestant) had to
evolve in herself and to accept as fate. The black beads were shadow
parts which would lose their darkness when they had been threaded by
her on her own little chain (of consciousness).
After such a clear dream, it seems almost unbelievable that the
patient could not definitely change her attitude. She could do this for a
ANNA MARJULA 153
whileshe was impressedbut it did not last very long. Exceedingly

clear language used by the analyst or the Great Mother usually provoked
the animus immediately to add his own drastic comments. Our patient
then never failed to identify with him and to believe each one of his
words.
This time, in order to blot out the influence of that nun who had
appeared upon the scene, the next trick of the animus had to be a very
subtle one. The animus picked up the patients aptitude for religious
devotion. He told her to accept her fate, her suffering and her neurosis
willingly, even to get sexual satisfaction out of her religious readiness to
bear what she might call Gods cruel coitus with her! Here her
analyst interfered, explaining the difference between obedience to God
and obedience to the animus. The analyst showed her to what extent she
had an inclination toward masochism, masochism being connected with
extreme femininity, just as sadism may accompany extreme masculinity.
The patient could see her own tendency to masochism, and this led to
the following discussion with the Great Mother.
Second Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: My Great Mother, if only I could reach a
positive acceptance offate, instead o f cherish
ing that passive and foolish courage which
causes me to stand the neurosis and to suffer
masochistic satisfaction.
Great Mother: Look your masochism in the face and see the
moral satisfaction you get out o f it, the forti
fying conviction that you are a heroine, will
ingly drinking endless cups o f bitterness. You
distill ego admiration out o f that and sup
posed vigor. I f you can sacrifice all these
possessions which seem so valuable to you,
then positive forces can get into action.
Patient: My life is built up on heroically borne suffer
ing. This is my support and justification. It
keeps me going. I f I am to give it up, I shall
be very weak.
Great Mother: You are very weak as it is, only you do not
know it.
Patient: Is it right to assume that my desire for great

ness has provided me with a great neurosis? I
mean it this way: i f I cannot be great in real
life, then at least I can be great in neurotic
suffering?
Great Mother: You have never been able to sacrifice your
megalomania and be ju st a simple, ordinary
female. Therefore you chose neurosis and the
possibility for passive greatness. Your neuro
tic suffering was great, but sterile. Again*
masochism is a dangerous power. In the heat
o f suffering, masochism identifies with its
opposite: sadism. You torture yourself Can
you recognize the sadist in yourself?
Patient: I always called him animus.
Great Mother: Look at this ambitious neurosis o f yours. Let
us call it by a big name: sadistic-masochistic
heroism. We might as well call it fainthearted
fear, for you are too insipid to become aware
o f your conceited shadow. Change your nega
tive heroism into some positive humility. The
first proof o f real greatness is to own the dark
forces in one's soul and humbly feel respon
sible for them. I f you can do this, you serve
me instead o f Mr. Animus. Real greatness
consists in ego sacrifice.
The patient had something to meditate upon now! She did so for a
while and then she forgot all about it, for the animus also had medi
tated on something; namely, on a new plot, in order to regain lost terri
tory. And apparently, he proved to be more cunning than his oppo
nents, for what happened was this: the patient fell ill. As a conse
quence, the next years were filled with medical treatments against dis
eases which the doctors were unable to cure. At the bottom of her heart,
the patient was very much ashamed of being neurotic and had always
tried to conceal her symptoms. Therefore physical illness, bringing an
established diagnosis from medical quarters, was welcome to her. It
proved in her own eyes that her complaints were not imaginary, that she
was not as neurotic as everybody thought. As a matter of fact, it released
ANNA MARJULA 155
her from a large part of her humiliating nervous weaknessor at least

she thought it did. And the animus assiduously abetted her. Thus the
doctors could not cure her. Time and money were spent in vain. She had
to return to psychological methods.
Her illness had caused delay; nevertheless, it became evident that the
analytical process had not been damaged by the interruption. The
patient proved more ready for analysis after the apparently wasted years
of medical treatments, hospitals, nurses and the like. In the end, she
challenged her animus to have a serious talk with her, of which the
salient points will be given here. After that talk, he seemed somewhat
intimidated, and she found her way back to the Great Mother.
Conversation with the Animus (fragment)

Patient: I f my illnesses are animus opinions, then you
ought to be able to explain the idea behind
this.
Animus: You want to suffer, do you not, because it
suits you to play the part o f the masochistic
heroine? I provide you with the chance of
doing this.
Patient: Perhaps I was once like that, but I have
changed mypolicy. What is yours?
Animus: Mine is to play husband to you. You whore
with me when you are ill.
Patient: Pick your words more carefully, please!
Animus: I procure illnesses for you in order that you
may experience being passive, helpless, over
powered. In the guise o f illness, I am your
husband. Have I put that nicely enough for
yourfastidious ears? The Great Vision o f your
youth (as you call it) commanded coitus with
out sexual lust. Now this is the reason why I
figure as illness. In your illness, you are with
mejust as a woman is during intercourse, but
without lust sensations. See?
Patient: What I see is that you are a devil! For shame!
. . . But, Mr. Devil, I do not want your
suggestions o f illness at all, neither do I want

yourproposals o f intercourse. What I want to
gain is acceptance o f fate. Through this I will
feel feminine toward God, and that is my
goal. Is this clear to you? My femininity is
sheltered in God. And in this way I want to
exorcise you out ofmy body, you evil spirit!
Religious Symbols
After this dramatic scene with the animus, the patient experienced a
change for thebetter, a psychic change. This consisted in a growing
interest in religious symbols, an interest which was favorable, since it led
her away from ego problems and bodily difficulties. She felt less
unhappy. In addition to this, she was thankful that she felt herself very
much sustained by the analysts clearly shown sympathy with her efforts.
One of the religious symbols that interested her a great deal was the
symbol of the quaternity and Satans place within it. In earlier years, she
had made drawings representing a quaternity that contained Satan.
These drawings were rather obscure to her at that time. Nor did the
analyst explain their meaning. Later it became clear: they were anticipa
tions. Such anticipations, either not understood or even 2Aunderstood,
often seem totally useless, but in reality they have an influence on the
person to whom they appear. They function as a kind of motor that
keeps one going. In this way they are important.
The idea of seeing God as a quaternity instead of a trinity was in itself
not difficult for the patient. She had been educated in the philosophy of
Spinoza, and Spinoza expresses the idea that God would be incomplete
if every degree of valuefrom the very lowest to the very highestwere
not present in Him. This concept of Spinozas had long ago convinced
the patient of the fact that evil is part of God. Spinoza adds that human
beings call good what is good for them and bad what is bad for
them, and he agrees with this human standpoint. Buthe declareswe
should be aware of the probability that Gods views about good and evil
may not be identical with our own conceptions. Thus, Spinoza had more
or less restored in the patients eyes the concept that God is irreproach
able because of His greater plan being incomprehensible in human
terms.
Perhaps it is not Jungs intention to call God irreproachable, at least
not in the sense of perfect. But in the idea of restoring Gods complete
ANNA MARJULA 157
ness by giving back to Satan his place in heaven, Jung and Spinoza are
able to meet. Or so it appeared to the patient, and she had no great
difficulty in this respect. Nevertheless, the patient was now troubled in
regard to this issue. The cause of her trouble was an enormous inflation
on the part of her animus, and of this inflation she was as yet uncon
scious. She felt inner confusion, even bewilderment; therefore, she
asked her Great Mother about Satan and the quaternity. The Great
Mother answered with an explanation on the subjective level only, in the
following way.
Third Conversation with the Great Mother

Great Mother: In your case, the animus is entangled with
Satan. That is too high up for him. He is your
animus; the devil is a part of God. Your
animus cannot be placed in the quaternity.
He has got a tremendous inflation if that is
what he thinks.
Fantasy
While listening to the Great Mothers words, the patient had a vision,
or passive fantasy:
She saw an enormous devil with wings, who flew upward in order to go
andfulfill his heavenly destiny in the quaternity. And she heard a choir
o f angels singing a hymn o f praise to Satan because he was about to
reoccupy the place left empty since his fall. The angels welcomed him
into heaven, their glorious chant of Hail, hail! rising in waves of
harmonious sound.
Interpretation
It seems remarkable that the fusion, or confusion, of Satan and
animus is disentangled at the very moment in which the Great Mother
alludes to it. At this moment, Satan frees himself from his imprison
ment in a human soul and can fly upward. And the patients animus,
released from his daemonic inflation, feels that he has lost face and takes
to his heels. The whole of this is an anticipation taking place in the
patients soul. It could be integrated only very much later, and only bit
by bit, but meanwhile, it had an influence on the patients ego. It was
now clear to her that she could not get hold of her animus by looking
high up into the clouds. Now, at last, she really began to understand
that there is only one way of breaking a state of possession by the
animus; namely, to become conscious of ones own shadow and to take
this dark figure totally into oneself. Or, quoting the symbol which the
nun in the dream had used, she had to thread the black beads into her
own little chain and, by doing so, give the rosary more prayers. Seeing
this very clearly now, she spoke to the Great Mother as follows.
Fourth Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: I want to look at my sins. O f course I
know that sins are not only evil deeds, but
also neglect o f duties. I feel myself utterly
guilty and burdened with inferiority in the
presence o f men because I have not given
them the consolation or the pleasure that
they can receive from a woman. But, now, if
it is my fate to stay unmarried, if my type is
that o f the nun, o f the spiritual woman, and
if I must develop this spiritual woman within
myselfas my goal, how then can it be that my
lacks and failures as a woman are both my
guilt and myfate7
Great Mother: I f you had really accepted your unmarried
condition as fate, you would not have such
terribly torturing feelings ofinferiority. Will
ingness to live ones fate does not feel like an
inferiority; in fact, just the reverse. There is
an enormous difference between fulfilling
ones fate actively and being willing to accept
one'sfate passively. You have not yet achieved
this active fulfillment. But the problem is
extremely difficult, because even when you
have achieved active fulfillment, it may be
possible that a small measure o f guilt and
inferiority cannot be eliminated. It is like
this: an unmarried and childless woman sins
against nature. I f it is her fate to sin against
nature in this way, then there is in her a
ANNA MARJULA 159
conflict between nature andfate. Fate comes

first. Consequently, a part o f the conflict has
got to be suffered, for it is not to be solved.
But you have not quite reached this point.
Your acceptance o f fate is not yet a fulfill
ment and it is not active enough either.
The contents of this conversation were of course discussed with the
analyst, who commented, As fate and nature want you for different
purposes, and as this conflict cannot be solved, you must try to look at it
from a higher standpoint, just as we might look down from the top of a
pass where we can see both sides of the mountain.
The patient was not yet quite at the top of this pass and could not yet
look down from a higher standpoint. She told her Great Mother this.
Fifth Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: It is difficult not to let the animus come up,
because he is on the side o f nature and
againstfate; so is the shadow.
Great Mother: Yourproblem is a womans problem and the
animus is bad at giving advice there. Do not
mind his opinions! The shadow is on nature's
side, o f course. But, most o f all, it is you who
are on natures side. It is you who cannot
sacrifice sexuality as your life's goal. Indeed,
you do not even want sexuality for its own
sake, but only as a help, in order to get rid o f
your annoying inferiority and o f your longing
to be as other women are.
Patient: I should like to know what it is that fate
wants me to do. Fate always seemed to me to
be something alien and hostile to my own
nature, something which God imposes upon
me from outside. I f I were able to see that
fate, my fate, was always within me, and that
it belongs to me verypersonally, I might then
be able to live it consciously and not only to
accept itpassively.
Great Mother: Yourfate was bom in you as a germ. One has

got to live in order to develop that germ. Or,
it develops by itself as long as one lives. This
unfolding o f fate is lifes goal. As long as you
are unconscious o f this, fate seems to impose
itself upon you from the outside. Try to be
come conscious o f this germinating process
within yourself. To the degree in which you
can become conscious o f it, so in the same
measure or degree you unite with God. God
is yourfate.
Patient: Is there a difference between Fate with a
capital F andjust my ownfate ?
Great Mother: As much or as little as there is a difference
between Godand God in yourself. You
might put it this way: when you live uncon
sciously, you merely achieve your fate. This
is what animals do. But when you are con
scious o f the achievement o f fate as being
your life's goal, then you are allowed to see it
as Fatewith a capital F. In the ideal case,
you receive fatewith a small f out o f
Gods hands in order to unfold it, and to give
it back to Him as Fatewith a capital F. By
doing so, you create God as much as God
created you. Christs life is the extreme ex
ample o f this.
Patient: Christ created God when He consciously
chose to achieve His Fate; namely, to die on
the cross.
Dear Great Mother, I can understand what
you mean, but I cannot feel it inside myself
as coming up out o f my own depths. I am so
terribly afraid o f repressing the things or the
feelings which I do feel spontaneously. These
feelings are, above all, my needs as a woman,
which clamor to befulfilled.
Great Mother: Do you think Christ had nothing to repress in
ANNA MARJULA 161
Himself when He chose to go the way o f the

cross? Do not repress things in yourselfas far
as to become unconscious o f them, but say no
to them when you must say no.
Patient: That is more difficult still.
Great Mother: O fcourse it is. Out o f pure Preudianism, you
neglected in yourself the life o f your spirit.
That is repression also, and in your case it is
even more destructive than sexual repression,
because spiritual life should hold more values
for you and be even more in your own nature
than the so-called natural life. Your own
nature seeks not only biological fulfillment',
the "nun in you is longing for God. Try to
see her and to give her a chance.
Patient: It is strange that I have neverfelt guilty about
having misseda spiritual life.
Great Mother: Then do so now. Feel guilty toward the
' nun in you, toward me, if you wish to put
it like that, or toward God. But do not feel
guilty toward male human beings, nor infer
ior to married women.
Patient: And if I cannot get rid ofthose feelings?
Great Mother: Suffer them if you must, but tell yourself
that they are animus ideas!
Since the animus kept silent with regard to the last important dis
closures, the patient was for once undisturbed'when she meditated upon
them. She noticed that these revelations concerning the fulfillment of
fate were imparted to her as soon as she wanted to look at her sins (as
she expressed to herself her willingness to assimilate shadow parts). And
she kept that in mind for the future.
Here follows her answer to the Great Mother after having thought
things over.
Sixth Conversation with the Great Mother
Patient: Because I want to develop the spiritual woman
within myself and because you told me that
nothing can fall totally out o f the psyche, I

tried to find a spiritual equivalent for the
parts o f my soul which are presumably lost.
Do I understand a receptive feminine atti
tude toward God, or toward fate, to be a
spiritual equivalent for feminine receptive
ness expressed in the act o f love? And might
spiritual motherhood find expression in my
hope o f fulfilling myfate, in order to place it
in God's hands as a thing bom out o f me,
after having cherished it in my soul? I had an
inspiration about how I might see spiritual
life in general. I saw what in this world we
call real life as a symbol for Real Lifewith
capital R and Lthe latter being Gods life
in us, or thatpart o f God that lives our life in
us. When I look at it in this way, it then
seems unimportant whether I am enjoying or
suffering my so-called earthly life, this being
in higher reality what I can experience of
Gods Life.
This time the Great Mother did not answer, but months later she and
the patient looked at the question again. It was now formulated as
follows.
Seventh Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: How can opposites be united in thepsyche ?
Great Mother: A god can unite opposites; you cannot. In
your case, nun and mother (fate and nature)
could not be united. Pate triumphed and the
mother in you was sacrificed. When you
sacrificed her, you sinned against your per
sonal nature, but you fulfilled what is called
human nature. It is a unique and essential
task o f the human creature to suffer the
tension of the opposites that cannot be
united. Your mistake was that you did not
feel responsible and guilty and repentant
ANNA MARJULA 161
Himself when He chose to go the way o f the

cross? Do not repress things in yourselfas far
as to become unconscious o f them, but say no
to them when you must say no.
Patient: That is more difficult still.
Great Mother: O fcourse it is. Out ofpure Freudianism, you
neglected in yourself the life o f your spirit.
That is repression also, and in your case it is
even more destructive than sexual repression,
because spiritual life should hold more values
for you and be even more in your own nature
than the so-called natural life. Your own
nature seeks not only biological fulfillment',
the ' nun in you is longing for God. Try to
see her and to give her a chance.
Patient: It is strange that I have neverfelt guilty about
having misseda spiritual life.
Great Mother: Then do so now. Feel guilty toward the
' 'nun" in you, toward me, if you wish to put
it like that, or toward God. But do not feel
guilty toward male human beings, nor infer
ior to married women.
Patient: And if I cannot get rid ofthose feelings?
Great Mother: Suffer them if you must, but tell yourself
that they are animus ideas!
Since the animus kept silent with regard to the last important dis
closures, the patient was for once undisturbed when she meditated upon
them. She noticed that these revelations concerning the fulfillment of
fate were imparted to her as soon as she wanted to look at her sins (as
she expressed to herself her willingness to assimilate shadow parts). And
she kept that in mind for the future.
Here follows her answer to the Great Mother after having thought
things over.
Sixth Conversation with the Great Mother
Patient: Because I want to develop the spiritual woman
within myself and because you told me that
nothing can fall totally out o f the psyche, I

tried to find a spiritual equivalent for the
parts of my soul which are presumably lost.
Do I understand a receptive feminine atti
tude toward God, or toward fate, to be a
spiritual equivalent for feminine receptive
ness expressed in the act o f love7 And might
spiritual motherhood find expression in my
hope o f fulfilling myfate, in order to place it
in God's hands as a thing bom out o f me,
after having cherished it in my soul? I had an
inspiration about how I might see spiritual
life in general. I saw what in this world we
call real life as a symbol for Real Lifewith
capital R and Lthe latter being God's life
in us, or that part of God that lives our life in
us. When I look at it in this way, it then
seems unimportant whether I am enjoying or
suffering my so-called earthly life, this being
in higher reality what I can experience of
God's Life.
This time the Great Mother did not answer, but months later she and
the patient looked at the question again. It was now formulated as
follows.
Seventh Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: How can opposites be united in the psyche?
Great Mother: A god can unite opposites; you cannot. In
your case, nun and mother (fate and nature)
could not be united. Fate triumphed and the
mother in you was sacrificed. When you
sacrificed her, you sinned against your per
sonal nature, but you fulfilled what is called
human nature. It is a unique and essential
task o f the human creature to suffer the
tension o f the opposites that cannot be
united. Your mistake was that you did not
feel responsible and guilty and repentant
ANNA MARJULA 163
regarding your personal nature. You felt

neurotic instead. Let us examine this para
dox. You could not help your fate and its
command to sacrifice the mother in you.
Nevertheless, you must feel responsible and
guilty and fu ll o f remorse toward your per
sonal natureor be neurotic. Here we come
to why it is said that man is a sinner by
nature. Do you see? Man is forced to sin
because he cannot unite incompatible oppo- 1
sites. He sins on the one side or the other.
And this is hisfulfillment o f human fate.
These last conversations were presumably above the level of animus
interruptions. It is to be noted that he remained silent.
To be confronted with problems of this sort had, of course, an educa
tive influence not only on the animus, but also on the patients
conscious ego. First of all, they helped her to do away with the over
exaggerated significance which sexuality (and the lack of it) had received
in her thoughts as a result of Freudian analysis. As long as she saw sexual
fulfillment as the only possible goal of her earthly life, she could not
develop spiritually. Now things began to look a bit different from the
way they had looked, and gradually she could find a new meaning in her
past life and also in the future. It was a great help to attain even some
slight insight into the perhaps symbolic meaning of life. Vice versa, this
insight helped her to symbolically interpret the contents of dreams and
visions, and thus to develop a further understanding contact with her
own inner life. The door to her further development had been opened,
and progress in becoming conscious meant also an advance in cure.
III. Interpretation of the Great Vision

on Various Levels of the Soul
In Jungian analysis, we repeatedly find that we have arrived at the
same spots, but each time on a higher level, as Jung expresses itthe
way to individuation being like a spiral up which we climb.
Without doubt, the patient had now climbed to a higher curve of the
spiral, and her more elevated standpoint permitted her to attain a more
extensive view. Because of this, she became able to attribute a symbolic
meaning to the curious phenomenon of her Great Vision. Together with

her analyst,6 she came to an interpretation which was now really accep
table to the whole of her being.
Literal or Symbolic Realization?

We can divide the patients Great Vision into two parts: the first part
deals with her examination and with her stage fright, and the second
announces to her her true goal in life. The first part had always been
clear; it could be dealt with literally, and at the time of her examination
it had caused a relaxed and receptive willingness to accept things,
whichever way they went. So far, she had understood her Vision in a
wonderful way. But the second part, which we might call the Annun
ciation, was much more complex. Here, obviously, a symbolic realiza
tion must have been meant.
In those early days when she had experienced the Vision, the patient
had never heard of psychological symbols and she no doubt felt that the
words were meant literally. Still, she was normal enough to see any
attempt at literal realization as a danger that might even push her
beyond the borderline of sanity. She never made such an attempt in
reality, but she got caught in a muddle, and she passionately wanted to
get rid of the whole affair. Unfortunately, she could not do away with it
because of its numinous aspect which so overwhelmed her. As she was
an introverted feeling type with very good intuition, her differentiated
functions might have steered her more or less safely on her course. But
the girl did not see the cliffs set up by her unconscious shadow, and she
unfortunately chose the animus as her pilot.
The Interplay o f Shadow and Animus

The patients positive shadow parts which we call female instincts had
been wounded in her early youth and in the beginning of her girlhood.7
When instincts are crippled or wounded, they cannot function well;
above all, they cause pain. Therefore, the patient had repressed them.
But when instincts are in a repressed state, their growth is blocked. As a
consequence, the patient missed the foothold which normally
developed instincts might have given her. To understand the message of
the mysterious Voice, she had to do so without the help of a normally
6At this time, Anna was again working with me.B.H.

