THE LIVING TREE
BRANCHING DESCENT
Nothing Lives As Long As Deep Memory
The Tree Where Man Was Born
Parental complex:
A group of emotionally charged images and ideas associated with the parents.
Jung believed that the numinosity surrounding the personal parents, apparent in their more or less magical influence, was to a large extent due to an archetypal image of the primordial parents resident in every psyche.
The importance that modern psychology attaches to the “parental complex” is a direct continuation of primitive man’s experience of the dangerous power of the ancestral spirits. Even the error of judgment which leads him unthinkingly to assume that the spirits are realities of the external world is carried on in our assumption (which is only partially correct) that the real parents are responsible for the parental complex. In the old trauma theory of Freudian psychoanalysis, and in other quarters as well, this assumption even passed for a scientific explanation. (It was in order to avoid this confusion that I advocated the term “parental imago.”)["The Function of the Unconscious," CW 7, par. 293.]
The imago of the parents is composed of both the image created in the individual psyche from the experience of the personal parents and collective elements already present.
The image is unconsciously projected, and when the parents die, the projected image goes on working as though it were a spirit existing on its own. The primitive then speaks of parental spirits who return by night (revenants), while the modern man calls it a father or mother complex.[Ibid., par. 294.]
So long as a positive or negative resemblance to the parents is the deciding factor in a love choice, the release from the parental imago, and hence from childhood, is not complete.["Mind and Earth," CW 10, par. 74].
Hermes-Souls-on-the-Banks-of-the-Acheron-Hiremy-Hirschl-1898 The Grail Table
Illustration of 'The Round Table and the Holy Grail',
from a manuscript of 'Lancelot-Grail' written by Michel Gantelet, completed in 1470
It reappears in Medieval to late Renaissance alchemy and Freemasonry, and lies at the core of the Medieval stories about the loss and recovery of that mysterious object of adoration and restoration—Sangreal, the Holy Grail.
"My soul - are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again. Should I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the unfathomable, which we call divine." --C.G. Jung
The knowledge of death came to me that night, from the dying that engulfs the world. I saw how we live toward death, how the swaying golden wheat sinks together under the scythe of the reaper, like a smooth wave on the sea-beach.
He who abides in common life becomes aware of death with fear. Thus the fear of death drives him toward singleness. He does not live there, but he becomes aware of life and is happy; since in singleness he is one who becomes, and has overcome death. He overcomes death through overcoming common life. He does not live his individual being, since he is not what he is, but what he becomes.
One who becomes grows aware of life, whereas one who simply exists never will, since he is in the midst of life. He needs the heights and singleness to become aware of life. But in life he becomes aware of death. And it is good that you become aware of collective death, since then you know why your singleness and your heights are good.
Your heights are like the moon that luminously wanders alone and through the night looks eternally clear. Sometimes it covers itself and then you are totally in the darkness of the earth, but time and again it fills itself out with light.
The death of the earth is foreign to it. Motionless and clear, it sees the life of the earth from afar, without enveloping haze and streaming oceans. Its unchanging form has been solid from eternity. It is the solitary clear light of the night, the individual being, and the near fragment of eternity.
From there you look out, cold, motionless, and radiating. With otherworldly silvery light and green twilights, you pour out into the distant horror. You see it but your gaze is clear and cold. Your hands are red from living blood, but the moonlight of your gaze is motionless.
It is the life blood of your brother, yes, it is your own blood, but your gaze remains luminous and embraces the entire horror and the earth's round. Your gaze rests on silvery seas, on snowy peaks, on blue valleys, and you do not hear the groaning and howling of the human animal.
The moon is dead. Your soul went to the moon, to the preserver of souls. Thus the soul moved toward death. I went into the inner death and saw that outer dying is better than inner death. And I decided to die outside and to live within. For that reason I turned away and sought the place of the inner life. ~Carl Jung; Red Book. The Holy Guardian Angel is the personification of the immortal bloodline collective consciousness, a genetically-carried and accessible connection back through the mists of time that constitutes genius: One Blood, One Life, One Love Preface
"In the deepest sense, we all dream not of ourselves,
but out of what lies between us and the other." --C.G. Jung
"The realm of the psyche is immeasurably great and filled with living reality. At its brink lies the secret of Matter and Spirit." ~Carl Jung
BRANCHING DESCENT
Nothing Lives As Long As Deep Memory
The Tree Where Man Was Born
Parental complex:
A group of emotionally charged images and ideas associated with the parents.
