[Carl Jung on “Fire.”]
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. They then dwell in the house next door, and at any moment a flame may dart out and set fire to his own house. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 277.
On the one hand, emotion is the alchemical fire whose warmth brings everything into existence and whose heat burns all superfluities to ashes.
But on the other hand, emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion”. ~Carl Jung, CW 9, Page 96.
Is there anyone among you who believes he can be spared the way? Can he swindle his way past the pain of Christ? I say: “Such a one deceives himself to his own detriment. He beds down on thorns and fire. No one can be spared the way of Christ, since this way leads to what is to come. You should all become Christs. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 235.
When the flame of your greed consumes you, and nothing remains of you but ash, so nothing of you was steadfast. Yet the flame in which you consumed yourself has illuminated many. But if you flee from your fire full of fear, you scorch your fellow men, and the burning torment of your greed cannot die out, so long as you do not desire yourself. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 311.
When the fire has burnt all that should be burnt, the balanced people of common sense naturally settle down and control the fiery ones because they are a nuisance. Yet the fire remains alive in certain people, eg. Meister Eckhart whose teaching lay dormant for six hundred years. Around Eckhart grew up a group of Brethren of the Free Spirit who lived licentiously. The problem we face is: “Is analytical psychology in the same boat?” “Are the second generation like the Brethren of the Free Spirit?” If so, it is the open way to Hell, and analytical psychology has come too soon and it will have to wait for a century or two. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 20.
When the new revelation has lost its life, it means that the fire has devoured all the old wood of the past, then there still remains the Institution or Church (Ecclesia means Society). Thus what we call Church may have the form of any Society, e.g. for amusement, etc. Ecclesia means a gathering of people for any common purpose. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 19.
The Brahmans to look upon the fire both as the subject and the object of a sacrifice. The fire embraced the offering, and was thus a kind of priest; it carried it to the gods, and was thus a kind of mediator between gods and men. But the fire represented also something divine, a god to whom honour was due, and thus it became both the subject and the object of the sacrifice. Hence the idea that Agni sacrifices himself, that he offers a sacrifice to himself, and likewise that he offers himself as a sacrifice” ~Carl Jung; CW 5.
It was a familiar idea with the Brahmans to look upon the fire both as the subject and the object of a sacrifice. The fire embraced the offering, and was thus a kind of priest; it carried it to the gods, and was thus a kind of mediator between gods and men. But the fire represented also something divine, a god to whom honor was due, and thus it became both the subject and the object of the sacrifice. Hence the idea that Agni sacrifices himself, that he offers a sacrifice to himself, and likewise that he offers himself as a sacrifice. ~Carl Jung; CW 5; Citing Max Mueller.
In keeping with its original wind-nature, spirit is always an active, winged, swift-moving being as well as that which vivifies, stimulates, incites, fires, and inspires. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; para. 390.
The struggle between light and darkness has broken out everywhere. The rift runs through the whole globe, and set the fire that is smoldering and glowing Germany ablaze wherever we look. The conflagration that broke out in Germany was the outcome of psychic conditions that are universal. Carl Jung; Civilization in Transition; CW 10, par.485.
The stirring up of conflict is a Lucipherian virtue in the true sense of the word. Conflict engenders fire, the fire of affects and emotions, and like every other fire it has two aspects, that of combustion and that of creating light. On the one hand, emotion is the alchemical fire whose warmth brings everything into existence and whose heat burns all superfluities to ashes (omnes superfluitates comburit). But on the other hand, emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light or from inertia to movement without emotion. – “Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype” (1939). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P. 179
If one honors God, the sun or the fire, then one honors one’s own vital force, the libido. It is a Seneca says: “god is near you, he is with you, in you.” God is our own longing to which we pay divine honors. ~Carl Jung; The Psychology of the Unconscious.
I believe that we have the choice: I preferred the living wonders of the God. I daily weigh up my whole life and I continue to fiery brilliance of the God as a higher and fuller life than the ashes of rationality. The ashes are suicide to me. I could perhaps put out the fire but I cannot deny to myself the experience of the God. Nor can I cut myself off from this experience. I also do not want to, since I want to live. My life wants itself whole. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 339.
