Jacob and Esau

Text by Erich Neumann © 2015 by the Neumann Estate. All rights reserved.

Translation © 2015 by Mark Kyburz. All rights reserved.

Synopsis of biblical story, introduction, and editorial apparatus © 2015 by Erel Shalit. All rights
reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher, Chiron Publications, 932 Hendersonville Road, Suite 104,
Asheville, North Carolina 28803.

Jacob and Esau: On the Collective Symbolism of the Brother Motif is published in cooperation with
Recollections, LLC. Recollections is devoted to promoting and supporting the publication of material
related to the early development of analytical psychology. Through its partnership with Chiron
Publications, Recollections has several projects under way.

Cover image: “Jacob and Esau,” by Meir Gur-Arieh. Used with permission by the artist’s estate,
Meira Kain.

Title page illustration: “Jacob and Esau,” by Jacob Steinhardt. Used with permission by the artist’s
estate, Yosefa Bar-On Steinhardt.

Photo of Neumann at his desk courtesy of Ralli Loewenthal-Neumann.

Book and cover design by Marianne Jankowski.

Printed in the United States of America.
Second Printing.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Neumann, Erich, author.
Jacob and Esau : on the collective symbolism of the brother motif / Erich Neumann ; edited and
with an introduction by Erel Shalit ; translated by Mark Kyburz.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Text is a translation from German of previously unpublished typescripts and manuscripts.
ISBN 978-1-63051-217-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-63051-216-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
-- ISBN 978-1-63051-218-7 (electronic)
1. Psychoanalysis and religion. 2. Jacob (Biblical patriarch) 3. Esau (Bibical figure) 4. Twins--
Religious aspects. 5. Twins--Mythology. 6. Archetype (Psycho ogy) 7. Symbolism (Psychology) 8.
Jungian psychology. I. Shalit, Erel, editor. II. Kyburz, Mark, 1963- translator. III. Title.
BF175.4.R44N48 2015
150.19'54--dc23
2015028170
 Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
The Biblical Story of Jacob and Esau
Introduction

I.
The Symbolism of Jacob and Esau
II.
On the Collective Symbolism of the Brother Motif
III.
Layers of the Unconscious: The Interpretation of Mythology

Addendum
Editor’s Note
Translator’s Note
Bibliography
Index
 Acknowledgments

W hile not a simple task, it has been a great privilege to edit and
introduce this work by Erich Neumann. I am grateful to Ms. Rali
Loewenthal-Neumann and Professor Micha Neumann for giving me access
to this manuscript and thus providing me with the opportunity to delve into
the depths and the development of Neumann’s thoughts.
It has been a rather unique experience to be as if present in the process of
Neumann’s writing and typing, which has been necessary in order to follow
the evolution and crystallization of his thinking. Concurrent with the sense
of being present has been the advantage of looking at this manuscript from
a distance in time and in the context of the bulk of Neumann’s writings in
the course of his all too short, yet tremendously creative life. Adding to the
paradoxes of this endeavor has been the sense of timelessness and
agelessness; on the one hand, this is an old manuscript, written eighty years
before I first read it, yet written by a young man, less than half my age. I
can only stand in awe and appreciate being let into the world of this very
introverted, remarkable illuminator of the psyche.
This book sees the light of day thanks to Nancy Swift Furlotti. She has
enabled this project to materialize. Spurred by her interest in Neumann’s
writings and her profound knowledge of Jung and analytical psychology,
carrying the spirit of depth, she read and saw the importance of this
manuscript. She has been the driving force behind this and other
publications, such as Analytical Psychology in Exile: The Correspondence
of C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann, as well as forthcoming works.
Neumann wrote this book, as he did all his other works, in German.
Mark Kyburz has provided a first-class translation into English. He has
created a text that is not only faithful to Neumann’s original but also
eloquent and easily readable, to which John Peck has bestowed valuable
editorial assistance. Furthermore, in a number of instances, Mark and John
have resolved difficult questions of translation in a masterful way.
My thanks go to Steve Buser and Len Cruz, publishers at Chiron. Their
professionalism, support, and enthusiasm have been tremendously valuable,
making this not only a process of hard work but contributing to the sense of
significance as well as joy. It has also been a pleasure and an honor to work
with Siobhan Drummond in the final stages of this book. She has handled
all aspects of this process in a way that every author or editor can only wish
for, skillfully guiding us across the hurdles of book production.
I would also like to thank Rina Porat, friend and colleague, for her
valuable help and comments. Few know Neumann’s theory and work as she
does.
I wish to thank Gideon Ofrat, historian of Israeli art, for turning my
attention to the woodcut by Jacob Steinhardt and the silhouette by Meir
Gur-Arieh. Their respective images of the meeting, reconciliation, and
embrace of Jacob and Esau convey the immensity of the biblical drama.
Yosefa Bar-On Steinhardt, the artist’s daughter, and Meira Kain,
granddaughter and namesake, have generously given permission to make
use of the artwork.
 Lastly, while I don’t expect my grandchildren to read this book in the
very near future, I have undertaken the task of editing and introducing this
book by Neumann for them. Just like Erich Neumann’s work is a
psychological reconnection with his Jewish ancestors, reinterpreting the
stories of old in the realm of the objective psyche, I hope that their
generation will seek its own distinct ways of individuation, connected to
and on the basis of the inevitable, yet seemingly so easily deniable,
archetypal patterns of our ancestors.
 The Biblical Story of Jacob and Esau

J acob and Esau are the best-known pair of twins in the Bible, sons of
Isaac and Rebekah.1 Abraham’s servant was sent to Aram-Naharaim to find
a wife for his son Isaac. Guided by providence, the servant met Rebekah at
the city well, “and the girl was very pretty to look upon, a virgin, and no
man had known her” (Gen. 24:16). She was the granddaughter of
Abraham’s brother Nahor, and she had gone down to the well to fill her jar
of water.2 Showing her hospitality and grace to the stranger, Rebekah gave
him a drink and drew water for his camels.
Abraham’s servant inquired about her background, so Rebekah brought
him home to her family. He told them about his mission, to find a wife for
Isaac, from his master Abraham’s family of origin. With the blessing of her
family, Rebekah agreed to follow him back to the Negev desert in the land
of Canaan, where Isaac was meditating in a field near the well of Lahairoi,
where he lived (Gen. 24:62).3 While Rebekah’s age is not mentioned, Isaac
was forty years old when they married. They remained childless for twenty
years, until she bore Esau and Jacob.
Rebekah inquired of God why her children struggled with each other in
her womb. God told her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples
shall be separated from your bowels; and the one people shall be stronger
than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger” (Gen. 25:23).
Esau, the firstborn, was “ready,” or “done,” which is the literal meaning
of his name, already when born. He came out red and hairy—thus his
additional names are Edom (red) and Seir (hairy). Jacob, born second,
followed with his hand holding on to Esau’s heel. His name means “the
supplanted,” or literally, the one who follows, holding the heel.
The brothers were each favored by one parent; Isaac loved Esau,
Rebekah loved Jacob. Esau grew up to be a skillful hunter, a man of the
field, while Jacob was a herdsman, a quiet tent dweller, that is, introverted
in comparison to his more extraverted hunter brother.
One day when Esau returned famished after hunting, he asked Jacob to
feed him red lentil soup. In exchange for the meal, Jacob demanded and
received Esau’s birthright as the firstborn, with the authority and the
inheritance associated with it.
Esau eventually became estranged from his parents, causing them grief
by marrying wives from the Hittite people.4 When old and approaching
death, Isaac called upon Esau, his beloved son, to go hunting and prepare
for him a dish he loved. He would then bless Esau before he died.
However, in an act of deception orchestrated by Rebekah, she prepared a
dish for Jacob to bring to his father and helped him obscure his identity.
Covering his neck and hands with fleece to appear to his father as if he were
the hairy Esau, Jacob presented the meal, with the intention of receiving his
father’s blessing. Isaac was suspicious, saying, “The voice is Jacob’s voice,
but the hands are the hands of Esau,” but he nevertheless gave Jacob his
blessing (Gen. 27:22).
When Esau returned after the hunt and realized Jacob’s deception, he
cried bitterly and asked his father to bless him as well, pointing out that
Jacob had deprived him of both his birthright and his blessing. Isaac then
blessed Esau and told him that while he would live by the sword, he would
prosper and eventually gain independence from Jacob.
Betrayed by Jacob, Esau hated his brother and “said in his heart, When
the days of mourning for my father are at hand, then I will slay my brother
Jacob” (Gen. 27:41). Aware that Esau took comfort in murderous thoughts,
Rebekah sent Jacob away to find a wife at the house of Laban, her brother
in Padan-Aram.5
Jacob departed on his journey, and when the sun set he lay down with a
stone as his pillow and dreamed his well-known dream:

Behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the
angels of God ascending and descending on it. The Lord stood above it, and said, I am the
Lord God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, to you
will I give it, and to your seed; And your seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and you shall
spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in you and
in your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. I am with you, and will keep you in
all places where you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you, until I
have done that about which I have spoken to you. (Gen. 28:12–15)

When Jacob woke up, he called the place Bet-El, “the House of God,”
and went forth on his journey to the east, until he arrived in the city of
Haran, where his uncle Laban lived. He looked around, and in the field he
saw a well. At the well, Jacob inquired of the men who had gathered there
with their flocks of sheep if they knew Laban, grandson of Nahor. As they
spoke, Laban’s daughter Rachel came to the well for water for her father’s
sheep. Seeing her, Jacob approached, telling her he was the son of Rebekah,
her father’s sister. He helped her roll the stone from the well’s mouth. Thus,
in a way, he returned the gesture of affinity that his mother had shown the
servant of Abraham.
Jacob fell in love with Rachel, and wanting to take her as his wife, he
served Laban seven years, which “seemed to him but a few days” (Gen.
29:20). However, after those seven years, Jacob was betrayed by Laban,
who on the wedding night substituted Leah, his firstborn daughter, who had
“weak eyes,” for the beautiful Rachel. Determined to wed Rachel, Jacob
agreed to serve Laban another seven years, and then a further six years to
receive the cattle as a dowry. Realizing that Laban was taking advantage of
him, Jacob finally fled, returning to Canaan with his wives and children.
When Laban discovered that Jacob had escaped with his family, he and
his kinsmen went after him. After seven days, they caught up with Jacob in
the mountains of Gilead, east of the Jordan River. Having reconciled, they
parted in peace. Jacob “went on his way, and the angels of God met him”
(Gen. 32:2). For the second time, Jacob names a place, calling this site
Mahanaim (“two camps”), because “this is God’s host” (Gen. 32:3).
Now desiring reconciliation with Esau, Jacob sent messengers to tell his
brother, who had “settled in the land of Seir, the rugged, semiarid country of
Edom to the east and south of the Dead Sea,” about his return.6 When told
that Esau would meet him with four hundred men, Jacob feared Esau’s
revenge. He prepared gifts for his brother, and before sunset he sent his
wives, Leah and Rachel, Zilpah and Bilhah, his servants, and eleven sons
across the Jabbok River that they might be safe and away from any
conflict.7
Remaining behind alone, Jacob wrestled that night with a stranger, an
angel, “till the breaking of the day” (Gen. 32:25). Jacob did not let go of
him until he received a blessing from the stranger. The angel asked Jacob
his name, then renamed him Israel, “for you have striven with God and
with men, and have prevailed” (Gen. 32:29). Jacob named the place Peniel,
“For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved” (Gen. 32:31).8
After the sun rose, Jacob was limping because of the wound that the angel
had inflicted on his thigh in the struggle between them.
 The biblical account at this point seems to condense time, possibly
indicating the significance of the connection between the struggle with the
angel and the meeting with Esau. Upon lifting his eyes, Jacob saw in front
of him Esau and his men, and he bowed to his brother. Esau embraced him,
and the two brothers kissed and wept in each other’s arms. Having found
grace in his brother’s eyes, Jacob insisted on giving Esau his gifts, for “I
have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God” (Gen. 33:10).9
The hostile brothers parted ways: Esau went to Mount Seir in Edom,
becoming the father of the Edomites, while Jacob returned to his native
Canaan, becoming the father of the twelve tribes of Israel.
__________
1. The other known pair of biblical twins is Perez and Zerah. There is no explicit statement in the
Bible that Cain and Abel were twins; the length of time between their births is not mentioned.
However, according to a Midrash, each of them had a twin sister.
2. See Genesis 24. In one instance—Genesis 24:48—the Hebrew Bible, the King James Version, and
other translations give Rebekah as Abraham’s niece, his brother Nahor’s daughter rather than his
granddaughter. However, the New International Version correctly names Rebekah, in this verse as in
others, as Nahor’s granddaughter.
3. The well, situated in the western Negev, “between Kadesh and Bered” (Gen. 16:14), is the place
where Hagar was told she would give birth to Ishmael. The name Lahairoi means “the Living One
(God) who Sees.”
4. Genesis 26:34 mentions Judith and Basmath, and Genesis 28:9 tells about his marriage to
Mahalath, daughter of Ishmael. In Genesis 36:2–3, their names are given as Adah and Oholibamah,
while the daughter of Ishmael is Basmath. Mahalath/Basmath, who may thus be one person, possibly
pertains to the remedy of Esau’s pain as a combination of forgiveness and the fragrance of wisdom.
(Their respective names are transcribed in various ways from the Hebrew.)
5. Padan-Aram, “the field of Aram,” was part of the region of Aram-Naharaim, “Aram of two
rivers.”
6. Joan Comay, “Who’s Who in the Old Testament,” in Who’s Who in the Bible, ed. Joan Comay and
Ronald Brownrigg (New York: Bonanza, 1980), 181.
7. Presumably he sent his daughter Dina as well; his youngest son, Benjamin, the only one of the
children to be born in Canaan, had not been born yet. Regarding his wives, in Genesis 30:4: “So she
gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife, and Jacob went in to her”; and in Genesis 30:9: “When Leah
saw that she had ceased bearing children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a
wife.”
8. Peniel, or Pnei El, means “Face of God.”
9. Based on this verse, Neumann elaborates on God and Esau, shadow and Self (p. 37f).
 Introduction

T his early manuscript by Erich Neumann, here published for the first
time after eighty years of incubation, opens up as the virtuosic overture to
his later works. Its publication rectifies Neumann’s belief that it would not
be published. In a handwritten addendum to a letter to Jung in 1934,
Neumann wrote, “I will pursue your suggestion of elaborating on the
‘Symbolic Contributions’ to the Jacob-Esau problem . . . . The great
difficulty is the rather depressing impossibility of a publication.”1
This is the remarkable work of a wise old man, even though not yet in
his thirties, who with superb clarity explores the theme of the hostile
brothers and the principle of opposites. This, says Neumann, is a
fundamental problem of humanity and lies at the heart of the human soul.
The seeds of some of Neumann’s finest works, prominently Depth
Psychology and a New Ethic and The Origins and History of
Consciousness, are sown in the soil on which the archetypal theme of Jacob
and Esau is brought alive. The clarity of his formulations reflects an
extraordinary maturity of thought.
My introduction intends to provide the reader with a brief background
and an overview of the book, enabling also those who are less acquainted
with Neumann’s writings to comfortably approach this work.

Neumann’s desire to elaborate on Jacob and Esau and the motif of the
hostile brothers was inspired by Hugo Rosenthal’s essay, “Der
Typengegensatz in der jüdischen Religionsgeschichte,” which Jung had
included in his Wirklichkeit der Seele.2 As Martin Liebscher writes in his
introduction to Analytical Psychology in Exile: The Correspondence of C.
G. Jung and Erich Neumann, Rosenthal’s essay “was reviewed by
Neumann in the Jüdische Rundschau on 27 July 1934.”3 Early in his
correspondence with Jung, Neumann shared his thoughts and intention to
write about “Jewish psychology,” based on the Jacob and Esau story.4

Neumann wrote Jacob and Esau in 1934, finishing parts of it by December

of that year.5 Soon afterward (1934–1940), he began writing a monumental
two-volume manuscript, in which he explored the experiential roots of
Judaism, the psychological meaning of Hasidism, and other Jewish and
religious themes.6 He continued to be occupied with Jacob and Esau, and he
wrote to Jung that he would send him “a supplement to the Jacob-Esau
work soon,” though we don’t hear anything further about it in their
correspondence.7 This, in fact, serves as an essential part of the entire
manuscript and constitutes the first part of this book. While Neumann’s first
significant letter to Jung was written from Zurich in the spring of 1934, his
next letter was written early that summer, soon after his arrival in Israel.
This was a time when young Neumann was establishing the foundation of
his new life in the ancient land of the fathers, pulling together and
implementing the collective and cultural essence of his identity. This was
based not the least on an astute understanding of the shadow (“that we Jews
are accustomed to recognizing”), of the need to attend to the inner voice,
and of the tension between the spirit and the earth in Judaism and Zionism.8
As seen in this manuscript, his deep thinking and productive creativity are
quite remarkable, considering both his young age and the personal
transition from Nazi Germany to the pre-State Yishuv.9
Furthermore, Neumann chooses to speak of “the people’s soul” and “the
people’s unconscious,” because they allow, as he says, the “actual state of
affairs” to shine through, rather than being concealed by “scientific
terminology” (p. 34).

In Jacob and Esau, Neumann explores the opposites residing in the soul of
the individual, as well as on the collective and cultural levels. He defines
this as one of the fundamental problems of human existence. Jacob,
representing the principle of introversion, needs to recognize that the
extraversion of Esau, representing the world as other, also resides within
himself. We might find here Neumann’s own personal struggle, as well as
his formulation of his own identity as a Jew.

This previously unknown work by Erich Neumann is divided into three

parts, “The Symbolism of Jacob and Esau,” “On the Collective Symbolism
of the Brother Motif,” and “Layers of the Unconscious: The Interpretation
of Mythology.” The order of the three parts has not been conclusively
determined, since Neumann’s numbering of them was not definitive.
However, the present order was decided upon after careful examination of
the manuscript and following Neumann’s handwritten corrections of the
typescript. What we find is a circumambulation of the symbolism of the
brother motif and the theme of opposites.

I. The Symbolism of Jacob and Esau

In his introduction to the subject, as well as toward his conclusion,

Neumann points at the shortcomings of a purely individual psychology,
such as Freud’s or Adler’s, to deal with religious phenomena, because such
a psychology “reduce[s] spiritual-cultural and religious events to our
instinctual structure.” In order to better understand cultural and religious
events, it is necessary, he claims, to rely on a psychology that accounts for
the collective unconscious, which, as a “suprapersonal non-ego,” can
confront the ego. While the archetypes of the collective unconscious
manifest in the individual, they neither belong to nor originate in the
personal sphere.
Study of the biblical forefathers, who are not merely mythological
figures but have “prototypical significance,” requires an archetypal
perspective, accounting for the collective unconscious. Both the forefathers
and the prophets are crucially related to this primal source in the collective
psyche, beyond the individual and his or her family story. They are
forefathers not only genealogically, but because they contain the experience
of an entire people and have an impact on the psyche of their descendants.
Importantly, Neumann emphasizes how the account of the forefathers
stems “from the soul of the people remembering and processing those
events.” That is, the account is derived not only from the forefathers as they
were or are described in the scriptures but also from continuous reference to
them. There is a living interaction between memory and processing. This is
the reason why merely studying and keeping the memory of the biblical
story itself is not enough; the exegeses and legends of Midrashic literature
provide the processing taking place in the collective psyche.10 In fact, this is
exactly what Neumann himself does: he carries the people’s story further by
processing it. The psyche, both individual and collective, is involved in the
process, implying a psychological approach rather than a literal reading of
the scriptures.
The symbolism in the Midrashic texts lies “readily available at the
bottom of a people’s soul.” It pertains not only to the archetypal heritage of
the Jewish people, but to humanity at large, says Neumann. Referring to
Jung’s remark that myths are like the dreams of a people, Neumann reads
the symbolic language of the Midrashic texts as manifestations and as a
reflection of a people’s unconscious thinking across generations.
In what foretells the phases of conscious development in his Origins and
History of Consciousness, Neumann observes how, in the course of history,
tradition loses its authoritarian meaning.11 In the individuation process,
tradition is replaced by personal experience. In a way, this brings the
process full circle back to the “beginning of the chain of tradition,” where
the forefathers’ and the prophets’ collectively meaningful individual
experiences were central (p. 34). In the individuation process, the personal
experience again becomes pivotal for the individual and replaces the
meaning that was carried or held by tradition.

The Brother Motif

Jacob and Esau serves as Neumann’s blueprint for a variety of aspects of
the brother motif. For Neumann, Jacob represents the Jew, or, as Jung
writes, “the quintessence of the Jew,” to be understood as a “symbolic
exponent of folk psychology,” who from the outset carries the promise—the
promise as the chosen one and God’s promise to Abram that “in you shall
all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3).12 Jacob’s entitlement to the
rights of the firstborn, claims Neumann, was confirmed by his dream of the
ladder at Bethel. While his father Isaac did not recognize his role, his
mother Rebekah did, and she ensured he would receive the blessing.
Recounting Jacob’s negative encounters with the outside world, such as
with Laban, his father-in-law twice over, Neumann demonstrates Jacob’s
introversion.
Neumann begins his investigation of the archetypal motif of the brothers
by quoting texts from Bin Gorion’s collection of Jewish legends, reflecting
different polarities between the hostile twin brothers: while Esau takes his
place in the world of food and commerce, Jacob chooses the spiritual
world.13 The sun becomes the kingdom of Esau, while the moon belongs to
Jacob. Furthermore, Jacob draws his strength from his father Isaac’s inner,
sacred face, while Esau draws strength from the outer, profane face of his
father.14 We may keep in mind Jung’s writing that “I call the outer attitude,
the outward face, the persona; the inner attitude, the inward face, I call the
anima.”15
Jacob is turned toward the internal, invisible world, “toward YHWH and
his inner demand,” the God that does not manifest in images or in man-
made artifacts, and is not concretized in the outer world. In contrast to
Esau’s visible and ordinary world of external reality, Jacob’s is the world of
the inward-looking gaze, a world of “interiorization.” This is a world in
which the God-image is, in fact, imageless, an inner sacred space of pure
interiority, without depiction in the physical world.
Thus, Jacob comes to represent introversion, while Esau represents an
extraverted attitude. Following the biblical story, Jacob represents the Jew
(as a collective designation) and the Jewish people, while Esau is, for Jacob
the Jew, the other. This is the idea of the other, who is betrayed, who has to
depart, and who must find his way in the outer world. With a strong
foothold in external reality, he then becomes a threat to Jacob’s
introversion. Yet, along the lines of the biblical story, and as Neumann
points out, if Esau can be recognized as an internal shadow, reconciliation
can be found.

The Inner Voice

With the God-image as pure interiority, we are required to be oriented
“toward the inner voice, toward the voice of God.” This inner voice refers
to the breath, the spirit, and the wind.16 The “Voice” becomes a
manifestation of an internal God-image, “an orientation within the human
heart,” rather than being lost in the world and in the values of the external
collective. Neumann develops this further in Depth Psychology and a New
Ethic, where he writes, “Each new revelation of the Voice in an individual
—is opposed to conscience as the representative of the old collective
ethic.”17 This inner voice of the Self, thus, is opposed to the laws of the
collective.
Neumann’s creative thoughts and ideas, such as his work on the inner
voice, are steeped both in Jewish culture and tradition and in Jung’s
conceptualizations of analytical psychology. They are living expressions of
the interaction between memory and processing, as he describes regarding
the exegeses of Midrashic literature.

The Sun and the Moon, the Outer World and the
Inner
Concluding that the intellectual and cultural structure of Judaism is
introverted, or, as Hugo Rosenthal writes, that “the attitude of the Jew is
introverted,” Neumann explores the relationship between Jacob, as a
“prototype for the Jew,” and the nocturnal world of the moon (p. 7).18
Beginning with the Hebrew lunar calendar, the moon symbolizes rebirth
and renewal, and “the plea for the future Messianic era uttered at the New
Moon festival.”
Based on a legend which tells of the sun and the moon originally being
of equal size, Neumann discusses the balance between the two sides—the
inner and the outer sides of the world, the extraverted and the introverted
aspects, the objective and the subjective circumstances, and the two
directions in which the face can turn. Being of the same size, and together
forming a whole, they constitute “the original, pre-defined condition of the
world” (p. 10).
In the legend, the moon asks God if the sacred world of the moon should
not be larger than the profane world of the sun, to which God responds by
making the light of the moon sixty times smaller. The smallness of the
moon, says Neumann, refers to the experience of inferiority and the
inadequacy of the inner vis-à-vis the outer world, as well as the Jew’s sense
of helplessness toward the power of the “sun-like peoples.” Thus, God
punishes the moon for craving power.
Neumann looks into an additional Midrashic text, in which the moon
accuses God of having done the moon wrong and of creating a divided
world, claiming that God actually belongs to the sacred world of the moon.
The divided world pertains theologically to the sacred and the profane, and
psychologically to the division between unconscious wholeness and the
inevitable division that is both the foundation of consciousness and which
emerges with consciousness. We see here the beginning of Neumann’s
developing ideas about the ego-Self axis.
In the Midrashic text, God consoles the moon that it shall rule day and
night. Neumann quotes from a letter in which Jung had responded to his
ruminations on the sun and the moon. Jung wrote, “Everything exterior is
the world of the sun, and there is no doubt that the power of the sun is great.
The inner is invisible and always seems to be powerless. In reality, however,
it rules secretly and pervasively and its power is as great as the sun’s” (p.
13).19
Jacob and Esau, as a pair of opposites, reflects this division between the
inner voice of spirit and the outer hands of action, as in Genesis 27:22: “The
voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” But the story of
Jacob and Esau also reflects the sense of inferiority, fear, and threat that
invisible interiority experiences in relation to the hands of action and the
skills of the extraverted.
Although he does not elaborate, Neumann pertinently refers here to the
legend of the thirty-six righteous, ever-present across the generations, yet
known neither to themselves nor to others. Their presence ensures the
world’s existence and prevents its destruction. This pertains to the
indispensable world of invisible interiority—as wind, spirit, voice, or Self
—in order to ensure the existence and continuity of the visible world of sun,
ego, and physical reality.

The Inner Division of the Moon: Evil and the

Scapegoat
Besides the diminution of the moon in relation to the sun, that is, the two
sides of the world, Neumann refers to a division “within” the moon,
pertaining to the moon’s darkening by evil. He sets out on a fascinating
exploration of evil within, based on Jewish sources, tying together the
symbolism of Jacob, the moon, the angels (both good and evil) and Esau,
and the ritual sacrifice, as well as the banishment of the goat, the scapegoat.
 The biblical New Moon festival, like the Sabbath, signified a close
relationship with God, as expressed for instance in the custom to turn to the
prophets, the men of insight and introspection, on the day of the new moon.
In the sixteenth century, following Rabbi Moses Cordovero, New Moon
Day became the Minor Day of Atonement, thus further connecting the
moon with sin and forgiveness.20 On Yom Kippur, the high priest, HaKohen
HaGadol, drew lots over two goats, one to be sacrificed to God, the other,
the scapegoat, to carry the people’s sins “to Azazel,” into the wilderness,
that is, back to the habitat of the evil demon, the source of the sins.21
Esau, “the hairy one, who resembles a male goat,” as the legend tells us,
represents both the red sun-goat, the creative and procreative ruler of this
world and lustful sexuality, as well as the dark sun-goat who shades,
darkens, and obstructs the moon. As the moon grows large and full, “the
strength of the male goat is consumed by the fire of the almighty.”22 And
legend tells us that as the moon wanes, the goat is rejuvenated. Thus the
waxing and the waning of the moon shifts the problem from one between
moon and sun, inner and outer, to an internal issue where, due to the dark
moon, it becomes constellated as a moral issue. “The problem,” says
Neumann, “must lie with Jacob.” Thus, the problem of evil becomes an
“inner Edom.”23 The resolution of the moral conflict manifests itself as a
sacrifice of the goat, of the evil side within, thus reflecting the polarity
between YHWH and Azazel. As Neumann says, “Yom Kippur also concerns
the resolution of the moral problem through the sacrifice of evil; the part
representing Edom is brought as sacrifice in its symbolic shape as a goat”
(p. 34). However, when repressed and supposedly resolved by being split
off, the struggle against evil becomes an everlasting, self-perpetuating
process.24
Neumann then raises the question, “How are the diminution of the moon,
that is, the problem of two worlds, and the opacity of the moon, that is, the
moral problem, connected?” His answer is that the opposition governing the
world, that is, between Jacob and Esau, between the moon and the sun,
between introversion and extraversion, “persist[s] in the introvert as a moral
problem” (p. 21). That is, within the introvert, the opposite resides as an
inferior, potentially mischievous function.

