But let us come back to our modern [German] word Toilette.⁸⁸ In German it is synonymous with Abort, while in French it has a different meaning. Toilette is derived from toile, a small linen blanket, which originally probably covered the lady’s dressing table and referred to her dressing room.

Despite the modern term used by the boy, and despite the sparkling hygiene associated with the word today, this place is still taboo for us. Even today, refined and enlightened persons who otherwise speak quite explicitly about biological processes talk in paraphrases or enigmatic abbreviations about this place. There are the elegant foreign words Toilette and water closet,89 there is the flüsternde Örtli,⁹⁰ the Locus,⁹¹ or, in the mysterious language of runes, the WC or the AB,⁹² still whispered today like the blessing formula of the Irish monks. So even today this place is something suspect, mysterious, taboo, forbidden, a secretive place one avoids mentioning by name, because it serves the lower needs of man. What does the boy see in the toilet? He sees a girl. He does not give more details about the girl in the dream, in this vision, but the context and the explanations the young person later gives about the girl show that he sees a specific type of girl before him. She is a girl with dark-brown hair, with a tinge of red, with a skin and blood complexion that is characteristic of certain Englishwomen, and considered, I dare say, the ideal by the average Englishman. A person from the continent knows this type from the illustrations by Rackham, and also from the portrayals by the Pre-Raphaelites, in which this type tends to have decadent features. So what the boy sees is not an everyday figure, but a kind of fairy-tale creature, an elfish being. According to Jung, these elfish beings are a preliminary stage of a magical female being that we call anima. Elfen, or Elben in Middle High German (from the English elf or ælf) are often creatures of the light with both human and divine features. According to Grimm, the blessed virgins can be classified in this category, the wise women who sunbathe, comb their hair, and bathe; the Lorelei, the Greek Sirens, the mermaids and fair water beings93 who are in need of salvation. These elfish beings, these elevated fair ones, however, have nothing to do with the fairy figures that rather indicate a mother symbol. The word Fee (fairy) is derived from feie, fine; fata, fate. These are goddesses of fate, the Nornes, who hold the life string in their hands. Our elves, however, are beguiling, enchanting beings who often dance at night in a clearing in the woods, moving seductively to a sweet melody, beguiling young people, pulling them toward those light regions where there is neither death nor sin. Certainly these beings are very often able to change; the fascinating attraction emanating from this light creature can give way to the lamia,⁹⁴ to the empusa,⁹⁵ to those man-eating monsters, to those succubae who consume men from within and put straw and wood in place of their hearts.

With this description we have at the same time characterized the archetype of the anima; it is not identical with the dogmatic notion of soul.⁹⁶ Soul, in Gothic saivalo, is movement and oscillation par excellence, in short, everything that constitutes life in all its aspects. It is this moving and lively force in its roguishness and artfulness that drives man, and this mixture of wisdom and roguishness appears, to quote Jung, as one and the same in the elfish being.

We have shown the connection between the nature of the girl and the elves. Elves don’t have souls. In her playful way, the girl now does something very significant: she washes her hands.

Washing one’s hands has always been connected with a great and magnificent ceremony. At first, washing one’s hands was probably done out of politeness and custom, but it is also a symbolic act. Thus the priest in Catholic mass prays for moral lustration during the washing of hands, the introductory part of mass. In Matthew 27:24, there is the well-known passage: “When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.” Something similar is found in Deuteronomy, where the following is demanded after a manslaughter: “And all the elders of that city, that are next unto the slain man, shall wash their hands” (21:6). In Cornwall, according to the biblical tradition, washing one’s hands was the sign of innocence of a certain crime. An Icelandic prayer says: “I remove my enemies and adversaries from me by washing.” In this context let us also remember the statement of Lady Macbeth: “A little water clears us of this deed: How easy is it, then!” Who can forget the scene in which Lady Macbeth enters the hall after the bloody deed at midnight, watched by the doctor and the gentlewoman: “Look, how she rubs her hands—It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands.”

In ancient customs, too, washing one’s hands is considered necessary in extraordinary circumstances, for example, in Silesia, one has to wash one’s hands after a burial to avoid dying or losing one’s teeth. In the Rhineland, you should wash your hands after a sudden fright to prevent lasting harm. In Southern Germany and in Switzerland, special blessings by washing the hands are customary, which impressively show the importance of this act. In all cultures, washing one’s hands is a symbolic act, an integral part of the ritual. The Egyptian priest, for example, is called uibu, the washed one, or uibu totui, the clean one with both hands. In alchemy, too, we know of the ablutio, when the pure white color emerges after the nigredo, the blackness.

The boy felt a pain of separation. This pain felt in separation is not an unambiguous feeling, because one would like to, indeed would have to, separate from such an elfish being—this would be the quite appropriate, instinctive feeling of the dreamer. At the same time, this pain of separation generates a half-lustful, half-world-weary feeling, and a wish to remain in this state.

In contrast to the previous dream of the pyramid, this dream absolutely corresponds to the scope of the boy’s personal experiences. Seen superficially, this is nothing but a very banal vision, explicable by the boy’s personal unconscious, but the enrichment of the dream material should disabuse us of this assumption. Despite its banality—“washing her hands in a toilet”—this dream reaches far down into the collective unconscious. For one, it was shown that the girl in her elfish nature is an instinctual, preliminary stage of the anima; and this playful, elfish being does something very meaningful, symbolic, and ritualistic: she washes her hands, and she does so in a somewhat suspect place, in a forbidden place, for which we may substitute the unconscious here. This place, where the lower functions of human life happen, is taboo. What we have here is also a pair of opposites: black–white; the haunted place where spirits and devils dwell, where black demons rise, on the one hand, and the light figure, the elf, who washes her hands with an ironic smile or in a gesture reminiscent of Pilate, on the other.

We now come to the interpretation of the dream. To begin with, we have to ask why it recurred so often. For one, the dream does not have a solution, and is dreamed again and again to demonstrate to the dreamer that he should finally deal with his anima. This the dreamer does not do; he remains in his passivity, and this passivity gives us the key to understand the vision. There can be no solution in this vision because the dreamer does not confront the elfish girl, his anima; thus, the archetype of the anima becomes autonomous. What is fascinating in the elf—to fascinate derives from fascere97—actually becomes a decisive factor. Metaphorically speaking, the oscillating, elusive, effortless quality turns into something beguiling, a lamia, a fiend, an empusa. To stay in the picture: it turns into the succubus that sucks the marrow out of the young man’s bones, or, to put it psychologically, the anima turns into an autonomous being that exercises an absolutely dominating influence.

Professor Jung: The dream is of an approximately five-year-old boy. It has recurred for a long period of time in one version or another, and the cause for these recurrences was always the motif of the separation pain. This went on until about the thirtieth year. Then something happened that we could have guessed already from the dream itself: he fell in love with a girl who absolutely resembled the dream figure. This love affair dragged on for quite some time, up and down, back and forth, with great indecisiveness. One moment he thought he should marry her, the next he shied away from this thought. She was a fairly enigmatic girl, and he could never find out any actual details concerning her family and her background. Eventually it all ended with a break-up after all. He suffered greatly from this fascination, and the relationship gave him many a sleepless night. She also caused him great difficulties with his parents.

This girl resembled the above-mentioned English type. Such girls usually radiate something fairylike or elfish, that certain something that makes a man feel at a loss. To characterize this type I’d like to tell you a story: A Danish pastor once went across the moor; there was only one path leading through it, and whoever deviated from it would drown in the mud. He had a long way to go across the country, because he had been called to a dying man. When he was on his way back in the middle of the night, he faintly heard some music, and wondered: “What is this?” Then he saw two little figures coming toward him on the moor, going where no human being would have been able to. When they stood in front of him, he realized that they were elves. They asked him who he was. He answered: “The pastor.” They asked what a pastor was. “Someone who has to pray with the people so that their souls are saved.” They moaned that they had no souls, to which he replied that he could not help them; they would have to ask God to give them immortal souls. He wanted to teach them how to pray and said to them: “Our Father which art in heaven . . .” They said, however: “Our Father which art not in heaven . . .”—They simply could not repeat it otherwise. So he had to dismiss them again. And that is why they never received immortal souls. We have to imagine the girl in the dream as such an elfish being.

In contrast to the dream discussed in the previous session, this is not an image, but a vision; because a vision usually has a synthetic character and is a kind of composition. Each part derives from the other, so that all of them together form a complete synthesis. The present dream, however, is essentially composed of material drawn from experience, which stems from the most varied sources, and is not connected by inner evidence. It does not follow at all from the character of the dream image that the girl necessarily had to be in the toilet.

We can distinguish three elements in this dream: first, the memory of this girl who historically is not linked with the toilet at all. She had made a deep impression on the boy, and had perhaps for the first time aroused a certain feeling in him—the pain of separation. This emotional situation is repeated in the dream: the dreamer does not approach the girl, but, if there is movement at all, this movement is nipped in the bud, and, therefore, he experiences the pain of separation.

The second element is the toilet with all its concomitant associations. It is a place around which the erotic fantasies of the boy revolve. This is quite normal, because the beginnings of sexuality lie in the cloacal area. These two sources, the memory of the girl and the toilet, originally have nothing to do with each other, because the dreamer did not associate any sexual fantasies with this girl until he was an adult. So we have to state that it was not the girl who was the object of his sexual fantasies, but the toilet. It is very important, therefore, that these two elements appear together in the dream.

The third element is washing the hands. The girl washes her hands because she has used the toilet. This is a completely natural activity, appropriate for this place. It shows that a functional relationship has been established between the anima and the toilet. For the time being, we are not able to give more details about this, but instead will deal more closely at first with the dream.

The toilet is a very meaningful place, and I am glad we can once seize the opportunity to speak about it. True, it is not a very savory subject, but it is of great importance to children. That place is always haunted because the functions that are exercised there are the natural functions par excellence. In every place where humans are natural, and can’t help but be natural, the ancient natural demons are also still nearby. It is quite understandable, therefore, that the toilet becomes the taboo place par excellence, in which obsessions, phobias, and a plethora of neurotic symptoms have their origins, because it is precisely the natural functions that are disturbed in the neurotic. The fascination of this place is also immensely increased by the fact that the first beginnings of sexuality are linked to these functions. Now, there is always a close relation between instinctual processes and the collective unconscious, which reaches deep down into our nature and offers a view, so to speak, of our primordial nature. So we are completely justified in calling the toilet the collective unconscious, as Dr. Steiner has quite correctly interpreted. Now we also understand that the anima, that enigmatic figure of the unconscious, just like a spirit, a devil, or a fiend, is up to her mischief in exactly this place. Are there other places where one is afraid of apparitions?

Participant: The cemetery.

Professor Jung: Yes, cemeteries are classic haunted places, because death also is part of the natural, irrevocable processes. This is also the reason why dying is accompanied by fears and psychical phenomena. There, too, nature simply forces its way, and we cannot avoid it, just as we can’t avoid dealing with all the other natural bodily functions. Do you know in which cases the dream language makes use of these processes?

Participant: In case of natural necessities.

Professor Jung: Yes, if we dream, for example, that we have to pass water in the company of other people, or that we have to get up immediately and go to that place. This means that nature cannot be stopped. It must get out after all. If, for instance, someone constantly avoids talking about certain things, about which he should talk, he will perhaps have such a dream sometime, in which he suddenly has to go to the toilet or something like that.

In alchemy, too, the toilet plays a not inconsiderable role, insofar as the prima materia or the lapis can also be found in the privies or in excrement. Meyrink reports on one of his own alchemical experiments in the translation of a tract that has been attributed to Thomas Aquinas. For this purpose he had bought an old privy, had it emptied, and put the base, the “peculiar juice,”98 into an alchemical pot. On this he applied a coat of clay and sealed it “hermetically”—obviously quite well, because when he slowly heated the pot over the fire, the lid of the pot all of a sudden blew up. He claimed that a strange, yellowish matter had formed in it. The experiment still did not convince him that one couldn’t make gold out of the sediment of a sterquilinium⁹⁹ after all! When we study these things we shake our heads and think: there has to be something in it after all, if people are so fascinated by it unconsciously. We have to consider the claim, therefore, that the prima materia, that earth of paradise, that primordial chaos, is hidden in the fecal matter, as a significant contribution to the psychology of this place.

In our dream the anima appears in the toilet, in precisely that taboo place. Is this alright? Does it fit?

Participant: No.

Participant: Perhaps it does after all, because the toilet represents the unconscious. And the anima mediates between consciousness and the unconscious.

Professor Jung: But doesn’t it strike you as extraordinary or strange that the anima appears in this of all places?

Participant: That’s all right as it is, but it still seems to me that the anima belongs more in nature, while the toilet is like a distortion of nature, which gives the situation a moralistic aftertaste.

Professor Jung: Let us disregard the unpleasant and repulsive character of this place for the moment, and focus on the fact that it represents the unconscious. We can then simply state that the anima is in the unconscious. Is that abnormal?

Participant: On the contrary, it is the place of creativity, where something is created.

Professor Jung: Yes, this is quite in order, or at least it can be in order, because the toilet isn’t just “nothing but,” but, on the other hand, it also has the meaning of a creative place. As a matter of fact, something is really created there. Children know this very well. One of my children once stayed in the toilet for a long time. When my wife asked: “What’re you doing in there?” a voice answered: “The carriage and two ponies!” You probably know the so-called Dukatenscheißer.100 The relation between the absolutely worthless and the absolutely valuable is, as we already saw in the previous meeting, a basic idea in alchemy: it is the thesaurus thesaurorum,¹⁰¹ and at the same time the cheapest of all objects that you can find even in the street. If we keep this in mind it is not surprising that we come across the anima in this place of creativity and of the unconscious, because the anima is a figure of the collective unconscious.102 It is the soul image of a man, that inner personality that is compensatory to the conscious attitude. As long as it remains unconscious—as it usually does until the second half of life—it is experienced in projection only. But how is it experienced by the child?

Participant: The child at first projects the soul image onto the mother.

Professor Jung: Yes, the mother is the female figure that plays the greatest role in the lives of children. Children project their unconscious onto her. But as they are still completely living in the collective, they cannot experience the mother as real, but above all as an archetype, by which she gains that superhuman, fateful importance.¹⁰³ She can become the witch, the demon, the all-powerful, all of which she is not in reality; or also the all-loving and all-understanding mother. In dreams she often appears as someone menacing and uncanny, as a ghost or some other monster. Naturally, it may also be the case that projections of such archetypal images are facilitated by the psychical structure of the mother. I remember the case of a mother driven by instincts, who could not understand her children at all. She was infatuated with both her daughters, and the daughters adored her. But at night they had terrible nightmares in which the mother appeared as a witch, a persecutor, or as an evil animal. The younger girl once told her fourteen-year-old sister about it, who confessed to having similar dreams of their mother. Later it turned out that these dreams did not come out of the blue, but were in fact related to the mother’s psyche. In menopause she fell ill with a depression with fugue states, in which she turned into the same wild animals the children had dreamed of! She crawled on all fours and accused herself of being a wolf, a bear, and so on. So the dreams of the children had been a reflection of the mother’s instinctuality, which she would have to realize. The mother had been too much “up there,” and had played the role of saintly motherhood. Her daughters had reinforced the mother’s attitude. The depression was meant to bring her down to earth again. But even if the dream figures were facilitated by the mother, we must not overlook that they belong to the archetypal world of the children; they are their own archetypes, and must not be taken away from them.

In the present it is not the mother, but a girl who appears. Why is the anima shown as a girl here?

Participant: Because the anima already appears in connection with sexual fantasies.

Professor Jung: Exactly. What consequences does the emergence of the sexual fantasies have for the relation of the boy to his mother?

Participant: These sexual fantasies separate him from the mother, because he cannot approach her with them.

Professor Jung: Yes, otherwise incest would be the result.104 But why can’t he simply have an incest fantasy? Why can’t we commit incest?

Participant: Perhaps the father prevents us from committing it?

Professor Jung: No, for one, the father isn’t always at home. One could commit incest twenty times if one really wanted. Incest is something quite doable, and it does happen. But why should it not be committed? What is the reason?

Participant: There is the incest taboo, isn’t there?

Professor Jung: Of course. Where does this incest taboo, which has been there for thousands of years, come from? It cannot be observed, as such, in animals, but it exists in all kinds of variations in humans. The main reason is a psychological one, because this is a highly symbolic matter. If it were possible that a man could commit incest just like that, he’d have everything at his fingertips and would never leave his home. His initiative would be completely paralyzed, and a psychical incapability would be the result.

The primitive, of course, does not have such considerations. His own nature stands in the way of incest. The attraction of something new is so overwhelming that it will always chase him out of his cramped nest. Primitive man created his marital laws and customs out of his inner needs, such as the marriage castes, the custom of abducting the women, and so on.

We can assume that in children, too, such instinctual forces are effective, so that they do not become involved in incest. How does their sexuality normally develop?

Participant: It is transferred to a person who does not belong to the family.

Professor Jung: Yes, this also happens with our dreamer. He had seen this girl in reality, she made a strong impression on him, and in the dream he then brought her up in connection with the toilet, with his cloacal, sexual fantasies. This helped him circumnavigate the dangerous cliffs of incest. This connection is only correlative, however, not interdependent. The latter would have to be expressed by a movement toward the girl. In the dream the boy feels only separation pain with regard to her, because his sexual fantasies are still attached to the toilet, and will remain split off from the girl for some time to come. Why?

Participant: Because he is still attached to his mother.

Professor Jung: For such a child the mother is not real at all, as we have seen. She is the bearer of the soul image, she is anima. So we have to investigate the question why the boy splits off his sexuality on the basis of the psychology of the anima.

Participant: Perhaps another girl is the reason.

Professor Jung: No, these things pose many riddles. I have to point out that we have to be very cautious in the case of little children, when we think in terms of the personality and try to find a rational explanation. We must never forget that the infantile soul is no tabula rasa—this would be the greatest misconception—but we always have to keep a door open—to what?

Participant: To the collective unconscious.

Professor Jung: Yes, quite right. This is also the reason why the anima does not unite with the cloacal fantasy. Can you tell me why?

Participant: Perhaps the dreamer is too self-centered?

