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— |A Memorrof|
| Toni Wolff — eee
by Irene Champernowne — |
A Memoir of
Toni Wolff

by Irene Champernowne
with a Foreword by
Joseph L. Henderson
C. G. Jung Institute of
San Francisco
Copyright © 1980 by the C. G.Jung Institute of San Francisco.

Published by the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, Inc.

2040 Gough Street, San Francisco, California 94109.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to re-

print copyrighted material:
Princeton University Press for quotations from The Collected Works of C.G.
Jung, edited by G. Adler, M. Fordham, and H. Read; translated by R. F.C.
Hull; Bollingen Series XX, vols. 1,9, 10, and 12; copyright © 1953, 1959,
1964. And for quotations from Essays on a Science ofMythology by C.G. Jung
and C. Kerényi, copyright © 1949 by Bollingen Foundation Inc.
University of Chicago Press for quotations from The Meaning of Shakespeare
by Harold C. Goddard, copyright © 1951.
Rhein-Verlag for quotations from Eranos-Jahrbuch 1948, copyright © 1949.
Spring Publications for quotations from Spring 1972, copyright © 1972 by
Analytical Psychology Club of New York, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Champernowne, Irene
A memoir of Toni Wolff.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Psychoanalysis—Case studies. 2. Champernowne, Irene.
3. Wolff, Toni. 4. Jung, Carl Gustav, 1875-1961. I. Title.
RC506.C45 616.89°17'0926 [B] 80-21227
ISBN 0-932630-01-4

Abbreviations of Principal References

CW = The Collected Works of C.G. Jung. Edited by Gerhard Adler, Michael

Fordham, and Herbert Read; William McGuire, Executive Editor; trans-
lated by R. F.C. Hull; New York and Princeton (Bollingen Series XX) and
London, 1953-1978. 20 vols. References are to paragraph numbers.

Design and mechanicals by Robert Sibley.

Type set in Garamond 3 by Abracadabra, San Francisco.
Printed and bound by Optimum Press, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 0-932639-01-4
Ue le

ANTONIA WOLFF
1883-1953
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
In 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/memoiroftoniwolfO000cham
 FOREWORD

Irene Champernowne was a remarkable English woman who

founded and directed a unique treatment center for emotionally dis-
turbed people at a country house, Withymead, near Exeter, from
1942 to 1966. The Withymead center had a Jungian orientation from
the beginning owing to Mrs. Champernowne’s personal analysis and
later affiliation with Dr. H. Godwin Baynes, who was Jung’s chief
representative in England during the 1930s. Dr. Baynes appears to
have encouraged his student’s experiment of introducing the insights
of analytical psychology into the field of psychiatry, where diagnosis
with palliative treatment, usually in an “asylum,” still held sole
sway. Dr. Baynes’ premature death in the early 1940s removed the
inspirational support Irene Champernowne had counted upon to sus-
tain her effort, but she was helped ona practical level by her husband,
Gilbert Champernowne, and ona cultural level by a nearby progres-
sive educational center at Dartington Hall, an ancient estate pre-
viously belonging to the Champernowne family. This center was
owned and generously endowed by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst
who were friendly to the Withymead experiment in its early years.
Laban’s dance movement therapy at Dartington was a resource, and a
certain reciprocity existed between the two centers in sharing practi-
tioners of art and music therapy. Dr. Culver Barker, Mrs. Scott-
Maxwell, and Mrs. Allenby were Jungian analysts especially helpful
in the development of Withymead.
After World War II Irene Champernowne turned to Jung in the
hope of enlisting his support for her venture and also for herself per-
sonally. But Jung was never interested in furthering group experi-
ments and even refrained from becoming involved in the formation of
the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich. Also his professional work with
patients was coming to an end after a severe illness. The last ten years
of his life, from 1951 to 1961, were largely spent in retirement except
for some writing, of which one book? is particularly relevant to this
memoir.
In the late 1940s and early fifties Irene Champernowne found what
she needed from Jung’s assistant in Zurich, Fraulein Antonia Wolff,
commonly known as Toni. This nickname, however, is misleading.
She was a reserved, aristocratic, and very private individual in the
strongest possible contrast to Irene Champernowne with her warm,
democratic, outgoing personality. In a relationship that began as a
strictly analytical association, with Toni Wolff as analyst and Irene as
analysand, many difficulties in communication had to be overcome.
Eventually their common dedication to the study of Jung’s psychol-
ogy brought about a mutual personal regard, and one can see from
this memoir how they finally became friends. This was no ordinary
friendship, however; they were, one might say, friends of the spirit.
Toni Wolff was especially interested in the problems of women and
their roles in society. In this respect she described four types of
women: the mother, the hetaira, the Amazon, and the medium.? Al-
though Irene had played all these roles to some extent at one time or
another, the role that this memoir most clearly mirrors is that of the
medium. This is represented in the series of paintings, here repro-
duced, which illustrate the period of her work with Toni Wolff. The
personal interaction between the two women is vividly described,
with C. G. Jung’s and Emma Jung’s occasional comments, but that
is perhaps not as important as the archetypal material itself and its
bearing upon the individuation process as it occurs during an analy-
sis. Even though she continually sought to find literal, personal
meaning in her images and finally succeeded in convincing both Jung
and Toni Wolff that her initial painting was precognitive of her sup-
portive relation to Toni as a human woman, their essential meaning
remains for us transpersonal, expressing an important archetypal
symbolism.
Two years before her death in 1976 Irene Champernowne entrusted
the whole manuscript of her memoirs to me to see if Icould find a
publisher in the United States. Interesting as her life story is for those

‘Flying Saucers; A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. CW 10, par. 589-824.
>Toni Wolff, “A Few Thoughts on the Process of Individuation in Women,”
Spring 1941, Analytical Psychology Club of New York City, 1941, pp. 81-103.
who knew her or about her, the completed work, as she wrote it, was
deemed unsuitable for the general public. In discussing this with
Mrs. Besse Bolton, a friend of mine who had encouraged Mrs. Cham-
pernowne to send her memoirs to me, and with Betsy Garrett and Dr.
Anthony Stevens, two of her closest associates in recent years, it was
decided it might be of very special interest to publish an edited ver-
sion of the chapter in which she describes her period of analysis with
Toni Wolff.
As a friend and colleague of Toni Wolff (and as an analysand briefly
on two occasions) I have often wished that something of her very per-
sonal dedication to the welfare of her analysands could be described.
The present account gives a much more intimate and poignant pic-
ture of this than anything I could have imagined would ever come to
light. My only concern was that it might seem too intimate, and so it
would for general publication; but for those who know something of
analytical psychology from personal experience, it provides a wel-
come contribution to the understanding of analysis as it was practiced
in Zurich in those early years, beginning in the 1920s, when Jung
was virtually alone except for such assistants as Dr. Baynes and Miss
Wolff. Of later developments leading to the formation of C. G. Jung
Institutes, and of the many analysts Jung trained during the late thir-
ties and forties there is little or no mention with the exception of Bar-
bara Hannah. Thus this memoir reflects a time when Jungian analysis
was still something of a family affair conducted by Jung, Peter
Baynes, Toni Wolff, and Emma Jung who became a part-time analyst
in the later years. They were very personal and supportive in their
interest toward all those who came to consult them; a good example is
Irene Champernowne’s description of her conversation with the
Jungs after Toni’s sudden death.
On my last visit to Jung in 1958 he was living alone at his house in
Kusnacht. Emma Jung had died, and he was attended only by his
housekeeper, Ruth Bailey, and his secretary, Aniela Jaffé. During
this visit Jung talked at lunch of his great interest in the UFO phe-
nomenon about which he told me he was making a special study.
This was published in the autumn of that year, and the following year
translated into English by R. F. C. Hull as Flying Saucers, A Modern
Myth. Irene Champernowne’s initial painting from the series repro-
duced here was placed as its frontispiece, and Jung described its
meaning in the text. Perhaps Irene’s close tie with Toni Wolff was in
his mind at this time, because our visit ended with his taking me into
the garden to show me the little stone bas-relief he had carved in
Toni’s memory, placed under the ginkgo tree that had been given
to him by students of the C. G. Jung Institute. This tree is an import
from China, and on the stone four sets of Chinese characters were ar-
ranged vertically. He told me they read from above downwards:

Toni Wolff
Lotus
Nun
Mysterious

The subsequent developments in the process of individuation rep-

resented in the paintings, especially those illustrated by the symbol-
ism of numbers, I leave to the speculation of interested readers based
on the interpretation of Irene Champernowne.
I am indebted to William McGuire for an editorial reading of the
manuscript and to Dr. Anthony Stevens for corrections in dating and
style, and especially to the Champernowne Trust and to Besse and
Wilbur Bolton for grants of money to help support its publication.

Joseph L. Henderson
San Francisco, 1980
 A MEMOIR OF TONI WOLFF

When the following experience happened to me in the fifties, I

never intended it to be shared publicly. It was written just as it reads
here, for myself and Toni Wolff. But now, over twenty years later and
near the end of my life, I feel able to share it, especially as an increas-
ing number of people are ready to accept the mysterious and the
non-understandable. Nothing can now harm the experience for me.

Three shags against a dark sky

Flying westward
Signify
Three crosses in the soul’s night journey
Eastward.

This memoir is an account of visionary experiences, represented in

paintings (my art therapy) of a deep visionary kind, which I have not
fully understood even with Toni Wolff’s help. Jung accepted it all
with quiet, but on the whole sparse, comment, allowing it its inher-
ent validity. Mrs. Jung wrote telling me how important she felt the
material was for woman in general.
I have purposely not reorganised or altered it. I used Toni Wolff’s
letters just as I received them then. I always felt as if I were even
nearer Jung’s inner wisdom when I was with her than when I was
with him in the flesh. She was in some way the inner side of his work
or rather the inner companion of his journey through the uncon-
scious. She had remarkable insight and was articulate and confident.
Sometimes I felt she was almost too confident, yet this forced one to
hold one’s own in some unique way. I was always conscious of the
presence of Dr. Jung as if Toni spoke for him. As Aniela Jaffé writes
in Spring 1972, Toni Wolff was “his helper in the intellectual penetra-
tion of the world of psychic images and remained his helper until her
death in 1953.’
This is actually how I experienced her, and as a woman I found she
mediated Jung’s mind and intuitive ideas directly, for she had been
part of their creation from the unconscious. Mrs. Jung was most help-
ful to talk with and I was indeed privileged to have had such oppor-
tunities, for she understood much about woman’s life; I took her to be
an introverted feeling-type of woman. Yet it was Toni Wolff with her
wealth of intuitive thought, introverted as she was, who could touch
profoundly the mysteries of life. For Jung this relationship, as well as
his firm roots in his home with Mrs. Jung and the children, kept him
in human touch while he dived into the dangerous sea of the uncon-
scious. The woman partner of such a dive is, I think, much more
threatened, and Toni Wolff, loyal and loving as she was, inwardly
remained a lone and sad figure. Only those of us who lived with her in
the inner world came really close to her. The outer world remained a
place where two people walked together yet alone.
Toni Wolff came over to England in the early fifties and went to
Droitwich where she tried a “‘cure” for her arthritic condition. My
husband, Gilbert, had gained much from such a cure and I had per-
suaded her to try. One year she stayed part of the time in Tewkes-
bury, and we spent a day driving around the countryside. I felt I was
an inner daughter figure for her. Only reservedly and intermittently
did I learn to know her a little externally. But she brought me very
close to Jung’s inner life as well as participating, to some extent, in
the mid-years of the work I did with him analytically.
This particular inner process lasted just over two years, and I am
sure the pictures did their work in me. Some of the stages really made
me feel ill and very anxious. But I could do nothing else but let these
visions and dreams come, record them honestly, struggle to add my
thoughts and associations, and send them to Toni Wolff when I was
not able to see her. The whole happening was a mystery, but I am
sure I owe some of the peace and fulfillment of my life to this fine
Swiss woman and | am grateful.
Perhaps only those who are forcibly destined to travel the inner
way can understand or fully appreciate Jung and his followers who
trod this road ahead of us. Jung once said, ‘‘Don’t go into an analysis

