Carl Gustav Jung on Wotan
'What is curious is that an ancient god of storm and frenzy, the longquiescent Wotan, should awake, like an extinct volcano, to newactivity, in a civilised country that had long outgrown the MiddleAges. We have seen him come to life in the German youth movement, andright at the beginning, the blood of several sheep was shed in honourof his resurrection.'Armed with rucksack and lute, blond youths and girls were to be seenrestlessly wandering on every road from the North Cape to Sicily,faithful votaries of the roving god. Later, towards the end of theWeimar Republic, the wandering role was taken over by thousands of unemployed. By 1933 they wandered no longer, but marched in theirhundreds of thousands. The Hitler movement literally brought the wholeof Germany to its feet, from five-year-olds to veterans, and producedthe spectacle of a nation migrating from one place to another. Wotanthe Wanderer was on the move.'Wotan is a restless wanderer who creates unrest and stirs up strifeand works magic. He was soon changed by Christianity into the devil,and only lived on in fading local traditions as a ghostly hunter whowas seen with his retinue (the Wild Hunt) flickering like a will o'the wisp through the stormy night.'The German youths who celebrated the solstice with sheep sacrificeswere not the first to hear a rustling in the primeval forest of theunconscious. They were anticipated by Nietzsche, Schuler, StefanGeorge, and Ludwig Klages. The literary tradition of Germany has aclassical stamp that cannot easily be got rid of; every interpretationof intoxication and exuberance is apt to be taken back to classicalmodels, to Dionysus.'No doubt it sounds better to academic ears to interpret these thingsas Dionysus, but Wotan might be a more correct interpretation. He isthe god of storm and frenzy, the unleasher of passions and the lust of battle; moreover he is a superlative magician and artist in illusionwho is versed in all secrets of the occult.'We are convinced that the modern world is a reasonable place, basingour opinion on economic, political, and psychological factors. Iventure the heretical suggestion that the unfathomable depths of Wotan's character explain more of National Socialism (Nazism) than allthree reasonable factors put together. There is no doubt that each of these factors explains an important aspect of what is going on inGermany, but Wotan explains yet more.'Perhaps we may sum up this general phenomenon as 'Ergriffenheit' - astate of being seized or possessed. The term postulates not only an'Ergriffener' (one who is seized) but also an Ergreifer (one whoseizes). Wotan is an 'Ergreifer' of men, and, unless one wishes todeify Hitler - which indeed has actually happened - Wotan is reallythe only explanation. It is true that Wotan shares this possession
quality with his cousin Dionysus, but Dionysus seems to have exercisedhis influence mainly on women. The maenads were a species of femalestorm-trooper, and according to mythical reports were dangerousenough. Wotan confined himself to the Beserkers, who found theirvocation as the blackshirts of mythical kings.'It seems to me that Wotan hits the mark as an hypothesis. Apparentlyhe really was only asleep in the Kyffhauser mountain until the ravenscalled him and announced the break of day. He is a fundamentalattribute of the German psyche, an irrational psychic factor whichacts on the high pressure of civilisation like a cyclone and blows itaway. The Wotan-worshippers seem to have judged things more correctlythan the worshippers of reason. Apparently everyone had forgotten thatWotan is a Germanic factor of first importance, the truest expressionand unsurpassed personification of a fundamental quality that isparticularly characteristic of the Germans.'The emphasis on the Germanic race, the Germanic heritage, blood andsoil, the ride of the Valkyries, Jesus as a blond and blue-eyed hero -all this is the indispensable scenery for the drama that is takingplace and at bottom they all mean the same thing: a god has takenpossession of the Germans and their house is filled with a 'mightyrushing wind'.'It was not in Wotan's nature to linger on and show signs of old age.He simply disappeared when the times turned against him, and remainedinvisible for more than a thousand years, working anonymously andindirectly. Archetypes are like river-beds which dry up when the waterdeserts them, but which it can find again at any time. An archetype islike an old watercourse along which the water of life has flowed forcenturies, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it has flowedin this channel the more likely it is that sooner or later the waterwill return to its old bed.'We are driven to conclude that Wotan must, in time, reveal not onlythe restless, violent, stormy side of his character, but also hisecstatic and mantic qualities. National Socialism will not be the lastword. Things must be concealed in the background which we cannotimagine at present, but we may expect them to appear in the course of the future.'Jung had much more than just an academic interest in Wodhanaz, in facthe came to believe that this god is the true deity of the Germanicpeoples of Europe. Of particular interest in this regard was a dreamJung had the night his mother died. In his autobiography, 'Memories,dreams, reflections', Jung writes:'The night before her death I had a frightening dream. I was in adense, gloomy forest; fantastic, gigantic boulders lay about amonghuge jungle-like trees. It was a heroic, primeval landscape. SuddenlyI heard a piercing whistle that seemed to resound through the wholeuniverse. My knees shook. Then there were crashings in the
undergrowth, and a gigantic wolfhound with a fearful, gaping maw burstforth. At the sight of it, the blood froze in my veins. It tore pastme, and I suddenly knew: the Wild Huntsman had commanded it to carryaway a human soul. I awoke in deadly terror, and the next morning Ireceived the news of my mother's passing.'Seldom has a dream so shaken me, for upon superficial considerationit seemed to say that the devil had fetched her. But to be accuratethe dream said that it was the Wild Huntsman, the 'Grunhutl', orWearer of the Green Hat, who hunted with his wolves that night. It wasWotan, the god of my Alemannic forefathers, who had gathered my motherto her ancestors.'It was the Christian missionaries who made Wotan into a devil. Inhimself he is an important god - a Mercury or Hermes, as the Romanscorrectly realised, a nature spirit who returned to life again in theGrail legend. Thus the dream says that the soul of my mother was takeninto that greater territory of the self which lies beyond the segmentof Christian morality, taken into that wholeness of nature and spiritin which conflicts and contradictions are resolved.'I went home immediately, and while I rode in the night train I had afeeling of great grief, but in my heart of hearts I could not bemournful, and this for a strange reason: during the entire journey Icontinually heard dance music, laughter, and jollity, as though awedding were being celebrated.'This paradox can be explained if we suppose that at one moment deathwas being represented from the point of view of the ego, and at thenext from that of the psyche (soul). In the firstcase it appeared as a catastrophe; that is how it so often strikes us,as if wicked and pitiless powers had put an end to a humanlife....from another point of view, however, death appears as a joyfulevent. In the light of eternity, it is a wedding, a 'mysteriumconiunctionis'. The soul attains, as it were, its missing half, itachieves wholeness.'
Fuente http://es.scribd.com/doc/53555116/Carl-Gustav-Jung-on-Wotan
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