7We will come to this later p. 183.
ANNA MARJULA 165
functioning shadow, a help that otherwise might have kept her with
both feet on the ground. Instead of this, the animus made himself
master of the contents of the Annunciation. That the animus had the
power to do this was due to the fact that he and the shadow played
together against the patient. Her wounded instincts brought on feelings
of inferiority, which sought for some kind of compensation. This
mechanism had provided the girl with her overwhelming ambition.
Only during the tension of those examination days did she begin to feel
doubtful about whether she was gifted enough to satisfy the demands of
her ambition. And this was the long anticipated moment for shadow
and animus to pounce on her with what they said would be an excellent
solution for her. Indeed, what would be simpler and easier than to shift
the weight of the whole conflict onto a highly gifted son and thus make
the way free for her to retire, with honor and without pain, into legiti
mate maternal pride? Indeed, it would be a marvelous proof of the
ingenuity of this pair!
As mentioned above, the second part of the Vision can be looked at as
a command for literal realization (and this would be the lower level) or
for symbolic realization (the higher level). The animus had stolen the
lower level on his own behalf, for the elimination of love and sexual
excitement in any future relationship between our girl and a male
partner is nonsense, and such an idea could not have come from anyone
but the animus. It may even be possible that he changed the words of
the voice a little bitoh, not so very muchmerely a touch (only just
enough to enable him to get what he wanted!). One does not know
about this. This is only a suggestion, but it would accord with his
nature, and the fact remains that the Vision was not written down until
many years later. On a higher level of the soul, the Annunciation had a
totally different meaning, as we will see. But before we take leave of the
primitive animus ideas, it should be made clear that the animus has two
different levels or aspects of his nature within himself.
Two Animus Aspects

In his original aspect, he is merely the personal animus, meaning that
little bit of undeveloped masculinity contained in a female soul. In this
aspect, he ranges from the impish and teasing up to the devilishly
destructive, but all this in the personal realm. He may be a positive
figure even in this personal sphere, and he often seems to be, especially
nowadays when women have mens jobs which they could not possibly
manage with their femininity alone. On the highest level, we look upon
him as being a Great Spirit. Every important feminine inspiration must
be attributed to this figure. Most of the time he is highly positive. If he
is negative in this upper sphere, then he is negative on the impersonal
level. In this case, he is a great evil spirit in every degree, all the way up
to Satan himself!
In this girls life, we shall see him at work in almost every aspect. We
have already heard his witty, teasing chaff in some of the conversations,
and in the higher sphere we must give him credit as the one who
inspired her creative musical work. In the second part of the Vision, he
destroys with one blow both her future career (by saying that it was not
her vocation) and her potentialities as a woman (by excluding normal
reactions from the sexual relationship). But on the upper level again, he
is the mediating factor which, in the end, makes her see the symbolic
'meaning of what the Voice had announced to her.
A Mary Fantasy
Jung once told the patient that her Great Vision was a Mary
fantasy and he pointed out three parallels between Marys situation
and the patients vision: First, Mary conceived her child by the Holy
Ghost, probably without sexual pleasure; secondly, Mary gave birth to a
divine child, to a man of genius ; and thirdly, the child was not
legitimate.
Could we not gather from the above that the Voice in the Vision
chose these three parallel points in order to suggest a Mary fantasy; that
through them, the Voice was trying to tell the girl that she had to be like
Mary, humble and obedient, fulfilling the life which God had chosen
for her, and that she should not strive to attain fame and glory if they
were her lifes goal? For if we alter our starting point somewhat and look
at Marys life as if at a myth, we may interpret that myth (or that life) as
a symbol standing for the souls extreme femininity, unfolded in devo
tion to receive Gods Will.
In Stundenbuch, the poet Rilke expresses this feminine surrender of
the soul to God. Rilke uses the following words: *My soul is as a woman
to Thee. And again: Spread Thy wings over Thy maid. This
attitude of humility and devotion was what the girl had to learn. Like
wise, in one of the conversations the Great Mother had said: If we
consciously fulfill our fate in an attitude of spiritual devotion, we create
ANNA MARJULA 167
God as much as God created us. 8 In more feminine words, to create

God is synonymous with giving birth to God. And as the Great Mother
had also alluded to fate as a divine germ, we may read the symbol as 1
follows: If we consciously live our developing fate in an attitude off
spiritual devotion, we give birth to a symbolic divine child.
From certain things which Jung once said to the patient, she received
the impression that God is the life in us, that we are His eyes and ears
and that we must give consciousness to God. This last idea may express
what Jung considers to be the purpose of each individual life: We must
give consciousness to God!
If we are able to do this, then our human consciousness becomes
divine consciousness. And thus this divine consciousness is born out of
our soul by means of our earthly experience or by means of our accepted
and actively lived fate. May not this have been the goal to which the
Voice in the Vision pointed? Godas creator of the germ of fate in our
soulwas the mysterious "father of the child which the patient was
commanded to seek, and the meaning of this was that she had to
become conscious of God as father of the child. And, further, her voca
tion was to make the divine germ sprout in order that it might be born
out of her as divine consciousness. Symbolically, not only the father of
the child, but also the child itself had to beGod. This vision is indeed
a Mary fantasy.
Of course, the Bible tells us the same thing in a much shorter and
more direct way through Christs words: "Not my will but Thy Will be
done. But Jung explains that every symbol, even the most well-
adapted and suitable one, may lose its mana in the long run. Sometimes
a symbol becomes worn out, used up, exhausted. Where this is the case,
a new symbol must be born in the person who has lost contact with the
old one. This individual birth of a new symbol, capable of containing
the mana of the preceding one, was in fact the difficult process of
growth in the patient's inner life. When it was achieved and could
emerge into consciousness, she was able to regain touch with the just-
mentioned Biblical words, to which she could now give all the mana of
which her soul was capable. In later years, her transformed attitude to
life and fate proved to be the source of healing for her neurosis. But it
did not work as rapidly as that. Insight alone was not enough. This
insight had to become a living factor expressed in her daily life.
The Fifth Conversation with the Great Mother.
The Girl's Examination

Let us return to the gitl who had just had her Great Vision and who,
on the following day, was going in for her examination as a concert
pianist. Perhaps in the first part of the Vision the authoritative Voice
was meant as a practical help for the girl, so that she would not spoil her
examination by stage fright. We have already seen how it did work as a
help in this direction. It is possible that the first part of the Vision alone
might have sufficed to enable her to reach this goal, but this seems
doubtful. For the first part was not as heavily laden with mana as the
second part was. The patient could not have felt the simpler first part as
a religious experience, at any rate not sufficiently to have it at hand at
the moment in which the stage fright would try to invade her. Far more
important was the second part, which dealt not only with her musical
performances, but also with the whole of her future life and, funda
mentally, with the future life of her soul. Here lay the religious experi
ence. In that eventful night, she had seen God for a moment and could
never be the same person again. The next morning, when she sat down
at the grand piano to play her examination pieces, she was still totally
under the spell of what had happened to her during the night. This is
why she played so well. Even the examining committee felt the nearness
of God. When she had finished playing, all of the examiners instinc
tively rose from their seats to let her pass. They were speechless.
Archetypal Battles in the Soul

Even if the unconscious had only meant to give the girl the satisfac
tion of a successfully passed examination, the second part of the vision
would have been necessary in order to achieve it. However, the uncon
scious meant far more than this; apparently, its intention was to touch
the girl in the depths of her soul so as to force her to become conscious of
her dangerously ambitious shadow and powerful, daemonic animus.
She was not going to be allowed to give her soul in payment for the
world-famous name which she was so anxious to acquire in music. The
devil was not to have this soul, at least not so long as her Great Mother
was in contact with her. It almost looks as if this girl had gotten a
personal guardian angel in the form of her Great Mother. Was this
perhaps to make up for the negative influence of her too powerful
animus? Who can tell? What do we really know about the archetypal
forces of light and of darkness, fighting out battles in our souls? So long
as we are totally unconscious of them, we can probably be no more than
ANNA MARJULA 169
their battlefield. A small role of our own very likely starts only after we
have acquired at least some measure of insight into the fact that we are
not only a conscious ego, but also a minute particle of vast, collective
happenings in the unconscious.
Reactions: Anticlimax and Return to the Great Mother

We must now leave the young woman and her examination and con
sider the elderly woman who in her analysis had relived the past days in
order to obtain a satisfactory explanation for her Great Vision, and who
was now confronted with the problem of how to work out her newly
attained knowledge.
As we all know, it is very difficult not to become inflated when we are,
or have been, in touch with archetypal figures. For if we make the
mistake of identifying with them, then first inflation and subsequently
deflation are bound to follow. This was exactly what happened to the
patient after the last interpretation of her Great Vision. Instead of using
her newly acquired insight for a better adaptation to lifes demands, she
felt as ifafter all she had gone through in analysis(!)she now had a
right to obtain health, thrown into her lap ready-made, to be owned
and enjoyed and used exclusively on her personal behalf. True, she
could acknowledge the above-mentioned interpretation of her Great
Vision as being the right one, but with that explanation in her hand she
did not see the gates of paradise opening for her as she had hoped.
Instead and because of this, she had to go through an anticlimax, a
bitter frustration. As we know, she had striven for the true explanation
during what was practically a lifetime. She had clung to it as to her only
chance of salvation. And now that she had gotten it, she saw that its
acquisition did not have the power to heal her neurosis. (Of course, she
made the terrible mistake of insisting that she now be healed, at the very
moment in which she should humbly have changed her previous atti
tude into one of devoted service to the unconscious forces which had
revealed such important truths to her.)
In her state of depression and despair, a well-known old friend poked
his trustworthy nose round the door and re-entered the scene. Her old
animus, of whom she had lost sight for a while without even missing
him too much, had now come back to comfort her, to make her see,
as he himself called his function, and thereby (but this he was careful
not to mention) to regain his lost power over her. He had only waited for
a favorable moment and there he was, his unmistakable self, continually
assuring her that she had slid back two steps to every one gained on that
slippery spiral she had to climb, which they call the way to individua
tion. Of course, as he said, this ascent was far beyond her capacity; she
herself must certainly see by this time that the effort could only injure
her health. It was high time to stop the venture. With this and many
more insinuations of a similar kind, he bombarded her.
The patient listened to him with one ear, it is true, but in her other
ear she heard a faint echo of several words which the Great Mother had
spoken, words that fortunately were not totally lost on her. In the dia
logues about fulfillment of fate, the Great Mother had really touched a
responsive chord in the patients soul, and the latters attitude to her
past and future life had changed. For instance, she now caught sight of
the true reason for the delay in getting back her health, namely her self-
willed character, which produced enormous resistance to being success
fully analyzed, for she had a fatal tendency to be always right! So long as
her shadows conceited attitude (functioning as a compensation for
inferiority feelings) was not sufficiently recognized, she occasionally
went so far as to use neurotic regressions in order to prove to her analysts
how much they were in the wrong and how much she herself (or
was it her animus?) was always right! Not a very suitable means of
getting cured, one must admit. With this attitude, she had provided
an excellent hiding place for unconscious shadow parts and much
loved animus possessiveness. So long as her grand Annunciation
could not be more efffectively explained by analysis, the shadow
and the animus were content, and the girl herself was ill and unhappy,
but comforted by the idea that she was always the stronger one,
not to say the superior party! Now she would have to do away with
such animus opinions. During the above-mentioned inflation, he had
had an opportunity to pump her up with his ideas until she was like a
swollen balloon. And when the deflation came, the disagreeable anti
climax, she had clung to him as her only support. The whole of this
stage of being possessed by the animus functioned as one of those veils
which the animus is so fond of throwing over his victims; while she was
blinded by this veil, she could not see clearly that she had in fact
ascended her summit, from whence she might be able to destroy the
hiding place which actually concealed shadow and animus and their
joint plot against her.
The patient had to dismiss her beloved seducer and to return to her
Great Mother, which she did, but not without frequent wavering and
ANNA MARJULA 171
hesitation. She knew by now that there is only one way to obtain power
over the animus; namely, to look deeper into the darkness of the
shadow, in order to separate that figure from him; and she knew that
this was also the only way to get really into harmony with her unhappy
past life and with the painful wounds received in earlier days. The Great
Mother, of course, had her own idea about how to deal with animus
veils. She began to teach the patient humility and ego sacrifice, thus
preparing the way presumably for a great plunge into the unconscious,
from which her pupil would have to fish up what was now necessary for
further individuation. In fact, it was the life behind the neurosis with
which she had not yet dealt, the life which the Great Mother had lived
for her and had promised to give back into her hands as soon as she
would be sufficiently mature enough to live it herself. As to humility
and the death of the ego, the Great Mother spoke as follows.
Eighth Conversation with the Great Mother

Great Mother: The shadow, even when conceited, is useful
and indispensable to you because there are
germs concealed in her that might, and
should, develop into humility. Do not feel
yourselftoo goodfor all the wounds you have
received in your life. Be humble enough to
feel responsible for them.
Patient: How can I attain humility, Mary's humility
which made her become the chosen Mother
o f God?
Great Mother: You cannot attain it. Mary is a goddess; you
are not. You can only try all the time to see
how very lacking you are in humility. That is
your form o f humility. Be aware all the time
o f your conceited shadow. Do not try to get
above it; you cannot. Try to accept your
shadow, and go through life suffering her,
but consciously!
Ninth Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: I feel very ill. I feel that death might be
approaching. I feel afraid and horrified, as if

it were going to be an execution.
Great Mother: In the event o f its really being a sentence o f
death, would you feel guilty or free from
guilt with regard to the sin for which you
have been sentenced?
Patient: You told me to feel as guilty as possible for
my cardinal sin, that sin being my omissions
toward my feminine nature. Is it natures
revenge which I am nowfated to suffer?
Great Mother: You suffer nature's revenge in neurosis.
Patient: And am I sentenced to death by the Self?
Great Mother: Yes, if 'death means ego sacrifice!
Patient: And what about myfear o f bodily death?
Great Mother: I am not going to announce to you the hour
o f your bodily death. It belongs to human
nature not to know that. But I announce to
you that ego sacrifice is demanded o f you, a
total sacrifice. And you can only save your
life, your bodily life, by bringing about this
ego sacrifice.
Patient: I f I understand you correctly, what you mean
is that I suffer bodily pain instead o f adult
human suffering, and if I cannot achieve ego
death, then bodily death might come in
stead, as a kind o f symbol.
Great Mother: Yes, but bodily death is not always a symbol
for ego death. I f you now want to achieve ego
death just to save your life, that is not ego
death at all. You should accept death and
pain and everything that might come with
them. That would be nearer to ego death.
Very many people are able to achieve ego
death in no other form than that o f bodily
death. You might be one o f those. Put aside
the ambition to achieve ego death. Be thank
fu l that humble death o f the body can make
up for many non-achieved ego deaths. You
ANNA MARJULA 173
are so afraid o f death because you only count

on yourselfand even on your intellect alone.
But you cannot direct either living or dying
with your brain. Try to rely on me, for in
stance. Give your fear into my hands. This
would be ego sacrifice on your level o f today.
Perhaps nature, offended by your sexual
shortcomings, might be satisfied with this
penance. And not only nature, but also your
shadow. She never got her natural rights.
Fulfill ego sacrifice to satisfy the shadow. And
see your satisfaction in experience; I mean
God-experience which might be contained in
ego death.
IV. Deep Plunges into the Unconscious

We now approach what the patient called her deep plunges into the
unconscious. Until this time, the Great Mother had been educating
her pupil on the latters personal level (with one or two exceptions that
were actually anticipations). From now on, the undertone changes
almost imperceptibly and the conversations take on the character of real
revelations by a great teacher to her pupil.
The first big plunge had to be mainly into the personal unconscious;
namely, into very personal repressions of painful events and adversities.
But its greatest emotional value did not consist merely in regaining
consciousness of repressed events. Much more valuable for the patients
development were her newly acquired obedience and submission to the
Great Mother and to the pain and sorrow which this great figure of the
collective unconscious was now going to inflict upon her. In the eyes of
the patient, her dive had a downward direction. But the Great Mother
taught her to look at it from her, the Great Mothers, point of view.
And the deeper the pupil descended into the animal side of human
nature, and the more personal this animal side seemed in her own eyes,
the higher became the spiritual level from which the Great Mother
made her look at things. It almost seemed as if the patient was in
analysis with the Great Mother.* But in outer reality, she was also in
analysis with a Jungian analyst, and it is certain that the patient could
?It did not only seem so; she was.B.H.
never have achieved her deep plunges without the solid backing and
warm sympathy of this woman. Here the part which this analyst played
in the development is practically omitted, for this paper is to be seen as
an attempt at showing, above all, the Great Mothers role'. But please
bear in mind that the analyst is in the background at all times with her
indefatigable patience and her readiness to help. She gave freely of the
psychological wisdom which she herself had acquired probably only
through constant and intense inner efforts.
An Unrequited Love
Before we turn to the following conversations, which were the begin
ning of the patients real descent into the darkness of her own soul, we
must go back to that part of her history in which, at the age of twenty-
four, she started a Freudian analysis with an analyst whom we shall call
Mr. X. Now, decades later, the Great Mother summons her to make a
plunge to the very bottom of just that repressed despair which had been
the result of Mr. X s treatment. The patient felt convinced that she had
to face it, and in a written fantasy she made an honest attempt to do so.
During this fantasy, she saw herself in a kind of cellar or prison. In this
cellar lived her despair. Everything there seemed dark, confused and
unclear. It was extremely bewildering. But there, the Great Mother
came to her and brought her something, giving it into her hands. Then,
at the moment in which she thought she would have to touch her
despair, it turned out to be quite different. It was not her despair which
she touched. It was her capacity for love, brought back to her by the
Great Mother.
Here, the active fantasy turned into a passive one. In this passive
fantasy she was married to Mr. X. He loved her and he was tender with
her. She felt grateful and happy. They wanted each other and gave way
to their desire. But her passion was not all that she gave him. They were
a married couple, loving each other warmly and truly. Every feeling was
genuine and intense. It was as if her girlhood dream had been fulfilled.
She felt amazed to experience that her love was not trampled upon, nor
torn to pieces. It showed itself to be virginal and blossoming. But it was
a very young love, not matured through womanhood. And it was
purified, purer in fact than it had been when Mr. X had destroyed it in
outer reality. And then, somehow, she knew it was even Mr. X who had
purified it. She had not received this gift only out of the hands of the
Great Mother, but rather out of his hands too. In this way, she learned
that she had never genuinely hated him. It was as if they had been
ANNA MARJULA 175
married all those years, but in another world, not in this one. In an
earthly marriage, they could never have achieved this kind of union.
Three days later, the patient had the following conversation with her
Great Mother.
Tenth Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: What you brought to me in this cellar is
wonderful, o f course. Ar usual, the animus
tried to take it away from me, but I did not
allow him to do so. Only, on one point I
think I agree with him; namely, that I dont
want a girlish attitude, however pure it may
be. I even prefer my sorrow. My sorrow car
ried me through life, and I feel more mature
in my sorrow and even more dignified in it
than a young girl's virginity.
Great Mother: Then what I gave you helped you to see the
value o f your sorrow. That is acceptance o f it,
integration even. There is no repressed
despair in you now, because you see the value
o f a woman matured through sorrow. You
even feel that this means more than the
untouched happiness for which you longed.
This is acceptance o f fate, is it not?
With these words, the Great Mother left her pupil to her own reflec
tions and to what her analyst would have to add to them. After some
dream explanations, the analyst said, You must retain both. You must
not throw away the symbol, nor the sorrow. They are one and the same
thing in different aspects, and you must keep conscious of both. '
An animus attempt at interruption was prevented in the following
conversation.
Eleventh Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: ' When I am submissive to the anim us. . .
Great Mother You have your female instincts to tell you
(interrupting her): that you had better be submissive to real
men. Let them have all your submissiveness,
even if you are playing a part. This will help
you to get free from the animus. And the

shadow will bepleased, too.
Patient: But I am shy in the company o f men.
Great Mother: That is an upside-down submissiveness, and
a terrible possession by the animus, who
swallows yourpersona and then, in your state
o f shyness, speaks out o f you himself. And
you project him onto real men, knowing
exactly what they think and how much they
dislike you, despise you even.
Patient: I know.
Great Mother: But what you do not know is that these great
and mighty men would not despise your little
comedy o f submissiveness at all. They would
not see through it, and their vanity would be
flattered. Should they see through it, they
would still appreciate your feminine clever
ness in playing up to them like that, and they
would react as if they were pleased. It is
persona to persona then, both well-played
and well-managed. This would be much
better than your stubborn shyness and their
being irritated by that. Enough for today.
In this way, the Great Mother mocked at the patients awkwardness
and at the same time laughed at her own impatience. But in the follow
ing dialogue her words sounded quite serious again.
Twelfth Conversation with the Great Mother (fragment)

Great Mother: Trust me, rely on me, when I say that you are
not an unloved woman; you did reach Mr. X,
but neither you nor he understood what was
going on. It seemed all negative, but it was
not. Your feeling was so genuine, so very
real, that it belongs to the things that cannot
be lost. But neither o f you was equal to that
and so it had to be experienced as suffering,
very negatively, and had to be misunderstood
as well.
ANNA MARJULA 177
Mr. X did feel your love, but he repressed

that feeling, preferring not to become con
scious o f it. He also had to suffer, just as
much as you did.
Thirteenth Conversation with the Great Mother (fragment)