The Introvert and the Sacrifice of Inferior

Extraversion
As Neumann says in his ensuing discussion on introversion and
extraversion, as represented by the characters of Jacob and Esau, each of
these poles carries within it the opposite, however undeveloped, attitude.
Introversion requires acknowledging an inferior, undeveloped extraverted
side. This inferior extraversion, however, “is not identical with ‘the real
Edom,’ the extravert and ruler of this world.” That is to say, internalization
is not a wholesale process. There is a confluence between an internal
archetypal core and living experience, a nodal point where archetypal
externalization and internalization of the actual experience come across
each other and form what Jung calls the imago.25 Considering Jacob’s
dominant attitude as introverted, and Jacob as a prototype for the Jew,
Neumann focuses on introversion, and the concomitant inferior
extraversion, with an associated sense of inadequacy and inferiority
residing in the shadow.26 The experienced “image of Edom,” that is, Jacob’s
inferior side, is a combination of the real, actual Other and the distorted,
superimposed projection of his inferior “Edom-likeness.”
When the inferior aspect in the psyche is sacrificed, for instance, by
means of the scapegoat and by the effort to eliminate that which is
perceived as evil, the process of resolving the moral conflict becomes
perpetuated, supposedly ending only in the Messianic era. The attempt to
split off the shadow creates a perpetual process, an infinite battle, with the
Other. Using Jacob as a prototype, Neumann describes how the inferior
aspect is initially experienced merely through projection onto the hostile
brother.27
The experience of a moral conflict entails the first stage of overcoming
the split and the distorted projection and is symbolized by the opaque moon.
The realization of the shadow within oneself terminates its projection,
whatever imagery is applied, such as Jacob realizing that Esau resides
within himself, or when the introvert discovers his or her inferior
extraversion.
When projection of the shadow is withdrawn, “the actual image of the
Other becomes visible,” says Neumann succinctly. Neumann’s discussion
here lays the foundation for the thoughts that he developed further in Depth
Psychology and a New Ethic, written more than a decade later, in the
aftermath of the Holocaust. The fanatic and the fundamentalist, however,
thrive on archetypal identification and the inevitable projection of the
shadow. The essence of their existence requires the splitting off of the
shadow, and they are therefore unable to withdraw their projections.
In contrast, the moral conflict rests upon the creation of an internal
polarity. Recognizing the problem of opposites, and gaining an insight into
the polarity, constitutes the second stage of overcoming an undeveloped
experience of the shadow or, in the metaphorical language that Neumann
applies in this treatise, the Jew’s and the introvert’s primitive experience of
Esau. The problem of opposites eventually reaches its peak and resolution
in Jacob’s struggle with the angel. In a response to Neumann, Jung writes,
“The ‘other’ reinstates the divinity of God in contrast to human inflation
and thereby establishes the ‘initiation,’ i.e., the path of redemption, until the
final revocation of the separateness of man from God.”28
 The Shadow, Its Projection, and the Struggle with
the Angel
Neumann points out that Esau is presented as “truly negative, primitive and
extraverted,” thus making him well suited as a target for Jacob’s
projections. However, it must be kept in mind that the narrative is written
from Jacob’s perspective, and it is he, Jacob, who needs to accept Esau, the
brother who carries his projected inferiority. Jacob, who cunningly ensured
he became his father’s chosen son, needs to recognize that with being
chosen comes what we might call self-reflecting inferiority. For Jacob as an
introvert, Esau epitomizes the frightening, violent world, capable of
crushing him and his family, “the small seed of the great promise.”
Something internally valuable always requires protection, to be kept apart,
sometimes as a secret (which means “set apart,” just like the Hebrew word
for holy, kadosh), with the concomitant experience of being externally
threatened. While Jacob’s fear is directed toward the outer Esau, his fear is
intensified by Esau within himself, his shadow. In fact, Jacob’s image of
Esau is a combination of the real Esau and the projected shadow, that is, his
own inferiority and “inner brother.”
Upon his return after twenty years in exile, during the night before he
crosses the Jabbok River, Jacob encounters a stranger. When struggling
with him, Jacob does not yet know who his adversary is. Only later does he
remark to his brother that he has battled with God, in the guise of Esau, his
inferior shadow and representative of the hostile world. Jacob’s personal
shadow has here merged with the archetypal antagonist. Shadow and Self
have merged and become one—there is no Self without shadow, and the
Self may be reached only through the shadow.
When Jacob greets Esau, he tells him, “For therefore I have seen your
face, as though I had seen the face of God, and you were pleased with me”
(Gen. 33:10). Neumann observes how here something fundamentally
different from the customary Judeo-Christian approach is taking place.
Rather than sacrificing the inferior and the negative aspect, sending it out
into the desert where the demons reside, that is, outside the realm of
consciousness, Jacob sees God in his adversary. “The onslaught of instinct
then becomes an experience of divinity,” says Jung, in reference to Jacob’s
wrestling with the angel.29 This event, at the height of the hero’s struggle
with the adversary, transcends the problem of opposition, and the
opposition between the two worlds. Jacob, the introvert, comes to recognize
the outside world, and evil, as the face of God. He now comes to accept and
reintegrate his shadow. He assimilates Esau into consciousness, and he
acknowledges him as divine. Furthermore, he “also recognizes evil as
God’s messenger, and the apparently hostile and negative outside world as
the face of God.” Having fought both God and humanity, Jacob has
prevailed.30 This is a development from a condition in which the archetypal
adversary, Satan in the Hebrew Bible, is split off from the God-image and
can become integrated.31 This is a tremendously significant stage in the
development of the psyche; we might say that the Other has not only been
recognized as the shadow within oneself, which is already a manifestation
of consciousness, but the gifts that Jacob brings his previously hostile
brother, the adversary, are his sacrifice to the divine, his sacred-making that
transforms the Other, merging shadow and God-image.
Jacob recognizes that he and Esau represent two faces of God. It is the
struggle, writes Neumann, which enables the experience of the duality of
God, as manifested by the inner and outer worlds, by good and evil, and by
the two brothers. He writes, “The moral division (the inferior function) and
the division of the world (the principle of opposites) are suspended in God’s
all-encompassing two faces” (p. 40). For Jacob, as a prototypical
representation of the Jew and the introverted attitude, Esau is now no longer
an unconscious inferiority but can be dealt with consciously as a separate
human being rather than as a demon and a fear-inspiring brute.
 Neumann considers the angel touching Jacob’s loins as related to the
sexual sphere, which, he says, is weakened by the encounter, leaving Jacob
limping. It may, however, also reflect Jacob’s strength as a human and a
mortal, which, in contrast to divine potency, always entails a wound.32 The
conscious assimilation of the shadow leads to its disempowerment as a
hostile other. Furthermore, by renouncing a one-sided orientation in favor
of an all-inclusive conception of God, Jacob reaches a third place, beyond
the opposites, and can then become “effective as ‘a blessing’” (p. 43).33
Neumann claims, however, that the level of experience that Jacob’s
struggle with the angel implies is hardly ever attained, as progress beyond
the stage of projection of the shadow is rare. Because the Jews remain
unaware of their “inferior Edom-likeness,” they tend to project this onto
other peoples, says Neumann, which distorts the image of those peoples
and, in fact, “activates their negative Edom-likeness.” He asserts that the
Jews need to be aware of and recognize their own shadow in order to
correctly perceive and constructively coexist with other peoples. Neumann
is certainly not apologetic of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic persecution,
nor is he attempting to explain it as a consequence of an unawareness of the
Jews’ own shadow aspects. His critical awareness of Nazism and anti-
Semitism is evident prominently in his correspondence with Jung. Rather,
what he says does reflect the consciousness of sincere introspection.
In Neumann’s view, Hasidism has overcome the conventional Judeo-
Christian belief that one side of the opposites needs to be sacrificed.
Instead, the two faces of God, says Neumann, in actual fact “fight each
other to be blessed by each other” (p. 49).

II. On the Collective Symbolism of the Brother

Motif
Pursuing the motif of Jacob and Esau, Neumann sees it as his task to extend
its archetypal foundation beyond Jewish particularism to the broader
symbolism of humanity. But he also attempts to broaden the Jewish
problem of the shadow by considering the tension between spirit and earth.

The Archetypal Foundation of Mythical Motifs

Neumann rejects the so-called Wander-Theorie, which attempts to explain
the similarity of folktales and mythical motifs by their geographical
dispersion and cultural dissemination. Like other Jungians, he accentuates
the archetypal origin of such universal themes. However, the particular
constellation of archetypal motifs in the history of a people will determine
the dress in which the archetypal images appear and their distinct cultural
shape.
Referring to Midrashic literature, the story of Jacob and Esau is linked to
the theme of opposites. Because this is such a central motif in the
unconscious psyche, it is widespread in ancient mythology and symbolism,
appearing for instance as the themes of the sun and the moon and brothers
and twins. The strife between the twins in the womb pertains to the
opposing twins motif. Primogeniture, the rights of the firstborn, however,
establishes the concept of unequal brothers and points to the more general
principle of opposites. According to Bachofen, the principle of opposites is
related to the symbolism of light and shadow, black and white, and the life-
and-death dynamics of the telluric (feminine, earthly) region. He also
considered this to be a region of the unconscious, in contrast to the uranic
(masculine, heavenly) region of consciousness.34
The different motifs of opposites, brothers, and twins refer to a twofold
and pervasive opposition within the human soul. In the first instance, says
Neumann, it concerns the compensatory movement between consciousness
and the unconscious, as expressed by enantiodromia, whereby a one-sided
tendency in consciousness turns into, or is balanced by, its counterposition
in the unconscious.35 Additionally, a polarity exists in the unconscious
between creation and destruction, and between good and evil, representing
two equal sides. There is an internal periodicity of the opposites in the
collective unconscious, says Neumann, similar to the succession of day and
night.

Moon and Sun

Insofar as the Jew is identified with the feminine and the receiving nature of
moon symbolism, Jewish psychology, it seems, implies a reversal of the
masculine and the feminine.36 However, while for the Westerner it may
seem peculiar that the moon would be a principle superior to the sun, it
becomes understandable when considering that in the East the moon’s
cooling effect is life-enhancing, while the “sun’s predatory nature
overwhelmingly governs a world that has been turned into an arid desert”
(p. 58). Neumann refers to Babylonian mythology to demonstrate the
importance of how motifs are processed, which is of greater importance
than tracing what their origin might be. There, Sin, the moon deity, is
considered the father of the sun, Samas, and of the gods. The sun is the
death star, god of the underworld, while the moon is the life star. This is a
reversal of the sun’s significance in the conventional Western hero myth
and in the image of the sun hero, pertaining to the attainment of ego-
consciousness.37 However, in “The Moon and Matriarchal Consciousness,”
Neumann determines that “whether it appears as the dominant factor in the
psychology of a woman or of a man, in its essence the moon is bound to the
archetypal Feminine.”38
 The fusion of these dominant principles of the collective unconscious
with the quasi-historical text places the entire problem of opposites at the
heart of humanity. Thereby it becomes a general psychological problem of
humankind, which is restricted not merely to the individual psyche. The
development from what originally is a psychologically unconscious issue
into a highly acute human question, as in the Jacob and Esau story, raises
the eternal question of existence to a higher level of consciousness, as
“represented by a typically introverted mentality,” says Neumann (p. 61).
We can see here the beginning of his theses on the origins and history of
consciousness.
The moon, says Neumann, is called a twin not only because of its
relation to the sun but because of its own inner, twofold character, as the
waxing and the waning moon, and the opposition between the full moon
and its absence, the black moon (principally the presence of absence). The
solar deity Nergal, the Babylonian god who pertains to the “scorching sun
in the summertime,” also plays the role of the waning moon. That is, he
serves as the moon’s inner adversary.
In his discussion on the opposition between the sun and the moon,
Neumann draws parallels between the Babylonian deities, and likewise
compares the opposition between Seth and Horus.39 Seth, like Esau, is
analogous to the sun = the red one = the hostile brother = evil, with which
he eventually came to be identified. The color red pertains to the desert, in
contrast to the green color of fertility.40 But, as Neumann describes, this
opposition continues to play a role also in the modern unconscious.
Furthermore, Seth, the epitome of evil, is identified with “the dragon of the
abyss, the evident shadow brother of Osiris, the power of evil and death” (p.
64).41
Neumann concludes this part, the briefest of the three, by referring to the
attempts in psychoanalysis to interpret the problem of the opposites (for
instance, between consciousness and the shadow), as it appears in myth and
legend, solely on the level of the personal unconscious. He raises the
question on which level myths, folktales, and art should be interpreted,
elaborating this question in the final part of the book.

III. Layers of the Unconscious: The Interpretation

of Mythology

The universal, fundamentally similar structure of the human soul explains

why similar motifs are present across cultures, appearing in folktales and
mythology.
Primarily relying on Otto Rank, Neumann is critical of the attempts
made by psychoanalysts to reduce the understanding of various archetypal
motifs, such as the twins and the hostile brothers, to the Oedipus complex.
He criticizes the psychoanalytic tendency to invariably view, for instance,
the theme of the woman to be conquered as a surrogate mother, whereby the
development of manhood becomes a priori an incestuous process. Likewise,
claims Neumann, Adler’s individual psychology interprets the Oedipus
complex in terms of the drive for power, while Freudian psychoanalysis
views the drive for power from an oedipal perspective. Universal validity is
ascribed to their respective perspectives. In order to avoid simplification,
the study of these themes from the perspective of analytical psychology
must therefore account for the complexity of the human soul.
The motifs of the two brothers and of the twins are interrelated. Both
pertain to the problem of the shadow. As hostile brothers, the two opposing
sides struggle against each other, and as twins, the opposing sides are
inseparably connected. The Dioscuri, the twin brothers Castor and Pollux,
the former mortal, the latter divine, indicate that the motif cannot be
reduced merely to personal desires.
 The dual inner nature of the human psyche may take the form of the
conflict between good and evil, ego and shadow, or the opposition between
mind and nature. This inner duality pertains to the transformation of libido.
Around its center, says Neumann, orbit archetypal motifs such as the
symbolism of light, sun, heroes, gods and demons, heaven and hell. The
struggle of the human soul for consciousness, and its emergence out of the
unconscious, is expressed by these archetypal motifs. We can here observe
how Neumann’s exploration heralds his magnum opus, The Origins and
History of Consciousness. Through the lens of the brother motif, we gain a
sense of our dual belonging, to consciousness and the uncon-scious, and of
the stages of transformation of consciousness.

The Shadow and the Development of Consciousness

The shadow reflects the compensatory relationship between consciousness
and the unconscious. The adversary figure of the shadow represents the
dark side, which belongs to consciousness as night does to day, representing
what is absent from consciousness, whether in moral or instinctual terms.
Thus, a moral consciousness will in the shadow be represented by a
contradicting immorality. The “other side,” the unconscious, is most
strongly incarnated in and represented by the body. “Instincts and
archetypes are most intimately related to the body as pictorial forms, if not
as a parallel identity to the body,” says Neumann. In order to “attain its own
world of light,” consciousness, which Neumann calls a “small and late child
of the unconscious,” must constantly work its way out and separate itself
from body, race, and nature (p. 77). The savior, as a bearer of
consciousness, represents the consciousness that slumbers in the
unconscious and guides the way out of the cosmic principle of opposites,
creating individual consciousness by conquering the dragon of the
unconscious.
 This forms the background to the motif of the hostile brothers, whereby
one side drives toward consciousness, the other pulls back toward
unconsciousness. The motif of the shadow appears where a world of light
and consciousness has become large enough to cast a shadow.
Through this constant work of separation, consciousness can become
individual; it can gain experience and recognize the nature of things and
their value. Consciousness develops through reflecting on the crucial
questions at the crossroads of life—from where do I come, where do I go,
and what does it mean?42
The dominance of consciousness may cause the false belief that the dark
side can be completely overcome. The shadow, however, “is the chain that
restrains any ascent into the heights. It is the dark adversary and
circumcisor. It is the eternal memory of limitation and abyss.” The shadow
is, Neumann continues, “the captivation of consciousness by the dark
unconscious and the world” (p. 79).
The shadow reminds the individual of his or her boundaries and
limitations, for instance, due to the times and circumstances into which one
was born, or one’s ethnicity, family, typology, and body. It is important to
remember, however, that the shadow contains the treasure of creative life,
as well. The shadow, says Neumann, “emerges amid the ascent and descent
on Jacob’s ladder, between the son’s ego-consciousness on the one hand and
the mother’s collective unconscious on the other” (p. 78). It is by
acceptance of the shadow that one can become an individual.
Due to the constellation of the shadow, the collective unconscious
becomes organized and doesn’t remain “a random, quasi-cosmic expanse,”
and by means of consciousness, the individual can now engage in dialogue
with the collective unconscious. The shadow becomes the intermediary
between the collective unconscious and consciousness.
 Secondary Personalization
In the course of history and the development of consciousness, Neumann
suggests, the original projection of negative parts gives way to introjection,
whereby aspects of the external world are taken in by the subject,
contributing to the process of soul formation. Initially the individual, in
identification with the sacrificed animal, could offer up a part of himself,
which was transferred into the sacrificial animal. In the course of history,
the sacrificial ritual became emptied of its meaning. This was followed by a
stage in which the animal sacrifice became an inner sacrifice. Here,
spiritualization and prayer replaced the initial identification, the
participation mystique. This introjection pertains to the development of
conscience, since projection onto the object is replaced by internal psychic
experience.
Similarly, by means of the process that Neumann calls secondary
personalization, an impersonal content is transformed into a personal
story.43 A myth becomes transformed into “a family story involving
individual ‘characters’” (p. 84). By secondary personalization, archetypal
material is turned into personal, living reality.44
In early myths, the collective unconscious is at work and unmistakably
apparent. Even though they might appear in human shape, gods and other
images are experienced as impersonal. Similarly, images that arise from the
deep unconscious, appearing in the individual’s psyche, cannot be reduced
to or deduced from the personal unconscious. With the growth of
consciousness and the ego at its center, the process of secondary
personalization has emerged and taken place, both in the individual and in
general human development. The folktale marks the transition and holds an
intermediary position between the archetypal and the personal layers.
 The process of secondary personalization is highly meaningful for the
development of consciousness. It is like a “descent of the gods: from divine
events spring humanlike and eventually human events,” as Neumann
describes it (p. 85). The archetypal motif becomes living, personal reality.
The process of personalization, in which concrete individuals such as father,
mother, or sibling appear as individual persons, occurs relatively late in
human development, presupposing an ego-consciousness and awareness of
reality.45
Prior to secondary personalization, while the archetypal world prevails,
the mother, for example, “still contains everything—the world, the
nourishing, the enveloping—and fades into the infinite background.” The
phase of secondary personalization brings about an adaptation to reality and
either the disentanglement or the extraction of personal figures from the
archetypal images. “The child’s ego lives among the archetypes as the
adult’s ego-consciousness does among people” (p. 88). When the ego has
been more stably formed, the effect on the child of the inherent archetypal
constellation becomes less fateful, while object relations become
increasingly dominant. In the development of consciousness, there is a
continuous movement away from the archetypal world, from predestined
fate toward individual destiny.46

Mythologizing, Secondary Personalization, and

Objectification of the Archetypes
In The Origins and History of Consciousness, Neumann writes that
“secondary personalization brings a steady decrease in the effective power
of the transpersonal and a steady increase in the importance of the ego and
personality.”47 The personalization process is directly related to the
development of the ego and consciousness, which requires a decrease in the
power and strength of archetypal contents. Neumann writes, in a footnote,

The earliest historiographers always tried to bring the individual hero into line with the
archetype of the primordial hero, and thus produced a kind of mythologized historiography.
An example of this is the Christianization of the Jesus figure, where all the mythical traits
peculiar to the hero and redeemer archetype were sketched in afterwards. The mythologizing
process is the exact opposite of secondary personalization, but, here as there, the center of
gravity of the hero-figure is displaced towards the human activity of the ego.48

Thus, in the process that Neumann calls “the separation of the systems,”
the unconscious and consciousness rely on mediating factors that enable
archetypal contents to become personalized, as well as enabling personal
material to attain a measure of archetypal energy.49
Through the objectification of archetypes, the nature of the archetype as
the principal element in the unconscious is recognized.50 The dominance of
the external object is replaced by acknowledging the archetypes. However,
the archetypal impact is also relativized by consciousness. The child—and
the neurotic person—will then be less likely to project the archetypal image
onto the external object, such as a parent, nor will they be flooded by the
power of the archetypes. As a result, the tension between consciousness and
the collective unconscious becomes productive, constituting, says
Neumann, “the energetic basis of all life and all productivity” (p. 89).
Knowledge of the three stages—mythologizing, secondary
personalization, and conscious objectification—enables genuine
interpretation. Psychoanalytic reduction of mythological material to the
family story pertains to the significant stage of secondary personalization.
This serves the development and preservation of ego-consciousness.
However, it tends toward generalization, for instance, by reduction to the
sex drive. It reduces childhood experiences to the family story without
accounting for the archetypal source or aspect of the experience. By means
of secondary personalization, the potentially intrusive and disruptive
archetypal images become bearable. Archetypal imagery—such as the
whirlpool in the bathtub’s drain that threatens the frightened child with
being drawn into the abyss of the netherworld, with being overtaken by the
dark forces of nonexistence that overwhelm the tiny ego—loses its grip by
means of secondary personalization. The archetypal magnitude is reduced,
and the ego comes to stand on firmer ground.
This creates an increase in ego continuity, says Neumann, and reduces
the child’s primordial world to personal factors. The world thus becomes
less frightening and more manageable. However, it causes neither an
increase in energetic tension nor an extension of consciousness. Thus,
according to Neumann, psychoanalytic interpretation is a method primarily
suitable for treating certain neuroses in the first half of life, since secondary
personalization pertains to the psychology of youth.
Neumann criticizes Freud for capturing only the negative aspect of the
archetypal world, with the inevitable result that the mythical becomes
reduced to the merely personal. While this enables the developing ego to
gain strength and set boundaries, awareness and acknowledgment of the
mythical layer are lost. Healing remains limited if it takes place only in the
sphere of secondary personalization. In order to open up the sources of life,
says Neumann, it is necessary to advance toward the mythologizing layer,
to “the collective mother soil of the soul.”
Early man, the child, the creative person, and the neurotic, says
Neumann, live outside the dominance of ego-consciousness, whereby the
archetypes of the unconscious become more significant. While an
extraverted attitude emphasizes the influences of the outer world and
neglect the subjective factors, the child actually projects the archetypes onto
external objects, experiencing the archetypal situation through them, even
though it is not caused by those objects. The archetypal dimension provides
the subjective, internal component of experience.
Secondary personalization corresponds to the personal unconscious.
Thus, in Freudian psychoanalytic thinking, says Neumann, relying
primarily on Otto Rank, artistic activity “is consistent with the tormenting
compulsion of psychic self-preservation,” which is maintained by
compensatory fantasies (p. 93). In contrast, Neumann claims that through
engaging with the archetypes, the artist mythologizes the world, which
mythologizes itself through him. It is because of his or her proximity to the
unconscious and the dangers therein that the artist is forced toward
“formulation and formation” (p. 93). The process of inspiration and creation
requires both a productive unconscious and a receptive consciousness.
Reaching into the mythologizing layer, the artist is less subject to secondary
personalization than the average person.
Otto Rank, for example, the psychoanalyst whose writings Neumann
explores, interprets the dragon to which the virgin is sacrificed in myths and
folktales “as the young woman’s sexual fear of her husband’s animal side”
(p. 95). That is, Rank’s interpretation is rooted in personal relations.
Neumann, on the other hand, emphasizes the significance of the dragon as
the devouring danger of the unconscious, which the hero and ego
consciousness must overcome, not the least by means of secondary
personalization. The hero, who for Neumann represents ego-consciousness,
struggles with the dragon of the unconscious. He survives and brings the
victory of consciousness. This is the struggle involved in all child
development, says Neumann. There is an archetypal basis to the heroic
struggle of the child to attain consciousness, to wrestle itself out of the grip
of the unconscious.
In the psychoanalytic version of history, the archetypal world and its
symbolism are lost. “The reduction to the family story,” says Neumann,
“deprives archetypal events of the inherently magnificent problems of
human history” and diminishes these events (p. 99).

The Centrality of Secondary Mythologizing

In the final part of his work, Neumann returns to the symbolism of the twin
brothers, Jacob and Esau, and the symbolism of sun and moon. The deepest
layer of mythologizing, into which the unconscious is projected, includes a
variety of themes in which the principle of opposites manifests itself. The
primitive ritual of the sacrifice of the scapegoat, by means of which the
unconscious is projected onto the level of reality, indicates an early layer of
mythologizing. The transition from the myths of sun and moon to a distinct
story of the two brothers corresponds to a later stage of greater
personalization, even though the archetypal images are still predominant. In
the biblical story of Jacob and Esau, says Neumann, both genuine
mythologizing and secondary mythologizing, as well as strong elements of
consciousness, are woven into the story.
In the initial stages, a balance existed between the opposites, for
instance, in the motif of twins. In the development of consciousness, one of
the principles becomes the governing principle of consciousness, whereas
the other side is demoted to a devil-like status. The original equality
between the opposites is replaced by hostility and by the struggle for
predominance, as expressed by motifs such as the hostile brothers and the
hero’s struggle with the dragon, that is, with the unconscious. With the
advent of ego-consciousness, these themes take on a more subject-related
formation, whereby interpretation can take place on the subjective level,
and the hostile brother becomes a representative of the struggle with the
inner shadow.
 Neumann considers secondary mythologizing, in which the historical-
individual and the collective-mythological merge, to be a prominent trait of
Jewish mentality and creativity. The biblical text itself is such an
amalgamation, so common in Jewish tradition, exemplified, for instance, by
the figure of Elijah. This layer becomes particularly evident in Hasidism,
which Neumann explored extensively.51

Freud, Adler, and the Collective Unconscious

Neumann considers the inability of Freud and Adler to conceptualize the
collective unconscious as both a generational and an individual Jewish
problem (although he observes that Freud did formulate such a concept;
Freud considered the primal scenes as pertaining to a “phylogenetic
endowment”). In addition to Freud’s positivism, both Freud and Adler
“belong to an era of the Jewish history of ideas that is characterized by its
assimilation of Occidental thought” (p. 100). With the extensive loss of
religious and collective Jewish ties, the emancipation of individual
consciousness is marked by extraversion. The outward flow of libido which
this entails causes a loss of Jewish memory, Neumann claims, and a loss of
contact with the collective unconscious.
Due to the above historical situation, in which Jewish consciousness is
detached from what Neumann terms “its originally primitive confinement to
a Jewish community,” Freud and Adler avoid the problem of Jewish
collectivity (p. 100). Therefore, they are unable to reach into and
acknowledge the collective unconscious. Thus, their field of inquiry is
consistent with the process of secondary personalization, implying
detachment from participation mystique, and focuses instead on the
development of ego-consciousness.
 Neumann ends his treatise by calling the reader’s attention to the fact
that Western historiography is also dominated by archetypal images, such as
in the projection of the negative onto the adversary, whereby every struggle
is construed as one between good and evil. Individual consciousness is
replaced by the masses adhering to the primordial image of “holy battle,”
identifying with the hero ideal, “willing to slay the enemy dragon and to
sacrifice their blood, as they always have” (p. 106).

I now invite the reader to go back to 1934, the year of Neumann’s arrival in
the land of Israel, to open the door to Neumann’s study on the
Mediterranean shore in Tel Aviv, and to sit down next to him at his writing
desk. Look at the handwritten and typewritten pages as they fill up one by
one and are added to a rising pile, and enjoy sharing the innovative and
meaningful ideas of this brilliantly creative depth psychologist.
Neumann’s treatise on the collective symbolism of the brother motif, as
well as his yet to be published work on the roots of Jewish consciousness,
pertaining to what Neumann considered to be nothing less than a
“rediscovery of Judaism,” is an exceptional expression of the work that he
wanted Jung to do. In a letter to Jung in the summer of 1934, Neumann
writes, “I’ve set myself the big challenge of getting you to write something
fundamental about Judaism.”52 We should be grateful that Jung did not take
up that challenge, but let Neumann himself do the work.

