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81 " Ego-accentuation leads from the uroboric to the hermaphroditic, and so to the narcissistic stage, which is autoerotic at first and represents a primitive form of centroversion. The next stage is that of phallic-chthonic masculinity, dominated by the body sphere, and this in turn is succeeded by a masculinity in which the activity of consciousness has become the specific activity of an autonomous ego. "
― Erich Neumann , The Origins and History of Consciousness
82 " The rite of marriage derives from the part played by the king in the old fertility ritual. The union of the Earth Goddess with the god-king becomes the prototype of marriage, and only with the institution of this symbolic ritual did the act of sexual union, endlessly repeated for millions of years, begin to be understood consciously. "
83 " The background events in the soul are projected outwards and are experienced through the object, as a synthetic unity compounded of external reality and the psychic activation of this reality. "
84 " As the generations succeed one another, and yet remain magically connected, the patriarchal line of fathers and sons is seen to rest upon the spiritual phenomenon of their identity, which transcends their differences. Every king was once Horus and becomes Osiris (tikis. 30); every Osiris was once Horus. Horus and Osiris are one. "
85 " Its link with the transpersonal invests a mindless natural occurrence with the solemn significance of a ritual act. "
86 " Hence the “captive,” as an interior quantity, can be experienced both personalistically and transperson-ally on the subjective level, just as it can be experienced personalistically and transpersonally as an exterior feminine quantity. A personalistic interpretation is no more identical with the objective level than a transpersonal interpretation with the subjective level. "
87 " Although they appear as inner events, the victory and transformation of the hero are valid for all mankind; they are held up for our contemplation, to be lived out in our own lives, or at least re-experienced by us. "
88 " Compared with the uniform frightfulness of the mother dragon, the father dragon is a culturally stratified structure. From this angle also she is nature, he is culture. The Terrible Male, like the Terrible Female, "
89 " the initiate becomes an “ennoos,” one who possesses nous, or whom the nous possesses, a “pneumaHkos.” 71 "
90 " The aim of this fight is to combine the phallic-chthonic with the spiritual-heavenly masculinity, and the creative union with the anima in the hieros gamos is symptomatic of this. "
91 " some ceremony or course of action, always precedes the formulation of the myth, and it is obvious that action must come before knowledge, the unconscious deed before the spoken content. "
92 " Historically speaking, however, the synthetic path of development—which includes the stage of the hero fight—was never followed in Christianity as it grew up under Gnostic influences, but only in alchemy, the cabala, and above all in Hasidism. "
93 " But first we have to discuss the emotional situation, and to understand that this deed, though it manifests itself as the coming of light, and as the creation of the world and of consciousness, is vitiated by a sense of suffering and loss so strong as almost to offset the creative gain. "
94 " Not until we have familiarized ourselves with the dominant images which direct the course of human development shall we be able to understand the variants and sidelines which cluster round the main track. "
95 " Carpentry, too, as a sacred process, belongs to this canon. Wood, like milk and wine, was thought to be a life-principle of Horus-Osiris (cf. Blackman, op. cit., p. 30), and cedar oil with its preservative and hardening qualities played an important part in embalming. "
96 " The margin of conscious alertness in modern man is relatively narrow, the intensity of his active performance is limited, and illness, strain, old age, and all psychic disturbances take their toll of this alertness. "
97 " is nevertheless a conflict between the developing ego consciousness and the world of instinct. The former must always put its own specific mode of behavior, which pursues very different aims, in place of collective and instinctive reaction, for the latter is by no means always in accord with the individual aims of the ego, nor with its preservation. "
98 " But let us be careful! We are speaking of ourselves. If this art is degenerate, we too are degenerate, for innumerable individuals are suffering the same collapse of the cultural canon, the same alienation, the same loneliness – the rising blackness with its shadow and devouring dragon. The disintegration and dissonance of this art are our own; to understand them is to understand ourselves. "
― Erich Neumann , Art and the Creative Unconscious: Four Essays
99 " The theory of heredity, proving that the child has the ancestral heritage biologically in himself, and to a large extent actually 'is' this heritage, also has a psychological justification. Jung therefore defines the transpersonal — or the archetypes and instincts of the collective unconscious — as 'the deposit of ancestral experience.' Hence the child, whose life as a prepersonal entity is largely determined by the collective unconscious, actually is the living carrier of this ancestral experience. "
100 " …the group and group-consciousness were dominant…[the individual] was not an autonomous, individualized entity with a knowledge, morality, volition, and activity of its own; it functioned solely as a part of the group, and the group with its superordinate power was the only real subject. "