Professor Jung: He certainly is. The toilet represents his autoerotic attitude. Like so many children, he is curious what adults do in the toilet, and this arouses distinct sexual feelings in him. But this merely confirms that he got stuck in his cloacal fantasies and was not able to reunite them with the anima figure.

Participant: Would it have been alright for him to link the sexual fantasies with the girl?

Participant: No, because the anima is a figure of his soul.

Professor Jung: Yes, this girl has actually all the advantages of a soul image, and the noblest feelings have been associated with her. So it was impossible for him to associate her with the other side—his anima image would have been soiled. This is also the deeper reason for the anima to wash her hands. She shows him that she cleanses herself of all impurity. It is as if she said to him: “Your sexual fantasies are about unclean things, with which I don’t want to have anything to do.” Naturally, this also throws some light on the dreamer’s sexuality. We have to conclude from his behavior that the image of the anima is, a priori, such that it does not want to merge with the other side, that is, with his budding sexuality. This actually causes the beginning of a split between the lower and the higher spheres in him. He has to part with what is high and pure, and it is because of this separation pain that he remembered that dream. Why is this separation necessary?

Participant: Because otherwise he would never be able to approach the dark side.

Professor Jung: What would happen if he could not separate from the girl? He would for ever have remained the little boy in whom an image lingers on, and his instinctuality would remain completely undeveloped. He has to be separated, therefore, from the anima image. In the dream it is the anima herself who keeps the distance. She actively intervenes. We must not conceive of the anima as a passive image that the dreamer could control as he wishes; she is autonomous to a great extent. When she appears in the projection, she is usually extremely overpowering, and the man in question falls prey to her hook, line, and sinker. Rider Haggard clearly saw this: “She that must be obeyed.”105 The anima can be a terrible tyrant!—Pierre Benoit has also described this anima type in his Atlantide. In a woman, the analogous figure is the animus, which can dominate her and completely bring her to ruin. The fatefulness of the soul image announces itself very early. Whenever the anima figure appears in a boy’s dream we have to be careful, because she represents life as such: that which moves herself as well as the dreamer.

In the present dream, the anima washes her hands, which psychologically means that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with sexuality, but wants to preserve her purity. This attitude of the anima has played a great role in the later life of the dreamer. The ensuing split between sexuality and the anima is, by the way, frequently found in men, and often manifests itself as a neglect of Eros, which is the essence of the anima. Men are rarely split off from sexuality, because it is too evident for them, but what they lack is Eros, the relational function. Men often think they can replace the relational function with reason. They are proud that they don’t let themselves be controlled by affect, because this would be womanly, tantamount to weak. No Eros, for God’s sake! This lack is what women most complain of in marriage, and is what so disappoints them. For what they seek in a man is the Eros, the capacity to relate.

This is exactly what is missing in our dreamer! The anima withdraws; she does not want to mingle with the unclean place, does not want to enter into the instinctual turmoil. But then this is a quite natural attitude for someone whose sexuality is still bound to the cloacal sphere. At this age it is not yet possible to have a different attitude; sexuality cannot but develop out of this cloacal sphere. It is the place in which it originates, in which man is born. “Inter faeces et urinas nascimur,”106 as St. Augustine put it. For the boy, sexuality belongs in this region, and he should not feel otherwise because then he would be in danger of becoming obsessed. By what?

Participant: By the soul image.

Professor Jung: Yes, precisely by the anima. And this would have the psychological consequence that he would remain the cute little boy, tied to his mother’s apron strings, a nice kiddie who never gets into mischief, and to whom the mother says: “Promise that you will never hurt your mommy and kiss a girl.” Then the little boy is a puppet on the anima’s strings. This is the sweetness we have to renounce over and over again. The result would be that sad, nice boy who is good for nothing, whose sexuality is repressed and therefore remains confined to the privy pit. These are men who foolishly might be taken in by prostitutes, maybe even acquire syphilis. And why? Because they didn’t notice anything and have never developed out of this toilet into the world. Then they cannot distinguish between what is dirty and what is clean. Doctors see all kinds of things in this respect.

Homosexuality plays a great role in these men, because a homosexual is identical with the anima, which brings about his aesthetic femininity, with all of the virtues of the feminine. He sees a heterosexual relationship in the light of the aspect that exists within himself, which is that undeveloped sexuality—and acts accordingly.

I saw a typical case, a very refined, cultured, amiable adolescent, who was identical with his anima. Of course he was affectionately attached to his mother, who had taken him on her lap too much when he was a child. Unfortunately he agreed to undergo a treatment, lost his homosexuality, and wanted to be a “real man.” But what did that get him into? He fell for a terrible woman, a potential whore suffering from lues, who was afflicted with a bone syphilis in the nose, a syphilitic ozena, a “stinky nose,” that suppurated all the time. This was the “toilet” alright, and this was the woman he married and had a child with, who then suffered from hereditary syphilis. These terrible things could happen because this boy suddenly fell out of the perfumed atmosphere of the mother—she herself an anima child—and into his undeveloped toilet-manliness. His wife reeked of the stench that had fascinated him.

It is part of the normal instinctual development of man that it begins in the cloacal sphere and has to pass through this dark valley. The instinctual development is a development “per vias naturales.”107 If it only concerns sexuality, however, without the inclusion of Eros, this will be the source of the most bitter disappointment in women. Most men, however, are not aware of this.

So when the anima says in our dream: “I’m not coming with you,” this means that the dreamer has to develop into the world. Fortunately, he cannot give up the toilet fantasies, and fortunately he cannot transfer them onto the anima figure. Unfortunately, he later succeeded in doing so, leading to bitter disappointment. Life had to demonstrate to him that he must not transfer sexuality onto the anima. In falling in love with the anima, he forcibly tried to circumvent the laws of development. This was a concession to his mother complex. He was not man enough to withstand seduction, partly due to the fact that he also had a father complex. His father never allowed him to assert himself against him. The father was too powerful and did not leave enough room for the son to develop into a man. As a consequence, the latter was forced to that side of his feelings where he fell victim to his own weakness, and no longer had the strength to escape the anima. A man proves his moral strength by running away from the image of his anima. When he falls prey to the anima, he has lost a battle. This is also the reason why most normal men flee the anima by marrying a woman who does not correspond to that type.

The constellation of this anima type always entails the risk of a concession to the mother complex, but it also brings about the danger that the anima itself will violate its bounds and come out of the unconscious to enter into the world. The relational function with the unconscious must not be transformed into a relational function with the conscious world! The anima must always establish the relation with the unconscious, even when the man begins to consciously experience it as a function. If it tries to represent the relation to the world of consciousness, however, the person concerned will become effeminate. Unfortunately, their insecure social status forces many men today to function via the anima, that is, to use the anima as a relational function with the environment. An employee has to know about the whims of his boss, know what to say to him, and so has to acquire quite feminine traits. Such a man has to become a nice “office sissy”! This femininity is of no advantage to him, but secures his existence. That’s the reason why so many men are so unconditionally enthusiastic about the war, because finally they can—“thank God!”—swear, hit, and be real men. For how can one be a man in a pussyfooting, moralistic society? Vice versa, the same is true for today’s woman, who is often forced into an animus adaptation. She would prefer to be feminine, and not to take possession of the world head first.

For the boy, the whole extent of the anima problem is hinted at in the dream, but of course his consciousness at that age is not capable of understanding the problem. The dream image does evoke a certain feeling, however, leaving at least an emotional imprint: here my toilet fantasy and the attached sexuality, there the beautiful child from whom I have to separate.

Let us return to the previous question: why this separation pain? Why does his anima indicate from the very beginning: “Alas, I have to leave you?” The moment he has discovered her, he has to leave her again. What is the reason? Something must have happened before, something occurring entirely in the unconscious, which might provide the explanation for why he has to take leave from this figure.

Participant: He has the inner conviction that the anima is too grand.

Professor Jung: Yes, that’s what I meant. The first anima experience of the boy is a very high idea, something incomprehensibly grand and beautiful. It is so beautiful that he just knows that he can only lose it. It is like the farewell to paradise, that wonderful thing, just beginning, filled with the pain: it is lost! This is connected with those golden memories, those prenatal images, which are still sensed by the child. The boy’s separation pain shows that he is attached to those magical images, that he comes from that world which, however, he has to leave behind. The dream shows him that now he has to choose the dirty path, just as eating dust comes after the loss of paradise. It is outright dangerous to remain attached to this lost world, because in that case one refuses to get in touch with the earth—and will never be born. Quite recently I met such an unborn man, who constantly had to dream of his own birth. He had got stuck in his anima. Such people give the impression of a strangely arrested development. They cannot touch the world and take it into their hands—but if we want to live we have to take hold of it, and not be anxious about getting our hands dirty. The world isn’t clean. Our dreamer has the greatest difficulties imaginable in touching the world, because he has been fascinated by the anima over and over again. This arrested his development and he became inefficient. He couldn’t take the dream’s repeated warning to heart.

Participant: It is not clear to me why the girl is a collective figure. Isn’t she rather a personal figure?

Professor Jung: Yes, it is a girl he knows. However, she has certain traits of the Anglo-Saxon race and, therefore, represents a type that he will frequently come across in his later life. This is crucial in this case. Women, as it is, like to act a type, for instance, that of the coquette; in this respect, one woman is like another, they are interchangeable. This is only possible, however, if it concerns the man’s anima, and not the woman as a personality. Men with some insight into their eroticism can easily tell what their anima looks like. The can say: this is she, and nobody else.

It is strange that there are not many kinds of anima in a man’s soul, but only one anima. Women, on the other hand, have a multiplicity of animuses. Often they appear in combination. There is an excellent description in the book by H. G. Wells, Christina Alberta’s Father. There a whole “court of old men”108 is concerned with the moral behavior of the young woman. The same phenomenon is described in the occult literature. Among the spirits of William James’s well-known medium, Mrs. Piper, there was a special group of controls,¹⁰⁹ called the “Imperator group” by her. The animus very often appears as a power animus. In contrast, the anima is essentially a unity, at least in a man whose development proceeds normally. Such a man will get married and have sexual relations with his wife. In addition, he will perhaps have the image of a woman whom he adores from a great distance. If his quiet course of life is unsettled, whether by inexplicable mood swings or by external events, doubt about the past will arise. He is thrown back onto himself, and has to try to solve the conflict within himself, meaning that he has to establish a relation to his unconscious, and this is only achieved if the anima becomes conscious. The result of its becoming conscious is that distinctions are being made: the paradoxical and, as it were, completely amoral anima has to be split, because otherwise it would remain inexplicable and not comprehensible for consciousness. Then it occurs that the man experiences the white and the black anima, the saint and the witch or the evil Circe. The anima is an absolutely paradoxical being which, however, is basically always one and the same. It is precisely her ambiguous nature that fascinates man, attracts him until he perishes, and that he has to escape. Read the novels of Rider Haggard110 and you will get an impression of what the anima is. Once he met her in South Africa; he was so impressed that he had to write a large number of books about her. He accurately sensed that a supernatural being is concealed behind this phenomenon, and that it radiates that strange and powerful magic that also was effective in the ancient goddesses. These divine figures live on in the anima, with all their attributes of motherhood and pleasure, as well as with all their demonic features, their depravity and magnificence.

Participant: Does the anima remain the same throughout a man’s whole life?

Professor Jung: No, the anima is by no means unchangeable. If the individuation process sets in, for instance, the anima, too, is subject to a change. She is a personification of the unconscious and consequently modifies her character when the conscious attitude changes.

Participant: Does this change of the anima coincide with the climacteric period, the age between thirty-six and forty?

Professor Jung: This is indeed so, or, I’d better say this would normally be the case, if only the transformation processes were uncomplicated. In the primitives, these processes are made much more concrete, so that they can be read, so to speak. I’d like to tell you an example from the Indians. A very bellicose chief dreamed in his fortieth year that he turned into a woman, and had to dress in women’s clothes and eat their food—in our eyes an absolutely ridiculous transformation. But he followed the dream’s command and nonetheless remained as respected in his tribe as before, enjoying the reputation of being surrounded by magic. It was a great dream, a dream of being called. Old men are considered sages by the primitives. They are the guardians of the teachings of the tribe, of the great secrets that alone make the existence of the tribe possible. If this wisdom is lost, the tribe will dissolve. Old Jews had a similar position. In the Old Testament it says: “Your old men shall dream dreams.”111 They had a wise anima who could open their inner ears.

You see what natural forms the inner transformation assumes in the primitives. In our own case, this is usually much more complicated, because we are no longer able to make the inner processes as concrete. The reason for this lies partly in the fact that the cultural process inhibits natural development, causing certain shifts. This has the effect that we cannot live what we would have long lived already under primitive circumstances. Thus a man of fifty or sixty may have to make up for what he should have experienced at the age of twenty-eight. Then highly infantile things come to the fore in an unnatural way; these are, so to speak, worn out children’s shoes—all this because conventions prevent a natural realization. Then such belated developments happen. As you can see, it is difficult to lay down the general rule that this change is always linked to the turn of life, as it can also happen much later or not at all. In the case of a highly civilized man in particular, it is possible that he goes on leading an absolutely abstract, unreal existence, and that the whole development takes place in the unconscious. This nevertheless makes itself felt in consciousness, for example, in the form of a nervous breakdown¹¹² or of depressive phases. It can also have the effect that such a person goes under, becomes demoralized, a snivelling woman, full of resentment and with all the symptoms of “female logic.” He then is nothing but anima. In creative persons we can observe changes in the form of their creative production during these phases. Nietzsche, for instance, had the dramatic Zarathustra experience at the age of thirty-eight, which stood in remarkable contrast to his previous intellectualistic manner. True, it is hard to find the female element in Zarathustra, but if you read the work with a critical eye, you will discover the anima at the end. This experience, however, led him into insanity. All his anima eroticism is contained in the texts that were found in Turin by Overbeck,113 and were burned by Mrs. FoersterNietzsche because she found them too unsavory. From a psychological viewpoint, it would have been extremely interesting to learn something about his development in precisely this period.¹¹⁴

The Gnostics already knew about the transformations of the anima. In their writings we find a kind of development of the anima, from its most primitive stage up to wisdom. The most primitive anima is Chawwa, the earth. She is Eve, who represents the all-motherly and the receiving. At this stage, the anima is still a purely sexual being, a kind of earth goddess in a nearly prehuman developmental form. A further stage is Helen. According to a Gnostic legend, Simon Magus discovered a girl in a brothel in Tyrus (Phoenicia), in whom he recognized a reincarnation of Helen of Troy, and whom he therefore named after her. Helen of Troy was an adulteress and the lover of many a hero of those times. She was actually the type of the “femme qui se fait suivre.”¹¹⁵ The link between these two women is that both of them carry a light within them, regardless of their bad reputation. Helen of Troy means beauty to the man, the Gnostic Helena ennoia (consciousness). At this stage, man still experiences the anima as a collective figure, but a certain concentration on the one woman has already taken place. This is a very human stage, partly conducive to cultural development. The next stage of the anima is Mary, who was also an extraordinary person. She was the lover of the Holy Spirit and so become the mother of God. The humiliation by illegitimate motherhood is compensated by the symbolism of her being the mother of God. Although this stage still bears human traits, it already points to the spiritual. For the Gnostics, the highest developmental stage of the anima is Sophia. She is one-half of the divine syzygy (Greek, “pair,” “yoked together”; conjunction and opposition of sun and moon). She is the most spiritual form of the universal mother. Any human or personal aspect has disappeared.

The anima as a friend or soror mystica has always played a great role in history. In the cours d’amour of René d’Anjou she even takes precedence over the wife. The term maîtresse actually means mistress or master. In the Middle Ages, for example, the worship of the anima led to courtly love, in which the knight was committed to his lady and was at her service. In later history we know of women such as Madame de Maintenon, Ninon de Lenclos, or Madame de Guyon. The latter was a woman of the highest spiritual eroticism and of a strangely deep wisdom. She deserved being called a saint. It is no sign of culture if a woman is only a daughter, or only a pregnant mother, or only a whore. The primitives and also the apes do act out this one-sidedness. But should she become the femme inspiratrice,116 oscillating between goddess and whore, representing all the doubtfulness and diversity of life, the highest skills and the highest Eros are called for. Such women are manifestations of a much more developed culture, and this was known in the Middle Ages and also in Greece in its heyday. You know, of course, about Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles and of many cultured men of her time.

Participant: Is it a specific quality in a woman that makes such relationships possible at all?

Professor Jung: Many anima types have something masculine about them. But then, it is after all the soul image of a man. It is probably the unconscious feminine side in man which, however, does not completely lack maleness. That’s why a man projects his anima onto a suitable woman who shows some male characteristics. For then she can also be a friend; the relationship is not just a heterosexual experience, but also friendship, and this is very important.

Participant: But then we cannot say in general that it is a sign of strength if the man flees the anima.

Professor Jung: No, this only refers to the young man. He has to flee this type, so that he may develop into the world. The real confrontation with the anima is one of the problems of the second half of life. What was right before now dies down; the former ideals are burned. This is also how we have to understand Nietzsche’s dictum of the revaluation of values: man destroys the values of his youth and prepares his own descent.

6. Dream of a Seven-Year-Old Boy of a Dead Girl in the Water117

PRESENTED BY MRS. A. LEUZINGER

Text: I went to the lake to the steamboat jetty. There two tree trunks were rammed into the ground to moor the ships. I had already fished at this place. When I looked into the water, I saw a schoolmate, on whom I had a bit of a crush, in the water. She lay dead in the water. Her face was still completely fresh. She was dressed in a red and white checkered apron. When I kept on looking, I saw that her face disintegrated. It got criss-crossed with wide red cracks. I didn’t have an uncanny feeling at all, as I later had when I dreamed of corpses.

Mrs. Leuzinger: The dramatic structure of this dream is as follows: the beginning indicates the situation and the locale: the lake, at the steamboat jetty.

The persons are the dreamer and the girl in the water. The exposition shows the dreamer’s activity and the topic: earlier the topic had been fishing, now it is looking into the water. The peripateia: the face disintegrates, there are wide red cracks in it. The lysis is contained in the sentence: “I didn’t have an uncanny feeling at all, as I later had when I dreamed of corpses.”