Patient: I fear what I call your greatness injections!'
I fear an inflation! Might it not be better to
follow the advice of the animus and see my
lovefor Mr. X as somewhat immature?
Great Mother: What was immature in it?
Patient: I could not see his point o f view at all. I
relied on my own feelings and I never con
sidered hisfeelings.
Great Mother: Mr. X, in his role o f Freudian analyst, did not
give you the slightest chance. The situation
was awkward. He was not up to the situation.
Your love was all right, but it could not
develop. It could not develop in you, it could
not develop in him. He murdered it, so to
speak. Then you made a mistake: you allowed
him to torture you, psychically, because tor
ture was the only thing you could get out of
him. To willingly suffer this torture meant
sexual union for you. Thus he got you into a
perversity, which was more his than yours.
And therefore I kept your love pure for you.
I now wantyou to take it into yourselfand to
integrate it. The reason why you made all this
trouble about it, even trouble between you
and me, is that you take his mistakes onto
your own shoulders, and this again out of
sheer love! You cannot see him as dark. That
is childish and immature. Try to acknowledge
that he had a disastrous side in his behavior
towardyou.
Patient: Was I blind?
Great Mother: Yes, but you had to be. That did not matter.
What did matter was that you projected the

qualities o f your own love onto him and
when that would not work, you dethroned
your love instead o f dethroning its object.
Patient: Was X not worthy o f my love?
Great Mother: He was. But he was ill himself and damaged
by life, and stillfarther away from the normal
than you were. And you were not up to
helping him, principally because that was the
last thing he wanted. Nothing was farther
from his thoughts.
For the time being, the patient now had important material to medi
tate upon and to integrate if she could. To look at her poor, down
trodden love through the eyes of the Great Mother was like balm to a
wound. She could now start a new contact with important values in her
innermost soul and feel a bit more rooted in regard to her past life and
to her own femininity. All of this was highly positive. But her case of
neurosis was a complicated one, and we must have a good deal of
patience with it, particularly because of her animus. That personage was
like a jack-in-the-box, popping up at uncontrolled moments. We
should never underestimate the mischievous pleasure he had in fighting
his adversary, the Great Mother, by devaluating her sayings in his clever,
convincing way. And he always made it clear that, of course, he made
his speeches in a benevolent spirit and only because he wished to be of
use to the patient! She had her struggle with him, but she knew by now
that his power over her could only be broken if she became conscious of
her shadow as completely as she possibly could. She tried to make a
habit of fortifying herself with some newly acknowledged shadow parts
whenever she was about to attempt another dive into the unconscious.
The result of this was the following conversation.
Fourteenth Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: I have tried to become more conscious o f that
part o f me which I call the 'unloved woman
in myself. She is an extremely piteous little
female, and at the same time so presump
tuous! She is always having hysterics, always
crying and moaning. She is tortured by her
ANNA MARJULA 179
want o f love. But not even the love o f Christ

could have satisfied her. Her wishes are much
more primitive. The only convincing love in
her eyes isi f you will allow me to use her
own drastic languagea penis penetrating
her. And the fact that this is so is my torture.
This little animal lives in me; it lives, of
course, in every woman. And I presume a
man, in his turn, cannot be convinced that a
woman really loves him so long as she does
not give her body to him. He must be as
much tortured by his vagina complex as
women are by penis wants, I suppose. Now
that I look this animal side o f human nature
in the face, I feel pity and love and under
standing for all human beings, not looking
down on them from above, but out o f the
feeling I am ju st one o f them.
Great Mother: In your case, that unloved woman, as you call
her, has had to remain unloved in order that
you might reach this consciousness o f her.
But you should not generalize: frustration
was your way o f becoming conscious, whereas
for others, the way may be completely
different.
Such assimilations of sexual shadow parts were absolutely indispen

sable for the patient as a preparation for the next big plunge into the
unconscious. What she was going to fish up this time she subsequently
referred to as her family horrors. The Great Mother probably already
knew about these horrors, and she knew also that her pupil would have
to go through hell while fishing them up. Therefore, her preparation
consisted in making sure that the tie which joined her and her pupil was
sufficiently secure to stand the inevitable difficulties.
Here, the question arises whether it would not have been better if the
patient had gone to a male analyst, in order to heal her damaged sexual
ity. But this was exactly what she could not do, because the contact with
masculinity in general, and with masculine sexuality in particular, was
still blocked in the unconscious. Now that she was going to try to
become conscious of the causes which in earlier years had occasioned this
stoppage, the patient wanted a psychic hook, a strong psychic bond,
upon which to attach her own enfeebled femininity. This would help
her to avoid the danger of being devoured by the unconscious, a possi
bility that was liable to happen as soon as the original horror, one which
had totally swallowed her up, rose to the surface again.
For an extraverted person, a normal human contact with the other sex
probably would have been the way out of the difficulty. But our
extremely introverted patient had to go an introverted way if she were
ever to attain in the depths of her soul the genuine and really convincing
feeling without which she could not venture a single step in the outside
world. The measure in which an extraverted solution was impossible for
her shows in the fact that any attempt at overcoming her sexual panic
had always failed. Twice in her life she had been very near to having
what we call an affair, but in both cases the same thing happened. At
the moment in which she could have overcome her panic, the partner
felt the taboo, could not deal with it and left her. This behavior of more
than one otherwise normal partner was suggestive. It necessitated a
second plunge into the unconscious, for the sake of acquiring a better
insight into the nature of the taboo.
In the following conversation, the Great Mother makes use of the
well-known fact that a genuine spiritual ecstasy often produces sexual
sensations perceptible in the body. Presumably, she wanted her pupil to
have these sensations becauseas we have just heardthe patients
shadow could not be convinced by any truths whatsoever, except by
those of the sexual parts. And this primitive shadow should not be left
behind and allowed to nourish her resentment, secretly and unobserved,
in the unconscious. If spiritual ecstasy is the highest possible kind of
religious experience, then its counterpart, sexual ecstasy, should not be
excluded, but should be allowed to have its place in order to convince
not only the spiritual side, but the whole of the human psyche, i.e., the
bodily shadow as well.
Fifteenth Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: The other day, as you know, I picked up a
shadow part; namely, at the moment in
which I recognized in myselfthis little animal
which said that a penetrating penis was the
ANNA MARJULA 181
only thing she could believe in. Today I

experienced a similar bodily sensation. It was
very real and very convincing, but the pene
tration took place in my soul, and the one
who penetrated there was you! Consequent
ly, I must admit now that you are the truth
o f my shadow. This is terrible for me. It
signifies that I must give up my rational,
critical hold. It means that I am totally in
yourpower now.
Great Mother: Surrender to me. Do it for the sake o f your
shadow. Our symbolic union means for her
the coitus she desires.
Patient: Whatyou are doing to me is penetrating into
myfear, into my sexualpanic and taboo.
Great Mother: I am not going to spare you! This act o f
spiritual union has got to be accomplished,
for I must have certainty that you are wholly
willing to give yourselfup to me.
Patient: Then test me!
Great Mother: I shall! But remember, there is no retreat.
Symbolically speaking, I am now taking away
from you your virginity and your indepen
dence. You will belong to me forever after
that, and not always in ecstasy. Much worse
will be the periods in which you will feel
separatedfrom me. You will not actually be
separated, but you will feel as though you
were. You will long fora renewed union with
me, but I shall not always grant you that.
This is the test. I f you can stand such trials, it
will be the proof that you have developed a
real contact with me. Nowfirst o f all, assimi
late what you once called my ''greatness in
jections, for without greatness you have not
the slightest chance o f tolerating me. Know
that coitus signifies impregnation, even in a
symbolic union.
Penance
It meant hell to the patient to yield to the irrational experience of
union with an archetype, to become aware of it, through ecstasy, as
sexual excitement, and to be confronted with this whole situation. It
looked like a penalty imposed upon her by two furious and injured
entities, nature and shadow, who both felt wronged by the patients
continence in sexual matters, and who both could only be soothed if she
were able to surrender unconditionally to this penance. What the Great
Mother demanded was really an expiation. And during her expiation,
the patient would not only have to give up the critical rebellion of her
animus, which had definitely been a weapon against insanity, she would
also have to completely surrender to claims which the unconscious
seemed to put upon her, and which she actually could not understand.
She feared the Great Mother now and she feared losing her sanity, or
that she was mad already. She feared to be inundated by the irrational
and to be drowned in it. Without an analysts backing, she could not
possibly have continued. But she had that backing, and she had a sound
inner motive for which to persevere: that this new experience could not
be worse than the one she had had during the innumerable years in
which she suffered the terrible consequences of her neurosis, which
certainly was equally irrational. She decided to take the risk, even the
ultimate risk of madness, because, for the sake of everything that was
sacred to her, she did not want to lose this last chance to relieve her soul
of its burden, the chance contained in this irrational penance which she
was commanded to do.
Then the Great Mother comforted her by saying that the animus
would save her. She should listen to the words of the Great Mother as
well as to the objections of the animus, so that she might learn to form
her own point of view. The rebellious spirit of her animus was to be seen
as a possible protection against the perhaps too powerful personality of
the Great Mother. The patient might keep an eye on both him and
her.
This now seemed to the patient a real proof of the Great Mothers
superiority. It made an enormous impression on her. Her tutor had
called even her worst adversary into the arena as a help for the pupil and
thus, against herself. This put an end to all doubts, and the patient was
willing now to submit to the Great Mother in a symbolic act of coitus,
hoping that she might in this way make up for ail those experiences she
had missed in bodily reality. And this, her union with the Great
ANNA MARJULA 183
Mother, proved to be at the same time a second dive into the personal
unconscious, a dive that was necessary, so as to bring forgotten occur
rences to the surface and to look at them from a new standpoint. The
dive was a difficult one. Consequently, pages and pages were filled with
conversations concerning the things that emerged. It is impossible to
present this material in its whole abundance, so a contracted narrative
will be given, and in it you will hear the actual words of the Great
Mother only now and again.
The Family Tragedy
Let us call up in our imagination an apparently happy family: father,

mother, three children; outward circumstances are quite normal; the
fathers character is the dominant one, and that of the mother, gentle,
fitted for adaptation and for the easing of difficulties.
Because the father is the more dominant of the two parents, we shall
look particularly at the kind of person he was. I think the word self-
righteous could be applied to him: he always knew exactly what was
right and what was wrong. But apart from this rigidity, he was amiable,
generally loved and esteemed. He certainly loved his wife and his chil
dren; he loved his fellow men and was an agreeable comrade. Profes
sionally, he was a good lawyer, industrious and well-known. Now this
man, who seemed destined to go through life happily and without too
much trouble, had a highly dangerous shadow, of which he managed to
stay totally unconscious, thus bringing the whole family to ruin.
When the children were still very young, the father, who worked late
at night, was often unable to get up in the morning. From the breakfast
room, his wife would send the children upstairs, one after the other, to
wake him up. So it happened more than once that his second little
daughter, our patient, invaded the bedroom and played with her lazy
father until she succeeded in making him get up. It must have been
during one of those innocent early-morning visits that the almost unbe
lievable thing happened which destroyed the little childs harmless
playfulness and wounded her for life with a sexual taboo. She was so
young when it happened that, later in analysis, she could never remem
ber the precise details, and she hoped for a very long time that it might
have been an imaginary, rather than a real, happening. But the Great
Mother told her that it had been exceedingly real, and the unhappy
story of later sad events in the family forces us to look at it in that way.
What the little girl of about three or four saw on that, the worst of all
her days, was not only her fathers genitals, but probably his masturba
tion and, what was even worse, the expression which came over his face.
What she could clearly remember later was an overwhelming sensation
throughout the whole of her body, and probably in her soul, too. She
completely identified with her father in what Jung calls participation
mystique.
The Great Mothers comments to this were as follows.
Sixteenth Conversation with the Great Mother

Great Mother: The Freudian analyst merely encouraged you
to remember what had happened. That is not
sufficient. Deal with it! See the role which it
stillplays in your life.
Patient: My libido has gotten stuck in it.
Great Mother: Yes. You could never separate your own
sexuality from that o f yourfather. And this is
your trouble and torment even now.
This participation in the sexuality of her father had, of course, exerted
a bad influence on the character of the little girl. She tried to repress the
torment of uneasiness which she could not understand, and which
consisted of guilt and inferiority feelings. She overcompensated these
feelings by showing herself to be an especially obedient child (whereas
she had been rather naughty before) and she began to develop a
burning ambition to excel in every way. As long as her mother lived,
that gentle woman was a true protection for the nervously overburdened
and highly strung child, who at least felt safe in the shelter of this
motherly love. But, notwithstanding all he had unwittingly done to her,
the child did not hate her father. She adored and worshipped him. In
fact, all her life she desperately strove to acquire his love.
Then the family was hit by the worst imaginable blowthe death of
the mother.This very dearly loved woman died of cancer at the age of
forty-three. She had been the one who kept the family going, and when
she was no longer there, her husband and children felt uprooted. The
father tried to be both a mother and a father to the children, but this
attempt failed disastrously, even though he had their love and they felt
his.
Shortly after the death of the mother, a bad incident occurred. The
ANNA MARJULA 185
father had made a habit of going freely in and out of all the bedrooms,
including the one in which the two daughters slept. (The girls were
fifteen and thirteen now.) Once he came in as the youngest, our patient,
was undressing and had just removed her last garment. The father was
agreeably surprised to see that her young figure was already so well-
developed, and he told her this. He could not resist caressing her naked,
young breasts, this in the presence of the elder sister.
Seven years later, he gave another proof of his misplaced mother
function. ' The girl was twenty now. It had been necessary for her to be
medically examined, and the doctor had prescribed interior irrigation
through the vagina. When the young woman, who was sexually as inno
cent as a child, started the manipulation, the father was present in the
bedroom under pretext that she, in all innocence, might do herself
harm. He felt obliged to show her how it should be done, and he
himself inserted the irrigator. His badly hidden emotion startled the
young woman and injured her soul still more.
We do not know how the father behaved toward the other children,
but the fact remains that the boy died at the age of eighteen and, much
later, the eldest daughter committed suicide.
Thus, the unhappy man had lost his wife and two children, and all
that was left to him was the one daughter, our patient. This daughter
was neurotic, and for that reason a thorn in the flesh of her father, who
had always felt an utter contempt for neurotic people. He died at the
age of seventy-eight from the consequences of an operation. It was a
slow and lingering death. The end came in the hospital in which he had
been nursed for exactly six months and to which our patient went to see
him every day. In the last weeks of his life, his mind began to fail. So his
consciousness was gradually extinguished. In this state of mind, he once
begged his daughter to undress. As his voice was by now very feeble, she
had to bend over him in order to catch his words, whereupon he
attempted to unbutton her blouse with his dying hands, and was angry
with her for several days after that because she had eluded his grasp. He
was a pitiful sight in his last days, tortured by dreams and hallucina
tions. He fancied himself to be in prison and in chains, because he had
murdered both his daughters, as he told her. It was in all the papers, he
said.
At last, death delivered the poor old man from his torture. He died
on a Sunday morning. At the very moment in which he breathed his
last, a choir consisting of hospital sisters began to sing the habitual
Sunday-morning hymns in the corridors of the building. This was a

coincidence, if you want to see it as such. But in the ears of the
daughter, sitting at the bedside of the father, who had just passed away,
the singing voices seemed to be a celestial escort for the soul of her father
into the Beyond. This synchronistic event appeared to her to justify the
fact that, in spite of all that had happened, she had never ceased to love
her father dearly.
An Attempt by the Great Mother to

Heal the Sexual Taboo o f the Patient
The family tragedy, described above, had to be given here because of
details that were not mentioned before. Without these details, we
cannot understand the point of view which the Great Mother expresses
in the following dialogues. But first I wish to quote from Psychology and
Alchemy. In this work, Jung writes:
Whateversins theparents andancestors have committed against the child
are accepted by the adult man as his own innate condition with which he
must come to terms. Only a fool is interested in the guilt o f otherpeople
which he cannot alter. The wise man will ask himself: " Who am I to
whom all this happens ?" To find an answer to this fateful question he
willlook into his own depths.10
These meaningful and wise words express exactly the idea of the Great
Mother with regard to the education of her pupil. The Great Mother
always accentuates, just as Jung does, the value of taking responsibility
unto oneself instead of hiding ones own guilt behind somebody elses
shadow. Therefore, she now commands the shadow of the patient to tell
the story in her own words, even if these words should turn out to be not
too carefully picked. And the Great Mother summons the patient to
become conscious of the latters own role in the tragedy, the role which
she played by means of that shadow which is a part of herself.
The outcome is a talk between three figures: ego, shadow and Great
Mother. The shadow speaks first.
Conversation with the Shadow under Supervision o f

the Great Mother
Shadow (to the Why (do you think) your mother suffered
patient): and died? Why (do you think) your brother
10Cf. authorized translation in Jung, Collected Works, vol. 12, par. 152.B.H.
ANNA MARJULA 187
died so young and your sister killed herself?

And how can you overlook what happened in
the last days o f your fathers life, when he
clearly showed that he sexually desired you?
Dont be a child! Understand at last!
Patient: My lovefor myfather blinded me!
Shadow: Your foolish love! Me he wanted! And had!
You chose to be innocently unaware. You
repressed everything by seeing it as harmless,
you silly child! But I took my chance with
him. He was a child himself. I shall tell you.
The doctor said that your mother was not to
have any more children.
Patient: I know, he told me himself. She nearly died
when my little brother was bom, and more
births were not to be risked.
Shadow: He did not touch her after that, and he took
his refuge in perversions. He satisfied his lust
through cruelty.
Patient: (addressing Please, Great Mother, may I speak with you,
the Great Mother): rather than with the shadow?
Great Mother: You may have this part o f the story with me.
Listen! Your extravertedfather, as a righteous
thinking type, knew exactly where righteous
ness ended and where sin began. As long as
he had no direct coitus with you, he saw
everything as paternal andpermitted. He did
not see his sexual shadow, nor did he see that
he lived that shadow. He loved power. He
wanted everybody to give way to him, but
not in a normal coitus. He made people want
him and then he retired into righteousness.
That is what you suffered, and that is why
you felt a burning, unrequited love for him.
You loved him because he was, in fact, very
lovable. Partly, his paternal love was all right
and more than right. But there was that per
versity in him. When you were a very young
child, he showedyou his sexualparts and his
own lust in order to see you overwhelmed by

desire. But he did not know about it; he was
as unaware as a child. Now your shadow
comes in. She liked it.
Patient: Please, Great Mother, may I speak with you
and not with her?
Great Mother: No, go to the bitter end and hear her lan
guage.
(The patient agrees to this and listens to the shadow.)
Shadow: I simply liked the sensationpart lust, part
fear, part guiltand I liked to have it to
gether with him. I felt a grand girl, and I was
superior to your stupidity. O f course, he
knew unconsciously that he could always get
you through me. And I, as shadow, played
up to his shadow.
Great Mother Now, please try to recognize this shadow in
(interrupting the yourself, feel responsiblefor her.
shadow and speaking
to thepatient):
Patient: I can remember that some warning instinct
did tell me the thing was not right.
Great Mother: This instinct was also the shadow: it was
another part o f her. I f you had listened to
your instinct, you might have pushed your
father away from you; at any rate, on these
later occasions when you were older. But you
encouraged him. Do you know how you en
couraged him?
Patient: Iam afraid I liked the contact.
Great Mother: Yes. You cherished pleasures, fears and
agonies in your unconscious, rather than part
from his unawareness and perversions. You
gave libido to your father's darkest shadow
by refusing to see him as sinful, and this, in
spite o f your warning instinct. You must not
repress your own guilt by exonerating your
father. He is not only the paternal, loving
ANNA MARJULA 189
father, and you, the obedient, innocent girl.

No! He approached his little daughter with
perverse tendencies, and she liked it and gave
way to it. Almostfather-daughter incest!Just
one more little step and it might have thrown
him into prison. O fcourse, this little step was
not taken, and both o f you retired into
righteous respectability, the incestuous
inclinations covered up by apparent inno
cence. Today you are still under the spell o f
all this. Now break this spell! Refuse to keep
on burdening yourself with the false respec
tability o f your father. See his shadow and
push that shadow aside by judging your
father severely. And take over the fu ll
responsibility for the role which your own
shadow played in the tragedy. Suffer the
loathing you feelfor her, suffer it completely!
Perhaps your injured nature will forgive you
then and balance may at last be restored in
your soul!
Dream
To confirm this conversation, the patient had a dream about
smuggling, which took place at some frontier. Her analyst explained the
smuggling in the dream as being the kind of dishonesty which we
contrive when we repress unpleasant thoughts up to, and beyond, the
frontier of consciousness. And the analyst added: Most people think
they are not guilty when they do not know about deeds which they
commit. But Jung shows us that we are guilty when we do not know
about them. Not to know is the guilt!'
The next step on her path toward individuation was that the patient
had to see her human mother through the eyes of her archetypal
mother.
Seventeenth Conversation with the Great Mother

Great Mother: It will be difficultfor you, because you loved
her so deeply, but we must now look at the
part which your motherplayed in your 'fam

ily horrors. Your mother was not as uncon
scious as her husband, but she was weak and
easily influenced. She loved her husband
above everything and she could not accept
or see his dark side. She made the same
mistake which you made. You copied her.
This was because o f your participation mys
tique with her. She repressed her knowledge
about this dangerous shadow o f her husband,
for he had to remain her immaculate hero.
She did not know much about her own
shadow, but lived in his false righteousness.
This she did out o f loyalty and gentleness
toward him. She was too much one with him
and participated in his crime insofar as she
did not protect her children sufficiently. She
surrendered to his shadow and had to die for
it. The devil took her body and poisoned her
mortally.
An Archetypal Aspect o f the Family Tragedy

Now that we have carefully examined the family tragedy in its
personal aspect, it does not seem premature to turn our attention toward
a possible archetypal aspect of it, because a father complex which
manifests itself negatively enough to form a sexual taboo in the
daughters soul is worth following up in all its projections, symbols and
aspects.
Fields o f Masculinity in the Psychology o f Women

When we consider the existence of a father complex or of masculinity
in general in the psychology of women, we can discriminate between
three aspects or fields.
The.iJ^igt field is the human aspect, the father complex as such, and its
projections onto other real men. Its realm is the personal one.
Secondly, we have the: animiij aspect. The animus is innate in a
woman as a germ which can develop into such-and-such characteristics,
in the majority of cases through the father complex. This animus figure
functions as a kind of bridge, for on one side he belongs to the womans
ANNA MARJULA 191
personal life, in which he represents the unconscious part of her mind;

whereas on the other side, he is at home in the collective unconscious.
Hidden behind the personal animus is a larger animus, behind him a
larger one still, and so on. In this way, ^positive animus leads up to the
most positive side of God, whereas a negative animus leads down
even to Satan!
This brings us to a durd_aspect of masculinity in the soul of a woman,
which would be the image in her of male divinity himself. The fact that
a woman can have a feeling relationship to this divine power proves that
at least an image or reflection of it must live in her soul, and that allows
us to call this image the third aspect of masculinity in her.
When the father complex is constellated in the unfolding soul of a
woman, we can discern not only its effect on what we call her earthly
fate, but also its influence on the development of her animus and, ulti- ^
mately, on her evolving relationship to spirituality. The differentiation
of the three fields of masculinity in the soul of a woman is made more
difficult, owing to the fact that in projections these fields are often
intermingled. As we know, the heavenly Father is generally over
burdened with human qualities. And it does not need to be emphasized
how often a human man is a kind of god in the eyes of a woman (or, just
as frequently, a sort of animus-devil!).
But let us return to the case and consider the three aspects of the
father complex and its projections as they are manifested there. We have
already shown the influence which the father complex had exerted on
her earthly fate. In the conversation which follows, the Great Mother
will deal with the fatal result which the father complex had on the
development of the patients animus. And, later on, we shall get an
insight into its effects upon the spiritual image, or religious concept, in
the soul of this woman.
Eighteenth Conversation with the Great Mother

