MAGIC
The Magic of Our Ancestors
The Magic of Our Ancestors
Lizzy Ansingh - Magie: The Magician (oil on panel 51 x 38.5 cm 1875-1959)
Magic is a way of living. If one has done one's best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 314.
The ancients devised magic to compel fate. They needed it to determine outer fate. We need it to determine inner fate and to find the way that we are unable to conceive.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 311.
The "way" is not an upward-going straight line, f.i. from earth to heaven or from matter to spirit, but rather a circumabulatio of and an approximation to the Centrum.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396
Magic is a way of living. If one has done one's best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 314.
The ancients devised magic to compel fate. They needed it to determine outer fate. We need it to determine inner fate and to find the way that we are unable to conceive.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 311.
The "way" is not an upward-going straight line, f.i. from earth to heaven or from matter to spirit, but rather a circumabulatio of and an approximation to the Centrum.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 392-396
Magic is a way of living.
If one has done one's best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place.
One cannot say what the effect of magic will be, since no one can know it in advance because the magical is the lawless, which occurs without rules and by chance, so to speak
But the condition is that one totally accepts it and does not reject it, in order to transfer everything to the growth of the tree. Stupidity too is part of this, which everyone has a great deal of, and also tastelessness, which is possibly the greatest nuisance.
Thus a certain solitude and isolation are inescapable conditions of life for the well-being of oneself and of the other, otherwise one cannot / sufficiently be oneself A certain slowness of life, which is like a standstill, will be unavoidable.
The uncertainty of such a life will most probably be its greatest burden, but still I must unite the two conflicting powers of my soul and keep them together in a true marriage until the end of my life, since the magician is called Daihmon and his wife Bachus.
I hold together what Christ has kept apart in himself and through his example in others, since the more the one half of my being strives toward the good, the more the other half journeys to Hell.
When the month of the Twins had ended, the men said to their shadows: "You are I," since they had previously had their spirit around them as a second person.
Thus the two became one, and this collision the formidable broke out, precisely that spring of consciousness that one calls culture and which through lasted until the time of Christ. But the fish indicated the moment when what was united split, according to the eternal law of contrasts, into an underworld and upper world.
If the power of growth begins to cease, then the united falls into its opposites. Christ sent what is beneath to Hell, since it strives toward the good. That had to be. But the separated cannot remain separated forever.
It will be united again and the month of the fish will soon be over. We suspect and understand that growth needs both, and hence we keep good and evil close together. Because we know that too far into the good means the same as too far into evil, we keep them both together.
But we thus lose direction and things no longer flow from the mountain to the valley, but grow quietly from the valley to the mountain. That which we can no longer prevent or hide is our fruit.
The flowing stream becomes a lake and an ocean / that has no outlet, unless its water rises to the sky as steam and falls from the clouds as rain. While the sea is a death, it is also the place of rising. Such is DAIHMON, who tends his garden.
Our hands have been tied, and each must sit quietly in his place. He rises invisibly and falls as rain on distant lands. The water on the ground is no cloud, which should rain. Only pregnant women can give birth, not those who have yet to conceive.
[Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 314-315.]
If one has done one's best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place.
One cannot say what the effect of magic will be, since no one can know it in advance because the magical is the lawless, which occurs without rules and by chance, so to speak
But the condition is that one totally accepts it and does not reject it, in order to transfer everything to the growth of the tree. Stupidity too is part of this, which everyone has a great deal of, and also tastelessness, which is possibly the greatest nuisance.
Thus a certain solitude and isolation are inescapable conditions of life for the well-being of oneself and of the other, otherwise one cannot / sufficiently be oneself A certain slowness of life, which is like a standstill, will be unavoidable.
The uncertainty of such a life will most probably be its greatest burden, but still I must unite the two conflicting powers of my soul and keep them together in a true marriage until the end of my life, since the magician is called Daihmon and his wife Bachus.
I hold together what Christ has kept apart in himself and through his example in others, since the more the one half of my being strives toward the good, the more the other half journeys to Hell.
When the month of the Twins had ended, the men said to their shadows: "You are I," since they had previously had their spirit around them as a second person.
Thus the two became one, and this collision the formidable broke out, precisely that spring of consciousness that one calls culture and which through lasted until the time of Christ. But the fish indicated the moment when what was united split, according to the eternal law of contrasts, into an underworld and upper world.
