Reference Jung, C. G. (1969) 2nd Ed. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious , The collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9i. Bollingen Series XX, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N. J.
First edition 1959

§4 “The contents of the personal unconscious are chiefly the feeling-toned complexes as they are called; they constitute the personal and private side of psychic life. The contents of the collective unconscious, on the other hand, are known as archetypes.”

§5 “The term “représentations collectives,” used by Lévy-Bruhl to denote the symbolic figures in the primitive view of the world, could easily be applied to unconscious contents as well, ….Primitive tribal lore is concerned with archetypes that have been modified in a special way. They are no longer contents of the unconscious, but have already been changed in to conscious formulae taught according to tradition, generally in the form of esoteric teaching. This last is a typical means of expression for the transmission of collective contents originally derived from the unconscious.” (Emphasis mine). Jung elaborates further on regarding the origins of the content. However, in the matter of the 'transmission' I find it useful to understand the rôle of ritual and how it - without the individual knowing in most cases - brings or gives expression to unconscious content, necessarily so I think is crucial too. As we have lost ritual and tradition in many ways with our modern culture, we have neglected or taken away a platform for our unconscious and not replaced it with anything.

§6 “The archetype is essentially an unconscious content that is altered by becoming conscious and by being perceived, and it takes its colour from the individual consciousness in which it happens to appear.⁹“
⁹_{One must, for the sake of accuracy, distinguish between “archetype” and “archetypal ideas.” The archetype as such is a hypothetical and irrepresentable model, something like the “pattern of behaviour” in biology. Cf ”On the nature of the Psyche,” sec. 7.}
This will make life tricky as the material is mixed between 'archetypal' and personal in expression. Cf. para 28, Aion CW9ii …although this has more to do with projection.

§7 “All the mythologized processes of nature, such as summer and winter, the phases of the moon, the rainy seasons, and so forth, are in no sense allegories¹⁰ of these objective occurrences; rather they are symbolic expressions of the inner, unconscious drama of the psyche which becomes accessible to man's consciousness by way of projection - that is, mirrored in the events of nature.” (emphasis mine) This is very instructive. The unconscious drama finds voice in the expression of mythologising about nature. So Jung is saying here the psychic drama came first. The 'convenience' - if I can call it that - of finding expression, mirrored even, in nature is interesting to me. It really is - in this view then - 'as above, so below' etc. It is remarkable how the unconscious then has sought expression, or rather, how we as humans have given it expression. We are a reflection of nature then in some ways…as the reciprocal must in some way be true too; our psychic drama plays out as in nature?
A reflection now on astrology: “And yet anyone who can calculate a horoscope should know that, since the days of Hipparchus of Alexandria, the spring-point (Vernal equinox) has been fixed at 0° Aries, and that the zodiac on which every horoscope is based is therefore quite arbitrary, the spring-point having gradually advanced, since then, into t he first degrees of Pisces, owing to the precession of the equinoxes.”
¹⁰_{An allegory is a paraphrase of a conscious content, whereas a symbol is the best possible expression for an unconscious content whose nature can only be guessed, because it is still unknown.}

This is a full paragraph quote, but worth it I think as it says so much:
§8 “Primitive man impresses us so strongly with his subjectivity that we should really have guessed long ago that myths refer to something psychic. His knowledge of nature is essentially the language and outer dress of an unconscious psychic process. But the very fact that this process is unconscious gives us the reason why man has thought of everything except the psyche in his attempts to explain myths. He simply didn't know that the psyche contains all the images that have ever given rise to myths, and that our unconscious is an acting and suffering subject with an inner drama which primitive man rediscovers, by means of analogy, in the processes of nature both great and small.¹¹“
¹¹_{Cf. my papers on the divine child and the Kore in the present volume, and Kerenyi's complementary essays in Essays on [or Introduction to] a Science of Mythology.}

Σ §11 “Why have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious formula for everything psychic - and one that is far more beautiful and comprehensive than immediate experience. … Naturally, the more familiar we are with them the more does constant usage polish them smooth, so that what remains is only banal superficiality and meaningless paradox. …” Definitely worth reading further here …this whole paragraph. “That people should succumb to these eternal images is entirely normal, in fact it is what these images are for. They are meant to attract, to convince, to fascinate, and to overpower. … That is why they always give man a premonition of the divine while at the same time safeguarding him from immediate experience of it. Thanks to the labours of the human spirit over the centuries, these images have become embedded in a comprehensive system of thought that ascribes an order to the world, and are at the same time represented by a mighty, far-spread, and venerable institution called the Church.”