__________
1. C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann, Analytical Psychology in Exile: The Correspondence of C. G.
Jung and Erich Neumann, ed. Martin Liebscher (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015),
62.
2. Hugo Rosenthal (1887–1980), a German-Jewish educator, immigrated to Palestine (Land of Israel)
in 1925. Returning to Germany in 1929, he was asked by Rabbi Leo Baeck to become director of a
Jewish school. Upon his return to Israel in 1939, he became director of the Ahava Village in northern
Israel, a residential center for children and youth at risk. Having changed his name to Josef Yashuvi,
he published papers on education and psychology in Hebrew. He received an award from UNICEF
for his work in child education. In his essay “Der Typengegensatz in der jüdischen
Religionsgeschichte” [“The Opposition between Psychological Types in the Jewish History of
Religion”], Rosenthal focuses on the opposition between introversion and extraversion. [The
translation of the title here is by Mark Kyburz. In Analytical Psychology in Exile, the title has been
variously translated as “The Type-Difference in the Jewish History of Religion” (xxix), “The
Typological Contrast in Jewish History of Religion” (20), and “Opposing Types in the Jewish History
of Religion” (357).]
3. Jung and Neumann, Analytical Psychology in Exile, xxix.
4. Martin Liebscher has managed to trace the important attachments to Neumann’s letters, in which
he shares the outline of the Jacob and Esau manuscript with Jung, who tells him, “You should
develop what you say in your ‘Annotations’ into an essay in its own right. Your elaborations are new
to me and very interesting. . . . Jacob is the quintessence of the Jew and therefore a symbolic attempt
at a collective individuation, or rather at individuation on a collective level. . . . So you are quite right
in conceiving of the problem completely from the side of the collective unconscious and in
understanding Jacob entirely as a symbolic exponent of folk psychology” (Jung and Neumann,
Analytical Psychology in Exile, 54). Neumann’s extensive elaborations on the Jacob and Esau motif
in his correspondence with Jung can be seen as first thoughts, sometimes a stream of consciousness,
which then matured and were integrated in the present book.
5. In a letter to Jung, December 10, 1934, Neumann writes, “The work on Jacob and Esau and
symbolism is also nearly ready and just needs typing up” (Jung and Neumann, Analytical Psychology
in Exile, 80).
6. This work, to be translated by Mark Kyburz and edited by Ann Lammers, is expected to be
published in 2018 in the Recollection series.
7. Neumann’s letter to Jung, December 5, 1938; Jung and Neumann, Analytical Psychology in Exile,
142.
8. Jung and Neumann, Analytical Psychology in Exile, 12.
9. The Old Yishuv pertains to the Jews residing in the Land of Israel before the Zionist revival in
1882, the New Yishuv to the Jews residing in Israel prior to the proclamation of the State of Israel in
1948.
10. The Midrash is the body of rabbinic literature consisting of commentaries on biblical texts and
stories told by the sages. Its compilation began after the Second Temple era.
11. Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1970).
12. Jung and Neumann, Analytical Psychology in Exile, 54. God gave this promise to Abram before
he was renamed Abraham.
13. Micha Josef Bin Gorion (Berdyczewski; 1865–1921) was a journalist and Hebrew author. He
came from a rabbinical family; his father was the last in a line of thirteen generations of rabbis
(preface by Emanuel Bin Gorion to M. J. Bin Gorion, Mimekor Yisrael: Classic Jewish Folktales
[Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976], xvi). Having received a Talmudic training, he turned
to Jewish enlightenment and was also influenced by Hegel and Nietzsche. His writings specifically
focused on the individual’s revolt against the limitations of the old Jewish traditions. He also
collected Jewish legends and folktales, thus giving expression to the creative tension between
enlightenment and tradition. The stories and myths were collected in Die Sagen der Juden [The
Legends of the Jews] and Der Born Judas [The Well of Judah]. All the quotations from Bin Gorion
have been translated by Mark Kyburtz.
14. Panim, “face,” is one of those intriguing words found in the Hebrew language. It can
simultaneously be feminine, masculine, and plural. Furthermore, it is related to “turn”; that is, the
literal meaning of panim is “the face turned toward one” (Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive
Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English [Jerusalem: Carta, 1987],
514). It also means “interior.” Acquaintance with the etymological roots of Hebrew words is
important to understand the imagery behind some of the Talmudic legends.
15. C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (1923), CW, vol. 6 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1971), par. 803.
16. Wind and spirit are the same word in Hebrew, Ruah.
17. Erich Neumann, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic (Boston: Shambhala, 1990), 67.
18. See Jung and Neumann, Analytical Psychology in Exile, 37.
19. Throughout the translation, emphases in Neumann’s original text (indicated with spacing and
underlining) have been replaced with italics (please see the translator’s note).
20. Rabbi Moshe ben Yaacov Cordovero, often called the Ramak (1522–1570), was a central figure
in sixteenth-century mysticism in the town of Safed, in Upper Galilee. At a young age he had been
called by a heavenly voice, as he describes it, to study Kabbalah with the well-known Rabbi Shlomo
Alkabetz. Gershom Scholem writes, “Cordovero is essentially a systematic thinker, his purpose is to
give both a new interpretation and a systematic description of the mystical heritage of the older
Kabbalah, particularly the Zohar” (Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism [New York: Schocken Books,
1974], 252). Scholem considers him to be the greatest of the theoreticians of Jewish mysticism.
21. On the complexity of the desert as habitat of both Self and shadow, of revelation and demons, see
Erel Shalit, Enemy, Cripple, and Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path (Hanford, CA: Fisher King
Press, 2008), 88.
22. Micha Joseph Bin Gorion, Die Sagen der Juden, tr. from Hebrew to German by Rahel Bin Gorion
(Frankfurt: Rütten and Loening, 1913–1927), vol. 2, 356–357.
23. Edom, from adom, “red,” which is related to dam, “blood,” adam, “man,” and adama, “earth,”
was both an additional name of Esau’s and the name for the semiarid land in which he settled. King
Herod, builder of the Second Temple, was an Edomite.
24. Neumann later developed these thoughts in Depth Psychology and a New Ethic.
25. This is how complexes, whether teleological or autonomous, take shape.
26. Neumann says that “being Jewish is intimately related to being introverted.” This of course does
not mean that a Jew by necessity is introverted. Rather, Neumann implies that, structurally,
introversion may be a dominant in Judaism, grounded in the invisible, “ungraven” God-image. Jacob
is then the prototype, or an archetypal image of that cultural attitude.
27. This corresponds to what I have described in Enemy, Cripple, Beggar as the enemy-layer of the
shadow.
28. Letter from Jung to Neumann, August 12, 1934, in Jung and Neumann, Analytical Psychology in
Exile, 59.
29. C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation (1952), CW, vol. 5 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1956), par. 524.
30. The significance of the event is reflected in the three instances involving names: Jacob calls the
place Mahanaim, i.e., “double camp” or “two camps”; Jacob’s name is changed to Israel, having
battled directly with God and prevailed; and Jacob calls the location where the battle takes place
Pnei-El, “Face of God” (see note 14). The collective significance of the event is emphasized by the
fact that Jacob’s new name, Israel, becomes the name of both the nation and the people.
31. Isaiah 14:12: “How are you fallen from heaven, O bright star, son of the morning! How are you
cut down to the ground, you who ruled the nations!” (In Hebrew, “son of the morning” is Hillel ben-
Shahar, in Latin “Lucifer”). See also Rivkah Shärf-Kluger, Satan in the Old Testament (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1967), and Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan (Harmondsworth, UK:
Penguin, 1995).
32. Oedipus’s swollen foot has been interpreted both as phallic potency and as an inability to stand
firmly on the ground. I have developed this further in Shalit, Enemy, Cripple, and Beggar.
33. Jung speaks of the transcendent function, when the opposites are brought together to produce a
third (see, for example, “The Transcendent Function” (1958), in CW, vol. 8 [Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1969], par. 181).
34. Like many other psychologists and philosophers, including Erich Fromm and Walter Benjamin,
Neumann refers to Bachofen’s work in his writings, such as The Origins and History of
Consciousness and The Great Mother (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963). Johann Jakob
Bachofen (1815–1887) is most well known for his theories about a prehistoric matriarchy. Neumann,
however, points out that this should be understood psychologically rather than sociologically and that
the matriarchal stage pertains to a structural layer rather than a historical era.
35. Jung, Psychological Types, CW 6, par. 709.
36. Neumann writes, “in the patriarchal psychology of Judaism, the male can experience himself as a
feminine moon vis-à-vis a superior masculine divine solar principle if the man’s religious
consciousness identifies with the moon-anima. The identification of Jacob and the moon in the
Jewish midrash is characteristic of this.” “The Moon and Matriarchal Consciousness,” in The Fear of
the Feminine and Other Essays on Feminine Psychology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1994), 71 n11.
37. Regarding Samas, or Shamash: in Hebrew, “sun” is shemesh. Shimshon (Samson) was a sun hero
whose name means “strength of the sun.” In spite of claims that the moon invariably symbolizes the
feminine principle (see, for example, J. Chevalier and A. Gheerbrant, The Penguin Dictionary of
Symbols [London: Penguin, 1996], 669), this is far from always the case. In German mythology, for
instance, the solar deity is female, the lunar male, as is the case in earlier Egyptian mythology, in
Japan, and elsewhere.
38. “The Moon and Matriarchal Consciousness,” 71.
39. Horus and Seth are sometimes depicted as brothers, while elsewhere Seth and Osiris are brothers,
and Horus is the son of Osiris.
40. Osiris was often depicted in green or as green-skinned, as well as blue or black, symbolizing
rebirth. Neumann further elaborates on green as the color of the moon, fertility, and concealed
consciousness in “The Moon and Matriarchal Consciousness,” 101f.
41. The evil god Apopis (or Apophis) was often depicted as a dragon or serpent, often associated
with Seth. Residing in the netherworld, he threatens the sun god (see Andreas Schweizer, The
Sungod’s Journey through the Netherworld [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010]).
42. Avroham Davis, Pirkei Avos: The Wisdom of the Fathers (New York: Metsudah Publications,
1980), 79.
43. Neumann introduces and describes the concept of secondary personalization in this work; he
elaborated on this process further in The Origins and History of Consciousness.
44. In this context, Neumann speaks of the transformation of myths into folktales. It is worth taking
into account Marie-Louise von Franz’s extensive writings on the subject, for instance, when she
writes, “To me the fairy tale is like the sea, and the sagas and myths are like the waves upon it; a tale
rises to be a myth and sinks down again into being a fairy tale. . . . fairy tales mirror the more simple
but also more basic structure—the bare skeleton—of the psyche.” Marie-Louise von Franz, The
Interpretation of Fairy Tales (Dallas: Spring, 1987), 17.
45. For instance, Neumann writes, “The very nature of the human species conditions an archetypally
determined development in the first phase of which the natural mother archetype is dominant; in the
second phase it is the cultural father type. This archetypal situation is usually incarnated and, as we
have seen, in part shaped by the personal parents, but these phases of the child’s development involve
not only its family history but also go far beyond it to encompass the development of mankind from
an existence in nature to an existence in nature and culture.” Erich Neumann, The Child: Structure
and Dynamics of the Nascent Personality (London: Karnac, 1973), 94.
46. See Erel Shalit, The Cycle of Life: Themes and Tales of the Journey (Hanford, CA: Fisher King
Press, 2011).
47. Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, 336–337.
48. Ibid., 337, note 13.
49. I am grateful to Rina Porat for providing the source information for this paragraph.
50. In the main text of The Origins and History of Consciousness, the term is given as objectivation.
51. See note 6.
52. Jung and Neumann, Analytical Psychology in Exile, 20.
 The Symbolism of Jacob and Esau

E very application of psychological aspects and perspectives to religious

texts faces particular difficulties and obstacles. Aside from those people for
whom the biblical text, as a story of revelation, should not be subject to any
psychologizing whatsoever, even those who consider the text to be central
to human civilization justifiably oppose any inadequate or indeed
undistanced treatment. The manner in which Freudian psychoanalysis, for
instance, has been applied to religious and Jewish contents, even though
Freud not only demonstrated but also acknowledged his lack of
understanding of religious phenomena, has obviously increased the
opposition to a purely psychological treatment of such problems.
We must bear in mind from the outset that the historical texts of the
Bible, such as the Pentateuch, demand the application of quite different
methods. The more historical and the later any given text, and indeed the
more human and the more comprehensible its protagonists, the more
appropriate the application of a straightforward psychological approach.
But the further removed the events and experiences in such a text are from
average human experience, the more its psychological treatment can be
provided only by a psychology that has both considered and come to terms
with such extraordinary human experience.
In actual fact, Freud’s and Adler’s psychologies are psychologies of the
individual, which consider nothing other than the personal unconscious and
consequently reduce spiritual-cultural and religious events to our instinctual
structure and its two dominants, the sex drive and the drive for power. Such
psychologies prove inadequate as far as religious phenomena are
concerned, in that they regard such phenomena as no more than a figurative
expression of this instinctual structure, and in a transformed personal guise.
Moreover, these psychologies consider the religious phenomenon to stem
from the family story or from some other arrangement. Only C. G. Jung’s
analytical psychology—and its discovery of the collective unconscious,
which confronts the ego as a suprapersonal non-ego—is capable of
adequately experiencing and understanding religious phenomena and texts.
It goes far beyond the scope of this study to describe the collective
unconscious, since Jung devotes his entire work to this subject. But perhaps
the concrete nature of the present discussion will help illustrate what the
collective unconscious involves.
One particular difficulty, as in our present case, arises if the events
surrounding the forefathers become the subject of psychological inquiry. It
is no doubt mistaken to consider the forefathers only as “mythological
figures” or suchlike. The concrete nature of the text, as much as its
contents, plainly rules out such a perspective. On the other hand, it is just as
certain that precisely these accounts contain the experiences of an entire
people. The life of the forefather handed down through the ages is also
shaped by his sons, by the tribe, and by the people who experienced this
person and his life as a forefather. The vivid and enduring participation in
and preoccupation with that life, which occupies a central position in both
genealogy and narration, constitute the essence of tradition, of the
forefatherhood, of the ancestor, and of the filial descent of the Israelites.
Although the forefathers are neither mythological figures nor ideal
images of “the Jew,” their lives nevertheless have prototypical significance.
The renewed and vivid preoccupation with the forefathers brings forth
within the people experiencing these figures another, namely, mythological
figure of the forefather. The midrashic texts, the Aggadah, and the legends
that continue to emerge to this day bear living witness to this
morphogenesis, which emerges from the structure of the people in whose
midst this figure has come into being, despite all reference to the actual
account of the forefather.
The midrashic texts studied here are mythological in this particular
sense. They originate in the soul of the people experiencing the forefathers.
Now it would perhaps seem obvious to suggest that the forefathers are mere
folklore, and thus admissible as a subject of psychological inquiry, but that
any further-reaching application to the biblical text would be inappropriate
and methodologically unjustifiable. More strikingly, but by no means more
surprisingly, a close study of this uncanonical lore is greatly revealing for
our understanding of the biblical text. It is precisely the intimate and vivid
relationship between the people and the forefathers that adequately explains
why it is fruitful to consider midrashic literature and the biblical text
together. Ultimately, the account of the forefathers and its specific
formulation, from which the noncanonical texts later emerged, both stem
from the soul of the people remembering and processing those events and
experiences. Precisely because this people has been shaped physically by its
particular descent, as well as spiritually and psychically by a specific inner
tradition, by the reachievement of life, and by the experience of its
forefathers, in turn allows the midrashic texts brought forth by the people to
complement and elucidate the account of the forefathers.
The first texts concerned with the problem of Jacob and Esau that we
want to study read as follows:

I.

It is said that when Jacob and Esau were still in their mother’s womb, Jacob said to Esau:
“Esau, my brother, there are two of us, and two worlds lie before us, one world on this side,
another beyond. One world is the world where people eat and drink, a world of commerce
and change; the otherworld, however, has none of this. If it is your will, then take this world,
 and I shall keep the otherworld for myself.” At that hour, Esau took his place in this world,
whereas Jacob chose the otherworld.

II.

When he created the world, the Lord decided that the sun would be Esau’s kingdom and the
moon Jacob’s.

III.

Know then that Isaac had two faces, a sacred and a profane one; that face that was turned
inward was sacred, the one facing outward profane. Jacob drew strength from the inner face,
Esau from the outer. The rulers of the world also abide by the left side of the world.1

Each of these texts concerns the opposition between Jacob and Esau.
Each, however, attributes a different polarity to the hostile twin brothers: in
the first, it is between this world and the otherworld; in the second, between
the sun and moon; in the third, between the inside and outside.2 What these
texts have in common are two series of motifs: the first is composed of
Jacob, the moon, the otherworld, and the inner side; the second consists of
Esau, the sun, this world, and the outer side. Before we proceed any further,
we must try to understand the meaning of this opposition.
It is easiest to begin with the third text and its polarity. Here, we have the
face turned inward, from which Jacob drew strength. He looks toward the
inner world, the dark nocturnal world, which is governed by the moon. This
inner world is turned toward Jacob; his life starts from this world and this
turning inward is sacred. The inner world is opposed to the outer, visible,
real, and bright world, that is, Esau’s world of the sun, whose concrete
realities are “eating and drinking, commerce and change.” The essential
hallmark of Esau’s world is visibility, and it includes the outer, the ordinary,
the unholy world.
Jacob is neither like Esau nor like the peoples of the world, but instead
he is turned toward that world which not only proves to be the coming
world, the otherworld, but also the inner and invisible world. Jacob, the
Jew, looks inward, toward YHWH and his inner demand. But this does not
mean that YHWH reveals himself only within. Unlike the gods, however, he
never manifests himself in images or in the man-made, nor does he become
concretized in any part of the outer world where he can be worshipped. In a
certain sense, one can say that YHWH is “inside” and appears only to the
inward-facing gaze. Compared to pagan religion, it is precisely the demand
for interiorization that is clearly Jewish. I shall not further pursue this aspect
here; suffice it to say that it casts light on a decisive feature of Judaism. The
radical prophetic demand for an orientation within the human heart toward
the inner voice, toward the voice of God, toward the law that is placed
within him, needs to be mentioned in this respect. Also part of this context
is the crucial task of safeguarding this inner orientation and this chosenness,
along with the tendency not to commingle with the world and not to lose
oneself to it, but instead to be sacred, that is, to face inward toward YHWH.

C. G. Jung described two fundamentally different human attitudes:

introversion and extraversion. The three texts studied above indicate that
the attitude of the Jew is introverted and that he even seems to be aware of
his introversion. Hugo Rosenthal’s important work was the first to point out
this introverted structure of Judaism, which we find confirmed by our texts
and their symbolism.3
The fact that the inner world, as a dark nocturnal world, and Jacob
belong together and the consequence arising therefrom, that the moon
becomes Jacob’s kingdom, will first of all probably be misunderstood as
poetic allegory, if not as sheer allegory. To demonstrate the reality and
efficacy of such a symbol, which is anything other than a manner of
speaking but a force at work, we must first further explore the relationship
between the moon and Jacob, that is, the Jew.
The first law given to Moses even before the exodus from Egypt, is the
introduction of the moon calendar and the celebration of the new moon. The
sentence “For the Israelites reckon by the moon and the peoples of the
world by the sun” plainly equates the moon and Israel.4 It also refers to the
fact that a lunar eclipse is a bad omen for Jews, just as a solar eclipse is for
the peoples of the world. The waning and the waxing of the moon are meant
to correspond to the vicissitudes of Jewish history.5 More strikingly, and
therefore also more characteristically, is that for the Jews, unlike for most
other peoples, it is not the sun’s path but the moon’s that symbolizes rebirth
and renewal: “Just as the new moons are renewed and sanctified in this
world, so will Israel be sanctified and renewed in the future world.”6 The
plea for the future messianic era is uttered at the New Moon festival, which
we shall discuss in greater detail, in the following strange formula: “And
the light of the moon shall be like the light of the sun.”7
Precisely if the symbolism of the moon, in contrast to the sun’s, is so
evidently associated with Jacob, and if everything suggests that this
association is both very profound and original, then it is only natural,
indeed it is to be expected, that the visible disparity between the sun and
moon has become a subject of much deliberation. Curiously, the texts
instruct us that the sun and moon were originally the same size:

The sun and moon were both the same size, just as it says: God made two great lights. And
their sizes remained the same until the moon deplored this. He spoke to the Lord: “Lord of
the world, why did you make your world with Beth, the second letter?” [the Torah begins
with the word Bereschit]. The Lord said: “So that all my creatures know that I have placed
the number two at the beginning [in Hebrew, Beth = 2]. I placed the number two at the
beginning, because I also created two worlds, and thus only two witnesses shall be heard.”
The moon said: “But which of these two worlds is greater than the other? Is it this world or is
it the otherworld?” The Lord said: “The otherworld is greater than this world.” The moon
said: “Look, you made two worlds, this world and the otherworld; the otherworld is great,
this world is small. You created heaven and earth; heaven is greater than earth. You created
fire and water; and water extinguishes fire. And then you made the sun and moon; if that is
so, does not one have to be greater than the other?”

The Lord said: “It is obvious to me that you believe that I shall make you greater and the sun
smaller. But since you contemplated doing evil against the sun, you were meant to be smaller
 and your light shall shine sixty times less than hers.” On hearing this, the moon said to the
Lord: “O Lord of the world! I spoke but one word, and now I am to receive such severe
punishment?” The Lord said: “One day you will be as great as the sun again; and the light of
the moon shall be like the light of the sun.”8

Originally, the two sides of the world, as symbolized by the sun and moon
or the two directions in which the face can turn, were completely
equivalent. The inner and outer sides of the world—the extraverted and
introverted aspects, the objective and subjective circumstances, the world
and the human being created in the image of God—were both created by
God. They are the same size and only together do they form a whole: this is
the original, predefined condition of the world.
But the moon, which represents the inner side, the inward-facing Jew,
raises a question that is both correct and crucial. Because whereas the world
was created in a two-faced manner, so to speak, there nevertheless exists a
hierarchy between these two faces. For the world—and this is the
primordial experience made by the Jew—was not made according to the
principle of balanced dualism. “The otherworld is greater than this world,”
asserts God. Consequently, the inner side, that is, the world of the moon,
which is assigned to Jacob, is larger. This indeed constitutes the difference
between the sacred and the profane. But if that is the case, asks the moon
(and God understands its question quite correctly), should then the moon
not be larger than the sun?
As we learn from the midrashic texts, God responds to the moon’s
question by making it smaller. Which state of affairs does this diminution
correspond to or, put differently, why does God react thus? The smallness of
the moon compared to the sun corresponds to the inferiority of the inner
world experienced so passionately by the introvert. It also corresponds to
the inadequacy of the inner world toward the terrifyingly great and
powerful outer world of objects. And it corresponds to the Jew’s experience
of the smallness and sense of helplessness of the chosen people toward
those sun-like peoples who seize the world with their hands and who have
an abundance of power. God made the moon smaller, so the text says,
because he sensed a craving for power, a potential of the moon for “doing
evil against the sun,” in its demand for greater size. Such craving is also
linked to a well-known psychic reality, namely, the psychology of power in
those who feel they have come off badly or missed out in life. Adler speaks
of the psychology of the younger son in this respect, and Jung attributed
this psychology to the introvert. For our present purposes, it is most
interesting that these problems are unconsciously acknowledged and
formulated as the fundamental problems of Jewish psychology as early as
the midrashic passages discussed above. God vigorously refutes the moon’s
claim and metes out punishment instead because he understands the moon’s
claim as a claim to power as a fundamentally negative stance. In turn, a
rescinding of the punishment is promised for the messianic era, in which the
original equality of the moon and sun will be restored.
The problem addressed here is far more crucial than the above midrashic
text would lead one to believe. Another, apparently very similar midrashic
text raises the same issue but pursues it in far greater detail:

God created two great lights, the sun and the moon. The moon said to the Lord: “O Lord of
the world! Is it correct that one crown shall serve two kings?” To which the Lord replied:
“Go forth and become the smaller light.” The moon replied: “No sooner have I spoken a true
word shall I become smaller?” The Lord answered: “But therefore thou shall rule day and
night.” But the Lord saw that the moon was unappeased; he regretted doing this and
commanded Israel: “Now that I have made the moon smaller, go forth and bring me a
sacrifice. And this shall be a goat that is sacrificed at new moon, sacrificed when God’s
temple still stood erect.”9

Here the moon adopts a completely different stance in claiming that the
facts mentioned in the other midrashic text do not apply to its case; that is,
the question of power and resentment has been settled. The subject here is
not the moon’s personal problem, if one may put it that way. Rather than
addressing a personal matter, one that concerns the neurotic introvert or
indeed the resentful Jew, the moon, as a representative of the inner side,
insists on its suprapersonal question, which concerns nothing other than the
structure of the world. The moon has spoken a “true word,” and this
achievement suggests that God has done the moon wrong by making it
smaller.
What does the moon’s true word mean? Its true word is an accusation
against God. Why did you create a divided world? Why did you not create
the world so that the inner world is greater, so that you, YHWH, are its ruler,
and so that your commands may be fulfilled? Why did you grant what does
not behold you such great power?
There can be no doubt that behind this question also stands the
subjective experience of the introvert, namely, that God actually belongs
more to the other side of the world, or else one face would not be called
sacred and the other profane. Below, we shall encounter two solutions to
this problem, one provisional, the other, which is reflected in Jacob’s
wrestling with the angel, more definitive.
The consolation that God offers the moon—that it shall rule day and
night—evidently does not appease the moon. And yet the factual nature of
this consolation is so very essential that it must at least be hinted at. There
is no better formulation of this than Jung’s: “Everything exterior is the
world of the sun, and there is no doubt that the power of the sun is great.
The inner is invisible and always seems to be powerless. In reality, however,
it rules secretly and pervasively and its power is as great as the sun’s” (cited
from Jung’s answer to a letter from the author that included a draft outline
of this study).10 Incidentally, this fact can be appreciated only by those who
have grown aware of the extent to which the outer stems from the inner, and
who see through the outer to the inner standing behind it. The following
passages probably also belong in this context:
 The wise Rabbi Isaac was sitting in front of a cave. A man, accompanied by two boys, came
by. The older brother spoke to the younger one: “The sun is strongest at midday, but the
world can exist only because of the wind.” The younger brother replied: “The world could
not exist without Jacob.”11

Here, once again, the opposition between Jacob and Esau looms in the
background. Esau is identified with the midday sun, and Jacob apparently
with the wind. The invisible power of the wind, of the ruach and pneuma,
of the inner, animating principle, belongs to Jacob. The midrashic text
interprets the sentence, “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the
hands of Esau” (Gen. 27:22), along the same lines, namely, that the voice
(that is, the breath, spirit, and wind) is governed by Jacob, and the hands
(that is, the practical action of the sun in the outer world) by Esau. Just like
the moon, which is invisible by day, the principle of the wind only seems to
be weak in the face of the powerful sun; in actual fact, however, the world
rests upon the wind, this hidden principle. Compare this to the thirty-six
concealed righteous ones who ensure the existence of the world.
Since God’s remorse did not return the moon to its original size, this
suggests that the moon has raised a correct question, a question that remains
to be answered. Of particular importance in this respect is the connection
established here between the issue of the moon and sun with the New Moon
festival.
The New Moon festival occupied a crucial role in biblical Judaism. On
this day, just as on the Sabbath, it appears to be both possible and necessary
to enter into a particularly close relationship with YHWH, due to the fact that
it was on this very day that one went to the prophets, the men who had
insight.12 On the same day Isaiah says about the messianic era: “And it shall
come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to
another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord” (Isa.
66:23). Just as characteristic of the meaning of this festival is a saying from
the second century AD. Its radical formulation remains almost
incomprehensible, unless one recognizes the central status of this festival:
“It would be enough if Israel could receive its father in heaven only every
month on the occasion of the New Moon festival.”13
The fact that under the influence of seventeenth-century Kabbalism the
new moon day took on a new or at least a renewed meaning as the Minor
Day of Atonement leads us even more deeply into the problem of the
moon.14
At the heart of the ritual celebrated on the Day of Atonement stood the
sacrifice of a goat before YHWH and the banishment into the desert, to
Azazel, of a second goat, upon which the sins of the people were put. The
goat is also the sacrifice brought to the blessing of the new moon. The
blessing uttered at the New Moon festival is as follows:

You have given new moons to your people, a time for atonement for all its descendants when
they brought sacrifices before you, sacrifices made to give pleasure and goats offered for
their sins, to make atonement for themselves, in commemoration of all, and for the salvation
of their souls from the hands of the enemy.15

The problem can now be further developed by considering the ritual of the
New Moon festival. The blessing is followed by pleas for the reerection of
Zion and for the resumption of service in the temple. The eulogy on the
blessing of the moon asserts: “and spoke to the moon that it should renew
itself, as a crown of the glory for those blessed by the mother’s womb, who
shall some day renew themselves just as it [the moon] does.”16 (According
to Isaiah 46:3, YHWH carries the Jews from the womb.) Finally, a plea is
made to revoke once and for all the darkening of the moon and its
diminution.17 “May the light of the moon be like the light of the sun.”18
While the pervasive symbolism of the opposition between the moon and
the sun is preserved, a completely new motif has appeared unexpectedly.
This new motif further pursues the issue of the diminution of the moon in
both a generative and enlightening manner. Besides the diminution of the
moon, which is related to the opposition between the moon and the sun,
there is now the problem of its darkening, its opacity.
The opposition between the moon and the sun is not the only opposition.
In effect, this opposition corresponds to a division within the moon so to
speak, which is itself subject to an alternating opacity. The relevant
literature includes the following passage about the darkening of the moon
by evil:

In the writings of the Geonim it is written: “Seven days before the rising of the moon, the
spirit of gentleness prepares to do battle with Samael and his hordes over the diminution of
the moon. But the hairy one, envious of the beauty of the moon, picks a quarrel with the
smooth one—and thus Michael and Gabriel wage war against the accusers. But at the end of
the seventh day, Gabriel weakens their strength and Michael, the high priest, takes Semasael,
who is standing alongside the hairy one, who resembles a male goat, and brings them as a
sacrifice of sorts before the altar, which is erected for the purpose of penance at the
beginning of each month. Then the highest will is assuaged, the moon becomes large and
full, and the strength of the male goat is consumed by the fire of the almighty. But when the
moon is waning, the male goat becomes rejuvenated and grows anew, and thus it continues
until the Day of Judgment, of which it is said: the light of the moon shall be like the light of
the sun.”19