Great Mother: Your animus became entangled with the
shadow o f your father and therefore perpe
trated the family horrors all over again in
your unconscious. And you project this crim
inally infected animus on human men. So
how can you expect them to love you?
Through your animus works the shadow o f
your father, and through this shadow works

the devil! This devil wanted to kill the
members o f your family, one after the other
-and he succeeded! Your whole family has
now died except for you. You must live five
lives, so to speak. You had to sacrifice a
normalpersonal life. You lived the life o f the
family.
Patient: Must I part from the family and now live a
personallife?
Great Mother: I cannot tell yet. Perhaps you will have your
hands fu ll until your own death in achieving
thisfamily mission. In that case, there will be
no personal life, just the sacrifice o f it, and it
must be freely given. Your mission in life
might turn out to be the impersonal one of
looking that devil in the face without capitu
lating to this fascination. Now that you have
looked at yourfather complex in the personal
realm, you must try to free your animus from
the shadow o f your father, lest the devil
succeed in fastening his grip on him. See the
tragedy in its fullest extent, and be severe
about it. Do not only be impressed by your
own dissatisfaction as an "unloved woman,
but try also to see the family tragedy as an
impersonal happening, the ramifications of
which operate in the collective unconscious as
wellas in yourpersonalsoul.
Patient (desperately): Tell me, Great Mother, why do I have to go
through these horrors all over again?
Great Mother: The idea of it is that the collective uncon
scious contains the father-daughter incest
and that everybody is unconsciously con
nected with it. You are now consciously
going through it, and that is more than most
people do. You do it for the family, but also
you do it for a much larger circle o f human
ANNA MARJULA 193
beings. And it will work itself out in a better

relationship to them. People willfeel it.
The patient asked her analyst why exactly incest is forbidden. The
analyst answered:
The psychological results of incest are not so well known as is
commonly supposed; psychically, incest narrows the horizon; in the case
of a father-daughter incest, the daughter would remain a child always.
Since father-knows-everything-best, she will never take responsibility
upon herself and consequently, she cannot develop.
The animus now gets a form of treatment from the Great Mother, and
the patients part in it consists of her willingness to have it done in her
soul.
Nineteenth Conversation with the Great Mother

Great Mother: You must once more go through a complete
union with me, and your willingness to do so
is what your animus needs in order to get
healed. Give me your love; he cannot possess
you then. Your willingness to endure is your
necessary contribution to my act o f exorcising
the incest-devil out o f you, and thus healing
the animus.
Patient: I am willing.
Great Mother: By submitting to me, you separate your ani
mus from the shadow of your father, and
consequently, from the devil. Thus you heal
the neurosis o f your animus, which is your
own. He must see that he is neither your
fathers shadow nor the devil. Such identifi
cations cause an inflation in him. He is very
ill and totally crushed, carrying your fathers
shadow.
Patient: Isn 't he behaving rather like a woman ?
Great Mother: Yes, insofar as he identifies with his anima
while he allows her to fornicate with Satan.
That is what happens to you in your soul,
when you are carriedaway by nervous attacks.
Patient: Is thisparticular devil the incest taboo ?

Great Mother: He is not the taboo; he is the incest. He
creeps into your father's shadow where the
incest is at home, and then he fornicates with
your anima-possessedanimus.
Patient: I feel almost insane now.
Great Mother: You can stand it. You must stand it!
Patient: To whom can I turn i f the whole family was
infected?
Great Mother: To me! I show you all these horrors because
you must havefaith in me; you must be suffi
ciently impressed to keep to me! You will
never become whole if you cannot free your
faith, this faith which is blocked in the
unconscious by your horrors. You are on the
verge o f insanity now, but you can keep
going. And then the madness o f your father
will die in you. You and I are now accom
plishing something completely irrational, but
being willing to suffer it in your soul has for
you the significance o f a sacrifice, freely
brought and freely given. You are humble
and obedient now, and courageous. Now
that you side with me, the animus can be
reborn through you. Our union is his rebirth!
Two days later, we hear the patient speaking to her Great Mother
again.
Twentieth Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: I have read over our last conversations, but
now it no longer impresses me as being par
ticularly important, whereas at first, it
seemed to have the significance o f a great act
o f exorcism, devil exorcism, applied to
myself.
Great Mother: I was exorcising the devil out o f you, and you
know it. But words could not express this. It
was beyond words.
ANNA MARJULA 195
Patient: Ifelt as if you were gathering the whole o f my

being and the whole past o f my life into one
enormous grasp in order to unite it with
yourself, thus withdrawing it from the
animus.
Great Mother: It was a gigantic crisis.
Patient: What happened to the animus?
Great Mother: H ad he not been immortal, he would have
died! Let him be in my charge now. Your
task is to take care o f yourself and your
shadow.
V. Developments
When the patient had read and thought over the last dialogues, she
began to see what might be the consequences of a relationship between
her own shadow and an animus who was depraved enough to have a
secret affair with Satan. She saw that this shadow was giving all her
blood (and indeed the blood of the patient herself) to the fatal con
glomeration of animus, fathers shadow and devil. This insight meant
an important step on her way toward individuation, and each higher
level she attained on the spiral gave her a more extensive view, which
included the future as well as the past.
After the almost medieval act of devil exorcism which the Great
Mother had worked upon her, the patient was free to turn to the third
field of masculinity in her soul, which we have discerned as the image
of the male divinity himself, to which a positively developed animus
may form a bridge and thereby enable the ego to participate.
Religious Poems
The creative animus had already appeared (apart from musical inspir
ations) in a series of religious poems which the patient had begun to
write at this time. The contents of one of these poems will play a part in
her further development. They give a clear idea of the influence which
her negative father complex had upon her religious concepts.
In this poem, called The Harp of God, she compares her soul to a
harp which she yields up to God. She describes what pains she took to
tune the strings accurately and how she dusted and polished the gilded
frame until it shone brightly. These careful preparations having been
accomplished, she offers up her harp to God, praying that His divine
fingers may touch its strings. When she considered her poem finished, a
curious and totally unexpected thing happened. She heard a masculine
voice, the voice of God, telling her in the rhythm and rhyme of her own
poem that He, God, does not wish to be disturbed just now. And,
besides, He does not want her human harp at all. He has already
selected the universe for a harp, the golden strings of which are
sunbeams.
So far, the poem distinctly demonstrates that the negative father
complex affected even this highest level, the level on which God rejects
her harp (namely her love). In the human realm, as we have seen, her
womanly love for the other sex was unable to reach any partner. Instead,
fascinated by the animus, she allowed him to possess and torture her.
And on the spiritual level, God now refuses to play upon her harp
that is, to accept her love. But this time, powerful personalities are
sustaining herarchetypal figures as well as human personalities.
She has an opportunity to read her poem, including Gods answer,
to Jung.11 She expects him to laugh heartily, especially at Gods answer,
but this is not the case. Jung does not take it as a joke at all; in fact, he
takes the matter very seriously indeed, and he tells her that she cannot
leave it at that. She must find an answer to God, an answer which might
inspire God to become conscious not only of beautiful sunbeams, but
also of His obligation to play upon the harp of human souls. It is God
who has created these human beings and therefore He has to accept His
share of the responsibility for their souls.
This view about her poem which Jung said was the answer he would
have given to God was at first no help to the patient. It somehow did
not harmonize; in fact, it interfered with her own relationship to God.
The difficulty may have been that she had not yet formed a clear
concept of the God image which lived in her soul. Until now, according
to orthodox Christian dogma, she had understood God to be abso
lute ; that is, existing in Himself and detached from any human condi
tions. But, as we shall see, the God about which the Great Mother and
the patient are speaking in the following conversations is rather a rela
tive God; namely, a God whose existence is in a certain sense depen
dent upon a human subject by means of a mutual and necessary
interplay. In the case of our patient, this God, or God image, was at first
The following account of Jungs pronouncements should not be taken literally, but
rather as the echo which they had in the soul of the patient.
ANNA MARJULA 197
negatively coloredas mentioned abovebecause the ramifications of

the patients negative father complex extended to this divine level. The
goal was now to purify this image.
The Great Mother takes up its negativity in the coming conversations
and helps the patient to find a relationship to it by drawing the latters
attention to the collective quality of her disturbance and to its origin in
the collective unconscious.
Twenty-first Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: I have the dreadful feeling that everybody
has withdrawn from me. There is emptiness
all around me. God has retired into the
clouds.
Great Mother: Perhaps God feels as desolate as you do
because He refused to play upon your harp.
It might be His mood which He projects
upon you.
Patient: Do you mean that God plays His bad mood
upon my harp? Then he is a badplayer.
Great Mother: Are you perhaps a bad listener?
Patient: Is my emptiness Gods emptiness? Is God's
animaprojected onto me?
Great Mother: Not only onto you. Onto humanity, we
might say. God wants to become conscious,
yet He does not want to. His ambivalence is
heaped upon mankind. You are one o f those
who might be called upon to succor God in
His state o f nigredo (blackness).
Patient: How can I do that?
Great Mother: Be conscious o f the nigredo in yourself, but
without seeing it as personal. It is worldwide.
You can save neither the world nor God. But
you might save an infinitesimal part o f its
trouble, just as much or as little as you are
willing to suffer yourself.
Patient: I cannot see God clearly. I see clouds instead.
Great Mother: You project your animus onto God. This is
countertransference, or vice versa. Be very

humble lest God hit out at you. One might
compare Gods condition to the state o f mind
that precedes creativity. God must project
this forlomness caused by the nigredo onto
mankind, because He is unconscious o f it. I f
there are not enough human beings who can
carry God's nigredo on their own shoulders,
then catastrophe is probable. But if you know
what you are carrying when you feel miser
able and ill, if you do not feel your suffering
to be only personal, but understand that an
archetype from the collective unconscious is
touching you, then you can bear it better. Do
you see? To carry your own cross means carry
ing a part o f Gods cross as well.
Patient: I f I react to my desolation by judging the
whole o f my analysis to be a mistake, then
that o f course is an animus opinion.
Great Mother: Yes, such thoughts are animus opinions. But
the nigredo feeling, as we shall call it, must
be separated from them and, please, not
repressed.
Twenty-second Conversation with the Great Mother

Two days later, the dialogue is taken up again as follows:
Patient: I f God wants to transplant His negative side
into m e. . .
Great Mother I must put this right. I f God were actually to
(interrupting): do so, then there would not be the slightest
chance for you to stand it. You are not up to
carrying an incarnation o f the devil. Only in a
higher region could such an incarnation take
place. Should God choose you for this
purpose, you would most certainly die or
become insane. You are not able to contain
the image o f the antichrist. To let that idea
get hold o f you would be an inflation.
ANNA MARJULA 199
Patient: I do not know whether I had that idea or not.

In fact, I do not believe that 1 had it.
Great Mother: You had it in a way, perhaps unconsciously.
Be conscious o f your personal shadow and
understand through her that God has a
shadow too; namely, His son, Satan. God
must become conscious o f His shadow. He is
not yet sufficiently conscious o f him. This is
God's state o f nigredo, and its image in
human souls generates the trouble in the
world. A particle o f Gods difficult condition
has to be fought out in each human being.
Yourfamily history is halfpersonal and half-
impersonal. It is like a ladder uniting the two
realms. The newly acquired consciousness o f
its personal, as well as o f its animus, aspect
will now help you to get right with God, for
all the time you were struggling with your
family horrors you were also wrestling with
the devil, who is a part o f God.
Patient: Is the devil that part o f God which will not
accept my harp?
Great Mother: It is that particular song which God will not
play upon your harp. God prefers to leave
that to the devil. He reserves the sunbeams
and the cosmic hymnfor Himself.
As a result of this conversation, the patient now tries to look at her

inner history in its spiritual aspect. At first, she calls that aspect its
reflection in heaven. But in this connection, words such as reflection,
mirage, image and so on seem to be out of place. She thinks she had
better change her post of observation so that she might learn to look at
her human tragedy as if it were the image, in miniature, of a universal
drama. She even tries to see her own life as an infinitesimal earth symbol
for celestial evolutions.
In order to find this spiritual standpoint, she now undertakes a
symbolic journey to an unknown land under the supervision of the
Great Mother, hoping to attain the new point of observation for which
she is longing. She experiences this voyage as an extremely dangerous

enterprise, which she describes in a long series of conversations with her
Great Mother.
The dialogues contain an active fantasy of which an abridged version
will be given in form of a narrative. The patient calls her fantasy:
A Tightrope Dancer Crosses an Abyss

In thisfantasy the patient is standing on the edge ofa precipice which
lies between two realms: her old, terrestrial standpoint and the more
spiritual conception oflife to which she is now aspiring.
A rope connects both sides of the abyss, and apparently this rope is
meant to replace a bridge. This is going to be a tightrope dancers
crossing! Atfirst, she recoilsfrom the danger o f it. But the Great Mother
reassures her, saying that sheathe Great Motheris the rope, and that
the patient cannot come to grief because she is firmly fixed to this rope,
although as yet with only one toe. Moreover, says the Great Mother, the
patient has a balancing pole in her hands', namely, her instincts. Conse
quently, ourpoor, untrainedtightrope dancer decides to venture across.
But when she has gotten halfway, she is imprudent enough to look
down into the depths, and there she sees her animus and her shadow
waltzing together and kissing! The sight o f them makes her giddy. She
loses her balance andfalls, but remains hanging, head downward, from
the rope to which she is attachedwith only one toe.
Now, just this fateful slip is that which separates the lovers. The
patient is now hanging between them, head downward, as if she were a
sworddividing them. A need to end this torture makes her remember her
balancing pole (her instincts). She tries to reach the bottom o f the preci
pice with this pole, in order to make contact with the earth {her own
earth). But the pole is not long enough. How can she make it longer? At
last, her agonyforces her to cry out to hershadow, imploring her to come
to her aid. And then, after the reunion with her shadow, her instincts
come to life, whereupon the pole grows longer and longer. When it
touches the bottom of the abyss, she succeeds, by pushing hard against
it, in regaining her upright position on the rope, and then she proceeds
along the rope untilshe reaches the otherside of the ravine.
Of course, on paper it is easy enough to say that the patient united

with her shadow, but in actual fact, she was in the extremity of her need
when she shouted for help, and her cry for the shadow was uttered in
agonizing fear. The patient expressed her need as follows:
ANNA MARJULA 201
A Talk with the Shadow

Patient: Shadow! Leave that animus alone! Unite with
me! You belong to me!
Shadow: Yes! Now that the devil is exorcised out of
him, this animus is nothing but a very
unattractive mass o f misery. I am not inter
ested in him, not I! I prefer little flirtations
with real men, and I want to get at them
through you!
Patient: You said *'little flirtations. That is all right.
But I do not want you to flood me with your
sex appeal.
Shadow: Take me or leave me! . . . In the end, the
animus might recover and I might go back
to him!
Twenty-third Conversation with the Great Mother

Great Mother: Can you see the mistake you made?
Patient: Oh, yes. 1 should have taken the whole o f her
while she was willing to come to me.
Great Mother: You are terribly afraid o f her and o f instincts
that mightflood you.
Through this conversatoinas in a flash of lighta deeper under
standing was given to the patient. Something which was as yet dark and
inaccessible in her was suddenly illuminated.
She saw that her idea of masculinity was a misconception; that it was
wrapped in darkness by opinions which actually belonged somewhere
else. When she was confronted by masculinitybe it in its human
aspect, in the animus realm, or in a spiritual spherethen her panic
was, at bottom, fear of becoming overwhelmed, swept away by her own
sensations, emotions and instincts. Her sexual panic was called forth by
unconscious shadow parts which she had projected onto masculinity,
together with her shadows shameless display of sexual need and lust.
Her realization that this projection had to be taken back onto herself put
an end to the enjoyment felt by the dark couple in waltzing and kissing
each other in the abyss.
Symbolically, this was the moment in which her instinctive balancing

pole reached the earth. It was also the moment when she could regain
her upright position and proceed along the rope by leaning hard on the
pole with which she kept touching the bottom of the ravine as she went.
This repeated contact with her own depths sustained her, and thus she
could reach the other side of the ravine. Here layas the Great Mother
had foretoldthe Promised Land, the spiritual realm which she could
now begin to explore, the world-behind-her-neurosis, as she called
it. In this world, she hoped to find God.
VI. A Sojourn in a Spiritual World

Alas, the first encounter which the patient had in her 'world-behind-
the neurosis was definitely not the one for which she had yearned. For
the first figure which advanced to meet her was Satan himself!
Satan immediately opened a discouraging conversation with her.
Conversation with Satan

Satan: Do you really think that you can stand your
ground? You silly child! You have not got
the slightest chance o f resisting me!
Patient: The Great Mother is protecting me.
Satan: I am superior to the Great Mother. I belong
to the quatemity and she does not.
Here, the conversation came abruptly to an end, because the patient
could not find a reply to Satans impudent words. But the patient had
an analyst to whom she could turn, and this analyst had an answer at
hand. The analyst said, Satan has got an inflation if he thinks he is
superior to the Great Mother, and the analyst made her the following
chart of the quaternity:
God Father
Christ- -Satan
Holy Ghost, Mary, Sophia,

Great Mother, Earth
ANNA MARJULA 203
Thus equipped, the patient felt better armed against possible attacks on
the part of her powerful opponent. She risked a further conversation
with him, and this time she herself was the attacking party.
Conversation with Satan

Patient: Now hear me, Satan! My analyst has in
formed me that as Earth, the Great Mother
belongs to the quatemity just as much as you
do! You are not placed above the Great
Mother and you are not going to ruin my
relationship with her.
Satan: I have ruined that for you already, and you
know how I did it.
Patient: It is true that I felt as if she were going away
from me. I almost cried in my dismay. But
now I see it was you who had a hand in the
game. You tried to separate us! Go away! I
want the Great Mother, notyou!
Satan: The Great Mother has a shadow, too. I am
that shadow!
Patient: No, you are not!Just as the Great Mother has
a shadow, so you are related to Christ. Now
leave me!
Twenty-fourth Conversation with the Great Mother

Great Mother: Well done! This time he could not get you.
Patient: But only thanks to you! My previous conster
nation was brought about by my confused
thoughts concerning you and the Self.
Great Mother: Your analyst toldyou that I am Earth. And as
Earth, I am a part o f the quatemity. I enter
into it as the opposite o f God the Pather.
Patient: Are you going to abandon me ?
Great Mother: I am always present. But it depends on you
whetheryou are aware ofthis fact or not.
Of course, Satan did not give in as easily as that. He no longer
attacked his victim openly; instead, he used a hidden means to tempt

her in the old way. He misused the ambition of her shadow and the
almost irresistible power of her animus to inspire the patient in her
music, at the cost of analysis. The patient, without having recognized
this as a plot of Satans, told the Great Mother about her temptation.
Twenty-fifth Conversation with the Great Mother,

Including a Short Talk with the Animus
Patient: I feel terribly tempted to go back to music,
and I do not know whether it would be right
or wrong to do so.
Great Mother: You may abandon Jungian psychology and
be an artist in music again. You are suffi
ciently gifted to do so. Or you can go to
further depths o f individuation. You are
standing at the crossroads now, and a deci
sion must be taken.
Patient: 1 know my goal is individuation, but I am
terribly tempted to fly away with the animus,
up into the clouds. Thisputs me to the test.
Great Mother: I f you know your goal, then make your deci
sion quickly. Do not keep on torturing
yourself.
Patient: This is a real sacrifice.
Great Mother: There is no need to tell me that; I know it. It
is your real encounter with your animus. I f
you become fascinated, you will follow him
and be an artist again. You are free to do so.
Or you can sacrifice the fascination by choos
ing to become more and more conscious o f
your animus.
Patient: Here I am. 1 belong to you! I have wor
shipped my animus as if he were God. I must
sacrifice him now, or I shall never be able to
see God. This is my hell. I thought that hell
was to be neurotic and ill, all that kind o f
thing, but now I see the cause o f my neurosis
ANNA MARJULA 205
in my inclination to be fascinated by the

animus. I want to argue with him now about
this.
(The patient then addresses her animus.)
Patient: My animus, why did you makeme struggle
with musicfor more thanforty years?
Animus: Oh, just a pastime.
Patient: Do not ridicule me.
Animus: My undertone is mocking, but I am speaking
the truth. Your unconscious struggled with
the family horrors, but you yourselfwere not
up to doing that. So we did without you. We
gave your ego an occupation so that you
should not spoil our work or interrupt us.
Patient: Who are "we and us ?
Animus: The Great Mother told me to occupy myself
with you while she dealt with your uncon
scious problems. She told you more than
once that she had livedyour life for you.
Great Mother This is true. He was the one who caused you
(interrupting the to move on in music. But I was an even
animus and deeper cause than he was. I made him push
addressing the you. I gave him a pastime just to prevent his
patient): mixing himself up with my work, which was
to prepare your unconscious for later individ
uation. This individuation is the goal now.
Having come out of the struggle with Satan and her animus with a
whole skin, the patient then had an important dream which cleared her
psychic sky in a wonderful way.
Dream
Thepatient is in a hurry to reach the station, but cannotget on. She is
overtaken by a boy on a scooter who shouts to herfor sheerjoy ofspeed.
He has passed and is already a good distance ahead of her when she sees
him falling with his scooter while going at full speed. His head hits the
paving stones. This happens three times. The patient cannot go to his
assistance, for she has to,catch her train. She is late as it is. Besides, the
accidents happen a long way off, and the distance is too great for her to
cover. She asks for a taxi, but is told there are no taxis today. She then
tries to run to the station, but she is not able to run; her legs feel like
lead.
The town in which she is struggling forward is the capital o f her native
country, and she manages to reach its main square. Here it proves impos
sible to advance because o f a big procession o f women, evidently a
demonstration, which is moving along and blocking the way. The women
are going to act a play or allegory on this square. The patient is now in
the company o f another woman. Together they find places on a kind o f
private tribune where they can look at the performance. As yet, there is
nobody else on the platform, and they have a free choice o f seats. The
patient would have liked to sit in the front row, but she is willing to join
her companion and be content with seats in the back row. Moreover, she
wonders whether all o f this is not perhaps a mistake, for they have come
to what appears to be the royal tribune.
Explanation of the Dream