3 pp. 177-8.
unless you cannot help it,’”’ meaning, If you can manage in life as you
are, well and happily, carry on. My experience, like many of this gen-
eration, is that we cannot manage to live any longer in this outer
world with its superficial values, and count life worth living. If one
experiences strange and out-of-the-ordinary phenomena, and if one’s
life of outer reality is penetrated from time to time by the mysterious,
religious, archetypal world, one is forced to accept the existence and
power of these manifestations. Iam happy to have known a great man
who dared to try to explain, and certainly to accept, the truth of un-
conscious phenomena. The following account is of one of the mighty
experiences of my life, which yet in no way detracted from my human
loves and personal relationships; probably the reverse is true. Kerényi
writes: “The miracle will cause people to talk of it, always and every-
where. The mystery is kept silent. Is not this, perhaps, the secret of
every true and great mystery, that it is simple? Does it not love secrecy
for that very reason? Proclaimed, it were but a word; kept silent, it is
being. Anda miracle, too, in the sense that being with all its paradoxes
is miraculous.’’*
Woman is concrete and personal; I think she is primarily con-
nected with “being” and I believe she can only truly write of woman
in a woman’s way when she is personal. At least I can only write per-
sonally of what I have experienced or discovered. I know it, though,
for what it is: “the flesh become Word.” A mystery. It will be simple
and true, if not in the ordinary category of documents. And it is a
simple woman’s statement of a tremendous truth.
In 1948 I was in Zurich and I dreamt a dream which I discussed
with Dr. C. G. Jung.
I was at a gathering in an L-shaped room like the Club room in Zurich.
Dr. Jung was there and he explained that all of us present were going to
sing together and then turning to Toni Wolff he asked ifshe would play
the accompaniment. I knew her hands were painful with arthritis and 1
felt so sorry that I jumped up quickly, surprised that Dr. Jung was
unaware of it, and said to him, “I will do it for her.”’ He seemed to
assent so 1 went to the piano. There on the music stand was a manuscript
in Jung’s own hand. It was difficult to read and I was terribly afraid I

4C.G. Jung, and C. Kerényi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, Bollingen Series

XXII, New York: Pantheon, 1949, p. 256.
 would fail. After looking intently at the script I tried softly till the song
began, following by ear with the people. Thus the music notation became
intelligible to me and I played.

When I told the dream to Dr. Jung he said at once that it was right
for his ideas and his psychology to be translated into feeling and ac-
tion: that feeling was in his writings. He added, “Toni Wolff is a
thinking-intuitive type and she cannot turn my ideas into feeling.
This is your function. Turn ideas into feeling, into music.” He put
his hand on my shoulder and bade me farewell with his blessing.
It made sense to me and I felt somehow comforted. I thought, as I
walked along Seestrasse, that probably Toni Wolff had helped to get
the notes on to the paper without which my humble attempts would
be completely useless. How true this is! But how could I express Dr.
Jung’s ideas in feeling? A crowd of thoughts and pictures jostled in
my mind. I went on my way to continue the pattern of my living.
From 1949 to 1951 I had spent much time pondering long and
deeply on the question of ‘““woman and the spirit.” I had been looking
for spiritual power which I could depend on professionally, such as I
had found when I worked as assistant to Dr. Godwin (‘‘Peter’’)
Baynes till he died in 1943. But I could not find any. I had a very dear
and loving husband with great understanding. I had good, helpful,
practical friends in Withymead. But, professionally, I felt alone. I
greatly respected my women colleagues, but I longed for masculine
“spiritual authority.’’ As a woman I was rooted in the earth, and I
sought the spirit. There was an “‘essence’’ in the flesh as yet uncom-
prehended; I knew little of it or what it meant in action or in “being.”
So I groped my way and lived my life without the support for which I
longed.
The years 1946 to 1950 were tremendous years for me, within and
without. Withymead demanded my very life blood, and I had to find
the substitute authority in myself. It was then that I sensed an ‘‘es-
sence’ in woman’s life which is as yet unborn. I touched it, no more
than that. I visited Zurich in 1946, 1947 and 1948, and I went there
in 1950 feeling then I would find the support I sought. I thought Dr.
Jung would supply the spiritual authority essential to my need. Since
I had first met him and talked with him in Ascona in 1936 I had al-
ready, through the years, put so much faith in him; I read and re-read
his books with hunger, and with an understanding of which I did not
know I was capable. So he was the pillar of the spirit for me. Now I
needed to have the chance again to put the load directly on him and
feel his blessing and acceptance of my work and of my fumblings
towards this new essence of “being” which was rising from my
womanhood. It was not the same spirit as that of man. Woman has
sought an equivalent in man’s world but that was not the only an-
swer. It was something yet to be born for her and from her. The logos
principle becomes flesh and is incarnate through woman, “. . . like
the Chinese Yin, where the woman power or the feminine principle is
the concrete principle which makes the ideas visible, when the mas-
culine principle is hidden in the sky, so to speak, not yet formed. It
needs the Yin principle to bring . . . [the ideas] down to earth, to
give birth to them in the concrete world.””®
In this transition period I clung to the hope that Dr. Jung would
not exactly take my load from me, but hold its counterpole. But he
couldn’t see me. Twice in 1950 I went to Zurich at great cost. He was
ill or away and my appointments had to be cancelled. Much hap-
pened to me, but the only man I knew who could help me with my
burden, if but fora moment, couldn’t see me, and my heart fainted
with despair. But it may be true, as Toni Wolff said, that a man’s
mind might have disturbed the experience which came to me later.
Who knows? The unconscious had something to say about it anyway
and I dreamt:
Dr. Jung needed a boat urgently. I was rowing the last boat away from
an island where there had been a conference. Dr. Jung was there, and
mine was the last boat to leave. He was standing in water up to his
knees, and 1 called and beckoned so that he should know my boat was
there and going. It was growing dusk. He did not see or hear me. I could
not make contact. I had to go. It was essential, and with sadness and
terrible despair | rowed away and left him to his island fate.
I dreamt again, the same night:
Dr. Jung was coming to lunch at Withymead. Barbara Hannah was
there and helping me to prepare the lunch. Dr. Jung arrived much too
early. He was hungry and tired and wanted to start eating at once. He

>Comment by Miss Wolffin “The Kundalini Yoga; Notes on the Seminar given
by Prof. Dr. J. W. Hauer with Psychological Commentary by Dr. C. G. Jung,”’ Pri-
vately Printed, p. 82. (The seminar was given in Zurich, autumn, 1932.)
 was preoccupied in thought but very easy and familiar as if he were used
to us providing him with an early lunch. We served him although we
were not really ready, and he sat down and ate alone. He then went into
the drawing room where | found him later seated on the couch asleep
with a child’s story book on his knee. The room was full ofyoung people
sitting on the floor reading all around him. There was silence and
peace.

So Dr. Jung was there in spirit in a simple way, asleep in the com-
mon room. The dream gave me strength, and | took up the spiritual
load to carry as much ofthe authority as I could in woman’s “spirit.” I
returned to England.
The next dream came to me on the first night at home in Withy-
mead on November 5, 1950. It was a visual dream (see PI. I):

Two women were standing on the edge of the world, seeking. The older
was taller but lame, the younger was shorter and had her arm under
that of the taller as ifsupporting her. The older looked out with courage
(I identified her in some way with Toni Wolff) and the younger stood
beside with strength, but feared to look. Her head was bowed. I identi-
fred myself with this second figure. Above was the crescent moon and the
morning star, to the right the rising sun. An elliptical silvery object
came flying (a flying saucer). It was peopled around its rim with figures
which I think were men, cloaked figures, all silvery white. The two
women were awed and trembled in that unearthly cosmic space, their
position untenable except at the moment of vision.

It was a vision, a dream of great power, and conveyed an impres-

siveness I cannot describe. I painted it. The words “Caught in the
hollow of her hand” came to me, as if the divine feminine deity had
held out her hand and caught hold of me.
One day the previous October, in Zurich, I had been with Toni
Wolff when a strange experience of something other-worldly jcame
over me. I felt as if she had seen a vision of something, but was not in
her lifetime able to do more than see. And something came over to
me from her that I was to make actual. It was just a moving vapour, a
“spiritual” experience, and I hardly did more than record the mo-
ment. It passed. All was as before, solid and real. Some time later I
came across the following account which I found on my desk; it was
in my own handwriting. I had quite forgotten it and it read like
someone else’s dream. I do not know exactly when I wrote it. It must

10
19)!
have been in Zurich in 1950.

Toni Wolff was standing erect and lame with a strange mist or vapour
or only just visible wind passing through her hands. | am standing
facing her, very close, my hands just touching hers. The vapour passes
like a liquid from hers to mine and turns to actual liquid as it touches
mine, colourless liquid, then gold and viscous. Suddenly it changes into
silk or woolen material, wood, metal. | am amazed at these raw mate-
rials and know I cannot use them. I do not know how. Suddenly young
people, first a man, then women, then more men, appear and the stream
of material begins to be handed on. It is like a ballet, moving figures all
around me. | am so busy receiving the vapour that I cannot see who or
what is happening, but I feel a circle of people threading in and out
around me, and the feeling is 2 good one. I sense some people very close to
me almost supporting me. But I cannot see. I have my eyes fixed on Toni’s
hands and am intent on our contact and relationship though absolutely
at ease and content in the feeling of the wonderful life encircling me. I
know a pause will come when we can rest a moment and see each other.
But it is not yet. | cannot stop, I have now to keep the supply going, for
the vapour streams to me, and I have to pass on the raw material as it is
formed into the hands ofthe ever-moving people who come and go around
me. Music begins to be heard and I feel the movement ofthe ebb and flow
ofpeople linked with it. I cannot see, only hear and feel this hum of life.
I know however it is satisfactory. And I do not doubt it even though I
cannot see at present.

