JUNG'S TOWER and PERSONAL MYTHOLOGY, Part Two

(Continued from Part One)
The first expansion of Jung's tower-- what is now the central structure-- came four years after the initial stage. Despite the feelings of "response and renewal" within the first structure, Jung felt that something more was needed, beyond the familial hearth.
In a practical sense, the tower would have to be expanded in order to become useful as a work space, family cottage, guest room, an actual dwelling. Its potential usefulnes expands. This stage of the building can be read as a symbol in stone of the need for the Self to move beyond the castle keep of the womb, beyond its source, into action in the world, to become, as humans must, a socialized animal.

After action in the world, the evolving Self will feel the need to withdraw into itself if only to recharge and rest, to assimilate exxperience and listen for its own voice. Four years later, Jung's tower is extended again-- and hear its personal meaning is fairly well spelled out for us by Jung himself:
"I wanted a room in this tower where I could exist for myself alone. I had in mind what I had seen in Indian houses, in which there is usually an area-- though it may be only a corner of a room separated off by a curtain-- in which the inhabitants can withdraw. There they may meditate for perhaps a quarter or half an hour, or do yoga exercises. such an area of retirement is essential in India, where people live crowded very close together."
Jung keeps the key to this private room well guarded. He meditates, he paints on the wall, he writes arcana in his magician's diary, the so-called "Red Book" containing paintings of his visions-- expressing "all those things which have carried me out of time into seclusion, out of the present into timelessness... a place of spiritual concentration." One of the pictures shown here-- "Shadow Cornered"-- was painted during the depression that followed Jung's break from Freud.
Following to Gaaskell's scholarly stricture, it should be noted that the Greek god informing this third stage of development-- the Spiritual-- is Hermes, the trickster benefactor of alchemists, tricksters, thieves and travelers.

To be Continued...