The dream affirms that the patient was right when she chose to go the
way of further individuation instead of listening to the tempting sugges
tions of her animus. The little boy on the scooter is a young animus, and
probably it was he who recently tempted her to leave analysis in favor of
eternal musical raptures together with him. Always to fly up into the sky
is natural for an animus. This tendency of his shows in his speed, which
indeed ends in a calamity, but his immortal nature enables him to,
survive such disasters. Had the patient joined him, she would have met
with what would have been for her a fatal smash. She has managed to
avoid this trap.
In the dream, she was right to let the animus look after himself, but
she was mistaken as far as her goal is concerned. The goal seems to be to
catch her train. A taxi is not to be had; she must go on foot (which is the
most individual way of advancing, whereas a taxi is a more collective
means). She tries to run, but her legs feel like lead. The motif of heavi
ness, when it occurs in dreams, generally indicates that we ought not to
reach the goal toward which we are striving. We should change it for
another goal. This is exactly what happens in the dream. The patient
forgets all about her train as soon as she reaches the main square of the
town, where she becomes absorbed in looking at the procession.
In reality, fame is the train for which she had been running. This
hope must now be given up in favor of the all-embracing goal of indi
ANNA MARJULA 207
viduation. The dream gives her more details about her real destination,
telling her that it is a square in the center of the town and in the heart of
her native country, where she has her roots. It is a mandala that sym
bolizes the Self. In outer reality a national monument was erected in this
square after the last war, in honor of liberation from the Nazis and from
their enormous animus, Hitler. The women in the dream are going to
perform a play or allegory around this monument, and the patients
associations inform us about its character, for the play is connected with
a famous poem written by a well-known woman poet of her country.
This poem describes a festival, celebrated by women, in honor of libera
tion from inner slavery, and the dream makes use of this symbol in order
to express that the women (that is, all the women in the patient
herself, the whole of her being) are celebrating the sacrifice of being
possessed by the animus in favor and in honor of the Self. This perfor
mance, at which she is a spectator, is taking place in the center of her
own soul.
She is together with her shadow, and for the sake of that shadow, she
is willing to sit in the back row of the tribune. We ought to be thankful
that the humility of the shadow prevents her from choosing seats in the
front row, for the front row appears to be the royal tribune to which they
have been admitted. And, surely not the ego but the Self should be
seated in the front row. This tribune is a symbol of what the patient has
called her spiritual post of observation lying in her world-behind-
the-neurosis, which the Great Mother has helped her to reach on the
other side of the abyss. In the dream, the patient does not get an infla
tion because she is conscious of her shadow and willing to accept the
responsibility for that shadow.
This important dream and its explanation opened the patients eyes,
so that she began to see the value of sacrificing animus temptations in
favor of the all-embracing meaningfulness of the Self.
From that point, she tried to become familiar with the spiritual aspect
of her problems by means of further contact with her inner figures and
their superpersonal points of view. Her progress began to be rapid.
Twenty-sixth Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: It appears to me that my previous problem
with the animus has now to be gone through
on its highest level', namely, in relationship
to God.
Great Mother: Your relationship to God has changed since

that devil, your fathers shadow, was exor
cised out o f your animus and since your
shadow remains separatedfrom him.
Patient: When I try to speak to God, I feel as if I
were again hanging head-downward on the
rope, as in the fantasy.
Great Mother: Head-downward means that you should ap
proach God not with your head, but with
lowerparts.
These words, spoken by the Great Mother, recalled to the mind of
the patient her shadow, who perhaps might be helpful in making a
favorable approach to God.
She broached this idea to her shadow in the following way:
Conversation with the Shadow

Patient: Shadow, can you help me to approach God
with myfeeling?
Shadow: I know how to feel toward masculine persons.
It is very simple; you justfeelfeminine!
Patient: In what way?
Shadow: Men can help us with what we ourselves are
not. We must feel ourselves very feminine,
very much a female. Then men will come.
Love your female body, love your own need
for men. Then they come. I feel myself
superior to men because I know that they
must fall for me. This is a little trick. We
mean pleasure to them. Please them by play
ing the pleasure to them. They cannot resist
it; they come. You can get everything out o f
them when you play the ultra-female, their
pleasure part. Never forget how much we
mean pleasure to them!
The patient thanks the shadow for her information and addresses the
Great Mother.
ANNA MARJULA 209
Twenty-seventh Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: I must acknowledge that I never could iden
tify with my own femininity and that I never
thought o f humbly representing a mans
pleasure.
Great Mother: That would be your sin toward God. You
have not accepted your fate while you have
not accepted your sex. And it is not enough
to accept your sex as suffering, which you
did. Your shadow accepted it as a gift. She is
pleased to please men and quite content with
her role. Moreover, how can you be Gods
vessel if you repress the natural function of
yourfeminine physique, o f those parts made
for the purpose o f conception? Spiritual
conception and the way to it can be taught to
you by what your body is able to tell you. As
soon as the feeling part is constellated
through your instincts, you will no longer
need to beg God to play upon your harp. He
Himselfwill ardently desire to do so.
In this manner the attempt to enrich herself with yet unconscious
shadow parts had once again allowed the patient to take a step forward
on her way to individuation.
She now tried to feel in which way she could please God. Of course,
her animus immediately told her that he disagreed with her ludicrous
plan. But she knew how to answer him, as we shall see in the next talk.
Conversation with the Animus

Patient: Animus, be silent! I want to feel God's near
ness through active identification with the
life He means me to live. So, first o f all, I
shall try to feel at home in my ownfemininity.
Animus: I am your messenger to God! I am now going
to fly up to Him and tell him thisfor you.
Patient: Thanks, but I am going to tell Him myself.
An Archetypal Dream
Some days later, a very short but extremely archetypal dream is given
to her:
She hears a masculine voice, God's voice, crying out to her for help.
Instead o f using the common word "Help," God repeats several times,
in the language o f the patient, the ancient biblical word "succor.
This is the whole of the dream.
This dream was followed by a conversation with the Great Mother, in
which the latter explains how human beings can be of use to God.
Twenty-eighth Conversation with the Great Mother

Great Mother: Dr. Jung once told you that human beings
are the eyes and ears o f God and that they
must give consciousness to God through their
lives. It now looks as if God had called to you
for help because he wants this bit o f con
sciousness which you can give Him.
Patient: I had a difficultfantasy which I want to relate
to you. It said that God was angry because
men had stolen parts o f Him which He had
not meant to be in human hands. These parts
were natures secret about nuclear splitting
and, the equivalent o f this, Ju n gs knowl
edge concerning the Deity. God had not
intended that human beings should know
about His dark side. He meant to remain
unconscious about this Himself. He wants to
repress this awkward business. He has resis
tances. Therefore Jung and his pupils, all o f
them, are damned in His eyes.
Great Mother: The danger to all o f you is not imaginary.
You have experienced the enormous tension
yourself; I mean the tension that existed in.
your soul when you had to become conscious
o f dark sides in yourself, or when a creative
process was about to manifest itself in you.
Perhaps God will create very positive things
ANNA MARJULA 211
as soon as He is conscious enough to start

action. But if He does not become conscious
o f Satan as His son, then His own dark side
may be projected onto human persons. He
may let loose His resentments onto mankind
in a world catastrophe. Subsequently, He will
accuse Dr. Jung and Professor Einstein of
having caused it. They will be the scapegoats.
Now, listen: you are very near to Jung and
o f course you will be destroyed with him if
the worst were to happen. But you, being a
woman, can do a thing which Dr. Jung, who
is a man, cannot do. You might charm God!
You and other women might wake Him up.
To do this would be less dangerous for you
than for Jung, because a man is likely to
provoke Gods masculine eagerness for com
bat. Moreover, God does not need to become
aware o f His masculinity but o f His dark side,
which includes femininity. It is a womans
job to make Him aware o f this. Be the ser
pent in Paradise and make God eat the fruit
from the tree o f knowledge o f good and evil.
The truth is that human beings ate o f it and
that God did not. Make God eat the fruit
which you offer Him. This is the same thing
as making Him play upon your harp.
Patient: But that is exactly what He refused to do.
Great Mother: Yes. But at that time you were not yet suffi
ciently conscious o f your shadow. You can
only make God do it if you and your shadow
are completelyfused.
Patient: Oh, my Great Mother, I am not up to this
task! Yourfemininity and the wisdom of the
Selfare necessary for the achievement of such
a mission. Only Sophia herselfmightperhaps
be powerful enough.
Great Mother: Yes, this is true. But in your dream, Gods
voice called to you for help. Listen: we great

female archetypes o f the collective uncon
scious may counterbalance the too masculine
line and, therefore, dangerous attitude o f
God. But to save humanity, human beings
mustprovide us with a foothold. It cannot be
done in our spiritual world alone. And in this
special case we need women, earth women.
We need this earthly aspect o f femininity. A
sufficient amount o f it might turn the scales
and bring them to balance. Play your parti
This is the meaning o f your whole life.
Twenty-ninth Conversation with the Great Mother

Patient: My Great Mother, I had an experience which
was not a vision but a kind o f illuminating
thought, very queer and rather dangerous.
Perhaps I spoke with you in a passive fantasy.
Somebody told me things or inspired me
with thoughts. I did not make them up.
Great Mother: Tell me about it.
Patient: When Christ had to be bom, God made
Mary pregnant through the Holy Ghost.
Then Gods Son descended from heaven
onto earth. Now it has been indicated to me
that the reverse is about to happen and Satan
seems on the point o f being admitted into
the quatemity. Until now, Satan was incar
nated in mankind as sin, but now he must
either ascend from earth to heaven, or he
must be reborn in heaven. Only if this takes
place will mankind be freedfrom Satan', that
is to say, from sin. My fantasy said that an
earth woman must instigate this, must set the
ball rolling. We women must make God
willing to accept the apple o f the garden o f
Eden, which is the apple o f consciousness
ANNA MARJULA 213
about good and evil.12 Orin this caseit

should be called the apple o f earth, the apple
o f human sinfulness. The offering o f this
apple has the purpose o f evoking a thought
in Gods mind; namely, a consciousness of
Satan as His son, or perhaps a consciousness
o f Sophia as His wife, out o f whom Satan can
be reborn as their son in heaven. Exactly how
or in what manner this would occur is unclear
to me.
Great Mother: Should you be as humble as Mary was, you
can try to fulfill your part in this. Then, on
the highest possible symbolic level, you will
be delivered o f that spiritual child which was
once announced to you in what you then
called your "Great Vision. On an earlier
level than the present one, this, as you will
remember, was explained as "active fulfill
ment o f fate. '
Patient: I am afraid it is impossible for me to be as
humble as Mary was.
Great Mother: I f you become inflated, you will either die or
suffer deeply.
Patient: I am willing to die for it, or to suffer deeply,
if only I may be allowed to bring forth this
symbolic child. I can have no peace unless
such a fulfillment takesplace.
Great Mother: You cannot make conditions.
Patient: I see. I will accept myfate and try to fulfill it.
Should the anger o f God strike me before 1
have attained fulfillment, I am ready to
accept it.
Great Mother: That is how it should be.
Patient: Great Mother, be with me! I beg you to tell
me at once if I tend to become inflated.
Warn me, please! Help me to be humble.
2In a drawing she made at the beginning of her analysis, many years before, Anna had
lepicted both herself and a serpent offering apples to the trinity.
Great Mother: You know God called to you for help. Let
awareness o f this fact give you humility, for
it is God who makes you do it. In yourself,
you have not the power to achieve this task.
God Himself will inspire you to do the right
thing, even though this may seem to be irra
tional. You are just this bit o f human foot
hold which is needed. Satan is in mankind
he is imprisoned there. In the same way, your
animus was once imprisoned in you. Your
animus cried out o f you as neurosis. You
opened that prison. He then told God you
might open anotherprison also.
Patient: Is Satan in this prison ? Or is God7 Did God
shoutfor help, or did Satan?
Great Mother: There is no difference. Satan is a part o f God.
You redeem both o f them and mankind if
you can achieve this mission.
Patient: My Great Mother, are you not causing me to
get an inflation? I do not want to identify
with divine matters1.
Great Mother: It is more humble to obey than to retire in
fear. You said that you preferred to be sacri
ficed rather than to have this feeling of
eternal unfulfillment.
Patient: Then I submit.
Great Mother: I f you are unable to fulfill this mission, there
will be other women who are ready to take it
over. Perhaps your task is merely to provide a
beginning. It is o f no importance whether it
be you or someone else who will achieve it.
Somebody must make a beginning, and a
beginning demands the utmost effort.
Patient: What must I do?
Great Mother: When you were hanging head-downward on
that rope in your fantasy and did not fall in
that ordeal, you then became fertilized with
the whole o f this upside-down situation.
Remember what you said previously: Once
ANNA MARJULA 215
God descended from heaven to earth; now

earth must bring forth that which is lacking
in heaven. You are one o f those who must
help this to come about. You must sacrifice
being fascinated by the animus. I f a suffi
cient number o f women do this, then Satan
can rise up into heaven. But the thought that
you must achieve it alone is the result o f an
inflation. Such thoughts are animus ideas.
You are one woman p f many who are called
upon to free God, or Satan, or their own
animus. Just now, I left you in your inflation
fo ra moment because I wanted to test you (or
God tested you) in order to see if you can be
humble. You can; you havejust proved it.
Patient: I feel utterly bewildered. What happened
exactly?
Great Mother: You see, as soon as you try to open the prison
o f your animuswhich would favor Satan's
ascensionhe immediately attempts to pos
sess you by giving you an inflation. In conse
quence, this swollen idea came up, the idea
that only you were called upon to help God.
This is, o f course, not so. Femininity is called
upon and you must fulfill your part with
great humility. You must free your animus,
not all at once, but bit by bit, step by step.
And not in ecstasy by flying up with him to
the sky, but by learning humility for the rest
o f your life on earth. Keep in mind these
women in the main square o f your town in
the dream. They celebrated liberation from
the animus, and you were privileged to be a
spectator at this festival o f liberation. Today
you started action yourself, and now you are
in ityou are one o f those women. You
must do in your humble domain what we
archetypes o f the collective unconscious will
do in our spiritual domain. The too mascu-
line God in you is your animus. Heal him

from his inflation when he thinks he is God
or Satan. By disentangling your animus from
Satan, you help the latter to ascend to the
quatemity. Thus, you play your part in the
celestial drama, and you willfeel that you are
participating in it.
Now I must put you on your guard against
a coming danger; you will incur the risk o f
getting terrible inflations yourself. Be aware
o f this danger all the time. Only through you
can the inflation o f your animus leave him.
You can do away with it by your suffering
awareness. Besides, inflation will not be the
only dangerfor you. Deflation is just as bad.
Do not feel inferior when you see that you
have been inflated; feel humbly human.
Neverforget that it was God who called to
you for help, although you are not the only
creature whom he has called. Be patient. Let
things grow at their own rate. Be with your
shadow always. For it is not certain that you
will now abide forever in what you have
called your ' world-behind-the-neurosis.
Perhaps you will have regressions. Go
through them if you must. Be courageous
and be watchful!
With these words, the Great Mother took leave of her pupil for a
longer period. Obviously, this teacher held the view that the patient
might now be sufficiently mature to stand on her own feet. And, gener
ally speaking, she probably was, though some difficulties remained to
be solved.
On the whole, the patient no longer considered herself to be neurotic.
She avoided certain difficult situations, it is true, and she was still a bit
afraid of possible regressions, which she would sooner evade than risk.
When living quietly, she could manage a considerable amount of work.
And she had the satisfaction of feeling that people liked her better and
that some actually sought her out.
ANNA MARJULA 217
As to the process of individuation of which I have shown the develop

ment in the course of these lectures, the patient fully acknowledged
what she owed to the Jungian line of thought in general, and to the
method of active imagination in particular. In addition to this, she had a
warm feeling of gratitude for her analysts and their unfailing love and
patience which had carried her through, and raised her above, long
periods of despair.
Above all, she experienced deep and real thankfulness to the sublime
figure of the Great Mother, her eminent teacher, who had nourished her
with archetypal food. In honor of this great personality, the final word
will be given to her in the form of a last conversation. It was not the last
in sequence, but it was laid aside at the time in order to close this series
of conversations.
It took place when the Great Mother and her pupil were sojourning in
that spiritual world which the patient had reached at the end of the
tightrope dancers crossing of the abyss. After this crossing, the Great
Mother and her pupil were dwelling together in the upper spiritual
realm. There, this sublime teacher drew the attention of her pupil to a
curious sound which the latter had not previously noticed, a very curious
sound indeed, which she could never have heard had she not been
trained by the revelations of the Great Mother. The latter explained this
sound in such a way as to give a notion of proportion to her pupil.
Thirtieth Conversation with the Great Mother

Great Mother: This sound which you are able to discern now
because you are living in what you call your
' 'world-behind-the-neurosis this curious
sound is breathing. You hear the breathing
o f Life now, the breathing o f God: out and
in, out and in; birth and death, birth and
death. . .
One divine breath is the whole life o f a
human being.
Epilogue by Barbara Hannah
Later Conversations With the Great Spirit
After Anna had completed her conversations with the Great Mother,
she devoted herself for two or three years to interpreting the drawings
she had made many years before at the beginning of her analysis with
Toni Wolff.19 As mentioned before, Jung usually advised against inter
preting active imagination at the time it occurred, in order to avoid
influencing its development. Moreover, Anna was in no way ready to
understand her drawings at that time. It was also much better and more
convincing that their interpretation should comeas it eventually did
from her own unconscious. Jung used to say that although people are
interested in the interpretation of their analysts, they never really incor
porate such interpretations into their actual lives until their own uncon
scious gives them its version. The analyst would be foolish, however, to
mind this, for the only important thing is that the analysand really be
moved by the meaning.
For several years after Anna had finished this work, she devoted
herself to preparing the text, Anna Marjula, for its private printing. I
must emphasize that she herself did all the considerable work that was
necessary, for the conversations as they originally took place were far too
long and unwieldy to print uncondensed. My involvement was to read
her manuscript through from time to time, and to offer a few
suggestions.
During this period, Anna felt much better than she had before her
,5Fivc of these drawings plus another four supplementary drawings, together with
Annas own interpretation of them, are included as Part II in the privately printed
booklet known as Anna Marjula.
218
ANNA MARJULA 219
conversations with the Great Mother; in fact, she already felt completely
healed, which had been her goal for so long. She continued with her
analysis, but no longer because she felt it was necessary for her health,
nor to cure her previously laming sense of inferiority, but solely to
increase her consciousness. She was fully convinced that increase of con
sciousness was the most urgent need of modern man.14 However, her
experience in childhood and adolescence with her exceedingly uncon
scious father had wounded her far more deeply and fatally than she had
realized, and there was still a region in her whole relation to men and to
the animus where trouble might begin again and ruin all she had
gained. In Anna Marjula, we saw that her father had remained com
pletely unaware, and therefore completely unrepentant, even on his
deathbed, of what he had done and still wished to do to his unfortunate
daughter.
The daughters of such a father equate sexuality and incest, and there
fore the strong traditional taboo against incest will operate overwhelm
ingly in them whenever the realm of sexuality or any intimate relation
ship to men is touched. For this reason, such an area will resist and will
remain unchanged, even by such a thorough transformation as Anna
had experienced in the material which she describes in Anna Marjula.
Indeed, for some years it did suffice to make Anna quiet and happy,
so that she was able to devote herself to the interpretation of her early
pictures and to the preparation of Anna Marjula. But when all this work
was completed, the taboo area began giving her trouble, and she pain
fully realized that more work in active imagination was necessary before
she could rely on her transformation to free her for the kind of rain
maker existence that gives meaning even to the most advanced old
age.
She had fully realized this and we were already discussing where to
begin when she had a dream which came to the rescue. She reported it
as follows:
I am in a restaurant where self-service (or "S e lf' service!) is the custom.
The door opens and in comes ProfessorJung. He takes a place at my table
and speaks with me. Then the situation changes: I myselfam seated, but
ProfessorJung is nowstanding at my right, speaking with a man. I cannot
follow the discussion, for they speak to each other as equals and their
subject matter is above my intellectualgrasp. But all the while they talk,
,4Hannah, Jung: His Life and Work, pp. 17 If.