I sent the flying saucer dream to Miss Wolff. She replied on De-
cember 19, 1950 as follows:
The dream is certainly an extraordinary one, both in image and feel-
ing. It has a cosmic and impersonal atmosphere. It is of course neces-
sary to see the painted picture to understand more. The painted pic-
ture seems to me essential, as the dream is not one that can just be
analysed and brought back to anything personal and clear. It is essen-
tially a vision. It is therefore quite impersonal. The figures are not any
known women. They are neither you nor me. You say clearly you are
an observer, and not really in the dream. I don’t know why the older
woman is lame, it must have a meaning though in the dream it plays
no role, as she is perfectly able to stand erect. The main thing is her
looking on to what happens. Being older she is probably wiser, knows
more of life and is more able to see strange happenings. The other
woman being younger is for that reason more frightened. The group of
two reminds me of analogous groups, i.e. a master and a disciple, or

12
 Moses looking into the promised land, the future.
What happens then is the receding of night and of tha moon, and
the coming of the sun, a new dawn, a new day, perhaps a new cosmic
day, a new aeon, as is the case astronomically more or less, the sun
being at the end of the Zodiacal sign of the fishes (the Antichrist) and
in about 100 years moving into the sign of Aquarius. So a cosmic year
comes to an end (as was the case about the time of the birth of Christ,
roughly when the sun moved from Aries into the Fishes). This means,
of course, a tremendous upheaval, psychically and also concretely. The
Christian era is certainly coming to an end. So one can expect a new
symbol to appear. It will, of course, not appear as a collective symbol,
just as the Christ or Fish symbol was not a collective symbol at first,
but an individual one. The new symbol seems to be a round thing. As
you know it is the symbol in dreams and visions of the Self, the com-
plete man, the totality (not totalitarianism of course). That is prob-
ably the reason why “flying saucers” or discs as they are called in Eng-
land, are “seen.” They are symbolic rumours or actually seen things
unconsciously perceived as the round things.
The circle of people on your disc which makes it look somewhat like
a crown in your sketch may refer to the future man, the whole man,
and therefore is a real community. Their being grey and misty makes
them look like ghosts because they are not yet born or shaped. They
are “in the air’; they are not yet on the earth in reality.
There is probably some connection with the declaration of the new
dogma of the Assumption of the Virgin. She is the feminine principle
accepted into the Trinity. She is earthly though of finer (impeccable)
substance than ordinary man. They form a quaternity, another symbol
for wholeness. The declaration of the dogma is also a tremendous hap-
pening because it accepts a new and earthly principle into the,2 ,000-
year-old masculine and exclusively spiritual principle. That may be
why these two women are privileged to see what they see, to get a
glimpse of future things, though of course as always in the form of
“dark pictures.”” The Virgin Mary is, by the way, both mother and
daughter. That may be another aspect of the two figures. I cannot say
more as I don’t know more. Except perhaps this: if you feel rather like
the younger woman, terrified of the vision, accept it, don’t try to see or
understand. There is another older and wiser woman in you who does
see clearly and takes it all in. This is quite sufficient.

Before receiving this letter I had sent Toni Wolff the account of the
psychic moment I had experienced with her and posted the picture.
On December 31, 1950 came the following reply:

Although the pictures have not yet come, I want to say a few words
about your dream because your addition about the experience you had

13
 actually with me adds, of course, quite an important item. It must
have been a symbolic moment where personal and impersonal things
blended and so in a way the dream seems to continue on the theme and
to enlarge it. In the experience, we seem to have been both ourselves
and, at the same time, a kind of symbolic exponent, probably of a fu-
ture thing, only expressible in symbols, and the dream goes on to pic-
ture it more clearly but also in symbols.
I cannot understand why in the vision I am lame and supported by
you. One meaning is, of course, that we are helping each other. The
only situation where this might be applied is in your work. My work is
with individuals only, whilst yours is in the group where relationship
is just as important as individual analysis. Insofar as relationship is
essentially the feminine principle, it could be said that I have only the
vision, but am “‘lame,” incapacitated to bring it into reality, whilst
you bring it into reality by your feeling, but may not be able always to
understand what you do. On the impersonal and symbolic level the
older woman represents the Self, and the younger one the individuated
real person, namely you. There it is equally true that the Self has the
big vision but is unable to bring it into reality unless the individual,
the very personal ego, supports and executes it. Naturally the ego does
not have the whole vision. So together the ego and the Self bring the
new vision into life. That is a very beautiful and deep presentation of
how things are in the psychological world, let us hope the one of the
future. But even if the world at large does not see and know it, it is
certainly the task of those who know to live it. It is wonderful that you
have those men around you who have faith. They don’t have to under-
stand and perhaps can’t, but as long as they accept and follow the
women who do, it is all right and each fulfills his role.
Let me close with my best wishes that it may continue thus. And
believe in my constant loyalty.

Meanwhile, another picture emerged early in December (see PI.

II). I was painting in the art therapist's class in the studio. I had been
pondering much about the flying saucer, but with no great concen-
tration, as I had little or no time to give to my deep inner life in any
consecutive or ordered way. Outer, pressing things connected with
Withymead’s new shape and buildings took all my strength. But the
unconscious gave me a picture to carry on with (a continuation of the
first one) in a fleeting hour spent in the studio. The peace and sincer-
ity of the painting class drew it out of me despite the storm and stress
of outer life, and emphasized for me the value of the atmosphere cre-
ated in the art rooms with such fertilizing presiding spirits as the art
therapists.
In the second picture, the flying saucer seems to have come to earth

14
and is likea flower. It contains two women in its heart, and around the
central seed box lie the stamens, faint pinkish remains of the circle
round the saucer’s rim, obviously of masculine quality. The picture
gave me a feeling of peace; something had arrived and was settling
down on the earth. The two women were still of vital importance,
one younger, one older (I identified myself first with the younger,
then with the older). It was right so: two women together. I was re-
minded of the passages in Introduction to a Science of Mythology by Jung
and Kerényi:°®
Demeter and Kore, mother and daughter, extend the feminine con-
sciousness both upwards and downwards. They add an “older and
younger,” “stronger and weaker” dimension to it and widen out the
narrowly limited conscious mind bound in space and time, giving it
intimations of a greater and more comprehensive personality which
has a share in the eternal course of things. We can hardly suppose that
myth and mystery were invented for any conscious purpose; it seems
much more likely that they were the involuntary revelation of a psy-
chic, but unconscious, pre-condition. The psyche pre-existent to con-
sciousness (e.g., in the child) participates in the maternal psyche on
the one hand, while on the other it reaches across to the daughter psy-
che. We could therefore say that every mother contains her daughter
in herself and every daughter her mother, and that every woman ex-
tends backwards into her mother and forwards into her daughter. This
participation and intermingling give rise to that peculiar uncertainty
as regards time: a woman lives earlier as a mother, later as a daughter.
The conscious experience of these ties produces the feeling that her life
is spread out over generations—the first step towards the immediate
experience and conviction of being outside time, which brings with it
the feeling of zmmortality. The individual's life is elevated into a type,
indeed it becomes the archetype of woman’s fate in general. This leads
to restoration . . . of the lives of her ancestors, who now, through the
bridge of the momentary individual, pass down into the generations of
the future. An experience of this kind gives the individual a place and
a meaning in the life of the generations, so that all unnecessary ob-
stacles are cleared out of the way of the life-stream that is to flow
through her. At the same time the individual is rescued from her isola-

SLondon: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950. This was the English edition of the
work published in 1949 in the U.S. as Essays on a Science of Mythology (op. cit.), the
reference cited throughout this memoir for those essays contributed by Kerényi.
Jung's contributions are reprinted in CW and are so cited.

16
 tion and restored to wholeness. All ritual preoccupation with arche-
types ultimately has this aim and this result.”
. . . Demeter-Kore exists on the plane of mother-daughter experi-
ence, which is alien to man and shuts him out. In fact, the psychology
of the Demeter cult bears all the features of a matriarchal order of soci-
ety, where the man is an indispensable but on the whole disturbing
factor.§
This is comparable to the woman disturbing man’s world. When
man is busy with man thinking out a plan of work, woman can dis-
turb the atmosphere to such an extent that he is incapacitated.
Woman’s feeling function can bring his logical work to a standstill,
or so confuse it that he works against great odds. I have experienced
this when I was asked as a woman to refrain from attending a men’s
committee, on which I was the one woman member, while they dis-
cussed finance. The request came from an accountant who had quite a
strong feminine side and whose feeling responded easily toa woman’s
plane of“reasoning.” He was not able to remain in his own field when
I was present. He became confused by feeling where only empirical
thinking was needed. He respected and liked me; there was nothing
personal in his request for a masculine meeting.
It may be that the experience of Demeter-Kore, of two women,
one each side of me, might never have come to me in this way if I had
seen Dr. Jung in 1950. Withymead and I personally owe a lot to this
extension of feminine consciousness, an experience which excludes
man from its actual inner mystery. But immediately it is lived the
men become indispensable. When we have created something within
the purely feminine field it has a terrible need for man to bring its
“essence” into life. I say more about this later on, although it lies in
the realm of the unexplained.
For nine months after this I was torn and burdened by work of a
colossal kind outside in Withymead, building, reshaping, staffing,
restaffing, financial problems and difficulties beyond anything imag-
inable.® I seemed tormented by trouble at every corner. So I had no

"CW 9, 1, par. 316.

8Ibid., par. 383.
°In addition to which the author was working on a deep level with many individ-
uals in psychotherapeutic sessions. —Ed.

17
time to paint or write, barely to live and work. My ponderings were
mostly on the problem of acommunity of conscious beings, a special
small community related in a way which is new. Is it perhaps a collec-
tive form of the Self? It is born from inside and has its mirror in the
soul of individuals, perhaps more in the soul of woman than man. Yet
man must be there so that it can be born; he knows of it with another
part of himself. The circle of practical men around us at Withymead
made its life possible. The feminine soul of the artistic creative man
carries a similar image I believe.
So the year went on and I was still immersed, even swallowed up,
in community group issues. I could never reflect enough on the
strange quality of this way oflife: the giving and the taking, the love
and the hate, the leader and the follower, the scapegoat and the wise
one, the devil in the midst, the inner circle. It is the hub of the wheel
and upon it depends the life or death of the community, its power of
exorcism and of creative fostering.
Then there was Gilbert Champernowne, my husband, that strange
rock in the centre, loyal and firm, “‘a rock ina thirsty land”; “a covert
from the tempest.” The group life went on filled with treachery and
loyalty, silence and conversation, subjectivity and objectivity oflove,
humour, and much laughter. Lives are saved by this. So on it goes,
and always the little child in the midst.1° “. . . [T]he symbol of the
‘child’ fascinates and grips the conscious mind, its redemptive effect
passes over into consciousness [from the unconscious] and brings
about the separation from the conflict-situation which the conscious
mind by itself was unable to achieve.”!! We depend on the children
in our midst for redemption.
By this time Miss Wolff had received the two pictures (Pls. I and
II). Here is her reply on February 1, 1951:
The pictures are quite beautiful as pictures and very expressive. I don’t
think I can add much more to what I have said already as far as the
meaning goes. The main thing is, as always, the expression of the ex-
perience and we can only add a few comments about that. The second
picture does I believe corroborate my idea that the flying saucer, or

Many children came to live at Withymead, some with their parents and some,
referred to the community from other sources, who stayed without other members of
their families. —Ed.
CW 9, 1, par. 287.