The dream could also be divided into two halves or dream images: in the first part, the dreamer stands on the steamboat jetty, looking into the water. In the second part, the focus shifts from the dreamer to the girl in the water; the dreamer becomes only an onlooker.

Some of the symbols, for example, the steamboat jetty and the girl, come from the dreamer’s personal experience and state of consciousness. Around the eighth year there is a transition to ego consciousness, as we have already seen in previous children’s dreams. The child breaks away from the extremely close relatedness with the familial milieu; he has already acquired a certain experience of the world, and the libido, which had up to then been tied to the parents, detaches itself from them and often is introverted.

In our dream there are already some indications of this experienced reality: the girl in the water is a schoolmate—the one he’s got a bit of a crush on. The steamboat jetty is a place known to the dreamer, where he had already gone fishing.

Seen from the perspective of consciousness, the steamboat jetty is a place that exerts a great attraction for boys at the age of seven or eight in their first school years; it has a touch of life in foreign countries and adventure, ships moor and cast off, fishermen cast out their lines or prepare their nets. It is also possible to stand there oneself with a fishing pole and fish. There are also other strange and exciting things in the water at the steamboat jetty: bicycles, old tires, things made of tin or iron, sometimes there are also dead fish at the bottom; in short, for an enterprising boy who seeks his first adventures, the steamboat jetty exerts a great attraction.

In the dream, the boy goes to the lake, to the water. The lake or the water are among the most common symbols for the unconscious. So I would just like to mention its two main aspects: first, the destructive quality of water—we can sink and drown in it; second, the aspect of healing and salvation, of transparency and spirituality, culminating in the rebirth out of water. The dreamer approaches the water, but stays at or on the steamboat jetty, as can be deduced from the fishing.

The steamboat jetty has some similarity with the symbol of the bridge, with which we have dealt in detail in one of the previous children’s dreams. If the bridge stands for the continuity of consciousness, however, the steamboat jetty indicates a certain state of consciousness: while the bridge connects two sides, the steamboat jetty abruptly ends in empty space. The only possible further connection is by boat, with which one can travel the waters, the unconscious depths. The steamboat jetty that ends in empty space is like a still-isolated fragment of consciousness, which could be flooded by a wave of the unconscious, just as the pier could be flooded in a storm by the waves of the lake. The steamboat jetty is a much less secure place than the bridge; we also say: on shaky ground.118 It is suspended between the sky and the water, one no longer has firm ground under one’s feet, but stands above the water in a slightly elevated position. It is a place in consciousness from which one can easily sink into the unconscious.

The steamboat jetty is a kind of link between the ground and the water. All this leads to a kind of suspended situation, which beautifully illustrates the psychological situation of the dreamer. A child at his age is indeed suspended between consciousness and the unconscious; he does not yet have a firm foundation of consciousness. The child is still rooted in the unconscious, just like the pilings of the pier that are rammed into the bottom of the lake.

What Professor Jung said about consciousness in the primitives is also true for children: their consciousness is still insecure and rests on shaky foundations; it is still childlike, having just emerged of the primordial waters. A wave of the unconscious can easily run over it.

The dreamer is a contemplative onlooker, which is in perfect line with his uncertain, suspended situation. The actual drama, the action, begins in the water, in the unconscious.

This time the dreamer does not fish, but looks down into the water, that is, he immerses himself in the unconscious, being attracted by the depths of his own unconscious.

Looking into the water is equivalent to going to oneself. Professor Jung has elaborated on this process at length; let me quote the relevant passage here:

True, whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own face. Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with himself. . . . The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me. . . . Our concern with the unconscious has become a vital question, a question of spiritual being or non-being. All those who have had an experience like that mentioned in the dream know that the treasure lies in the depths of the water and will try to salvage it. As they must never forget who they are, they must on no account imperil their consciousness. They will keep their standpoint firmly anchored to the earth, and will thus—to preserve the metaphor—become fishers who catch with hook and net what swims in the water. . . . Whoever looks into the water sees his own image, but behind it living creatures soon loom up; fishes, presumably, harmless dwellers of the deep—harmless, if only the lake were not haunted. They are water-beings of a peculiar sort. Sometimes a nixie gets into the fisherman’s net, a female, half-human fish. Nixies are entrancing creatures.119

According to Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology, the mermaid is a magical water creature that has much in common with wood nymphs, elves, water and fountain ghosts, Mrs. Holle, sea nymphs, virgins, and so on. As is shown in many fairy tales (of the water nixie, the nixie in the pond,¹²⁰ the little mermaid,¹²¹ the beautiful Melusine,¹²² etc.), these are all creatures in need of salvation. The nixies appear as they sit in the sun, comb their long hair, and with the upper part of their bodies—which is of great beauty—rise out of the water. When they go ashore, they are dressed like human maidens; they can be recognized only by the wet hemlines of their skirts or the wet tails of their aprons. Like the siren, the nixie draws the listening youth into the depths with her singing. According to German fairy tales, children who fall into the well fall into the hands of the water nixie, and have to spin matted flax as in the fairy tale of Mrs. Holle. But nixies also appear as helpful beings and accompany the drowned humans into the home of the water nixie. Characteristically, the nixie beguiles man with her singing, fascinates him with her beauty, renders him weak-willed, and pulls him down to her. Something iridescent and seductive is inherent in the nixie, as was convincingly portrayed by Böcklin in his Mermaid of the Calm Sea. Professor Jung defines the nixie in the Eranos Yearbook of 1934: “The nixie is a still-instinctual stage, a preliminary stage of a magical female being, which we call anima.”

This nixie-elf-anima represents the soul in its entirety, uniting the good and the bad; it is moving, iridescent like a butterfly. The soul is a life-giving demon, and plays its elfish game beneath and above human existence.

So what the boy sees at the bottom of the lake, and what fascinates him so much that he loses himself in it, is his unconscious soul, his anima. Before this sight he stands as if spellbound. It would only be natural for him to try to rescue and pull this girl up to him, this girl who is his classmate and with whom he has an emotional bond, his “crush.” But he remains as if paralyzed, unable to actively intervene—a motif often found in dreams.

Nevertheless, he registers the details of her appearance: the still-fresh face and the red and white checkered apron.

The apron is a somewhat strange dress for the anima, who otherwise prefers ancient dresses. Moreover, it is the girl’s school apron, a somewhat dowdy piece of clothing. It is an exquisitely feminine piece of clothing, designed to protect one’s dress. In popular superstition (according to the Handbook of German Superstition), the apron has various meanings: on working days it is worn as protection, on Sundays as an adornment. The color of the apron is not without significance: in many regions girls, brides, wives, and widows are distinguished by the color of their aprons; in Upper Austria, bride and bridesmaids are dressed in white aprons as a sign of their innocence. Very often the apron has a distinctly sexual meaning, as in the case of the “pubic cover,” called Skamskyte on the Swedish island of Öland. The loss of the apron means loss of virginity; that’s why we talk of a “skirt chaser,”123 who is after the skirts like the devil. The apron has become the attribute of the feminine as such.

Sometimes the apron has a protective and exorcizing function. According to an Upper Austrian legend, the Holy Virgin catches the pilgrims who fell in the Danube in her apron, so that only one soul is left for the devil who had made the whirl. When people, and in particular little children, fall down somewhere without getting hurt, the Magyars say that they had fallen into the apron of the Virgin Mother; such an apron is called the “lap of the Virgin Mother.”

The apron is also the place of transformation: in fairy tales it often turns leaves and wood, which had been carried home in it, to pure gold. In the apron of St. Elizabeth, the food for the poor turns into roses.

The apron is also the place where girls hide something. I remind you of the dream of the little girl who rode on a lion and had the magic mirror hidden in the pocket of her apron.¹²⁴ On that occasion Professor Jung called the apron the region of the Muladhara, the dark instinctual region, the lowest psychical center.

The Schürze [apron] is also a synonym of Schoß¹²⁵; in dialect we call the Schürze “d’Schoß.” Schoß—lap or womb—has a maternal meaning. “To rest in the womb of the earth” is an expression we use for the earth as the Mother of All Living Beings. So a maternal secret is hidden in the apron.

In summarizing, we can say that the apron has a protective and transforming meaning that refers to the female sex.

The color of the apron is also important in our dream; the girl wears a red and white checkered apron. White and red are a pair of opposites. The queen in “Little Snow-White” wants to have a child white as snow and red as blood. White symbolizes innocence, red instinct and passion. In alchemical symbolism, white means the feminine, the femina alba;126 red means the masculine, the servus rubeus.¹²⁷ In our discussion of Peucer, we came across a dream from antiquity in which the pair of opposites white/red appeared. An old woman, a Sibyl, who kept the old religious sacrificial laws, had to be found between a yew (taxus), which has red berries, and a myrtle with its white blossoms. The maternal secret lay hidden between the pair of opposites.¹²⁸

I think that the apron in our dream, checkered red and white, refers to something similar. Checkered red and white means that the red and white lines intersect, so that the pair of opposites of male and female is united in these crossing lines, so that the opposites are united in a center. In this unity there lies the secret of the maternal womb, in which all new life has its origin.

The dream continues: the girl, the classmate, lies dead in the water, but her face is still completely fresh. Through the transparency of the water, the dreamer looks at the bottom of the lake, where the girl is lying like Snow-White in the glass coffin, of whom it is also said that after three days, “she still looked as if she were living, and still had her pretty red cheeks.” But whereas Snow White lay in her coffin for a long time without decaying, in the dream there is a sudden change: “When I kept on looking, I saw that her face disintegrated. It got crisscrossed with wide red cracks.” Here something starts in the dream that Jung calls enantiodromia, the fact that the events take an opposite course. In the philosophy of Heraclitus, this term signifies the play of opposites in an action, the assumption that everything that exists will turn into its opposite. What lives will become dead, what is dead will live, what is young will become old, the old young, what is awake will sleep, and what sleeps will awake. The flow of creation and destruction never ends. One moment the face of the girl was fresh and her colored apron glistened in the water, the next her face starts to disintegrate, and there are wide red cracks in it.

Disintegration is an eerie process. Children generally dread these processes of decay and dying. The cracks in the face remind us at first of old paintings with their cracks and tears; these, however, are wide red cracks, rather reminiscent of the stigmata of saints, which are linked to suffering and death. The cracks, signs of disintegration and decomposition, bring the process of dying as it were to life and make it observable to us. Dying means to pass from the living state into the dead state. The dead body unites the opposites of life and death in itself. In popular belief, the corpse still shows signs of life; there are still connections between the living and the dead, which are only severed as the dead person undergoes several transitional stages. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, this transitional stage is expressed by the symbolic forty-nine days, which is the period of time between death and rebirth. It is significant that the greatest chance of salvation occurs in the direct process of dying. So here we have to conceive of the dead body as the direct expression and the symbol of the magical transformational capacity of the soul, the anima.

This leads us to the actual meaning of the dream. The steamboat jetty portrays the psychical situation of the dreamer. Looking into the water is his approach toward the unconscious.

The figure of the girl on the bottom of the lake means that the dreamer’s anima is entirely situated in the unconscious.

The attribute of the apron signifies that, with regard to the figure of the girl, the emphasis lies on instinctuality and sexuality. This is also the reason why the anima has been separated from the mother and transferred onto the classmate.

As Jung has explained in the definitions in Psychological Types, the soul, our inner attitude, is represented in the unconscious by certain persons who show the characteristics that are commensurate with the soul. The character of the soul would in general complement the outer character and contain all those attributes missing in the conscious attitude.

In his consciousness the dreamer has “a bit of a crush” on the girl, thus something entranced and ethereal; the unconscious, however, shows him exactly the instinctual, sexual side of this figure.

Jung says that the personification of the anima (here represented by the classmate) psychologically always denotes a relative autonomy of the personified content. Such a content spontaneously either reproduces itself or withdraws from consciousness. Such a split may develop if the ego and a certain complex are incompatible. Experience shows that this split often occurs between the ego and the sexual complex.

In the case of a seven- to eight-year-old boy, this will probably not concern a repressed content; the boy was not yet consciously aware of the content at all, and the content now confronts him for the first time in a different form, the form of the anima.

The present dream could be seen as complementary, because it stresses the other side. The dream brings to light a very specific aspect of the unconscious, the instinctual character of this anima—in this sense it is probably a direct expression of the opposition between the dreamer’s ego and his instinctual nature.

The anima makes the dreamer look down into the water, where the unconscious reigns, and where human consciousness wanes like the notion of time in the realm of the water spirits and nixies. Here a natural process—dying—takes place; viewing it in this light, we could also characterize this dream as a process in which something is partially brought into consciousness, as the nixie/anima is hidden wisdom and secret knowledge.

One moment the girl, with her fresh face and the red and white checkered apron, has all the attributes of freshness and liveliness; the next she turns into a corpse and disintegrates and decays. This dying is not a completed process, however, but a transition and a transformation, and also includes the possibility of a rebirth. This is why the nixie/anima of the dream also has the aspects of life and transformation; her element, the water, is at the same time the element of rebirth.

The disintegration and death of the anima demonstrates that what had been valid before—the old still-infantile position—is now dying to be changed into something new. The dream represents the tensions between the opposites of above and below—between the dreamer’s ego, which stands above on the steamboat jetty in a somewhat insecure and precarious state and is threatened by the danger of the unconscious, and the anima, which haunts the bottom of the lake and leads her own spectral life there.

By looking into the depths and approaching himself, the dreamer has probably chosen the right path, although, like so many heroes in fairy tales, he stops halfway, entranced by the all-powerful anima. When he says of his dream: “I didn’t have an uncanny feeling at all,” he obviously sees the process of dying as something natural and inevitable. For the time being, he remains observant and assimilating in his attitude, and does not interfere. His problem, in all likelihood the confrontation of his ego with his instinctual nature, as it is represented by the anima, is actually not tackled and solved, so the later dreams of corpses are much more threatening.

Professor Jung: In the paper we have heard about interesting mythological parallels to the single symbols. The real message of the dream, however, seems not to have become entirely clear yet in my view. What might the message of the dream be?

Participant: The boy is told that his little friend is dead.

Professor Jung: At least you have to say: “Well, something has happened.” You have to imagine the situation: the boy has a crush on somebody. He has the first presentiments of tender feelings, and now he discovers his little friend dead in the water. This should actually frighten him, and the astonishing thing is that this is not so. Isn’t it a bit suspicious when he states that it made no impression on him, because especially when they were scared shitless, boys usually say: “Oh, that was really nothing.”—But the dream shows us that a little drama actually happened, and that the girl lies half-rotten in the water. What does that mean? You’d best approach this dream with as little prejudgment as possible, and ask yourselves: what does the dream tell? What it says is: wherever you may go fishing, you will discover that the girl whom you love is lying dead in the water. That is the message, but how do we interpret it? The dream is like nature: it puts a bug in your ear, but you just dismiss it—“Yuck, that’s a bug!” And you forget how complicated this actually is. Just try once and exhaust all the secrets of a bug! We will never understand this secret of life and this cosmos, it is much too complicated, and the same is true for dreams. They fall like nuts from the tree of life, and yet they are so hard to crack.

So in order to understand the meaning of this seemingly simple message, at first we have to take a look at each detail. Let us begin with the locale of the events. The steamboat jetty connects the firm ground with the water. The former is the place where we feel that we are standing on firm ground, and where we can see and breathe. The fact that the boy is on the steamboat jetty in the dream means that he approaches the border between consciousness and unconsciousness. What does this mean for the dreamer in reality? We have to keep it very simple and stick to the image: he is on the land and comes to the brink of a large lake or the sea. What will happen if he keeps on going?

Participant: But he can’t go further.

Professor Jung: Well, but if he went further anyway?

Participant: He’d come into a new world.

Professor Jung: You call that a new world when someone falls into the water? He comes into the beyond. There is a danger, and therefore the dream says: here you’re coming to the edge, to an end. Now it’s getting hot and you’ll have to be very careful. Here the risk begins, the uncertain element of water. This is the first statement in the dream. But then he stands on a jetty on which steamboats can land, which adds a new twist to the situation: it contains the possibility of leaving, of traveling the unsafe waters and of cruising the lake. This is the primordial image of the courageous venture. For the dreamer this implies that he must do something. He has come to the edge of the steamboat jetty, in other words, to the edge of his consciousness; just as we say that we are on the “brink” of something. At that very moment, what was common and usual ceases and an adventure starts. What has he done so far?

Participant: He went fishing.

Professor Jung: And what does this mean for a little boy?

Participant: He hauls out images of the unconscious.

Professor Jung: At this age, fishing is more like a game, it is a game and nothing professional. Up to that moment he has played with it, and in doing so has hauled out various objects, various possibilities, from those vague and indefinite regions. Fishing, and also hunting, are old symbols of a more or less playful involvement with adventure. This continues until it gets serious. Do you possibly know an example where hunting went wrong and became serious?

Participant: The story of St. Hubert.

Professor Jung: Yes, this gives you an idea. It is the story of a hunter who on a Sunday sees a white stag, which he wants to bag by all means. All of a sudden he perceives a shining crucifix between its antlers. This is a prey he hasn’t dreamed of: it is the Holy Spirit itself whom he meets in the forest. The same story is told of St. Eustace, another Hubert, so to speak. Many people interact playfully with their unconscious. They are like fishermen who daily fish in the unconscious and even “nourish” themselves on it: they take all kinds of good and evil things from the treasure of the unconscious, they can have a cultured conversation about them, can philosophize this or that and even write newspaper articles about them. One day, however, it happens that they catch a golden fish, just as in fairy tales. What can that mean?

Participant: It could be the anima.

Professor Jung: Yes, it’s the old story of the nixie or the mermaid who gets caught in his net. It is the being that has no soul and therefore strives after it. And that’s where the problem begins.

In the dream, too, the boy’s fishing is a playful occupation with something of which he is not yet aware that this is an adventure and involves danger. At this moment the dream tells him: “Attention! Today you won’t catch any fish, today you will see something for a change, something wonderful.” What can we see in the water that is so fascinating?

Participant: We can see ourselves.

Participant: When we look into the water we see our own images.

