On the Following Night, However, I Had a Vision.

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Hi everybody. Since Wednesday, our furnace has broken down, and my plans have been disrupted! I wanted to write some posts, but my brain is almost frozen! That’s why I took an old post from my other site (I really don’t know who created it; I didn’t!), which I also took from my valued friend, Lewis Lafontaine and his blog.🙏

So, here is an extraordinary vision from Carl Jung’s remarkable book, The Red Book. I hope you will enjoy it, and I wish you all a thrilled New Year.

Title image: Angel by Samuel Bak

Sir Galahad, source: George Frederic Watts

As he came around the following night, however, I had a vision: I was with a youth in the high mountains. It was before daybreak, and the Eastern sky was already light.

Then Siegfried’s horn resounded over the mountains with a jubilant sound. We knew that our mortal enemy was coming.

We were armed and lurked beside a narrow rocky path to murder him. Then, we saw him coming high across the mountains on a chariot made of the bones of the dead.

He drove boldly and magnificently over the steep rocks and arrived at the narrow path where we waited in hiding.

As he came around the turn ahead of us, we fired at the same time, and he fell slain. Thereupon, I turned to flee, and a terrible rain swept down.

But after this, I went through a torment unto death, and I felt certain that I must kill myself if I could not solve the riddle of the murder of the hero.

Then the spirit of the depths came to me and spoke these words:

“The highest truth is one and the· same with the absurd.” This statement saved me, and like rain after a long, hot spell, it swept away everything in me which was too highly tensed.

From The Red Book, via Carl Jung Depth Psychology

Then I had a second vision: I saw a merry garden clad in white silk, with forms walked, all covered in coloured light, some reddish, the others blueish and greenish.

I know; I have stridden across the depths. Through guilt, I have become a newborn.

We also live in our dreams; we do not live only by day. Sometimes, we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams. On that night, my life was threatened since I had to kill my lord and God, not in single combat, since who among mortals could kill a God in a duel? You can reach your God only as an assassin if you want to overcome him.

But this is the bitterest for mortal men: our Gods want to be overcome since they require renewal. If men kill their princes, they do so because they cannot kill their Gods and because they do not know that they should kill their Gods in themselves.

If God grows old, he becomes a shadow, nonsense, and he goes down. The greatest truth becomes the greatest lie, and the brightest day becomes the darkest night. As day requires night and night requires day, so meaning requires absurdity, and absurdity requires meaning.

Day does not exist through itself; night does not exist through itself.

The reality that exists through itself is day and night.

So, the reality is meaning and absurdity.

Noon is a moment, midnight is a moment, morning comes from night, evening turns into night, but evening comes from the day, and morning turns into day.

So meaning is a moment and a transition from absurdity to absurdity, and absurdity is only a moment and a transition from meaning to meaning.

Oh, the German hero, Siegfried, blond and blue-eyed, had to fall by my hand, the most loyal and courageous!

He had everything in himself that I treasured as the greater and more beautiful; he was my power, my boldness, my pride.

I would have gone under in the same battle, and so only assassination was left to me. If I wanted to go on living, it could only be through trickery and cunning.

Judge not! Think of the blond savage of the German forests, who had to betray the hammer-brandishing thunder to the pale Near-Eastern God nailed to the wood like a chicken marten.

The courageous were overcome by a certain contempt for themselves.

But their life force bade them go on living, and they betrayed their beautiful wild Gods, their holy trees and their awe of the German forests.

What does Siegfried mean for the Germans! What does it tell us that the Germans suffer Siegfried’s death!

That is why I almost preferred to kill myself in order to spare him. But I wanted to go on living with a new God.

After death on the cross, Christ went into the underworld and became Hell. So he took on the form of the Antichrist, the dragon.

The image of the Antichrist, which has come down to us from the ancients, announces the new God, whose coming the ancients had foreseen.

Gods are unavoidable. The more you flee from God, the more surely you fall into his hand.

The rain is the great stream of tears that will come over the people; the tearful flood of released tension after the constriction of death had encumbered the people with horrific force.

It is the mourning of the dead in me, which precedes burial and rebirth.

The rain is the fructifying of the earth; it begets the new wheat, the young, germinating God. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 241-242

36 thoughts on “On the Following Night, However, I Had a Vision.”

  3. Noooo. Wish you and yours could come sit by our open fire, we don’t pay a penny for since we have a son in law with a joinery business, a nearby beach to ‘comb’ and several kinds of saws….. There is nothing worse than this degree of cold and yet being the wonderful person you are you have still brought us this beautiful post. it does not matter how old or ‘Yung’ it is, thank you, my friend. And I hope you get this sorted soon.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. The furnace… YIKES

    I can’t believe you have to wait until the new year to get yours fixed.

    Yes, ours is fixed, because we have no landlord. As homeowners it cost a year’s rent to do it over the holidays.

    Still, if we did have a landlord, I believe it would be against the law to not have it fixed immediately. For sure the landlord would have to put us up in a hotel.

    One thing led to another and culminated with the chimney being relined on Christmas Eve. Two men 2 days, and 1 man 2 days/… on holiday overtime, plus parts.

    Oddly, I am happy!!!!!!

    I hope your frozen head is okay, my dear Aladin.

    I hope yu are going somewhere warm to ring in the New Year!

    Thank you for a most intriguing post!

    xoxoxo🕊🤍💖💙

    Liked by 2 people

    • Well put, my dear! Your thoughts on the landlord act align with my dream: sending in a hotel! Naturally, that would be the right approach. The law is an ever-present factor in our world, particularly in Germany. One simply needs sufficient funds for a capable lawyer to assert such rights.
      Nonetheless, I’m glad our degrees differ, and a glass of Jack Daniel’s always helps.
      My lifelong friend, thank you and I wish you a cosy and joyful New Year’s Eve.
      🤗🙏🥂😘💖🦋🥰

      Liked by 1 person

  8. Chuckster's avatar Chuckster

    Do you ever stop and thing god has long ago stopped being virile, productive, and powerful? Has he become old and decrepit? Do we give him too much credit and respect? I don’t wish to supplant him, but he needs to get up off his lazy boy and make some mischief…

    Liked by 2 people

  9. I’m so sorry to hear that you’re so cold. Aladin. I hope the furnace is fixed now.

    “The highest truth is one and the· same with the absurd.”

    That’s an interesting line and one I’ll think about today. To me, it speaks of randomness more than a need for opposites to define the polarities in life. Perhaps that’s why I’m an atheist, because even though we are gifted with choice, what happens to us seems so random.

    Thanks for the thought-provoking post.

    Liked by 1 person

    • You have identified a critical issue, dear friend. Though Jung wasn’t an atheist, he kept all the doors open to explore every possibility in the search for truth.
      And I must say that I am still freezing! The first reason is that it happened at an unfavourable and inconvenient time: holidays, one after another; and, unfortunately, in Germany, nothing happens at the moment as one might wish! Thank you for your kind and wise comment; that warms my heart. Sending love and my best regards.🙏🌹💖

      Liked by 1 person

    • Thanks for your warm and kind words, Teagan, my lovely friend. Unfortunately, it is still cold here. We need new gadgets fixed, but due to the holidays, we must wait until next week (hopefully!). However, you have warmed my heart with your kind visit. Happy New Year! Hugs.🙏💖🌹

      Like

    • Oh, yes, I am going to see that movie. I have also recorded a documentary about Joan Baez’s life, which I haven’t watched yet. 😛 She is an extraordinary woman.
      I wish you a speedy recovery, dear friend.🤙

      Like

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