If the power of growth begins to cease, then the united falls into its opposites. Christ sent what is beneath to Hell, since it strives toward the good. That had to be. But the separated cannot remain separated forever.
It will be united again and the month of the fish will soon be over. We suspect and understand that growth needs both, and hence we keep good and evil close together. Because we know that too far into the good means the same as too far into evil, we keep them both together.
But we thus lose direction and things no longer flow from the mountain to the valley, but grow quietly from the valley to the mountain. That which we can no longer prevent or hide is our fruit.
The flowing stream becomes a lake and an ocean / that has no outlet, unless its water rises to the sky as steam and falls from the clouds as rain. While the sea is a death, it is also the place of rising. Such is DAIHMON, who tends his garden.
Our hands have been tied, and each must sit quietly in his place. He rises invisibly and falls as rain on distant lands. The water on the ground is no cloud, which should rain. Only pregnant women can give birth, not those who have yet to conceive.
[Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 314-315.]
George Henry and Edward Atkinson Hornel - The Druids Bringing in the Mistletoe (1890)
Magic is the science of the jungle. ~Carl Jung, Civilization in Transition, Page 63.
Our psyche can function as though space did not exist. The psyche can thus be independent of space, of time, and of causality. This explains the possibility of magic. ~C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff - A Collection of Remembrances; Pages 51-70.
The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 314.
Magic is the working of men on men, but your magic action does not affect your neighbor; it affects you first, and only if you withstand it does an invisible effect pass from you to your neighbor. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 308.
Where reason abides one needs no magic. Hence our time no longer needs magic. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 314.
Magic is a way of living. If one has done one's best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 314.
The ancients devised magic to compel fate. They needed it to determine outer fate. We need it to determine inner fate and to find the way that we are unable to conceive. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 311.
Paradise, here, means the new impersonal attitude that is needed. The white magician cannot find the keys, because the way that seemed to be the wrong way led into the right way; for they needed the completion of things. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 26.
Analysts and mathematicians both consider themselves infallible; they live with invisible magic cloaks around them. They are both concerned with archetypes . Archetypes are living powers; they are the "thoughts of God." ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 59.
An idol is a petrified symbol used stereotypically for "magical" effects. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
The magical word is one that lets "a primordial word resound behind it"'; magical action releases primordial action. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
There is no description of the Mass, for instance, in the gospels, it came in from antique sources; so the key of God in the Christian cult is the magic key with the power to open or shut. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 189.
Do not forget that the original meaning of all letters and numbers was a magical one! Hence the "perils of the soul." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 528-529.
Divine grace is not, so to speak, conjured up, the priest does not make a sort of magic incantation in the prayer of consecration to compel the intervention of divine grace; but the Mass itself is a divine intervention, of which man should become aware. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 110.
The serpent represents magical power, which also appears where animal drives are aroused imperceptibly in us. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 366.
Eternal is the Golden Flower only, which grows out of inner liberation from all bondage to things. A man who reaches this stage transposes his ego; he is no longer limited to the monad, but penetrates the magic circle of the polar duality of all phenomena and returns to the undivided One, Tao. ~Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 18.
We constantly hear of Mahatmas and Rishis living away in the mountains of Tibet who are capable of all kinds of magical practices and in India this is also taken for granted; but when Shri Rama Krishna became interested in the question and tried to discover if such people existed, he did not find a single one. Usually it is the invisible or psychic reality which is meant. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 103.
A mandala is a technical term for a magic circle which is used for meditation, but it is also used in a lower form for purpose of witchcraft; the witches' circle was well known in the Middle Ages. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 25Nov1938, Page 25.
We are very much afraid of the word magic, it has a bad name, for its meaning has degenerated and it has a purely superstitious sound in our ears. But magical was originally simply psychical, the ancients did not know of the existence of the psyche, so not being able to call anything psychic they used the word magic. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.
Apotropaic: Descriptive of "magical thinking," based on the desire to depotentiate the influence of an object or person. Apotropaic actions are characteristic of introversion as a mode of psychological orientation. I have seen an introverted child who made his first attempts to walk only after he had learned the names of all the objects in the room he might touch. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, par. 897.]
The word becomes your God, since it protects you from the countless possibilities of interpretation. The word is protective magic against the daimons of the unending, which tear at your soul and want to scatter you to the winds. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 270.