Professor Jung: In hydromancy, for instance, a dark bowl filled with water is used, as is still today the custom in India. Little boys have to look into a water bowl, whereupon they fall into a trance and report what they see. A similar fascination can be observed in looking into a crystal. There is a parallel to this self-mirroring, the strange vision in the Gnostic myth of nous and physis.129 Nous is the divine spirit that comes from above and looks down into the mirror of physis. He sees his own wonderful picture in it; at that moment physis clasps him and does not let him go, he is captured in her. The physis is like the mirror of the water, into which he looks. She is the waters with the thousand arms, the danger of the unconscious. Now our dreamer does not see his own mirror image in the water, but the girl on whom he has a crush. With that the water reveals its secret; the girl is the physis that wants to pull him down with a thousand arms.

But the girl is dressed in a very rustic apron. What kind of apron is this?

Participant: A cooking apron.

Professor Jung: Yes, the cook at home probably has such an apron. But why does the girl wear the apron of the cook and not, say, of the mother? What is the cook in contrast to the mother?

Participant: She is the countermother and subordinate to her.

Professor Jung: Yes, she is the one at whom the boy’s affection is directed. She secretly gives him the forbidden candy that the mother wouldn’t give him. As Wilhelm Busch has put it:

“Each young laddie will get hooked
on the beautiful kitchen cook.”¹³⁰

The cook is a subordinate woman who can on certain occasions perfectly correspond to the anima. The cook also prepares the food in the kitchen, and this is the place where everything is prepared in mysterious ways. It is the uterus, the place of coming into being, which is often brought into connection with cooking, baking, or roasting in folkloric tradition. Just think of the oven or the cooking pot in which the little children are made! So the cook is a maternal figure, who can represent the anima figure to the boy at a certain age. At our last meeting we saw that the mother is the bearer of the soul image. Normally she remains so until the beginnings of sexuality make themselves felt, and the boy has to go down a step. Then he will often go into the kitchen, because there he finds something more appropriate, something which corresponds to his level of relationship. He finds it easier to deal with the cook than with the mother, because there is no incest barrier. As a result, however, the mother is more and more elevated, until she rises into heaven, so to speak. But the boy also looks for someone less difficult to deal with—no education, for God’s sake! It is extremely convenient for the boy to be spoiled, but not educated, by a woman. That’s why boys get so easily attached to the kitchen personnel; the kitchen is le lieu de raccrochage131 for them. Later, of course, it is the school; there are female classmates among whom one can find a suitable one. The figure in the water was also a little schoolgirl who, moreover, wore the kitchen apron as a distinction. With the apron she also possesses the whole secret hidden behind it. But the child is dead. We might therefore say that this whole hopeful development breaks off. What does this mean?

Participant: It is like in the previous dream: the dreamer has to separate from the anima.

Professor Jung: Of course, it’s exactly the same here. The previous dream gives us the key to this dream. In both cases, the dream is about the farewell to the anima. In the previous dream, the dreamer had to separate from the anima he met in the toilet. This is even farther down than in this dream, which is about the kitchen. From a certain, perhaps more liberal, viewpoint we could consider this development of such an anima relation as something desirable. Exactly this development is stopped, however, and a strangely longing atmosphere ensues. The image of the dead girl seems to tell him: “The sweetest dream of your life”¹³² is lying down there and is shattered.

The girl wears that mysterious kitchen apron, checkered white and red. Mrs. Leuzinger has rightly traced the meaning of these two colors. Red and white are a union of opposites. Among others, they are the symbol of the medieval mystical marriage, which represents a union of these two, of the white and the red. There are alchemical tracts in which this union takes place in the depths of the water, for example, in the Visio Arislei.133 There the couple, Thabritius and Beya (that is, the red slave and Albeida, the white one), are locked into a triple glass house on the bottom of the sea. It is terribly hot, and they sweat profusely. This is done with the help of Arisleus, the ancient natural philosopher (Arisleus is Archelaos, the disciple of Anaxagoras), and his companions, who are also locked in the glass house. They have to bring the couple to life again.¹³⁴ The philosophers describe consciousness, which activates the latent opposites in the unconscious and leads them toward the mystical union. As a place of rebirth, the glass house is a symbol of the uterus. To understand the colors white and red, we also have to take into account something else: they are also the colors of the underworld, as we know from the so-called Apocalypse of Peter. In the Mabinogion,¹³⁵ there are white dogs with red noses and eyes in the underworld. Just like the uterus, the underworld is also a symbol of the unconscious. Both indicate a state of unconsciousness that, however, simultaneously represents a potential state—in utero—before birth. The dichotomy of the two colors is contained in yet another detail in the dream, namely, in the peculiar disintegration of the corpse, in which red cracks appear. This is a very graphic image: the white skin dissolves, and the red flesh appears. We might say that the whole girl herself becomes that apron, representing the dissolution of the opposites. She returns to the state of dissolution and is now herself like a white and red being of the underworld. This process of decay also occurs in alchemy, where putrefactio leads to rebirth. Putrefaction is linked to nigredo, blackness; like the darkness of the underworld, it is a state of complete unconsciousness. If we apply this to the dream, we could say that the girl simply dissolves into the unconscious. This seems to be a negative ending but, quite to the contrary, this end means something positive: it is only by this that the dreamer can separate from the attachment to the anima. Why did he have to have such a dream?

Participant: Because he was in danger of being possessed by the anima.

Professor Jung: What would that have meant for him?

Participant: He would have got stuck in the anima image and he would not have developed into the world.

Professor Jung: From what does the boy suffer so that he has to receive this message?—It is a mother complex; he is still much too attached to the image of the “mother.” This is a typical dream of a boy with a mother complex. It could lead to the strongest anima possession. The more somebody clings to the “mother,” the more dependent he is on the processes going on in his unconscious, the stronger their archetypal power and their demonic power will become.

In girls something analogous happens. In their case, however, it is the father who can become such a demonic power, while the mother plays a different, although not unimportant, role. For a woman the mother is not the anima—for the anima is always the object of longing desire—but actually the sexual organ, the uterus. In the case of a negative mother complex in a woman, there often are various disturbances of the sexual function, for instance, menstrual disorders and similar disturbances.

In our dream there is too much of the mother in the anima. The boy has “too much mother.” For him to be able to distance himself from the “mother,” the dream has to tell him: Now you’re coming to the edge. Now comes the adventure of life, with which you have just played so far. Now it could be expected that this would cause him great pain. But we should not be surprised that this is allegedly not so; as we have already remarked, many boys won’t admit—God forbid!—that they were impressed by something.

Participant: But if the mother is meant, why does the classmate appear in the dream?

Professor Jung: This is due to his age. I have shown you how the anima gradually becomes this classmate. For certain reasons, the mother can no longer represent the anima figure; the cook takes her place, or any other female being wearing an apron, thus also that girl. As a representative of the mother, she has to die. And this is desirable. If it were not for that apron, that ridiculous detail, we might well doubt whether this lysis is desirable. Then we could ask ourselves, if it hadn’t been preferable that the boy had fallen into love with this little girl after all, and if it weren’t sad and alarming that such a normal expression of love had been cut off. This would truly be a problem—if the girl did not wear this apron! The apron reveals the secret connections, reaching to the mother via the cook. Obviously, the girl is his anima, and this constitutes the difference from a normal relationship. An anima relationship is never a normal relationship, but always something fantastical. A man sees his female face in the anima, and that is dangerous; the anima transforms everything it touches. Wherever it is active, it visualizes one’s own image, a man’s own image, and this is his female being, an invisible minority that he carries inside himself.

7. Dream of a Three-Year-Old Girl of Jack Frost136

PRESENTED BY DR. WALLER¹³⁷

Text: Jack Frost¹³⁸ is coming. She is scared. He pinches her everywhere in the belly. She awakens and realizes that she has pinched herself.

Professor Jung: This dream is connected to early masturbation, which already started at the age of three, but then stopped again soon afterward. The dream was dreamed by a three-year-old girl and is the earliest to be remembered. There are some medical questions involved. The dreamer has a strong hereditary taint. An aunt suffered from schizophrenia. Her own psychosis remained latent for many years, and first surfaced in the form of a severe obsessional neurosis. An obsessional neurosis is one of the most distinct phenomena of dissociation we know of. It can mean a complete split of the personality, in which one part wishes as passionately to stay healthy as the other wishes to remain ill.

The dramatic structure of the dream has been described quite correctly, but the question of the lysis has not yet been cleared up. Can we speak of a lysis here?

Participant: Perhaps it lies in the fact that the dreamer wakes up from pinching herself.

Professor Jung: No, because this no longer belongs to the dream action.

Participant: Is it the anxiety the child feels?

Professor Jung: No, because this would mean the exact opposite of a lysis. The final thing the dream expresses is just anxiety, and surely anxiety can’t represent the solution of the problem. Moreover, it is nothing extraordinary to wake up from a dream in a state of anxiety. Many anxiety dreams can have an actual lysis; often, however, it is only hinted at, for instance, if in the dream we know that it is an anxiety dream. But sometimes the lysis is completely missing, and this is the case in this dream. Do you remember what we said about dreams without a lysis?139

Participant: They point to an unfavorable prognosis.

Professor Jung: Yes, but we must not generalize this. Not every dream without a lysis has an unfavorable prognosis, for instance, if the danger does not reach you in the dream, or if there is something like a comforting allusion. But why do we have to suspect an unfavorable prognosis here, after all?

Participant: It is a dream from earliest childhood.

Professor Jung: Yes, and it has been remembered throughout her whole life. If such an important dream has no lysis, we will have to be attentive, because then a vital problem of the dreamer has found no solution. Naturally, a dream without a lysis always gives an unsatisfactory impression, particularly if it is of a catastrophic character. When we hear such a dream, we are actually frightened and would like to maintain silence. In the last seminar on children’s dreams we discussed two such dreams,¹⁴⁰ and I also told you about two catastrophic dreams of a fifteen-year-old girl that ended without lysis. In all these dreams, the climax, the catastrophe, coincided with the end. In addition, the present dream seems rather unremarkable, and such meager dreams often have an unfavorable prognosis. But we must not avoid such examples, because they do happen in reality. When you ask: “What kind of a lousy dream is this?” you have already noticed something important. Then, however, you have to go on asking: “Why is this so?” Only if we take the simplest things seriously will we have the key to wisdom. A dream is like a piece of nature, and of course we have to react to it. So we may well swear now and then and say: “Such a piece of shit of a dream. That’s really pathetically poor; such poverty is enormously saddening.” We have to let this poverty of nature affect us. Dreams are not always full of fancy details. If a rich fantasy had blossomed, we could say: “All hell broke loose.” Here nothing broke loose, which confirms the unfavorable prognosis. The dream contains hardly any possibility of appropriately reacting to it. It is much too meager compared to its importance.

The figure of Jack Frost appears in the dream. He is a figure from English folklore, and there are similar figures in German popular belief. There is St. Nicholas, the icily gray and cold one; he is the old man symbolizing the beginning of winter. St. Nicholas, however, is a benevolent figure. Why?

Participant: He’s like the Erinyes, who are evil and benevolent at the same time.

Professor Jung: Yes, often a good name stands for an evil cause.

Participant: St. Nicholas is also split into two figures. He usually is accompanied by Knecht Ruprecht, who represents the devil. He comes with a rod and a sack, in which there are the children he has already taken.

Professor Jung: Where does he carry the bad children?

Participant: Into the forest.

Professor Jung: Yes, into the forest. And what happens there? What is the forest?

Participant: It is a dark place, full of dangers.

Professor Jung: You know the saying “To hell with him!” This means that the devil takes you to the place of darkness and terror, actually to the place of the dead. St. Nicholas, too, takes the children to the place of darkness. As the gray one, who appears at the beginning of December, he is also death, who takes man into the world beyond. He is a kind of judge of the dead, who punishes the bad and rewards the good, similar to Osiris, the judge of the underworld. So a very serious meaning is concealed behind the figure of St. Nicholas. Jack Frost corresponds to St. Nicholas, although he is much less incorporated into folkloric culture. He, too, appears at the beginning of winter and represents coldness, which implies a memento mori. A white ghost, he seems to be covered by the shroud of snow. What does Jack Frost in our dream signify?

Participant: Death wants to get to the dreamer.

Professor Jung: Yes, it is not yet spring, and winter is here already.

Participant: Do we have to see the figure of Jack Frost in such a negative light? If he wants to take the dreamer into the forest, this might perhaps only mean a state of introversion, out of which a new content could arise.

Professor Jung: Such an optimistic interpretation is not appropriate here. We must not forget that the dream has no lysis, and that it is extremely meager. It is impossible to conceive of the figure of Jack Frost, therefore, as positive. Even if the Samichlaus141 appeared in his place, it would be misleading to think of a joyous children’s party or any other merry event. We have to try to grasp Jack Frost in his ominous meaning, as the one who freezes all life.

We also have to stick to the dream, in which the child does not experience joy, but fear of the ghost of coldness. And this figure touches her!

Participant: This increases the negative effect of this figure. It is similar to the Erlking.

Professor Jung: Yes, the Erlking is also such a ghost. In Goethe’s poem the increasing anxiety of the child is beautifully expressed, until the moment where he says:

“Dear father, oh father, he seizes my arm!

The Erlking, father, has done me harm!”

Then the child dies.

Participant: It also seems very dangerous to me that Jack Frost touches the girl on her belly.

Professor Jung: Yes, the belly is the kitchen, the stove, radiating warmth. In the belly we are sheltered as long as we are embryos. If we are cold, we’d like to crawl into our own belly to warm up. This place of warmth is also the origin and the center of all life; this is expressed in the word “liver,” the main organ in the abdomen. It is “the liver,” he who lives.

Participant: Can we see from the dream if this is about a psychical or physical death?

Professor Jung: This is not easy to see. Let us assume that the child told this dream at the age of ten, that is, at a time when there was no visible sign of a neurosis yet. In this case, I would really have been in doubt whether it referred to a physical or a spiritual death. I would have been able to say only that the dream indicated something extremely alarming, but I would not have been able to decide if this would later lead to an obsessional neurosis, to a psychosis, or to suicide. But then the dreamer took her own life at the age of thirty-six in a mental institution! The psychosis began with extreme anxiety states that intensified until the fatal end. The dream does contain a detail that could point to the suicide. She herself intervened in her life with a cold hand.

Participant: Was this the reason why she escaped into masturbation? Was it an attempt to keep herself warm?

Professor Jung: Yes, for her it was a defensive move, an apotropaic magic, a stress on life in aspectu mortis,142 just as people may become sexually aroused when they are in mortal danger or confronted with hopeless, life-threatening situations.¹⁴³ There was ample evidence of this desperate eroticism in the earthquake at Messina.¹⁴⁴ It is as if the life instinct asserted itself, and as if life tried to affirm itself in a quandmême.¹⁴⁵ So, you see, the dream is very tragic. I would not hesitate to make a connection between the fact that the dreamer pinched herself and the suicidal outcome. Any more questions?

Participant: You mentioned that the dreamer at first fell ill with an obsessional neurosis, which masked a latent psychosis. How did the psychosis become manifest?

Professor Jung: Behind each classical obsessional neurosis a psychosis is hidden. In the dreamer the mental illness broke out when the voices began to become audible. From then on the process could not be arrested by anything.

Participant: Doesn’t emotion also originate in the belly?

Professor Jung: Yes, of course, it is the seat of the solar plexus, where the psychical and the physical are still one. But you must not conceive of the belly as too complicated. It is merely the center of warmth, the seat of life. Because the psychical and the physical are still one in it, it is hard to tell if it was a physical or a psychical illness that prematurely destroyed the dreamer. The unconscious actually does not seem to care one way or the other. Moreover, the unconscious has a different relation to death than we ourselves have. For example, it is very surprising in which way dreams anticipate death. Often this does not happen the way we look at death, but in a completely different manner. You will find something analogous in astrology or also in chiromancy and other ancient “mancies,” in which the indications for death are also very questionable. It is as if death was something other than what we think. That is, approximately, how we could put it. It might be linked to the fact that the unconscious has a different relation to time than we have. In the unconscious there exist, so to speak, an elastic space and an elastic time. It seems as if these deeper layers of the psyche were characterized by particularly strange features, and this, of course, is also expressed in dreams. So I would not have dared to predict from the dream’s character if a physical or psychical death was implied.

Participant: Wouldn’t it have helped the dreamer if she had later gone to a female analyst? What she missed was probably primitive, vital warmth. Perhaps she never received enough maternal love; moreover, the dream expresses a very negative attitude toward men.

Professor Jung: If we are dealing, as in this dream, with such deep-reaching and life-threatening affairs, the sex is no longer of importance. In these cases, a physical force has to intervene, a force that pulls the person out of the predicament and saves her from drowning, so to speak. These fine details no longer play a role, and it doesn’t make any difference at all if it is a man or a woman who tries to come to the rescue.

8. Dream of a Ten-Year-Old Girl of a Transparent Mouse146

PRESENTED BY CORNELIA BRUNNER

Text: The Transparent Mouse. In the dream I imagined a mouse; once worms came into it, and the mouse turned gray, then snakes, and it turned red, then fish, and it turned blue, then people, and it turned into a human being itself. That’s how all men and women develop.

Mrs. Brunner: This is an extraordinary dream, seemingly childlike at the beginning, and then purely archetypal. The details, seen for themselves, could be based on day residues; the context and the structure, however, do not correspond to any experience of the outer world, but, down to the last detail, to experiences of the inner world. This “development of man” cannot be the phylogenetic development, because the sequence—mouse, worms, snakes, fish—does not correspond to the biological line of development. Biologically speaking, the fish would have to appear before the snakes, and the mouse afterward.

Let us try to structure the dream:

Locale:	In a world of envisaged images.
Time:	Once (as in fairy tales, “once upon a time,” thus again in the realm of the prenatal imaginary world).
Dramatis personae:	Mouse, worms, snakes, fish, humans, one human being.
Exposition:	“In the dream I imagined a mouse.”
Peripateia:	Animals and people enter into the mouse.
Lysis:	The transformation of the mouse.
Final realization:	“That’s how all men and women develop.”