18
 rather ring, is a representation of the approaching of the Self. The very
reason that the flying discs or saucers are round makes them contain
the same idea in a crude and concretistic form. If only rumour, yet the
rumour is most significant and symbolic: the roundness, whitish me-
tallic material, the autonomous movement, often with strange crea-
tures inside, coming from somewhere outside our known world. That
is exactly the relation between the Ego and the Self. The figures, on
the disc or oval in your picture, are unknown, impersonal figures of
our psyche, as well as other real people who belong to our world intrin-
sically and so constitute the self on the outer plane.

(The “self on the outer plane’ made up of real people: is that per-
haps the secret of the hub of a wheel of a community whose life be-
comes creative from the core outwards?) Miss Wolff goes on:
The second picture is another and further expression; now the Self has
apparently arrived on the earth, is still whirling round, but beginning
to settle down, likea plant, therefore the green leaves. The ego and the
other woman, perhaps the ‘wise woman,’ are inside, the centre and
kernel of the Self, its product and its consciousness. The sun in the
background has a curious likeness to the flower, which may indicate
the fact, or idea, that the Self is the concrete and tangible experience
and counterpart of the sun, the source of light and life in our world,
the symbol of consciousness and God. I hope you continue to paint as
there is certainly no other form to express these experiences. Moreover
the second picture, so to speak, asks for continuation.

In that same letter Miss Wolff had commented on my phantasy of

the vapour streams, which had appeared so spontaneously that I had
overlooked it until it turned up amongst some papers many weeks
later.
Miss Wolff writes:
The phantasy you sent me, now certainly belongs somehow. It is not
really possible to explain it. It is an experience which has meaning as
such, it seems to contain the same idea of a link and bond between
yourself, the figure you call me, and other people. Again there is the
idea that the living experience of the Self, or if you prefer, the non-ego
factor or divine factor, is a collective thing, that is, not generally col-
lective, but of a small group; again, the idea that we are constituted
not only of one person but of several; and equally we can live our real
values, not alone but in connection with a group. As you do live the
group side so consciously and positively, the pictures may represent
the necessary awareness of the inside aspect of the problem, and that
may also explain the other woman whom you call me. I am certainly an
introvert and my emphasis is more on the introverted aspect. And it is

19
 just the introverted aspect, the subjective level, who receives the kind
of fluid which by being passed on becomes solid. With your intro-
verted side you receive the subtle substance or fluid in the form of feel-
ings, intuitions, inner experiences, and with your extroverted side you
make them real and substantial. And for this you need others to re-
ceive them. The transformation is necessary and inevitable. You can
see this in any historical fact, i.e., in the forming of a religion. Take
Christianity; first it is a new experience of the divine by one single
person, Christ; then he gives it on to his disciples where already it is no
more quite the same. Then they pass it on further. Finally it becomes a
Church, the experience has become a doctrine and a dogma, it is solid-
ified. The subtle fluid quality is transformed into solid matter.
Somehow these experiences seem indeed to be intrinsically woven
together with your relation to me and that seems as it must be for the
moment, even if I am quite aware of the fact that I represent a sym-
bolic figure at the same time. For that reason it is necessary that you
convey to me these strange and almost inexpressible experiences, and
it is good that you recovered that phantasy.
I am glad you feel happy with Mrs. Allenby. Withymead needs an
introverted woman as your pictures show.

Still practical living filled my time to breaking point: permits,

building, staff, and psychological work with people.
On February 12, 1951, Miss Wolff wrote:

I do hope the (outer) difficulties can be overcome in time. I am so glad

the spirit of the group is so fine. I do hope too that you find occasional
time to give to the inner life too, and for a very practical reason. I am
convinced that, given the right inner attitude, outer difficulties fall
into place and can be overcome. There is some strange connection. In
fact, it is the Chinese idea that inner and outer things hang together.

Spring and Summer of 1951 in the outer world at Withymead con-

sisted of dust and reconstruction, a chaos of reorganization, staffing
and restaffing, despairing attempts at order and peace without. It was
an atmosphere of change and temporary adjustments, and very trying
for everyone.
I began to doubt in a big way, but my young colleagues held on
superbly, with spirit and determination, and when I needed courage
I would go into the office and find steadfast Joanna typing and creat-
ing plans with faith, or into the pottery room with its creations and
Jo, always so valiant, with Winifred beside her, creating beauty. The
painting room had peace and sincerity filled by Norah’s insight; and
the dance-movement classes, the obvious and vital meaning that

20
Veronica’s work had for us all, and Denis’s too, in a living, gallant,
experimental way. Then Molly appeared as a spark of wonderful new
life from “nowhere,” and music was reborn for us. Lilyanne flashed in
and out and left us all making music pipes; to say nothing of the slow,
inner growth of the soul in so many of us thanks to the quiet work
with Mrs. Scott-Maxwell and Mrs. Allenby and me.
But the management committees behind the scenes had a hard and
worrying job. The kindness and faithfulness and devotion of those
practical men were beyond dispute. But our chairman was ill, and he
alone united the outer and the inner in the way we needed. Conse-
quently much fell on Gilbert, who was also far from well. It was a
grim time. Life and the battle were lived much on the outside. I had
been unable to paint for almost nine months; I tried once but could
not give myself to it. But the unconscious waited. When the time
was ripe for the next to be born it was about August 1951, and two
more pictures came to me in close succession.
In the first (see Pl. III) the flower-like circle was moving, whirling
around. The two women were still in the centre. In the second (see
Pl. IV), the whole structure is more in the form of a fruit, and be-
tween the two women an ovum or seed seems to be forming. Dr. Jung
showed me some parallel pictures when we talked years later, and he
gave very particular value and emphasis to this seed.
Some few weeks later I had a strange feeling of holding myself
steady with great difficulty and great pain. I awaited my holiday with
longing for release from an intolerable outer strain. But I was experi-
encing it within also. I sometimes smile when my introverted col-
leagues say, “Why not work more inside?” “Introvert more.” In the
studio at least something can be expressed. Ina short half hour in the
painting room the next picture jumped on to the paper. I called it The
Green Woman crucified between the Golden Wheels (see Pl. V). She was
standing with arms outstretched holding the two wheels apart. She
was the red-haired woman whom I have known for years, whom I saw
in a dream in February 1950 freed from her earthbound place, tied to
a tree. Here she is again “bound” between two wheels which she is
holding suspended on either side of her.
I felt deeply identified with this woman and longed for release. My
psychic energy remained in that picture until I got to Zurich a few
weeks later on October 9, 1951. I have just found a note in my note-
book which gives a sign of the difficulties of the months up till then: a
desperate cry for someone to take over the ordering of the house.

on
 Tid

22
AT osed
222Id
A
 It is such a difficult job to be good with matter and insightful into
people. Oh God! why is it that in this house (this Withymead) the
material details cannot find their leader? What do I do, or not do, that
no one comes to carry out the external order which we need and which
we each work so hard to create ‘within.’ They come and go, these wo-
men.
One is too sensitive
One too rigid
One is materialistic (all sensation)
One is too spiritual
One has no feeling for the faltering
Another despises the incarnate word
I should love to give myself fully to it, shop, cook and order this
house which I love. I long for time to harvest (apples and fruit to pre-
serve and be a housewife). But I am driven on to other things on the
other side of myself: the tension between the inner and the outer. But
asJung says, “Only because of this psychic ‘otherness’ is consciousness
possible at all. Identity does not make consciousness possible, it is
only separation, detachment, and agonizing confrontation through
opposition that produce consciousness and insight.’’!”
In Zurich on October 11, 1951 I was writing, when across my paper
came the picture of the green woman. Slowly she brought her arms
together until the two wheels faced each other, but not touching.
Between them threads sprang up, joining them like silk or light, so
creating two vessels which were revolving opposite ways, and touch-
ing at a central point where the strands met. The woman is still
bound to them but this is only for a time. The pictures came so rapid-
ly at this point that I could only execute them in crayon quickly. Al-
though I had all my time to introvert, there was not yet enough to
keep pace with the unconscious and I was not able to make a picture
of the above image at all. If I sketch it here it may be clearer:

RCW 9, 1, par. 289.

ay)
 221d
IA

ce

eh
Be
er
 Next day, October 12, I drew the sixth picture (see Pl. VI). The
wheels in this joined form flew off and the woman looked up in the
sky watching them go.
Picture seven followed immediately, and as it was all too fast I still
had to use crayon (see Pl. VII): the woman sank to the earth, her face
in her hands, relieved yet empty and broken, the wheels high up are
flying away. The feeling of depletion and emptiness was awful; I re-
mained alone unable to face the world, in such cold emptiness of soul.
During the next few days I lived with this picture. It was Friday
when the wheels left her and Saturday and Sunday were lived in emp-
tiness, though the next picture began to stir. I was low and forsaken
and unable to do more than bear it.
The eighth picture took a long time to paint in oil, nearly a week
(see Pl. VIII). It was a direct continuation of the last. The girl at last
raises her head from her hands and looks up. She finds she has two
little wheels, golden wheels, left on her person, one at her neck and
one at her waist. There is a golden chain around the neck to the
brooch at her throat and a golden chain around her middle to the
buckle at her waist. She was terrified to see what she had acquired;
these wheels were hers to carry, valuable and beautiful, but represent-
ing a terrifying experience. In the picture she is fleeing through a
wood at night with the moon behind her. There is fear in her face.
Her arms are still outstretched. She runs as if she would hide; there is
a sense of guilt as though she has stolen the woman’s equivalent of the
Promethean fire from the Goddesses and has the impersonal stamp on
her.
I later discovered that Shakespeare, in Love’s Labours Lost, speaks of
the Promethean fire springing from woman. Professor Goddard says
in his book The Meaning ofShakespeare: “Wit, the intellect, is mascu-
line and by itself is barren. And the same is true of learning. . . .
Each must be married to the feminine principle to be found in
women’s eyes ‘from whence doth spring the true Promethean
fire.’’”’1? Woman's eyes? The place of sight and consciousness. A new
consciousness rising up from her body to meet man in thought. I feel
this is the meaning of these pictures.
I found I went ahead into creating these pictures hazily before my

13Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1951 5sp 93:

