In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.
Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
That which you do not bring to consciousness comes to you as your Fate, that which you do bring to consciousness, whether it was what you thought you wanted or not, is your destiny.
The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.
Doesn’t the world bring forth thinking in human heads with the same necessity that it brings forth blossoms on the plant?
The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows it to realize its supreme purpose through him.
Magic is the science of the jungle.
Everyone is in love with his own ideas.
Every man carries within himself the eternal image of woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definite feminine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, a hereditary factor of primordial origin.
Every Mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her mother and every mother extends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter.
Everything to come was already in images: to find their soul, the ancients went into the desert. This is an image. The ancients lived their symbols, since the world had not yet become real for them. Thus they went into the solitude of the desert to teach us that the place of the soul is a lonely desert.
Indeed, we must never forget that for us outer reality exists only in so far as we perceive it consciously, and that we cannot prove that it exists “in and by itself.
The neurotic who seeks to get rid of the necessities of life wins nothing and lays upon himself the frightful burden of a premature age and death, which must appear especially cruel on account of the total emptiness and meaninglessness of his life.
The intellect is undeniably useful in its own field, but is a great cheat and illusionist outside of it whenever it tries to manipulate values.
The name Mithras is related to Modern Persian mihr, meaning ‘love’ and ’sun.
Magic is a way of living. If one has done one’s best to steer the chariot, and one then notices that a greater other is actually steering it, then magical operation takes place. One cannot say what the effect of magic will be, since no one can know it in advance because the magical is the lawless, which occurs without rules and by chance, so to speak. But the condition is that one totally accepts it and does not reject it, in order to transfer everything to the growth of the tree.
Dreams, visions, fantasies, and delusions are expressive of a situation.
We find this in everyday life, where dilemmas are sometimes solved by the most surprising new propositions; many artists, philosophers, and even scientists owe some of their best ideas to inspirations that appear suddenly from the unconscious. The ability to reach a rich vein of such material and to translate it effectively into philosophy, literature, music, or scientific discovery is one of the hallmarks of what is commonly called genius.
But whoever always wants only fortune of others is ugly, since he cripples himself. A murderer is one who wants to force others to blessedness, since he kills his own growth.
There is one necessary but hidden and strange work – a major work – which you must do in secret, for the sake of the dead.