Collected Papers on Analytical PsychologyJung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Science
Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Psychoanalysis
The later séances were usually begun by our hands being joined and laid
on the table, whereon the table at once began to move. Meanwhile S. W.
gradually became somnambulic, took her hands from the table, lay back
on the sofa, and fell into the ecstatic sleep. She sometimes related
her experiences to us afterwards, but showed herself very reticent if
strangers were present. After the very first ecstasy she indicated
that she played a distinguished _rôle_ among the spirits. She had
a special name, as had each of the spirits; hers was _Ivenes_; her
grandfather looked after her with particular care. In the ecstasy with
the flower-vision we learnt her special secret, hidden till then beneath
the deepest silence. During the séances in which her spirit spoke she
made long journeys, mostly to relatives, to whom she said she appeared,
or she found herself on the Other Side, in "That space between the
stars which people think is empty, but in which there are really very
many spirit-worlds." In the semi-somnambulic state which frequently
followed her attacks, she once described, in peculiar poetic fashion,
a landscape on the Other Side, "a wondrous, moon-lit valley, set aside
for the races not yet born." She represented her somnambulic ego as
being almost completely released from the body. It is a fully-grown but
small, black-haired woman, of pronounced Jewish type, clothed in white
garments, her head covered with a turban. She understands and speaks the
language of the spirits, "for spirits still, from old human custom, do
speak to one another, although they do not really need to, since they
mutually understand one another's thoughts." She "does not really always
talk with the spirits, but just looks at them, and so understands their
thoughts." She travels in the company of four or five spirits, dead
relatives, and visits her living relatives and acquaintances in order
to investigate their life and their way of thinking; she further visits
all places which lie within the radius of these spectral inhabitants.
From her acquaintanceship with Kerner's book, she discovered and
improved upon the ideas of the black spirits who are kept enchanted in
certain places, or exist partly beneath the earth's surface (compare
the "Seherin von Prevorst"). This activity caused her much trouble and
pain; in and after the ecstasy she complained of suffocating feelings,
violent headache, etc. But every fortnight, on Wednesdays, she could
pass the whole night in the garden on the Other Side in the company of
holy spirits. There she was taught everything concerning the forces
of the world, the endless complicated relationships and affinities of
human beings, and all besides about the laws of reincarnation, the
inhabitants of the stars, etc. Unfortunately only the system of the
world-forces and reincarnation achieved any expression. As to the other
matters she only let fall disconnected observations. For example, once
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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