Jung is protectively hiding me behind his broad back, and he keeps

holding my hand. Through this touch I feel a stream o f new life entering
me.
The strange man is evidently an animus figure whom she had not yet
met, and indeed, her work on the animus in Anna Marjula was mainly
confined to the negative side. The fact that this figure could speak to
Dr. Jung as an equal on subjects above her intellectual grasp shows
that he came from a positive niveau of her animus of which she was still
completely unaware. It seemed to me, therefore, that this figure was the
equal of her Great Mother on the masculine side, and that, if he were
willing to talk to her, he would be able to take her as far into the logos as
the Great Mother had taken her with the eros. The transference to Jung,
moreover, was always disturbed by what her own father had done to her,
and was often very much in the hands of her negative animus. This
dream figure, therefore, also seemed to offer an opportunity of great
improvement in this respect, a hope that was subsequently fully
realized.
Nevertheless, it was obvious in the dream that the venture might be
somewhat dangerous, or why should Dr. Jung hide her protectively and
hold her hand throughout the dream? But the fact that new energy
poured into her through this contact made the venture obviously worth
while. Very wisely, Anna kept open the contact with the Great Mother,
and from the beginning, she was quite sure of her full approval in the
venture. In fact, the Great Mother intervened more than once when
things were difficult, thereby saving the situation.
These conversations with the Great Spirit, as Anna called him,
were just as long and unwieldy as the original version of her conversa
tions with the Great Mother, and obviously needed a great deal of
condensation before they could be included in this book. She had
arranged them in the form of lectures, as a sequel to Anna Marjula. But
by this time, she was approaching ninety years of age and, moreover, the
Great Spirit was inspiring her to write poems in her own language.
Therefore, she asked me to do the condensation for her and she gave me
full permission to do what I thought best with the material.
I did not feel capable of keeping it in the first person or as imaginary
lectures; moreover, the reader has already experienced this form in
Annas conversations with the Great Mother. Therefore, I decided to
pick out what seemed the most important points and condense the rest,
as I have also done in the other cases.
ANNA MARJULA 221
First Series o f Conversations

Anna had great difficulty in beginning these conversations, for her
sole experience of the animus so far had been of a personal, negative
figure that her unfortunate experience with her father had imprinted on
her. However, the father, though so blindly unconscious in regard to his
daughters, was also a very intelligent, distinguished man. Therefore, her
personal animus had a more positive side which she had never seen, and
behind this was the archetypal image of the Great Spirit. But all these
aspects were hopelessly confused and contaminated with each other
when she began these conversations, so naturally the first part was
entirely concerned with their disentanglement and with the removal of
Annas projection of her negative power animus on the other aspects.
Anna tries to speak to the archetypal image right away, although she
admits to seeing him very dimly and says that her negative animus is
between them. The Great Spirit replies that, since the figure is much
smaller than he, this can only be true if Anna stays so close to the nega
tive figure that he can obliterate the far larger figure. He also complains
that she is too afraid of this smaller figure, whereas her tone is too bold
when addressing the Great Spirit.
The next day, she tells him how much this conversation has helped
her, and she feels she has changed some of her fear into reverence for
him. But the Great Spirit says that it should be put the other way
around: she has changed her aggression toward him to a more humble
attitude, thus neutralizing some of her fear of his 'little brother, as he
calls her personal animus.
Anna had read a great deal of Meister Eckhart and was very sure that
we must give up our way for Gods, or, in psychological language, that
the ego must abdicate in favor of the Self. Therefore, she asks the
Great Spirit if he can help her comply with Gods wishes willingly. He
replies that the willingly is entirely her own business, but in general,
he can let her know what God wishes of her. But, he adds, this is just
what she does not want to know; she is far too afraid of being asked to
pick up her cross, so to speak. Therefore, she prefers to be possessed by
his little brother. She regards that as harmless compared to what God
might wish of her. Anna then complains that although the Great Spirit
is curing her of her fear of his little brother, she is much more afraid of
him than she ever was of her negative animus!
In her next conversation, she accuses herself of inflation. The mention
of the cross made her identify with Jesus and once again, she saw herself
as much more than she really was. (The reader will remember that many
of her conversations with the Great Mother were disturbed by Annas
burning wish to become a great woman. ) The Great Spirit reminds
her that not he but she herself was the one who began wanting to know
Gods wishes in regard to her.
I must point out that, owing to the contamination between her own
positive animus and the Great Spirit, she attributes all the answers she
gets to the latter. This, in itself, is enough to cause inflation, and shows
us why it is so necessary in active imagination to distinguish between
individual and collective elements. Just as when a woman first begins to
see her negative animus, she often regards him as Satan himself, so, on
the positive side, she can mistake her own individual unconscious mind
for the Great Spirit per se.
Anna notices in her next conversation that she is doing most of the
talking herself, which she considers very foolish if she wants to learn
from him. As I pointed out in my comments about Hugh de St. Victor,
this is a fault she shares with manyin fact, mostof the medieval
records we have of such conversations: the so-called dialogue is really a
monologue by the writer himself.15 But Anna had less excuse for such
lapses, for it belongs to the technique of conversation in active imagina
tion first to speak or question oneself, then to make ones mind quite
blank so that one may hear the answer. As the Ba said 4,000 years ago:
Behold, it is good when men listen -4advice that only very few of us
have learned to follow even today. The world would probably be in a
very different state if more people had learned this lesson.
The Great Spirit, or rather Annas unconscious, creative mind, then
tells her that though he has no objection to her questions about her
personal life, she must understand that if he needs her for a creative
purposea poem or more musiche will simply force her to obey as he
has done all her life. She then speaks of it being too much for her to
carry him on her shoulders, which leads him to tell her not to talk
such nonsense! She cannot, and does not, carry him; she can only
become pregnant with his inspiration, as is womans way. If he chooses a
woman to bring his inspiration into reality, she should not suddenly
turn herself into a second-rate man! She must try to empty herself,
particularly of his little brothers animus ideas. Then he can create
,5See above, p. 109.

ANNA MARJULA 223
through her. This is exactly the technique that we have to use in order to
listen to the unconscious: emptying oneself and listening.
But Anna is not yet content to listen, and, like the World-Weary
Man, she begins to play with the idea of suicide. She calls it using her
ambition in the interest of self-sacrifice. She says: In one single blow,
then, suicide might relieve my unconscious guilt feelings (by self
punishment), and satisfy my megalomania or ambition to become great,
especially if the suicide took the form of ecstatic self-sacrifice!
The Great Spirit, like the Ba, at once opposes this idea. He says that
the time is long past when she can follow her sisters example,16 for now
she is equipped with * just a bit more consciousness of her shadow. . . .
Andstill more importantlya bit more consciousness of God as a
living being.
Admitting that she still often confuses Gods wishes and animus
opinions, she also concedes that while she is not crazy and can use her
common sense, she will never commit suicide. But she is very afraid of a
religious ecstasy which might sweep her away. If she could only
change this to the Biblical fear of God. . . . The Great Spirit replies by
telling her that she must first accept her own limitations and face the
fact that she is just not a great woman.
We see here almost exactly what Jung tells us at the end of his chapter
On Life after Death [a Memories, Dreams, Reflections. He says:
The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or
not? That is the telling question o f his life. Only if we know that the
thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoidfixing our interest
upon futilities, and upon all kinds o f goals which are not o f real
importance. . ..
The feeling for the infinite, however, can be attained only if we are
bounded to the utmost. The greatest limitation for man is the "self'', it
is manifested in the experience: "I am only that! Only consciousness
o f our narrow confinement in the selfforms the link to the limitlessness
o f the unconscious. In such awareness we experience ourselves concur
rently as limited and eternal, as both the one and the other. In knowing
ourselves to be unique in our personal combinationthat is, ultimately
limitedwe possess also the capacity for becoming conscious o f the
infinite. But only then!11
liAnnaMarjula, p. 256.
But Anna is not yet ready to sacrifice her favorite goal of becoming a
great woman. She tells him she now sees it as her task to accept the
Great No from Gods hands: no husband, no children, no lover, not
a great composer or poet. This is her feminine dignity of today. But the
Great Spirit is her great seducer; therefore, she must now take leave of
him. He gave her pleasure from time to time when he inspired her, and
he may still do so if he accepts his secondary rle in her life, which is now
completely occupied with the Great No.
He points out that being dismissed and reduced to a possible embel
lishment of her life would not suit him at all, but she scarcely hears
him. She sees nothing but her Great No. God has seduced her now, and
the Great Spirit is far below them. She even claims that her Great No
is nothing less than the union of opposites as experienced by Luther.18
He thus became a great man just as she expects to become great, though
she admits that her greatness will be more invisible because she is a
woman. If only the Great Spirit can realize his secondary role and just
embellish her life, he might even please God!
At this point, though she seemed prepared to boast along these lines
forever, she was called to order by a dream. She dreamt:
I am in an unknown town. I climb a steep street. At its top is a big
building (Association: Palace o f Justice in Brussels). Pour roads lead to it.
I reach the top o f the hill and look down its steep descent. The view is
magnificent, and fills me with ecstasy. Then I am down again in the
lower town and in a very dirty kitchen (the shadow's kitchen?a witchs
kitchen?).
Although as a rule it is best not to interfere in active imagination, one
should, of course, point out when it is being used wrongly, and it had
been obvious to me for some time that Anna had again fallen victim to
her negative animus. But she was no more inclined to listen to me
than to the Great Spirit, for she was totally possessed by the opinion of
her Great No. This dream gave me may chance, however, and I asked
her, for justices sake, to re-read the last conversation and see
18Luther, as a young monk, was very neurotic; perhaps even mad. He did whatever he
could to outgrow his illness. He confessed five times a day, he flagellated himself, he
fasted. Nothing helped him. In utter despair, he then said to himself: All right, God
has cursed me, I belong to hell. I now shall be willing to submit to God, willing to accept
being cursed, separated from God. (Generally a man fights his fate, whereas a woman
suffers her fate. But in his extreme despair, Luther chose the feminine way, and chat
attitude brought him healing.)
ANNA MARJULA 225
whether she was being just and fair to the Great Spirit, and to also ask
herself what she was doing in a witch's kitchen.
Of course she did not like it, but for justices sake she was willing
to do it. By the next time she came, she had thrown off her animus
opinion of the Great No entirely and had seen just where it overtook
her. But it still took a little persuasion to induce her to resume her
conversations, for by this time she was very afraid of facing the Great
Spirit after all her impertinence to him.
She does do so at last, however, and asks him if it is still possible for
him to talk to her after her terrible mistake of confounding him with her
negative animus. She has quite forgotten her dream where he talked to
Jung as an equal, and she admits that it is most probable that he did not
seduce her at all.
He replies by telling her that it is most important for her to find out
the identity of her seducer. She says she is afraid ambition seduced her.
He replies that it was not ambition, but megalomania, which is much
worse because in it, ambition appears as if in a fulfilled state. When he
told her to accept the fact that she was not a great woman, he trod on
her megalomania. Immediately, she retorted that she was great, for she
had accepted the Great No from God and even claimed this as equal to
Luthers union of opposites. Then for justices sake, he agreed that
she had accepted her fate, but she had ruined this genuinely humble
gesture by being proud of it. She thus gave it over to her megalomania
and again felt herself to be a great woman. She should get quite straight
about this.
Moreover, the Great Spirit advises her to become much more
conscious of her personal negative animus. She is making the mistake of
thinking that becoming more conscious of the positive side will auto
matically keep the negative down, he says. But only by becoming more
conscious of the negative can she approach the Great Spirit more posi
tively. Only by hard work on the lower regions can she begin to under
stand the spiritual things of which he was speaking to Jung in her
dream.
In the next conversation, Anna speaks of her sexual taboo which, she
believes, is keeping her from relationship to men and to the Great
Spirit. He points out that it is her power animus and her own craving for
power that is doing this. He says:
In the sexualact, a woman must give up herpower andallow herselfto be
overpowered by the male. Deep down, this is what she wants. She wants
to be overpowered by the masculine. The moment in which she has to
give in is her moment o f satisfaction. Such is nature.
She asks where her mistake is. He replies that she judges men by her
own negative animus, who really only overpowers her to gain power over
her, and she thus has no confidence in men, in their tenderness, or in
their love. She projects her own negative animus on men and thus
destroys all chance of the man loving her.
Anna, being well over 70 when this conversation takes place, says, I
try to realize that the time for sexuality is past and gone. The Great
Spirit replies that the time for concrete sexuality is indeed over, but not
the time for its symbolic realization. With sexuality in the background,
she must learn to look spirituality in the face. Anna then realizes it was
her own lust for power, for being a great woman, that has spoiled her
feminine sexuality.
The Great Spirit explains that although she has sometimes realized
that she was possessed by the negative animus, whom she has always
regarded as something outside of her, she must now realize that he is
within her. It was her lust for power that had kept her from the normal
feminine reaction of wanting to be overpowered. She blocked the way to
her feminine nature by her craving for power. No outside devil did this
to her; she did it to herself.
In the next conversation, she tells him how much all he told her has
helped her. But now she is distressed by something new. A woman in
her hotel, whom she calls Mrs. C, has gotten on her nerves. She was
determined to end all contact with her, but she now realizes that she was
cruel and egotistic toward her, and wonders how much she has
harmed her. She is also aware that she was dishonest in accepting too
much change at the post office that morning. What does he think of her
behavior?
He replies that one can not accept ones negative shadow parts
without some consequences. At least she now knows she is not more
honest than other people. But he does not intend to tell her what she
has done to Mrs. C because she did not do it for the other womans sake,
but entirely for her own. She now enjoys her freedom, but the joy is
mixed with uneasiness because she is forced to see that she can be
hard, cruel and pitiless.
Anna asks him where the negative animus comes into this situation,
but the Great Spirit replies that these acts were committed by her
shadow and had nothing to do with her animus. She must learn to
ANNA MARJULA 227
distinguish between them: the animus is the one who offers her irrefut
able opinions as to what she should or should not do, whereas the
shadow slips in the actual concrete, negative acts.
The Great Spirit draws Annas attention to something very important
here: it is unwise to blame the animus when he has had nothing to do
with it. I learned that the hard way once when, during my analysis, Jung
was away for the Christmas holidays. I got badly out of myself and
blamed the animus entirely for my predicament, which only made the
matter worse. In my first analytic hour, I told Jung I had been badly in
the animus throughout the holidays. He looked searchingly at me and
said, I dont think that was the trouble. Now what really happened to
you at the beginning of the holidays? 1 then remembered that some
one had hurt me very badly, but I had been understanding and reas
onable about it, without seeing how much I really minded. It was the
unrecognized emotion that had really thrown me out of myself, and by
blaming the animus, where for once he was wholly innocent, I had
naturally infuriated him and made him into an additional, though
secondary, difficulty.
As often happens in active imagination, Annas great mistake turned
out to be a blessing in disguise. It gave the Great Spirit the opportunity
to teach Anna the difference between himself and her negative animus,
and to distinguish between the latter and her shadow. This first part of
her conversation ends with the development of her ability to keep these
three figures apart, and she makes no such mistakesor at all events,
she sees it at once when she doesin the subsequent conversations. But
she has as yet no discrimination between her own individual positive
animus, or unconscious mind, and the image of the archetypal Great
Spirit. She must learn this differentiation the hard way in the course of
the next series of conversations.
Presumably, the inspirations of which she speaks came from her own
individual positive animus, though such inspirations also seem to come
partly from the archetypal level. The fact bears witness that the spirit of
the times seems to express itself through the paintings, poems, or music
of the individual artist. This is very clear in the paintings of such an
artist as Peter Birkhauser, for example.
Second Series o f Conversations

In this second series, Anna wanted enlightenment from the Great
Spirit on how to relate to Gods dark side and on whether or not we may
be called upon to do evil consciously. It must be pointed out from the
beginning that consciously doing evil is something very different from

being possessed by it unconsciously, as seems to be the case all around us
these days, and it is very different from regarding evil as good. In the
former case, we take the responsibility for the evil we do, and we suffer a
great deal from having to do itthat is, if we have been brought up in
the Christian belief that all evil is of the devil and should be carefully
avoided, as Anna had been. This fitted the needs of man 2,000 years
ago, when Christ preached it, but it has become far too one-sided today,
when it is clear that our task is to accept both opposites and do the best
we can with them.
Anna realized this and was appalled, as we all are, by the problem of
how we can possibly relate to evil. Jung wrote a chapter in Memories,
Dreams, Reflections entitled Late Thoughts when he was well over
80. He said:
Light isfollowed by shadow, the other side o f the Creator. This develop
ment reached its peak in the twentieth century. The Christian world is
now truly confronted by the principle o f evil, by naked injustice, tyranny,
lies, slavery, and coercion o f conscience. This manifestation o f naked evil
has assumed apparently permanent form in the Russian nation; but its
first violent eruption came in Germany. That outpouring o f evil revealed
to what extent Christianity has been undermined in the twentieth
century. In the face o f that, evil can no longer be minimized by the
euphemism o f the privatio boni. Evil has become a determinant reality.
It can no longer be dismissed from the world by a circumlocution. We
must learn how to handle it, since it is here to stay. How we can live with
it without terrible consequences cannotfor the present be conceived.19
Anna did this active imagination after Ju n g s death. Ju st after
Memories was published, and, remembering that the figure o f the Great
Spirit was talking to Ju n g in her dream as an equal, she hoped the Great
Spirit would be able to teach her how to live with evil, if possible,
without the terrible consequences. Like all o f us, she realized that the
terrible consequences may overtake any or all of us in terrifying Apoca
lyptic form at any time, but we all still naturally pray with Christ: If it
be possible, let this cup pass from m e , 20 which is quite legitimate if we
can honestly add, nevertheless: not my will, but thine, be done.
Anna begins by asking the Great Spirit how she can relate to G ods
19Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 328f.

Matt. 26:39.
ANNA MARJULA 229
dark side. He asks her to consider if she really wants to do this. She
admits that she does not, but she is sure she must. He accepts this
answer, but advises her to begin by relating to her own dark side and
adds, Perhaps you think you have done this already, and I admit you
have made the shadow conscious to a considerable extent, but you have
not actually related to it. She asks if he means that she must change
her attitude to the extent of sometimes doing evil consciously. He
replies, That is exactly what I mean, which causes her to revert to her
Christian attitude and ask him if he is Satan himself! He answers, No,
I am not the evil principle, but because the principle of opposites must
be fulfilledthis being the condition for lifeI know that those who do
bad deeds (consciously) are serving Gods wishes. Anna asks if human
beings cannot leave this to God. But the Great Spirit replies: "If you
leave it to God, He does it through you, but you turn your back on it.
This is the reason why your back is so tired and why your neck aches so
much. Then you can look into the clouds. But your eyes are also over
tired because of too much light. Moreover, the whole of this attitude is
a lie.
He goes on to explain that we do evil anyway, because we are half
good, half-bad by nature, but in conscious hands, evil takes on a
different color. That is what you can do for other people: you may
deliver them from a part of their evil by materializing your own evil into
conscious deeds.
I tried to show how this works on a practical level when I described
Charlotte and Anne Brontes attitude to their brother Bramwell,21 and
Prue Sarn (in Mary Webbs Precious Bane) leaving all evil to be done
behind her back by her brother Gideon.22 But the Great Spirit goes
further, and explains how one can suffer physical symptoms as a result
of evading the fact of the equality of the opposites. According to the
prophet Isaiah, the Lord Himself tells us: I form the light, and create
darkness, I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things. 23
Obviously, therefore, the Lord expects us to accept both these opposites
created by Him.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we who are still living, after
two world wars have shown us that the Christian solution of repressing
evil no longer works, have the task of somehow relating to both oppo
21Hannah, Striving Toward Wholeness, pp. 159f and pp. 182f.
Ibid., pp. 94-97.
Isaiah 45:7.
sites, a task which has perhaps never before been asked of man to this
extent. This evidently belongs to the change of eras: we can no longer
swim in the unconscious with the fishes; rather, we must carry our
portion of it with Aquarius, the water carrier. I remind the reader that
Jung thought the whole future of the world might depend on how many
people could complete this task.24
Anna then asks if her behavior toward Mrs. C was not a start in this
direction, to which the Great Spirit agrees. But then she asks him if she
may be very prudent. He replies that she may also go on carrying her
share of evil by means of an aching back if she prefers it, but then he will
retire and leave her to his little brother, for he admits it is easier for her
to leave her part in evil to God than to do her part and thus share his
suffering with him. He then warns her to leave megalomania out of it
to(do it for Gods (the Selfs) sake and not in order to be great after all,
for then she will indeed be lost.
Anna considers this conversation for some time, and thinks she sees a
chance to be great after all. She therefore suggests to him that, since
indulgence in megalomania is undoubtedly a bad tendency of hers,
and if she must be evil anyway, she might bring this evil tendency into
her conscious life. She does not agree with him that if she does so she
will be lost.
He repeats that if she does, she will be lost, but this time he adds that
in such deep regions of the soul, one must sometimes be lost. She asks
him if he will be her support and guide in these regions. He replies that
he will be her guide, but she must take the responsibility herself.
Greatness begins with taking responsibility, he says. She then speaks
of the shyness which hampers her so much, and she thinks it could be
cured if she gave up fighting her megalomania. He points out that now
she is facing it to do away with her shyness, not for its own sake! She asks
if shyness and megalomania are not two aspects of the same complex, to
which he agrees.
She then asks if she may begin by cajoling her megalomania a little
and he replies, Try it out. She asks if he is disgusted with her; he
replies, No, I am amused. She reports that she feels a wave of libido
coming into her. He says yes, she has dared to take a stand against him,
but he warns her that she will now have to deal with his little brother.
She accepts this, saying she dares to do so because the Great Spirit has
promised to be her guide, to which he replies that it looks rather as if she
MSee above p. 8f.