Since the moon, as we have seen, represents not only the inner world and
Judaism but also Jacob, the problem must lie with Jacob. The alternating
opacity of the moon and its darkening must correspond to an opacity within
the Jew, that is, if the symbolism proves to be as unequivocal as we are
assuming.
Here, a confusing difficulty seems to arise at first. If we examine the
principle of opacity more closely, then we are no doubt once again dealing
with the opposition between Jacob and Esau. Although Esau is not
mentioned by name, the rulers of the left side of the world, who are
represented here by Samael and Semasael, plainly belong to that side of the
world (see p. 4). Moreover, there can be no doubt that the “hairy one, who
resembles a male goat” is Esau, that is to say, Edom, whose hairy
appearance has already been emphasized.20
Esau makes Mount Seir his home, where the goat spirits, the seirim, are
also said to live.21 The identity of Esau and the goat leads us further,
however, for there is verifiable evidence that in myth the goat is a symbol of
the sun, albeit a negative one. In Germanic mythology, the goat corresponds
to the winter or midnight sun, that is, the sun in December, when it stands
lowest and is weakest. This frame of reference probably includes the fact
that at this time of the year, the zodiac sign ruled by the sun is Sagittarius,
that is, the sea-goat. Esau, the dark sun-goat, who makes the moon opaque,
now faces the other Esau, the red sun-goat, the ruler of this world. This
outer, sun-governed side of the world is associated with the goat as a
symbol of creative, instinctually procreative nature on the one hand and
with the goatlike satyr, Pan, and fauns and their lustful sexuality on the
other. In Christianity, both goatish figures, whose connection we shall
consider below, ultimately become devils with goatlike legs and goat heads
that give off the stench of goats.
The opposition between Jacob and Esau, that is, the moon and the sun,
which have been both compared and kept distinct in terms of different
worlds in the first texts studied here, receives a new twist in our final text.
The motif of the opaque moon shifts the problem inward, where it
constellates itself as a moral problem. What has become apparent is the
problem of evil as an “inner Edom.” Indeed, if one fully understands the
meaning of the final text, then the time up until the Day of Judgment is
construed as a self-perpetuating struggle against evil, which disappears only
on the Day of Judgment together with the moon becoming opaque. This
inner Edom, whose actual nature remains unclear to us, is sacrificed on the
day of the new moon in the shape of a goat. “Then the highest will is
assuaged, the moon becomes large and full, and the strength of the male
goat is consumed by the fire of the almighty.”22 Or, as it says in the blessing
of the new moon, the goat is a sacrifice brought for everyone “and for the
salvation of their souls from the hands of the enemy.” The cleansing, the
resolution of the moral conflict, manifests itself as a sacrificing of the goat,
of the inner Edom, of the evil side. This obfuscating goatlike figure is
referred to as an enemy already in the Yom Kippur ritual (which clearly
illustrates why the day of the new moon could also be called “little Yom
Kippur”). This is a reference to the mysterious sending forth of the second
goat to Azazel.
No matter whether this opposite pole to YHWH was later concealed to
guard against the danger of dualism—that is, whether Azazel is thought to
be a mountain or a reminder of an earlier cult—a polarity between YHWH
and Azazel nevertheless exists. This polarity recurs in the opposition
between right and left, as emphasized in midrashic literature. Lots were
drawn to select the goats. If the right lot was drawn, then the goat was
assigned to YHWH; drawing the left lot, on the other hand, assigned the goat
to Azazel.23 It is well established that the right side goes together with
being positive, just as the left side is associated with being negative (see, for
instance, the ambiguity of the word sinister). This also explains why Esau’s
goat rules the left side of the world. In this connection, YHWH and the right
side belong to the color white, whereas Azazel and the left side go with the
color red. Thus, the threads that are tied to Azazel’s goat and to the gates of
the temple are red; their color must change to white after atonement.24 Not
only is red the color of blood; it is also Esau’s color and that of sin.
Correspondingly, Jacob is white in color whereas Isaac is red, because
Esau has sprouted from him.25 The red color of the son rubs off on Isaac as
it were, whose connection with Esau is indeed very powerful. These colors
are also related to the polarity between the moon and the sun: Jacob’s
whiteness is the color of the moon, Esau’s redness that of the sun. The same
polarity exists among the angels, where it is elevated to the cosmic level.
 “To God’s right stands Michael, whose color is white; to his left is
Gabriel, who is red.”26 Applied to the three angels who came to Abraham,
the following words are attributed to the angel who announced Sarah’s
pregnancy:

This was Michael, who stands to God’s right—everything good and every blessing comes
from the right side; the third angel, who came to slay Sodom, was Gabriel, who stands to
God’s left; he is the highest judge, who presides over all the courts of the world and comes
from the left side.27

Equally, in the Kabbalah, the right pillar of the Tree of Sephiroth denotes
the male aspect and is known as the Pillar of Mercy; the left pillar
represents the female aspect and is known as the Pillar of Severity or
Judgment. The color white is assigned to the right side, the color red to the
left. Silver is assigned to the right side, gold to the left. We shall discuss this
highly remarkable fact elsewhere.28 (It goes beyond the scope of this study
to discuss the problem of the threeness, that is, of the third color and the
associated basic principle of equilibrium as the balance between these
opposites.)
In any event, Yom Kippur also concerns the resolution of the moral
problem through the sacrifice of evil; the part representing Edom is brought
as sacrifice in its symbolic shape as a goat.
Evidently, our next task must be to discuss the connection between the
two seemingly contradictory figures of Edom, as it seems utterly
incomprehensible to begin with how the inner symbolism of opacity and the
opposition between the worlds—the inner world of the moon and Jacob and
the outer world of the sun and Esau—are related. The problem could also
be formulated thus: How are the diminution of the moon, that is, the
problem of two worlds, and the opacity of the moon, that is, the moral
problem, connected? How are they related irrespective of the fact that both
will be revoked at the same time on the Day of Judgment, in the days of the
Messiah, when “the light of the moon shall be like the light of the sun”?
It seems most appropriate to approach these questions from the text at
hand: the opposition governing the world—between Jacob and Esau,
between introversion and extraversion, between the moon and the sun—
persists in the introvert as a moral problem, in that an extraverted part, the
darkening goat of the nocturnal sun, causes mischief in the moon,
obfuscating its brightness and seeking to consume it. Whereas this state of
affairs seems to be highly incomprehensible and paradoxical at first, it is
confirmed just as bafflingly and as accurately by the experience of
analytical psychology.
For there is no such thing as a “pure” introvert or extravert, because each
of these attitudes is one-sided and incomplete. Instead, all persons carry
within themselves an attitude in opposition to their dominant one. This
opposite attitude, however, is undeveloped and primitive, at work as an
inferior function.29 Thus, to speak of introversion—for our texts are
concerned only with this attitude, precisely because being Jewish is
intimately related to being introverted—means to acknowledge that there is
an inferior, undeveloped extraverted part in each introvert. This means, as
the symbolic language in which these connections are captured and
depicted in purely intuitive terms puts it, that Jacob carries within himself a
part of Edom, that is, the goat that clouds the moon. It now becomes clearer
why this goat is an essential symbol of the inferior sun, the hibernal sun.
This part of Edom, which is an inferior function of the introvert, is not
identical with the real Edom, the extravert and ruler of this world.
It is impossible to discuss the psychological facts represented by the
inferior function in greater depth here.30 By way of rough illustration, it is
worth noting how frequently introverted persons, who are inwardly
oriented, have a highly primitive, inferior, and inadequate relationship with
things and people and with external reality in general. The introvert, besides
being unworldly, almost always is contemptuous of the world, which in turn
is symptomatic of an inferior relationship with the world.
The inferior function always resides in the unconscious, in the dark.31 It
is closely related to the shadow, to the other side, to the negative half of the
conscious personality, that is, the bearer of the repressed or dark attributes,
which only begin to emerge secretly. In Jacob’s case, the shadow
corresponds to the inner Edom. In symbolic terms, this dark side is behind,
out of sight, where the eyes of consciousness do not reach. From another
perspective, this part is also referred to as the left side. The ambiguity of the
word sinister—which means both “left” and “dark”—has already been
noted above.32 Also, the positive direction of the opposition, in which the
right side belongs together with righteousness, is unequivocally clear.
Most probably, this also explains that the left side is often cited as the
side of judgment. On the left, on the shadow’s side, lies the moral problem,
as well as a sense of inadequacy and inferiority. The preoccupation with this
problem, which inevitably erupts in a moral conflict, not only begins on the
left side, that is, in the unconscious, but it also proceeds with the crucial
involvement of some unconscious authorities.33 This preoccupation,
furthermore, which takes place partly inside, partly outside, is the tribunal.
To begin with, the other side, which is governed by bright consciousness, is
always the side of mercy.
The relationship between right and left has general validity, irrespective
of the psychological type, because it makes no difference whether the
shadow has an extraverted character (like Edom), as in the case of the
introvert, or vice versa, whether the extravert carries within himself inferior,
introverted characteristics. In both cases, the left side, that is, the
unconscious, is the side of inferiority, from which the judgmental and
decision-making preoccupation proceeds, even if this kind of tribunal is at
work differently in the two types. Characteristic of the judgmental efficacy
of the unconscious, which initially appears to be negative, are its
superiority, a particular kind of waywardness, and its conspicuousness,
which make us feel painfully powerless and helpless.
This inferior side, Esau’s, which is immensely important in the history of
the Jewish people, causes the opacity of the moon. Thereupon rests the
moral conflict, which Christianity and Judaism both sought to resolve by
sacrificing the inferior, by exterminating evil, and by sacrificing the goat. It
is striking enough that the text refers to this attempt as an eternal process.
This attempted solution turns the moral problem into an infinite moral
process, whose endpoint lies in the messianic era.
Incidentally, the text unequivocally refers to the aforementioned two-
sidedness of the introvert as the two-facedness of Yitzhak.34 Whereas his
holy face is turned inward, his inferior and profane face is turned outward,
toward the world. (This two-facedness translates precisely as an inferior
extraverted function.) The same problem has stepped out of the personal
sphere into the sphere of the tribe and people, into the twin brotherhood of
Jacob and Esau, the two sons of the Jewish forefather who stand on either
side of their father. This connection is firmly supported by the text, in which
Yitzhak curiously favors Esau (whereby a roast, various other food, smell,
and so forth play a salient role, which, however, has never been properly
understood). In the text, Esau actually leans on Yitzhak’s inferior
extraversion. No argument has been presented thus far to dampen the
feeling that these desires, and indeed the privileging of Esau, are not
becoming to the forefather.
However, the connection between the inner, obfuscating Edom in Jacob
and the outer brother of Edom exists not only through extraversion and the
identical common characteristics given thereby. It is also heightened by the
introvert (as well as by the extravert) projecting his inferior aspect outward
and experiencing it there. This means that originally Jacob does not
experience Edom, who represents his inferior aspect, within himself, but
outside himself in the guise of his hostile brother (that is, through
projection). The experienced image of Edom consists of the real Edom as
the extraverted Other and of the distorting, superimposing projection of his
own unconscious, inferior Edom-likeness. The first stage of overcoming
this primitive experience of Edom as the alien Other, which the extravert
necessarily seems to be to the introvert, is precisely the moral conflict
represented by the symbol of the opaque moon. This moral conflict naively
presupposes the experience of dissociation, that is, of no longer being
oneself; it thus marks the beginning of the suspension of primitive one-
sidedness. At the same time, discovering one’s negative side initiates a
more equitable evaluation of the Other. When the moon discovers the goat,
or rather Edom within himself, not only does this put an end to painting a
bleak and one-sided picture of Edom in the outer world, but it is the first
sign of what the inner and the outer might have in common. Esau’s
experience of alienation is attenuated by what, however, is a negatively
tainted experience of himself, albeit only to the extent to which it is
acknowledged. Obviously, the negative inner image can also be suppressed
and projected outward. That is, one can project one’s own moral problem—
as usual—onto another person. As soon as this does not happen and one
confronts one’s own problem, the projection is withdrawn and the actual
image of the Other becomes visible.
As observed, the diminution of the moon compared to the sun entailed
the moon’s unanswered accusation against God. The problem, however, did
not cease to exist but developed further and culminated in what we
considered to be no more than a tentative solution to the moral problem.
The diminution of the moon is related to its opacity. The inadequacy and
powerlessness of the inner side as against the powerful world of the sun and
Esau have a moral cause. The world of the moon is weak and deficient in
clarity, because within it resides a negative, undeveloped part of Edom. As
such, however, this particular answer, that is, inferiority as a moral problem,
corresponds to what we identified at the beginning of this study as a
reduction of matters to the moon’s and the introvert’s personal problem.
The moon’s demand for unity had already identified the problem as a
fundamentally metaphysical and suprapersonal one. Seen thus, the opacity
and the moral problem, as manifest in the inferior function, originated in
God’s creation of a (divided) inner and outer world. Ultimately, the moral
problem thus rests upon the creation of two worlds, that is, the creation of a
polarity between the moon and the sun.
Addressing the problem of opposites is the second stage of overcoming
the Jew’s—and the introvert’s—primitive experience of Esau. The majority
of the midrashic texts interpreted here represent this stage, at which the
opposition between Jacob and Esau is seen as an opposition between two
worlds. This insight into the polarity of the world, for which the various
oppositions—between Jacob and Esau, the moon and the sun, introversion
and extraversion—are but a symbol, is perhaps formulated most cogently in
a small midrashic text that fully substantiates the line of development
suggested in this study:

On the fifth day, God created great whales, and these are Jacob and Esau; and all the
creatures that liveth and weaveth are the stages lying in between.35

As we shall see, this problem reaches its unrivaled peak in the biblical text
about Jacob’s struggle with the angel, where it is also overcome. What
becomes evident, then, is that the significance of the above account emerges
only when it is set against the entire relevant background, as established
here with reference to the midrashic texts.
What has transpired from studying these texts, which come from
different periods and have been recorded by various hands, is the strange
fact that they constitute a unified, pervasive, and absolutely unequivocal
symbolism, which belongs to the archetypal heritage of the Jewish people
in particular and of humanity in general. It is the very fact that this
symbolism does not originate in any particular individual, but lies readily
available at the bottom of a people’s soul, that makes it possible to present
these texts in conjunction and to demonstrate their close association. As the
individual thinks and lives in this symbolic protolanguage, so the
unconscious mind of a people thinks and deliberates in that language. The
texts studied here reveal a preoccupation with fundamental Jewish and
human problems. Perhaps somewhat uncannily, this preoccupation occurs
beyond any individual life and across generations; moreover, it proceeds
continuously, on its own terms, and as a reflection of a people’s thinking.
Notwithstanding its mysteriousness, there is nothing mystical about
engaging with these fundamental problems. Jung once remarked that myths
could be considered to be the dreams of a people. These midrashic texts,
which speak in a collective symbolic language, make clear that such
dreaming is unconscious thought. What makes this so particular is the
continuity of the discussion that occurs within a people’s unconscious. The
midrashic texts are but the visible manifestation of that discussion. What
should by no means be overlooked in this regard is how strongly involved a
people’s and the individual’s consciousness are in creating these texts. And
yet the fact that the fundamental problem has been expressed so
continuously in the same basic language and symbolism for centuries, as if
these texts had been written by one and the same author, is both astonishing
and exciting. Nor can that fact be argued away.
If we now turn to the fundamental text, that is, the origin of all midrashic
thought, it will already have become clear that the actual purpose of
drawing upon midrashic literature is to reveal the close linkage between
archetypal symbolism and that fundamental text. Jacob is not the moon, nor
is Esau the sun. However, the symbolism of the moon and the sun, which a
people’s unconscious later related to the account of Jacob and Esau, extends
and clarifies what this account was about or at least what the people’s
unconscious believed it was about. And precisely because this very same
people’s unconscious experienced and helped shape this account we are
able to understand its relationship with the later midrashic texts, a
relationship which is both plausible and astonishingly intimate.
This text can be understood only if its intended meaning is taken
seriously and if its details are left undistorted. Jacob is deliberately made
the structural bearer of the promise from the outset. Unlike Isaac, Jacob’s
mother, Rebekah, recognizes his role and ensures that he attains the
blessing. If there is any doubt about Jacob’s entitlement to primogeniture, to
the promise and to the blessing, then his legitimacy is confirmed once and
for all by his famous dream at Bethel.36
Jacob flees to a foreign land as an utterly forlorn, miserable, and
defenseless individual. He is exposed to a world that is unimaginably
hostile, and this experience doubtless fills his consciousness. Under these
circumstances, his dream, whose contents we shall not dwell upon any
further here, provides him with crucial and magnificent compensation in
that it announces to him the collective and singular significance of his
existence and future. It is precisely his powerlessness that plainly reveals to
him the central position occupied by the one who bears the promise. At this
moment, he realizes that as the chosen one, as the bearer of the promise, he
and also later his people will always be inferior to the multitude.
Beyond a superimposed layer, which stems from the people handing
down this material, our positive attitude toward the text enables us to
distinguish a core that derives from an original account referring to the
forefathers. Owing to its collective nature, the collective processing of this
account by the people, which is closely attached to and supported by the
core text, as well as its literary formulation and tradition, is characteristic of
secondary mythologizing. By contrast, the dream at Bethel, the struggle
between Jacob and Esau, and Jacob’s wrestling with the angel are essential
aspects of the central tradition of the forefathers.
The religious genius of the forefathers is at work in the transmission of
their central religious experiences, such as the dream at Bethel and the
struggle with the angel, which correspond to absolutely real personal
experiences. One of the major successes of psychological analysis is its
ability to furnish all but convincing evidence for the relationship between
the events handed down and their experience by the forefather. If the dream
at Bethel were a mythological text originating in the people passing it on
from one generation to another, then it would somehow have to appear as
inserted in psychological analysis, such as the account of Jonah and the
whale, which plainly belongs to the processing layer of tradition. Strikingly,
however, analysis reveals the absolute affinity between the forefather’s
situation, such as Jacob’s flight, and the dream at Bethel, or between Jacob
before his encounter with Esau and Jacob wrestling with the angel (the
latter being an event handed down to us). The compensatory function of the
unconscious—that is, the emergence of those very contents from the
unconscious that consciousness needs most because it lacks them—has a
surprising effect on the (close) association between situation and dream.
This function, moreover, can be employed as a critical method that is
capable of determining whether a text should be attributed to the core layer
or to the superimposed layer of popular tradition. This is so because the
interweaving of different textual layers can be determined from the breaks
in the text, that is, from those passages indicating that they do not belong
together. The fact that the law of unconscious compensation was evidently
completely unknown at the time, but nevertheless emerges here most
impressively, ensures that the situations actually experienced by the
forefather, as well as his nocturnal experiences, belong neither to two layers
nor to two texts. Anyone familiar with how primitive peoples preserved and
passed on their leaders’ dreams, visions, and experiences will not consider
it improbable that a people like the Jewish people preserved and passed on
with utmost precision their forefathers’ experiences, which in turn shaped
the entire existence and history of that people.
The essence of tradition, which occupies a pivotal position in Judaism,
amounts to placing at the center of life and consciousness the extraordinary
experience, that is, those miracles that can be experienced only by particular
individuals or by a people during particular times. This would, then, be for
the benefit of those people and individuals for whom such an experience
remains inaccessible and for those times in which such miracles are rare.
The particular affinity of the Jewish people with the forefathers and later
with the prophets rests upon this fundamental fact. This people’s concept of
the world was and continues to be shaped and rebuilt by men of exceptional
experience, the “servants of YHWH.” Only from this vantage point can we
understand the outer structure of tradition, whose accomplishment is meant
to allow the people to make such an experience. Suffice it to mention in
passing that the course of history, which involves the emancipation and
individualization of the Jewish person, gradually and necessarily results in
tradition losing its meaning in the ancient authoritarian sense and that the
need for personal experience takes its place.
At the beginning of the chain of tradition stands personal but collectively
meaningful individual experience, like that made by the forefathers and
prophets; at its end, when the power of tradition crumbles, personal
experience, that is, the central religious experience, must once again take
the place of tradition. The layer from which the world of midrashic
literature emerged as a people’s unconscious also plays a crucial role in an
individual’s personal experience.
We have deliberately chosen indeterminate and seemingly
indeterminable expressions such as “the people’s soul,” “the people’s
unconscious,” and so forth, because they allow the actual state of affairs,
which scientific terminology so often conceals, to shine through. We have
observed that a certain basic language and a certain symbolism belong to
this generality and that the pervasiveness of this symbolism coincided with
an observed content. We have attributed to an indeterminate subject what
has emerged as the mythological treatment of the core texts analyzed here.
Only at this point does it seem feasible to mention that Jung’s concept of
the collective unconscious is at work here. This basic layer means a
collective, that is, general sphere that reaches beyond the individual.
Whereas the collective unconscious manifests itself in the individual, it
neither belongs to the individual nor originates in his personal sphere. Of
course, the midrashic texts discussed here came from individuals, but their
emphatically general and symbolic language and contents prove that they
are essentially anonymous. The fundamental experiences of the religious
person, such as the forefathers and later the prophets in particular, are
crucially related to this anonymity, that is, the suprapersonal primal source.
But if phenomena like the dream at Bethel or the wrestling with the angel
are considered personal experiences made by the forefathers, then they are
singularly personal and groundbreaking instances of the preoccupation with
this primal source. Evidently, the superimposed mythological layers also
originate in the individual, through whom they have merely passed, so to
speak. In actual fact, these layers, like all folklore, belong to the general and
anonymous primal source of the collective unconscious.
Thus, I do not consider Esau to be a mythological figure but instead
maintain that the problem of Jacob and Esau is real and concerns a real
conflict between two brothers. Whereas the motif of unequal brothers is
indeed archetypal, this archetype reflects innumerable human experiences.
There can be no objection to assuming that for Jacob the antagonism with
his extraverted older brother has become a personal and crucial life
experience, as reported in the text. (As we shall see, the problem of the
twins, like the equation between Esau and Edom, is a different case.)
As his pivotal experiences demonstrate, there can be no doubt about
Jacob’s introversion. It is equally obvious, however, that his encounters
with the outside world are all negative. The world confronts him as his
fiercest, wildest, and most daunting antagonist in the guise of his brother
Esau. His experiences with Laban only heighten his fear of the world. If his
inferior extraversion, which shapes his behavior toward Laban, leads Jacob
to adjust to his surroundings, which in turn brings him prosperity, then his
rejection of the world, or rather his fear of that world, persists as a
characteristic of his introversion. As much is attested both by Jacob’s flight
from Laban and by his fear of Esau. The discrepancy between the promise,
“in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3), and Jacob’s
person, which continues to be one-sided, incompletely developed, and
introverted and hence fits into a psychological typology, escalates into a
disastrous conflict when he must prepare to encounter Esau, the powerful
ruler of this world.
It is imperative that Jacob’s inferior side accept Esau, onto whom he can
project his inferiority. Not only do Esau’s characteristics, which the text
presents as truly negative, primitive, and extraverted, make him well suited
to this projection, but he is indeed also the brother. It is a psychological law
that we project our inferiority most readily and most preferably onto those
closest to us. Finally, Jacob’s sense of guilt also plays a crucial role in this
respect: for notwithstanding that the fraudulent plot by which Jacob
receives his blessing is justified, his negative side contributed to Rebekah’s
instigation of that ruse. Notwithstanding the legitimacy of Jacob’s claim to
the blessing, the fact that he has an inferior aspect, an inner Edom, a
shadow, needs to be taken into consideration. First, he is the younger
brother, and second, he has the psychology of a younger brother, a factor
that is heightened here by the opposition between psychological types. His
fear of Esau is a fear of the outer Esau, but this fear is intensified by his fear
of the Esau within himself, that is, his shadow. This connection is firmly
anchored in the law of such matters. As the image of Esau experienced by
Jacob is composed of the real Esau and of the inferior aspect of Esau
projected outward from Jacob’s psyche, so the fear of this Esau is
experienced naively as a fear of the outer Esau. This fear, however,
originates partly in his fear of the shadow, that is, in his own inferiority and
in his inner brother.37
For Jacob, whose inner life has for decades been concerned with the
dream at Bethel, Esau must have become a more serious problem than his
family. Although the encounter with Esau instills a great fear in Jacob, as an
introvert he is seized more deeply by a more general kind of fear, namely,
that of the hostile, overpowering, and unfamiliar outside world. The
introvert repeatedly and unforgettably experiences how great is the danger
of what most matters to him being destroyed, even annihilated, by the
pointless violence of worldly events. This, in essence, is Jacob’s deep-
seated fear of Esau, who epitomizes the violent world and who has the
power to crush Jacob and his family, that is, the small seed of the great
promise.
The key event experienced by Jacob in this situation is his struggle with
the angel, whose significance we can understand only by studying the
crucial passages surrounding this event:

I.

Before Jacob approaches the problem with Esau, he meets the angel of God. For inexplicable
reasons, he calls the place “double-camp,” implying this is God’s host. (Gen. 32:1–2)38

II.

The changing of Jacob’s name to Israel is interpreted as follows: “for as a prince hast thou
power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” (Gen. 32:28)
 III.

Jacob calls the place of the struggle “Penuel,” meaning the face of God, because he has seen
“God face to face, and my life is preserved.” (Gen. 32:30; see also the blessing of the moon)

IV.

When he meets Esau, Jacob says: “for therefore I have seen thy face, as though I had seen
the face of God, and thou was pleased to see me.” (Gen. 33:10)