"Magic," he says, is "the preceptor and teacher of the physician," who derives his knowledge from the lumen naturae. ~Carl Jung citing Paracelsus, CW 13, Par 148.
Our psyche can function as though space did not exist. The psyche can thus be independent of space, of time, and of causality. This explains the possibility of magic. ~C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff - A Collection of Remembrances; Pages 51-70.
The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 314.
Magic is the working of men on men, but your magic action does not affect your neighbor; it affects you first, and only if you withstand it does an invisible effect pass from you to your neighbor. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 308.
Where reason abides one needs no magic. Hence our time no longer needs magic. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 314.
Magic is a way of living. If one has done one's best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 314.
The ancients devised magic to compel fate. They needed it to determine outer fate. We need it to determine inner fate and to find the way that we are unable to conceive. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 311.
Paradise, here, means the new impersonal attitude that is needed. The white magician cannot find the keys, because the way that seemed to be the wrong way led into the right way; for they needed the completion of things. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 26.
Analysts and mathematicians both consider themselves infallible; they live with invisible magic cloaks around them. They are both concerned with archetypes . Archetypes are living powers; they are the "thoughts of God." ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, Page 59.
An idol is a petrified symbol used stereotypically for "magical" effects. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
The magical word is one that lets "a primordial word resound behind it"'; magical action releases primordial action. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.
There is no description of the Mass, for instance, in the gospels, it came in from antique sources; so the key of God in the Christian cult is the magic key with the power to open or shut. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 189.
Do not forget that the original meaning of all letters and numbers was a magical one! Hence the "perils of the soul." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 528-529.
Divine grace is not, so to speak, conjured up, the priest does not make a sort of magic incantation in the prayer of consecration to compel the intervention of divine grace; but the Mass itself is a divine intervention, of which man should become aware. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 110.
The serpent represents magical power, which also appears where animal drives are aroused imperceptibly in us. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 366.
Eternal is the Golden Flower only, which grows out of inner liberation from all bondage to things. A man who reaches this stage transposes his ego; he is no longer limited to the monad, but penetrates the magic circle of the polar duality of all phenomena and returns to the undivided One, Tao. ~Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 18.
We constantly hear of Mahatmas and Rishis living away in the mountains of Tibet who are capable of all kinds of magical practices and in India this is also taken for granted; but when Shri Rama Krishna became interested in the question and tried to discover if such people existed, he did not find a single one. Usually it is the invisible or psychic reality which is meant. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, Pages 103.
A mandala is a technical term for a magic circle which is used for meditation, but it is also used in a lower form for purpose of witchcraft; the witches' circle was well known in the Middle Ages. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 25Nov1938, Page 25.
We are very much afraid of the word magic, it has a bad name, for its meaning has degenerated and it has a purely superstitious sound in our ears. But magical was originally simply psychical, the ancients did not know of the existence of the psyche, so not being able to call anything psychic they used the word magic. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.
Apotropaic: Descriptive of "magical thinking," based on the desire to depotentiate the influence of an object or person. Apotropaic actions are characteristic of introversion as a mode of psychological orientation. I have seen an introverted child who made his first attempts to walk only after he had learned the names of all the objects in the room he might touch. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, par. 897.]
The word becomes your God, since it protects you from the countless possibilities of interpretation. The word is protective magic against the daimons of the unending, which tear at your soul and want to scatter you to the winds. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 270.
"Magic," he says, is "the preceptor and teacher of the physician," who derives his knowledge from the lumen naturae. ~Carl Jung citing Paracelsus, CW 13, Par 148.
When they [the mystics] descend into the depths of their own being they find ‘in their heart’ the image of the sun, they find their own life-force which they call the ‘sun’ for a legitimate and, I would say, a physical reason because our source of energy and life actually is sun. Our physiological life, regarded as an energy process, is entirely solar ~Carl Jung; Symbols of Transformation; para. 176.