24
TA
7%
ld

noobie
te as
Plate VIII

29
libido was ready to move out of the last experience. I was still held
captive in the experience of ‘““The Green Woman crucified,” the
woman between the opposites. Even now as I write, on November 9,
1951, I am touched at some deep level by an, as yet, unformed, un-
born picture in the making. It simply shows how much the pictures
belong together and how continuous is the stream of psychic energy
which goes into the making of them. Gradually during the week of
October 14/19 I came over into picture seven, where I remained for
some days, empty, bereft, not “knowing” (knowing in the sense of
experiencing) that the woman was left with a value, though already
the eighth picture was in process of being painted.
On October 19 I had the opportunity of atalk with Mrs. Jung and I
took the whole series of pictures to her. This was a most deeply help-
ful experience. Miss Wolff was the inner companion of the journey,
but to look at the series with another woman who was outside the
happenings gave me a view of my own process of experience which
was quite invaluable. She had great understanding of the woman’s
authority. Mrs. Jung wrote me before I left Zurich in November:
“Your pictures have impressed me very deeply indeed; I feel there is
something extremely important and valuable for woman in general.”
She thought it right for me to talk to Jung about it all, as she felt it
was all out now, and man’s mind would therefore not influence its
development but receive it. And if more was to come it would again
move on in its own right. After that I lived more easily with the flee-
ing woman, though her awe and terror made me quickly concretise
the next picture out ofits vague misty stirrings.
In pictures nine and ten (see Pls. IX and X) she reached the depth
of the wood, halted and covered her two parallel wheels with her
hands as she felt them exposed. Suddenly a cloaked figure in grey
came out of the wood, an impersonal figure and probably a man, but
almost indistinguishable: perhaps a man with feminine insight and
tenderness (Dr. Jung? or someone quite above strife and outside it).
He wrapped a cloak of green over her, a dark green hooded cloak and
she shrank into it in thankfulness, hidden and withdrawn. There she
(and I) remained for days and days.
On November 6, 1951 I saw Jung and we went through the pic-
tures which I had already completed, together. He was in a wonder-
ful mood, so gay, so deeply earnest, true and direct yet simple. He
talked of the conflict of opposites in life; woman’s part in this opposi-
tion; her experience, like mine, of the opposites; and his experience of

30
Plate IX

oi!
the place between them. He showed me Jacob Boehme’s representa-
tion of his experience in the old manuscript, a wonderful battered old
book. The representation showed two half circles back to back, one
dark, one light, and a heart between. It is illustrated in “Zur Empirie
des Individuationprozesses”'* and shows the way Boehme as a Chris-
tian mystic could get the opposites no closer than back to back. Jung
said that in one of his mandalas he had united his and had sought for
others’ experiences throughout history. He then spoke to me of the
isolation of such experiences. As I handled Boehme’s book I felt, for
just a fleeting moment, the isolation relieved by a companionship of
suffering and individual experience of consciousness, transitory as all
such paradoxes are in time. For just a moment I sat with those two
great men of such different epochs.
Dr. ‘Jung says in Introduction to a Science of Mythology: “Higher
consciousness, or knowledge going beyond our present-day con-
sciousness, is equivalent to being a// alone in the world. This loneliness
expresses the conflict between the bearer or symbol of higher con-
sciousness and his surroundings.’’!®
My experience had to be mine, as a woman alone. I have yet to
come to greater understanding of it: those wheels and their meaning
for me in life; I sense it, but at present it is inexplicable. But the fact
that a great living man, and his forerunner Boehme, were with me
and accepted my experience gave me strength to return to it and live
with it as a woman so that its truth might be realized in my “being.”
While Jung was talking I was reminded of the dream I dreamt in
1937: 1 had a half crystal in my hand. Peter Baynes had half a crystal in
his. Together on the shove by the sea we passed through a great fire and when
we emerged he had a perfect crystal in his hand. I had one larger than his but
showing a mark, a wound where the two halves had come together.
That dream was very precious to me for I owe Dr. Baynes more
than anyone. He led me into the way of Truth.
This experience with Dr. Jung was unique. He talked to me of
man’s experience of the opposites, of woman as the Yin principle, of
evil, of Eve, of spirit and flesh, and I saw it as man describes it, as I
had often seen it before from woman’s side. I felt in easy and true
rapport with Dr. Jung, a great man who had wrestled with his own

14CW 9, 1, Fig. 1, p. 297.

15Tbid., par. 288.

33
soul and stood between the opposites till they met in him. At the
same moment | experienced that same opposition from the side of
woman, not as man sees her and experiences her, but as she is in her
being. I felt the “essence’’ from the side of flesh and Yin going over to
comprehend the Yang. Up till then I had known what it felt like to be
woman over against man (i.e., when the Yang principle comes down
and becomes concrete in life through Yin). But this time I was quite
separate. I felt as woman-earth, receptive to the masculine principle.
But I also felt something more, something new, namely the “es-
sence” of the concrete principle of “being,” Yin trying to rise up into
Yang and find its meaning there. It was a tremendous experience,
difficult to explain. I was trying to bring to birth the experience from
the side of Yin and via man. It was a case of two parallel experi-
ences, not just a complementary experience, as if one was travelling
in the moving symbol. The words of John Donne seem to explain this
movement of woman:
. . . we understood
Her by her sight: her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought
That one might almost say, her body thought.’’?®
This whole question of spiritual authority and the woman has set
me pondering on a dream which came back to me and which I told to
Mrs. Jung when I saw her with my pictures. I had had it many years
ago, maybe in 1935 or 1936:
The God of Thunder, Thor, was seated in the sky; on his right hand
was seated a great, black, ugly, almost obscene woman. I was observing
this from a very small rocky island on which I was standing alone,
naked, in the midst of the sea. Suddenly a raging wind and storm blew
up and the sea beat all around me. Thunder and lightning followed
each other in close succession. All was dark; one could not see. Equally
suddenly after a tremendous clap of thunder all was hushed, the sky
cleared. The woman had fallen from her heights by Thor and all I
could see was a great black thigh sticking up like a rock out of the wa-
ter. This rock I knew was she. The waves were gently lapping over it,
and a voice spoke saying, ‘Upon this rock will I build my Church.”
Then I saw below me, mirrored as it were deep down in the clear water,

16John Donne, “The Second Anniversarie: of the Progresse of the Soule,” 1612,
Il. 243-246.

34
 fields of waving corn with the wind passing over them. I knew that was
the future.

It seems to me that the dark woman was a representation of the

feminine principle in the wrong place, lifted up into the heavens in a
wrong way. Her fall was essential. Naturally I think of the Assump-
tion of the Virgin Mary in this connection as being a dogma repre-
senting the opposite movement of Yin, of the feminine principle as
experienced in the Christian Church.
I now want to include two pictures done by a patient of mine about
two years after the above dream. They have some correspondence
with mine.
“The Flying Woman’ (see Pl. XI) was painted by an intellectual
woman of very good intelligence and capacity, who was doing an ex-
cellent job as a private secretary to the manager of an important in-
dustrial firm. She lived entirely divorced from her feeling and was cut
off from true human living. In Donne’s terms, her body did not
speak. In her picture, the woman flies far above the city with its pul-
sating life. Her hair, which is blue as smoke, acts like a parachute,
her eyes are glowing red in colour, her passion is in her head; her
body, well-formed, is bound by a golden cord which passes from one
hand to the other in a self-contained system; mummified, it does not
speak.
The only comment I felt moved to make (apart from saying the
picture spoke to me) was, “But you must come down to earth.”
At her next visit this patient brought “The Woman on the Earth”
(see Pl. XII). Here the woman stands stretched between earth and a
heavenly body, the golden cord strained from the individual star
down to her wrist, resting ona bear, and thence to a tree which shows
some life: three leaves and a pear. I do not want to go into a full inter-
pretation of this picture; suffice it to say that it is all under the sign of
the Great Bear, the Plough in the sky, Demeter, the earth, the Bear
Goddess, upon whose back her hand is resting. True the earth is fiery
hot, too hot almost for the life of this woman, but she has begun her
descent.
It seems to me that woman in her need has had three experiences,
or possibilities: (1) to remain as earth, experiencing spiritual author-
ity of consciousness only through man; (2) to experience the spiritual
authority of man also, in herself, in the animus; (3) to leap out and
place herself alongside the logos authority, as in the twentieth cen-

35
 )
Plate XI Ap (satient’s painting: “The Flying
ys
Woman.

36
Plate XII. Another painting by the same patient
“cc
The Woman on
the Earth.”

Bi
tury, where she is either hideous or obscene, or coldly ineffectual ex-
cept as a pseudo-man.
These dream pictures seem to me to show the third possibility as a
failure, and they are painted by a woman who had attempted it with-
out satisfaction. She has again to descend to earth, to Demeter, the
earth-mother and go through the experience I have described in my
earlier pictures of two women together, Demeter-Kore. Then may
come the fourth experience, which I believe is the gradual raising of
the feminine consciousness to a higher level where it can serve as au-
thority. This in no way negates woman’s relation to man or the ani-
mus (the counterpart of man) in her, as far as I can see, except in the
moment of experiencing her feminine life. For this experience of a
feminine spirit or consciousness is not the same as the experience of
the spiritual animus. It is I believe an archetype of woman not yet
fully realized, nearer to the Amazon or martial maid.
In the course of my ponderings on woman’s new position and her
new consciousness I have naturally given thought to her new relation-
ship to man in consequence of awakening. I was led to re-read a paper
given by Mr. John Layard at Ascona, and reprinted from the Eranos-
Jahrbuch, on “The Making of Man in Malekula.”
In the conclusion, he writes of ““The Making of Woman in Man.”
As I feel this touches the question of woman herself in the making, it
will perhaps throw some light on the relationship of man and woman
in the future. He says:
The Making of Man is, in fact, the Making of Woman in Man, that is to
say the achievement, through death ritual and an extensive and inex-
haustibly rich treasure house of mythological imagery and imitative
practice, by man of the ability to feel what it is like to be a woman, first in
the negative and then in her positive aspects, not only externally, but
primarily within himself. In other words, he not only becomes ac-
quainted with these inner aspects of himself, the positive and negative
anima, but experiences them through identification.
. . . This is essential to healing, whether of oneself or others, and
is, when fully achieved, the real feeling and actual (not mere theoret-
ical) knowledge of opposites. Thus all shamans (the earliest, unorgan-
ised, medicine men), if they were male, wore women’s clothes and did
women’s work, and, if they were women, wore trousers and went
hunting. *7

‘John Layard, “The Making of Man in Malekula,” Eranos-Jahrbuch 1948,

Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, 1949, p. 281.

38
 In Greece those taking part in the Eleusinian Mysteries ‘‘identified
themselves with Demeter”’ as described by Kerényi. It is not a matter
of becoming “Children of God” but of ‘“‘divine Motherhood” also.
Men and women both suffer the same fate. The men also appeared in
the form of Demeter and they also were ‘‘one with the goddess.” As
Kerényi says: ““To recognize this is the first step towards any under-
standing of what went on in Eleusis.”*® The “way” of Eleusinian ini-
tiation is symbolised by the initiates actually following the supposed
“way” of Demeter or of Persephone who is at one and the same time
the raped bride and the Queen of Death who leads to spiritual life. In
the northern district of Mewun (Malekula), we learn from ‘““The Mak-
ing of Man,” men take the part of mothers and follow the ‘““Woman’s
way” in revivifying the Dead Creator who is at the same time the
Eternal Child, thereby, symbolically at least, achieving full man-
hood by ritually experiencing the “woman within.”
In the course of woman’s development to consciousness can we not
hope that a new relationship may grow between man and woman
which may offer some solution to the desperate state of eternal de-
structive and non-creative conflict which is so evident today? Maybe
an increased experiencing of life from “the other side” whether male
or female will be what finally brings a wholeness to the individual and
the community. Maybe it will bring us to the place where the inner
and the outer, the male and the female, meet.
But here I am passing outside my experience as woman and claim-
ing the animus’s help in trying to explain. He cannot. I must wait for
more “light” from the realms of Demeter herself. Perhaps the Holy
Mary in her journey to the Trinity can understand, for as yet I do not.
What has this to do with the outer and inner of life at Withymead?
A lot. The life of the group depends on man’s relationship to woman
and the concrete collective representation of the circle in a woman’s
experience.
Before leaving Zurich in November 1951, I wrote the following
letter to Miss Wolff:
Dear Miss Wolff,
I must now get down to packing, but I still haven’t quite written
myself out, so to speak. My mind keeps churning over the meaning of
those wheels. They have something to do with relationship because of

18Jung and Kerényi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, op. cit., p. 191.