Before and during the struggle with the angel, Jacob has no idea who his
adversary is, as his question about his name clearly suggests. This contrasts
directly with the subsequent naming of the place as Penuel and also with
Jacob’s later remark to his brother that his adversary is God, who confronts
him in the guise of Esau.
The involvement of the collective unconscious at this stage points to the
collective significance of these events. At stake here is not simply Jacob’s
struggle with his own inferiority or his moral problem (see our previous
discussion on the opacity or clouding of the moon). The personal layers are
embedded within a more comprehensive problem, that is, the problem of
God or rather an altered notion of God, which arises from the surmounting
of the opposition between two worlds that had thus far dominated Jacob’s
predicament. In that opposition, the angel, who according to ancient
tradition is Esau’s representative, furthermore stands not only for the
aspects of Esau within Jacob but also for the hostile outer world. The
extraordinary and suprapersonal significance of these events is contingent
upon the coalescence of Jacob’s personal shadow with the archetypal
antagonist stemming from the collective unconscious. This active
involvement of the collective unconscious, which conditions the figure of
the angel and also defines the collective significance of the struggle, is the
precondition for the later elevation of the angel.
Whereas the customary Judeo-Christian solution to this problem is to
sacrifice the inferior and negative, here something fundamentally different,
indeed crucially opposite, happens. As the text says, Jacob sees God in his
adversary Esau. This event, which leaves both misunderstood and
unmistakable traces in the text, surpasses the problem of opposition in
general and the opposition between the two worlds in particular. Esau, as
the face of God, is the extended aspect: Jacob overcomes the introvert’s
halved world because he now also recognizes the “other side,” that is, the
outside world and evil as the face of God. Not only does this experience
fundamentally change Jacob’s structure, in that he accepts Esau, his
shadow, and assimilates this figure into his consciousness, but he also
recognizes him as divine. Thus, however, he also recognizes evil as God’s
messenger, and the apparently hostile and negative outside world as the face
of God. This means: you have fought against humanity [the shadow of Esau
that you carry within yourself] and God [the negative world of Esau]—
which actually means that you have prevailed.
The struggle amounts not only to the earthshaking elevation of the angel
of Esau to the face of God, but also to the fact that he was forced to bless
Jacob. Jacob fights as God’s fighter, in a struggle that brings Jacob and
Esau face to face as two sides of God, for both are the face of God.39 But
because Jacob also recognizes the outside world as God, the principle of
God immanent in Jacob is extended by this part of the world. This means,
however, that the Other is subordinated to God and is thus forced to bless
Jacob. Here, a new and extended experience of God is hinted at. Of course
Jacob already knew beforehand that God, to use symbolic language, had
created both the moon and the sun, but this knowledge did not correspond
to any inner experience. As long as he experienced that part of the world
that belongs to Esau as hostile, as adversary, and as a place to fear, as
conditioned by his one-sided and introverted attitude, this part of the world
did not belong to God in his eyes but stood opposed to him. It is only the
experience of the struggle that enabled him to experience the duality of
God, as manifested by the inner and outer worlds, by good and evil, by
Jacob and Esau.
What has happened? Jacob’s life was preserved, and the negative
principle and thus the division were suspended. The moral division (the
inferior function) and the division of the world (the principle of opposites)
are suspended in God’s all-encompassing two faces. (Perhaps Jacob’s
encounter with the angel and the naming of the double camp, the two hosts,
because this is God’s host, mark the beginning of this inner experience,
which, as shown, reaches its dramatic climax in the struggle).
Jacob’s growing out of his fearful attitude toward the world is
immensely important and has a pivotal and visible effect on him. The
assimilation, awareness, and acceptance of the other side as being part of
the essence of the world and God, find immediate expression in how Jacob
encounters Esau. The way in which he avoids moving on with Esau is also
cunning, but it is no longer a partly malicious case of fraud, an unconscious
inferior function at work. It is instead a conscious human action, that is, a
successful adjustment to a fully recognized reality. Esau is a factor that
Jacob must deal with, a different kind of human being, rather than a demon
and a fear-inspiring brute.
The angel, while wrestling with Jacob, touches the hollow of Jacob’s
thigh, which leaves him with a limp and means that it is forbidden to eat the
sinew. This negative outcome of the struggle reveals how absolutely real is
this experience, which manifests itself in a physical defect. We must
disregard those conceptions of Jacob’s limp—be they correct or incorrect—
that fail to explain this characteristic in context and instead assume that it is
either a ritual limping common at the Bethel sanctuary or a detail which
merely serves to explain the taboo of eating sinew. Such attempts at
interpretation must be disregarded first because they are based upon
unproven and mutually exclusive assumptions and second because the
editor of the text placed this characteristic in another context and thus wants
it to be understood differently.
The fact that Jacob’s limp is an archetypal trait—one that he shares with
an array of mythological heroes—suggests an instance of secondary
mythologizing. That is, this characteristic does not come from the core layer
of the account. However, it no doubt serves to emphasize the defining
reality of the struggle with the angel, who is not what modern readers think
he is, but an experience that profoundly agitates Jacob’s whole organism
and transforms his physiology and constitution. The core layer, however,
includes the fact that Jacob’s pivotal experience—the struggle with the
angel—leaves him with a physical defect, casting a shadow over the
positive transformation of Israel as it were.
There is no need to discuss this detail any further here. But it is worth
noting the following hypothesis: the angel touching Jacob’s loins is
evidently related to touching the sexual sphere, which is weakened by the
struggle, whereby this sphere, as a pars pro toto, represents the entire
instinct-shadow component.40 This struggle, in which the side represented
by Esau has become visible and tangible as God’s worldly side, has
changed Jacob’s shadow side (which has been quite prominent up to this
point). The conscious assimilation of the shadow side leads partly to its
sacrifice, to its detoxification, and to its disempowerment. The
acknowledgment of the principle of duality has weakened Jacob’s shadow
and its negative assertiveness, on which he has been forced to rely on
various occasions. This reliance can be felt in Jacob’s humility toward Esau,
along with the important fact that he stands in awe of Esau as a symbol of
his experience of the other side of God.
Behind this personal meaning, however, lies something far more crucial.
For it is not until Jacob conquers the outer world through his struggle with
the angel and then forces that world to give him its blessing that he can
begin to perform his task of conquering the world for YHWH and of
becoming a blessing for the peoples of the world. Structurally, this becomes
possible only after Jacob has renounced his hitherto typically one-sided
orientation in favor of a totalizing, all-inclusive conception of God. It is
only after Jacob has reached this third place, which lies beyond all
oppositions such as the opposition between introversion and extraversion as
typical attitudes, that he can become effective as a blessing.
For early human beings, in particular intuitive ones, who experience
their unconscious as something encountered in reality, just as Jacob comes
face to face with the angel, that total experience has the power to alter their
conception of the world and of their fellow humans. Thus, for early
humans, change does not occur primarily through thought, as it does
perhaps for moderns, but through action and actual experience, which in
turn alter their worldview. In this sense, then, the fact that the angel changes
Jacob’s name, an event that corresponds to his change in outlook, is the
pivotal moment in a struggle that he experiences as fundamentally real. The
altered conception of the world, which is consistent with Jacob’s change,
occurs later and becomes visible only in the renaming of the place, in
Jacob’s altered behavior toward Esau, and in his remark that he has seen his
brother’s face just as he has seen God’s.41
The standpoint adopted by Jacob-Israel and its underlying experience of
God has never been completely understood since. The people that has
handed down and experienced this account and the midrashic literature
taking it up have never again advanced as far as this core. As observed,
however, and as shown by the midrashic texts studied here, this people has
fully grasped and processed the problem of opposites, which is the starting
point for the struggle with the angel. We believe that this results not only
from the opposition between the moon and the sun, whose consequences
our present discussion has considered in full, but also from its intersection
with the archetypal motif of twins, which must once again be attributed to a
mythologizing people. The situation of Jacob and Esau presupposes the
existence of a younger and an older brother. It is no coincidence that the
twin brother motif, which corresponds so conspicuously to the originally
equally sized sun and moon, is linked to this principle of opposites. Both
originate in the same fundamental layer.
Quite possibly, the symbolic work of the Midrash has taken up a strange
passage in the text or has at least helped shape it. For immediately after the
naming of Penuel, which, as we have seen, expresses the subordination of
the outer world to the principle of God, as represented by Jacob, the text
reads: “And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him” (Gen. 32:31),
which is followed by the words, “And Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked,
and, behold, Esau came” (Gen. 33:1).42 If, as we may safely assume, the
people bringing forth the Midrash has read the text just as intuitively as its
references were provided by intuition, then it is indeed possible that one
could see the equation of the sun and Esau shine through at this point.
Indeed, the word him (in “the sun rose upon him”), which has strongly
exercised the minds of interpreters, could be the last trace of a reference to
Jacob’s struggle with and victory over the angel, meaning a struggle with
and victory over that side of the world represented by the angel (that is, the
sun, the outer world, Esau).
If the Midrash has the angel, that is, Esau, plead, “Let me go, the sun
shall rise [. . .] hordes of God-serving angels are calling Michael, awaken, it
is time to let the morning songs resound,” then this clearly illustrates the
angel’s association with the sun.43
The people’s reception of the forefather’s fundamental experience seems
to be exemplary and prototypical even though it has never been fully
understood by his descendants. The preoccupation with this experience,
which has been passed on down the ages, has exerted both a direct and
indirect effect at least with regard to the course it took over time. This is
attested by the much later midrashic texts, which take up the basic problem.
However, the figures conveying such fundamental experiences, which have
a formative influence on the people, thus became forefathers, who are
constituted not merely by the genealogical chain but also by the effects of
their fundamental experiences on their psyche and intellect.
The equation of Esau and Edom is an entirely different matter. Naturally,
this originates in the mythologizing treatment by the collective of the
material surrounding the core event. The last part of Jung’s statement
—“The psychology of the individual corresponds to the psychology of
nations. What nations do, each individual does also”—needs to be reversed
in the case of the primitive peoples, since the leader’s personality becomes
highly effective due to deficient individual development.44 Here, the
psychology of the nation is largely determined by the psychology of the
leader, in our present case the forefather’s, who is the only individual. Thus,
another of Jung’s assertions is equally correct: “A metamorphosis in the
attitude of the individual is the only possible beginning of a transformation
in the psychology of the nation.”45 For this reason, the collective
psychology of the nation initially remains behind the stage reached by the
psychology of its leading individuals. Only in the historical process can the
psychology prefigured by the leader as a psychological role model be
attained, if at all. We became aware of this fact when we realized that the
people handing down the forefather’s fundamental experience failed to
understand the basic meaning of Jacob’s struggle with the angel, that is, of
the new conception of God. This fact comes to life again in the problem of
Esau and Edom.
The people transmitting the experience does not advance beyond the
principle of opposites. Whereas they experience their own unconscious
nature, their “inner Edom,” through the Edomites, in effect they do not
progress beyond their own projection. They do not become aware of their
inferiority; indeed, not even the strange fact, which owes its existence to
this very projection, that the Edomites are a brother nation becomes a
subject of concern. On the contrary, historically, and indeed even today,
Edom symbolizes the negative, the non-Jewish, the anti-Semitic.
Crucially, and this is another essential reason for separating the seminal
account from its mythological-collective treatment, the level that constitutes
Jacob’s fundamental experience of his struggle with the angel, and which is
experienced on the other side as the face of God, was not attained by the
people. This level has not been reached to this day, let alone recognized as a
level.
Because the contents of these core texts are handed down by the
collective, they are the subject of appreciation and attempted realization.
But just as the people’s entire existence diverges from the realization
demanded in the commandment, there is also a strong discrepancy between
the experience—in this case Jacob’s—concretized in these core texts and
the reality of the people transmitting that very experience.
Jacob’s fundamental experience in his struggle with the angel, which
marks a crucial event in his life, has foreshadowed the solution of a current
problem, one which today has taken on collective significance.
The distorted image of Edom remains a highly topical Jewish problem.
Precisely because the Jews remain largely unaware of their inferior Edom-
likeness, they project it onto those peoples that they frequently consider the
epitome of sullied blood and lacking spirituality. This feature recurs time
and again, from the stupid Goliath to the despised Shabbat goy. Whereas
this primitive misperception is undoubtedly nurtured by the fact that,
objectively speaking, the peoples of the world wreak their negative Edom-
likeness invariably and preferably on the Jews, it is also nurtured by the
Jews’ unconscious Edom-likeness. Such a projection not only distorts the
image of those peoples, but it also takes effect and activates their negative
Edom-likeness. It is part of the same psychological context that only their
own awareness and the recognition of their own shadow will allow the Jews
to see the other peoples correctly and to envisage fruitful coexistence with
them.
In the biblical text studied here, the core text about Jacob and Esau and
the mythologizing treatment by the people handing down this account are
closely interwoven. From this layer, which belongs to a transmitting
collective, spring both the problem of opposites, in the form of the opposing
twins, and the connection between the motif of Esau and the Edomites,
which is thus turned into an opposing people.
It is unnecessary to reiterate the close connection between the midrashic
texts and their inspirational core text. What does need to be emphasized,
however, is that the principle of opposition between the moon and the sun,
and its overcoming in Jacob’s struggle with the angel, concretizes one, if
not the, central phenomenon of Judaism, namely, YHWH’s struggle for the
world and, for the role of Israel, that is, the holy people as YHWH’s

representative, in that struggle.

Christianity and Judaism still persist in their demand that one side of the
world be sacrificed, whereas Hasidism has already taken a first great step
toward overcoming such a point of view. Only a small minority understands
the equilibrium between seemingly irreconcilable differences; moreover,
only some few individuals have actually experienced what Jacob
experienced in his struggle with the angel, namely, that the moon and the
sun, the inside and the outside, the sacred and the profane, and Israel and
the peoples of the world are but two faces of God. These two faces fight
each other to be blessed by each other.

__________
1. Micha Joseph Bin Gorion, Die Sagen der Juden, tr. from Hebrew to German by Rahel Bin Gorion
(Frankfurt: Rütten and Loening, 1913–1927), vol. 2, 353–355; for the source texts, see p. 444.
2. The opposition between right and left, which is alluded to here, shall be discussed later (p. 19).
3. See “Der Typengegensatz in der jüdischen Religionsgeschichte,” in C. G. Jung, Wirklichkeit der
Seele: Anwendungen und Fortschritte der neueren Psychologie (Zurich: Rascher, 1934).
4. Sukkah 29a. —Trans.
5. Midrash Exodus Rabbah 15. [Exodus Rabbah, or Shemot Rabbah, 15:26. —Ed.]
6. Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer.
7. Various other passages suggest a close relationship between the moon and the Jewish people.
However, we cannot consider these passages here, nor discuss the many references to the Jews as a
people of the moon. The possible connection between the Hebrew alphabet and ancient oriental lunar
calendars (see Eduard Stucken, Der Ursprung des Alphabets und die Mondstationen [Leipzig:
Hinrichs, 1913]) is part of this context, just as much as Hugo Winckler’s and Alfred Jeremias’s
assumptions that the Sabbath was originally the day of the full moon [Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer].
8. Bin Gorion, Sagen der Juden, vol. 1, 15–16; for the source text, see p. 352.
9. Bin Gorion, Sagen der Juden, vol. 1, 6–7; for the source texts, see p. 352. See also the following
passage: “Just as the moon renews itself, so will Israel also renew itself. Just as the moon shines day
and night, this world and the future world shall belong to Israel. But if the moon has no more power
by day, Israel shall have no power in this world, because of the peoples of the world.”
10. Erich Neumann refers, in parenthesis, to a letter from Jung to Neumann, dated August 12, 1934.
The translation from the German given here is by the translator, Mark Kyburz, and differs from the
translation found in Jung and Neumann, Analytical Psychology in Exile, 58. —Ed.
11. Bin Gorion, Sagen der Juden, vol. 3, 268. [Regarding “wind,“ see the introduction, note 17. —
Ed.]
12. “And he said, Why will you go to him today? It is neither new moon, nor sabbath. And she said,
It shall be well” (2 Kings 4:23).
13. Sanhedrin 42a.
14. The ritual of Yom Kippur Katan, the Minor Day of Atonement, was introduced in sixteenth-
century Safed by Rabbi Moshe Cordovero. It takes place on the day preceding Rosh Hodesh, the
New Moon Day. See also the introduction, note 22. —Ed.
15. No source is indicated in the German typescript. The text is part of the blessing recited in the
Mussaf (additional) service at Rosh Hodesh (New Moon). In Hebrew:

16. Sanhedrin 42a.—Trans.

17. In a passage not discussed here, the identification of Israel with the moon and its eternal renewal
is uttered in another, strange form, in a sentence that proclaims the immortality of David as the
representative of Israel in connection with the new moon: “David, King of Israel, lives and persists”
(Tractate Soferim, section 20; see also Rosch Hashanah 25a and Chullin 60b). [Tractate Soferim:
Tractate of the Scribes, a minor, noncanonical Talmudic treatise. —Ed.]
18. Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish is quoted as saying that the goat offered at the New Moon (Rosh
Hodesh) is atonement for God himself, having made the moon smaller than the sun (Talmud,
Shevu’oth 9a). —Ed.
19. Bin Gorion, Sagen der Juden, vol. 2, 356–357; for the source text, see p. 444. [The Geonim were
the spiritual leaders and authority in Babylonia, approximately seventh to eleventh century CE. They
headed the Talmudic academies of Sura and Pumbedita. Furthermore, the symbolism of the male goat
here reflects the principle of birth, death, and rebirth. Additionally, Samael—Satan, angel of death—
served as guardian angel of Esau. In a footnote, Bin Gorion wonders if Semasael perhaps refers to the
angel Shemhazai (book of Enoch). —Ed.]
20. “And the first came out red, all over like a hairy garment; and they called his name Esau” (Gen.
25:25).
21. “And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother to the land of Seir, the country of
Edom” (Gen. 32:4). “And they shall no more offer their sacrifices to demons [seirim], after whom
they play the harlot. This shall be a statute forever to them throughout their generations” (Lev. 17:7).
22. Bin Gorion, Sagen der Juden, vol. 2, 356–357.
23. Sef. Haagadah I, p. 45. [The ritual of the goats assigned to God and to Azazel in the wilderness is
described in The Book of Legends: Legends from the Talmud and Midrash (Sefer Ha-Aggadah),
edited by Hayyim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky (New York: Schocken Books,
1992), 178–180. —Ed.]
24. Sef. Haagadah I, pp. 168 and 197–98.
25. Bin Gorion, Sagen der Juden, vol. 3, 266; for the source texts, see p. 293. [One of the words for
moon, as in kiddush halevana, the blessing of the moon, is levana, which means “white.” Likewise,
as has been mentioned, Edom pertains to adom, meaning red (as in adama, “earth,” and Adam,
“man”). —Ed.]
26. Bin Gorion, Sagen der Juden, vol. 2, 204; italics in the original.
27. Ibid.; for the source texts, see p. 440. [In the current text (p. 16), the polarity between Michael
and Gabriel is replaced by that between Semasael and the two archangels.—Trans.]
28. On the archetypal symbolism of the colors red and white, see, for instance, Herbert Silberer,
Probleme der Mystik und ihrer Symbolik (Vienna: Hugo Heller, 1914).
29. Clearly, Neumann is not using the word Funktion (German) in terms of Jung’s four functions of
consciousness, but as a mechanism in the unconscious. —Ed.
30. For an in-depth discussion of this problem, see especially C. G. Jung, Psychologische Typen
[Psychological Types] (Zurich: Rascher, 1921).
31. Again, Neumann does not follow Jung’s structure of consciousness. He speaks about extraversion
as an inferior function in the unconscious, whereas the inferior function, in Jung’s structure, pertains
to consciousness, although as the conscious function that is closest to the unconscious. Furthermore,
introversion and extraversion are defined by Jung as attitudes of consciousness, and not as functions.
—Ed.
32. See C. G. Jung, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido: Beiträge zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des
Denkens [Symbols of Transformation] (Leipzig: F. Deuticke, 1912).
33. In this connection, it is worth recalling the “judgment of the dead,” a notion widespread among
many peoples of the world. Franz Kafka’s The Trial is perhaps the greatest modern depiction of this
fact. For a discussion, see the first part of the author’s [i.e., Neumann’s] unpublished commentary on
Kafka.
34. Only in the three instances in this paragraph does Neumann use Yitzhak rather than Isaac. —Ed.
35. Bin Gorion, Sagen der Juden, vol. 2, 354; for the source text, see p. 444.
36. The attempt at explanation made here is strongly indebted to Hugo Rosenthal’s “Der
Typengegensatz in der jüdischen Religionsgeschichte,” which is included in Jung, Wirklichkeit der
Seele. Despite the significance of Rosenthal’s work and its results, important parts of his findings
must be revised. Rosenthal’s analysis (see above), which has in part reached as far as the central
problems, suffers from its negative stance toward the text, which, just as Bible criticism does, often
simply contradicts instead of illuminates it. Incidentally, the same might be said about Rosenthal’s
analysis of the relationship between David, Saul, and Samuel, which rests far too strongly on
currently prevailing views. This basic attitude leads to an erroneous psychological analysis of Jacob,
which culminates in the purported transformation of Jacob’s character. Rosenthal’s assumption that
Jacob is an extravert not only contradicts the biblical text and its meaning, but also his view of Edom
being contained in Jacob’s unconscious, which is irreconcilable with his own assumption.
37. The affinity between brother and shadow is also archetypal.
38. Genesis 32:1–2: “And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob
saw them, he said, This is God’s host; and he called the name of that place Mahanaim.” Mahanaim
means “double camp” or “two camps.” Additionally, there is a difference in the verse scheme of
Genesis 32 between Jewish and Christian versions. Thus, Genesis 32:1–2 is 32:2–3 in a
Jewish/Hebrew Bible, Genesis 32:28 is 32:29, and Genesis 32:30 is 32:31. —Ed.
39. “I have seen God face to face, and my life is perserved” (Gen. 32:30).
40. Those who come from the loins are the descendants (Gen. 46:26; Exod. 1:5; Judg. 8:30). The oath
ceremony is also associated with this part of the body. Just as in Hebrew, the connection between “to
bear witness” (Zeuge) and “to bear children” (zeugen) is worth noting in both German and English.
See the psychoanalytic conception of limping as impotence, which holds true only in symbolic terms.
41. The apparent contrast between early and contemporary humanity is no more than relative.
Because whereas the experience of the struggle marks the change-inducing breakthrough, the fact
that it can constellate itself at all requires a great deal of determined thinking about this problem on
Jacob’s part. On the other hand, the act of thought in which a contemporary person engages, and from
which springs a conception of the world, is itself based upon unconscious processes, which in turn
correspond to his experience of a struggle. Thus, Jung’s assertion that “the image of the world that
we create, acts back on us [das Bild von der Welt, das wir schaffen, wirkt auf uns selber zurück],” can
be slightly reformulated as: “By creating an image of the world, the thinking person changes
himself.”
42. The word him is underlined in the German typescript. —Trans. The passage in Hebrew Bible is
Genesis 32:32. —Ed.
43. Bin Gorion, Sagen der Juden, vol. 3, 15.
44. From the foreword to chapter 14, “The Psychology of the Unconscious Processes,” in C. G. Jung,
Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1917), 353. —Ed.
45. Ibid. —Ed.
 On the Collective Symbolism of the
Brother Motif

O ne faces two tasks when further pursuing the problems raised by the
motif of Jacob and Esau. To begin with, it is important to extend the
archetypal foundation of this series of motifs at least to materials that point
to the existence of the same archetypes among other peoples and in other
periods of human history, so that the embeddedness of Jewish symbolism in
the broader symbolism of all humanity becomes evident. Moreover, the
motif of Jacob and Esau should be made the starting point for an attempt to
at least delineate the boundaries of another area of Jewish psychology,
beginning with the Jewish problem of the shadow and extending to the
fundamental tension between the spirit and the earth. The position of the
moon as a central symbol of the inner side of the world, which contrasts
with the outer world of the sun, has several further consequences if the Jew
is identified with this moon symbolism, whose nature is feminine and
receiving. The reversal of the masculine and feminine in Jewish
psychology, to which this identification alludes and whose depths cannot be
entirely fathomed, throws light on a wealth of additional psychic materials
concerning the Jewish attitude toward the feminine principle. Studying
these materials, which assume a concrete shape in Jewish literature,
ultimately leads to the problem of modern Jewish persons, in whom the
same primary spiritual layers once again become productive and which—
partly through the same, partly through an entirely different and new
symbolism—revolutionize and reorient the critical situation of Judaism at
present.

On the Collective Symbolism of the Brother Motif

The discovery of the collective unconscious and of the archetypes as those
dominants governing the human unconscious irrespective of time, place,
race, and nation has put paid not only to the theory of dispersion (Wander-
Theorie), which attempted to explain the existence of the same mythical,
folktale-like, and religious motifs among different peoples in terms of
geographical or cultural dissemination. The discovery of the collective
unconscious has also rendered futile the tendency to enhance the value of
the documents of any given people by emphasizing the singularity of their
motifs, and thereby to devalue others by denying their originality and by
deriving their origin from other peoples. Precisely if the creative layer of
the unconscious throws into relief the same primordial motifs for all
humanity and if, irrespective of variations in the human race, the same
archetypes determine the life of the unconscious, then our research must
focus on the question of origin; indeed it must shift from the question of
motifs to how these primordial motifs are processed by the human being.
The constellation of those archetypes that have shaped the history of a
people, and the shaping force with which this constellation has seized these
primordial forms of life, characterize the uniqueness of each constellation.
Each singularity stands out as an accentuation, as a unique constellation,
from the extensive and hidden creative power of the general human
unconscious, whose starry heavens extend boundlessly into every area of
the human soul.
What follows attempts neither to offer an exhaustive account of these
matters, nor to discuss in great depth the relevant parallels, but rather to
enrich our understanding of the Jacob-and-Esau and moon-and-sun motifs
by drawing on insights from antiquity. These insights should not be
misunderstood in historical terms, even if there is evidence, both verifiable
and unverifiable, that supports the existence of relevant historical
connections. Instead, the focus here lies on further illuminating the
amplitude of the symbolism involved and its relationship with basic human
thought. It is precisely for this reason that, along with actual parallel
mythical materials, reference is also made to interpretations, because the
purpose of the present reflections is less to establish the veracity of a
particular content than to indicate the enduring vitality of this symbolism.
Midrashic literature has intimately linked the story of Jacob and Esau to
the unconscious and its pervasive theme of opposition. The story is related
particularly to the motifs of the disc and crescent, or the sun and moon,
whose nature as brothers and twins in the collective unconscious represents
the obvious connection. As a central motif of the unconscious, the principle
of opposites is an immensely widespread fundamental motif in mythology
in general and in ancient mythology and symbolism in particular.
The case of Jacob and Esau represents an amalgamation of these
fundamental motifs, namely, of unequal brothers and of twins. This
amalgamation has no actual meaning in the Bible, because there the motif
of unequal brothers is absolutely dominant and accounts for the dynamics
of events. By contrast, the twin motif appears only in the context of birth. In
midrashic literature, the motif is shifted emphatically into the prenatal
period, that is, the strife between the twins in the womb. But since the motif
of primogeniture, which is so very important in the Bible, is also intimately
related to the motif of Jacob and Esau, the opposing twins motif must
naturally take second place to the former, more general principle of
opposites.
 In its familiar extension of the case of Jacob and Esau to the motifs of
the disc and crescent, or the sun and moon, midrashic literature introduces a
new motif and various content equations, and thereby adds an attractive
wealth of meaning to the basic problem. As we shall see, the paradoxical
amalgamation of the motifs of the unequal brothers and twins had already
become effective in Babylon, just as they have since often been
interrelated.1
The Swiss thinker Johann Jakob Bachofen understands the profound and
general significance of the principle of opposites in relating the burial
symbolism inherent in the principle of twins to the symbolism of both light
and shadow and black and white, and in interpreting that principle as the
life-and-death dynamics of the telluric region, for which he has gathered
copious material in his writings.
Bachofen is indeed a rich source of psychological knowledge if—quite
apart from his importance as a historian—he is viewed as the modern
psychologist which he declined to seem to himself. For instance, as soon as
one considers the telluric region as a region of the unconscious, in contrast
to the uranic region of consciousness, then Bachofen’s findings become—
symbolically but not historically—both newly and highly relevant.
The motifs of opposites and twins always refer—as the example of the
Jacob and Esau motif in midrashic literature has suggested—to a twofold
and pervasive opposition within the human soul. In the first instance, this
concerns compensatory movements among two systems—the conscious and
unconscious—which work against and move toward each other. Expressing
itself in enantiodromia, this compound system presses for a transformation
of the aspects of life, for a capsizing of consciousness into its opposite if the
unconscious, that contrary stance, has become too strong.2 Whereas the
principle of enantiodromia manifests itself most powerfully in the
psychology of conversion, specifically Saul’s conversion to Paul, it also
governs—albeit less evidently—all human life down to the smallest detail.
If modern science observes that “among the highest organisms, the
opposition between waking and sleeping, these two states of life, is
nowhere as pronounced as in spiritual behavior,” then the attribution of the
principle of enantiodromia to the cosmic conditions of the human being
expresses only somewhat differently ancient humans’ establishment of the
moon and the sun as opposite poles or black and white as a pair of
opposites.3 That is not to say that the principle of opposites can be deduced
from the cosmic periodicity of day and night. Without doubt, however, the
human soul processes this conditionality, which is one among many
contingencies constituting the principle of opposites following the
primordial experience of day and night, in such a way as to elevate the sun
and the moon—and their symbolism—to the status of core figures in the
problem of opposites.
Besides this opposition, which is alluded to by the existence of two poles
—consciousness and the unconscious—an opposition also exists in the
unconscious itself, namely, as Bachofen suggests, in the telluric region. For
this dichotomy, that is, the polarity of indifferent unconscious nature,
creation and destruction as well as good and evil represent nothing but two
equal sides. This opposition, whose most impressive formulation is the
Chinese symbol of the taijitu, and which Bachofen also construes from the
symbolism of the black-and-white Orphic egg, corresponds to the periodic
succession of day and night, winter and summer. This principle exists in the
lower layers of the unconscious and forces human consciousness into active
or passive reaction. This internal periodicity of the unconscious, which can
be observed in schizophrenia and in every analysis of the unconscious,
whether in dreams or fantasy worlds, is apparently not related directly to the
annual seasons or to larger units of time. The analysis of historical
periodicity, however, strongly suggests a periodicity of the collective
unconscious, be it related to external cosmic cycles, as assumed by ancient
astrology, or through achieving autonomy from its coincidence with
external contingencies.4
The present discussion neither discusses the opposition between so-
called moon and sun cultures nor criticizes sociological attributions of
agriculture and sun nomadism or of the moon principle, nor does it consider
the arguments for and against similar or opposing views. Instead, it
consciously assumes and is confined to psychological and thus also to
symbolic aspects. Precisely because the symbolism of the sun and the
moon, irrespective of its presumed dependence upon data from the
objective world, demonstrably appears as a central figure of the problem of
opposites inherent in the unconscious, one may justifiably restrict oneself to
considering and interpreting psychic symbols.
What is relevant in terms of the above reflections is that we begin to
understand what strikes Western people as an utterly peculiar notion of the
moon as a principle superior to the sun, if one considers that in the Orient
the sun, in contrast to the life-enhancing moon and its cooling effect, is
scorching hot and deadly.5 This is expressed most clearly in Leo, the zodiac
sign ruled by the sun and hence associated with the hottest period of the
year, during which the sun’s predatory nature overwhelmingly governs a
world that has been turned into an arid desert.
In Babylon, the two great deities are Sin and Samas, moon and sun,
whereby the priority of the moon arises from the fact that it is considered to
be the father of the sun and the gods.6 In Babylon, the sun is the god of the
underworld and the death star; the moon, the father of the gods, is the life
star.7 Alfred Jeremias, who derives the structure of the deities from their
astrological-astronomical position, observes: “The sun and the moon are
also twins, the hostile and separated brothers.”8 The crescent of the new
moon symbolizes the victorious weapon with which the underworld is
defeated in the struggle for supremacy between the moon and the sun. In
that battle, the sun appears as a devouring dragon of the underworld which
consumes the heroic moon, who bears the crescent-shaped sword, in what is
a highly interesting reversal of the sun myth, which demonstrates that the
archetype of the hero’s battle is primary and original. Whereas this
archetype is mostly associated with the path of the sun, here, conversely, it
is related to the moon. The parallels, however, or rather the fundamental
Babylonian motifs on which the midrashic texts are based, reach even
further and plainly reveal how unimportant the “origin” of the fundamental
motifs is compared to how they are processed.
One essential complication of the midrashic texts was, as observed, that
the twin appeared as a shadow in the moon, that is, the inner Esau was
housed in Jacob. According to Jeremias, this motif also exists in Babylon,
save that it occurs there as a purely astral projection without, however,
making possible any psychological or subjective interpretation. It is most
interesting to observe that the same facts can be deduced from the
symbolism of the Jewish Midrashim as well as from a very different
perspective, namely, Babylonian astral mythology. It was only after
completing the above section on Jacob and Esau that I discovered Hugo
Winckler’s study, on whose findings Jeremias also draws.9 According to
Winckler, the beginnings of Babylonian astronomy date back to the age of
twins, that is, the sixth to fifth centuries BCE. This age is governed by the
moon; at the beginning of creation, however, the sun also stood in these
twins. “A corresponding explanation is given for the twins; they are
explicitly considered to be nothing other than Sin, the lunar deity, and
Nergal, the solar deity, in his hibernal or nocturnal phase, that is, during his
stay in the underworld.”10 Thus, Winckler, adopting an astronomical-
astrological perspective, arrives at the following formulation, which
coincides verbatim with our own finding: “Jacob and Esau, the latter
representing southern Edom and the sun, which explains why he is hairy,
are described as the spring moon and sun.”11
 Even though Winckler’s hypothesis about the overwhelming cultural
influence of Babylon is untenable, it is nevertheless absolutely certain that
Babylon exercised a strong influence on Jewish consciousness—also and
particularly during the midrashic-creative period. But precisely the
existence of the same primordial images and symbols in the general
collective unconscious renders the aspect of dependency relatively
unimportant, whereas the kind of processing greatly reveals the kind and
nature of Jewish creativity.
Possibly, the sun and the moon already existed as a traditional
cosmicastral series of motifs, just as the motif of twins blended into the
motif of the hostile brothers. In any event, each of these factors bore the
typically pagan characteristics of mythology, that is, they were alien and
objective events removed from human life. The amalgamation of the moon
and the sun with mythological heroic events preserved the character of a
cosmic projection, which, for instance, enabled Winckler and his school to
translate this mythology back into an astronomical-astral sphere. But the
fusion of these dominants of the collective unconscious with the text about
Jacob and Esau, that is, the linkage with an unmythological, quasi-historical
text, places the entire problem at the heart of humanity. Only this
connection renders feasible—consciously and unconsciously—the symbolic
meaning of the opposition between the sun and the moon that is capable of
being understood by consciousness and thus of being conveyed toward the
inner dynamics of the soul.
Through their amalgamation with the opposition between Jacob and
Esau, the cosmic and mythological contents are elevated to the subjective
level, that is, to the level of psychic contents. Thus, they become a problem
concerning the opposition within the human being and thus a problem
concerning responsibility. As observed, however, these matters are less
about a narrowing of collective and mythological contents to a psychic—
and thus merely personal—level. Following the passage through the ethical
level, psychological processing, which is no longer situated on a projective,
mythological level, leads to a general psychological problem of humanity.
Thus, the Jewish processes of assimilation and production convert the
astral-Babylonian series of motifs, which are characterized by an objective
necessity of nature, that is, a psychologically unconscious problem, into a
highly acute human question, namely, the eternal problem of existence on a
much higher level of consciousness, as seen and represented by a typically
introverted mentality.
The moon—apart from being twinned with the sun—is called a twin
because of its own twofold character as a waxing and waning moon. It
stands in hostile opposition to itself as both a full moon and a black moon.
But the astral anticipation of the midrashic motifs in the Babylonian
conception of the world is more detailed. In the astral system, Nergal, the
Babylonian god, whose planet is Mars, belongs to the underworld and the
hibernal sun. Like the sun, he is also the hostile brother and twin of the
moon; in the twin-like nature of the moon, he plays the role of the waning
moon.12 In this manner, Nergal stands in good stead the shadowlike nature
of the moon, sun, and Edom, and he extends their spiritual world-like
sphere, since “Samas and Nergal are one.”13 He is “the scorching sun in
summertime, which causes death, the god with the flaming sword ... the
strangler and destroyer, the raging god of fire.”14 It is equally
understandable that from that point, he becomes the god of hunting and the
insurmountable god of war. He also becomes the god of the plague and
pestilence.
In the Amarna letters, he is referred to as the god of iron, which
heightens his underworldly nature.15 His animal is the lion, whose
attribution to the negative sun we have already observed (p. 57).
If one recalls that the planet Mars is linked to iron and to the red color of
blood, then suddenly one comes full circle: Esau, Edom, the red one, and
the hunter are bearers of this entire inner and outer world-like sphere
occupied by Samas and Nergal. It is most enlightening that until recently
the Jewish images of Esau bear the character of Mars, the gruesome
warrior. Edom, as discussed in part I, is attributed to the angel Gabriel, as
an angel of the court. In turn, however, Gabriel is the angel of Mars, the red
one. To this day, the doer of evil is depicted in the Passover Haggadah as a
warrior, murderer, and mercenary.
Whether a similar motif design—for instance, from an Egyptian
perspective—is involved in the foundations of midrashic literature or even
in the making of the biblical text is irrelevant, for a similar fundamental
motif consistently prevails. In ancient Egypt, the hostile brothers are Seth
and Horus. The opposition between Seth and Horus also matters because
Horus, and in particular the eye of Horus, is represented by the moon.16 The
eye of the moon (and thus of Horus) stands in fiercest opposition to the eye
of the sun, which one speaks of in particular “when one thinks of the star as
a terrible creature that burns its enemies.”17 On the other hand, the enemy
of Horus and the moon, whom he repeatedly harms, is Seth. The
identification of Seth with the eye of the sun is clearly recognizable, albeit
indirectly, but actually seems to occur directly, so that once again, as we
shall see, the analogous equation Seth = eye of the sun = the red one = evil
becomes readable. In a hymn to Nut, it says: “Nut, two eyes appear in your
head, you took Horus and his magician, you took Seth and his magician.”18
Here, the two eyes are those of the goddess of heaven; important for our
present context are the equations between Seth and Horus, the sun and the
moon. In the later religious development of Egypt, the opposition between
Seth and Horus is replaced by that between Seth and Osiris. Even in the
course of the battle between Osiris and Seth—just as in the case of Jacob
and Esau—the struggle is occasioned by the motif of primogeniture.19
With the passage of time, Seth-Typhon assumes an increasingly negative
character and eventually becomes entirely the principle of the hostile
brother, that is, evil. Originally, however, Seth is the lord of the desert
countries, of the red countries; the color red, so hated by the Egyptians, is
his color.20 He had red eyes, was red-colored, and the evil he committed
was red in contrast to the blessed green things. Unquestionably, the contrast
between red and green also relates to the opposition between the desert and
fertility. However, one must not forget that these contrasting colors are
archetypally conditioned and that their opposition continues to play its role
in the unconscious of the modern person—no matter whether this involves
Esau = Edom = the Red One, or not. If no historical connection exists, then
similar mythologizing and similar oppositions will establish themselves,
here and there, on the basis of the same fundamental motifs of the
unconscious.21 The attitude toward Seth changes strongly in late Egypt.
Whereas in former times he was considered a great god, even though he
murdered Osiris, now (ca. 1300 BCE) he becomes the cause of great disgust,
which ultimately leads to his banishment from the assembly of gods. Seth
becomes a devil, the epitome of evil, and is identified with Apophis, the
giant snake, the dragon of the abyss, the evident shadow brother of Osiris,
the power of evil and of death. Seth is also construed as a black pig, in
whose guise he wounded Horus; the taboo of the pig among the Egyptians
is connected to this fact. The pig appears as a sacred animal all over the
world. Its taboo character, for which cults in the Near East provide ample
evidence—its significance in Germanic mythology is beyond our present
scope—plays a great role among the Egyptians, the Syrians, and to this day
the Jews. Just as Seth appears as a mortal black boar in the myth of Horus,
not only does Adonis but so do Attis and Tammuz suffer death at his
hands.22
Now without claiming that the association of Seth, the red and evil one,
with Esau and Edom actually occurred in the Jewish unconscious, the
identification of Esau with the wild black boar in the book of Enoch, that is,
Seth and Near Eastern figures as attested representatives of the devil, could
nevertheless point in this direction, because a strong reciprocal subterranean
influence undoubtedly existed between religious notions held across the
Near East, for which the enormous counter-struggle of the Old Testament
provides the best evidence.23 Following Psalm 80:14, Esau is also
compared to the destructive boar.24
What should also be mentioned in this connection is obviously the well-
known Persian parallel, namely, the twin-like character of the opposing
spirits Ohrmuzd and Ahriman, whose antagonism is also associated by the
Zurvani sect with the motif of primogeniture, in that Ahriman, the evil
spirit, “knowing perfectly well that lordship would fall to the first born,
broke forth unseasonably and thereby obtained the rights of the eldest.”25
Following the above survey of one part of the relevant collective
material, and before further pursuing the actual issues raised by the motif of
the hostile brothers, we must first consider the attempt made by
psychoanalysis to interpret this problem on the level of the personal
unconscious. Doing so requires elaborating on some fundamental issues
concerning the appropriateness and authority of such a level of
interpretation.
It is fundamentally important to engage with psychoanalysis because,
based upon our attempted definition of fundamental terms and concepts, it
is a matter of retrospectively establishing the eligibility of our present
interpretation while attempting to demonstrate on which level myths,
folktales, and works of art should in principle be interpreted. Precisely the
ways in which deeper layers in this structure reach into each other
objectively and overlap to produce it, together with the bias of the naive
point of view of consciousness, seem to make this endeavor so necessary.