Homoousia : a person who held that God the Father and God the Son are of the same substance.

§12ff Jung goes into some detail now about Brother Nicholoas of Flüe and his Trinity vision, as an example of the religious explanation of unconscious contents. Paragraph 17 has a 'conclusion' statement: “Brother Klaus came to terms with his experience on the basis of dogma, then firm as a rock; and the dogma proved its powers of assimilation by turning something horribly alive (The vision of Christ) into the beautiful abstraction of the Trinity idea.” …continue to para. 18

St Nicholas is an interesting character. Jung mentions in paragraph 15 that Nicholas had visions of 'Christ in the bearskin' …which makes me think of the bearskin fairytale. Some online reading came up with some interesting points where both Jung and Von Franz seem to come back to Brother Nicholas and his visions at various points.

From http://oldsojur.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/bears.html :

Popularizations of the life of Nicholas of Flue conflate his influence on contemporary events with his mysticism. Through his hermit life, Nicholas experienced visions, vividly recalled. When still with his family and considering an eremitic life, Nicholas had dreamed of a horse consuming a lily, which he took to mean that the cares of the world (represented by the draft-horse) were consuming the spiritual life (represented by the lily). A significant dream justified his eremitic life, wherein he sees a pilgrim approaching him, who is transformed into Christ but also Wotan, and into a berserker, a wildman in appearance, like a bear, frightening in aspect. C. G. Jung interpreted the dream carefully and explicitly:
The meaning of the vision could be this. Brother Klaus recognizes himself in his spiritual pilgrimhood and in his instinctive (bearlike, i.e., hermitlike) subhumanness as Christ. … The brutal coldness of feeling that the saint requires to separate himself from woman and child, and friendship is found in the subhuman animal kingdom. Thus the saint casts an animal shadow. He who was capable of bearing in the highest and the lowest to get this is hollowed, holy, whole. The vision is telling him that the spiritual pilgrim and the berserker are both Christ, and this paves the way in him for forgiveness of the greatest sin, which is sainthood.
To be a saint, in the eyes of Nicholas and the world, was a “sin” in that it required a turning away from filial affection, from family duty, from love of his spouse to whom he was jointed in sacramental union and therefore obliged to care for. But sainthood calls for removing all of this human accretion, nd so he has taken this dangerous psychological step. The dream reassures him.
As Von Franz explains, the vision of Brother Klaus “unites irreconcilable opposites, that is, subhuman savagery and Christian spirituality.” By entering this figure of berserker into his life and psychology, Klaus is capable of reconciling his personal conflicts (and be able to advise anyone else). The eremitic life means reconciling the impulses and instincts of aggression, anger, lust, and pride with the spiritual values of renunciation, disengagement, humility, and non-possession. The Christ-figure has never completely engaged those in the world, never been fully understood as anything but pain nd suffering. Von Franz suggests that only the counterpart berserker figure can provoke the psychic energies that could reconcile the terrible cost of sainthood, could integrate our personal shadow, not the collective shadow of the Self, the dark side of the Godhead. Yet if we suffer the problem of the opposites to the utmost and accept it into ourselves, we can sometimes become a place in which the divine opposites can spontaneously come together. This is quite clearly what happened to Brother Klaus.
The bear-skinned pilgrim who is the berserker is also the bear who has attained the honey of love and compassion, who can advise and sympathize with others while retaining his distance. On the personal scale, this attainment allowed Nicholas to feel reconciled to his absence of family life. At the same time opening himself to visitors from many nations and classes. The mature hermit can function like a therapist, as has been seen in hermits throughout history, East and West. Jung went so far as to suggest that Brother Klaus should be the patron saint of psychotherapy.
This famous vision exemplifies Jung's comment that Brother Klaus' dreams and visions are largely unadulterated by formal learning other than rudimentary catechetical knowledge of the time. The dreams and visions clearly represent universal archetypes. Thus the famous wheel image found on the cell wall of Brother Klaus' hermitage in his last year of life, and reportedly described by him as “my book in which I learn and seek the art of its teaching.”
But the image was a remnant of a dream he experienced 10 years before his death, the vision of an angry and terrible God, with six images representing six episodes in the life of Christ – as well as six religious virtues enjoined by the mollifying words of Jesus – again reconciling the psychological opposites represented in Christianity.
Conclusion
As Von Franz notes, ” compared to such holy sages as Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu, Brother Klaus as a solitary hermit is a humbler figure.” The identification of eremitic solitude as a vocation not only exempted him in the eyes of his Swiss compatriots as a gifted person, but gave Brother Klaus the psychological space to grow as a hermit reconciling the opposing needs of spirituality and sociability, of mystical vision and contribution to others. His abandonment of the world was an abandonment of its false values, but not of his fellow human beings in their simple yearnings.

