137 - Arthur I. Miller [109]
It was a case of synchronicity. Pauli had homed in on 2 × 6, not realizing at first that he was reimagining the dreams of a man of the Renaissance, when these topics were hotly debated.
The division into two—symbolized by the two donkeys—reflected an era in which there was a split between matter and mind, soon to be manifested in the emergence of modern science in the work of Kepler and Descartes. Early scientists focused on matter because it could be described by mathematics in three-dimensional space, another case, like the Trinity, of three.
Or perhaps the two donkeys in More’s dream had something to do with Pauli’s own “two life phases.” “A Zen Buddhist would understand this, as God speaks to us always in riddles,” he added.
To illustrate the letter to von Franz, Pauli drew two six-sided stars of David, which he labeled as the two stages of his life: “the youth phase (until 1928) [and] the phase after World War II until the summer of 1953.” The two stars sprang from Pauli’s “active imagination”—two six-sided stars: 2 × 6.
In the years between these two life phases—1928 and 1945—Pauli lived through many turbulent events: two marriages, divorce, flight from Europe, rejection by colleagues at the ETH, the lonely war years in the United States, and his analysis by Jung, which had led to a deeper understanding of himself and the world about him. He depicts these two contrasting periods in three pairs of opposing archetypes.
The “youth phase” of Pauli’s life, to 1928. (Based on Pauli’s drawing in his letter to von Franz.)
In the youth phase of his life the archetypes are the “Light Anima” (superior; Pauli’s intellectual side which was dominant in that “at the time I was completely absorbed in physics”) versus the “Shadow, projected entirely on the father along with repressed negative emotions about Judaism” the “intellectual side of the ‘Self’ projected onto the teacher” versus the “Dark Anima [whom Pauli saw as] (“inferior,” a “prostitute”); and the “Ego” versus a “Real woman (mother) with whom I had a positive relationship.”
The period of Pauli’s life from 1946 to 1953. (Based on Pauli’s drawing in his letter to von Franz.)
The transforming event in Pauli’s life, as he remembered, was his marriage to Franca. This brought about the adult phase. Here the archetypes appear in new forms. The Light Anima, now inferior and projected onto the “wicked stepmother,” is set against the Shadow. But the Shadow is no longer projected onto the father even though Pauli still regards him as “controversial, intellectual, divested of feeling.” The “Ego” is set against the “real woman” with whom Pauli now has the “positive feeling of being at home” this woman is no longer his mother. The third pair includes the “Master Figure” whom Pauli associated with Merlin. In an earlier letter to Emma Jung he described him as seeking a way to move from three to four solely by rational reasoning, using physics. But Pauli now knows this cannot be accomplished by logic alone and so places him in opposition to the Dark Anima who is now superior, appearing as the “Chinese woman.”
Pauli then laid out the pattern of this, the second half of his life.
The connection with physics cools off. A positive connection with Kabbalah (and Chassidism) arises.
Then: the Kepler work.
Good and evil appear relativized and coincide with light (spiritual) and dark (chthonic).
Religion: is sought for.
Values of the youth phase threaten to be lost. At the high point of this phase a compensatory stagnation kicks in with anima-projections upon actual women.
Pauli continued to mull over three times four, six times two, and the zodiac. An “inner storm” raged. Finally his “‘active imagination’ or perhaps ‘synchronicity’” led him to realize something he had missed: “the dilemma regarding the patriarchalistic versus the matriarchalistic sphere [and the] dilemma concerning 3 versus 4—these seem to me to be merely