39
 their shape. I think also with a community: I keep feeling the hub as
the “inner circle” well related to the outer by twelve spokes. I think of
twelve for a lot of reasons. In planning and running Withymead I have
been very preoccupied with the question of the “inner circle” which
because of the community’s size has become an absolute essential both
physically and spiritually. Leonard Elmhirst and I were discussing this
one day and he told me that the military war correspondent Liddell
Hart (I think I have called him by his proper title) said that every
military general knew he could only keep in touch with twelve of-
ficers, they then had to contact the others. We talked then about the
twelve apostles and it gave me a feeling of the spiritual shape of a
community somehow.
The two wheels on the woman in those positions, i.e., at the throat
and at the navel, could they stand for the experience of relationship at
the negative level of raw emotional affect below the heart even and
then at a level of consciousness not quite in the head but above the
heart, the throat where speech is formed? I hesitate always to apply
anything from the eastern idea of the chakras to woman’s experience
because first we are western; and, secondly, woman may have a quite
different way of experiencing meditation. But there may be some-
thing here. In fact I go even so far as to say the terribly inflamed throat
with which I was laid low this week may even belong there.
Please give me some of your ideas about these wheels. I may get
some “light” from another picture, but I have not done it yet. It is just
flickering, not formed properly. But I want to know what the two
wheels are, which flew away; and also the two personal jewels of expe-
rience left on the woman.
I wish I could have seen you, but I don’t think it will be possible
though I might still take the taxi via you, but I will phone.
Yours affectionately always,
Irene Champernowne

On Saturday, February 16, the twelfth picture, which had long

ago been forecast in me, began to form itself definitely enough for me
to begin a painting (see Pl. XIII).'9 It came very quickly in oils: a
stormy sky, a sunrise in the centre, a sea, ora sea of clouds, a rainbow,
the earth appearing on the scene, the moon and star fading into mist
on the left. That was all. I could not people the earth and yet I knew it
was not empty. I waited. The following week I was busy, very busy. I
had little time to think. I was due to go to London for an Art Therapy
Committee and was preoccupied with my speech. Nevertheless, at

' Picture eleven was a diagram reproduced on p. 25. —Ed.

40
 921d IITX

41
the last moment before going, I suddenly saw three women, not two
now but three, standing on the world. A quick vision and I rushed to
the painting room. At once they formed themselves, a trio standing
on the earth, gazing up at the double wheel symbol flying away
toward the rising sun. I was satisfied that my picture said what my
innermost self was struggling to say, and I went away in peace.
Here follow my three ietters to Toni Wolff and her letters to me in
the spring and early summer of 1952:
March 3rd
Dear Miss Wolff,
My eleventh and twelfth pictures are completed but not my writing
yet. The eleventh picture is merely the abstraction of the symbol. I felt
I wanted to see it on its own. Then the last picture began to take shape
in my mind’s eye and (at a synchronistically significant moment just
after the King’s death) ina more concrete form though it did not com-
plete itself until I began to paint it. It took mea few days to finish. So I
am sending you the last two originals with the other ten you have seen
in photograph form, in case you want to refresh your memory, and the
series belong together.
I am writing this at the cottage where we are for a weekend.
No. 11. The symbol of the wheels abstracted, as if they had changed
their form via the woman, is quite unintelligible. I do not know what
they mean. I wish I did.
No. 12. The first part of this picture was quickly on the canvas, the
sun, rainbow, sea, cloud and earth, unpeopled. I could not make out
why I could not paint the two women nor one woman on it and yet I
knew women or woman should be there. Then suddenly three made
complete satisfying sense, the picture is quite definitely a statement
and a valid one, again the symbols of the wheels, flying up. They are in
two planes, two horizontal rings (from neck to throat, and from the
waist) and two vertical wheels. I do not know which woman is which,
nor whether one or all still bear the mark of the wheels. The misty ring
of people are men, and below that, not yet in the picture, rings of men
and women coming into view. Further than this I cannot go at pres-
ent. Would you be kind enough to show Mrs. Jung the pictures, and I
will send a copy of my writing later to you.
It has all been very overwhelming and I think the death of the King
was a very important happening, setting free the last picture in me.
I wish I could see you. Will you ever come over again?
My love to you, affectionately, Irene.
P.S. Will you send the pictures back by someone and the photos. I
will send you a complete bound copy of all with the writing, but elev-
en and twelve have not been photographed.
Sunday, March 16th.
My dear Miss Wolff,
I have been giving ten lectures, a weekly evening course of ten
weeks for the University Extra-mural Department at the Dartington
Adult Education Centre. I have given nine and am preparing my tenth
and while doing so have been caught up by my own inner material and
woman's consciousness. I see so clearly and yet I doubt if I can convey
it even to myself let alone to you or anyone else. I see the conscious
community as small and dependent on woman’s consciousness, on
that form of consciousness about which my pictures have been trying
to speak. As if the libido has to return to the mother in order to find
the basic image of the community, the “family” archetype which must
lie in woman’s unconscious as well as consciousness.
How do my symbols the wheels speak in this connection? They are
saying something. As they have left the woman and fly off as a general
archetypal pattern (having been created via woman) are they pointing
out the small circle or community at the level of the navel or body
raised up to the level of the throat or speech and a higher conscious-
ness, woman’s consciousness, sO man can relate to woman in a new
way, not only through the animus in her, his image?
And what about the different planes?
The two golden wheels with a hub (the centre circle) and spokes to
the peripheral circle at the speech level, and the same at the navel level
but connected and the golden chains on the horizontal planes also at
those two levels.
I vaguely see it but cannot explain it. It has some connection which
I can only glimpse and intuitively express in my lecture for this week,
the last lecture, the Conscious Community: the “positive” regression
to the mother and the woman, the womb, the body; the progression
via the father. Continuity and containment seem coupled with out-
going risk and progressive evolution (and woman, too, experienced
this risk and evolution in my pictures and symbols). Only this new
level of woman’s consciousness can bring the new circle or community
into being, a cultural re-establishment of primal unity of feeling in
which all human beings are contained, ona new level. Does this make
any sense?
This fumbling of ideas has arisen via my lectures, on man and
woman, the opposites, and now the Conscious Community. My
thoughts and reading, such as they are, have met my pictures, but not
quite clearly yet. Do write when the pictures arrive. I do need your
intuitive-thinking wisdom. I am just burning up with that curious
feeling of being on the verge of experience and knowledge together.
And Withymead has a lot to do with it. We are just having to change
our man secretary for a woman. The masculine management com-
mittee, living out and coming in to relate, works wonderfully. But an

43
 active man as yet in an inner central place is still impossible. Gilbert,
of course, as a father figure here from the beginning, is a man who
protects and roots this feminine life. It could not live without him yet.
Mrs. Allenby says perhaps the Yin principle is not yet fulfilled here to
the utmost. I have just shown her my pictures.
We must await our new masculine inner life in Withymead. Men
patients come in numbers more than ever before but not staff. I am
dining with Flo and Eddie Bennet next Monday after lecturing on Art
Therapy to 400 occupational therapists, no small task. Our young Art
Therapists, Jo Guy, Norah Godfrey, Molly Kemp (music) and Mrs.
Ena Curry (children’s play therapist) and Joanna Hogg are coming up
to demonstrate.
So it goes on. Do write me as soon as you can. I must now finish
preparing my lecture on the Conscious Community for Tuesday.
Yours ever, Irene.

April 30th
Dear Miss Wolff,
I am away at the sea for a fortnight and thus have a little time to
think.
At last I recovered my picture, the wooden frame smashed badly
but fortunately the canvas not damaged very obviously. I am having it
photographed and am sending all the photographs together: I am still
busy with the script.
I have been looking up the symbolism of wheels and came upon
Moon Wheels. Up to the present I have always connected the symbol
of the wheel with the sun, mine are both yellow and white, and both
sun and moon appear in the pictures. Can the wheels of my pictures be
connected with the moon? The whole series of pictures seems con-
cerned with the sun and moon and earth in some way that as yet I do
not understand.
The symbol of the wheels needs much more investigation and, as
yet, I have not been able to go any further. I don’t seem to find much
which is understandable in relation to the double figure. However the
three women do begin to mean a great deal to me. They are in order of
age, the woman of middle age in the centre, the younger and older on
either side and I connect them with the three queens. I have not yet
looked up the three queens in Morte d’Arthur by Malory but have that
on my list to do. The photographs of the three Queens at King George
VI’s funeral went home to me, the Dowager Queen Mother, Mary; the
widow, Queen Elizabeth; and the young Queen; only they were not
standing in quite the same formation or relation to each other as in my
picture.
This morning I came across in Dr. Esther Harding’s book Woman’s

44
 Mysteries (Chapter X, “Emblem of the Moon’’)?® a discussion of Hecate
triformus and numerous examples of the Triune form of the Moon
Deity are given. Apparently the Triune quality is represented in later
statues as threefold women, three goddesses in one pillar.
All this, Miss Wolff, seems to bear directly on my last picture.and I
am deeply interested. It remains for me still to discover what that
curious double wheel symbol really means, which via the person of
a woman was changed in form before flying away again into the sky.
I await with great interest your answer to my letters which I expect
you will send when all ten photographs arrive. I hope this will be ina
week or two.
I am in the meantime trying to write all I can about it all, and so
clarify my own thoughts.
My love to you. I do hope you had a good and restful holiday. How I
should love a chat with you now while my mind is full of all this.
Affectionately yours, Irene

Freiestrasse 15, Zurich 32

June 14th
Dear Mrs. Champernowne,
I have time today to write you about the pictures and later on it will
be rather impossible. I am most awfully busy, and in a week we are
having examinations on top of it all.
Only I don’t think I am able to add anything valuable at all. You
have already explained a great deal, as much as is possible. With sym-
bols, as you know, interpretation is impossible, otherwise they would
not have to be symbols. One can talk around them somewhat and add
more or less parallel amplifications, but that is all.
My feeling is that the circle and the wheels are a symbol of the Self
which, when it appears, seems as if coming from space. There is as you
said already a slight parallel to the flying saucers which really do come
from an extra-terrestrial source, because no actual metal or matter or
machine could stand that velocity and climb at that speed. So one can
only say that this vision or experience is as strange and as incomparable
as the flying saucers are.
The problem of the wheels when they were an ornament to be worn
and proved to be too full of mana, or too much charged with energy,
could express the fact that the Self, as a factor and function transcend-
ing the Ego, can indeed not be put on to the Ego because the Ego is
contained in it.