§18 “This example demonstrates the use of the dogmatic symbol: it formulates a tremendous and dangerously decisive psychic experience, fittingly called an “experience of the Divine,” in a way that is tolerable to our human understanding, without either limiting the scope of the experience or doing damage to its overwhelming significance.” The religious attitude and dogma provide an infrastructure and framework on which we can build and handle, hold unconscious content. What though, if we don't 'bother' ourselves with thinking of the unconscious, why do we need the dogma or religious infrastructure? …the unconscious will come through if we are not in tune with ourselves, and then we'll have nothing with which to handle what it throws at us. Cf. para. 335 & 339ff from CW 5 :

§21 “Dogma takes the place of the collective unconscious by formulating its contents on a grand scale. The Catholic way of life is completely unaware of psychological problems in this sense. (Because they deal with everything in their dogma, and explain it through their rituals and ceremonies.) …”

§22 Definitely worth a read … “The iconoclasm of the Reformation, however, quite literally made a breach in the protective wall of sacred images … Besides, people had long since forgotten what they meant. Or had they really forgotten” Could it be that men had never really known what they meant …the Virgin Birth, the divinity of Christ, … the Trinity? …“

Σ §23 “The Protestant is cast out into a state of defencelessness that might well make the natural man shudder. His enlightened consciousness, of course, refuses to take cognizance of this fact, and is quietly looking elsewhere for what has been lost to Europe. We seek the effective images, the thought-forms that satisfy the restlessness of heart and mind, and we find the treasures of the East.”
§25 ”… Christianity …fits in with the existing archetypal pattern.“

Ω §66 “Human interpretation fails, for a turbulent life-situation has arisen that refuses to fit any of the traditional meanings assigned to it. It is a moment of collapse. We sink into a final depth - Apuleius calls it “a kind of voluntary death.” It is a surrender of our own powers, not artificially willed but forced upon us by nature; not a voluntary submission and humiliation decked in moral garb but an utter and unmistakable defeat crowned with the panic fear of demoralization. Only when all props and crutches are broken, and no cover from the rear offers even the slightest hope of security, does it become possible for us to experience an archetype that up till then had lain hidden behind the meaningful nonsense played out by the anima. This is the archetype of meaning, just as the anima is the archetype of life itself.”

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§219 “Indeed, any case where the recognition of a greater personality seems to burst an iron ring round the heart must be included in this category.¹³”

Ω §249 “The intuition of immortality which makes itself felt during the transformation is connected with the peculiar nature of the unconscious. It is, in a sense, non-spacial and non-temporal.”

§240 “By this is meant the moment when consciousness sinks back into the darkness from which it originally emerged, like Khidr's island, the moment of death.”

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§290-291 Very interesting couple of paragraphs…they need to sink in :)

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§384 ”…there is an Archimedean point outside. For the psyche, no such outside standpoint exists - only the psyche can observe the psyche. Consequently, knowledge of the psychic substance is impossible for us, at least with the means at present available.“

Jung goes on here to talk of the substance of the psychological statement and its content. The substance being questionable only from a scientific point of view which is excluded in part within psychology as the Archimedean point does not exists and the measuring instrument is also that which is being measured, i.e. the psyche. The content however, and the phenomenological aspects are certainly available for psychological revision.

