• Highlights of the Historical Dimension of Analysis
• Antichrist or Merlin?: A Problem Inherited from the Middle Ages
• The Transformed Berserker: The Union of Psychic Opposites
• The Unknown Visitor in Fairy Tales and Dreams
• Matter and Psyche from the Point of View of the Psychology of C. G. Jung

Highlights of the Historical Dimension of Analysis

• Von Franz’s central argument is that through the collective unconscious and the various generations in which we are spawned, that we inherit the psyche of our ancestors. Said differently, our subconscious processes things through dreams which can manifest through fairy tales and myths, but while we may not be conscious of what they pertain to, understanding one’s history can be the key to linking their particular interpretation to their historical roots.
• Stored deep within our subconscious lies this history. I in particular have spent 8 years documenting my family tree and learning of the roots of my heritage: the Afghan people, in particular Kabul and Logar provinces. Naturally I would look as far back as is documented, but that isn’t far. I stretch farther back to the beginning of Islam in that area, but ask myself a fundamental question of what existed before that, and before that. Suddenly my instinctual draw towards Buddhism makes sense when you look back far enough in the region.
• Thinking patterns and psyche can exist in certain slices of space and time, known as a zeitgeist. Some examples are the Reformation and Renaissance periods, where there is a collective shared outlook, idea or feeling.
• This can explain how both Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton can independently create Calculus without ever crossing paths. It seems that when an idea is close to its fruition, there are several contenders for the title of discoverer/creator. It’s as though knowledge, ideas, or even events fall within particular grooves and that it’s merely a matter of time — but like a single drop raises the ocean, the zeitgeist acts more as the water line.

Antichrist or Merlin?: A Problem Inherited from the Middle Ages

• Stemming from Jung’s book Aion, Von Franz elegantly explains their theory of the likely reason for any accuracies tied to astrology.

“In relatively long periods of time (anywhere from one to three thousand years, certain archetypal collective images tend to emerge and recede again, probably in response to spiritual needs of humankind, but also to some creative evolutionary process. Insofar as this process shows a certain psychologically logical continuity, prophetic predictions have been made by intuitive "seers" as to the coming dominants in the future aeons. One great system of such predictions is astrology — which is in fact not mirroring "influences of the stars" (for this as is probably only a projection) but transformations of archetypal constellations in the collective unconscious. Jung has shown how powerfully astrological speculation was linked with the rise of Christianity. Christ himself was not only symbolized as the slaughtered Lamb (the end of the age of Aries) but from the very beginning was associated with the Fish-thus initiating the age of Pisces.”

1. This makes me think of a belief that I have, that we all collectively participate in the creation of our reality. Sure it can be an offset of manifesting, but look at it from this frame: day trading. In day trading, millions of speculators read the charts as though they are tea leaves, looking for clues. Some of it is backed by sound logic, others may be less proven so. However an interesting concept of “support” and “resistance” lines show up, where if a price tends to hover or immediately deviate at a particular price range, then that price now becomes meaningful. Theoretically we can say that buyers and sellers have reached a temporary equilibrium, and so the tipping point for the next direction depends on how often buyers and sellers test that price point. Does that price have anything to do with the underlying operations of the company? Said differently, if a company’s price can change 15% in a day without anything substantial changing about the company, but driven by pure speculative belief — it’s the collective belief that makes the price a reality. It’s the collective belief that makes that price now hold some level of importance. To those working in the company, it has no bearing on their meeting their commitment to shareholders, but to the shareholders, they’ve established their own reality that comes to fruition from their shared, participatory beliefs, that continue to calcify the more these perceived points of support or resistance are tested. So too, our shared belief in astrology can have an impact on our psyche, and if Von Franz’s belief that memory is stored from not only our ancestors, but from the distinct zeitgeists present in each strata, then all the more reason for Hume’s empiricism.
• Jung makes a clear distinction between morals and ethics. Morality is the proper adherence to a collection of rules, while ethics is the following of one’s innermost conscience.
• Von Franz appends additional examples to astrology, showing how we create, believe, then adhere to certain beliefs, giving an example of Jewish Kabbalistic gematria, an alphanumeric numerology system that assigns numerical values to letters in a word or phrase.
• Jung alludes to how Antichrist was used liberally to describe something “evil”, an overuse and deviation comparable to Nietzsche’s example of “good” and “bad” shifting to an ecclesiastical “good” and “evil”.
• Von Franz dives into the story of Merlin and how his mother gave him the gift of prophecy, while the devil gave him the knowledge of the past. Two opposing forces represented by the arrow of time. Jung claims that Merlin’s representation of both good and evil is more encompassing of a complete whole — he would then represent the Self which isn’t just the good, but comes with its antithesis.
• Jung also sees Goethe’s Mephistopheles in his book Faust, as a good representation of Merlin.
• Franz draws a comparison between the Round Table and the use of the mandala, each stemming from the same archaic symbols representing wholeness. This wholeness (as mentioned above) implies the containment of good and bad, so Jung references the alchemist Mercurius who more or less is a trickster. Mercurius represents the bad that comes with the good and is needed for the good — the Tibetan Wheel of Life mandala has at its center three symbols: pig (representing ignorance), snake (representing anger), and bird (representing attachment or greed). The wheel of life would not move without these forces, thereby emphasizing the wholeness that makes the Self.

The Transformed Berserker: The Union of Psychic Opposites

The Unknown Visitor in Fairy Tales and Dreams

Matter and Psyche from the Point of View of the Psychology of C. G. Jung

• Coincidentally, Thomas Edison came to the same conclusion and would take a nap next to a metal plate with a ball in his hand, so that the minute he would doze off, the ball would fall on the plate and make a sound, jolting him awake. In this state, half-asleep and half-conscious, he would find that he could think better.