Carl Jung was born in 1875 and died in 1961. Please see his birth chart.
alchemical illustration of depression, the Nigredo
Jung's Letter on Depression
Dear N.,
I am sorry you are so miserable. "Depression'" means literally "being forced downwards." This can happen even when you don't consciously have any feeling at all of being "on top"! So I wouldn't dismiss this hypothesis out of hand.
If I had to live in a foreign country, I would seek out one or two people who seemed amiable and would make myself useful to them, so that libido came to me from outside, even though in a somewhat primitive form, say of a dog wagging its tail.
I would raise animals and plants and find joy in their thriving. I would surround myself with beauty - no matter how primitive and artless - objects, colours, sounds. I would eat and drink well.
When the darkness grows denser, I would penetrate to its very core and ground, and would not rest until amid the pain a light appeared to me, for in excessu affectus [in an excess of affect or passion] Nature reverses herself.
I would turn in rage against myself and with the heat of my rage I would melt my lead. I would renounce everything and engage in the lowest activities should my depression drive me to violence. I would wrestle with the dark angel until he dislocated my hip. For he is also the light and the blue sky which he withholds from me.
Anyway that is what I would do. What others would do is another question, which I cannot answer. But for you too there is an instinct either to back out of it or to go down to the depths. But no half-measures or half-heartedness.
A letter by C. G. Jung written on 9 March 1959, C.G. Jung, Letters, p. 492-493
If you are depressed, also try ...
eBook $9.95 [click cover to learn more]
And don't forget prayer. You can enter a prayer for yourself at the Unity Prayer Tower, 24 hours a day prayer. CLICK HERE.
Symbols from alchemy representing depression, the Nigredo state.
the lion swallowing the Sun, a common image for depression
Nancy R. Fenn