§385 RE Hylozoism, Cf. Paracelsus talking about cures and plants… herbarium spirituale sidereum

§386 “A very widespread view conceives spirit as a higher and psyche as a lower principle of activity, and conversely the alchemists thought of spirit as the ligamentum animae et corporis, (The ligament between body = corporis and soul = animae) obviously regarding it as a spiritus vegetativus (the later life spirit or nerve-spirit).”

§387 “From time immemorial emotion has been regarded as possession, which is why we still say today, of a hot-tempered person, that he is possessed of a devil or that an evil spirit has entered into him.^3
3_{See my ”Spirit and Life” (In CW8 )}

Jung spends some time in these paragraphs going through the 'score or so of meanings and shades of meaning attributable to the word “spirit”. …and then…
§388 “We are concerned with a functional complex which originally, on the primitive level, was felt as an invisible, breath like “presence.” …The souls or spirits of the dead are identical with the psychic activity of the living; they merely continue it. …When therefore something psychic happens in the individual which he feels as belonging to himself, that something is his own spirit. But if anything psychic happens which seems to him strange, then it is somebody else's spirit, and it may be causing a possession. The spirit in the first case corresponds to the subjective attitude, in the latter case …the unconscious .”

As Jung evolves his argument here he makes distinction between the Christian postulate of the spirit and that of the 'spirit of Nature'. The discussion seems a little contrived and quite subtle but no less valid in the formulation.
§389 “To put it in modern language, spirit is the dynamic principle, forming for that very reason the classical antithesis of matter - the antitheses, that is, of its stasis and inertia. Basically it is the contrast between life and death. The subsequent differentiation of this contrast leads to the actually very remarkable opposition of spirit and nature.(←- this part being the 'leap' if you will in the argument, although I guess, not entirely wrong.) …We must therefore be dealing here with the (Christian) postulate of a spirit whose life is so vastly superior to the life of nature that in comparison with it the latter is no better than death.” It is interesting here how Jung goes on to develop the idea of the 'natural life-spirit' being superimposed by a 'transcendent spirit' that rises up within us and has become the 'supranatural and transmundane cosmic principle of order' given the name of “God”. So we have imposed upon the life spirit our view of what spirit is in the principle of God and thus not taken into account the full nature if you like, or full extent of spirit in the 'natural life-spirit' sense…leading no doubt to the spirit of nature, the lumen naturae even.

In §391 Jung presents the hylozoistic direction of development of the 'spirit'. It is very interesting, notably he concludes saying that the quality of spirit not associated with matter also needed explanation and thus was given by the materialists the quality of soul . As he says…
§390 “Somewhere or other the deus ex machina quality of spirit had to be preserved - if not in the spirit itself, then in its synonym the soul, that glancing, Aeolian thing, elusive as a butterfly (anima).” The paragraph continues to discuss spirit and matter. Jung mentions here the idea of the 'subtle body'.

Σ §393 “The hallmarks of spirit are,
1) firstly, the principle of spontaneous movement and activity;
2) secondly, the spontaneous capcity to produce images independently of sense perception;
3) and thirdly, the autonomous and sovereign manipulation of these images.
This spiritual entity approaches primitive man from outside; but with increasing development (Development of consciousness?) it gets lodged in man's consciousness and becomes a subordinate function, thus apparently forfeiting its original character of autonomy. That character is now retained only in the most conservative views, namely in the religions. …This process, continuing over the ages, is probably an unavoidable necessity, …Their (The religions) task, if they are well advised, is not to impede the ineluctable march of events, but to guide it in such a way that it can proceed without fatal injury to the soul. The religions should therefore constantly recall to us the origin and original character of the spirit, lest man should forget what he is drawing into himself and with what he is filling his consciousness.
The danger becomes all the greater the more our interest fastens upon external objects and the more we forget that the differentiation of our relation to nature should go hand in hand with a correspondingly differentiated relation to the spirit, so as to establish the necessary balance. If the outer object is not offset by an inner, unbridled materialism results, coupled with the maniacal arrogance or else the extinction of autonomous personality, which is in any case the ideal of the totalitarian mass state.”

