an extract from Carl Jung's "Man and His Symbols". I'm reading the print version, this digital version has gaps in words (page breaks) and im too lazy to take them all out.
Here Jung talks about primitive man in contrast with modern, and how ill-equipped modern man is with "reason" and "science" to understand symbols, dreams, intuition etc, after debunking everything mystical, supra-normal etc via science and the mainline beliefs we are born into.
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Modern man does not understand how much his "rationalism" (which has destroyed his capacity to respond to numinous symbols and ideas I has put him at the mercy of the psychic "underworld." He has freed himself from "superstition" (or so he believes), but in the process he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated, and he is now paying the price for this break-up in world-wide disorientation and dissociation. Anthropologists have often described what happens to a primitive society when its spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilization. Its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organization disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. We are now in the same condition.
But we have never really understood what we have lost, for our spiritual leaders unfortunately were more interested in protecting their institutions than in understand- ing the mystery that symbols present. In my opinion, faith docs not exclude thought (which is man's strongest weapon), but unfortunately many believers seem to be so afraid of science (and incidentally of psychology) that they turn a blind eye to the numinous psychic powers that forever control man's fate. We have strip- ped all things of their mystery and numinosity : nothing is holy any longer. In earlier ages, as instinctive concepts welled up in the mind of man, his conscious mind could no doubt integrate them into a coherent psychic pattern.
But the "civilized" man is no longer able to do this. His "advanced" con- sciousness has deprived itself of the means by which the auxiliary contributions of the in- stincts and the unconscious can be assimilated. These organs of assimilation and integration were numinous symbols, held holy by common consent. Today, for instance, we talk of "matter." We describe its physical properties. We conduct laboratory experiments to demonstrate some ol its aspects. But the word "matter" remains a dry, inhuman, and purely intellectual concept, without any psychic significance for us. How different was the former image of matter the Great Mother that could encompass and express the profound emotional meaning of Mother Earth. In the same way, what was the spirit is now identified with intellect and thus ceases to be the Father of All. It has degen- erated to the limited ego-thoughts of man; the immense emotional energy expressed in the image of "our Father" vanishes into the sand of an intellectual desert. These two archetypal principles lie at the foundation of the contrasting systems of East and West. The masses and their leaders do not realize, however, that there is no substantial difference between calling the world principle male and a father (spirit), as the West does, or female and a mother (matter), as the Com- munists do. Essentially, we know as little of the one as of the other.
In earlier times, these prin- ciples were worshiped in all sorts of rituals, which at least showed the psychic significance they held for man. But now they have become mere abstract concepts. As scientific understanding has grown, so our world has become dehumanized. Man feels him- self isolated in the cosmos, because he is no longer involved in nature and has lost his emo- tional "unconscious identity" with natural phe- nomena. These have slowly lost their symbolic implications. Thunder is no longer the voice of an angry god, nor is lightning his avenging missile. No river contains a spirit, no tree is the life principle of a man, no snake the embodi- ment of wisdom, no mountain cave the home of a great demon. No voices now speak to man from stones, plants, and animals, nor does he speak to them believing they can hear. His contact with nature has gone, and with it has gone the profound emotional energy that this symbolic connection supplied.
This enormous loss is compensated for by the symbols of our dreams. They bring up our original nature its instincts and peculiar thinking. Unfortunately, however, they express their contents in the language of nature, which is strange and incomprehensible to us. It there- fore confronts us with the task of translating it into the rational words and concepts of modern speech, which has liberated itself from its primi- tive encumbrances notably from its mystical participation with the things it describes. Now- adays, when we talk of ghosts and other numi- nous figures, we are no longer conjuring them up. 'The power as well as the glory is drained out of such once-potent words. We have ceased to believe in magic formulas; not many taboos and similar restrictions are left; and our world seems to be disinfected of all such "supersti- tious" minima as "witches, warlocks, and wor- ricows," to say nothing ol werewolves, vampires, bush souls, and all the other bizarre beings that populated the primeval forest. To be more accurate, the surface of our world seems to be cleansed ol all superstitious and irrational elements. Whether, however, the real inner human world mil inn wish-fulfilling
Repressed unconscious contents can erupt destructively in the form of negative emotions as in World War II Far left, Jewish prisoners in Warsaw after the uprising; left, footwear of the dead stacked at Auschwitz. Right, Australian aborigines who have disintegrated since they lost their religious beliefs through contact with civilization This tribe now numbers only a few hundred fiction about it) is also freed from primitivity is another question. Is the number 13 not still taboo for many people? Are there not still many individuals possessed by irrational preju- dices, projections, and childish illusions? A rea- listic picture of the human mind reveals many such primitive traits and survivals, which are still playing their roles just as if nothing had happened during the last 500 years. It is essential to appreciate this point. Modern man is in fact a curious mixture of characteris- tics acquired over the long ages of his mental development. This mixed-up being is the man and his symbols that we have to deal with, and we must scrutinize his mental products very carefully indeed.
Skepticism and scientific con- viction exist in him side by side with old-fash- ioned prejudices, outdated habits of thought and feeling, obstinate misinterpretations, and blind ignorance. Such are the contemporary human beings who produce the symbols we psychologists in- vestigate. In order to explain these symbols and their meaning, it is vital to learn whether their representations are related to purely per- sonal experience, or whether they have been chosen by a dream for its particular purpose from a store of general conscious knowledge. Take, for instance, a dream in which the number 13 occurs. The question is whether the dreamer himself habitually believes in the un- lucky quality of the number, or whether the dream merely alludes to people who still in- dulge in such superstitions. The answer makes a great difference to the interpretation. In the former case, you have to reckon with the fact that the individual is still under the spell of the unlucky 13, and therefore will feel most un- comfortable in Room 13 in a hotel or sitting at a table with 13 people. In the latter case, 13 may not mean any more than a discourteous or abusive remark. The "superstitious" dreamer still feels the "spell" of 13; the more "rational" dreamer has stripped 13 of its original emo- tional overtones. This argument illustrates the way in which archetypes appear in practical experience: They are, at the same time, both images and emotions.
One can speak of an archetype only when these two aspects are simultaneous. When there is merely the image, then there is simply a word-picture of little consequence. But by being charged with emotion, the image gains numinosity (or psychic energy); it becomes dynamic, and consequences of some kind must flow from it. I am aware that it is difficult to grasp this concept, because I am trying to use words to describe something whose very nature makes it incapable of precise definition. But since so many people have chosen to treat archetypes as if they were part of a mechanical system that can be learned by rote, it is essential to insist that they are not mere names, or even philosophical concepts. They are pieces of life itself- images that are integrally connected to the living individual by the bridge of the emotions. That is why it is impossible to give an arbitrary (or universal) interpretation of any archetype. It must be explained in the manner indicated by the whole life-situation of the par- ticular individual to whom it relates. Thus, in the case of a devout Christian, the symbol of the cross can be interpreted only in its Christian context — unless the dream pro- duces a very strong reason to look beyond it. Even then, the specific Christian meaning should be kept in mind. But one cannot say that, at all times and in all circumstances, the symbol of the cross has the same meaning. If that were so, it would be stripped of its numin- osity, lose its vitality, and become a mere word. Those who do not realize the special feeling tone of the archetype end with nothing more than a jumble of mythological concepts, which can be strung together to show that everything means anything — or nothing at all. All the corpses in the world are chemically identical, but living individuals are not. Archetypes come to life only when one patiently tries to discover why and in what fashion they are meaningful to a living individual.
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