Those born after the flesh are opposed to those born after the spirit, who are not born from the fleshly mother but from a symbol of the mother” --Jung, CW5, (para. 313)
Those born after the flesh are opposed to those born after the spirit, who are not born from the fleshly mother but from a symbol of the mother” --Jung, CW5, (para. 313)
ANCESTOR WORK
One of the recurrent challenges of supporting others in the foundations of ancestor work is that most of us who were raised in the United States or other Western, industrialized nations totally lack a framework for relating with dead. I was not raised with an awareness of my blood ancestors or anything more than a passing awareness of ghosts, and I spent over five years actively involved with diverse European pagan, shamanic, and magical traditions, before greeting my own lineage ancestors. Had my first teachers in shamanic practice not guided me to reach out to my blood lineage ancestors, I could have easily continued to overlook what I now understand to be one core element of earth spirituality and indigenous wisdom.
So what is ancestor work? To begin to hone in on this question, it’s necessary to clarify who are the ancestors. In the broadest sense the ancestors include our pre-human animal kin, unicellular organisms, and the stars. Depending on your worldview and understanding of earlier times, they may also include deities, angels, demigods, giants, bigfeet, and other magical beings or elemental powers from which humans in general or your lineage in particular were formed. For the sake of simplicity and under the working assumption that what is proximal in time has the greatest influence on our lives, I’m mostly focused on our species-level ancestors or, in more mundane terms, the recent human dead. Another important type of ancestral engagement for many people involves the beloved dead along one’s spiritual lineage.
So, when I’m guiding others in ancestor work, most of the time this involves relating with one’s biological ancestors, both those remembered by name and others of the last seven generations as well as older lineage guides who may wish to assist in the ancestral elevation and repair process. Individuals who are adopted seem to carry what is variably a double blessing or curse in the form of significant influence by two family lineages or sets of family karma, and I encourage adoptees to work with both biological and adoptive ancestors, as moved by intuition and necessity. This topic raises a question beyond the scope of this essay regarding how our blood itself can change; however, my experience to date leads me to believe that even in cases of adoption, religious conversion, blood transfusion, weighty initiation into a specific lineage, and otherwise complex ancestral ongoings, that it’s still entirely worthwhile to do a cycle of work with the spirits of one’s recently deceased blood ancestors.
The essence of the process that I facilitate with the family ancestors is to help individuals to first make connection with vibrant, loving ancestral guides (some of whom walked the Earth quite a long time ago) along one’s respective bloodlines and then to partner with those guides for the elevation and healing of those among the recent dead who are in need of support. This process of systematically clearing the lineages of energetic funkiness and assisting any troubled dead in becoming well-off ancestors serves to restore the spiritual roots or energetic integrity of the family system to a level of coherence that would have likely been the norm during historical periods when ancestor reverence and more effective funerals/death rites of passage were commonplace. After completing this repair process, the nature of one’s ancestral engagements can then transition from often unconscious crisis management with the family ghosts to maintenance of conscious relationships with now vibrant and supportive ancestors. If having to do all this seems somewhat unfair and like it should have been taken care of by previous generations, that’s an entirely understandable and also largely unhelpful stance considering that it’s our lives and the lives of our children that are currently at the bottom of the ancestral dog pile.
The positive incentive for engaging your recent blood ancestors is that those who are already well (and those who become well in the process) deeply and truly want to you be happy and fulfilled, and they actually have the means to assist in bringing this about. The ancestors can be a source of guidance, wisdom, energetic and emotional support, magical companionship, family healing, personal empowerment, and all other manner of goodness and joy. If you are in the habit of taking care of your family, they can actively assist in this process and relieve some of the burden. If you don’t love feeling the weight of generations of avoiding personal growth issues then having active ancestral support for transforming these patterns can make all the difference. When you or other family members die, having the recent ancestors in good shape makes this transition a lot smoother as there is actually a reception committee on the other side. Also, the ancestors are particularly helpful at reminding us of the gifts and blessings that we have inherited along the bloodlines and the role these gifts play in fulfilling our potential here on Earth. Finally, I’ve found that personally knowing and loving my family ancestors is great medicine for the cultural wound of disconnection from indigenous, tribal culture and is helpful in healing the modern tendency to focus only on the future in dangerous and ungrounded ways.
http://www.ancestralmedicine.org/2011/who-are-the-ancestors-and-why-do-they-matter
One of the recurrent challenges of supporting others in the foundations of ancestor work is that most of us who were raised in the United States or other Western, industrialized nations totally lack a framework for relating with dead. I was not raised with an awareness of my blood ancestors or anything more than a passing awareness of ghosts, and I spent over five years actively involved with diverse European pagan, shamanic, and magical traditions, before greeting my own lineage ancestors. Had my first teachers in shamanic practice not guided me to reach out to my blood lineage ancestors, I could have easily continued to overlook what I now understand to be one core element of earth spirituality and indigenous wisdom.