§396 “The psychic manifestations of the spirit indicate at once that they are of an archetypal nature - in other words, the phenomenon (I like that he says phenomenon here, we experience the spirit) we call spirit depends on the existence of an autonomous primordial image which is universally present in the preconscious makeup of the human psyche.” Bold!
“It struck me that a certain kind of father complex has a “spiritual” character, so to speak, in the sense that the father-image gives rise to statements, actions, tendencies, impulses, opinions, etc., to which one could hardly deny the attribute “spiritual.” … In dreams, it is always the father-figure from whom the decisive convictions, prohibitions, and wise counsels emanate. The invisibility of this source is frequently emphasized by the fact that it consists simply of an authoritative voice which passes final judgments.⁷ Mostly, therefore, it is the figure of a “wise old man” who symbolizes the spiritual factor. … The dwarf forms are found, at least in my experience, mainly in woman; … In both sexes the spirit can also take the form of a boy or a youth. In woman he corresponds to the so-called “positive” animus who indicates the possibility of conscious spiritual effort. In men his meaning is not so simple. He can be positive, in which case he signifies the “higher” personality, the self or filius regius as conceived by the alchemists. But he can also be negative, and the he signifies the infantile shadow.”
⁶_{Even if one accepts the view that a self-revelation of spirit - an apparition for instance - is nothing but an hallucination. the fact remains that this is a spontaneous psychic event not subject to our control. At any rate it is an autonomous complex, and that is quite sufficient for our purpose. (Emphasis mine)}
⁷_{Cf. Psychology and Alchemy , §115}

§400 “In myths and fairytales, as in dreams, the psyche tells its own story, and the interplay of the archetypes is revealed in its natural setting as “formation, transformation / the eternal Mind's eternal recreation.””

§401 “The old man (spirit) always appears when the hero is in a hopeless and desperate situation from which only profound reflection or a lucky idea - in other words, a spiritual function or an endopsychic automatism of some kind - can extricate him.”

§402 “Indeed the old man is himself this purposeful reflection and concentration of moral and physical forces that comes about spontaneously in the psychic space outside consciousness when conscious thought is not yet - or is no longer - possible.”
Jung recounts an interesting story about “The concentration and tension of psychic forces have something about them that always looks like magic: they develop an unexpected power of endurance which is often superior to the conscious effort of will.” He goes on to present an example of putting a patient under hypnosis, and how the week bodied woman was able to out perform an athlete in strength while under hypnosis.

§404 “Often the old man in fairytales asks questions like who? why? whence? and whither?¹⁶ for the purpose of inducing self-reflection and mobilizing the moral forces, and more often still he gives the necessary magical talisman,¹⁷ the unexpected and improbable power to succeed, which is one of the peculiarities of the unified personality in good or bad alike. But the intervention of the old man - the spontaneous objectivation of the archetype - would seem to be equally indispensable, since the conscious will by itself is hardly ever capable of uniting the personality to the point where it acquires this extraordinary power to succeed.”

§405 “He also sees through the gloomy situation of the hero …can give him such information as will help him on his journey. To this end he makes ready use of animals, particularly birds.”

§406 “The old man thus represents knowledge, reflection, insight, wisdom, cleverness, and intuition on the one hand, and on the other, moral qualities such as goodwill and readiness to help, which make his “spiritual” character sufficiently plain.
Since the archetype (of the old man) is an autonomous content of the unconscious, the fairytale, which usually concretizes the archetypes, can cause the old man to appear in a dream in much the same way as happens in modern dreams.”
More here about the old man as 'King of the forest' as related to the unconscious landscape in fairytales.

