At the end of Dies II, Jung accepts his darkness and imagines himself as a greening tree nourished by both earth and sun. Chapter VI of Liber Secundus, “Death”, follows immediately. Greening does not carry him away from mortality. It brings him into a more direct relation with decay, ending and irreversible loss. A life that genuinely grows must also admit that it will finish.
Jung travels towards northern lowlands where rivers slow across broad plains and enter the sea. On the final dune at the edge of the world he encounters a cold and solitary figure whose heart has never beaten—Death. A vast multitude of the dead then streams towards the sea while blood, fire and a dark sun mingle. Because the writing belongs to the period surrounding the First World War, the vision cannot be reduced to a private psychological allegory.
The chapter argues that life and death cannot remain permanently separated. Without death, life does not simply become more abundant. It can lose boundary, weight and the possibility of maturity. Only when a person ceases trying to possess every unlived possibility can the limited life already present regain value.
From the Sun to the North: Life Meets Its Opposite
The previous chapter is filled with desert, sunlight, fire and ascent. This one moves towards cold, low country, sea and cessation. Jung does not remain in solar exaltation. His experience immediately travels towards the opposite pole. This is a recurrent structure in The Red Book: any force made exclusive becomes another imbalance.
Death stands outside ordinary social order. It has no human warmth, ambition or biography, yet it is the limitation shared by every life. Jung approaches it not because he seeks self-destruction but because life can no longer depend upon denial of its end.
The Figure of Death: Cold, Stillness and Final Equality
Jung experiences death as ice, the silence of stones, mountain snow and the extreme frost of space. Death has no beating heart and no personal preference. Identity, wealth, reputation and social difference lose their force here.
This equality is not comforting. It is not the solidarity of common life but the cancellation of individual distinction. Jung does not sentimentalise death as a welcoming home. He first recognises its inhuman character: achievement, desire and moral worth do not persuade it to withdraw.
The Stream of the Dead and the Sea of Blood
A silent multitude flows towards the sea and disappears into mist and blood. Blood and fire gather into a red sun that descends again into darkness. The scene recalls the floods and blood that threatened Europe in Liber Primus.
This cannot be explained only as the death of an old personality. Jung formed these images as Europe entered world war. Personal inward life and collective history meet here. Political violence does not remain outside psychology; it enters dreams, fear and symbolic imagination.
Evil Behind Virtue: What Is Excluded Does Not Vanish
Jung asks whether people know what evil is and suggests that it often stands immediately behind their virtues. The more completely a group identifies itself with righteousness, the easier it becomes to place all destructiveness in an enemy and commit violence in the name of goodness.
He is not erasing the difference between virtue and crime. He is denying that a virtuous self-image removes the human capacity for destruction. The devil confined to an abyss does not disappear when people stop believing in him. He may return as collective passion, holy war, humiliation of opponents or fascination with violence.
Why Death Brings Life to Maturity
The clearest thought in the chapter is that death imposes limitation, and limitation allows fulfilment. A person who continually reaches for every unlived possibility finds no actual life sufficient. Attention remains fixed upon what else might be possessed.
Accepting death does not forbid plans. It recognises that not every possible life can become real. To choose one life is to relinquish others. Because time is limited, a meeting, meal, piece of music or work can become irreplaceable. Death does not merely cancel meaning from outside; it participates in meaning’s formation.
Jung uses ripening fruit as an image. Fruit cannot remain indefinitely unripe. To reach its form is also to approach falling. A life devoted only to extension may continue without ever achieving a clear shape.
Balance Is Not Stasis
Jung describes balance as containing both life and death. This is not a permanently fixed condition. Once an old balance has formed, preserving it may obstruct life; disturbance then becomes necessary. Life renews itself through formation and dissolution, beginning and ending.
Psychological health therefore neither excludes every thought of death nor becomes absorbed by it. It permits endings where endings belong. Relationships cease, identities change, theories fail and bodies age. Refusing these smaller deaths often prevents entry into another stage.
The Dung Heap, Chickens and Dog: Death Without Heroic Dignity
At the chapter’s end Jung does not grant himself a noble death. He imagines perishing on a dung heap while chickens continue laying eggs and a passing dog lifts its leg. The scene is coarse and comic, stripping death of a heroic stage.
It recalls the destitute stranger who died in Jung’s arms in “One of the Lowly”. Death does not guarantee public recognition of a life’s significance. Nature continues without joining human mourning. Jung must accept not only death but the possibility of an undignified death.
Yet the chickens lay eggs. Decay, excretion, reproduction and new life occupy the same place. Jung undergoes three nights of birth-like horror, after which wild laughter is heard and life begins to move again. Rebirth does not deny death; it grows from mortality and the lowest material ground.
Original Experience, Later Theory, Contemporary Interpretation
At the level of original experience, the chapter records an encounter with Death, a river of the dead, a sea of blood, a dark sun and Jung’s own base death and return. Later Jungian theory may relate these images to the union of opposites, shadow, transformation and death within individuation.
Contemporary psychology may explore how mortality awareness reorganises value, how limitation supports choice, and how denial of death becomes control, consumption or collective identity. The chapter should not, however, be reduced to the advice that accepting death makes one happier. Its war imagery, violence, bodily degradation and suspicion of virtue are far more severe.
Conclusion: Death Must Participate in Life
Jung finds no way to defeat death and does not explain it away. His insight is more limited and more demanding. A life that excludes death loses boundary; when death is admitted, life can form, ripen and renew itself.
In the next chapter, Ammonius and the Red One return as remnants of old ideals. Bodily death is therefore not the only issue. Spiritual forms, values and guides must also be allowed to end when their work is finished.
Questions and Answers
1. Where does “Death” appear in the book?
It is Chapter VI of Liber Secundus, following Dies II and preparing the dissolution of old ideals in the next chapter.
2. Where does Jung encounter Death?
He travels through northern lowlands towards the sea and meets Death on a final dune at the edge of the world.
3. Why is Death represented by cold?
Cold conveys the ending of movement, desire and personal difference, as well as death’s indifference to human wishes.
4. Is the stream of the dead only personal symbolism?
No. It also belongs to the historical atmosphere of mass death surrounding the First World War.
5. What does the dark sun mean?
It joins blood, fire, descent and possible renewal, but the text does not reduce it to one theoretical definition.
6. Does Jung abolish the difference between good and evil?
No. He warns that destructiveness can hide behind a person’s virtue and righteousness.
7. Why is denied evil dangerous?
It is easily projected onto an enemy, allowing violence to appear morally pure.
8. What does it mean that death ripens life?
Finitude requires choice, completion and attention to actual life instead of endless pursuit of possibility.
9. Is accepting death passive?
No. It means living concretely while knowing that life has an end.
10. Why does limitation create meaning?
Without limitation there is no consequential choice and no irreplaceable moment or relationship.
11. Why is balance not static?
Life changes, so preservation of an established balance can itself become an obstacle.
12. Why does Jung die on a dung heap?
The image dismantles heroic self-presentation and brings death into bodily, ordinary and undignified reality.
13. What do the eggs laid by chickens suggest?
Death and reproduction coexist; new life emerges from material cycles rather than pure spiritual height.
14. What are the three nights of birth horror?
They turn the experience of death into a painful rebirth through which life eventually moves again.
15. How does this chapter relate to “One of the Lowly”?
There Jung witnesses an unknown man’s base death; here he enters a similarly unheroic death himself.
16. What is the chapter’s central judgement?
Life cannot become whole by excluding death. Limitation, ending and relinquishment participate in the formation of meaning.
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