ANNA MARJULA 231
thought she was his guide! She sees his point and welcomes the little
brother very condescendingly.
Later, Anna thinks over this conversation very carefully. She begins to
see that she has again been too bold with the Great Spirit, probably
because she was possessed by his little brother. The Great Spirit tells her
to distinguish between them even more closely, for it may then be
possible to reconcile them with herself. She tells him that she has indeed
seen that indulging her megalomania would be ego service, not Self
service as in her dream. She realizes this would be wrong and says that
she is now aware that only the Self can be great in her. She must not
identify with it; rather, she must bring sacrifices that it may fulfill itself
in her.
We see here how wisely the Great Spirit is guiding these conversa
tions. By telling her to try out," i.e., indulging her megalomania, she
learns its dangers through her own experience, which is the only way to
learn anything. He ends this conversation by saying: Reduce megalo
mania to its unfulfilled statenamely, to your hankering after greatness
and then dissolve your hankering into the Selfs hankering after it in
you. Obey this. Serve it. Do not try to become great. Try to become so
humble that the Self can be great in you, and can live its greatness
through you."
Here Anna learns for herself the truth which was confirmed for Jung
in the two dreams he records at the end of his chapter on Life after
Death in Memories, Dreams, Reflections; they are of the UFOs
(unidentified flying objects) in October 1958, and the earlier one of the
Yogi25 which I mentioned before.26 In these conversations, and in her
meditation on them, Anna realizes dimly that the Self, in order to incar
nate itself, would need to wear, so to speak, the garment of the human
form in order to have earthly experiences. She decides to do what she
can to help the Self incarnate itself in her.
In the next conversation, Anna tells the Great Spirit how she
hankered for greatness even as a child, for she wanted to be an infant
prodigy. He admits she was a gifted child, and because he did not know
what to do about it, the talent started growing crooked even at that
early age. But now she is old enough to realize that all greatness belongs
to the Self and that he, as part of the Self, is her giftedness.
This surprises her, and she suggests that since she has shared her
life with him, she must be married to him, with which he agrees! We see
Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 323-326.
See above p. 80.
here how dangerous it is not to discriminate between the individual and

the universal side of the Self. She was indeed married to her own indi
vidual, creative spiritas all creative women must bebut to see herself
as the bride of the archetypal image of the Great Spirit naturally led to
an inflation and to great difficulties in subsequent conversations.
Seeing herself as the bride had one great advantage, however; it
taught her to become aware of herself as a feminine being. Until then,
when her creative spirit seized her for inspiration, she had transformed
herself into an inferior man, as the Great Spirit has now warned her not
to do. But now she realizes that she, like all truly feminine women,
longs to be overpowered by the masculine. With her passion to be great
herself, it is doubtful if she would have accepted this at the hands of her
individual, creative spirit. To be the bride of the Great Spirit, however,
was something she could fully and readily believe, and she allowed him
to overpower her as much as he liked. But this led to more sexual excite
ment than her aged body was capable of standing, and his two warnings:
that a human being could not marry a Great Spirit and that only a
goddess could become Shivas Shakti. Both warnings fell on deaf ears.
Anna makes the same mistake that Faust did when he made himself
the bridegroom of Helen of Troy, instead of leaving her to Paris, to
whom she truly belonged. Jung pointed this out more than once, and
attributed the early tragic death of Euphorionthe son of Faust and
Helento this mistake.27 But Anna was very much taken with the
idea of being the Great Spirits bride. She began to want to give it up
not only when her health suffered but when she also became depressed
and felt that she had lost all she had gained in her long work in active
imagination. All her previous peace and sense of well-being had com
pletely disappeared.
In this dilemma, she was greatly helped by a dream: She is walking on
a steeply descending path in a forest. At the forests edge she comes to a
farm, although the path goes on descending to a lake with a bathing
hut. She obtains the key from the farmers wife and goes down for a
swim in the lake, but she decides she is too tired and will return home
instead. She returns to the farm and discovers she has left her purse with
all her money and some of her clothes in the hut. In spite of her fatigue,
she decides she must go down to fetch them. An enormous mail van
passes her and she sees that the bathing hut has become a post office.
2,Goethe, Faust, Part 2.

ANNA MARJULA 233
She shouts to the men to pick her up, but they say the van can go no
farther, for the road becomes too narrow. The van has blocked the road
and she cannot pass it. She wakes up in distress.
Anna saw for herself that the beginning of the dream was very
positive and that a swim in the lake meant the plunge into the uncon
scious that the Great Spirit was helping her to take. She also saw that
everything went wrong when she gave up this plunge, which would have
meant giving up trusting herself to the Great Spirit.
The associations to the dream bring more enlightenmentespecially
the key, which she associated to the key which Bluebeard gave to his
young wife and which belonged to the forbidden chamber in which she
found the skeletons of all her predecessors. She also saw for herself that
Bluebeard was the dark, evil side of the Great Spirit, and that she had
the same difficulty in relating to his dark side as she had in relating to
Gods or her own. Yet clearly it is his dark side that has the key to her
whole endeavor, so that in not trusting him (not daring the swim in the
lake) she makes everything go wrong. She attributes everything to this
cause and points out that the unconscious always behaves like Blue
beard: it gives us the key which it could easily withhold, and then
punishes us for using it. An example which shows this particularly
clearly is in Rosenkreutzs Chymical Marriage. It was Cupid himself who
led Rosenkreutz to the chamber of Venus and who allowed him to gaze
on the sleeping goddess, yet Cupid also punished Rosenkreutz for his
intrusion by shooting him with one of his arrows.28
At the end of her interpretation, Anna mentions the two brothers
who saved their sister in the Bluebeard story and supposes they cannot
be kept out of the interpretation. She unwillingly associates them to the
two postmen, in spite of the fact that the two postmen do nothing to
help the dreamer. She vaguely assumes that they must represent the
Great Spirit and his little brother! Anna entirely overlooks the fact that
the brothers, as the girls near relatives, certainly represent two indi
vidual animi, which is confirmed in the dream by the postmen belong
ing to outer daily life, whereas she herself has just likened the plunge in
the lake to having confidence in the Great Spirit. Therefore, the image
brought forward as the solution of the dream is clearly the discrimina
tion between the individual and the archetypal. I do not remember if I
Christian Rosenkreutz (pseud, of Johann Valenti Andreae). Chymische Hochzeit
(Strasbourg, 1616). For translation see: The Hermetick Romance or The Chymical
Wedding, trans. E. Foxcroft (London, 1690).
saw this as clearly then as I do now, but that interpretation would

certainly have fallen on deaf ears, as such warnings from the Great spirit
had already done.
A period of several weeks followed, with only what Anna herself
called some rather worthless conversations with the Great Spirit. I
remember agreeing with her about this, and they are not repeated in the
written record which she gave me. Anna was anything but at peace with
herself during these weeks. Fortunately, I remembered how Emma Jung
had previously dealt with a similar situation when she recommended
that Anna talk to a feminine figure, whom she later called The Great
Mother. Therefore, I recommended a halt to her conversations with the
Great Spirit for the time being, and suggested that she talk over the
whole situation with the Great Mother. Anna was very willing to do this
and accepted my suggestion immmediately.
To my relief, the Great Mother recommended that she loosen herself
from the Great Spirit, and most particularly from her attacks of sexual
excitement which were much too corporeal for her age. The Great
Mother pointed out that the Great Spirit had done a great deal for her:
he had rehabilitated her femininity. This should normally have hap
pened when she was about twenty and this was what her great vision
had tried to do, but unfortunately, it was misunderstood. Anna must
remember, says the Great Mother, that nearly fifty-five years have
passed since then, but that her femininity has only developed to the
stage of a young woman of twenty. Since this is totally unsuitable at her
age, she must realize she is just not the young bride per se, but that the
archetypal image of the young bride had come to life in her at last. As
an archetypal image, she is of royal birth and is a princess. Anna must
learn to be conscious of this princess in herself. This archetypal figure is a
youthful bride who is entitled to all the feelings which Annas ego had
usurped to itself. She must now find a way of relating to this archetypal
image.
Anna asks how she can do this. The Great Mother replies that she
must see that she is the young brides mother or grandmother. Anna
should tell her about the years she has apparently missed. The young
princess can help her make these years appear fulfilled and whole by
filling gaps and correcting failures, for Anna has repressed her to the
extent of being totally unconscious of her. She must try to understand
her with motherly love, and teach her to accept her feelings and sensa
tions, as well as to control them through awareness of her royal birth.
ANNA MARJULA 235
Anna also belongs to the royal family of gifted women ; therefore,

her passionately feminine daughter is not allowed to break every
1inconvenient law.
Until now, Anna had always been too hard on that inner royal
daughter and had trampled her down. Now, however, Anna has seen
her archetypal origin and must rehabilitate her. The Great Spirit has
awakened in Anna a genuinely feminine reaction to his masculinity, but
for her this means the birth ofthat is, the becoming conscious ofher
royal daughter. But just as she had pushed her down in earlier years, so
now the girl herself wants to overrun Anna, who must not let her do so.
Anna has her age as a natural protection and counterbalance to the girls
unbridled passion. Call her Irene, which means peace states the
Great Mother. Make peace with her; live in peace with her by giving
her the pleasure of making you acquainted with the feminine feelings
that are her natural birthright. Be aware of her as an archetypal image.
In this manner she may yet bring you peace.
Anna asks if she may be allowed one last question: May she continue
her relationship with the Great Spirit? She is told to introduce her royal
daughter to him. There is an immediate protest from the ego: But is
she going to marry him? The Great Mother replies that indeed she is,
and that Anna will then be the brides mother. Anna indignantly asks if
she must be content with looking at their pleasure, while lacking it
herself. The Great Mother replies:
You are at the age for this attitude. Bring your sacrifice as a penance for
the misdeedyou committed in youngeryears, the misdeed of repressing
the little bride within you, the archetypal princess. Today in you and
beyond you, Masculine Spirit and Feminine Love are going to be mar
ried. 29 Personal renunciation is your part in it. You may satisfactorily
participate in their union, but this is only possible if you are up to a
merelyparticipating experience. Prepare yourselffor their wedding.
Anna finds herself in the same position as Rosenkreutz in The
Chymical Marriage. He would have liked to marry Venus, on whose
naked beauty Cupid had allowed him to gaze while she was asleep, but
he had to be content with even less than Anna; for he was only a guest at
the Hieros Gamosthe sacred marriage.
In one conversation, the Great Mother has thus made Anna see, albeit
reluctantly, the great difference between the human and the archetypal
v>Hieros Gamos.
realm. The Great Spirit had tried to do this in vain, and my efforts in
the same direction had been worse than useless. Once again, I realized
how far more convincing it is when the analysands own unconscious
teaches him or her, and how very superior the knowledge and insight of
the unconscious is to that of the conscious. The unconscious still further
confirmed what the Great Mother had said by two fragments of a
dream. Anna writes:
I am together with my own Princess Irene and with another lady who
seems to be a crown princess. The latter is writing my Supplement to
Anna Marjula's Essay.'
and:
I am in a train whichjust stops at the end station. There is nobody in the
compartment, but it is filled up with luggage which belongs to my
father. No porter is to be had. I must carry all my fathers boxes home
myself. Though I know I cannot really do it, I decide to try anyhow.
Through this dream, Anna at last fully realizes what the Great Mother
has taught her: that her archetypal daughter, Irene, is destined to marry
the Great Spirit in a true Hieros Gamos. She accepts this solution of her
lifelong sexual problem. She has indeed sinned in repressing Princess
Irene, but if she had identified with her early life and had lived too
freely, she would have repressed the crown princess, the gifted woman
in herself. She could not escape sinning, but nevertheless, the debt of
every sin must be paid.
In the second dream, the boxes might represent her fathers enor
mous ambition regarding his gifted daughter. In this case, the dream
suggests that since she has realized the archetypal origin (or inspiration)
of the woman who writes Anna Marjula in her, and who has accepted
the archetypal young bride of the Great Spirit, Irene, she will be able to
carry her own giftedness home. At all events, the boxes seem lighter and
more manageable at the end of these two dreams.
When Anna gave up identifying with the archetypal bride of the
Great Spirit, there was, of course, danger of an enantiodromiaof
Anna throwing herself away as worthless. The dream meets this danger
with the usual genius of the unconscious. It takes up the Great Mothers
suggestion that Anna herself also belongs to the royal family of gifted
women, representing her even as a crown princess. At the time, all of
Annas creative ability was pouring into her epilogue to Anna Marjula,
ANNA MARJULA 237
to these conversations with the Great Spirit, so that clearly, the creative
woman in herself was meant. Although she kept this effort entirely
anonymousI have had to promise never to reveal her real name even
after her deaththe success of the Anna Marjula booklet, and the fact
that a great many people found it a/help in their efforts with their own
active imagination, was a considerable satisfaction to Anna. After these
dreams, she was always perfectly willing to let the archetypal Princess
Irene marry the Great Spirit, and she made no further efforts to push
her ego into the Hieros Gamos as the bride.
In their next conversation, she tells the Great Mother that she feels
wonderfully at peace since their conversation about the Hieros Gamos.
Reading it over, she feels she has integrated all the suggestions made to
her. But she still has the problem of how she should now behave to the
Great Spirit. She feels she has not finished with him, yet hesitates to
speak to him again in case she loses the peace she so greatly values.
The Great Mother says that while she is in Zurich and in contact with
her analyst, the danger is not so great as she imagines. Her previous talks
with the Great Spirit have indeed gotten her into great difficulties, but
they have also brought her remarkable inner growth. She advises
Anna to not waste the time and promises also to keep an eye on her.
(Anna would never talk to her inner figures when alone in her own
country, though she somehow kept enough in touch with them to
remain at peace.) The conversation ends with Anna expressing fervent
gratitude for all that the Great Mother has done for her.
Shortly afterward, she risks another talk with the Great Spirit,
explaining to him how afraid she is of talking to him. He replies that the
important thing is whether she wants to talk to him or not. She answers
that she wants to speak with him very much, and she hopes that her
daughter, Irene, may function as a bridge between them.
He corrects her phrase of my daughter to * our daughter. At first,
she is very surprised but then she sees that it was only through the Great
Spirits help that she gave birth to Irene; that is, became conscious of
her. But she recoils from the fact that then the Hieros Gamos which
took place in her was a father-daughter incest. He explains to her that a
Hieros Gamos always has an incestuous character: gods and archetypal
figures are not bound by human laws.
This was so clearly recognized in Egypt that the Pharaoh (as the gods
representative) was bound to marry his sister. Anna recognizes this and
no longer criticizes it. The Great Spirit replies by applauding her deci
sion, pointing out that this Hieros Gamos, particularly her right partici
pation in it, has also had a personal consequence for Anna. It has freed
her from all her incestuous desires and her recollection of these, which
were troubling her half-unconsciously. These remnants were entirely
absorbed in the realm of the Hieros Gamos. Even if she could not
understand this, it was still a fact. For this reason, she could truthfully
assure the Great Mother that she felt wonderfully and permanently at
peace. Irene was also at peace, freed from her prison at last, so that she
could finally unfold her archetypal ability to experience the Hieros
Gamos with the Great Spirit. He begs Anna not to underestimate the
great event that has taken place in her, and to realize that the Self has
enabled her to achieve the right participation in it, of which she will
eventually realize the full meaning.
This speech of the Great Spirit ends the second, and by far the most
important, part of Annas epilogue to Anna Mar/ula. The important
climaxwhich gave Anna an extraordinary peace throughout her
extreme old agewas the Hieros Gamos which took place in her soul,
the union of all the opposites within her, and the fact that she
achieved the right participation in it. She was able at last to distin
guish between the ego, herself as a human being, and the archetypal
images, and to sacrifice her inflation of identification with any of them.
This achievement of a rare order was due to her being able to dedicate
all of her considerable creative ability to unusually long and hard work
on active imagination.
Union o f Positive and Negative Animi

The climax of these conversations was reached when Anna succeeded
in achieving the right participation in the archetypal Hieros Gamos
which took place within her own soul. Two more parts to the notes she
gave me were very important to consolidating her own peace of mind,
but it would be an anticlimax and quite unnecessary for me to present
them here in detail.
The third part consisted of more conversations with the Great Spirit
and concerned his union with her negative animus, the little brother.
But it was not really the archetypal Great Spirit; she herself says that it
was, rather, his image in her soul; in other words, it was a union
between her positive and negative individual animi. That this was com
pletely successful, at least in the sphere of the unconscious, is shown by
the dream she had at the end of part three of her conversations.
ANNA MARJULA 239
She dreamed she attended a car race with a very superior man. A
special enclosure was set apart for them. The superior man was standing
on her right, whereas the racing cars approached her from the left. One
car was so much ahead of the others that the driver could afford to drive
slowly. The superior man held up his hand and stopped the driver, who
had already won the first round and was therefore competing for the
great prize of the day. All the same, he stopped immediately, exactly in
front of them. Then the dreamer saw why he had been stopped. Two
pieces of wood protruded from the front of the car, like the giant ten
tacles of some insect. This was normal to all the cars in the dream. But in
the case of the leading car, one of these pieces of wood was broken and
had the car gone on, it would inevitably have led to a fatal accident.
Anna was especially struck by the complete calm with which the driver
took the loss of his great prize and by the fact that he did not even show
satisfaction at his life having been saved.
The very next morning, Anna was walking in the forest near her hotel
when she saw two boards attached to a tree. One was broken and hang
ing down exactly as in the dream. This piece of synchronicity impressed
her greatly, especially since she remembered Jung telling her that
dreams which were thus reflected in outer events were notably
important.
The superior man, who took her into the enclosure, is clearly a
personification of the Great Spirit, so that she had the opportunity to
see what happened in the dream from a higher standpoint. In his
commentary on The Secret o f the Golden Flower, Jung says that such a
standpoint developed in some of his patients, thereby allowing them to
view their old problems from above. From that viewpoint, the problems
seemed more like a thunderstorm that was taking place in the valley
below them.}0 Such an opportunity is granted to Anna in this dream.
Anna herself, as we know, had been very ambitious, and since this
trait mainly came from her father, it was naturally carried on by her
animus. This is shown by the fact that the driver was competing for such
a large prize. But the totally new detachment and willingness to take
victory or defeat as it comes, and life or death with the same equanim
ity, show clearly that the union between her positive and negative
individual animi has been completely successful. Jung often said that in
such dreams, the animus shows the way which the woman herself must
take.
S0Jung, Collected Works, vol. 13, par. 17.
At exactly this point, interestingly enough, outer problems recalled

Anna to her own country unexpectedly early. The chance was thus
granted her of bringing the new standpoint which she had been shown
by the animus into her own outer life. Although it took her considerable
time and effort to give up her lifelong ambition and megalomania, she
was eventually completely successful in this endeavor.
In her lecture on active imagination for the International Association
for Analytical Psychology in Rome in 1977, Marie-Louise von Franz
pointed out that this stepwhich she calls the fourth stage in active
imaginationis the most important of all. If we fail to incorporate into
our actual lives what we have learned in our active imagination as an
ethical obligation, we have failed to take it seriously at all.31 This crucial
step was taken by Anna Marjula, and I attribute most of the peace and
happiness of her old age to this fact.
Part Four
Part four mainly consists of various important things that the Great
Mother said to Anna, chiefly during her conversations with the Great
Spirit. They are, however, not dated, so I have no means of knowing
where they belong. Moreover, though interesting and often extremely
wise in themselves, they are not essential to our theme.
There is only one conversation that I would like to mention, because it
forms an interesting parallel to a conversation between Beatrice and her
spirit man.32 In fact, it throws light upon the latter. This conversation
was the result of the following dream: The dreamer is walking hand in
hand with Annas old friend and foster mother Urs, the Great (a
literal translation of her surname). Her old friend is leaning heavily on
her and asks her for a cup of coffee as a stimulant.
It seems to me that this dream meant that the Great Mother might
want Anna to do something for her, and Anna asked her if that were the
case. To her great surprise, the Great Mother answered: Yes, help for
the world situation. Beatrice had asked her spirit man for help in the
dark situation in which she found the world, but Anna was not, like
Beatrice, particularly worried about it. Therefore, the Great Mothers
suggestion surprised her almost as much as the World-Weary Man was
astonished at the sudden attack of his Ba. One reason for her lack of
concern was that Annas active imagination took place many years
31Cf. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 189 and 192 .
MSee above, Chapter 4.
ANNA MARJULA 241
earlier, when the danger was not so glaringly apparent. For another, the
problem continually oppressed Beatrice, but Anna had never regarded it
as any business of hers, although the Great Mother had mentioned it to
her earlier. In other words, Beatrice knew that Jung thought the world
situation largely depended on how many individuals could stand the
tension of the opposites in themselves, whereas Anna had not yet heard
of this concept.
The Spirit Man advised Beatrice to take her anxiety to the flower,
where the warring opposites were united. The Great Mother had to
explain to Anna that the archetypes need human beings who are
conscious of them and who can therefore represent them by doing
what they want in outer reality on earth. She attacks Annas lifelong
shyness as responsible for her not seeing this need: when she is shy, she
is entirely in the ego, but when she sees the great value of the archetypes
within her, her shyness no longer troubles her. Anna can help the world
situation by fully realizing this and by being humble before the great
archetypes, instead of foolishly shy because she is projecting these same
archetypes onto other people.
Anna finishes this fourth and last part with a final conversation with
the Great Spirit. Although it helped her significantly, it only empha
sizes parts of the conversations which we have already considered but
which she had evidently not sufficiently realized. Therefore, there is no
reason for us to go into it here.
At this point, Annas age and health no longer allowed her to visit
Zrich, so her active imagination came to an end. She gave up her flat
and settled in what seemed to be a very satisfactory old-age home. At
first, she had some difficulty in accepting being with people of her own
advanced age, who had really come to die, but very soon, her inner
peace reasserted itself. This evidently had an effect on her companions,
for she made many friends, particularly among the men, with whom she
had had such difficulty establishing relationships earlier. She wrote to
me more than once, telling me that her old age was the happiest and
most serene time of her life.33
Editors note: The woman known as Anna Marjula died twenty years after completing
this work. Her nation mourned the death of one of their well-known musicians. She
died at the age of ninety, just a few months prior to publication of this book.
CHAPTER 8
The Eternal Search for the Inner, Great Spirit
Although the examples of active imagination could have been multi

plied and varied ad infinitum, I hope enough have been given to show
the reader the uniquely individual character of each of them. Jung
always encouraged me to give courses on active imagination; I wish to
make it very clear, however, that there is no recipe, nor any generally
comprehensible method, of putting it into practice. The goal remains
the same in every case: establishing contact with the unconscious and
learning to know the infinitely wise guidance that exists in all of us, but
which so few ever bring into reality.
In a talk with the students of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich in
May 19581 (three years before his death), Jung made this guidance very
clear by calling it the 2,000,000-year-old man in us all. He referred to
him throughout this discussion as the Great Man in ourselves. This
Great Man appears in images and symbols that are infinite in number
and which are different in every case.
In Man and His Symbols, Marie-Louise von Franz so vividly shows this
Great Man at work in an unspoiled people that I would like to quote
what she says in full:
Reported from notes made by Marian Bayes in C. G. Jung Speaking, eds. William
Mcguire and R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 359ff.
242
THE ETERNAL SEARCH FOR THE INNER, GREAT SPIRIT 243
This inner center is realized in exceptionally pure, unspoiledform by the