There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of the creative fire. ~Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Page 169.
You yourself are a conflict that rages in itself and against itself, in order to melt its incompatible substances, the male and the female, in the fire of suffering, and thus create that fixed and unalterable form which is the goal of life. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 375.
Thus, as early as the dream-book of Artemidorus, we come across the case of a man dreaming that his father perished in a fire, and after a few days the dreamer himself died of a high fever. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 546-548.
Everyone has complexes, there is nothing to be ashamed of in that; it would in fact be highly suspicious if we found someone who had no complexes, for these are the fires of the psyche. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 204.
Fire and water are inherent opposites and it is just this which causes rebirth. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 236.
Although since 1918 I knew that a terrible fire would spread over Europe beginning in the North East, I have no vision beyond 1940 concerning the fate of Europe. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 285-286.
People vary very much in their relation to these problems; some prefer the settled thing, while others, the revolutionaries, prefer the fire. But to the Old Man in us it is painful to walk into the fire. He seeks an institution because of its regularity and safety. The revolutionaries will find a sword not peace. They must go out and fight; they are on fire; but they repel, even each other. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 19.
One text says that the “heart” of Mercurius is at the North Pole and that he is like a fire (northern lights). He is, in fact, as another text says, “the universal and scintillating fire of the light of nature, which carries the heavenly spirit within it.” ~Carl Jung, Alchemical Studies, Para 256.
The way to your beyond leads through Hell and in fact through your own wholly particular Hell, whose bottom consists of knee-deep rubble, whose air is the spent breath of millions, whose -fires are dwarflike passions, and whose devils are chimerical sign-boards. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 262
I have been baptized with impure water for rebirth. A flame from the fire of Hell awaited me above the baptismal basin. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 304.
The spirit of the depths is pregnant with ice, fire, and death. You are right to fear the spirit of the depths, as he is full of horror. You see in these days what the spirit of the depths bore. You did not believe it, but you would have known it if you had taken counsel with your fear. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 238.
Passion, whose conquest still requires so much effort in the case of Christ and does so incessantly and in ever greater measure, has left Buddha and surrounds him as a blazing fire. He is both unaffected and untouchable. ~Carl Jung, Footnote 276, Liber Novus, Page 367.
The other Gods died of their temporality, yet the supreme meaning never dies, it turns into meaning and then into absurdity, and out of the fire and blood of their collision the supreme meaning rises up rejuvenated anew. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 230.
I see in splendor the mother of God with the child. Peter stands in front of her in admiration-then Peter alone with the key-the Pope with a triple crown-a Buddha sitting rigidly in a circle of fire-a many-armed bloody Goddess-it is Salome desperately wringing her hands-it takes hold of me, she is my own soul, and now I see Elijah in the image of the stone. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 248.
One used to believe that one could murder a God. But the God was saved, he forged a new axe in the fire, and plunged again into the flood of light of the East to resume his ancient cycle. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 283.
My God, I love you as a mother loves the unborn whom she carries in her heart. Grow in the egg of the East, nourish yourself from my love, drink the juice of my life so that you will become a radiant God. We need your light, oh child. Since we go in darkness, light up our paths. May your light shine before us, may your fire warm the coldness of our life. We do not need your power but life. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 286.
It is certainly possible and even quite easy for our reason to deny the God and to speak only of sickness. Thus we accept the sick part and can also heal it. But it will be a healing with loss. We lose a part of life. We go on living, but as ones lamed by the God. Where the fire blazed dead ashes lie. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 339.
The act of becoming conscious happens to man in darkness. If he can grasp and handle consciousness then the fire brought from Heaven becomes a sacrificial flame, not the wrath of the gods. The acquisition of consciousness by force creates a sense of guilt. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.
The Bible says, “Whosoever shall say “Racha” to his brother is guilty of hellfire.” If we substitute “shadow” for “brother” and implicate the dark brother within, we open out this biblical word into new perspectives. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 25.
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Thanks to Lewis Lafontaine for the work involved in compiling this great information.
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