Aurora Consurgens
Excerpt-Marie Louise Von Franz-Alchemy
The next chapter is the fifth parable, "The Treasure House Which Wisdom Builds on the Rock." You know the famous simile in St. Matthew about the house built on sand and the one built on rock, and you also know that in Proverbs 9:1-5 there is the simile that Wisdom built her house on seven pillars, and so on, and that she invited the Israelites to eat there.
Wisdom built a house and those who enter it will be blessed and find pasture, according to the testimony of the prophet. They will be drunk from the overflow of thine house, for one day in thy courts is better than a thousand (Psalm 84:10). Blessed are they that dwell in thy house. Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. Wisdom crieth at the gates and says: Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he with me.
How great is the fullness of sweetness which thou keepest hidden for those who enter this house, a sweetness which eye hath not seen or ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man. Those who open this house will have holiness and the fullness of days, for it is built on a strong rock which shall only be split open by the blood of the he-goat, or when smitten three times by the rod of Moses when water cometh out abundantly and the congregation drink and their beasts also.
You see here that this is to solidify what is weak. The rock stands for the steadfastness of the personality, which comes from a long process of assimilating the unconscious. If one has experienced for long enough those great ups and downs which are entailed by the meeting with the unconscious, then slowly an unshakable kernel is formed. I think that even a psychological cure or development, which is the same thing, does not change the conflict or cure a problem; what is really changed is the ability to stand it better, and that is the real development.
Sometimes the outer situation may remain unchanged, or certain difficulties in character, what are called character neuroses, still remain to a certain extent. If, for instance, someone has a very passionate temperament, or a tendency to depressions, that generally continues for a long time. It will take at least twenty years to educate that out of the system; it cannot be changed at once for it is ingrained in one's nature. But the first step is to be able to stand it better, not to be dissolved by it, to be detached and have a standpoint, to know that it is one's weakness to which one does not intend to give way and that it will pass.
The first step is that one is no longer identical with one's own mad spots. For example, if a paranoic says, "I believe, but forgive me, it may not be so, that. . .," it shows he has now something of a rock beyond his paranoid system; though he has not yet got rid of his fantasy, at least he is able to say he may be imagining it. That is the beginning of the formation of solid earth; outside the conflict, something has escaped the devil.
Or if one has always been swept off one's feet by the animus or some emotion, and there begin to be periods when one becomes reasonable, even though afterwards one may fall back again into the passionate possession, those moments are the beginning of the formation of the inner rock. The small piece of solid ground on which one stands becomes stronger and stronger and slowly becomes something solid, so that more and more one feels that come what may this will probably not be destroyed again.