§407 “There is equally a connection with the unconscious when the old man appears as a dwarf.”
There is more in this paragraph about the unconscious appearing as a little iron man, or dressed in iron. “There are indeed little ice men, and little metal men too…”

§408 “In this connection we might also mention the Anthroparion, the little leaden man of the Zosimos vision,²⁸ as well as the metallic men who dwell in the mines, the crafty dactyls of antiquity, the homunculi of the alchemists, and the gnomic throng of hobgoblins, brownies, gremlins, etc.”
“The atman is “smaller than small and bigger than big,” he is “the size of a thumb” yet he “encompasses the earth on every side and rules over the ten-finger space.””
²⁸_{Cf. “The Visions of Zosimos,” para. 87 (III, i, 2-3) (In my copy of the CW's III, i, 2-3 is in §86, not §87. However, the Brazen, then Silver man, and reference to the golden man - the Anthroparion, are made in §87. In §86 too, the Anthroparion is mentioned.)}
The ten finger space = mouth to the top of the head
Cf. CW5 where Jung is quotes an Indian Upanishad talking of Purusha:

Also, para's 179 & 180:

§409 “In certain primitive fairytales, the illuminating quality of out archetype is expressed by the fact that the old man is identified with the sun.”

§410 “Apart from his cleverness, wisdom, and insight, the old man, as we have already mentioned, is also notable for his moral qualities; what is more, he even tests the moral qualities of others and makes his gifts dependent on this test.”

§412 “The figure of the superior and helpful old man tempts one to connect him somehow or other with God. …
§413 “Just as all archetypes have a positive, favourable, bright side that points upwards, so also they have one that points downwards, partly negative and unfavourable, partly chthonic, but for the rest merely neutral. To this the spirit archetype is no exception. … It is thus possible that the old man is his own opposite, a life bringer as well as a death-dealer - “ad utrumque peritus” (skilled in both), as is said of Hermes.³⁴”

§413 “In a Balkan tale, the old man is handicapped by the loss of an eye. …The old man has therefore lost part of his eyesight - that is, his insight and enlightenment - to the daemonic world of darkness; this handicap is reminiscent of the fate of Osiris, who lost an eye at the sight of a black pig (his wicked brother Set), or again of Wotan, who sacrificed his eye at the spring of Mimir.”

§414 (following on from §412 above in some ways) “This may very well be, for everyday experience shows that it is quite possible for a superior, though subliminal, foreknowledge of fate to contrive some annoying incident for the sole purpose of bullying our Simple Simon of an ego-consciousness into the way he should go, which for sheer stupidity he would never have found by himself.”
In this way the old man spirit is both the executor and saviour on many occasion.

§417 Is interesting in discussing the 'secret inner relation of evil to good and vice versa' of the old man motif, as well as the rejuvenation and transformation characteristics of the old man. There is a common occurrence of enantiodromia in tales with the old man spirit, a meandering between the good and evil instigation of the old man. It makes me think of the tale 'The handless maiden' where the devil who deals with the miller is in fact the old man spirit working to effect change in a psyche that has developed as far as it can (consciously).

§419 “The animal form shows that the contents and functions in question are still in the extrahuman sphere, i.e., on a plane beyond human consciousness, and consequently have a share on the one hand in the daemonically superhuman and on the other in the betially subhuman. It must be remembered, however, that this division is only true within the sphere of consciousness, where it is a necessary condition of thought.”
This last bit is interesting - for then what does it mean in the unconscious arena, in dreams before it reaches conscious interpretation so to speak? See §420 below. We cannot imagine being an animal in the conscious world. The spirit is then above = very smart in the static world as the Gnostics say, but also earthly, in the dialectic world, i.e. animal. Jung goes on…
“In other words, while the abolition of an obstinate antimony can be no more than a postulate for us, this is by no means so for the unconscious, whose contents are without exception paradoxical or antinomial by nature, not excluding the category of being.”

tertium non datur = there is no third option

Σ §420 “Neither for the primitive nor for the unconscious does his animal aspect imply and devaluation, for in certain respects the animal is superior to man. It (the animal) has not yet blundered into consciousness nor pitted a self-willed ego against the power from which it lives; on the contrary, it fulfils the will that actuates it in a well-nigh perfect manner. Were it conscious, it would be morally better than man.
There is a deep doctrine in the legend of the fall: it is the expression of a dim presentiment that the emancipation of ego consciousness was a Luciferian deed.
Wisdom seeks the middle path and pays for this audacity by a dubious affinity with daemon and beast, and so is open to moral misinterpretation.”

