Translated from volumes published by Lorenz Jung based on the edition “Gesammelte Werke” dtv.de The Symbols of Transformation (1952) and Aion (1950)

Mana-personality. A personified archetypal image of a supernatural force.

The Mana-personality is a dominant of the collective unconscious, the well-known archetype of the mighty man in the form of hero, chief, magician, medicine-man, saint, ruler of men and spirits, and the friend of God.[The Mana-Personality,” CW 7, par. 377.]

Mana is a Melanesian word referring to a bewitching or numinous quality in gods and sacred objects.

Historically, the Mana-Personality evolves into the hero and the godlike being, whose earthly form is the priest. How very much the doctor is still Mana is the whole plaint of the analyst! [Ibid., par. 389.]

A Mana-Personality embodies this magical power. In individual psychology, Jung used it to describe the inflationary effect of assimilating autonomous unconscious contents, particularly those associated with anima and animus. (The text and the image are from Carl Jung’s Depth Psychology by my brilliant friend Lewis Lafontaine.)

I started with these specific sections of my friend’s website to better understand this enigmatic topic. Personally, I find Mana to be funny, attractive, amusing, intriguing, and, at the same time, very monstrous.

And now, after sharing parts one and two, I present part three, which is a short one so as not to bore you, or better to say, because of the preparations for my trip! I will be taking a two-week vacation, and the internet connection can be difficult on this trip. But after that, I promise to share a larger and more interesting part when I return!!💖

Individuation
The Mana Personality (P3)

In contrast, our pitifully limited “I”, if it possesses even a spark of self-knowledge, can only withdraw and quickly abandon any illusion of power and importance. It was an illusion: the “I” has not overcome the anima and, therefore, has not acquired its Mana. The consciousness has not become master of the unconscious, but the anima has lost its domineering presumption to the extent that the “I” has been able to come to terms with the unconscious. This conflict, however, was not a victory of consciousness over the unconscious but the establishment of a balance between the two worlds.

The ‘magician’ could only take possession of the “I” because the “I” dreamed of a victory over the anima. This was an attack, and every attack by the “I” would be followed by an attack by the unconscious.

>In a transformed figure
I exercise grim power. <
(Goethe: Faust II, Act 5, Scene 4, in Works in ten volumes, Vol. 4, 1961)

Therefore, if the “I” abandons its claim to victory, the obsession by the magician automatically ceases. But where does the Mana go? Who or what becomes Mana if even the magician can no longer perform magic? We now know that neither the conscious nor the unconscious has Mana, for it is certain that if the “I” does not claim power, then no obsession arises, which means that the unconscious has also lost its supremacy. In this state, the Mana must have fallen into the hands of Something that is conscious and unconscious, or neither conscious nor unconscious. This Something is the sought-after “centre” of the personality, that indescribable Something between the opposites, or the unifier of the opposites, or the result of the conflict, or the “achievement” of the energetic tension, the development of the personality, a most individual step forward, the next stage.

I do not expect the reader to follow the rapid overview of the whole problem in every detail. He should consider it a kind of exposition, the more detailed intellectual elaboration of which I will give in the following…

To be continued! I wish you all a great time.💖🙏💖🌹

PS: As the World Wide Web chaos happened yesterday, I hope our flight stays intact!!😁😅🙏