So what is ancestor work? To begin to hone in on this question, it’s necessary to clarify who are the ancestors. In the broadest sense the ancestors include our pre-human animal kin, unicellular organisms, and the stars. Depending on your worldview and understanding of earlier times, they may also include deities, angels, demigods, giants, bigfeet, and other magical beings or elemental powers from which humans in general or your lineage in particular were formed. For the sake of simplicity and under the working assumption that what is proximal in time has the greatest influence on our lives, I’m mostly focused on our species-level ancestors or, in more mundane terms, the recent human dead. Another important type of ancestral engagement for many people involves the beloved dead along one’s spiritual lineage.
So, when I’m guiding others in ancestor work, most of the time this involves relating with one’s biological ancestors, both those remembered by name and others of the last seven generations as well as older lineage guides who may wish to assist in the ancestral elevation and repair process. Individuals who are adopted seem to carry what is variably a double blessing or curse in the form of significant influence by two family lineages or sets of family karma, and I encourage adoptees to work with both biological and adoptive ancestors, as moved by intuition and necessity. This topic raises a question beyond the scope of this essay regarding how our blood itself can change; however, my experience to date leads me to believe that even in cases of adoption, religious conversion, blood transfusion, weighty initiation into a specific lineage, and otherwise complex ancestral ongoings, that it’s still entirely worthwhile to do a cycle of work with the spirits of one’s recently deceased blood ancestors.
The essence of the process that I facilitate with the family ancestors is to help individuals to first make connection with vibrant, loving ancestral guides (some of whom walked the Earth quite a long time ago) along one’s respective bloodlines and then to partner with those guides for the elevation and healing of those among the recent dead who are in need of support. This process of systematically clearing the lineages of energetic funkiness and assisting any troubled dead in becoming well-off ancestors serves to restore the spiritual roots or energetic integrity of the family system to a level of coherence that would have likely been the norm during historical periods when ancestor reverence and more effective funerals/death rites of passage were commonplace. After completing this repair process, the nature of one’s ancestral engagements can then transition from often unconscious crisis management with the family ghosts to maintenance of conscious relationships with now vibrant and supportive ancestors. If having to do all this seems somewhat unfair and like it should have been taken care of by previous generations, that’s an entirely understandable and also largely unhelpful stance considering that it’s our lives and the lives of our children that are currently at the bottom of the ancestral dog pile.
The positive incentive for engaging your recent blood ancestors is that those who are already well (and those who become well in the process) deeply and truly want to you be happy and fulfilled, and they actually have the means to assist in bringing this about. The ancestors can be a source of guidance, wisdom, energetic and emotional support, magical companionship, family healing, personal empowerment, and all other manner of goodness and joy. If you are in the habit of taking care of your family, they can actively assist in this process and relieve some of the burden. If you don’t love feeling the weight of generations of avoiding personal growth issues then having active ancestral support for transforming these patterns can make all the difference. When you or other family members die, having the recent ancestors in good shape makes this transition a lot smoother as there is actually a reception committee on the other side. Also, the ancestors are particularly helpful at reminding us of the gifts and blessings that we have inherited along the bloodlines and the role these gifts play in fulfilling our potential here on Earth. Finally, I’ve found that personally knowing and loving my family ancestors is great medicine for the cultural wound of disconnection from indigenous, tribal culture and is helpful in healing the modern tendency to focus only on the future in dangerous and ungrounded ways.
http://www.ancestralmedicine.org/2011/who-are-the-ancestors-and-why-do-they-matter
The Magic Circle by John Waterhouse
It is an error to believe that there are magical practices; that one can learn. One cannot understand magic. One can only understand what accords with reason. Magic accords with unreason, which one cannot understand. The world accords not only with reason but also with unreason. But just as one employs reason to make sense of the world, in that what is reasonable about it approaches reason, a lack of understanding also accords with unreason.