§421 ”…the motif of helpful animals. These act like humans, speak a human language, ….. In these circumstances we can say with some justification that the archetype of the spirit is being expressed through an animal form.“

§422-§424 Here follows a retelling by Jung of the fairytale “The Princess in the Tree”, [ Deutsche Märchen seit Grimm , pp. 1ff.]. I've not been able to find this tale online, and it isn't my my book of Grimm tales. It is a very interesting tales and much of what follows now; para. 425-435 is in elucidation of this tale.

§426 “Between the three and the four there exists the primary opposition of male and female, but whereas fourness is a symbol of wholeness, threeness is not. The latter, according to alchemy, denotes polarity, since one triad always presupposes another, just as high presupposes low, lightness darkness, good evil. In terms of energy, polarity means a potential, and wherever a potential exists there is the possibility of a current, a flow of events, for the tension of opposites strives for balance.
In psychological language we should say that when the unconscious wholeness becomes manifest, i.e., leaves the unconscious and crosses over into the sphere of consciousness, one of the four remains behind, held fast by the horror vacui of the unconscious. There thus arises a triad, which as we know - not from the fairytale but from the history of symbolism - constellates a corresponding triad in opposition to it⁴¹ - in other words, a conflict ensues. here too we could ask with Socrates, “One, two, three - but, my dear Timaeus, of those who yesterday were the banqueters and today are the banquet-givers, where is the fourth?” He has remained in the realm of the dark mother, caught by the wolfish greed of the unconscious, which is unwilling to let anything escape from its magic circle save at the cost of a sacrifice.”
⁴¹ _{Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 54 and §539; and, for a more detailed account, ”The Spirit Mercurius,“ §271.}

von Franz talks of the difficulty in going from 3 to 4, from 7 to 8 in fairytales:

and…

and…

§431 “It is an empirical fact that only one function becomes more or less successfully differentiated, which on that account is known as the superior or main function, and together with extraversion or introversion constitutes the type of conscious attitude. This function has associated with it one or two partially differentiated auxiliary functions which hardly ever attain the same degree of differentiation as the main function, that is, the same degree of applicability by the will. Accordingly they possess a higher degree of spontaneity than the main function, which displays a large measure of reliability and is amenable to our intentions. The fourth, inferior function proves on the other hand to be inaccessible to our will.
Hence the three “differentiated” functions at the disposal of the ego have three corresponding unconscious components that have not yet broken loose from the unconscious.”

§433 “It is as though the unconscious had two hands of which one always does the opposite of the other.”

§447 “The immediate consequence of this is his crucifixion. In that distressing situation he needs outside help, and as it is not forth coming from above, it can only be summoned from below.”

Cf. von Franz' comments on 'the star coming from below'

§450 “Speaking in the spirit of the fairytale, which unfolds its drama from the highest point, one would have to say that the world of half-gods is anterior to the profane world and produces it out of itself, just as the world of half-gods must be thought of as proceeding from the world of gods.”

§452 “We could say, then, that the swineherd stands for the “animal” man who has a soul-mate somewhere in the upper world. By her royal birth she betrays her connection with the preexistent, semi-divine pair. Looked at from this angle, the latter stands for everything a man can become if only he climbs high enough up the world-tree.^66
66_{The great tree corresponds to the arbor philosophica of the alchemists. The meeting between an earthly human being and the anima, swimming down in the shape of a mermaid, is to be found in the so-called ”Ripley Scrowle.” Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 257.}

§454 “When we consider the spirit in its archetypal form as it appears to us in fairytales and dreams, it presents a picture that differs strangely from the conscious idea of spirit, which is split up into so many meanings. … Man conquers not only nature, but spirit also, without realizing what he is doing. …
A warning to heed…
But were the unanimous convictions of the past really and truly only exaggerations? (The primitives view of the spirit, of daemons) If they were not, then the integration of the spirit means nothing less than its demonization, since the superhuman spiritual agencies that were formerly tie.d up in nature are introjected into human nature, thus endowing it with a power which extends the bounds of the personality ad infinitum, in the most perilous way.”
He continues in the next para. …
§455 “It seems to me, frankly, that former ages did not exaggerate, that the spirit has not sloughed off its demonisms, and that man kind, because of its scientific and technological development, has in in creasing measure delivered itself over to the danger of possession. … Man's worst sin is unconsciousness, but it is indulged in with the greatest piety even by those who should serve mankind as teachers and examples.”