Carl Gustav Jung on watering the roots of the Philosophical Tree

The Philosophical Tree, Plate 6 of the Splendor Solis by Salomon Trismosin (1532-1535)

The Philosophical Tree, Plate 6 of the Splendor Solis by Salomon Trismosin (1532-1535).
Image credit: Joseph Lewis Henderson and Dyane N. Sherwood in Transformation of the Psyche: The symbolic alchemy of the Splendor Solis, (Psychology Press, 2003), page 68.

Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the Shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.
Carl Gustav Jung in his essay “The Philosophical Tree”, paragraph 335, (1945). Available in Alchemical Studies, Collected Works Volume 13, translated by R. F. C. Hull, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 265.

Carl Gustav Jung Posted on behalf of on Tuesday, May 11th, 2010 under Quotations.

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