So it actually is a drama in four acts, with a prologue and an epilogue.

I will now provide the amplifications to each single dream phase, and then try in each case to deduce the meaning of the respective dream part. Regarding the fourth act, in which the dream deals with man, I will be very brief, but instead provide a few parallels to the whole of the dream, by which the meaning of “man” will be circumscribed.

The girl gave the dream the title “The Transparent Mouse.” This mouse awakens a special emotion in us. Mouse is a highly suggestive name for a little girl. Many mothers involuntarily use this term of endearment. It seems to me that this is a name for a certain kind of child. Mouse suggests the image of delicate, gray little fur, of a dainty, swift little creature, which scurries past before disappearing into a corner again, of a friendly, warm, and lovable being, shy toward strangers. That’s how I imagine the little dreamer.

Now to the amplifications: Brehm calls the mouse the most faithful companion of man, which follows him to the farthest north and to the highest Alpine huts. He describes it as charming, amiable, also curious, crafty, and very skillful. It runs, jumps, and climbs even on a blade of grass. It can even run on two legs like a human. It is very fertile; each year it gives birth to about thirty young, and a newborn female casts its young already after forty-two days. Young mice are extremely small and nearly transparent, says Brehm.

According to Schrader, the word mouse is derived from an ancient Indian word, mush, which means “to steal.” Vice versa, mausen means “to nick” in our dialect.

As to the mythology: it says in the Handbook of German Superstition that dwarfs and elves often turn into mice or slip into mouse-holes. Earth-, mountain-, and house spirits help man in the form of mice, and guard treasures. Bewitched virgins or wise women sometimes appear as mice. The transformation into a mouse is often a punishment, for instance, because of a fondness for sweet things. Peucer saw the devil in the form of a mouse, running back and forth underneath a woman’s skin. Witches try to escape from the fire by turning into mice. While the girl witch is dancing with Faust on the Brocken, a little red mouse jumps out of her mouth. Innocent children’s souls and the souls of the just appear as white mice, those of the godless as red ones. The souls of unborn children, too, appear as white mice. There is a very widespread notion that the soul leaves the human body during sleep in the form of a mouse, sometimes to quench its thirst, sometimes to cause nightmares in people, animals, and trees—in that case, it is usually the soul of a girl. If the mouse does not return, the girl will die. To whistle after mice means to lure the souls into the afterworld. Mice are often signs of death. Gray and black mice generally indicate disaster. They spread the Black Death and other diseases. The white mouse appears as a fever demon but, on the other hand, also attracts fever. It is said that mice are created out of earth or putrefaction, or are made by witches. Because of their gray color they are seen as tempest animals, coming from the clouds or the fog, or being brought by the wind.

The Teutons, Greeks, and Romans named the muscle after the mouse—mus. The uterus is called mouse sometimes. There are also etymological links between mouse and girl.147

Now let me try to interpret: the mouse is a soul animal, an image of the psychical reality that is difficult to grasp (it disappears into holes). It is a form of the soul closely connected with muscle, flesh, body, sexuality and fertility, and the devil. This is probably the reason for the extraordinary fear and excitement it arouses in many women. As a transparent mouse, it has obviously just been born, something still very little and clumsy. Let me also give you the amplifications to “transparency.” When we talked about the glass house on the pyramid, Professor Jung mentioned that transparency would be the expression of a spiritual being, of a disembodied, spiritual existence, of the subtle body in a still unmaterialized state. In India, the subtle body is represented by the lingam, the phallus symbol. Thus the mouse, in its meaning as a uterus, is also an analogous female symbol of the subtle body.

We may probably interpret the transparent mouse, therefore, as the subtle body of the dreamer. The girl sees her own, still hardly born soul. Transparent brings to mind glassy. The transparent mouse probably corresponds to the glass vessel in which the homunculus, the little man, is to come into being, “the Tom Thumb who dwells in the hollow of the heart.”—The fairy tale “The Glass Coffin” tells that the servants of the bewitched princess are captured in glass vessels as blue smoke or as colored spiritus.

“Once worms came into it, and the mouse turned gray.” Worms represent one of the lowest possible stages of animal life. They are segmented and their nervous system consists only of chains of ganglia. They impress us as a bunch of muscles with a mouth and intestine. We can hardly feel into such a low stage of nervous life. They blindly devour the fertile ground, in which they originated, and probably know, besides that greed, only a vague feeling of life and movement, and a blind feeling of being confronted with the resistance of matter. Worms are found in dead bodies, in putrefaction and decay. African myths explain that the soul stays in the body until the first worm, the soul worm, comes out of it.148

As to the interpretation: for a naive observer, the worms eat earth and transform earth into life, into movement, into greed. They transform matter into soul. They are life originating in death. Worms symbolize the first, unreflected movements of the soul—contents that are still colorless, still completely undifferentiated and incoherent, without feeling, without reason, the stirrings of the blind life instinct. Worms are the most primitive forms of psychical reality, hidden in matter. They belong to an unconscious level, in which the soul is still completely projected onto the outside, onto objects, and in which we experience the world only by blind devouring, by the resistance of the matter, and by involuntary innervation. Soul is here still little more than a physical-chemical substrate.

The entering worms are the soul of the matter; they take their element, matter, into the transparent mouse. This means that the soul, driven by greed, begins to “eat the world,” to get entangled in the world. The subtle mouse becomes a real, gray mouse. Darkness, impurity, the gray shadow enter into the pure vessel.

“Then snakes came into it, and it turned red.”—The snakes are hermatocryal, scaled reptiles; they breathe with their lungs and have a cerebrospinal nervous system. According to superstition, “a man’s marrow, especially from the backbone, turns into snakes.”149 When someone makes a fire at night in places with many poisonous snakes, he will soon experience how the snakes will be attracted by the fire and come crawling from all sides, so that he will have his hands full for hours fending them off. Snakes feed almost exclusively on living animals, which they attack and devour in toto. Snakes are of various colors and markings: green, yellow like sand, depending on their habitat. Those living underground are often characterized by a beautiful metallic luster.

The Teutons used the same word, ormr, for worm, snake, and dragon. In the primitive view, the snake is a bigger worm, which creeps out of the earth toward the fire.¹⁵⁰ Regarding the appearance of the snake in mythology: you remember what Ms. von Franz told us about the snake as an earth demon, as soul of the dead or the heroes, as a dark god of the Ophites, as the snake of the river bed, as movement, as vital force, as time, and as the snake of salvation.

Philo says of the snake that it would be the most spiritual among the animals, that it would move with exceptional speed, and that its nature would be that of fire.¹⁵¹ Ninck points to the fact that the expression, “sparkling snake,” is often used for the eye of the hero. He says of the dragon, “that fire sparkles out of its eye and mouth.” The dragon blood has the properties of fire: weapons melt and steel is hardened in it.¹⁵²

The mouse turns red because of the intruding snakes. Red is the color of fire, of blood, of wine, the color of embers and of inebriation. In the Handbook of German Superstition, red stands for life and death, for fertility and danger.

According to the Hermetic tradition, red is the color of the spirit, of gold, and of the sun.¹⁵³

Let me again try and interpret: snakes force their way into the gray mouse. Where life stirs in the dark womb of the earth, it will soon come to the light of day and assume a color, that is, the psychical stirring assumes a certain emotional color, which will at first still be identical with the respective environment, just as snakes show the color of their environment. The snakes force their way from the outside into the mouse. It is as if it were attacked by the instinctual stirrings that seem to intrude from the objects into the being in the retort. What comes into being feels attacked, assaulted, devoured, and, at the same time, invaded by sudden, forceful impulses, by sudden wishes and compulsions. It has no wishing and feeling of its own, but rather wishes and compulsions that attack it from the objects. These wishes and compulsions finally reach consciousness, because the snakes open up, with their cerebrospinal system, the possibility of a connection between the sympathetic nervous system and the brain. A knowledge about the wishes is added to the wishes as such.

The more snakes intrude, that is, the more instinctual wishes are accumulated in the retort, the hotter it gets in it. The black mouse turns red, the blood warms, the fire of passion erupts. Here alchemy speaks of the “red slave,” and rightly so, because the being in the retort is at the complete mercy of the heat; it does not yet have a countermagic with which it could fight or control the fire. Erupting passion calls for action, for attack, assault, and devouring, snake-wise. The snake symbolizes the freeing of the energy, the aim at an object, aggressiveness, and drive. The turning red of the mouse shows that the heat of the soul develops out of the material soul, so that passionate wishing is no longer experienced as imposed by the outside, but as an inner compulsion. Before, the shadow entered into the mouse, now the animus is revived; the male instinctual force is awakened, which wants to conquer the world to possess it. And each new conquest feeds the fire and the heat.

“Then came fish, and it turned blue.”—Fish are cold-blooded vertebrates with a barely developed cerebrum, but with gill breathing. Brehm says that fish perhaps surpass all other animals in their endurance. Salmon can cover a distance of twenty-six feet in one second, and up to 15.5 miles in one hour. It can cut like an arrow through the water. Most fish are predators, voracious, and audacious. When they rest—the state corresponding to our sleep—their lidless eyes never cease to be receptive to the environment. The fertility of fish is enormous. A codfish lays up to nine million eggs. Fish change their color according to their psychical processes; when sticklebacks, for instance, get enraged or want to conquer a position with regard to the females, they change from a greenish, silver-speckled, matte coloring to a crimson to reddish-yellow and shiny green color. The habitat of fish is the sea, down to the deepest depths, from the Pole to the equator, and up to the mountain rivers and lakes.154

Let us have a look at their mythology: In the fairy tale “The Fisherman and His Wife,” the flounder appears as a wish-fish. It fulfills all the wishes of Ilsebill.¹⁵⁵ But when she wants to be God Himself, she plunges back into her old misery. In Hofmannsthal’s Woman without a Shadow, seven little fish are the souls of unborn children. The little children, who are gotten out of the well, live as little fish in it. Three wise women dressed in blue coats appear to an Icelandic wife of a count, and order her to go to a nearby river, to lie down and drink, and to take the trout she will see into her mouth, and then she will become pregnant.¹⁵⁶

During the Annunciation, Mary is described as fetching water from a well, or as eating a fish.¹⁵⁷ The fish is Christ, so called after the constellation of Pisces, in which the vernal equinox entered after the beginning of Christianity.

In the mystical epitaph of Bishop Aberkios, there is a passage: “Belief (impersonated as a woman) always went ahead of me and gave me a fish to eat from a well, a gigantic, pure fish that a holy virgin had caught. This fish she always gave the friends to eat, with well-watered wine, together with bread.”¹⁵⁸ Aberkios speaks about the Last Supper or about the fish meal on Fridays, an ancient custom that originally was dedicated to Venus (Venerdi),159 to Ishtar, or to a Babylonian fish goddess.¹⁶⁰

In the fish sanctuaries of Western Asia, the fish were kept in sacred ponds, sometimes adorned with golden jewelry, on which formulas or whole poems were engraved. A Babylonian god was called fish as well as “writing stone of Bel.”¹⁶¹ In an Irish myth, the “salmon of wisdom” plays a great role. He who eats it will become the wisest seer in the world. To this day, Irish peasants say: “They will not be able to do justice to the cause unless they have eaten from the ‘salmon of wisdom.’ ”¹⁶²

The Greek alphabet was ascribed to the mythical Orpheus, whose name is translated as “fisherman” by Eisler. In a Merovingian liturgical mansucript we can see how the thoughts are held by letters in the form of fish.¹⁶³

The mouse turns blue because of the intruding fish. The pure clear water is blue, the mountains are blue, the sky is blue. Romantic longing searched for the “Blue Flower.” The little boy described by Maeterlinck¹⁶⁴ searches for the bluebird and finds the way to the primordial images. Blue coats are worn by the wise women who, as swan virgins, are linked to the water, to the mist, and to the sky. Mist rises from the water, rises up into the blue sky, to fall back on earth as rain. In alchemy and tarot, blue is the color of the moon, of silver, and of the soul.

Now to the interpretation: fish come swimming, they surface and disappear, effortlessly they float in the waters and slip away, fish of all colors and forms; inconceivably fantastic are the creatures of the deep sea, enchantingly beautiful in their colors, fabulous the goldfish; some of them shine, others are transparent like glass, others dark and dangerous, silent, lively images that chase one another, devour one another, playing in the boundless element. They bring their coolness, the diversity of the various colors and forms, the unborn potentialities, into the red-glowing mouse. Thoughts emerge, ideas, premonitions, and feelings, hard to grasp, vague in their origin and where they go, one idea devours another, new ideas emerge, enormous sowings of clearly contoured images in the indeterminate, undulating change of the spiritual element. And the voraciousness of the fish? How easily an impression, a feeling, is swallowed by another content, how easily we ourselves fall prey to an “ism,” an ideal, a primordial, overwhelming image.

The blue, cool flood flows into the mouse with the fish swimming toward the light and with the “salmon of wisdom.” It turns blue, blue glass or ice, a sapphire, a cleansed mirror of life.

Where previously wanting and compulsion reigned, now the wish and the idea emerge, where the impetus was caused by and directed to the outside, now the nature and the action of the environment intrude, the imaginary world of the unconscious, the thinking that is in the air. Feeling is no longer bound to the environment; it now becomes a living form of the content, a psychical expression. Where previously there was fighting and activity, now there is also feeding and passivity. In the blue mouse the soul becomes the anima, which mirrors the contents. Life flows in and assumes a solid form. The thoughts become cool and clear.

“Then people came, and it turned into a human being itself.”—Now what shall I tell you about the humans, about the species homo? That they have an erect posture and thus display their double relatedness, to above and to below? Or, as Pico della Mirandola says: “So he is free to sink to the deepest layer of the animal world. But he can also rise to the highest spheres of God.”165

And which of the myths is the right one here? In legends, the hero kills the dragon and wins the virgin; frogs, lions, and bears turn into princes. Deer and swans turn into virgins, fish into nixies, and then new complications arise, bringing suffering with them and calling for decisions.

What is it that distinguishes man from animals? Is it his reason that makes him tell right from wrong? Is it his eros, his potential for faithfulness and loyalty, or for unfaithfulness and treason? Is it the freedom of will that makes him say yes to all that wants to exist? Is it consciousness that experiences: all that is, and I am——? And the one human into which the mouse is transformed?

To begin with, let me give you some parallels to the gradual structure of this dream. You will then understand that I have little to say about this final, most crucial transformation.

First, an Australian myth: The ancestor of the Unmatjera tribe was a lizard. He was lying in the sun, stretched his legs, and as he looked around, there was a second lizard beside him. Surprised, he called: “But this is my spitting image!” And again he was lying there, and again he looked around, and again there was a new lizard. In this way he multiplied his existence by watching. They all came out of his body without his realizing it. And as he was again lying still, he became a man.166

The myths of the Zuni Indians are more elaborate. They know of four cave worlds, lying on top of one another, through which the humans climb up on a plant from the dark to the light of day, in order to take off their slimy and scaled clothes. In one version, these worlds have the following names: the inner world of raw dust, the inner world of soot, the inner world of mist, and the inner world of wings.¹⁶⁷

I think there is a very elaborate parallel in Tantric Yoga.¹⁶⁸ This visualizing yoga knows seven mandalas, situated one above the other, which correspond to certain body parts, and which are successively to be awakened and meditated by the ascending Kundalini serpent. The lowest of these mandalas is the earth lotus. It corresponds to the gray mouse. It is the place of the world-bound souls. In its center there is the lingam, colored like a fresh sapling, perhaps reminiscent of a worm. Coiled around the lingam, the Kundalini serpent sleeps. In it sleeps the essence of the highest experience. When it awakens, it ascends, passing through all lotuses to bring them to life. It is the driving force, the compulsion to become conscious. The animals in our dream can be seen as a transformational form of the Kundalini. The dragon in the second lotus corresponds to the snakes in our dream. Above, there is the fire circle, the center of emotions. This is the navel lotus, in the region of the solar plexus. The fish correspond to the heart-lotus, with a fleeing antelope. Nearby there is the place of the “divine wish-tree.” In this lotus thinking begins. Then follows the ether airspace or firmament-lotus, which reveals its connection with the blue mouse by its blue ovary and by its name, “circle of purification and ablution.” Above, in the two-leaved, winged circle of knowledge, there are no longer any animals. There the yogi sees the highest, eternal god, the incarnate, primordial man. And finally, in the highest, thousand-petaled lotus, the yogi receives the “knowledge of one’s own self.” The name of this place is “eternal blessedness,” and some call it salvation, Atman knowledge, or knowledge of existence itself.

Another parallel is given by astrology, in the sequence of the historical ages. About six thousand years ago, the first historical written records were made in the Age of Taurus. The earth element is assigned to the constellation Taurus. In ancient Egypt, the spirit found its expression through the medium of matter, the stone, and the earth.

Two thousand years later, the vernal equinox entered the constellation Aries. With that, a fiery age began, as witnessed by Moses, when he sees God in a fiery bush, or when God appears to His people as a pillar of fire.

Around the birth of Christ, there follows the Age of Pisces. Pisces is a water sign. That is probably why we have to look for the spirit in the water, in life’s flow of images, and in the unconscious.

And now we are on the threshold of the sign of Aquarius. The air element is assigned to it, and it is symbolized by an angel or a human being, instead of an animal. Here the spirit is meant to become something subtle again, and man to become who he is.

This juxtaposition shows what is meant by man in general and by the one person in our dream. These final stages correspond to the lotuses of Atman-, Purusha-, or God-knowledge. It is a union with Christ and an experience of the self, or an anthropogenesis that will be fully realized only in the coming Age of Aquarius.

I am not able to make this reaching of the final stage169 clear to you. Let me quote instead from Meister Eckhart’s sermons. You surely know the words of Meister Eckhart: “All nature means man.” And another one: “All creatures feel an urge to rise from their lives to their inner nature. All creatures carry my reason within themselves, so that they may gain reason in me. I alone again prepare all creatures for God!”¹⁷⁰ (All creatures—thus also man!)