20Mary Esther Harding, Woman's Mysteries, Ancient and Modern, New York: Put-
nam for the C. G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology, 1972.

45
 The two wheels which are interrelated by the chain can relate to the
two aspects of the Self. The Self is at the same time a unique thing, a
totality, and also a group. As such it can be said to have two aspects,
the inner and the outer. As the inner one, it is the many-fold factors,
archetypes, figures, situations, symbols, etc. which constitute it; and
as the outer it is a group of people which are an inherent part of the life
of an individual. Both aspects are interrelated.
Possibly the problem of the two levels also comes in, as one wheel is
on a lower basis than the other. One level might be the unconscious
and the other the conscious one. The Self exists always of course, but
often unconsciously. In Primitive Society, it is constituted by the
group or tribe or the Totem clan. In Egypt it is represented by the
Pharaoh at least in the earlier period. In Christianity by Christ and also
by the Church, as the body of Christ. (By Church I mean the commu-
nity of all who belong to the Church, and also the Church itself with
all its institutions, rituals and symbols.) It has two aspects also: the
human one of relatedness; and the one of ideas and forms; Eros and
Logos.
Sure enough in our time there is no such expression and objectiva-
tion any more, at least not for the Protestant and for the Atheist. So real
community also is lacking and people are either isolated or herded to-
gether in masses. It would indeed be a great achievement if a real
community would live again. But in a certain way it does with people
who are in relation to the Self, because as I said, the Self is more than
the Ego.
Possibly also it is particularly a woman’s task, as her ruling prin-
ciple is Relatedness. Only she will not achieve it without the mascu-
line principle of Logos, otherwise it would be merely personal and bio-
logical. We have the example of how it should be again in the Church:
the Church is the spiritual mother, the spiritual womb, but based on
and expressed by ideas.
The Self is a paradoxical symbol, as all real symbols are. It is totality
and oneness, yet man can only perceive it as duality. Somewhat like
the Chinese, that is Taoistic symbol of the Taigitu, it represents un-
manifested wholeness, but in actuality there is always either Yang or
Yin actually manifested.
I will return the pictures and photos either by Mrs. Allenby or by
Dr. Pye. If you come in October, don’t make it too early because I will
probably be away until towards the end of the month.
I hope all goes well with you. I will soon hear details from Mrs.
Allenby.
Affectionately, Toni Wolff.

46
 July 16th
Dear Mrs. Champernowne,
Thank you for your letters of June Sth and 17th, and for the enclo-
sure, April 30th. Meanwhile Dr. Pye has returned to England and
taken your pictures with her. She probably got them to Withymead
somehow. I am so sorry the frame was smashed.
I am glad you found some material in Dr. Harding’s Woman’s Mys-
teries. The triune aspect of Hecate was originally not due to the moon,
but because she had been a great goddess, master of the three worlds,
Heaven, Earth and Underworld. But the moon was often or mostly
seen under three aspects: the bright moon, the dark moon and the half
moon. The festival calendar was accordingly timed.
As for the symbolism of the wheel, you should also look up Hindoo
symbolism. The wheel (chakra) plays a great role there. I suppose you
will find it best in Zimmer’s books (English Edition by Bollingen
Press, New York): Maya, Philosophies of India, Myths and Symbols in
Indian Art and Civilization. All edited by Joseph Campbell.
All good wishes,
Affectionately yours, Toni Wolff
P.S. We have in Switzerland a number of localities with three moun-
tains, three saints etc. said to derive from three Celtic Goddesses who
were three in one. The three are many: The Norns, the Parces etc.
always referring to Time. In Buddhism the wheel is on the one hand
the cycle of everlasting rebirth, but also the wheel of the true teaching
and knowledge, by which rebirth is overcome.

Although I cannot yet understand all I have written of this experi-

ence nor fully understand the experience itself, the following quota-
tion from Introduction to a Science of Mythology by Jung and Kerényi
describes it in some measure: ‘‘Constellations of three goddesses are
to be found everywhere in Greece, becoming quaternities only by as-
sociation with a male god. The great goddess to be described in our
study of the Divine Maiden is threefold in relation to Zeus: mother
(Rhea), wife (Demeter), daughter (Persephone). An exact counter-
part to this is formed by the masculine Holy Trinity of Christianity,
which, mutatis mutandis, stands in the same relation to the Virgin
Mary.”’”}

POp ct. ps2)

47
 I had arranged to go to Zurich to see Toni Wolff in May 1953, but
in March I suddenly decided I must go immediately. I felt I must see
her, with a great urgency. I could not wait.
On Wednesday, March 17, 1953 I flew over to Zurich and on ar-
riving at the Sonne I phoned Miss Wolff. She was out (at Kusnacht,
with Dr. Jung). I phoned later and she replied.
She seemed surprised and said “Somehow I thought it was next
week you were coming. But never mind, I can see you.”
I was much’ relieved to hear this and we arranged 3 o'clock on
Thursday. I had a peaceful morning at the Sonne Hotel and duly ar-
rived at 3 o'clock on the Thursday. She was in her usual form, perhaps
a little quieter and more withdrawn than sometimes, but there was
nothing which gave me cause to ponder.
We discussed a rather threatening dream I had had and she was as
usual alert and wise. I felt one dream I had had of Peter Baynes dying
and its effect on me was very arresting to her. She kept on referring to
it and seemed somewhat concerned. We arranged I should spend the
afternoon with her, 2 o’clock to 4 o’clock, on Friday. I went, and
intended to use the time discussing my outer world, my own life,
people, work and the connection with London, lectures and the big-
ger problems of psychotherapy generally. It was about 2:15 or 2:20
p-m. I could not go on talking. Toni had moved her chair about,
leant forward, moved her feet and legs from one place to another. I
could see she was in pain.
Finally, in spite of her detached and reserved attitude, I said,
“Miss Wolff, dear, you are in pain. Are you not well?”
She rose and merely said, “‘I shall fetch something to take, a pill.”
She stumbled and I supported her under her left arm (I was on her
left side).
At this point she said, as if speaking to herself, “You supported
me, you supported me, under my arm. In the dream-vision,” she ad-
ded, as if to evoke a response from me. “Don’t you remember?”
“Yes,” I said, “Of course I remember.”
It was a strange unearthly moment. I knew something was hap-
pening ofa deep nature. She did not accept my support easily. In her
characteristic manner, she tried to be independent. At the door I left
her, and in a moment or two she returned and was swallowing a pill.
She sat down again and I tried to continue as she obviously wanted us
to carry onas if nothing had happened. But it was not long before she
rose and stumbled, wanting to vomit. Again I jumped up and sup-

48
ported her under her left arm out through the door down the passage,
through her bedroom to her bathroom. She was terribly sick and I
remained holding her until the little maid Lene came and brought
her some water. I returned to the library and waited. I felt ill at ease
and paced about.
Just before the sickness overcame her again, as she rose the second
time, she had said to me “I wonder if it has anything to do with your
material.”
I said, “How, Frl. Wolff?”
She replied, “Well: that dream of Peter is rather a threatening one.
I don’t know, of course, but I just wonder.”
Naturally this concerned me much and I was thinking about it
when she returned. She settled herself on the sofa, hardly suffering
me to prop her up with pillows. But I paid no heed to her Toni-ish
independent rejection of my care and she accepted it. She was ill. The
perspiration stood out on her forehead. As yet I had not consciously
understood what was to come. After the vomiting I had hopefully
thought of it as a bilious attack, though when she had risen to go out
the second time, she was so grey that I felt a very real fear for her.
As she lay on the sofa, her colour slightly returned and she looked a
little better.
She said to me, “Now let us talk of the real problem, what is it?”
I replied, “A terrible sense of loneliness in my work. I feel I stand
alone in face of great odds and mighty problems.”
She talked to me for quite a little while about Gilbert, his aging;
and about my position as woman in the work, about my personal life
with the more mature man, Gilbert, about my friends and my young
colleagues. Then we had tea, but it was a mere formality. She did not
drink much and I felt it to be just a helpful ritual to share. I had once
or twice suggested I should go and leave her, but she made it quite
clear she did not want me to do so. I asked her if she had read the
description of my pictures which I had brought her with the photo-
graphs. I had given her the completed manuscript. She said “No.” So
I was all the more amazed at her remembering the first visionary pic-
ture of my supporting her.
She said to me suddenly, “Of course, it may have a simple cause,”
meaning her sickness, “One of four: (a) it might be the injection I
had from the doctor yesterday.” She explained that she had had two,
one for her arthritic condition and one for something else, she didn’t
say what. “Or (b) I may have eaten something that disagreed with

49
me, or (c) well, the doctor says my heart and liver are affected by my
heavy smoking, or (d) it is just possible this work with you may have
touched me somewhere. But you mustn’t take that personally. It is
not to do with you personally. There is something perhaps in it which
means something for me. I do not know.”
I left her at 4 o'clock, begging her not to get up and see me off
which is what she intended doing. She did not rise from the sofa. I
said I would ring in the morning to see how she was, and to know
whether I should come at 4 o'clock on the Saturday as arranged.
On the way to the station I went into a florist and sent her up a
bowl of growing flowers, yellow and red with maidenhair fern. I sat
down to write a card for it and I drew out a black-edged one by mis-
take. I replaced it instantly; but it was to me another sign. I wrote on
another card how sorry I was she was not well and that I so hoped she
would soon feel well again, and I thanked her for accepting me into
her confidence.
I went back to the Hotel Sonne and felt very disturbed. I did not
speak of it until after dinner. I was with Elizabeth Welch and was
unable to contact her, I was so abstracted. So at 8:00 after dinner I
told her. At 8:30 p.m. I went down to the telephone and rang Lene to
know how Miss Wolff was. She said, ‘“‘A little better.”” Miss Wolff
had seen the doctor (she had been to him after I left, gone herself, not
sent for him). Miss Wolff herself came to the phone, thanked me
warmly for the flowers and for ringing up. She could not have been
more forthcoming and sweet, conveying genuine, warm apprecia-
tion. She then said she had read the writing and started to explain
about it. It was difficult to hear her and I begged her not to stand at
the phone. “Tomorrow I shall hear what you think. That is time
enough.” But she continued. We were then cut off. I did not know
what to do but, fearing she might wait, I re-connected and she was
still there. She was eager to tell me about the fourth, the complete-
ness, not only the three, the triad, and added “‘It is impersonal, all
impersonal.” And then added, “It is a diamond, a hexagram,” or
some such remark. It is difficult to recall this as Iwas so concerned for
her to go to bed. I wished her a very good night and I said I would
ring in the morning.
She said in a rather decided voice, “No! please, after lunch, not the
morning.”
She went into her bedroom and shut the door and she died that
night, alone and dignified as she had lived. God rest her soul.

