“He [God] first appears in a hostile form, as an aggressor with whom the hero has to fight.
This corresponds to the violence which is inherent in every unconscious dynamism.
That is the way in which the god manifests himself, and that is the form in which he has to be overcome.
The struggle has its parallel in Jacob’s struggle with the angel at the ford of Jabbok.
The furious onslaught of instinct then becomes an experience of the divine, but only on condition that man does not succumb to instinct and follow it blindly, but defends his humanity against the animal nature of the divine power.
‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,’ and ‘He who is near unto me is near unto the fire, and he who is far from me is far from the kingdom’; for ‘the Lord is a consuming fire,’ and the Messiah is the ‘Lion of the tribe of Judah.”
— Carl Jung, “Symbols of Transformation,” Page 337, Para 524
This text is a continuation of the article “Jacob Wrestling with the Angel,” whose central theme is the human struggle with the forces of the collective unconscious, which initially appear in the form of destructive impulses and attack the individual from within, from the depths of their own psyche.
It concerns the archetype of the Destroyer, about which I have written many times on my website, and which enters our lives in order to initiate us into the mystery of the god who is renewed in the depths of the human psyche. Another name for this same force is “the dark face of God”—a central theme in Jungian analytical psychology, where it is understood as part of the duality of destruction and creativity.
The archetype of the god who is renewed within the human being, of which Jung speaks, is a difficult theme to digest. It is difficult not only intellectually, because it contradicts the average conception of God as a force that is solely good. It is also difficult as an experience.
And these two are one and the same, because there is no understanding without experience.
Only a person who has personally lived through the encounter with the Angel with whom Jacob wrestled can understand the hostile forces that erupt from the depths of one’s own psyche, that are opposed to one’s conscious attitude and are not subject to the control of personal ego-will. Even more difficult is the realization that the entire ordeal one undergoes is not about oneself as an individual, but about the Whole.
“It is not man who is transformed into a god, but the god who undergoes transformation in and through man…”
— Carl G. Jung, Collected Works, Volume 5: Symbols of Transformation
This is so because these destructive forces are not part of the individual’s personal Shadow. The approach to Shadow integration that operates on the level of ego psychology is ineffective when the Shadow belongs to the collective layers of our shared soul.
For this reason, Jung uses a different term for this process—he calls it assimilation. It refers to the complex process in which a person resists the destructive impulses attacking from within, while at the same time attempting to bring consciousness into them—to come to know them by entering into dialogue with them.
Only after both of these tasks have been accomplished—fighting the demon and bringing consciousness into the experience—does a reversal occur. The demon reveals itself to be an Angel and bestows its blessing upon the one who has wrestled with it.
Kamelia Hadzhiyska
