Hrodnand

“After I had spoken these and many more angry words to my I, I noticed that I began to bear being alone with myself. But the touchiness still stirred in me frequently and I had to lash myself just as often. And I did this until even the pleasure in self-torment faded.9 10Then I heard a voice one night; it came from afar and was the voice of my soul. She spoke: “How distant you are!” I: “Is that you my soul, from which height and distance do you speak?” S: “I am above you. I am a world apart. I have become sunlike. I received the seeds of fire. Where are you? I can hardly find you in your mists.” I: “I am down on the murky earth, in the dark smoke that the fire left us, and my gaze does not reach you. But your voice sounds closer.” S: “I feel it. The heaviness of the earth penetrates me, damp cold enshrouds me, gloomy memories of former pain overcome me.” I: “Do not lower yourself into the smoke and the darkness of the earth. I would like that which I am still working on to remain sunlike. Otherwise I will lose the courage to live further down in the darkness of the earth. Let me just hear your voice. I will never want to see you in the flesh again. Say something! Take it from the depths, from which fear perhaps flows to me.” S: “I cannot, since your creative source flows from there.” I: “You see my uncertainty.” S: “The uncertain way is the good way. Upon it lie possibilities. Be unwavering and create.”
― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: A Reader's Edition

“I must free my self from the God,39 since the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature.”
― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: A Reader's Edition

“I came to my self,352 a giddy and pitiful figure. My I! I didn’t want this fellow as my companion. I found myself with him. I’d prefer a bad woman or a wayward hound, but one’s own I—this horrifies me. 353An opus is needed, that one can squander decades on, and do it out of necessity. I must catch up with a piece of the Middle Ages—within myself. We have only finished the Middle Ages of—others. I must begin early, in that period when the hermits died out.354 Asceticism, inquisition, torture are close at hand and impose themselves. The barbarian requires barbaric means of education. My I, you are a barbarian. I want to live with you, therefore I will carry you through an utterly medieval Hell, until you are capable of making living with you bearable. You should be the vessel and womb of life, therefore I shall purify you. The touchstone is being alone with oneself. This is the way.355”
― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: A Reader's Edition

“Happy am I who can recognize the multiplicity and diversity of the Gods. But woe unto you, who replace this incompatible multiplicity with a single God. In so doing you produce the torment of incomprehension, and mutilate the creation whose nature and aim is differentiation. How can you be true to your own nature when you try to turn the many into one? What you do unto the Gods is done likewise unto you. You all become equal and thus your nature106 is maimed. “Equality prevails not for the sake of God, but only for the sake of man. For the Gods are many, while men are few. The Gods are mighty and endure their manifoldness. Like the stars they abide in solitude, separated by vast distances. Therefore they dwell together and need communion, so that they may bear their separateness.107 For redemption’s sake I teach you the reprehensible, for whose sake I was rejected. “The multiplicity of the Gods corresponds to the multiplicity of men.”
― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: A Reader's Edition