This meeting is magical and eludes comprehension. Magical understanding is what one calls noncomprehension. Everything that works magically is incomprehensible, and the incomprehensible often works magically. One calls incomprehensible workings magical. The magical always surrounds me, always involves me.lt opens spaces that have no doors and leads out into the open where there is no exit. The magical is good and evil and neither good nor evil. Magic is dangerous since what accords with unreason confuses, allures and provokes; and I am always its first victim.Where reason abides, one needs no magic. Hence our time no longer needs magic. Only those without reason needed it to replace their lack of reason. But it is thoroughly unreasonable to bring together what suits reason with magic since they have nothing to do with one another. Both become spoiled through being brought together. Therefore all those lacking reason quite ;rightly fall into superfluity and disregard. A rational man of this time will therefore never use magic.
But it is another thing for whoever has opened the chaos in himself We need magic to be able to receive or invoke the messenger and the communication of the incomprehensible.;We recognized that the world comprises reason and unreason; and we also understood that our way needs not only reason but also unreason. This distinction is arbitrary and depends upon the level of comprehension. But one can be certain that the greater part of the world eludes our understanding. We must value the incomprehensible and unreasonable equally, although they are not necessarily equal in themselves; a part of the incomprehensible, however, is only presently incomprehensible and;might already concur with reason tomorrow. But as long as one does not understand it, it remains unreasonable. Insofar as the incomprehensible accords with reason, one may try to think;it with success; but insofar as it is unreasonable, / one needs magical practices to open it up.
The practice of magic consists in malting what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner. The magical way is not arbitrary, since that would be understandable, but it arises from incomprehensible grounds. Besides, to speak of grounds is incorrect, since grounds concur with reason. Nor can one speak of the groundless, since hardly anything further can be said about this. The magical way arises by itself If one opens up chaos, magic also arises.
One can teach the way that leads to chaos, but one cannot teach magic. One can only remain silent about this, which seems to be the best apprenticeship. This view is confusing, but this is what magic is like. Where reason establishes order and clarity,magic causes disarray and a lack of clarity.
1 One indeed needs reason for the magical translation of the not-understood into the understandable, since only by means of reason can the understandable be created. No one can say how to use reason, but it does arise if one tries to express only what an opening of chaos means. Magic is a way of living. If one has done one's best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place. One cannot say what the effect of magic will be, since no one can know it in advance because the magical is the lawless, which occurs without rules and by chance, so to speak But the condition is that one totally accepts it and does not reject it, in order to transfer everything to the growth of the tree. Stupidity too is part of this, which everyone has a great deal of, and also tastelessness, which is possibly the greatest nuisance. Thus a certain solitude and isolation are inescapable conditions of life for the well-being of oneself and of the other, otherwise one cannot / sufficiently be oneself A certain slowness of life, which is like a standstill, will be unavoidable. The uncertainty of such a life will most probably be its greatest burden, but still I must unite the two conflicting powers of my soul and keep them together in a true marriage until the end of my life, since the magician is called DAIHMON and his wife BACCHUS. I hold together what Christ has kept apart in himself and through his example in others, since the more the one half of my being strives toward the good, the more the other half journeys to Hell.
When the month of the Twins had ended, the men said to their shadows: "You are I," since they had previously had their spirit around them as a second person. Thus the two became one,and through this collision the formidable broke out, precisely that spring of consciousness that one calls culture and which lasted until the time of Christ. But the fish indicated the moment when what was united split, according to the eternal law of contrasts, into an underworld and upperworld. If the power of growth begins to cease, then the united falls into its opposites. Christ sent what is beneath to Hell, since it strives toward the good. That had to be. But the separated cannot remain separated forever. It will be united again and the month of the fish will soon be over. We suspect and understand that growth needs both, and hence we keep good and evil close together. Because we know that too far into the good means the same as too far into evil, we keep them both together.
But we thus lose direction and things no longer flow from the mountain to the valley, but grow quietly from the valley to the mountain. That which we can no longer prevent or hide is our fruit. The flowing stream becomes a lake and an ocean that has no outlet, unless its water rises to the sky as steam and falls from the clouds as rain. While the sea is a death, it is also the place of rising. Such is DAIHMON, who tends his garden. Our hands have been tied, and each must sit quietly in his place. He rises invisibly and falls as rain on distant lands. The water on the ground is no cloud, which should rain. Only pregnant women can give birth,not those who have yet to conceive.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 314-315
http://carljungdepthpsychology.blogspot.com/2011/09/magic-is-way-of-living-carl-jung.html
This meeting is magical and eludes comprehension. Magical understanding is what one calls noncomprehension. Everything that works magically is incomprehensible, and the incomprehensible often works magically. One calls incomprehensible workings magical. The magical always surrounds me, always involves me.lt opens spaces that have no doors and leads out into the open where there is no exit. The magical is good and evil and neither good nor evil. Magic is dangerous since what accords with unreason confuses, allures and provokes; and I am always its first victim.Where reason abides, one needs no magic. Hence our time no longer needs magic. Only those without reason needed it to replace their lack of reason. But it is thoroughly unreasonable to bring together what suits reason with magic since they have nothing to do with one another. Both become spoiled through being brought together. Therefore all those lacking reason quite ;rightly fall into superfluity and disregard. A rational man of this time will therefore never use magic.