Jung believed that the numinosity surrounding the personal parents, apparent in their more or less magical influence, was to a large extent due to an archetypal image of the primordial parents resident in every psyche.
The importance that modern psychology attaches to the “parental complex” is a direct continuation of primitive man’s experience of the dangerous power of the ancestral spirits. Even the error of judgment which leads him unthinkingly to assume that the spirits are realities of the external world is carried on in our assumption (which is only partially correct) that the real parents are responsible for the parental complex. In the old trauma theory of Freudian psychoanalysis, and in other quarters as well, this assumption even passed for a scientific explanation. (It was in order to avoid this confusion that I advocated the term “parental imago.”)["The Function of the Unconscious," CW 7, par. 293.]
The imago of the parents is composed of both the image created in the individual psyche from the experience of the personal parents and collective elements already present.
The image is unconsciously projected, and when the parents die, the projected image goes on working as though it were a spirit existing on its own. The primitive then speaks of parental spirits who return by night (revenants), while the modern man calls it a father or mother complex.[Ibid., par. 294.]
So long as a positive or negative resemblance to the parents is the deciding factor in a love choice, the release from the parental imago, and hence from childhood, is not complete.["Mind and Earth," CW 10, par. 74].
Hermes-Souls-on-the-Banks-of-the-Acheron-Hiremy-Hirschl-1898 The Grail Table
Illustration of 'The Round Table and the Holy Grail',
from a manuscript of 'Lancelot-Grail' written by Michel Gantelet, completed in 1470
It reappears in Medieval to late Renaissance alchemy and Freemasonry, and lies at the core of the Medieval stories about the loss and recovery of that mysterious object of adoration and restoration—Sangreal, the Holy Grail.
"My soul - are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again. Should I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the unfathomable, which we call divine." --C.G. Jung
The knowledge of death came to me that night, from the dying that engulfs the world. I saw how we live toward death, how the swaying golden wheat sinks together under the scythe of the reaper, like a smooth wave on the sea-beach.
He who abides in common life becomes aware of death with fear. Thus the fear of death drives him toward singleness. He does not live there, but he becomes aware of life and is happy; since in singleness he is one who becomes, and has overcome death. He overcomes death through overcoming common life. He does not live his individual being, since he is not what he is, but what he becomes.
One who becomes grows aware of life, whereas one who simply exists never will, since he is in the midst of life. He needs the heights and singleness to become aware of life. But in life he becomes aware of death. And it is good that you become aware of collective death, since then you know why your singleness and your heights are good.
Your heights are like the moon that luminously wanders alone and through the night looks eternally clear. Sometimes it covers itself and then you are totally in the darkness of the earth, but time and again it fills itself out with light.
The death of the earth is foreign to it. Motionless and clear, it sees the life of the earth from afar, without enveloping haze and streaming oceans. Its unchanging form has been solid from eternity. It is the solitary clear light of the night, the individual being, and the near fragment of eternity.
From there you look out, cold, motionless, and radiating. With otherworldly silvery light and green twilights, you pour out into the distant horror. You see it but your gaze is clear and cold. Your hands are red from living blood, but the moonlight of your gaze is motionless.
It is the life blood of your brother, yes, it is your own blood, but your gaze remains luminous and embraces the entire horror and the earth's round. Your gaze rests on silvery seas, on snowy peaks, on blue valleys, and you do not hear the groaning and howling of the human animal.
The moon is dead. Your soul went to the moon, to the preserver of souls. Thus the soul moved toward death. I went into the inner death and saw that outer dying is better than inner death. And I decided to die outside and to live within. For that reason I turned away and sought the place of the inner life. ~Carl Jung; Red Book. The Holy Guardian Angel is the personification of the immortal bloodline collective consciousness, a genetically-carried and accessible connection back through the mists of time that constitutes genius: One Blood, One Life, One Love Preface
"In the deepest sense, we all dream not of ourselves,
but out of what lies between us and the other." --C.G. Jung
"The realm of the psyche is immeasurably great and filled with living reality. At its brink lies the secret of Matter and Spirit." ~Carl Jung
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