And about the final transformation: “When the soul has to realize that no creature at all can come into the Kingdom of God, it begins to feel itself, goes its own way and no longer seeks God. Only then does it die its highest death. In this death the soul loses all desire, all capability of thinking, all form, and is deprived of all essence. Now at last it finds itself in the highest primordial image, in which God lives and is active, where He is His own kingdom.” Here the soul has found out that it itself is the “Kingdom of God.”

That is why the Church Fathers particularly stress “that the humanness of Jesus must not be just adored separately from the deity, but both have to be worshipped together in one single act.”¹⁷¹

Now let us consider what the dream wants to tell the little girl. Look, it says, look at this little mouse, this little, subtle, fragile being. This is the origin of all humans. This is not about the growth of the body, because it does not start with the parents. Neither is it about the “Spirit from Above,” because the image of God does not stand at the beginning. What it is about is something very little, the mouse, that elusive, pilfering, devilish little animal. And for a long time it goes through many transformations. At first come the worms, disgusting and voracious. Through greed the soul becomes entangled in the world, it becomes earthen, dark, and evil. It is touched by the objects and the humans, and everything is gray and dark. Then come the snakes, uncanny and dangerous. Fast as lightning they dash forward, devour their victims and disappear in the fire. Possession by the instincts, obsession, and heat of the blood lead to fiery desire and fervent compulsion. And now the magical beauty of the playing fish, colorful, shining, transparent, veiled. They bring the blueness of the sea with them, the feasts of heaven. Endless are the possibilities of being, the varieties of wishes. Whence they come we do not know. Accept them, for they bring coolness, clarity, knowledge, and wisdom. And then the humans: young and old, men and women, ancestors and grandchildren, each burdened with his or her experience, fate, and cross. Take them into your experience and behold, this becomes the one, the all-encompassing, the all-representing human being.

So this is a reversed Bardo Thödol, beginning with what is lowest and smallest, to bring all creatures home to the blessedness of the soul. The Tibetan teachings about the dead, however, incessantly remind us: “Realize that you are looking at yourself. This is you. Everything depends on your reality and that image becoming one.”

We know that the little girl died one year after this dream. The dream does not reveal anything pathological to me, it has a lysis. Although all the animals that appear in it are considered souls of the dead, they stand in logical connection with the inner development. What is alarming is only the absolute completeness of the archetypal vision, and this at an age when the archetypal images should be covered and suppressed by her own perceptions and experiences. This openness to the invasion by the unconscious indicates that she is endangered, that the infantile consciousness was profoundly shaken for reasons we do not know.

In our amplifications to the mouse we have heard that the soul leaves the body at night in the form of a mouse, to quench its thirst; it is said that in most cases this is the soul of a girl, and that if the mouse does not come back, the girl will die. In our dream, the girl sees her soul mouse, but it does not turn toward her. None of the animals comes to her; all pass by as in a film, and in no instance is she addressed directly or involved in an active way. On the contrary, it is as if everything living left with the animals for an afterworld of images; thus a process takes place that is appropriate for old age, not for this early childhood.

We can perhaps draw only one conclusion from the amplification for the inner situation of the girl: that her soul is thirsty—thirsty for living water. And this dream originates in the living water, only she is not able to grasp it. That is why she confides in the father: maybe he can grasp it.

Parallel Motives

And when we look at it now in retrospect, we are most unsettled by what she conveys with it: “Father, here you have your little mouse. I am going to the beyond of the images, and I am leaving you this dream so that you know what happens and how it happens. I am becoming a subtle vessel, your point of crystallization. It is still only a pending possibility, but death and dissolution can make real what is only imagined now.”

At a Later Meeting of the Seminar [5 February 1940]

Professor Jung: This dream was dreamed one or two years before the death of the child. I have chosen it from a series of twelve dreams, and we will hear about still another dream from this series. All of them are extremely peculiar; I have come across only a few such dreams, and was surprised when I read them for the first time. At first I did not know at all what this might be about. We have to go through such dreams very thoroughly and carefully to find out approximately what they might tell. For this, the only appropriate method is amplification, because nothing of relevance can be deduced by reduction from the relatively meager visual language of the dream. This Freudian method would lead nowhere; we would finally arrive at some banal conclusion, perhaps something generally known. Some little misery or other would come to light.

If we conceive of this dream as a message of the unconscious, however, made in an oracular language, so to speak, we make a certain presupposition: we assume that the dream has a meaning. But as we cannot easily make a coherent whole out of the few visual notions, this meaning remains hidden to us for the moment. So it will not be immediately evident to us that this dream of the transparent mouse refers to the development of man, although its meaning seems to be expressed in the final sentence: “And that’s how all men and women develop.”

At first this ideational connection strikes us as very strange. If we did not know anything about the child, it would be hard to realize that there lies a destiny behind this dream, and that the dream does indeed refer to the end, which has already cast its invisible shadow. I saw the child myself at that time. She looked fragile, but was in no way ill. I would have never guessed at the time that an exitus letalis172 might happen in the near future. The only thing I can say is that the child impressed me as a bit precocious. There was no neurosis, no hereditary taint by mental illnesses. I know the father and the mother and practically all the details about the family, so that I can exclude such a possibility. In the case of such strange dreams it is by no means absurd to think of a schizophrenia and to inquire after the hereditary taint; in any case this is a sign to be careful! Such dreams, which surprise us by their strangeness, also occur in other cases, namely, in children who have a touch of genius themselves or come from families of geniuses. But in that case the dreams are of a different kind, and show a greater richness. The series from which this dream was taken, however, is not characterized by a very powerful fantasy; every single dream is actually meager and not drawn from the abundant wealth of the unconscious. It rather seems as if the child had sunk into the unconscious with a part of herself—perhaps favored by her weakness—and was subsequently permeated by thoughts and images that she then could grasp only in her childlike language.

In this dream, the essence is expressed in the final sentence: “That’s how all men and women develop.” This is the leitmotif of the dream, so to speak. Without any doubt this is a general idea, a conclusion that the dreamer herself draws. We now have to ask ourselves: What does it mean for the child when such an idea rises from the unconscious? What psychical state does this imply?

Participant: Perhaps the child’s development did not proceed undisturbed, so that it has to be brought to her attention somehow.

Professor Jung: At first we have to take the generality of the idea as our starting point, and disregard the particularity of the development for the moment. Obviously, it is the dream’s tendency to acquaint the child with the general idea that all humans develop. What does this mean for the child’s consciousness?

Participant: The dream sounds like a primitive myth.

Professor Jung: This is correct, but this refers to the “how” of development, and not to the fact that development, as such, takes place. What could this mean: “That’s how all men and women develop”? What meaning does this have? What does it imply? You always have to imagine a dream as like a conversation you overhear on the radio or the phone. Somebody says something, you hear a sentence of conversation, then the conversation breaks off again, and now you should reconstruct what had been said. That’s how you should think of dreams. It is always a “listening in.”173 You just overhear something for a moment. Something becomes clear subliminally. You wake up with a sentence on your lips, but perhaps you’ve even forgotten the dream, too.

We have to try to understand such a dream as an answer to the conscious situation of the child. What question may have preoccupied the child? Perhaps she asked herself: “How do people actually come into being?” Do you think that this is the question here?

Participant: No.

Professor Jung: Why not?

Participant: Because the sequence of the images in the dream is no biological developmental line. If this were the question, the dream would have to start with the parents.

Professor Jung: Yes, this is not about the question: where have I come from? The dream does not show a biological, but a completely different developmental line. At first we have to clarify the psychical situation of the child, because none of all that existed in her consciousness.

Participant: It seems as if she hadn’t had the time to wait for the real development.

Participant: Perhaps the child felt she was somebody special, so that she had to be told: “You, too, are just one of all those.”

Participant: Often persons whose death is imminent undergo an accelerated development. A whole life unrolls in a very short time. So it could be that the dreamer has experiences that anticipate her development, because she is marked by death.

Professor Jung: I have already mentioned a couple of times that we cannot apply our notion of time to the unconscious. Our consciousness can conceive of things only in temporal succession, our time is, therefore, essentially linked to the chronological sequence. In the unconscious this is different, because there everything lies together, so to speak. To some extent, in the unconscious we all still live in the past; in a way we are still very little children, and often only very little is needed for the “child” to come to the surface. At the same time, we are standing in the shadow cast by a future, of which we still know nothing, but which is already somehow anticipated by the unconscious.174 So if the child is going to leave this world in the relatively near future, it is conceivable the unconscious has already in some way anticipated death. We can assume that the closeness of death has already cast its shadow on the soul of the child, and has raised questions in her such as: “Why did it come into being in the first place, if it will end anyway?” Or: “Why did it come into being? For what reason?” It must have been a philosophical question, because the answer is also philosophical. It is a question that we ask before we die: “Now what was this really all about?” Like the question that Newton himself answered on his deathbed—he said that he had played on the beach with the other boys, and had found a shell more beautiful than those of the others. This is such a philosophical answer to a philosophical question. The dream, too, also leads a kind of philosophical conversation, and the philosophical answer is: “That’s how all men and women develop,” meaning: “That’s how humans, as such, come into being.”

If we apply this hypothesis to the other dreams of the series, we will realize that actually each of the dreams is of a philosophical nature and contains the answer to a philosophical question. There is a dream, for example, that the dreamer titles “Heaven and Hell,” which goes as follows:

Once I went to heaven with a man. There were people there who danced heathen dances. Then we went to hell. There were angels, who did all the good.

This dream contains the idea of the relativity of good and evil. In a similar manner, this peculiar philosophical character recurs in all the dreams of this dream series, so that we find confirmation of our assumption that the present dream contains an answer to a philosophical question. The single dreams of a series are logically linked to one another, they express a common content and refer to one and the same psychical situation. When we have the key to one of these dreams, we will usually understand the whole series.175

What is surprising in this series is the strangely impersonal character of the individual dreams. The events are observed as from a distance of a million light years. It is very hard to feel into this; but then the dreams are so instructive precisely because they demonstrate man’s existential questions without any reference to the ego. This is especially clear in the dream titled “The Evil Animal,” which we will discuss in our next meeting. Also the dream called “The Island” by the dreamer has this strange, objective character:

Once I was on an island, and it was full of little animals that crawled in all directions. This really scared me. Then they got terribly big, and one sassy bastard ate me up.

In all these dreams, the dreamer states quite matter-of-factly that that’s how it was. But the situations are such that we would have to expect a much stronger emotional reaction, if, that is, there had been a connection to ego-consciousness.

How does the present dream portray the way men and women develop? It gives a description as we might find in the tribal lore of the primitives. A primitive cosmogonic fairy tale could sound quite similar. The dream is along the lines of ancient patterns, and, therefore, Mrs. Brunner has quite correctly traced these correspondences. Four different forms of transformation are distinguished, to which different colors are attributed. They correspond to a certain sequence of stages from animal to man. Here these stages are characterized by the gray mouse with the worms, the red mouse with the snakes, and the blue mouse with the fish; the final stage is man, to whom no color is assigned any longer. This sequence is quite imperfect, and seems to be a bit contradictory at first sight. So the stage of the fish, for example, comes after that of the snakes. What might be the reason for that?

Participant: For children and primitives the worms and the snakes belong together.

Professor Jung: Yes, of course. In former times the snake was also called worm, as, for instance, in lindworm.176 Certain superficial similarities may have been the reason for this: they are of similar shape, they creep in the earth and in secret holes. Both are chthonic animals. Their equation is an expression of a very primitive view, however, because the anatomy of the snake is much more sophisticated than that of the worm. In phylogenesis, the snakes come after the fish, in accordance with their more highly developed nervous and respiratory systems.

The transformational forms of the mouse imply the idea of different worlds: the worms live in the earth, the fish in the water, and man actually belongs to the air world, because he carries his head in the air (what is missing, however, is the world of fire). Man’s erect posture has already given rise to many philosophical reflections. It is not easy to classify the snakes in this context. Apparently, they did not always creep with their bellies on the ground, but were only later cursed to do so, as it says in the Bible: “Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life” (Genesis 3:14).

But why is it the mouse, of all animals, that is the medium of the development? We cannot give any compelling reasons for this, but Mrs. Brunner has given you enough evidence that the mouse is a soul animal. She has also quite correctly pointed to the transparency of the mouse and interpreted it as spirituality. Transparency is a criterion for the spirituality of matter. So the lapis philosophorum is also called vitrum (glass), precisely because it is of a spiritual nature, or lapis aethereus. So we have to imagine that the mouse, by virtue of its transparency, can form the spiritual vessel, in which the various transformations from animal to man take place. The starting point of this development is the gray mouse. The gray mouse is, as Mrs. Brunner has mentioned, an animal that stands in connection to the darkness of the soul; it represents that fleetingly glimpsed, dark nature of man that makes itself unpleasantly felt from time to time, above all at night. Mice are also allegories of gnawing thoughts, therefore, of pricks of conscience, that haunt us like spirits at night. These are chthonic animals with a certain relation to death. As deathly animals, they are brought in connection with Apollo. The Greeks worshipped Phoebus Smintheus, that is, the Mouse-Apollo, in whose temple mice were kept under the altar. There they were looked after and cared for, and in a way this had the meaning of apotropaic magic. We might ask what, for heaven’s sake, Apollo, the sun god, should have to do with mice. Now we know that Apollo is not only the god of light, but also the bearer of death, because his arrows can bring the plague, which is an illness that is spread by animals such as mice and rats. The mouse in general is an uncanny, deathly messenger. A great mouse plague is an evil omen for a country. This is understandable, because there were times when veritable mice epidemics broke out, when they multiplied in great numbers, destroyed all the crops, and caused famine and illness.

Participant: In Faust the mice also appear as spirits.

Professor Jung: Where?

Participant: When the pentagram prevents the devil from crossing the threshold.

Professor Jung: Yes, there Mephistopheles calls his assistants, the rats and the mice, that they should gnaw through the pentagram:

“The Lord of Rats and Mice,
Of Flies, Frogs, Bugs, and Lice,
Summons you to venture here,
And gnaw the threshold here.”177

Participant: The gray color of the mouse is also the color of the spirits.

Professor Jung: Yes, it is the color of darkness and of the spirits. So, you see, for all these reasons we may understand the mouse as a dark and enigmatic starting point of the development. In Greek antiquity, for example, the mice that crept out of graves were considered the spirits of the dead, and were, therefore, taken care of and fed.

The same was true of the snakes. If such a snake from the grave came into the house, the whole family moved out, because the spirit of the dead had taken possession of the house (the same can also be found in certain primitive tribes!). In their capacity as spirits of the dead, snakes were even publicly worshipped in Greece. The snake that was worshipped in the Erechtheion on the Acropolis was considered to be the spirit of King Erechtheus or Erechthonios, who was buried there. Usually the living spirit of the dead was fed by sacrificed food offered to it through burial holes. The snake cult also had an apotropaic meaning, because snakes are animals that suddenly appear out of the darkness and, therefore, frighten people. Moreover, man is incapable of establishing a rapport with them. They are as enigmatic and frightening as the unconscious, so, since time immemorial, man has protected himself against them as he has done against the unconscious. Primitives, for example, wear amulets on each joint, and their whole life is completely regulated by an immense number of practices governed by fear. They live as if imprisoned within walls they have erected out of fear of their unconscious, for it might well play a sudden trick on them.

Snakes, and particularly red ones, are not only spirits of the dead, but can also represent emotional states, as you have heard in the paper. They stand for the heat of the soul, the fire of passion, and thus represent a more intense stage of development.

The fish, the next transformational form of the mouse, represent the water element. Here the chthonic quality recedes into the background, and the spiritual begins. Mrs. Brunner has quite correctly pointed out that fish are like thoughts and premonitions that rise from the unconscious. There is an analogy in alchemy: when the primordial water, the humidum radicale, is sufficiently heated up, something like fish eyes (that is, steam bubbles) appears in it. This is what is most precious in fish, that which is capable of being illuminated. We may here interpret the fish, therefore, as the transition into spiritual element, into the air. In creation there was only the primordial water at first, which also contained the air. Then, it says, God divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.178 The lower waters border the underworld, but the upper waters are the spirit. According to alchemical philosophy, the spirit of life becomes visible here, the Holy Spirit. The upper waters form the body of the pneuma and are a kind of corpus spirituale, or a spiritus corporalis, a subtle spirit. At the final stage, humans come into being.

As we have heard, different colors correspond to the four stages. We mentioned already that the color gray is the color of ghosts. Gray is a combination color; it is semidarkness, in which light just starts to emerge from complete blackness. In alchemy, nigredo is the initial state, in which death reigns, absolute unconsciousness. Then follows the albedo, that is, whitening. The alchemists call it the rising sun that brings the morning and the crack of dawn. In this respect there is a certain analogy to the stage of the gray mouse.

In alchemy, red comes after white: after dawn comes sunrise, and after sunrise the full sun. In Greek alchemy, the complete constellation is called the “midday position of the sun.” When the sun reaches its zenith, the meaning of the day is fulfilled. What has been prepared during the night has now reached its highest perfection. In other contexts, too, the finished body is called rubinus or carbunculus in alchemy. It is a more intense state than albedo. Red, as it is, is an emotional color and stands for blood, passion, and fire.

The blue color is assigned to the following stage. Blue stands in stark contrast to red and indicates a cool and calming state. Blue is the color of Mary’s mantle in heaven. She is the womb in which Christ was born, and has always represented the symbol of a spiritual vessel. Blue is also the color of water and can thus represent the unconscious: just as we see the fish in the clear blue of the water, the spiritual contents contrast with the darkness of the unconscious. The color blue cannot be found in alchemy, but it is found in the East, where it takes the place of black and actually represents a color of the underworld. In Egypt, too, Osiris in the underworld is portrayed in black or blue. It is more a bluish-green color that characterizes not only the underworld (Osiris as the “Master of Green”), but also the water world. This world corresponds to the “lower waters,” in which the animals live as disembodied spirits. Thus blue is also the bluish-green sea that houses the spirits of the dead. The fourth stage is man, to whom no color is assigned.