__________
1. For instance, among the Indo-Germanic and North American peoples.
2. See Jung, Psychologische Typen [Psychological Types], definition 18, par. 708.
3. Willy Hugo Hellpach, Geopsychische Erscheinungen: Die Menschenseele unter dem Einfluß von
Wetter und Klima, Boden und Landschaft (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1911), 260.
4. On the emergence of an internal periodicity from an originally contingent periodicity, see
Hellpach, Geopsychische Erscheinungen.
5. The handwritten reference by Neumann reads “Goldberg, Mythen der Hebräer, p. 123,” which
might be a reference to Oskar Goldberg, Die Wirklichkeit der Hebräer: Einleitung in das System des
Pentateuch (Berlin: Verlag David, 1925). —Ed.
6. See A. Ungnad, Die Religion der Babylonier und Assyrer (Jena: Diederich, 1921), 167 and 190, in
prayers to the moon and sun gods.
7. Pierre Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte (Tübingen: Mohr,
1925).
8. Alfred Jeremias, p. 508. [In the original typescript, this note is appended to the previous sentence,
and Jeremias is referenced in both places. It is not clear from the German typescript whether
Neumann is referring to Jeremias, Das alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients (Leipzig: Hinrichs,
1906) or his Handbuch der altorientalischen Geisteskultur (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1913). Neumann’s
page reference does not match available editions of either work. —Trans.]
9. Hugo Winckler, Himmels- und Weltenbild der Babylonier als Grundlage der Weltanschauung und
Mythologie aller Völker (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1901).
10. Ibid., 36–37.
11. Ibid., 46. —Trans.
12. Ibid., p. 565.
13. Ibid., p. 566.
14. A source for this quotation could not be found. —Ed.
15. The Amarna letters, written in Akkadian cuneiform, were discovered in the late nineteenth
century in Amarna (Akhetaten) in Upper Egypt. The mostly diplomatic letters date from the mid-
fourteenth century BCE. —Ed.
16. Historically, the opposition between Seth and Horus is related to the opposition between Upper
and Lower Egypt. This is generally used to support the notion that deduces religious contents—such
as the opposition between Seth and Horus—from social-religious contents. Yet it is precisely our
present study, in which the opposition between these Egyptian brothers appears as one example
among many, that plainly reveals that in early history this very process took place quite differently.
The accidental historical finding of an opposition was seen as an earthly shaping of the apriori
opposition, because the dominance of the archetype governed history and historiography.
17. Adolf Erman, Die Religion der Aegypter (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1934), 21. —Trans.
18. Erman, Die Religion der Aegypter, footnote 6.
19. Hermann Kees, Ägypten: Religionsgeschichtliches Lesebuch (Tübingen: A. Bertholet, 1928), 31.
20. Erman, Die Religion der Aegypter, 39f.
21. It is probably impossible to determine to what extent the renaissance of Seth-Sutech in the
nineteenth dynasty made an impression on the Semitic tribes entering Egypt at this time, which is
related to the presence of the Jews there.
22. According to Winckler, the descent of the sun god in Ursus Major, which is also depicted and
construed as a boar, and of course these astral processes, which are projections of the unconscious,
need to be detached from their astronomical character, which is of no interest to our present
considerations, even if such a character exists.
23. Neumann’s note for the first part of this statement reads “Kautsch; Enoch 89.” This is possibly a
reference to Emil Friedrich Kautzsch, ed., Die Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen des Alten
Testamentes (Tübingen: Mohr, 1900). For the second part, Neumann notes: “This is confirmed by the
equation Saul = Seth, which has been handed down from Egyptian sources, albeit from the second
century (Burckhardt, Altaramäische Fremdwörter im Ägyptisch, vol. 2, no. 652).” This is possibly
Max Burckhardt, Die Altkanaanäischen Fremdworte und Eigenamen im Aegyptischen (Leipzig:
Hinrich, 1909). —Ed.
24. The Hebrew (Masoretic) Psalm 80:14 is 80:13 in Greek numbering: “The boar from the wood
destroys it, and the wild beast of the field devours it.” In the book of Jubilees (37:24), Esau is
compared to the boar, “springing like the wild boar which comes upon the spear that pierces and kills
it.” —Ed.
25. Edvard Lehmann, Die Perser (Tübingen: Mohr, 1924), 261. [The twins Ohrmuzd and Ahriman
pertain to the Zurvanite creation myth. While Ohrmuzd was to be granted the firstborn’s right over
creation, Ahriman ripped open the womb to emerge first. The Zurvani are an extinct branch of
Zoroastrianism. —Ed.]
 Layers of the Unconscious: The
Interpretation of Mythology

W hereas all attempts to interpret mythology and all efforts to explain

the occurrence in mythology of the same motifs, either in terms of
dispersion effects or in terms of astral or indeed other kinds of events, fail
to do justice to the facts, depth psychology, due to its Copernican turn, has
placed this question on a new, straightforward, and convincing footing,
namely, the human soul. Essentially, depth psychology argues that the
ubiquitous occurrence of the same motifs and series of motifs can be
explained in terms of what is essentially the same fundamental structure of
the human soul.
Any attempt to engage with the motif of twin brothers cannot disregard
the numerous endeavors made by psychoanalysis to consider and
understand this problem. Psychoanalysis, in its characteristically consistent
and monotonous way, attributes the motif of brotherly hatred to the Oedipus
complex, by assuming that the cause of this hatred is the rivalry between
two brothers over their sister and, moreover, by regarding the sister as a
surrogate mother and the brother as a surrogate father. This methodological
ruse, which involves permutation and false attribution, makes it extremely
easy for psychoanalysis to produce the necessary evidence to substantiate
its basic claim. In its interpretation of human development during puberty,
psychoanalysis employs this trick of representing the woman to be
conquered by the brothers (see folktales, puberty rites, etc.) invariably as a
surrogate mother and thereby turns the development of manhood a priori
into an incestuous process. Such development necessarily involves
murdering the father, and only thus is psychoanalysis able to attribute the
problem of the brothers to the problem of incest. Everything female in
psychoanalytic texts refers to the mother; failing such reference, matters are
even clearer, because they are then repressed, which doubly proves their
existence.
Now this critique of ours by no means amounts to disputing that
psychoanalytic interpretation is relevant in some cases and to some
narratives; what needs to be emphasized most strongly, however, is the
relative validity of any such interpretation. The categories of individual
psychology can be applied to the problem of the twin brothers with
absolutely the same justification. Precisely this problem, on account of its
primordial motif of the struggle for primogeniture, is an excellent example
of the psychology of the drive for power. If we are aware of psychoanalytic
interpretation as a psychology of extraversion, and that of individual
psychology as a psychology of introversion, then we shall not be surprised
to find that in mythological texts and folktales (just as in works of art) the
struggle over the woman and the struggle for power (primogeniture, etc.)
occur just as frequently as the motif of fraternal strife. The fact that
psychoanalysis reduces the drive for power to the Oedipus complex just as
self-evidently as individual psychology interprets the Oedipus complex as a
symbol of the power drive suggests that both the extraverted and introverted
types tend to consider their psychology to be universally valid and therefore
to negate every other standpoint.
To avoid simplification, analytical psychology must be consistent with
the real complexity of the human soul. Aside from holding one or the other
notion, analytical psychology needs to take new and further interpretative
steps that do justice to the given material while grasping and involving the
specific ethno-psychological situation in which such materials and texts are
produced.
 Most characteristically, psychoanalysis and individual psychology
neglect what is in effect a major problem: the curious fact that the motif of
unequal brothers is so often connected with the motif of twins. This linkage
seems to be highly paradoxical. Both psychoanalysis and individual
psychology adhere to the motif of unequal brothers in that the elder brother
is seen either as a screen figure (Deckfigur) for the father or as the cause of
the inferiority feeling of the younger brother.
How has the issue of twins been discussed? Otto Rank, for instance,
writes:

It cannot escape our attention that the brothers are twins, who resemble each other not only
physically, “like two peas in a pod,” but also as regards their personal characteristics and
attributes (they have the same animals, wear the same clothes, etc.); not even their names are
different, so that the queen recognizes her husband only by an artificial mark. If the notion of
the doublet applies to anything in this scheme of things, then certainly [it does] to the
brothers, one being a poor imitation of the other. But this reduction of the brothers to one and
the same person would deprive the story of its principal meaning, namely, the rivalry
between the brothers over the same love object, unless of course we remind ourselves that
originally one of the brothers was older and served his younger sibling as a father, as we can
read in the folktale about Bata.1

