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hEiDI k
Letter from Carl Gustav Jung to Echidna Stillwell.
Dated 27th February 1929. Extract.
...your attachment to a Lemurian cultural-strain disturbs me intensely. From my own
point of view - based on the three most difficult cases I have encountered and
their attendant abysmally archaic symbolism - it is no exaggeration to state that
Lemuria condenses all that is most intrinsically horrific to the racial
unconscious, and that the true Lemurians - whom you seem intent upon rediscovering
- are best left buried beneath the sea. I agree with the Theosophical writings at
least this far: it was in order that the darkest sorceries should be erased by
deluge that this continent of cultural possibility has been placed under the
unconscious sign of definitive submergence. I know little enough about the nature
of those that populated that cursed zone, but there are things I suspect, and the
line of your own researches confirms my most ominous intimations ...
There is no evidence of a reply to this letter.
Who were these three "difficult cases"?
One at least seems - at least superficially - to be readily identifiable as Heidi
Kurzweil.
In September 1908 Kurzweil was detained in a secure psychiatric institution after
the brutal murder of her twin brother in Geneva. She seemed to have lost the
ability to use the first-person pronoun, and was diagnosed as suffering from
Dementia Praecox, or schizophrenia. At her trial she repeatedly claimed: We killed
half to become one twin, but it wasn't enough ...
Jung took an early interest in the case, and began a series of analytical sessions.
Kurzweil - in Jung's journal and correspondence - became Heidi K, but after only
five weeks he seems to have abandoned hope of progress and disengaged the analytic
process. After his third session with Heidi K, exactly twenty years prior to his
Stillwell letter, on the 27th February 1909, Jung records the following words,
Herr Doktor Jung, wir wissen dass Sie in Ihrem anderen Korper sind
So alt wie die Holle Es hat Sie zuruckkommen lassen,
aber es schickt uns fort.
Es fuhlt sich Lemurian werden, und es ist bestimmt unleben.
Nichts. Nichts. Nichts.
Aber es Schicksal ist. Es heult elektrisches Gluck unter unseren Zellen.
Es ist in die Zeit nirgends und vernichet uns.
Es ist der Korper des Nichts, und elektrisch heiss.