So the development occurs in four stages, and this is no coincidence. This is the most frequently found structure, as, for instance, in a basic law of alchemy, according to which the process of transformation occurs in four stages. This gives expression to the idea that everything human develops out of something divided into four. In the legend of paradise, the river that flows out of the Garden of Eden parts and becomes four riverheads.179 This image has been taken up by the Gnostics to illustrate the development of the inner human being. According to Simon Magus, paradise is the uterus, and the Garden of Eden the navel. Four flows emanate from the navel, two air- and two blood-vessels, so to speak, through which the growing child receives its food, the blood, and the pneuma. In antiquity, the world was classified into four elements, to which also four temperaments corresponded. Four reemerges in the work of Schopenhauer in the theorem of the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. In Christianity, the division into four is expressed by the symbol of the cross. Where else does the division into four appear in Christianity?

Participant: In the benedictio fontis.

Professor Jung: Yes, in it the priest divides the water in the form of the cross, he seemingly divides it into four parts. In this way he repeats the beginning of creation. By this act the water becomes the mysterious, eternal, and divine water, by which man is cleansed of all sinfulness and impurity. The ablution, as it were, puts him back into the primordial state of innocence.

Apart from the four there are, of course, still other sacred numbers, but in each case of totality quaternity plays an important role, be it about the most primitive or the most elaborate ideas. The four always expresses the coming into being of what is essentially human, the emergence of human consciousness. Thus, the alchemical process also begins with such a division into the four elements, by which the body is put back into its primordial state and so can undergo transformation.

9. Dream of a Ten-Year-Old Girl of the Evil Animal¹⁸⁰

PRESENTED BY DR. JOLANDE JACOBI¹⁸¹

Text: The Evil Animal. Once I saw an animal in a dream, and it had very many horns. With these it gored other little animals. It coiled up like a snake, and was up to its tricks. Then blue smoke came from all four corners, and it stopped eating. Then came the Good Lord, but actually there were four good gods in the four corners. Then the animal died, and all the eaten animals came out alive.

Professor Jung: As you have seen, this dream is rather difficult and, given the young age of the dreamer, really remarkable. It is a product of the unconscious such as we rarely come across. As in the dream we discussed last time, the expression is basically simple. But that is precisely the astonishing thing. At first glance we are nearly unable to form a picture of what it might mean. Initially one does not have the courage to draw such far-reaching parallels as Dr. Jacobi, and to assume the presence of such fundamental problems of the history of mankind in a child’s mind. But there’s absolutely no way around it, because we can be sure: the simpler a dream is, the more we are confronted with general and fundamental problems. For it is only a deceptive simplicity, due to the fact that the dream, despite the importance of its content, has not found enough substance to express itself. We could compare it to a framework of archetypes, for which there is already a disposition at the beginning of life, and which is gradually filled with substance in the course of development. If a primordial image forces itself onto consciousness, we have to fill it with as much substance as possible to grasp the whole scope of its meaning. Basically, in our dream only axes are hinted at, which express the core content of the image in a very general way. The poverty of the composition strangely contrasts with the importance of the content. At first there is a horned animal, a kind of dragon, which gores all the other animals. It is a destructive monster that brings death to all living beings. We could say: this is death. Then the deity appears, actually divided into four gods, and reverses the whole process. The monster dies, and the little animals can come out alive again. This is a typical enantiodromia, which is already contained in nuce in the two extreme figures of the deity and the dragon. This is about the age-old confrontation of man with god and devil, these two poles of the world into which he is put. It is a deep-rooted dream of mankind, which reaches down into unfathomable depths. Here it could not assume a more complete form, however, because there is still too little experiential material in an infantile mind.

We could ask ourselves: How come a child has such a dream? It is a completely pagan dream, whose symbols can barely be still detected in Christianity. We do find such images in the apocalypse, but there they are in such a complex context, and in such cryptic form, that today we are hardly able still to understand them. So we may assume with reasonable certainty that the child did not get these images from the New Testament. Moreover, she grew up in a family that did not attach much value to religious education. The ancient historical images, so immensely attractive to children’s fantasy, no longer play any role at all today. This is a loss for our souls, because we don’t give the soul a language to give expression to its contents. In religious instruction, we more and more refrain from making children acquainted with these images, and instead offer them moral teaching, in which the devil is ignored altogether. But as this dream concerns an evil animal, which obviously represents the devil, we can be rather sure that the child did not get this image from school. So we may probably exclude an influence on this picture from the outside. The infantile soul is no tabula rasa at all, as presumed by modern psychology, but the ancient images are always already there a priori.

Mrs. Jacobi has assembled excellent material, which enabled her to give a nearly complete explanation of the images. I have nothing basically new to add, and would just like to make a few amendments. What is remarkable is that the dream is divided into two parts. We can distinguish a first, “descending” part from a following, “ascending” one. These two parts correspond to the earlier-mentioned polar structure of the dream. The dragon as representative of the first part symbolizes the organism in its two aspects of life and destruction. It represents the being that in China is expressed by the yin principle. The ascending part, in contrast, leads into the blue smoke, into the air, which by its nature corresponds to the yang principle. It is the smoke that rises from the earth, and which contains the gods as spiritual beings or smoke figures. Through them rebirth takes place. The primordial image of the division into two, preceding each creation, is also found in Genesis; there, the darkness of the depths—the lower waters—is incubated by the spirit of God hovering above it. Thus they are impregnated, and the creatures of the world emerge from them.

The first, descending part of the dream takes place, so to speak, in the lower waters, that is, in the unconscious. The dragon gores the many little animals, so they are doomed. The feature of multiplicity, here in combination with the animals, is an essential characteristic of all inherently unconscious life processes. This phenomenon is also frequently found in illnesses that are on the border between the psychical and the physical, for instance, disorders of the sympathetic nervous system or also states of intoxication. In the hallucinations during a delirium tremens often a great number of mice, insects, or also people, appears. This multiplicity is closely connected to the nature of the sympathetic nervous system, because its function is neither centralizing nor unifying, but branching and disseminating into the individual life of each cell. The image of the many little animals that are devoured thus indicates a dissolution and a destruction of organic life in this child. A death is taking place, so to speak. This process of destruction, by the way, is also hinted at in other dreams of this series, in which there is also a mass of animals, as in the dream entitled “A Severe Illness” by the child. It goes as follows:

Once I dreamed that I had a severe illness. Suddenly many birds came out of my skin, and they all sat down on my legs and on my whole body.

The phenomenon of multiplicity does not necessarily appear only in the case of an organic problem, as in this case, but can also indicate a dissolution of the person, the individual, into the collective environment. Multiplicity, as such, is characteristic of any inherently unconscious life process. The more unconsciously a process takes its course in a person, the stronger it is dissolved in the sphere of multiplicity, in the region of the many, of the others, of the mass, of the collective. In these cases it is often difficult to prove that such a process still belongs at all within the sphere of the individual. It is rather as if it were “in the air” and belonged to the many; therefore, it is also represented by the many. I would like to illustrate this with a typical dream:

Someone dreams that he comes to me in my practice. On the way, he meets lots of acquaintances and relatives, which annoys him. Now everybody knows that he is going to Dr. Jung. Then he enters my room, and again there are lots of people, so he can’t speak.

Here the unconscious state of the dreamer is hinted at by the multiplicity. He is “scatterbrained,” not centered, that is, not brought together into one. When someone is in such a state, every psychological process is contagious and leads to peculiar phenomena of participation.182 On the one hand, deep psychical stirrings in the individual may then affect the whole environment, and, on the other hand, the individual is carried away when the environment is seized by some psychical momentum. When you are in a crowd that gets agitated you will be infected, even if you do not share the people’s conviction. You can’t do anything against it, because nothing is passed on more easily than emotions. It goes straight into the unconscious, and then it is nearly impossible to hold out as an individual. This is also how religious collective experiences work, in which each individual at the same time experiences the many, the others. All are united with one another, and in all the same state of multiplicity predominates. There is something destructive in this multiplicity; it turns against the unity of consciousness and dissolves it. Wherever the multiple occurs, there is a conflict between the unity of the ego and the multiplicity of the persons in the environment. The person is, in other words, under too much pressure from the environment, from the opinion of other people, and from what is written in the newspaper. It can very frequently be proven that “the many” represent as many resistances and prejudices, which thwart the unity of the individual. So in the dream some aunt may say: “Oh dear, now what are you doing, going to Dr. Jung?” Or the father and the priest raise their objections. The psyche will then be decomposed into many single units, and we actually will have to put the person together again so that he regains his unity. So there is a great deal of collective psychology in the motif of the many little animals.

Thus our dream not only concerns the soul of this single child, but it pertains to much more, namely, to her parents, siblings, and the whole environment. I have to add that the child is from a German family, and that the father was very active politically. So there is no doubt that there is a great emphasis on the environment, and when exciting things happen there the child will be forced to take part in the emotional state of the family.

The first part of the dream represents the dissolution of the individual into multiplicity; the second part shows the complete reversal of the process: the dissolution is followed by the synthesis. It occurs in the upper layer as represented by the blue smoke. It says in the dream: “Then blue smoke came from all four corners,” and then: “Then came the Good Lord, but actually there were four good gods in the four corners.” The deity is something like vapor or smoke, rising into the air from below. Simultaneously the principle of fourness appears: it is the tetras, the quaternity, which is always the symbol of composition, of bringing order into the chaos. We saw already last hour that dividing the chaos into the four elements is the primeval act of the seeing spirit; it is the attempt to bring order into the chaotic plenitude of phenomena. The division into four is a principium individuationis; it means to become one or a whole in the face of the many figures that carry the danger of destruction in them. It is what overcomes death and can bring about rebirth. In our dream, the appearance of the four gods causes the death of the evil dragon animal, by which life can begin again: the many little animals all come out again.

The dragon as the dominating power in the first part of the dream prepares for the advent of the deity. It is the devil, the devouring animal of the underworld that swallows everything. But when it has devoured enough, it will have eaten its way into its own demise. Events turn, and the second phase reestablishes order. Thus the devil is a preliminary stage of individuation, in the negative it has the same goal as the divine quaternity, namely, wholeness. Although it is still darkness, it already carries the germ of light within itself.183 Its activities are still dangerous and deadly, but at the same it is like the darkness of earth in which the seed germinates. In the dream it is, therefore, followed by the blue smoke, which rises from the depths in the four corners, and in which the divine quaternity, the wholeness, becomes visible.

The fact that deity and devil belong together also plays a great role in alchemy. There the devil appears in the form of the serpens Mercurii, which, however, is at the same time the serpent of the Nous. For the Naassenes, too, the nachash,184 the serpent, is the Nous, or the Logos. Psychologically speaking, the fact that the Logos at first manifests itself as a poisonous snake means that whenever a powerful content emerges from the unconscious, which we cannot yet grasp with our consciousness, there is a danger that the whole ego-consciousness will be pulled down into the unconscious and dissolved. This introversion process can eventually lead to mental illness. Consciousness is completely emptied, because its contents are attracted by the unconscious as by a magnet. This process leads to a complete loss of the ego, so that the person in question becomes a mere automaton. Such a person is actually no longer there. He makes the impression of a piece of wood that lets itself be pushed around. He has completely lost his initiative and spontaneity, because his consciousness has been dissolved by a content of the unconscious. In the process of individuation, too, new contents can announce themselves in this devouring form and darken consciousness; this is experienced as a depression, that is to say, as being pulled downward. As the unconscious has a tendency to project itself into the outer world, there is a danger that one might get dissipated in the environment, instead of staying with oneself. That’s why the alchemists stress again and again that the alchemical vessel has to remain hermetically closed during the opus. If the lid springs open, vapor will escape and the process will be disrupted. Only when we bear our situation and accept our depression will it be possible for us to change internally. Then the devouring animal will be deprived of its power, and the new content can be grasped by consciousness.

In the dream, the dragon animal appears as a horned figure, although the child does not specify the number of horns. The image of the horned serpent is very frequent in mythology. Seven horns stand in connection with the seven days of the week, to each of which a planet is assigned; in seven days the moon completes one phase (one week), and in four times seven days queen Luna, accompanied by the seven planets, wanders across the sky. The idea of the seven planets also plays a great role in alchemy. There they sit together in a subterranean cave; they are the seven that are hidden in the womb of the earth. Here the seven are representatives of the metals. When the dragon has twelve horns, this corresponds to the twelve months or the twelve signs of the zodiac. So we can say: the animal in the dream carries on its head, like a diadem or a crown, either the heb-domas, the seven planets, or the dodekas, the twelve signs of the zodiac. In antiquity the image of the horned serpent was projected onto the sky. It appears in the well-known image of Draco, which meanders as a shining ribbon of stars, as sky serpent, between the Great and the Little Bear and, while always visible, moves around the pole.185 The world fire burns in this place, and, therefore, it is also called the fire pole. There the dragon rotates, eternally watching the objects in the sky. Now, we must not think that the ancients actually saw bears and snakes in the sky; this is a mythology inherent in all of us, which everybody can, therefore, reproject onto the sky. Thus our science has started with the stars. There our world consciousness came into being, and from there we took our science. Our deepest inner layers are hidden in the stars. When it is said that old Aratus interpreted the constellations mythologically, this is nonsense. He did not interpret anything, but everything has always been as it is. This sky serpent, the Draco, is the reproduction of a primeval image within ourselves.

Later, at the begin of the Christian era, Gnostic natural philosophers tried to incorporate these projections of the serpent into man, and to conceive of them as a part of the human structure. The body of the serpent became the spinal cord, its head the brain. This anatomical localization of the archetype contains an excellent interpretation, insofar as the lower psychical centers of the spinal cord are without doubt the seat of the unconscious. Already the sky serpent, which winds around the mysterious North Pole, was based on the idea of the serpent as the seat of the unconscious.186 It revolves as if around its own center. The world axis goes through the pole; it is in some sense the center of the world, but also the center of the unconscious around which everything revolves. There the deity, the ruler of the pole, moves the whole firmament as if he had it on a handle. The same idea can be found in the Mithraic liturgy, in which God swings the shoulder of a cow in his right hand. This is the Great Bear, which rotates around the pole like the dragon. A similar image of rotating serpents is found in the so-called Tantric Yoga, in which the Kundalini serpent winds three and a half times around the lingam, the phallus of Shiva.

So if we take a very close look at the dragon with its mysterious horn, we will see that it also represents the deity, only in a different, dark aspect. In the dream the dragon is followed by the blue smoke, rising out of the four corners, and thus being divided into four. It represents the positive aspect of the deity. To conclude, I would like to make some additions to the important notion of quaternity. We often find it portrayed in Christian images, although it actually does not belong to the dogma; the latter is the Trinity, the threeness. Quaternity is basically a pagan notion and much older than Christiantiy. Originally it goes back to Pythagoras, who saw in quaternity the root of eternal nature. It is a number that expresses the inner essence of nature. This meaning has remained preserved through all times. In Christianity, for example, we have the picture of the rex gloriae, the triumphant Christ, who sits enthroned amidst the four Evangelists. Frequently their animal symbols are found instead of the Evangelists; three of them are symbolized by an animal, and only John, the fourth Evangelist, by an angel. There are pictures from the Romanesque age, in which the Evangelists are portrayed with the heads of their respective animals: Mark with the lion head, Matthew with the eagle head, Luke with the head of a calf or an ox. The four symbols of the Evangelists have also been condensed to one animal, so that a tetramorphous emerged, a fourfold being, which served as the mount of the Church.

In the Gnostics, too, we find a portrayal of the Son of God on a platform on four pillars, the tetrapeza. The four legs are the four pillars, which represent the four Gospels. The Gnosis is rich in portrayals of quaternity. You know, perhaps, the Gnostic “Anthropos,” the primordial man, who is symbolized by the city with the four gates. He is the Autogenes, the one who gives birth to himself. He is also surrounded by two parental couples, that is, four persons. Moreover, in Irenaeus we find the idea of the upper mother (Anometer), the Barbelo. She is the female appearance of the deity. Her name is interpreted as “in the four there is God.”

In numerous Gnostic systems there are such and similar ideas, sometimes in the form that three further principles are deduced from a basic one. Or the ideas are more Aristotelian, meaning that originally there are four elements, and the fifth, the quinta essentia, is their center. For Aristotle this is the ether. So the four is thought of as 3 + 1, or simply as 4, or as 4 + 1. In the latter case, however, the result is not the five—which would be an expression of the state of unconsciousness—but the quinta essentia, which is always the extract or the origin of the four. In alchemy, the idea of a month is a basic principle. It is also called the prima materia, and the four elements develop out of it. Out of these, in turn, the monas develops, which represents the spiritual unity of the four.

Here, too, quaternity is the unfolding of the one; it becomes a system of orientation for consciousness. An example is the division of the horizon into four parts. In addition, the four elements provide a first orientation in the world, and the four temperaments are an orientation in the chaotic psychical nature of man. In accordance with these, the principles of human life were localized in the body in a kind of system of chakras, namely, in the brain, in the heart, in the liver, and in the genitalia. So, amongst others, reason and the sanguine temperament were associated with the brain, courage and the choleric temperament with the heart, the warmth of life and the melancholic temperament with the liver.

In alchemy, the division into four plays a very special role insofar as the nature of Mercurius is the cross. In his fourfoldness he expresses the unity of the opposites. Mercurius is the most peculiar and paradoxical being imaginable; he is also called the servus or cervus fugitivus,187 he who can never be caught and who runs through the fingers like quicksilver. Mercurius is composed of four mercurii; their names are:

1. mercurius brutus, the brute Mercurius, that is, common quicksilver (mercury);

2. mercurius sublimatus, Mercurius as a spiritual being;

3. mercurius magnesiae, magnesium as the vera alba, the pure substance, the shining wisdom, and the great light;

4. mercurius unctuosus, the unctuous Mercurius, which gives expression to the darkest darkness that we find in the interior of the earth and of matter. It is thought of as slimy, gooey, viscous, unctuous matter.

This Mercurius divided into four parts is in accordance with the idea of Mercurius as a hermaphrodite. For he is the Re-Bis, the male-female, who holds the new light. In the Middle Ages we find the idea that the unharmed virgin, who in turn is Mercurius, is living in the interior of the earth. The alchemists were convinced that God had put a spiritual substance into the world, so that it would be transformed by man into the substance that brings salvation.