The naivety of approaching matters in terms of the principle “because

what cannot be, should not be” will only unsettle those unfamiliar with the
insouciant methodology at work here. These are twins. But if they are
indeed twins or merely one person for that matter, then the motif of the
older brother and the fraternal rivalry over the same love object would
cease to exist—which would mean that the brothers are not twins after all.
What needs to be added is that, as is well known, the Egyptian folktale
about Bata, in effect about older and younger brothers, is a late replica of
the myth of Horus and Seth, in which the brothers are described as hostile
twins. Thus, the motif of twins is the original one.
 The starting point for the present study is the widely accepted fact that
the motifs of the two brothers and twins are interrelated. Using the
midrashic material and the motif of Jacob and Esau, I have attempted to
demonstrate that these motifs concern the problem of the shadow.
Moreover, I have sought to establish that midrashic literature itself—in
terms of interpreting itself as it were—discusses the issue of the brothers in
terms of the problem of the shadow. This interpretation elevates the entire
material to the subjective level, that is, it does precisely what Rank
considers necessary but subsequently rejects for two reasons. The
assumption that these events occur within a single personality reveals that
whereas both sides of the opposition are struggling against each other, as
hostile brothers, they are at the same time twins, inseparably connected and
forming one being. They resemble each other “like two peas in a pod”
because they are identical. This subjective interpretation casts an entirely
new meaning on the entire wealth of motifs surrounding the brother motif.
The case of the Dioscuri, whose essential yet peculiar characteristic is that
one of the twin brothers is earthly, the other divine, greatly enlightens our
current problem. For this cannot be explained, as psychoanalysis does, by
the fact that the late-coming brother is the twin of the firstborn. Moreover,
the material providing evidence for the particularly “brotherly” observance
of the afterbirth among the primitives needs to be interpreted differently, as
we shall see.2
The dual inner nature of the human person, which becomes apparent in
the problem of twins and the shadow, is only one of the many archetypal
forms in which we encounter one of the fundamental problems of all human
existence: the problem of opposites. This problem, which takes the form of
good and evil or of the ego and the shadow, and which manifests itself as
the opposition between mind and nature or between light and dark, is
perhaps the problem of the transformation of libido. Around its center orbits
a planetary array of archetypal motifs, the symbolism of light, the sun and
the heroes, the gods and demons, heaven and hell, each endeavoring to
express and give shape to the human soul’s experience of the history of
consciousness in its relation to the unconscious. The processes of the birth,
transformation, and death of this human consciousness are the secret tenor
underpinning the entire history of humanity. Our dual belonging, to
consciousness and the unconscious, also forms the actual background to the
brother motif.
All mysteries of reincarnation and thus the entirety of mysteries and
redemption cults, from primitive initiation rites to alchemy, belong in this
context since they essentially strive either to support one of the brothers, the
divine one, or even to deliver him from his connection with the shadow
brother. Since the entire mythology of the hero is related to this issue, this
and only this explains the motif of the twofold mother, the earthly one and
the heavenly one. The motif of the twofold mother is the counterpart of the
twofold father of the Dioscuri twins, which were born to the same mother in
the same night, one from the heavenly father, the other from the earthly
father.3 The misinterpretations of the Freudian school, which degrade all of
these contents to those of personal desires, will occupy us in a systematic
fashion.
As part of the problem of opposites, the problem of the shadow—in its
generality—is a fundamental example of the compensatory relationship
between consciousness and the unconscious. The adversary figure of the
shadow always provides a counterpoint to consciousness; it always
represents—and is known as the shadow for precisely this reason—the
dark, the shadow side, which belongs to consciousness as night does to day.
Thus, on account of the relativity of the shadow to the system of
consciousness, no particular and firmly delimitable contents are associated
with the shadow, in that it always represents what is absent—be it in moral
terms, in that the shadow represents the immoral against moral
consciousness, or, conversely, be it that the moral and communal instincts
resist in the form of the shadow an egotistical-immoral consciousness.
Despite this relativity, much can be said about the structural essence of the
shadow, specifically about its general contents, that is, those lying beyond
any determinable contents. Part of that essence in particular is its
amalgamation or at least its affinity with what consciousness considers to
be the “other side,” that is, the unconscious. The life of the unconscious,
however, is most strongly incarnated in and represented by the body. If
primitive psychology and Eastern psychology alike attribute the various
psychic centers to corresponding regions in the body, and if modern
psychology raises corresponding questions in its exploration of the
collective unconscious and its explanation of organic neurosis and the
symbolic language of illness, then this convergence implies that instincts
and archetypes are most intimately related to the body as pictorial forms, if
not as a parallel identity to the body.4
If one contrasts the phenomena of consciousness with the pure
unconscious, then affects or drives, which are noticeably related to the
bodily phenomenon of arousal, are one instructive principle.5 The more
unaware a person is, the more that person will be subject to the influence of
the bodily sphere in general, and the more that person will depend upon the
emotions and reactions of the body, which he or she inhabits as a conscious
ego. From time immemorial, every kind of primitive and no longer
primitive training of the conscious side has at the same time signaled an
effort to overcome affects and drives. Working on becoming a more highly
developed person has always involved freeing oneself from the body and
taking in hand the bodily sphere and its independence. This phenomenon
ranges from primitive initiation rites (and their ascetic procedures) through
the regimes of hygiene common among tribal peoples and mystery societies
to Stoicism, Gnosis, and Kabbalah, and also to Spinoza’s and Kant’s
categorical imperatives (in the latter’s case, the notion of inclination or
disposition needs to be overcome only as a psychological fact).
 Over the course of human history, consciousness, this small and late
child of the unconscious, must in each generation and in each individual
make tremendous and truly heroic exertions to work its way out of the
clutches of both blood and the body, in order to attain its own world of
light. It must separate itself from the participation mystique with the
collectives of body, race, and nature, in order to suffer as a distinct being, as
an individual, so as not to be swept away by the world current but instead to
gain experience and to recognize the nature of things, what they are worth,
where they come from, where they are going, and what they mean.
In myth, consciousness and the bearer of consciousness always arise
from the unconscious, for instance, from the waters of the unconscious in
the body of the fish, such as Oannes in Babylon or Vishnu in India, and so
on. On the primitive level, the savior as a bearer of consciousness also
always represents for unconscious humanity a force of the unconscious,
namely, the latent energy of consciousness slumbering in the unconscious,
which—salvifically—delivers humanity from remaining confined in the
unconscious. It is as if over the course of human history this force of
consciousness had to give birth to itself, into the light of the world, within
and through humanity, just as YHWH tells Abraham in one of the midrashic
texts: “From the time that I created the world, I labored my way through
twenty sexes, until you came and were circumcised.”6
But precisely this aspect of human history forms the background to the
principle of opposites and to the motif of the hostile brothers. One force
drives toward consciousness, to struggle against the other force, which in
turn pushes back toward the unconscious. Both forces are contained within
the tremendous planetarium of the unconscious, within the soul of the
individual and the soul of humankind.
Whereas the motif of the savior appears in a compensatory way, on a
level of humanity which, given the small radius of consciousness, persists
in the power sphere of the unconscious, the motif of the shadow quite
naturally appears where a world of light and consciousness has already
established itself, where the world of light has become so large and strong
that—true to the word—it casts a shadow. Drawing on this kind of
clarification, one sees that the motif of the savior is the motif of salvation,
which guides the way out of the cosmic principle of opposites. This motif
belongs to the layer in which mythologizing takes place, in which the
collective unconscious expresses itself before individual consciousness
emerges into existence; it creates—salvifically in the life of the hero—
individual consciousness by conquering the dragon of the unconscious.
As shown above in a different context, the problem of the shadow
belongs to a layer in which the continuity of consciousness has either
already been established or is what humanity is attempting to hold onto.
Every mentality, however, that assumes the dominance of consciousness
runs the risk—despite all factors to the contrary—of failing to recognize the
fundamental connection with the unconscious, for which consciousness is
only an organ, an exponent, of the unconscious. This misapprehension of
the primordial connection entails a tendency toward the apotheosis of
consciousness and light, which believes it is capable of definitively
overcoming and having to overcome the dark side. In other words, after one
of the two sides in the principle of opposites has become dominant as the
side of consciousness, what should now occur is idealization and, as it were,
an ascension to heaven by the side of light. Only now, however, does the
shadow, through its connection with the unconscious body, become an
impediment to any kind of development. The shadow is the chain that
restrains any ascent into the heights. It is the dark adversary and
circumciser. It is the eternal memory of limitation and abyss.
Mythologically speaking, it is the rock of Prometheus, the ash tree from
which Odin hung himself, and the cross on which Christ was crucified. It is
the globe, the atlas, and the bull carried by Mithras. For the individual, the
shadow is the uniqueness of the here and now, bringing to mind one’s
boundaries and inexorable entrapment in definitive circumstances, namely,
those of one’s age, race, and people. The shadow, moreover, defines the
individual’s inclusion in the landscape of both life and family and one’s
entrapment in the cage of typology and body. The shadow is the captivation
of consciousness by the dark unconscious and the world.
In reality, however, the shadow contains the great treasure of creative
life. In contrast to ecstatic life, the creative life arises amid the great
oscillation between ebb and flow, light and darkness, consciousness and the
unconscious. The shadow emerges amid the ascent and descent on Jacob’s
ladder, between the son’s ego-consciousness on the one hand and the
mother’s collective unconscious on the other. Only the shadow, and the
compulsion to accept it, turns the bearer of the principle of consciousness
into an individual.
Only the shadow affords the human being, this atom-like speck of dust
amid the millennia-old development of human consciousness, a unique and
unrepeatable opportunity in world history. The infinitely arbitrary work of
nature, which disregards the individual and assigns to each creature a
specific measure and limitation, opportunity and fate, takes on meaning
only through its acceptance of this givenness and through its affirmation of
the shadow. Unconscious being is characterized by random exchangeability,
relocatability, and miscibility. Here the indistinguishable character of
participation mystique rules through its ecstatic and overwhelming
extinction of individuality, through the disappearance of the human being
before the divine figures immortalized in eternally real primordial images,
which shape humanity beyond the fates of individual generations and
peoples.
This all comes together in the here and now of the shadow, becoming
plastic, and becoming the responsible point of reference for ego-
consciousness, which stands between the world and the primordial images
and assumes a unique form and mode of self-expression. Behind the
shadow, the world of the unconscious is no longer a random, quasi-cosmic
expanse. Instead, it is aimed at ego-consciousness and constellated by it; it
is unequivocally directed and thereby compels engagement. The world of
the collective unconscious organizes itself behind the shadow. Now
appearing as a detail of a larger whole, it is no longer the surrounding
motherly sea in which the embryo of human consciousness swims in
slumber, but the object of engagement. Although the individual and his
depths reach into this layer from which he has emerged and into which he
once again fades, he has the capacity to enter into a dialogue—in the form
of consciousness—with this primordial foundation, to render visible the
contents of the collective unconscious, to compare their contours, and at
least partially to bring them into consciousness. But all these possibilities
must occur via the shadow, which contains the entire personality.
Precisely the limits and confinement of the here and now make the
individual distinguishable and as such capable of opposing the
indistinctness of the collective unconscious and of cooperating with it as a
partner. On the primitive level, only the body—and its uncompromising
nature (“like this, not otherwise”)—distinguishes the human being from
spirits and daimons, bodiless and shadowless beings. Spirits and daimons,
however, are parts of the collective unconscious. The shadow-casting body
and its blood-based determinacy of race, people, family, and type
distinguish us from the dead and the spirits and thereby constitute the
specific features of human existence on earth.
In this light, one can understand the aforementioned afterbirth and
placenta rituals, which are far from seldom among primitive rituals, and
which have ensued in the positing of a doppelgänger, who lives the life of
the after-born, that is to say, an “after-born child.”7 (The after-born child is
supposedly the origin of the myths about twins.) The provident preservation
of these various elements among primitives probably by far exceeds the
well-known respect shown to various parts of the body (hair, nails,
excrement, etc.) which, following the pars pro toto law, carry the entire
personality in themselves and which, for the purposes of magic, must be
carefully safeguarded against abuse. Rank has already referred to the
connection with what primitive psychology calls the “body soul.” On the
level of the primitive concretization of the unconscious, however, such an
after-born child and twin, who is revered in the placenta, must be seen as a
projection of the shadow, which is most intimately linked to the body.
Depending upon the developmental stage of consciousness, psychic
contents manifest themselves differently. Unconscious contents are
projected, and the more unconscious they are, the more they are
concretized. Thus we see the body’s side of the shadow concretized in the
after-born twin, whose loss or harm is the greatest undoing for the ego,
precisely because the integrity of the body soul is crucial for life. On a later
level, and involving differentiated consciousness, parts of the ego’s negative
side are split off and sacrificed, that is, given up in an atonement ritual;
initially, this also occurs through primitive concretization and projection,
that is, animal sacrifice (see the sacrificing of the scapegoat, p. 101).
Precisely this example makes it possible to further pursue the gradual
raising of consciousness, in that the original projection of negative parts
over the course of history gives way to an introjection, a taking inward, and
thus at the same time to a formation of the soul. Initially, the purpose of
animal sacrifice was that the individual performing the sacrifice could stand
in participation mystique with the animal being sacrificed, so that he could
truly offer up a part of himself in the sacrifice, a part that was projected and
transferred into the animal. Following a stage of sacrificial rituals emptied
of their meaning, and equivalent to suspended participation mystique with
the sacrificed animal, came spiritualization and prayer. These
developmental stages, from animal sacrifice to inner sacrifice, that is, the
formation of a disposition, can be traced to great effect in the Old
Testament. This introjection goes hand in hand with the development of
conscience. We shall need to return to the development of this concept of
sacrifice when considering the significance of Hasidism for the inner
development of the Jewish person.
This duality—be it formulated as an awareness of inhabiting two worlds,
as this world and the otherworld, as spiritual and corporeal man, as shell
and kernel, or be it formulated in Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Gnostic, or
primitive terms—has preoccupied the human being from time immemorial
to the present day as a fundamental problem. Every monistic conception of
the world (such as materialism and idealism) denying the principle of
opposites affirms the existence of that very principle through the radicalism
with which it confronts that opposite principle.
So why, one must ask, does this problem occur in such manifold shapes,
on the one hand as an opposition between deities or, for instance, as a
collective issue in the case of Jacob and Esau, and on the other hand in the
folktale about two brothers, in poetry, and in modern psychology? Is it
always one and the same issue and, if so, why then does it appear in so
many ways? Do we not risk the same one-sidedness that was criticized
above in the case of psychoanalysis, namely, that widely different material
is forcibly subjected to one and the same explanatory principle?
Some theoretical reflections, which might be fundamentally important,
need to be made at this juncture to explain and interpret the various levels
of representation. These reflections concern the introduction of a law, which
could be referred to as secondary personalization. This term is used here to
describe a rather comprehensive fact, which is relevant to both
interpretation and therapy.
The transformation of the myth of Seth and Horus, the twin brothers,
mentioned above in passing, into the folktale about Bata, just as the
transformation of myths into folktales per se, is prototypical of this process.
In this process, an originally suprapersonal or impersonal content, namely,
the opposition between Horus and Seth, the hostile twin deities, is
transformed into a personal story, a family story involving individual
characters.
Myths produced in the early stages of humanity are experienced as
impersonal and suprapersonal events. Amid mythologizing humanity, the
collective unconscious is productively at work rather unperturbed through
the medium of formulating groups. The less conscious the producer, the
smaller his contribution to the product, which passes through the producer
as it were. Such processes are also familiar to us today, for instance, in the
images arising from the deep unconscious and passing through the
experiencing person. Importantly, these images are at first inaccessible to
consciousness, nor are they reducible to or deducible from any contents of
the personal unconscious. Such processes occur throughout early human
history, whether in myths, or partly in customs and rituals, and so forth.
They are direct projections of the unconscious, for instance, onto the
heavens. It is from these projections that we have any knowledge at all
about what we call the collective unconscious.
With the growth of consciousness, and the progressive development of
the ego as the center of consciousness, occurs what we have called
secondary personalization. This process can be observed in both general
and individual human development. Hitherto neutral and indifferent
suprapersonal events become personalized, through the increasing share of
what has become a more extensive ego and through experience and
representation standing in closer relation to that ego. What happens could
be described as the changing of shapes and the descent of the gods: from
divine events spring humanlike and eventually human events. From the
myth of the hostile twin deities emerges the family story, which includes
traits now dependent upon the producer’s personal structure. Secondary
personalization, which occurs under the dominance of ego-consciousness,
now also alters the originally suprapersonal conflict of opposites through
the inclusion of motifs. The original mythological opposition between
brothers now simply exists and stands at the beginning of the world as it
were. The question of motifs as a question of consciousness, as a question
of causality, arises only in the stage of secondary personalization.
Depending upon personal structure, this is where the motifs of sex, power,
and so on come into play, and where the issues of primogeniture and the
rivalry over a sister begin to enrich the fraternal conflict. Here, too,
characteristically, a formerly indefinable object of contention now becomes
concrete and moves within personal reach.
Previously, the object of contention remained unmentioned or was
indefinably symbolic. It was something in which the treasure or precious
object to be attained was still cocooned, in the infinitely shimmering
diversity of the unborn, which was at once soul, woman, mother, mistress,
power, treasure, gold, sun, philosopher’s stone, water of life and water of
death, deliverance from life, death, birth and rebirth: everything at once and
yet nothing, but nevertheless everything.
The more the producer, as an individual or as a group, is shaped by the
ego and consciousness, the more personalized and ultimately also the more
individual the formulation. Generally, the folktale marks the transition from
mostly suprapersonal myth to personalized works of art. In the folktale,
these two layers merge into one another. Depending upon the tale, one or
the other character exerts dominance. But something is almost always
characteristic of the intermediate position of the folktale: its formulation,
which is characterized by such a superior sense of justice that, unlike art, it
does not address groups already differentiated in typological terms. The
folktale still formulates matters so that it can be read and loved by both the
extravert and the introvert. In its wisdom, it instructs “the” human being
that his princess is everyone’s princess, no matter whether she is one man’s
woman, another’s soul, or still another’s anima.8 Anyone who listens to the
folktale can hear and grasp that meaning in his very own picture book of the
folktale world.
The process of secondary personalization, however, is neither
degenerative nor coincidental, but highly meaningful and necessary for the
development of consciousness—but one needs to know about it so as not to
commit crucial psychological errors.
The sphere of personalization also occurs relatively late in individual
human development; here, too, the sphere of mythologizing, that is, the
preservation of an archetypal world, takes precedence. The sphere of
personalization, in which concrete individuals, like the father, mother,
sister, brother, etc., appear as individual persons, as objects, is already a
hard-earned piece of reality. This sphere presupposes an ego-consciousness
that has gained experience of the world and possesses an awareness of
reality. Such experience and awareness are not originally given to the child
but must be painstakingly acquired little by little during the development of
consciousness. Behind the ciphers of the family story stand the primordial
images, which originally rose prominently into the suprapersonal and were
as expansive as the world. The effects of these images irradiate the child,
who at this stage does not yet recognize its parents as persons and thus is
completely open to unconscious images and forces. Here, no protective
consciousness exists as yet; such limit-setting consciousness regards the
mother as an individual part of the world.
At this stage, the mother still contains everything—the world, the
nurturing, the enveloping—and fades into the infinite background. The
difficulty of establishing the fact that the child is contained in the collective
unconscious lies precisely in the secondary personalization which it
gradually brings about, so that the adult, the naive bearer of consciousness
per se, later considers everything, even early childhood experiences, to be
transposed into personalization, into the entirely personal sphere, into the
family story. The original world of the collective unconscious, and the
swimming in participation mystique with that unconscious, is replaced by a
phase of personalization. This phase, as demanded and nurtured by the
principle of ego-consciousness, formulates a part of the looming object
world. The phase of personalization also brings about an adaptation to
reality, namely, a disentanglement of personal figures from the overarching
forms of the primordial images. Life without the centering force of ego-
consciousness is the stream of life in the collective unconscious, the world
of mythologizing during the primordial ages. The child’s ego lives among
the archetypes as the adult’s ego-consciousness does among people.
Two examples among many others may serve to illustrate the
implications of secondary personalization. The maladapted development of
the neurotic often becomes apparent in a failure to attain the level of
secondary personalization. Moreover, the omnipotent archetypal parental
images do not retreat behind the personal reality of individual relatives as
part of the outer world of objects, but instead the dominance of archetypes
remains unbroken. This entails the well-known phenomenon of the
neurotic’s “distorted relatives,” who in reality are utterly incongruent with
their images in his soul. For the child, this condition is normal, because its
lacking development of consciousness means that it has not yet reached the
phase of personalization. For the child, the fateful power of family ties is
therefore often largely independent of the individual and personal structure
of its relatives, as the completely different effects of the same relative on
different children proves time and again. Before entering the phase of
personalization, the fateful effect of the family springs not so much from
the external relative but rather from the archetypal constellation inherent in
the child. This constellation is induced by, but partly also remains
independent of, the relative. The neurotic—like the child—still lives in the
midst of the archetypal world. Due to his misapprehension of the personal
structure of the relatives, the neurotic projects this structure onto them as
what he experiences in a state of nondetachment from his real relatives.
Becoming aware of these conflicts entails—through the neurotic becoming
aware of his projection onto his relatives—a separation from his fixation on
them and thus a dissolution of his neurosis. In addition, however, the
dominance of the real person gives way to revealing the dominance of
archetypes. This process may be called the objectification of archetypes. It
produces an extraordinary transformation of the personality, because the
energy previously spent on projections onto real persons, which thus lies
fruitlessly and oppressively stranded in part of the outer world, is cancelled
out and, through the objectification of archetypes, now benefits the
productive tension between the ego-consciousness and the collective
unconscious. The extension of consciousness, which takes cognizance of
the archetypes as the dominants of the unconscious, goes hand in hand with
recognizing the nature of their dominance. That is, the tension arising
between these two systems constitutes the energetic basis of all life and all
productivity.
Only the knowledge of these three stages—mythologizing, secondary
personalization, and conscious objectification—makes genuine
interpretation possible in the first place. The reduction of all mythological
material to the family story, as undertaken by psychoanalysis, corresponds
to the conscious awareness of secondary personalization. Starting from the
primary, unconscious stage of mythologizing, consciousness must undergo
this development in order to both expand and preserve the system of ego-
consciousness. Herein lies also a therapeutic value of the reductive method:
whereas it tends toward generalization (that is, a reduction to the sex drive)
by returning to childhood, that is, the mythologizing layer, it reduces
childhood experiences to the family story. It thus devalues the supremacy of
archetypal images, by making them bearable to consciousness through
secondary personalization and by connecting them with ego-consciousness
in a manner beneficial to conscious dominance. In contrast to
objectification, however, neither an increase in energetic tension nor an
extension of consciousness occurs, but only an increase in ego continuity
and a reduction of the child’s primordial world to entirely personal factors.
With its knowledge of the family story—that is, that things were and are
“nothing but”—consciousness considers itself, in contrast to the world of
mythologizing, to inhabit a de-demonized world. This world is thus also
less burdened by fear and more manageable for ego-consciousness. Making
the primordial images retreat into the background undoubtedly benefits
youthful development both in humanity at large and in the individual; it is
therefore recommended as a method for treating certain neuroses in the first
half of life. It is important, however, to be mindful of the fact that this
aspect conveys an incomplete and merely provisional conception of the
world. In contrast to objectification, where the dominance of archetypes is
acknowledged, although relativized by consciousness, secondary
personalization entails a youthful and obtrusive attitude toward what in
reality remain the dominant forces, that is, those governing events. The
attitude conveyed by secondary personalization emphasizes action, believes
in progress, and is therefore well suited to every psychology of youth.
The great pessimism of the Freudian genius, which lies concealed behind
the reduction to the “nothing but” attitude of secondary personalization, has
captured only the negative aspect of the archetypal world and therefore
considers the reduction of the world of mythologizing to the personal to be
the only solution. This reduction enhances, by virtue of compensation, both
optimistic dignity and the force of consciousness and therefore possesses
great cultural and political value. In turn, however, it pays for this reduction
with an incredibly simplified conception of the world. Not only does such
simplification lead to an impoverishment of the world, but through the
exclusion of background dominants it eventually provides these forces,
once more, with a subterranean and dangerously animated sphere of
influence. Only objectification, which consciously acknowledges and
adjusts itself to the workings of the dominants, but does not consider itself
able to exclude them through secondary personalization, is also capable of
acting upon these dominants in a culturally therapeutic way. To what extent
the inadequate position held by Adler and Freud can necessarily be deduced
from the specific historical situation of the Jews needs to be discussed
elsewhere.
As emphasized, the process of secondary personalization means that not
only emerging consciousness but also developed adult consciousness are
afterward no longer aware of the mythologizing phase, since this transposes
everything onto the level of secondary personalization. That is, the
subsequent ontogenetic and phylogenetic layers of consciousness and of the
personal unconscious, which to a considerable extent consist of the
subliminal, forgotten, and repressed fates of ego-consciousness,
superimpose themselves upon the primary layer of the mythologizing
phase. However, all the protruding parts of this fundamental layer are now
subject to secondary personalization. As we have seen, psychoanalysis
takes up and generalizes this process in a fundamental manner. Any therapy
and interpretation seeking to reach as far back as ontogenetic and
phylogenetic beginnings must retroactively pierce this secondary layer of
personalization, as described in the family story, and advance as far as the
primary layer of mythologizing, that is, the collective unconscious. One
must trace the umbilical cord of generativity and of individual fate as far
back as the collective mother soil of the soul, in each and every case where
there is a generative disorder, an impoverishment of life, or sterilization.
Every persistence in the sphere of secondary personalization induces
relatively limited healing, because it does not open up the sources of life,
but only cleanses the basin of the water of life and at best fortifies the
irrigation engine.
 A study of introversion plainly reveals the subjective components of
experience, that is, the archetypal contingency of each and every possibility
of experience. For this reason, it is only one step toward realizing that the
psychic layers withdrawn from consciousness and ego dominance are
entirely dominated by archetypes. The early human being and the child,
however, and in a certain sense also the creative person and the neurotic,
due to maladapted development, live largely without the dominance of ego-
consciousness. As discussed, the inner dominants, that is, the archetypes of
the unconscious, are therefore far more significant for a child’s
development than its relatives, with whom the family story associates child
development. Here, too, the nature of secondary personalization must be
understood. The naive eye of consciousness finds this particularly difficult,
because in reality the child projects the archetypes onto the relatives, that is,
it experiences the archetypal situation through but not as caused by them.
Moreover, an extraverted attitude, for instance Freud’s, must emphasize the
influences of the outer world while neglecting the subjective factors.
Secondary personalization, whose prototype we have identified as the
family story in Freud’s case, corresponds to the layer referred to by Jung as
the personal unconscious. Freud and his school commit a cardinal error in
their discussion of the secondary personalization of the artist’s creative
process, by reducing it both continuously and exclusively to the layers of
the personal unconscious. This misapprehension is manifestly evident in the
formulation that “artistic activity is not a kind of psychic luxury indulged in
by one abounding in fantasy and energy, but it is consistent with the
tormenting compulsion of psychic self-preservation, which can be
maintained only through colossal compensation fantasies.”9 Like most
psychoanalytic findings, this conception is both half correct and half
mistaken. Without any doubt, the artist experiences what is frequently also a
tormenting compulsion toward psychic self-preservation, which vents itself
in creation, precisely because of—and Rank disputes this fact—an
overabundance of fantasy and energy. The artist is predominantly connected
with the layer of the collective unconscious. He engages with archetypes
and, just as in the primordial age, he mythologizes the world and it
mythologizes itself through him. Precisely his proximity to the unconscious,
and the danger of being flooded by it, forces the artist toward formulation
and formation. It is self-evident, however, that as a modern human being his
conscious personality is more or less strongly involved in the making. The
less primitive he is, the less he is a medium. That said, one must, however,
consider that each process of inspiration and creation presupposes a certain
mediality, that is, both a productive unconscious and a receptive
consciousness.
The private sphere of the personal unconscious is without any doubt
involved in the process of formation and can be analytically dissolved from
this process. But the psychology of the artist teaches us that his essence
reaches to a considerable extent into the mythologizing layer, and also that
he is less predominantly subject to secondary personalization than the
average person. What distinguishes the artist from the child is that this
condition is fully preserved in adulthood, whereas in the child it gives way
to the developmental process of consciousness. Unlike the neurotic,
moreover, the artist suffers no developmental disorder that needs to be
healed. In the artist, the emphasis between consciousness and the
unconscious still lies on the unconscious without, however, impairing life,
as in the case of neurosis. Instead, the artist is characterized by a greater
fullness of life. Unfortunately, however, precisely because the emphasis is
shifted toward the unconscious in the artist’s case, the adjustment to reality
often suffers as a result, so that a certain neuroticism can occur.
The principle of secondary personalization is so very important because
the actual reality of the psychological is largely excluded with its assistance,
to the extent that it completely assumes an illusionary character. One must
therefore study this principle, because knowledge of the extraordinary
reality of the collective unconscious constitutes the background that makes
an interpretation of collective-symbolic texts both meaningful and
necessary. Moreover, however, this principle, by virtue of its tendency to
draw everything into the sphere of consciousness and the personal
unconscious, blends layers so strongly into each other that any sense of
orientation is lost. Yet precisely that sense matters so greatly in the analysis
of the unconscious.
The following example, once again borrowed from Rank, illustrates this.
Rank interprets the dragon to whom the virgin is sacrificed in folktales and
myth as the young woman’s sexual fear of her husband’s animal side, as an
imago of the hated brother (in the folktale about the two brothers), as a
terrible mother (the goddess of death in myth and the folktale), and as a
negative father (in the folktale).10 All these interpretations are as such
correct if, as we shall see, one considers their actual layer of reality and
level of interpretation. They literally force one to create the notion of the
collective unconscious.11 But the tendency toward secondary
personalization nevertheless manages once again to exclude everything that
had come into view and to reduce it to the family story. This is particularly
evident because in this connection Rank himself refers to the indigenous
peoples, where we find evidence of a considerable number of virgin
sacrifices, performed in the form of weddings.
Without question, the primitive psyche perceives the dragon as a most
gruesome reality, collectively factual and forceful. Here, on this level, we
thus encounter a natural projection of the dragon archetype, which as such
is history-forming and brings forth festivals and rituals. Even if we assume
that a content belonging to the family story stands behind the dragon
symbol, this can only be the Oedipus complex because there is no evidence
for female sexual fear among the primitives and, moreover, the sacrifice of
women was instigated by men. This content is thus completely unconscious
and not a matter of secondary personalization.
 In myth, we are dealing with a psychic structure that corresponds to such
a sacrificial ritual. Here, too, the hero begins to occupy a central role, which
puts him at odds with the dragon archetype; the hero, however, always
represents ego-consciousness.12 Approaches to secondary personalization
already exist on the level of myth, on which personal fate and the contents
of the personal unconscious begin to enter into things. Psychoanalysis is
absolutely correct in claiming that the story of childhood informs the hero
and that the creation of myths occurs through fantasizing backward into
childhood. Here, too, however, the negative attitude of psychoanalysis once
again becomes unmistakably clear. The heroic deed, it claims, is the
murdering of the father; the heroic lie, moreover, consists only in the poet
bending reality in terms of his desire, by claiming to have slain the father
alone, whereas in reality this deed was committed by a horde.13 Through its
identification with the hero, every average bourgeois ego thus asserts its
age-old claim to the culture-forming primordial deed of patricide. In actual
fact, matters are both different and simpler. The childhood ego is the hero
because it creates itself and comes into existence through its struggle with
the unconscious. The struggle with the dragon of the unconscious, which
the hero must survive and which leads to the victory of consciousness, is
the struggle involved in all child development. Precisely this implies that
this struggle is archetypal and collective and that it repeats itself in each life
process of awakening consciousness. The ego’s identification with the hero
happens by virtue of the childlike ego, in fact with good reason, because
this particular ego vividly experiences both heroism and the danger
emanating from the dragon. This hero is no wishful fantasy, heroic lie, or
illusion but a verifiable reality, verifiable in every child’s development, for
all such development repeats overall human development. Like early
humans, the child lives in the world of the unconscious, of archetypes, and
of participation mystique. The child’s weak ego-consciousness is threatened
by the supreme powers of the unconscious and risks being devoured by
these powers, just as much as the weak ego-consciousness of primitive man.
Wherever it appears, the dragon is therefore “the danger of the
unconscious”;14 it is an archetype that does not accept personally formed
incarnations until personal life begins to take shape. Whenever the dragon
or snake appears, however, it is the swallowing force of the entire
unconscious that opens up behind the menacing figures in the foreground,
be they mother or father, brother or husband. But since this force of the
unconscious is highly objective and real for the primitive, whose ego-
consciousness is still weak, as his rites and myths plainly reveal, the
struggle with the dragon is as it were the permanent content of his life
situation, which in turn explains why primitive psychology constantly
endeavors to protect the small consciousness. For the modern child,
however, already born with a highly organized cerebrum that corresponds to
developed ego-consciousness, the myth of the hero is no more than a
transitional phase, since this organization ensures the overcoming of the
dragon. Secondary personalization constitutes a considerable part of this
overcoming, whose goal is the dragon’s exclusion. On the other hand,
however, the folktale is important for both primitive man and the child
because it also anticipates the hero’s journey. This is the journey of the
small and weak hero. He corresponds to the child’s ego-consciousness and,
based upon his natural instincts (animals, dwarfs, etc.), achieves victory
over the dragon.
The reduction to the family story deprives archetypal events of the
inherently magnificent problems of human history and diminishes these
events to indeed general but in effect illusionistic events. Whereas the great
background of humanity flashes up behind psychoanalytic interpretation,
although unintentionally, in reality the family story and its primordial
construction of patricide are a distinctly bourgeois version of human
history. This psychoanalytic version of history lacks the actual conception
of the collective unconscious, archetypes, and symbolism. Further, it lacks
the knowledge of the fact that the largest and most general problems of
humanity are represented in the early symbolism of the primordial age and
in myth and that they must be represented in this way. The psychoanalytic
reading of history forgets that earliest humanity, beset with the same
fundamental problems of existence as the modern human being, could only
project these problems as gigantic images into the spiritual realm, because
no consciousness capable of formulating these problems in conceptual
terms existed at the time.
The fact that Freud and Adler, as Jews, could not conceptualize the
collective unconscious, even though Freud appears to have formulated such
a concept in several places, is first of all a generational Jewish problem, and
second an individual Jewish one. Enough has been written about Freud
belonging to the age of positivism, just as much as his science-based and
materialist formulations, and thus his limitations, have been discussed. It is
important, however, particularly in our present context, to draw attention to
his confinement within Jewish history. Freud and Adler both belong to an
era of the Jewish history of ideas that is characterized by its assimilation of
Occidental thought. Following the extensive loss of all religious and
collective Jewish ties, this era has witnessed and continues to witness an
emancipation of individual consciousness marked by utmost extraversion.
The tremendous endeavor to embody Western intellectual thought goes
hand in hand with a flowing outward of libido which, it must be said,
entails a complete loss of Jewish memory. The absolute lack of a Jewish
self-consciousness is no more than the expression of the complete or nearly
total interruption of contact with the collective unconscious among Western
Jews. Any contents capable of establishing such contact are carefully
avoided, since this process of assimilation is meant to bring about de-
Judaization. The necessity of taking this step, which will concern us
elsewhere, springs from the necessity of Jewish consciousness to detach
itself from its originally primitive confinement to a Jewish community. This
historical process prevents Freud and Adler from attaining the collective
unconscious, because to begin with they would have become embroiled in a
debate over the problem of Jewish collectivity, which they would not have
managed to contend with. Corresponding to their actual historical situation
as Jews, however, they would not have wanted to acknowledge this problem
in any case. The stage of secondary personalization characterizing Freud
and Adler is entirely consistent with this stage of development, both
collectively and individually. This stage involves the necessary detachment
from participation mystique in the collective unconscious in order to
develop consciousness. Over the course of Jewish intellectual history, this
stage has only now been reached.
Let us now return to the original subject matter of this book, that is, the
symbolism of the twin brothers Jacob and Esau together with the
symbolism of sun and moon. We are now better able to distinguish the
various layers that make up these symbolic opposites and thus also to
distinguish the interpretative levels assignable to these layers. Part of the
deepest layer of mythologizing onto which the unconscious is objectively
projected without being psychically concretized includes an array of the
aforementioned myths about twin brothers, gods, or cosmic figures like the
sun and moon, in which the principle of opposites manifests itself, be it in
myth or festival. To the same layer, if not to an earlier one, belongs the
primitive ritual. The goat consecrated to Azazel corresponds to an objective
projection of the unconscious onto the level of reality, that is, to a
concretization of the unconscious through the sacrifice of the scapegoat,
just as the aforementioned sacrifice of young girls corresponds to the
concretization of another unconscious content. The myth of opposites and
the sacrificial rite do not originate in an individual but in the collective, the
primitive people, the tribe or group.
The connection between the myth about the sun and the moon on the one
hand and a distinct story of two brothers which encapsulates a human fate
common in many myths and folktales about brothers on the other already
corresponds to a later stage of greater personalization, in which individual
events, history, the family story, and secondary personalization allow
detailed characteristics to enter. Once more, however, archetypal images are
predominant. What cannot be substantiated here, but has been variously
alluded to above, is that the family story is merely a sequence of regular
archetypal constellations distorted by secondary personalization. This
sequence enables and has effect upon the growing awareness of humanity
and of the individual.
In the aforementioned stages, the principle of opposites is mostly
preserved to the extent that at least initially a balance existed between the
two opposing principles, as formulated best by the motif of twins. Sensibly
enough, the development of consciousness preemphasizes one of the two
principles, which thus manifests itself as the governing principle of
consciousness, as the hero, and so on. This contrasts with the principle of
darkness, which recedes, is suppressed, and, based upon the principle of
cosmic counterpoint, is demoted to a devil-like status. Whereas originally a
complete equivalence existed between the principles of opposites, when one
of those principles, namely, the principle of consciousness, seeks to
preserve its own continuity, hostility between the two emerges. What ensues
is a struggle for predominance, which constellates itself precisely through
the demand made by consciousness for enduring supremacy, in the face of
opposition from the repressed principle. This stage corresponds to the motif
of unequal and hostile brothers, gods, and cosmic figures, but also to the
myth of the hero and his struggle with the unconscious.
Whereas the first types still represented collective events and the history
of human consciousness, with the emerging predominance of
consciousness, that is, the appearance of the unequal brothers and the myth
of the hero, events are projected that the individual already experiences as
individual history. What follows from the genuine possibility of
identification with the hero, discussed above, is no longer an impersonal,
cinematic representation of objective unconscious events detached from
ego-consciousness, but instead a much more subject-related formation. This
would be the collective symbolism of individuation, the history of
consciousness, the struggles and toils of the individual as an individual.
Thus, however, one may also read and interpret the formation of these
layers on a subjective level, that is, to view them as one person’s history and
the figures appearing therein as parts of his personality. At this stage, the
struggle with the brother, for instance, becomes a struggle with the inner
brother, the shadow.
Linked to these formations, where an anonymous force is still at work
within a collective, such as in the folktale, are the creations of art, in which
the problem of the brother and the doppelgänger is developed in the case of
the individual person. Here, too, however, there is ubiquitous evidence for
the formation—based upon the primordial, archetypal foundation, which is
alive as the collective unconscious—as a creative layer in every originating
and nonoriginating person.
Before resuming our discussion of the general meaning of the shadow,
let us try to determine the place occupied by midrashic texts, so far as they
cannot be integrated into the aforementioned series of layers. Here we
encounter the peculiar case in which what we termed a core text is
contained in the individual fate and individual experience of the collective
unconscious after undergoing “secondary mythologizing.” Secondary
mythologizing means that a text does not originate in an early age of
mythologizing, but in a late age. It means further that the representing
consciousness suddenly resorts to layers alien to consciousness, which
spontaneously place their mythological material at the disposal of this
consciousness in the form of symbols and archetypes. Whereas early
historiography often enough presents cases of primary mythologizing, such
as when the struggle between Upper and Lower Egypt is construed in terms
of the archetypal opposition between two deities, later historiography is
characterized by secondary mythologizing. This becomes plainly evident in
the familiar identification of the victorious king with the god who defeats
his enemies, just as historiography transposes the myth of the hero onto the
king, and so on. A well-known example in this respect is the secondary
mythologizing of the figure of Jesus, which over the course of several
centuries became cocooned in the mythological life of a hero.
Secondary mythologizing, in which historical events are received by the
people and in which historical-individual and collective-mythological
materials merge, seems to me to be a prominent trait of Jewish mentality
and creativity. Already the biblical text is undoubtedly the product of such
amalgamation, which abounds in Jewish tradition. Precisely the exclusion
of the actual layer of mythologizing as pagan has channeled the flood of
living and creative collective images toward the historical figures of the
Bible, particularly toward political leaders (King Solomon, David, Moses).
Take, for instance, the extraordinary significance of the figure of Elijah for
the consciousness of the Jewish people. While merely alluded to in the
Bible, this figure is surrounded by abundant secondary mythologizing.
From it emanates an extraordinary wealth of collective-unconscious forces,
which created either no or almost no means of expression for themselves in
art and folktales. The immense and dense pictorial force of this layer in
Jewish persons becomes most powerfully evident in Hasidism, in which—
in the age of Voltaire—hordes of mana figures came forth, an eruption of
elementary youthfulness in a multitude of tzaddikim, in what amounted to
an astounding abundance of animated individualization involving secondary
mythologizing.15 These figures were historical and highly animated
contemporary figures, who, as soon as they had been created, were
nonetheless immediately wrapped in a mythically radiant net of mysterious
primordial images and forces of becoming.
 It will not escape the attentive observer that modern Western
historiography is also dominated by archetypal images. This is obvious, for
instance, in the verifiable projection of the negative onto the respective
adversary; every struggle, although springing from quite specific motives, is
thus construed in terms of the primordial image, that is, of good as such
conquering evil as such. The flat objection that this is always a matter of
propaganda and international politics cannot hold, because this particular
primordial image continues to exercise its psychic effect just as it has for
ages. Conspicuously, an individual’s conscious knowledge is suddenly
pushed aside and the masses, following the primordial image of the holy
battle, identify themselves with the hero; moreover, they are willing to slay
the enemy dragon and to sacrifice their blood, as they always have.
Without question, the connection between the symbolism of sun and
moon and the text about Jacob and Esau, which for Jews is a historical text,
is a case of secondary mythologizing. But what makes these texts both
interesting and particular is that here genuine mythologizing, secondary
mythologizing, and strong elements of consciousness are woven into each
other without, however, appearing to be inconsistent or fragmentary.
Obviously, the incorporation of the shadow has not advanced as far as the
conscious formulation of our depth-psychological interpretation.
Notwithstanding its metaphorical quality, however—that is, residual
unconscious interpretation—clear signs of a self-interpretation are already
tangible and verifiable in that formulation, particularly in its poignancy.

