CG JUNG - Countryside Anarchist

APPENDIX 2
was not there any more; he had faded. Where had he gone? She had a
second vision, and the first one had been dissolved in the second: a white
serpent appeared to her in splendor and imperturbable majesty, wearing
feathers and a diadem.
Personally she was in no way aware of what this image signified. It is
the well-known representation of the Mexican air and wind god Quetzalcoatl
in his shape as a feathered serpent (the Plumed Serpent). He is the
redeemer-god of the Indian, who embodies for the psyche of the American
person the unconscious spirit.
This vision impressed my patient tremendously and gave her the courage,
after ten years, finally to make her general confession to me—with
which the therapeutic effect was, of course, achieved.
What had actually happened? The humidity had descended as dew
and had fertilized and burst the wrapping of the Indian. He now showed
her his actual meaning, his undogmatic pagan face. From the point of
view of the church, it was the appearance of a devil, who had merely
assumed the form of the redeemer to mislead the Christian. Thus the
Spanish conquerors of Yucatan already interpreted the crosses that they
found all over the country as a seduction of the devil. The early Christians,
as well, who recognized the similarity between the myth of Dionysus
and the life of Christ, thought that the devil had invented this
Anticipatio Christi expressly to confound them.
What the patient actually did during her analysis was really pÖjv—persisting
in prayer—which then caused the transformation. Laya, the redissolution
of the figures, would for us correspond to the intellectual process
of comprehension. The patient has to know what has happened to
her; she has to understand her own myth. The image would capture and
detain us, if we would not dissolve it through comprehension. Only
when we have assimilated it to the height of consciousness can new
figures emerge.
6 October 1932
Dr. Jung: What one could still add here, from the psychological side, is
the purely empirical results of the analysis. 4 In every typical course of an
analysis greater awareness emerges through realizing repressions, projections,
and so on. The analytical process thus occasions a broadening
4 These remarks follow a discussion of the process of the development of consciousness
in yoga. Tantra Yoga, 50–51.
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