But it is another thing for whoever has opened the chaos in himself We need magic to be able to receive or invoke the messenger and the communication of the incomprehensible.;We recognized that the world comprises reason and unreason; and we also understood that our way needs not only reason but also unreason. This distinction is arbitrary and depends upon the level of comprehension. But one can be certain that the greater part of the world eludes our understanding. We must value the incomprehensible and unreasonable equally, although they are not necessarily equal in themselves; a part of the incomprehensible, however, is only presently incomprehensible and;might already concur with reason tomorrow. But as long as one does not understand it, it remains unreasonable. Insofar as the incomprehensible accords with reason, one may try to think;it with success; but insofar as it is unreasonable, / one needs magical practices to open it up.
The practice of magic consists in malting what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner. The magical way is not arbitrary, since that would be understandable, but it arises from incomprehensible grounds. Besides, to speak of grounds is incorrect, since grounds concur with reason. Nor can one speak of the groundless, since hardly anything further can be said about this. The magical way arises by itself If one opens up chaos, magic also arises.
One can teach the way that leads to chaos, but one cannot teach magic. One can only remain silent about this, which seems to be the best apprenticeship. This view is confusing, but this is what magic is like. Where reason establishes order and clarity,magic causes disarray and a lack of clarity.
1 One indeed needs reason for the magical translation of the not-understood into the understandable, since only by means of reason can the understandable be created. No one can say how to use reason, but it does arise if one tries to express only what an opening of chaos means. Magic is a way of living. If one has done one's best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place. One cannot say what the effect of magic will be, since no one can know it in advance because the magical is the lawless, which occurs without rules and by chance, so to speak But the condition is that one totally accepts it and does not reject it, in order to transfer everything to the growth of the tree. Stupidity too is part of this, which everyone has a great deal of, and also tastelessness, which is possibly the greatest nuisance. Thus a certain solitude and isolation are inescapable conditions of life for the well-being of oneself and of the other, otherwise one cannot / sufficiently be oneself A certain slowness of life, which is like a standstill, will be unavoidable. The uncertainty of such a life will most probably be its greatest burden, but still I must unite the two conflicting powers of my soul and keep them together in a true marriage until the end of my life, since the magician is called DAIHMON and his wife BACCHUS. I hold together what Christ has kept apart in himself and through his example in others, since the more the one half of my being strives toward the good, the more the other half journeys to Hell.
When the month of the Twins had ended, the men said to their shadows: "You are I," since they had previously had their spirit around them as a second person. Thus the two became one,and through this collision the formidable broke out, precisely that spring of consciousness that one calls culture and which lasted until the time of Christ. But the fish indicated the moment when what was united split, according to the eternal law of contrasts, into an underworld and upperworld. If the power of growth begins to cease, then the united falls into its opposites. Christ sent what is beneath to Hell, since it strives toward the good. That had to be. But the separated cannot remain separated forever. It will be united again and the month of the fish will soon be over. We suspect and understand that growth needs both, and hence we keep good and evil close together. Because we know that too far into the good means the same as too far into evil, we keep them both together.
But we thus lose direction and things no longer flow from the mountain to the valley, but grow quietly from the valley to the mountain. That which we can no longer prevent or hide is our fruit. The flowing stream becomes a lake and an ocean that has no outlet, unless its water rises to the sky as steam and falls from the clouds as rain. While the sea is a death, it is also the place of rising. Such is DAIHMON, who tends his garden. Our hands have been tied, and each must sit quietly in his place. He rises invisibly and falls as rain on distant lands. The water on the ground is no cloud, which should rain. Only pregnant women can give birth,not those who have yet to conceive.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 314-315
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