__________
1. Otto Rank, Das Trauma der Geburt und seine Bedeutung für die Psychoanalyse (Vienna:
Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1924), 103.
2. Rank, Das Trauma der Geburt, 103.
3. Jung, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido [Symbols of Transformation, par. 294].
4. See Weizsäcker, Heyer, Bilz, etc. [Neumann is referring here to Viktor von Weizsäcker, Gustav
Richard Heyer, and Clemens Rudolf Bilz. Heyer was a member of the Nazi Party from 1937 to 1944.
Yet, in 1938, he wrote a letter of recommendation for Max Zeller, who, prior to being interned in a
concentration camp, had been in analysis with Heyer. Thomas Kirsch quotes from Heyer’s letter: “I
esteem equally highly his gifts as a psychotherapeutic practitioner and his character as a man.”
Thomas Kirsch, The Jungians: A Comparative and Historical Perspective (London: Routledge,
2000), 125. After the war, Jung refused to meet with Heyer and denounced his Nazi past. —Ed.]
5. This sentence had been deleted by hand in the original typescript. —Ed.
6. Micha Josef Bin Gorion, Sinai und Garizim: Über den Ursprung der israelitischen Religion
(Berlin: Morgenland-Verlag, 1926), 99.
7. See Frazer, quoted from Rank.
8. Quotation marks around “the” appear in the typescript. —Trans.
9. Otto Rank, Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage: Grundzüge einer Psychologie des
dichterischen Schaffens (Leipzig: Franz Deuticke, 1912), 647.
10. Ibid., 363, 365, 372, and 374, respectively.
11. See Jung, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido [Symbols of Transformation].
12. Ibid., par. 548.
13. Sigmund Freud, Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (Vienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer
Verlag, 1921), 127.
14. See Jung, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido [Symbols of Transformation, par. 580].
15. Tzaddik, in Judaism, is a righteous person. —Ed.
 Addendum

T he following passage appears on a separate page at the end of the

German typescript. The translation preserves the words crossed out by
hand:
What does the appearance of the divine in human form, which rules over
the animal world of instincts and drives in a feminine guise and which
gathers under its spirit-like wings the animals like a tree its branches, mean?
Originally, long before a consciousness centered in the ego became aware
of the Self as the center of psychophysical wholeness, this Self appeared as
a body-self, that is, as wholeness governing the body and the multitude of
its functions.

Editor’s comment:
Neumann here contemplates the feminine aspects of the divine, as it
appears in human shape. This is then related to the appearance of the Self at
different stages of the development of consciousness whereby, prior to the
development of ego-consciousness, the Self appears as a body-self. Similar
to the Shekhinah, God’s feminine aspect, which enables the dwelling and
the presence of the divine, Neumann points out the feminine aspects of the
Self. His poetic ruminations are a suitable conclusion to this book, which
we now know served as the groundwork for and prelude to his subsequent
spiritual and psychoanalytical undertakings.
 Editor’s Note

S ection headings have not been inserted into Neumann’s text, since they
do not appear in his typescript, except for the one single case in the second
part, where Neumann did insert a heading.
All footnotes in Neumann’s text are his, unless otherwise stated. The
indication “—Ed.” is appended to notes the editor has inserted, notes not
found in the original manuscript, or, in brackets, where the editor has added
information to one of Neumann’s notes.
Where possible, Neumann’s references have been checked, and, if
necessary, page references have been corrected. However, many of
Neumann’s references have more historical than bibliographical value.
Furthermore, Neumann’s notes have been edited to comply with Chicago
style (full bibliographic data on first mention; shortened forms used in
subsequent mentions).
When Neumann refers to Bin Gorion’s Sagen der Juden, an additional
page reference indicates the “source text.” This refers to Bin Gorion’s
appendix, listing the sources of the legends, such as the tractates of the
Talmud.
To facilitate reading, double quotation marks in Neumann’s typescript
have been deleted when not deemed necessary for a correct understanding
of Neumann’s intentions. When in doubt, or when they may have been used
in an unusual manner, they have been preserved.
 Translator’s Note

T his translation of Erich Neumann’s volume on Jacob and Esau replaces

his original underlinings and word spacings with italics.
All citations have been translated from the German along with
Neumann’s text unless otherwise indicated (that is, unless a standard
English translation of the material in question has been used).
The notation “—Trans.” indicates that the translator has inserted a note
not found in the original manuscript. Square brackets contain information
added by the translator to Neumann’s notes.
The translator gratefully acknowledges the editorial assistance provided
by Dr. John Peck, whose suggestions have been indispensable to making the
English translation as readable as possible.
 Bibliography

Works cited by E. Neumann

Bialik, H. N., and Y. H. Ravnitzky, eds. The Book of Legends: Legends from
the Talmud and Midrash (Sefer Ha-Aggadah). Translated from the
Hebrew by William G. Braude, with an introduction by David Stern.
New York: Schocken Books, 1992. Note: When this work,
originally published in 1908, was quoted by Neumann, he referred
to it simply as “Sef. Haagadah.” Since we do not know which
edition Neumann used, we have cited this edition in English
throughout.
Bin Gorion, M. J. Die Sagen der Juden. 5 vols. Translated from Hebrew
into German by Rahel Bin Gorion. Frankfurt: Rütten and Loening,
1913–1927.
Bin Gorion, M. J. Sinai und Garizin: Über den Ursprung der israelitischen
Religion. Berlin: Morgenland-Verlag, 1926.
Burckhardt, M. Die altkanaanäischen Fremdworte und Eigennamen im
Aegyptischen. Leipzig: Hinrich, 1909.
Freud, S. Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse. Vienna: Internationaler
Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1921.
Chantepie de la Saussaye, P. D. Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte.
Tübingen: Mohr, 1925.
Erman, A. Die Religion der Aegypter. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1934.
Goldberg, O. Die Wirklichkeit der Hebräer: Einleitung in das System des
Pentateuch. Berlin: Verlag David, 1925.
Hellpach, W. H. Geopsychische Erscheinungen: Die Menschenseele unter
dem Einfluß von Wetter und Klima, Boden und Landschaft. Leipzig:
 W. Engelmann, 1911.
Jeremias, A. Das alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients. Leipzig:
Hinrichs, 1906.
Jeremias, A. Handbuch der altorientalischen Geisteskultur. Leipzig:
Hinrichs, 1913.
Jung, C. G. Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido: Beiträge zur
Entwicklungsgeschichte des Denkens. Leipzig: F. Deuticke, 1912.
Jung, C. G. Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology. New York: Moffat,
Yard, 1917.
Jung, C. G. Psychologische Typen. Zurich: Rascher, 1921.
Jung, C. G. Wirklichkeit der Seele: Anwendungen und Fortschritte der
neueren Psychologie. Zurich: Rascher, 1934.
Kautzsch, E. F., ed. Die Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen des Alten
Testamentes. Tübingen: Mohr, 1900.
Kees, H. Ägypten: Religionsgeschichtliches Lesebuch. Tübingen: A.
Bertholet, 1928.
Lehmann, E. Die Perser. Tübingen: Mohr, 1924.
Rank, O. Das Trauma der Geburt und seine Bedeutung für die
Psychoanalyse. Vienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag,
1924.
Rank, O. Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage: Grundzüge einer
Psychologie des dichterischen Schaffens. Leipzig: Franz Deuticke,
1912.
Rosenthal, H. “Der Typengegensatz in der jüdischen Religionsgeschichte.”
In C.G. Jung, Wirklichkeit der Seele: Anwendungen und Fortschritte
der neueren Psychologie. Zurich: Rascher, 1934.
Silberer, H. Probleme der Mystik und ihrer Symbolik. Vienna: Hugo Heller,
1914.
Stucken, E. Der Ursprung des Alphabets und die Mondstationen. Leipzig:
Hinrichs, 1913.
Ungnad, A. Die Religion der Babylonier und Assyrer. Jena: Diederich,
1921.
Winckler, H. Himmels- und Weltenbild der Babylonier als Grundlage der
Weltanschauung und Mythologie aller Völker. Leipzig: Hinrichs,
1901.
Additional sources

Bin Gorion, Micha Josef. Mimekor Yisrael: Classical Jewish Folktales.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976.
Chevalier, J., and A. Gheerbrant. The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols.
London: Penguin, 1996.
Comay, Joan, and Ronald Brownrigg. Who’s Who in the Bible. New York:
Bonanza, 1980.
Davis, Avroham. Pirkei Avos: The Wisdom of the Fathers. New York:
Metsudah Publications, 1980.
Jung, C. G. Psychological Types (1923). CW, vol. 6. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1971.
Jung, C. G. Symbols of Transformation (1952), CW, vol. 5. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1956.
Jung, C. G. “The Transcendent Function” (1958). In CW, vol. 8. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969.
Jung, C. G., and Erich Neumann. Analytical Psychology in Exile: The
Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann. Edited and with
an introduction by Martin Liebscher. Translated by Heather
McCartney. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.
Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew
Language for Readers of English. Jerusalem: Carta, 1987.
Neumann, E. The Origins and History of Consciousness. Foreword by C. G.
Jung. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1970.
Neumann, E. The Child: Structure and Dynamics of the Nascent
Personality. Translated by Ralph Manheim. London: Karnac, 1973.
Neumann, E. Depth Psychology and a New Ethic. Translated by Eugene
Rolfe. Boston: Shambhala, 1990.
Neumann, E. “The Moon and Matriarchal Consciousness.” Translated by
Boris Matthews. In The Fear of the Feminine and Other Essays on
Feminine Psychology (pp. 64–118). Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1994.
Neumann, E. The Great Mother. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963.
Pagels, Elaine. The Origin of Satan. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1995.
Rosenthal, Hugo. “Der Typengegensatz in der jüdischen
Religionsgeschichte.” In C. G. Jung, Wirklichkeit der Seele:
Anwendungen und Fortschritte der neueren Psychologie, 355–409.
Zurich: Rascher, 1934.
Schärf-Kluger, Rivkah. Satan in the Old Testament. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1967.
Scholem, Gershom. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York:
Schocken Books, 1974.
Schweizer, A. The Sungod’s Journey through the Netherworld. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2010.
Shalit, Erel. Enemy, Cripple, and Beggar: Shadows in the Hero’s Path.
Hanford, CA: Fisher King Press, 2008.
Shalit, Erel. The Cycle of Life: Themes and Tales of the Journey. Hanford,
CA: Fisher King Press, 2011.
von Franz, Marie-Louise. The Interpretation of Fairy Tales. Dallas: Spring,
1987.
 Index

A
Abraham, xi, xiv, 77
Adler, Alfred, xxiii, lv, lvi, 2, 10, 91, 99, 100
affects, 76
afterbirth, 73, 81
Ahriman, 66
alchemy, 74
Amarna letters, 62
analytical psychology, xxviii, xliv, 2, 22, 71
angels, 20, 45
anima, xxvii
anti-Semitism, xxxix
Apophis, xliii n41, 65
archetypes (archetypal motifs), xl, xlv, 35, 52, 75, 88, 93, 98–99
objectification of, 89–91
art, xliv, 67, 71, 86, 103-105
artist, psychology of, liii, 93-95
astrology, 57. See also zodiac
astronomy, Babylonian, 59
Azazel, xxxi-xxxii, 15, 19-20, 101

B
Babylon, 17 n19, 54, 58–60, 77
influence on Jewish consciousness, 60
Babylonian gods. See mythology, Babylonian
Bachofen, Johann Jakob, xl, 54-56
Bata (folktale), 72, 84
Bible, xi, xxxvii, 1, 30 n36, 37 n38, 45 n42, 54, 104, 105
application of psychological aspects and perspectives, 1
biblical forefathers, xxiii–xxv, 2–4, 25-26, 31–34, 45-46
historical figures, 104-105
Bible, books of
Exodus, 42 n40
Genesis, xi–xvi, xxv, xxx, xxxvi, 13, 18 n20, n21, 35, 37-38, 40 n39, 42 n40, 45
Isaiah, xxxvii n31, 14-15
Judges, 42 n40
Leviticus, 18 n21
Bilz, Clemens Rudolf, 76 n4
Bin Gorion, Micha Josef, xxvi, xxxii n22, 5 n1, 9 n8, 11 n9, 13 n11, 17 n19, 19 n22, 20 n25, 21 n26,
28 n35, 45 n43, 77 n6, 109
body, xlv-xlvii, 42 n40, 75–82, 107
body-self, 107
body soul, 82. See also soul
brother motif, xxv–xxvii, xlv, 44, 52–55, 70–74, 84, 101. See also twins
hostile, xvi, xix–xx, xxxiv, xxxvii, xliii–xlvi, lv, 5, 26, 58–66, 72-73, 78, 102
unequal, xl, 35, 54, 71, 102

C
categorical imperative, 76
Christianity, 18, 25, 49
collective unconscious, xxi n4, xxiii-xxiv, xli-xlii, xlvii-xlviii, li, lv-lvi, 2, 29, 34-35, 38-39, 52-53,
60, 75-103, 105
periodicity of, xli, 56-57
color symbolism, xliii, 62–64
of Jacob and Esau, 20-21
conscience, development of, xlviii, 83
consciousness, xxi n4, xxix, xxxvi-lvi, 22-24, 29-33, 39, 55-56, 60-61, 67, 74-82, 84-107
conversion, 55
Cordovero, Moses, xxxi, 15 n14

D
David, his immortality, 16 n17
day and night, xxix, xli, 11-12, 56
Day of Atonement. See Yom Kippur
depth psychology, lvii, 69, 106
Dioscuri, xlv, 73-74
disc and crescent, 53–54. See also sun and moon
dispersion, theory of, xl, 52, 69
dragon, xliii, xlvi, liii–lvi, 58, 65, 78, 95–99, 106
drives, 76, 107. See also power drive; sex drive
dualism (principle of duality), 10, 19, 42, 83

E
Edom, xii, xv-xvi, xxxii-xxxiv, 18–27, 30 n36, 35-36, 46-48, 59, 62, 64-65
ego, xxiii, xxx, xlix-lii, 2, 74, 76, 82, 85, 88, 93, 97
ego-consciousness, xlii, xlvii–lv, 79–80, 85–93, 96–98, 103, 107
ego-Self axis, xxix
Egypt, ancient, 63–66, 104
Elijah, lv, 104
enantiodromia, xli, 55-56
Esau
and the sun, xxvi, xliii, 5, 13, 20, 22, 30, 45
as Jacob’s shadow, xxvii, xxxvi, 36, 39
as the face of God, xxxvi-xxxviii, 38-40, 42-43
as this world, the outer side, xxxv, 4-6, 35-37, 42
his wives, xiii n4
identified with Edom, xxxii n23, 35, 46–48, 59, 64
identified with the wild black boar, 65-66
representing extraversion, xxii, xxvii, xxxv, 22
representing the goat, xxxi, 18–20
the biblical story. See Jacob and Esau, the biblical story
evil, xxx–xxxii, xxxvii, 9-10, 16, 19, 21, 25, 39, 62–66. See also good, and evil
experience, personal, xxv, 31, 33-34
extraversion, xxxiii, lvi, 6, 22, 23 n31, 24-26, 28, 35, 43, 70, 100. See also Easu, representing
extraversion

F
family story, xxiv, xlviii, li, liv, 2, 84–93, 96, 99, 101-102
feminine, xli-xlii, 52, 107
folktales, xl, xliv, liii, 52, 67, 70-72, 83–86, 95, 101–105
Jewish, xxvi n13
forefathers. See Bible, biblical forefathers
Freud, Sigmund, xxiii, lii, lv-lvi, 91–93, 99-100. See also psychoanalysis, Freudian
his lack of understanding of religious phenomena, 1
G
Gabriel (angel), 16, 21, 62. See also angels
Gnosis, 76
goat, 15–23. See also sacrifice, of a goat; scapegoat
as a symbol of the hibernal sun, 23
God, xxv, xxxv, 9-14, 107
creation of a divided world, xxix, 12, 27
in the guise of Esau, 38–43
problem of, 38
two faces of, xxxviii–xxxix, 40–42, 49
voice of, 6
God-image, xxvii–xxviii, xxxvii
good, and evil, xxxi, xxxviii, xli, xlv, lvi, 40, 56, 74, 105

H
Hasidism, xxxix, lv, 49, 83, 105
hero, xxxvii, xlii, xlv, l, liii–lv, 78, 96-98, 102
mythology of, 41, 58, 74, 97–98, 102–106
Heyer, Gustav Richard, 76 n4
historiography, l, 63, n16, 104
Western, lvi, 105
History, xl, xlvii, 53, 80, 82
human, liv, 51, 74, 77, 84, 99
Jewish, lv, 7, 25, 100–101
psychoanalytic reading of, 99
Horus. See Seth and Horus
humans, early (ancient, primitive), 43, 56, 93, 97, 99. See also primitive peoples
contrasted with contemporary humanity, 43 n41
human development, xlviii, 70, 85–87, 97

I
imago, xxxiii, 95
individuality, extinction of, 80
individuation process, xxv, 103
inferior function, xxxiii, 22–27, 40-41
inferiority, as a moral problem, 27, 38
initiation rites, xxv, 74, 76
inner voice, xxii, xxvii–xxviii, 6
inner world, xxvii–xxviii, 5-7, 10–12, 17, 22, 40
instinct, xxxvi, xlv, 42, 75, 99, 107
interiorization, xxvii, 6
introjection, 82–83
introversion, xxxiii, 6, 22, 23 n31, 28, 43, 70, 92. See also Jacob, representing introversion
dominant in Judaism, xxxiii n26, 22-23
Isaac, xi–xiv, xxv-xxvi, 20, 25, 30
Isaiah, 14–15
Israel
identified with the moon, 16 n17
state of, xxii

J
Jacob and Esau
archetypal theme, xix, 44, 51–55, 101, 106
the biblical story, xi–xvii, xxx, liv, 4, 48
their opposition, xxx, xxxii-xxxiii, xxxix-xl, 5, 13, 17–18, 22, 28, 31, 35, 61
Jacob
and the moon, xxvi, xxxi, xli n36, 4-8, 10, 17, 20, 22
as a blessing, xiii, xxxviii, 30, 36, 43
as a prototype for the Jew, xxi n4, xxv–xxviii, xxxiii, xxxviii, 7, 17
as the otherworld, the inner side, 4–7, 10, 17
his dream at Bethel, xxv, 30–32, 34–36
his inferiority, 36
his limp, 41
his loins touched by the angel, xxxviii, 42
his shadow, 38, 42
his wives, xiv-xvi
identified with the wind, 13
renamed Israel, xvi, 37, 42-44
representing introversion, xxii, xxvi–xxviii, 35
seeing God in Esau, 38–40
wrestling with the angel, xxxv–xxxviii, 12, 28, 31-32, 35–49
Jacob’s ladder, xiv, xxv, xlvii, 79
Jeremias, Alfred, 58–59
Jesus (Christ), l, 79, 104
Jewish collectivity, lvi, 100
Jewish people, xxvii, 8 n7, 25, 28, 32-33, 104
Jewish problem, xxxix, lv, 47, 51, 99
Jonah, and the whale, 32
Judaism, xxi-xxii, xxviii, lvii, 6-7, 14, 17, 25, 33, 48-49, 52
and Zionism, xxii
judgment of the dead, 24 n33
Jung, C. G., 2, 6, 10, 12-13, 29, 44 n41, 46, 93
K
Kabbalah (Kabbalism), 14, 21, 76
Kafka, Franz, The Trial, 24 n33
Kant, Immanuel, 76
Kirsch, Thomas, 76 n4

L
Laban, xiv–xvii, 35
Leah, xv
left and right. See right and left
libido, xlv, lvi, 74, 100
Liebscher, Martin, xx
light, xlv–xlvi, 6, 8–9, 11, 16–17, 22, 74, 77–79
light and dark (light and shadow), xl, 54, 74, 79
limping, as impotence, 42 n40

M
masculine, xli, 52
Midrash (midrashic literature), xxiv, xxviii–xxix, xl, 3–4, 7, 10–13, 19-20, 28–30, 34, 44–45, 48, 53–
55, 59-63, 72-73, 77, 103
miracles, 33
moon, xxx–xxxiv, 5–14, 23
and Jews, 7, 51. See also Israel, identified with the moon
darkened by evil, 15
its opacity, 16–19, 22, 25–27, 38
its twofold or twin-like character, 61–62
symbolism of, 8, 51, 57
moon and sun. See sun and moon
moral problem or conflict, xxxii–xxxv, 19, 21–28, 38
Moses, 7
motifs, primordial or fundamental, origin of, 52, 59. See also archetypes
mysteries, and mystery societies, 74, 76
myth (mythology), xl, xliv, xlviii, 54, 60, 67, 69, 77, 84–86, 95-99, 101. See also hero, mythology of
Babylonian, xli–xliii, 59-61
as dreams of a people, xxiv, 29
Germanic, xlii n37, 18, 65
mythologizing, genuine and secondary, liv–lv, 31, 41, 90–92, 101–106
N
Nahor, xi, xiv
Nazism, xxxix
Nergal, xliii, 59–62
Neumann, Erich
arrival in Israel, lvi
correspondence with C. G. Jung, xx–xxii, xxx, xxxv, lvii
publication of this manuscript, xix–xx
neurosis, 88–90, 95
New Moon festival, xxviii, xxxi, 8, 14–15

O
Oannes, 77
objectification, l-li, 89–91
Oedipus complex, xliv, 70–71, 96
Ohrmuzd, 66
opacity, principle of, 17, 22. See also moon, its opacity
opposites, principle of, xix, xxii, xxxv, xxxviii, xl–xliv, xlvi, liv, 28, 40, 44, 47–49, 54–56, 77–79,
83, 101-102
opposition, problem of, 5, 39, 57, 73
Osiris, xliii, 64–65
Other, the, xxvii, xxxiv, xxxvii, xlvi, 26-27, 40
otherworld, 4–6, 8–10, 83
outer world, xxvii–xxix, xxxviii, 6, 10, 13, 22, 27, 38, 40, 44–45, 51, 88-89, 93

P
Pan, 18
participation mystique, xlviii, lvi, 77, 80–83, 88, 98–100
patricide, 97, 99
Paul, conversion from Saul, 55
Penuel, 38, 44
periodicity, xli, 56-57
persona, xxvii
pig (boar), 65-66
placenta rituals. See afterbirth
polarity, 5, 19-20, 28
between the sun and the moon, 20, 28. See also sun, and moon
positivism, 99
power
 of the archetypes, l–li. See also archetypes
of the sun, xxix, 12-13, 27. See also sun
psychology of, 10
power drive, xliv, 2, 70-71, 85, 88
powerlessness (disempowerment), xxxviii, 12, 56–27, 31, 42
primitive peoples, 32, 46, 73–77, 81-82, 96–99, 101
primogeniture, xl, 30, 54, 64–66, 70, 85
projection, xxxiv-xxxv, 26-27, 36, 47-48, 82, 84, 89, 96, 101, 105
psyche
collective, xxiv
human, duality of, xlv
psychoanalysis, xliii, 66-67, 69–71, 73, 83, 90–92, 97
Freudian, xliv, liii, 1-2, 74
psychological analysis, 31-32
psychological types, 36
psychology. See also analytical psychology; depth psychology
collective, 46
individual, xxiii, xliv, 70
individual, and religious phenomena, xxiii
Jewish, xx, xli, 11, 51-52
of power, 10
of youth, lii, 91
primitive, 75, 82, 98

R
Rachel, xiv-xv
Rank, Otto, xliv, liii, 71–73, 82, 94–96
Rebekah, xi–xiv, xxv, 30, 36
reincarnation, 74
religious phenomena, 1–2
right and left, 19–20, 24
Rosenthal, Hugo, xx, xxviii, 6, 30 n36

S
sacrifice, 11, 49, 83, 106
animal, xlvii, 82
of a goat, xxx–xxxi, liv, 11, 15, 17–19, 21-22, 25, 101. See also scapegoat
of the inferior, xxxii–xxxiv, 39, 42
virgin, lii, 95–96, 101
salvation, 15, 19, 78
Samael, 16-17
Samas, xlii, 58, 62
Satan, xxxvii
savior motif, xlvi, 77–78
scapegoat, xxx, xxxiv, liv, 101. See also sacrifice, of a goat
secondary mythologizing, liv-lv, 31, 41, 103-106
secondary personalization, xlvii–lvi, 84–98, 101-102
Semasael, 17
Seth and Horus, xliii, 63–65, 72, 84
sex drive, li, 2, 90
shadow, xxii, xxxiv-xxxix, xliv–xlvii, 39, 42, 51, 73–82, 103, 106
and Self, xxxvi
corresponding to inner Edom, 23–25, 36
internal, xxvii
projection of, xxxiv–xxxviii
Sin (deity), xlii, 58–59
soul, lii, 61, 86–92. See also body soul
formation, xlvii, 82
human, xix, xli, xliv–xlv, 53–56, 69–71, 74
the people’s versus the individual, xxii–xxiv, 3–4, 29, 34, 78
salvation, 15, 19
Spinoza, Baruch, 76
spirit, xxii, xxvii–xxx, xxxix, 13, 16, 51, 66, 81–82
Stoicism, 76
sun and moon, xxvi–xxx, xli–xliv, liv, 5, 8, 14, 16–22, 28, 30, 40, 44, 48-49, 53–61, 106
cultures, 57
symbolism, 16, 30, 101. See also polarity, between the sun and the moon;
sun
hibernal, 23, 59–61
symbolism of, 57
symbol (symbolism), 7, 52, 99, 104. See also color symbolism
psychic, 57
archetypal, 28–29, 34
Jewish, 51

T
taijitu, 56
texts, biblical. See Bible
texts, midrashic. See Midrash
texts, noncanonical, 4
tradition, xxv, 3–4, 31–33
Jewish, xxvi n13, xxviii, lv, 33, 104
twins, xl-xli, xliv–xlv, liv, 5, 25, 35, 44, 48, 53–55, 58-62, 69–74, 81, 101-102
hostile, xxvi, 5, 72, 84–86. See also brothers, hostile
 in the Bible, xi
typology, xlvii, 35, 79
tzaddikim, 105

U
unconscious, xliv–xlviii, l-lv, 23–26, 53, 55–57, 64, 74–82, 98, 102, 106
compensatory function, 32
of a people. See collective unconscious
personal, xliv, xlviii, liii, 2, 66, 84, 92–95

V
Vishnu, 77
voice, inner. See inner voice
von Franz, Marie-Louise, xlviii n44
von Weizsäcker, Viktor, 76 n4

W
Winckler, Hugo, 8 n7, 59–60, 65 n22
wind, xxviii, 13

Y
YHWH, xxvii, xxxii, 6, 12, 14–15, 19–20, 33, 43, 48-49, 77
Yishuv. See Israel
Yitzhak. See Isaac
Yom Kippur, xxxi–xxxii, 14, 19, 21

Z
Zionism, xxii
zodiac, 18, 57
 ABOUT THE EDITOR

Dr. Erel Shalit is a Jungian psychoanalyst in Israel and past president of the
Israel Society of Analytical Psychology. He was founding director of the
Jungian Analytical Psychotherapy Program at Bar Ilan University and has
been director of the Shamai Davidson Mental Health Clinic. He has
authored and edited several books, among them The Cycle of Life; The
Dream and Its Amplification (with Nancy Swift Furlotti); The Complex;
Requiem; Enemy, Cripple, Beggar; and The Hero and His Shadow. He
chaired the Jung-Neumann Conference and has edited, with Murray Stein,
Turbulent Times, Creative Minds: Erich Neumann and C. G. Jung in
Relationship.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Dr. Mark Kyburz specializes in scholarly translation from German into

English. He is the cotranslator of C. G. Jung’s The Red Book (2009) and has
translated numerous books and articles in the humanities and social
sciences, the arts and culture, analytical psychology, and psychoanalysis.
His current projects include the translation of an unpublished two-volume
manuscript by Erich Neumann on the roots of Jewish consciousness. He
lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.
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