50
 At the time of Toni Wolff’s death I was staying in Kusnacht on the
lake a few hundred yards from Jung’s home. No one else in Zurich or
Kusnacht had any warning of her rapidly approaching death. It is
strange that I in England quite unconsciously must have intuited it
and my sudden irrational urge to put forward my May visit to March
was connected with this inner “knowledge.”?? I had found it difficult
to explain to Gilbert but in his wonderful accepting way he had put
no barrier in my path.
On the Saturday morning I rang up Toni’s flat to ask the little maid
Lene how Miss Wolff was.
She was weeping, ““Frl. Wolff ist gestorben,” she replied.
Elizabeth Welch, one of the women who contributed a great deal
to the translating of Jung’s lectures and who lived in the Sonne, was
the first person I told, and we went round at once to Barbara Hannah
who lived near. The fact Toni Wolff had said ‘‘I wonder if it’’ (mean-
ing her sickness) “has anything to do with your material,” naturally
worried me. Although she had told me not to take that personally I
could not help but wonder and I decided to ask Dr. Jung straight
away if I could go to see him. I rang him and he invited me to go that
very afternoon.
So Barbara Hannah and I went straight to Toni’s flat that morning
to pay our homage. I also wanted to recover my manuscript and pic-
tures to take to Dr. Jung so that we could discuss the connection, if
any, of my material with Toni and her death. He was obviously
shocked himself by the sudden death of a student and colleague who
had been as close to him as Toni had been over so many years. That

?2Gerhard Adler also intuited this approaching death and describes his need to
complete a piece of his analysis with Toni Wolff which began on March 2 and ended
on the very day of her death, March 20, 1953:
On Friday, March 20, during my regular hour with Toni, I told her I felt that all
the splintered bits of my psyche seemed to have come together, that conscious
and unconscious, female and male, aspects seemed in a true coniunctio. It was one
of those rare hours when everything seemed “in Tao.” Toni was so near and warm
and human, with a charming smile. We laughed a lot during this hour. Our rela-
tionship seemed closer than ever. When I left, Toni offered to see me on the fol-
lowing day, Saturday morning, but I felt that she needed the weekend and te-
fused, fixing the next hour for Monday, the 23rd. I went home full of the radiance
of that hour and with a profound sense of peace.
“Reflections on Chance and Fate,” The Shaman From Elko, C. G. Jung Institute of San
Francisco, 1978, p. 96.

Dil
afternoon we sat in the garden of his house by the lake.
Dr. Jung did not feel there was anything sinister or threatening in
my material. Later he saw in the first picture painted two years before
what I also realized, that it foretold her death. Jung also felt that I too
had been near to the realm of death at that time for it was also my
vision and had a subjective content.
Mrs. Jung joined us and we had tea and for part of the time the
three of us talked together. It was comforting to sit at tea in Jung’s
lakeside garden with him and Mrs. Jung. With him I could fully
unburden myself about the whole matter. I discussed the suddenness
of my appearance in Zurich and the last hours spent with Toni, in fact
the whole relationship, and my work with her over the years. Of
course Jung already knew a great deal about this for I had seen him
very frequently as well, although I had not shown him the full mate-
rial till now. Mrs. Jung emphasized the fact, as she had already done
in her letter to me, that there was something important to do with
woman in general in these visionary pictures, and that Toni had un-
derstood a good deal of it, as her letters showed. Toni had not been
well of late and somehow my psychological work, with which she had
been very involved, had touched her life. I was like a daughter, carry-
ing on the work, but first I had to support her to her journey’s end.
The picture of my first vision Jung used as a frontispiece for Flying
Saucers, This is what he writes about it:

Dream 5
This dream comes from a woman with an academic education. It
was dreamt several years ago without reference to UFOs [unidentified
flying objects]: . . . After this extremely impressive dream the
dreamer immediately seized a paint brush in order to fix the vision, as
shown in PI. I. The dream describes a typical UFO phenomenon which
contains the motif of “manning,” i.e., the presence of human beings.
It obviously represents a borderline situation, as the expression ‘‘on
the edge of the world” shows. Out beyond is cosmic space with its
planets and suns; or the beyond may be the land of the dead or the
unconscious. The first possibility suggests a space-ship, the technical
achievement of more highly developed planetary beings; the second,
angels of some kind or departed spirits, who come to earth in order to
fetch a soul. This would refer to [Toni Wolff], who was already in need
of “‘support’’ as she was ill. Her health really did give grounds for anx-
iety, and in fact she died about two years after the dream. Accordingly
the dreamer took it as a premonition [though not until after Toni
Wolff's death]. The third possibility, that the beyond is the uncon-

De
 scious, points to a personification of the latter, namely the animus in
his characteristic plurality; the festive white robes of the crew suggest
the idea ofa marital union of opposites. This symbolism, as we know,
also applies to death as a final realization of wholeness. The dreamer’s
view that the dream gave warning of the death of her friend may there-
fore be right. . .?3
In a borderline situation such as our dream depicts, we may expect
something extraordinary, or rather, what seems extraordinary to us,
though in reality it has always been inherent in such situations: The
ship of death approaches with a corona of departed spirits, the de-
ceased joins their company, and the multitudinous dead take the soul
with them.
When archetypal ideas of this kind appear they invariably signify
something unusual. It is not our interpretation that is far-fetched; it is
merely that the dreamer’s attention, caught by many superficial as-
pects of the dream, has missed the main point, namely the nearness of
death, which in a sense concerns her as much as her friend.”#

With all respect to Jung, I had felt the death pull and threat in the
dream-vision but I had no understanding at that time as to what it
might mean. Only slowly did I come to it. Nevertheless the full
meaning of the whole series still eludes me. That it has to do with
woman, mother-daughter, teacher-pupil, the present and the future,
and the stamp of archetypal power or mana in the individual life is
pretty clear. Toni, the only one who had followed with me and who
read the document the night before she died, was not able to com-
ment. She only said on the phone, “Your material is impersonal, it is a
hexagram and we will discuss it tomorrow.” She died a few hours
later. There is something in the material also which suggests another
kind of relationship of the male to the female backed by the trinity of
man and the trinity of woman respectively. Even if it is not under-
stood, it did some of its work at least in me on my life’s journey,
especially the part travelled with Toni Wolff.

23CW 10, pars. 697-8.

24Tbid., pars. 702-3.

56)
 It is now twenty years since I experienced and wrote up the mate-
rial I have used here. Of course I have not been in close touch with it
all the time. I have re-read it once or twice and thought a very great
deal about woman’s experience of life in relation to it. It all seems
such a far cry from the simple religious life of my ancestors.
But it was a deep religious experience to me and had a very impor-
tant connection with my own Christian experience which is still valid
for me. As a woman I feel that Christianity, though liberating
woman in many ways from a certain bondage to a place of honour “in
Christ,” was still under the sign of man. There was no blame in this.
Woman could only find her place slowly, and religious ideas had of
course much to do with the experience. The masculine Christian
Trinity had replaced the earth cults of the mother world and for
nearly two thousand years Our Lady Virgin, the mother of God, was
the only representative for woman and at that only for Catholics.
My experience was, however, only the confirmation of what artists
have represented on canvas for very many years. In one of the illus-
trated manuscripts of the Duc du Berry, the Holy Trinity, God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, sit together in a row as
three figures, clothed in white; and Mary the Virgin Mother is
fetched up from earth by Christ and allowed to sit on a little green
cushion on the side, a little lower down, not yet equal to the majestic
Trinity, but with them, almost if not quite, in the Godhead.
Some women brought up Christians (and who do not reject Chris-
tianity) are driven today to explore the unconscious, and discover that
they touch pre-Christian depths during this journey. After all 2,000
years is a very short time. We are much older than the Christian layer
of our lives, in its specific manifestation. This in no way denies for me
the Christian truths, rather does it give me the experience inwardly of
Christ’s actual coming to the pagan world. Because of my pagan ex-
perience, I realize in my being what happened 2,000 years ago, for it
was recapitulated in myself. The simple, childlike, religious musical
Godspell also presented for me a completely modern portrayal of John
the Baptist breaking into a “pagan” group, to introduce a little
clown, Jesus; it enabled one to relive the coming of Christ in the
heart. I had experienced something basic which remains the same
whatever garment it clothes itself in.
Doubting as I am, I have attempted to present and even try to ex-
plain something of this great experience. But as Jung says in Psychol-
ogy and Alchemy, “\ for my part prefer the precious gift of doubt, for

54
the reason that it does not violate the virginity of things beyond our
ken.”?5
At the time of the experience related in this memoir I had not read
Psychology and Alchemy. Although it was already published in Ger-
many much earlier, it was not then translated, and my German was
not good enough for me to wrestle with what then seemed a remote
and very difficult subject. But this book, which I have read with
enormous interest, seems to bring a certain belated enlightenment to
my thoughts on “the flesh made Word.” As Jung says:
Without the experience of the opposites there is no experience of
wholeness and hence no inner approach to the sacred figures.”®
Light wars against night, and the upper against the lower. The two are
not one, as they are in the psychic archetype.?”
The historical shift in the world’s consciousness toward the mascu-
line is compensated at first by the chthonic femininity of the uncon-
scious. In certain pre-Christian religions the differentiation of the
masculine principle had taken the form of the father-son specification,
a change which was to be of the utmost importance for Christianity.
Were the unconscious merely complementary, this shift of conscious-
ness would have been accompanied by the production of a mother and
daughter, for which the necessary material lay ready to hand in the
myth of Demeter and Persephone. 7°

Now this seems to me to bear some relation to my material, for it

was certainly a mother-daughter that was constellated. So although
this work of Jung’s on alchemy began to throw some light on my own
experience with Toni Wolff, yet it did not seem, as far as I understand
it, to be parallel entirely with the alchemists’ experience.
The alchemists were really secretly and unconsciously working ina
kind of opposition to the Church although they called themselves
Christian. They, like modern man, preferred immediate personal ex-
perience of “the eternal roots.” They found themselves “in the
wilderness where like Jesus they came up against the son of dark-
ness,” for “The problem of opposites called up by the shadow plays a
great—indeed, the decisive—role in alchemy, since it leads in the

2GW-l2. pat..3:
6Tbid., par. 24.
27Ibid., par. 25.
8Tbid., par. 26.

55
ultimate phase of the work to the union of opposites. . . .”?® And of
course this includes the confrontation of the male and the female.
The final diagram, which seemed to me to meet the experiences
described in my material, I repeat here:

t Christian Trinity

2 Virgin

2 Son

Po
Chthonic Trinity

As I write I wonder if Iought even to try to explain anything or, as

I quoted at the beginning from Jung and Kerényi, “The mystery is
kept silent.”’ Yet perhaps this attempt is my woman’s way of coming
to terms with my masculine spirit. To experience as a woman and to
know and question the experience in masculine terms is itself a bring-
ing together of the opposites. Thus I am allowing my struggle to ex-
plain to stand. If it means nothing to you, pass it by. It was an im-
mense happening in my life without which I could tell nothing about
my inner experience of “woman.” And we need to experience woman
fully if we are fully to experience man. The future marriage of the
opposites is not only in our own lives but in the world.

8Tbid., par. 43.

56
25