Regarding the polar appearance of the deity, there is a parallel in the meditations of Przywara,¹⁸⁸ in which God appears as concurrence of the opposites. When He manifests Himself, this happens in a conflict, on the cross. Here you can see the whole symbolism. The conflict situation seems to have been the origin out of which consciousness developed, and still develops anew again and again. We still witness this nowadays, day after day. Nobody will ever become conscious if he does not hit his head on something.

Now why should the child dream of such problems? This I don’t know. We can only state that this is what happened. The child has been told a truth, the absolute, basic truth of humankind, for which there is no proof, of course. The proof lies in the truth itself. It is expressed by the soul and by what human beings have thought since time immemorial. These are the truths that live forever.

1 Cf. C. G. Jung, Experimental Researches, CW 2, and seminar 2 (ed.).

² C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion, CW 11, § 41 (ed.).

³ Cf. seminar 1.

⁴ Genesis 1:7 (trans.).

⁵ Further examples in C. G. Jung, “Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy,” CW 12.

⁶ Session of 7 November 1939.

⁷ Cf. Richard Thurnwald, Primitive Initiations- und Wiedergeburtsriten.

⁸ Cf. Jakob Maehly, Die Schlange im Mythus und Kultus der klassischen Völker, p. 7.

⁹ Cf. Franz Cumont, Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, p. 100, and C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, CW 5, § 671.

¹⁰ Cf. Wilhelm H. Roscher, Ausführliches Lexicon.

¹¹ C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, CW 5, § 451.

¹² Cf. also the Grimm fairy tale “The White Snake.”

¹³ Cf. Erich Küster, Die Schlange in der griechischen Kunst und Religion.

¹⁴ Arthur Avalon, The Serpent Power.

¹⁵ Protrept. II, 16.

¹⁶ Albrecht Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, pp. 123–24.

¹⁷ Erwin Rohde, Psyche: Seelenkult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen, p. 244.

¹⁸ Obol or obulus: Greek silver coin worth one-sixth of a drachma (trans.).

¹⁹ R. Herzog, Aus dem Asklepeion von Kos. In: Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, 10, p. 212.

²⁰ Cf. seminar 3, § 8 (ed.).

²¹ Latin, “alloyed” (ed.).

²² Latin, “point of ignition” (ed.).

²³ Latin, “hidden God” (ed.).

²⁴ Hans Leisegang, Die Gnosis, p. 147.

²⁵ John 3:14 (trans.).

²⁶ John 1:1–3 (trans.).

²⁷ Epiphanios, Panar. Haer. 37, 5.

²⁸ John 19:26 (trans.).

²⁹ This picture by Quentin Matsys (Saint John) also in C. G. Jung, Transformations and Symbols of the Libido.

³⁰ Leisegang, Die Gnosis, p. 169.

³¹ Leisegang, Die Gnosis, p. 99

³² Cf. Baudelaire’s poem “Le serpent qui danse.”

³³ Cf. seminar 2, note 96. In the summer of 1939, C. G. Jung gave, within the framework of a lecture series on “Modern Psychology,” a seminar at the ETH Zurich titled “Process of Individuation: Exercitia Spiritualia of St. Igantius of Loyola” (ed.).

³⁴ Walter Y. Evans-Wentz, Das Tibetanische Totenbuch.

³⁵ Ignatius, Exercitia spiritualia. Cf. C. G. Jung’s lecture “On the Nature of the Psyche,” CW 8 (ed.).

³⁶ Greek, engastrimythos: designation of the person who prophesies in ecstasy (trans.).

³⁷ Sach. 4:10: Septem isti oculi sunt Domini, qui discurrunt in universam Terram (Vulgate). “They are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth” (Zechariah 4:10).

³⁸ Latin, “round fish” (ed.).

³⁹ Karl Vollers, Chidher.

⁴⁰ Session of 21 November 1939.

⁴¹ The mentioned locations are in Zurich. Bellevue: central square by the river Limmat. Quaibrücke: quay bridge. Bauschänzli: public square on the other side of the river Limmat, opposite Bellevue (trans.).

⁴² Cf. seminar 2, § 5 (ed.).

⁴³ Cf. seminar 2 (ed.).

⁴⁴ Hans H. Schaeder, Urform und Fortbildungen des manichäischen Systems (ed.).

⁴⁵ Fritz Künkel (1898–1956), psychotherapist, originally of Adlerian orientation. He emigrated to California (ed.).

⁴⁶ Two lakes in Germany (Black Forest) and in Switzerland (trans.).

⁴⁷ From Goethe’s poem “The Fisherman,” set to music by Franz Schubert (trans.).

⁴⁸ The Chandala or Black People were the lowest caste, or “outcasts,” in the caste system (trans.).

⁴⁹ See, for instance, www.gis.zh.ch/gb4/stzh/default.asp (14 March 2007) (trans.).

⁵⁰ Cf. Jung’s papers “The Psychology of Dementia Praecox,” CW 3, § 198, and “The Content of the Psychoses,” CW 3, § 317, where the expression “Sinn im Wahnsinn” [meaning in madness] is found (ed.).

⁵¹ Patron saint of Bohemia, a martyr (d. 1393). He is also called John Nepomucen. He was vicar general of Bohemia under King Wenceslaus IV (later Holy Roman Emperor Wenceslaus). When the king wished uncanonically to convert an abbey into a cathedral, St. John opposed him, in spite of torture. The king had him drowned in the Moldava (trans.).

⁵² Otto Rank (1884–1939); see his The Trauma of Birth (ed.).

⁵³ Session of 28 November 1939.

⁵⁴ Hans-guck-in-die-Luft, a character in Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter (Shock- Headed Peter), a classic children’s book (trans.).

⁵⁵ In the original: Oberstübchen, literally “little upper room,” a slightly pejorative colloquialism for head or brains (trans.).

⁵⁶ Cf. C. G. Jung, “Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy,” CW 12; “Religious Ideas in Alchemy,” CW 12; and Hans Baumann, “Betrachtungen über die Symbolik der Pyramiden.”

⁵⁷ Belbel: a sun disk with three rays or arrows (trans.).

⁵⁸ Cf. C. G. Jung, “Religious Ideas in Alchemy,” CW 12, §§ 435, 437, 449. The Visio Arislei is contained in Artis auriferae, vol. 1, § 3, pp. 146ff (ed.).

⁵⁹ The French homonym to Glas (glass) is glace = mirror (trans.).

⁶⁰ The Brocken, or Blocksberg, is the highest peak (1142 m) in the German Harz Mountains. It has long had associations with witches and devils. Also mentioned in Goethe’s Faust (trans.).

⁶¹ An alchemist (ed.).

⁶² Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, § 394 (trans.).

⁶³ This word in English in the original (trans.); here referring to the inner process of selfdiscovery as described in many fairy tales (cf. Hedwig von Beit, Symbolik des Märchens, vol. 1, pp. 335–36) and medieval knight romances (e.g., in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parsifal or Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein) (ed.).

⁶⁴ C. G. Jung, CW 12, 3, §§ 437ff.

⁶⁵ Washington Matthews, The Mountain Chant, pp. 379–467.

⁶⁶ Italicized words in English in the original (trans.).

⁶⁷ C. G. Jung, CW 12, 3, §§ 440ff.

⁶⁸ C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, CW 5, §§ 589f.

⁶⁹ Missale Romanum: Die Weihe des Taufbrunnens [The Consecration of the Baptistry].

⁷⁰ Cf. seminar 3 (ed.).

⁷¹ Greek, “thinking mind, knowledge, insight”: a way to reach higher consciousness. Cf. C. G. Jung, “The Visions of Zosimos,” in CW 13, § 97 (ed.).

⁷² Wolfgang von Eschenbach, Parsifal (ed.).

⁷³ Missale Romanum: Karsamstag-Feuerweihe. Cf. C. G. Jung, CW 12, 3, § 451.

⁷⁴ In Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, vol. 2, pp. 1–80.

⁷⁵ Daniel 2:31–35 (trans.).

⁷⁶ Seminar on Modern Psychology: “The Process of Individuation [Eastern Texts], Notes on the Lectures given at the ETH,” 1938/39.

⁷⁷ Latin, the “hermetic vessel”; the “mountain” (trans.).

⁷⁸ “Subtle body” in English in the original (trans.).

⁷⁹ Cf. seminar 3, § 2 (ed.).

⁸⁰ Latin, “the vulgar, common gold” (ed.).

⁸¹ In Artis auriferae, vol. 1, § 9, Merlinus. Cf. C. G. Jung, The Practice of Psychotherapy, CW 16, § 472 (ed.).

⁸² Spark of light (Latin, scintilla), a Gnostic concept; see Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, § 131 (trans.).

⁸³ Session of 12 December 1939.

⁸⁴ To avoid repetitions, the end of the paper was abbreviated (ed.).

⁸⁵ Swiss German, a diminutive of Haus = house (trans.).

⁸⁶ The following examples are taken from H. Bächtold-Stäubli, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens; Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings; Jakob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (ed.).

⁸⁷ 975–1018, bishop of Merseburg and noted historian (trans.).

⁸⁸ When referring to history, ethnology, and mythology, Dr. Steiner used the German Abort (etymologically derived from abgelegener Ort = secluded place), a now old-fashioned synonym of the word used in the dream text, Toilette (from the French toilette, a diminutive of toile = cloth, later euphemistically used for lavatory = cabinet de toilette) (Duden, Herkunftswörterbuch) (trans.).

⁸⁹ This expression in English in the original (trans.).

⁹⁰ Swiss German, literally “the whispering room” (trans.).

⁹¹ Latin, “the place.” In common usage: “the john, the loo” (trans.).

⁹² The origin of the abbreviation could not be traced; probably short for Abort (trans.).

⁹³ Huldinnen (pl. of Huldin), female personifications of grace (trans.).

⁹⁴ Latin, child-eating monster or witch; in folklore a corpse that rises at night to drink the blood of the living (trans.).

⁹⁵ In ancient Greek mythology, the Empusa (or Empousa) was a supernatural monster or demoness (trans.).

⁹⁶ Anima is Latin for “soul” (trans.).

⁹⁷ A doubtful statement; it rather derives from the Latin fascinare = to bewitch, to jinx (Duden, Herkunftswörterbuch) (trans.).

⁹⁸ Cf. Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust: “Blood is quite a peculiar juice” (trans.).

⁹⁹ Latin, “manure pit” (trans.).

¹⁰⁰ Literally, “shitting ducats”—an inexhaustible source of money (trans.).

¹⁰¹ Latin, “the treasure of all treasures” (trans.).

¹⁰² Cf. C. G. Jung, “The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious,” CW 7, §§ 296ff; “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious,” CW 9, §§ 51ff (ed.).

¹⁰³ Cf. seminar 3, § 7; C. G. Jung, “Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype,” CW 9, § 156 (ed.).

¹⁰⁴ Cf. seminar 3, § 4 (ed.).

¹⁰⁵ Rider Haggard, She. Quotation in English in the original (trans.).

¹⁰⁶ Latin, “we are born between feces and urine” (trans.).

¹⁰⁷ Latin, “along natural ways” (trans.).

¹⁰⁸ This expression in English in the original (trans.).

¹⁰⁹ This word in English in the original (trans.).

¹¹⁰ Rider Haggard, She; She and Allen; Wisdom’s Daughter.

¹¹¹ Joel 2:28 (trans.).

¹¹² The words nervous breakdown in English in the original (trans.).

¹¹³ F. Overbeck (1837–1905), Lutheran theologian and pastor in Basel, a friend of Nietzsche’s (ed.).

¹¹⁴ Allusions can already be found in the poems in Zarathustra, by the way, for example, in “Dudu and Suleika.”

¹¹⁵ French, roughly “the woman who makes others run after her” (trans.).

¹¹⁶ French, “inspiring woman” (trans.).

¹¹⁷ Session of 16 January 1940.

¹¹⁸ Original: ein schwankender Steg—a swaying, shaky footbridge or jetty (trans.).

¹¹⁹ C. G. Jung, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious,” CW 9, §§ 43–52.

¹²⁰ Two fairy tales collected by the brothers Grimm (trans.).

¹²¹ By Hans Christian Andersen (trans.).

¹²² Melusine (sweet as honey), the heroine of a fairy tale of Celtic origin, who, as the daughter of a king and a sea-nymph, on certain days had to assume the shape of a fish or a water-sprite (trans.).

¹²³ The German equivalent, Schürzenjäger, literally means “apron chaser” (trans.).

¹²⁴ See seminar 2, § 4 (ed.).

¹²⁵ Schoß can mean both “lap” or “womb” (trans.).

¹²⁶ Latin, “the white woman” (trans.).

¹²⁷ Latin, “the red slave or servant” (trans.).

¹²⁸ Cf. volume 2 of the English edition (ed.).

¹²⁹ C. G. Jung, “Religious Ideas in Alchemy,” CW 12, § 410.

¹³⁰ Original: Jeder Jüngling hat nun mal / Den Hang zum Küchenpersonal (trans.)

¹³¹ French, “the place of attachment or clinging” (trans.).

¹³² Deines Lebens schönster Traum—a crypto-quotation from Wilhelm Busch’s Max und Moritz (trans.).

¹³³ C. G. Jung, “Religious Ideas in Alchemy,” CW 12, § 435. See also Artis auriferae, vol. 1, p. 146, and Julius F. Ruska, Turba Philosophorum, p. 23.

¹³⁴ In a certain version, the bridegroom, the servus rubeus, completely disappears in Beya during the intercourse, and dissolves into atoms in her body. Cf. C. G. Jung, “Religious Ideas in Alchemy,” CW 12, § 439; and Rosarium Philosophorum, p. 246.

¹³⁵ A collection of stories based on the oral tradition of the Welsh bards (trans.).

¹³⁶ Session of 23 January 1940.

¹³⁷ The text of the paper is missing (ed.).

¹³⁸ Jack Frost is a figure believed to have originated in Viking folklore, an elfish creature who personifies crisp, cold, winter weather. He is said to leave frosty crystal patterns on leaves and windows on cold mornings. It is also thought that the English derived the name Jack Frost from the Norse character names, Jokul (“icicle”) and Frosti (“frost”) (trans.).

¹³⁹ Cf. seminar 3, § 5 (ed.).

¹⁴⁰ Cf. seminar 3, § 5 (ed.).

¹⁴¹ The Swiss equivalent of St. Nicholas (trans.).

¹⁴² Latin, “in the face of death” (trans.).

¹⁴³ Cf. Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy, p. 59 (ed.).

¹⁴⁴ A catastrophic earthquake in Sicily and Calabria on December 28, 1908, in which approximately 75,000–100,000 people died and Messina was almost totally destroyed (trans.).

¹⁴⁵ French, “nevertheless, in spite of everything” (trans.).

¹⁴⁶ Session of 30 January 1940.

¹⁴⁷ Original: Maus und Mädchen (trans.).

¹⁴⁸ Erich Küster, Die Schlange in der griechischen Kunst und Religion, p. 63.

¹⁴⁹ Hanns Bächthold-Stäubli, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens.

¹⁵⁰ Martin Ninck, Wodan und germanischer Schicksalsglaube, p. 157.

¹⁵¹ Jakob Maehly, Die Schlange im Mythus und Kultus der klassischen Völker, p. 7.

¹⁵² Ninck, Wodan und germanischer Schicksalsglaube, p. 153.

¹⁵³ Cf. C. G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14/I, § 130 (ed.).

¹⁵⁴ Alfred Brehm, Illustriertes Tierleben.

¹⁵⁵ The fisherman’s wife in the fairy tale (trans.).

¹⁵⁶ Robert Eisler, Orpheus the Fisher, p. 265.

¹⁵⁷ Ibid., p. 265.

¹⁵⁸ Ibid., p. 249.

¹⁵⁹ “Friday” (Freitag in German) is derived from the German goddess “Freyja,” goddess of love and beauty; Romance languages derived from “Venus,” hence “Venerdi,” “Vendredi,” “Viernes” for “Friday” (trans.).

¹⁶⁰ Eisler, Orpheus the Fisher, p. 221.

¹⁶¹ Ibid., p. 31.

¹⁶² Ibid., p. 47.

¹⁶³ Ibid. (picture).

¹⁶⁴ The Bluebird (L’Oiseau Bleu), a play by Maurice Maeterlinck (1908); cf. the “bluebird of happiness” idiom in Western culture (trans.).

¹⁶⁵ Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Ausgewählte Schriften, p. 18.

¹⁶⁶ Bächtold-Stäubli, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, s.v. anthropology.

¹⁶⁷ C. Baumann, lecture: “Zuni Origin Myths.”

¹⁶⁸ The Serpent Power, ed. Arthur Avalon.

¹⁶⁹ Original: Erreichnis, a neologism condensed from erreichen (to reach) and Ereignis (event) (trans.).

¹⁷⁰ Meister Eckhart, Predigten. See Herman Buettner, Meister Eckeharts Schriften und Predigten.

¹⁷¹ Georg Koepgen, Die Gnosis des Christentums, p. 214.

¹⁷² Latin, “lethal ending” (trans.).

¹⁷³ This expression in English in the original (trans.).

¹⁷⁴ Cf. seminar 1 (ed.).

¹⁷⁵ Cf. seminar 1 (ed.).

¹⁷⁶ A large serpentlike dragon without wings (trans.).

¹⁷⁷ Faust 1, lines 1516–19 (trans.).

¹⁷⁸ Genesis 1:7 (trans.).

¹⁷⁹ Genesis 2:10 (trans.).

¹⁸⁰ Sessions of 20 and 27 February 1940.

¹⁸¹ Dr. Jacobi’s paper is missing (ed.).

¹⁸² This word in French (or English) in the original (trans.).

¹⁸³ Cf. seminar 3, § 8 (ed.).

¹⁸⁴ Hebrew word for “serpent,” from which the Naassenes received their name (trans.).

¹⁸⁵ In astronomy, the constellation of Corona (crown) is not directly above the head of Draco, but this is irrelevant for the mythological interpretation.

¹⁸⁶ Cf. seminar 3, § 3.

¹⁸⁷ Fugitive servant or deer (trans.).

¹⁸⁸ Erich Przywara, Deus semper maior (ed.) See www.helmut-zenz.de/hzprzywa.html (14 March 2007) (trans.).