Joseph Wright: Vesuvius in Eruption Jung: “The change of character brought about by the uprush of collective forces is amazing.” The change of character brought about by the uprush of collective forces is amazing. A gentle and reasonable being can be transformed into a maniac or a savage beast. One is always inclined…
Carl Jung speaks about the projection of evil We are always, thanks to our human nature, potential criminals. In reality we merely lacked a suitable opportunity to be drawn into the infernal melee. None of us stands outside humanity’s black collective shadow. Whether the crime lies many generations back or happens today, it remains…
Peter Birkhauser: The Bear at the Tree of Light To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives…
Ivan Iavazovsky: The Creation of the World Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The later procedure, however,…
“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.” …
Carl Jung: “This meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow…” This 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…
Alexander-Louis Laloir: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1865 Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an…
William Blake: The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun Jung: On the demonic dynamism of the Shadow in mass movements… It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic…
Carl Jung: On the Shadow I have tried, in this book, to elucidate and amplify the various aspects of the archetype which it is most important for modern man to understand— namely, the archetype of the self. By way of introduction, I described those concepts and archetypes which manifest themselves in the course…