Naskapi Indians, who still exist in the forests of the Labradorpeninsula.
These simple people are hunters who live in isolatedfamily groups, so far
away from one another that they have not been able to evolve tribal
customs or collective religious beliefs and ceremonies. In his lifelong
solitude the Naskapi hunter has to rely on his own inner voices and
unconscious revelations; he has no religious teachers who tell him what he
should believe, no rituals, festivals, or customs to help him along. In his
basic view o f life, the soul of man is simply an ' 'inner companion, '
whom he calls my friend or Mista'peo, meaning "Great Man."
Mista'peo dwells in the heart and is immortal; in the moment o f death,
or shortly before, he leaves the individual, and later reincarnates himself
in another being.
Those Naskapi who pay attention to their dreams and who try to find
their meaning and test their truth can enter into a deeper connection with
the Great Man. He favors such people and sends them more and better
dreams. Thus the major obligation o f an individual Naskapi is to follow
the instructions given by his dreams, and then to give permanentform to
their contents in art. Lies and dishonesty drive the Great Man awayfrom
ones inner realm, whereas generosity and love o f ones neighbors and of
animals attract him andgive him life. Dreams give the Naskapi complete
ability to find his way in life, not only in the inner world but also in the
outer world o f nature. They help him toforetell the weatherandgive him
invaluable guidance in his hunting, upon which his life depends. I
mention these veryprimitive people because they are uncontaminated by
our civilized ideas and still have natural insight into the essence o f what
Jung calls the Self.1
Jung told his students that the transference was entirely due to the
existence of this Great Man, and he advised them to work with their
patients in analysis until they were aware of, and could establish a
connection with, the Great Man in themselves.
It seems to mealthough Jung said nothing about it in this talk with
the Institute studentsthat he had experienced this 2,000,000-year-old
Great Man in himself fairly early in his childhood, as his Number Two
personality. Or perhaps he experienced a comparatively small aspect of
him, for at first he felt this Great Man as coming from the eighteenth
century.3 1 think he can only have slowly realized the immense, indeed
2C. G. Jung, ed. Man and His Symbols (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1964),
pp. 161f.
archaic, age of what he called the 2,000,000-year-old man when he was

well over eighty years old.
In the oldest example which we have used, the 4,000-year-old text of
The World-Weary Man and His Ba, this is particularly clear to us, for
the Ba himself could be said to be a personification of the 2,000,000-
year-old Great Man in the unconscious of the World-Weary Man. The
Egyptian religion had recognized the fact of the existence of this
2,000,000-year-old man, but, having projected it into the Beyond, they
only saw him as a collective figure. Therefore, it was only because the
World-Weary Man was a genius endowed with most unusual courage
that he was eventually able to see the appearance of the Ba as an
individual event, which forced him to an encounter entirely beyond all
that he had been taught and all that he had believed in the religious
dogma of the time. I know of no medieval or modern example that can
compare in this respect with our old Egyptian text; in fact, Jung advised
me to stop searching, because one did not exist.
Jung once told me that it was a very long time before the archetypal
anima (who of course is a counterpart of this total 2,000,000-year-old
man) spoke to him directly. For many years before that, she had only
sent him her emissaries. The emissaries are what has mainly appeared in
all of our other examples.
Let us take the case of Edward (Chapter Two). We do see a direct trace
of the 2,000,000-year-old man in the Spirit of Fire, Water, Wind and
Ice that terrified Edward in the storm. We can also see a trace of the
negative side of his consort in the archetypal witch who was the cause of
the whole trouble. But for the most part, Edward is always in contact
with his emissaries, particularly with the two aspects of the anima: the
Guide and Four Eyes. The extraordinarily genuine character of Edwards
active imagination is vouched for by the fact that every detail in the
fantasy is truly symbolic. The defect of the fantasy comes from its
having been undertaken before Edward had dealt with his own personal
shadow. Therefore, he is quite unable to endure the destructive side of
the Spirit of Fire, Water, Wind and Ice. It is only after we have seen that
we ourselves have a very destructive side that we can endure that side in
the archetypal figures which we encounter. Therefore, this most genuine
example of active imagination, produced only by unusually long, hard
work on Edwards part, is still only the prelude to more hard and painful
work on his own shadow, who appeared at the banquet as the boatman.
When we come to Sylvia in Chapter Three, we are not dealing with a
real example of active imagination at all, but only with a prelude that
provides a great many starting points for true active imagination and
reveals Sylvias whole psychology in a way that no direct attempt could
have done at that stage in her development. Sylviafar more than
Edwardwould have shied away from seeing her personal shadow. Only
the fact that she felt she was writing a story about imaginary people
allowed it to be revealed that, given sufficient provocation, she was even
capable of murder. And many hints were thrown out in the allusions to
the Greek gods of the 2,000,000-year-old man in herself.
In the case of Beatrice, Chapter Four, we have an even more unique
document, because it was created during the last few months before her
death. That is, we have only studied the final part of a very long effort in
active imagination, much longer than Edwards. It is indeed an active
imagination, for she is fully involved in it from beginning to end, and
the Spirit Man, alias the Bear Man, was the result of long and pains
taking effort in the process of making his acquaintance. By the time we
enter her fantasy, he can be recognized as a very trusted emissaryor
almost a personificationof the 2,000,000-year-old man, as he
appeared to Beatrice and prepared her for the great change which he
knew was closely approaching. As I pointed out at the time, although
Beatrices death was sudden and completely unexpec ted in a way, she
was already showing herself unusually well-acquainted with, and appre
ciative of, the Beyond. In fact, during her last two days of life, when she
entered the flowerwhich she had been repeatedly warned might lead
to her inability to returnone almost feels she was conscious of the
great change that was coming to her.
The 2,000,000-year-old man in Beatrice is unusually clear; in fact, it
can only be compared with the World-Weary Man and His Ba. The
Spirit Mans main symbol is the flower that unites all the opposites in
itself. But the Spirit Man or Bear Man, who always guides Beatrice to the
flower and who evidently lives in it himself, was certainly its completely
trusted emissary, or even a personification of the Great Man himself.
It must be emphasized that this figure began as the animus which
gives every woman so much trouble and which was particularly difficult
for Beatrice. But by very long, hard work at active imagination, she
succeeded in uncovering the figure that is always behind womans
animusthe Great Man himself. Not that his tormenting side
disappeared: it is to be seen in the firmness with which he makes
Beatrice acknowledge and face her hated countertransference. Moreover,
she still had trouble when she was away from her miraculous flower with
his negative opinions. We can see this especially clearly in her
unfounded fits of jealousy concerning an imaginary attraction of her
husband to a young girl whom he did not even like! And we saw the
berserker rage which the Bear Man showedduring which he very
nearly killed Beatricewhen she exhibited an "abstemious attitude,
thereby repressing her own negative emotion. She had to promise never
again to repress her emotions for the sake of being reasonable before
he could be reconciled to her.
This throws a very interesting light on our ingrained Christian atti
tude toward morality. Evidently, we must now be whole, as we really are
even when we face the Last Judgment, so to speak. We cannot escape
from the opposite of evil, but must suffer the tension between it and
goodto say nothing of the other oppositesright to the end.
This concept goes against everything we have been taught. We
believe, to the marrow of our bones, that God wishes us to be good and
to repress evil. Therefore, it is the most difficult thing in the world to
realize that God now, most certainly, wants us to stand the tension
between good and evil. Yet old Isaiah saw this truth all those centuries
ago when he was inspired to write: " I form the light, and create dark
ness: I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things. 4 The
Lord has, for the most part, allowed us to forget Isaiahs words and to
bask in the sun of righteousness for nearly 2,000 years.
Originally, it was indeed necessary to do all we could to see the light
side to achieve the far more difficult righteous opposite. But it is clear
from the tremendous outbreak of evil all over the world, which is threat
ening our very existence on our planet, that God is determined to
remind us that it was He Himself who created evil; therefore, we must
somehow come to terms with it. As Jung wrote, "We must learn how to
handle it, since it is here to stay. How we can live with it without terrible
consequences cannot for the present be conceived.
The first modest attempt we can make toward averting the "terrible
consequences is to reconsider our inborn conception of God Himself in
the light of Isaiahs little-known description of Him. In the last 2,000
years, we have been taught to think of Him as a wholly benevolent,
Isaiah 45:7.
omnipotent God, and to attribute all evil and destruction to the devil.
We have not even kept in mind the well-known fact that the devil is
Satan, Gods elder son. For nearly 2,000 years, it has been more or less
possible to believe that the benevolent God was the stronger of the two,
and therefore, not to question His omnipotence.
But is it possible to maintain this attitude in face of the worldwide
outbreak of evil today? We must choose between a dualistic conception
of God (God and His enemy, the devil) or admit that God Himself
contains both sides and is thus truly whole and omnipotent. If one has
experienced how relative and totally different the opposites become
when both are fully accepted, it is not difficult to imagine a God who
contains both opposites. Jungs Answer toJob helps us do so.
To me personally, it is a much more bearable thought to conceive of a
whole God who contains all oppositesand, like nature, creates and de
stroysthan to see the worldwide outbreak of evil as the work of Gods
enemy, the devil, or as mans own fault, while an only good and omni
potent God apparently does nothing to prevent him or us from perpe
trating that evil. Indeed, we can only accept the negative side of God, or
any archetype, after we have faced our own shadow, our own negative
and destructive side. We saw, for example, in the last banquet scene and
when he was confronted by the Spirit of Fire, Water, Wind and Ice how
weakened Edward was by having this work on the shadow still before
him, and how nearly the Bear Man put an end to Beatricebefore her
right moment to diefor thinking she could repress her own negative
emotions even a few days before her death. It seems to me that all the
evidence points to mankind at last taking Isaiahs text seriously and
drawing the necessary conclusions from it.
I am sure Beatrice must have known from her material that a great
change was approaching, but it is always an uncertain matter when
dreams or active imaginations prepare us for a great change, whether
rebirth in this world or in the next is intendeda change that involves a
complete change of standpoint, and indeed, of personality. We know
that Beatrice expected the change to come in life, for in the last record,
written the day before her death, she tells us so herself. She writes:
I contemplate theflower. As I meditate upon it, I become, as I did yester

day, the flower itself, rooted, growing, radiant, timeless. Thus, I take on
the form o f immortality. Then I feel quite well, and protectedfrom all
attacksfrom outside. It also protects mefrom my own emotions. When I

am in the center, nobody and nothing can attack me. They can still attack
and hurt me in my human form and I know that I must still spend most
o f my time there.6But I shall always have the opportunity now and then
to become theflower.
Thus, Beatrice experienced immortality in her lifetime, and death for
her would be entering her beloved flower without the necessity of being
obliged, as she evidently expected, to leave it again for most of the time.
The 2,000,000-year-old man in Beatrice had certainly prepared her for
death in a wonderful way.
The next example of active imagination which we examined (Chapter
Five) was our best, although it comes from 4,000 years ago. But I have
already dwelt on The World-Weary Man and His Ba in this conclud
ing chapter. We come then to the dialogue between Hugh de St. Victor
and his soul (Chapter Six), which was a complete contrast to the World-
Weary Mans experience. The World-Weary Man was totally and unex
pectedly invaded by a figure from the unconsciousthe Great Man
whereas the medieval dialogue was started by Hugh himself. The first
text, which shows us how to adapt the conscious to such an invasion, is
really an example of a completely successful coming to terms between
conscious and unconscious. The interference from the unconscious was
much less dramatic with Hugh; indeed, we can only surmise that his
conscious program did not suit his anima by what the soul replies to his
fully conscious and intentional remonstrances. As the representative of
the unconscious, she clearly saw farther into the future than Hugh did
and tried to make him widen his point of view to include some of the
dark side. But it was still too early; she could only have very little success
in this endeavor, for in the twelfth century, a manespecially a monk
like Hughwas still legitimately struggling to develop the light oppo
site and to persuade his timeless unconscious to remain mainly within
that frame, as Hugh does do very successfully. But the anima does
succeed in preparing the ground for a later acceptance of both opposites
when she induces Hugh to see that her adherence to the dark side has
strengthened, rather than weakened, the love of her bridegroom. It is by
such small, almost invisible steps that the unconscious slowly prepares
the way for completely new circumstances, not only for the individual,
but for humanity.
Underlining added to emphasize that she expected the change to come in life.
The lectures of Jung at the Eidgenssische Technische Hochschule

(E.T.H.) in Zrich dealt with active imagination as it appears in two
great religionsBuddhism and Christianityboth of which attempted
to solve the problem within the boundaries of their own dogmas.7Jung
pointed out that these dogmas are by no means an invention of con
sciousness. They are built up on the unconscious; in fact, they are
usually, at the time they arise, an almost perfect expression of the
unconscious. For a time, they act as a perfect canalization, so to speak, of
the unconscious of the individual. Just as long as the unconscious is
willing to flow in these channels, the religion in question provides every
thing that is required, and these times belong to the happiest in the
history of the human race. There are still people today whose whole
unconscious fits into the dogma of the church or religion in which they
were brought up, and such people should be encouraged to remain
within it. But as the state of the world teaches us daily, this is no longer
the case for the vast majority. It is useless to deny that we are confronted
with a flood of water from the unconscious which is only finding a
channel in the conscious of a very few individuals. These few have
realized that the unconscious is now demanding much wider channels
that will contain both opposites, and not exclude the dark, usually
expressed as the evil, opposite, as the former dogmas do now.
Taught by all that she had learned from Jungto which she was espe
cially open from her earlier study of SpinozaAnna Marjula really did
attempt, through her active imagination, to include both opposites. The
first partwhich I was able to leave exactly as it came from her own pen
is really a preparation for the more obvious play of the opposites in
the second part: her talks with the Great Spirit. She was fully convinced
of a whole God that contained both opposites, and that she must
include them both in her active imagination before she began her talks
with the Great Spirit. Before these ended, she had carried them through
to the unusual, but most desirable, climax of the Hieros Gamos itself.
She was rewarded by the opposites no longer troubling her, because they
had become relative to each other; therefore, she enjoyed an unusually
serene old age.
Anna first endured the tension of the opposites and then achieved the
right participation to enable them to unite in her. I must mention that
in her own analysis of her earliest pictures, which she undertook
7E.T.H. Lectures, vol. 2; vols. 3 and 4, 1st ed.

between the conversations with the Great Mother and the Great Spirit,
she learned how far apart the opposites were in her, and that it was the
nearly intolerable tension between them that was undermining the
peace she had found after her conversations with the Great Mother. This
caused her to speak of them much more openly in her talks with the
Great Spirit. This, in its turn, led to the wonderful climax of which the
Great Mother says:
Today in you and beyondyou, Masculine Spirit and Feminine Love are
going to be married. Personal renunciation is your part of it. You may
satisfactorily participate in their union, but this is only possible in case
you are up to a merely participating experience. Prepare yourselffor their
wedding.
Anna Marjula thus fulfilled the condition that Jung said was the only
possibility of averting atomic war.8 When I told him what she was
doing, and before he saw her manuscript, he replied, It shows that one
should never despair of a case. For, as I mentioned before, there was a
considerable time when Jung and I feared that she would never get the
better of her negative animus. It seems to me, therefore, that Anna
Marjulas example of active imagination is a particular encouragement
to women in the great difficulties they encounter with their animus.
In a way, one cannot compare such small, individual efforts with the
dogmas produced by generations in the great religions. Yet only by such
individual efforts can people who are still supporting the religions begin
to see that their dogmas must develop if they are to remain alive and not
become dead relics of the past. Jung often pointed out what a tremen
dous step Pope Pius XII took in this direction when he raised the Virgin
to heaven and thus began to turn the Trinity into a quaternity, that age-
old symbol for wholeness.
We can see what significant importance Jung attached to the union of
opposites by the fact that he devoted his last long book, the Mysterium
Coniunctionisp entirely to that subject. It took him many years to write
this book; indeed, it was his main business, as Goethe called his
Faust. At the very beginning, he devoted a footnote to a quotation from
the well-known early-seventeenth century alchemist Michael Maier,
which has always struck me as one of the best descriptions of how the
opposites can unite. Maier says:
8See above p. 8.
Jung, Collected Works, vol. 14.
Nature, I say, when she turned about the golden circle, by that move
ment made its four qualities equal, that is to say, she squared that
homogeneous simplicity turning back on itself, or brought it into an
equilateral rectangle, in such a way that contraries are bound together by
contraries, and enemies by enemies, as if with everlasting bonds, and are
held in mutual embrace.10
We see clearly how impossible it is for the conscious to unite the
opposites; only nature can do that if human beings have the right
participation in it. We have seen, from how the Great Mother described
it, that the ego must give up all its egotistic demands and allow nature a
completely free hand. Or, to look at this right participation in another
way: the ego must achieve the same attitude as the Chinese rainmaker of
Kian Tchou.11 He told Wilhelm that it could not rain until he had
gotten himself back into Tao; then, of course, it did rain. As I see it,
nature can only bind contraries . . . together by contraries, and
enemies by enemies, as if with everlasting bonds and hold them in
mutual embrace if we can achieve the right attitude or participation
toward it.
Michael Maier, De circulo physico quadrato, p. 17.

See above pp. 13ff.
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Vol. 14: Mysterium Coniuntionis, 1970.
Vol. 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy, 1966.
Vol. 12: Psychology and Alchemy, 1968.
Vol. 5: The Psychology o f the Unconscious, 1967.
Vol. 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1969.
Vol. 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1966.
. E. T. H. (Eidgenssische Technische Hochschule) Lectures, Modern
Psychology, Vols. II, III, IV and V. Zurich: privately printed.
. Letters. 2 vols. Edited by Gerhard Adler and Anielajaffe. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1973.
. Man and His Symbols. Edited by C. G. Jung. New York: Double
day & Company, 1964.
. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Pantheon Books, 1973.
. Psychological Analysis of Nietzches Thus Spake Z arath u straPri
vate seminar given in Zurich during the 1930s.
Maier, Michael. De circulo physico quadrato. Oppenheim, 1616.
Marjula, Anna. The Healing Influence o f Active Imagination in a Specific Case
o f Neurosis. Zurich: Schippert & Co., 1967.
Mead, George Robert Stow. A Mithraic Ritual. Echoes of the Gnosis Series.
London, 1907.
. ed. and trans. Thrice Greatest Hermes. 3 vols. London, 1949-
Micropaedia. Vol. 7. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1943-73.
Preisendanz, Karl, ed. Papyri Graecae Magicae. 2 vols. Stuttgart, 1973.
Rauschning, Hermann. Hitler Speaks. London: Thornton Butterwotth, Ltd.,
1939-
Richard de St. Victor, Benjamin Minor.
Rosarium philosophorum. See Artis auriferae.
Rosenkreutz, Christian (pseud, of Johann Valentin Andreae). Chymische
Hoschzeit. Strasbourg, 1616. For translation, see The Hermetick Ro
mance, or the Chymical Wedding. Translated by E. Foxcroft. London,
1690.
254 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Saint Gertrude. Life and Revelations o f St. Gertrude. London: Burns and
Yates, 1870.
Thompson, Francis. Hound o f Heaven. Boston: Branden Press, n.d.
The Upanishads. Parts I and II. Oxford, 1879.
van der Post, Laurens. A Mantis Carol. London: Hogarth Press, 1975.
von Franz, Marie-Louise. Die Visionen des Niklaus von Fle. Zurich: Rascher
Verlag, 1959.
. Projections and Re-Collection inJungian Psychology: Reflection o f the
Soul. Translated by William Kennedy. La Salle: Open Court Publishing
Co., 1980.
Wilhelm, Richard. Death and Renewal in China. Spring: A Magazine o f
Jungian Thought. Analytical Psychology Club of New York, 1962.
Wolff, Paul. Die Viktoriner: Mystische Schriften. Vienna: Thomas Verlag
Jakob Hegner, 1936.
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concept of active imagination u most powerful tool in Jungian
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J#J
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j /(8 ?us is a
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ENCOUNTERS WITH T H E SOUL is the first and only book I know of which
can promote the understanding of "active imagination by illustrating through
various examples, the steps, pitfalls and successes of this method of encountering
the unconscious'.
Marie-Louise von Franz

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ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SOUL

ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SOUL:

Cover Design John Coy

THE INWARD GAZE.................................................................... vi

If we look inward, the other looks at us too, but with a strange

other words, it is a method for exploring the unknown, whether we

It may be difficult for the unprepared reader to understand why

I remember a very wise woman telling me that, on a long tour

the idea of coming to terms with them, he instinctively discovers some

Laurens van der Post even attributes the ruthless extermination of

,0Jung , Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 192f.

companionship is absolutely necessary to prevent us from becoming

all, except to point out if I had used it wrongly. Following that, he

Zrich Psychological Club.

have a disintegrating effect on our environment, the exact opposite of

approach that often reveals the unconscious particularly well, is to

It is characteristic o f the Western mind that it has no word for Tao.

Ibid., par. 28.

purpose of active imagination is to come to terms with the uncon

pursued the heroic Odysseus right to the end with relentless

quickly. He should have stayed and offered rich sacrifices to Zeus

the unconscious, first to become conscious of the personal shadow.

A Modern Example o f a Mans Active Imagination

Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 178.

Yes, I expect you are right; the devil prob

enter such a place? Does it not disgust you

Prostitute (embracing and kissing me, whispers in my ear):

The fantasy is characterized with the fact that Edward is an introvert.

hospital, Edward was condemned to watching her die, inch by inch, in

Ibid., pp. 323f.

Edward describes this venture very vividly and at considerable length,

by the archetype of the negative mother. Edward begins to sense her

The adventure which we have followed so far only represents eight

continually afraideven near to panic and despairthe boatman

except perhaps the devil, corresponds to the popular idea of what a

The country which has always been described as a rocky wilderness

One Beginning Approach to Active Imagination

In order to provide a contrast to Edwards case, the next example is

Sylvias father had taken full advantage of this opportunity. He criti

The fantasy is about a godmother who, although a rich woman, had

To study this closer, we must remember that the fantasy is related by a

construction; when it is finished, they manage it entirely by themselves.

'Handwrterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, s.v. Heiderkraut.

As mentioned before, Sylvia still sees all this as happening not to

4Jung, Collected Works, vol. 12, par. 57.

Jung describes a somewhat similar experience which he and Toni

The godmother, however, was not to find matters so relatively simple.

6Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 284.

Sylvia finishes the fantasy by saying that unfortunately Frulein

A rather ominous note is struck in the last sentence of the fantasy.

Mothers. 7 Mephistopheles gives him a key which he disdainfully calls

The Unconscious Prepares for Death

The case of Beatrice is a more advanced instance of active imagination

a good deal tortured by unfounded jealousy, though she had the

Beatrice is doing her best to approach this center of which Jung

Richard Wilhelm, Spring: A Magazine of Jungian Thought, Analytical Psychology

4Jung, Collected Works, vol. 14, pars. 110-133 and 154-233.

But sometimes the unconscious itself does something to bring one to

'H annah,/g: His Life and Work, pp. 42ff, 82f.