At the end of “First Day”, modern scientific knowledge has struck Izdubar and left him paralysed before Jung. Jung cannot deny what he knows, yet cannot abandon the wounded god. Chapter IX of Liber Secundus, “Second Day”, begins from this inability to act.
Izdubar expects to die, while Jung resolves to risk everything. His first proposal remains an external action: carry the god east in search of healing. Izdubar warns that eastern light will blind Jung and the journey will kill him. Only when every practical plan fails does Jung consider that the crisis may not require greater action. It may require a change in Izdubar’s mode of existence.
A Shared Impasse
Izdubar cannot walk and Jung cannot move him. The god is too large and the human being too weak. Each is trapped—the god by knowledge, Jung by responsibility towards the god.
The impasse forces Jung to abandon heroic rescue. Willpower, sacrifice and a longer journey cannot solve every problem. Some contradictions are genuinely insoluble within their original frame; further action merely exhausts the actor.
Why Neither East nor West Can Directly Heal the God
Izdubar comes from the East but cannot return. The West has science and human dwellings, yet western knowledge has injured him. If East represents myth and West reason, neither can provide the cure alone.
Returning east would deny modern knowledge; remaining west may allow the god to die. Jung needs a third form in which myth can enter modern consciousness without pretending to be physical science.
The Decisive Thought: Izdubar Is a Fantasy
Jung suddenly recognises Izdubar as fantasy. Everyday speech easily hears this as “he is unreal”. In The Red Book, fantasy is not empty unreality opposed to the world. It is a field in which psychic reality appears, forms and changes.
Treated as a physical giant, Izdubar cannot be moved. Existing as an imaginative figure, he is not constrained by the same weight, space and scale. Once the mode of existence changes, the impossible becomes possible.
Why Calling the God a Fantasy Does Not Diminish Him
Izdubar may first hear “fantasy” as denial. Jung’s response proves otherwise. He does not say that an imaginary god can be discarded. He discovers that because Izdubar is real in fantasy, he can be saved.
Modern thought often divides reality into material fact and false imagination. The Red Book adds psychological reality. A mythical figure need not walk through physical space to alter emotion, value, choice and direction. Its causal mode differs from that of a body; it is not therefore causally empty.
The Giant Becomes Light: Imagination Changes Scale
Once Izdubar accepts his fantasy nature, he becomes light as a feather and Jung carries him west. This is not the claim that every difficulty disappears when one changes attitude. It shows that some burdens result from applying the wrong scale of existence.
When symbolic demands are treated as external commands, a god becomes unbearable. When brought into inward work, divine force remains but can be carried by a finite human life.
Ammonius and the Red One Reappear
On the return journey Jung and Izdubar see Ammonius and the Red One. Izdubar finds them misshapen, while Jung calls them remnants still encountered in western lands.
The episode continues “The Remains of Earlier Temples”. The Christian anchorite and devil have not disappeared, but no longer lead Jung. Beside the god he carries, they have become guardians of an exhausted order. The new god is not automatically more correct, but he carries Jung’s living problem.
The Door Is Too Small
Jung brings Izdubar to a quiet garden and secluded house, only to discover that the entrance cannot admit the giant. Human dwelling, institution and daily life cannot directly contain an untransformed ancient god.
Then Jung remembers that fantasy occupies no physical space. He reduces Izdubar to an egg, puts him in his pocket and enters the house. Divinity no longer appears as an external power overwhelming the human being. It assumes its smallest, most vulnerable and unfinished form.
Why the Egg Is Decisive
The egg combines enclosure, protection, incubation and future emergence. Izdubar is not destroyed but returned to a beginning from which he can grow again. Monumental divinity must temporarily relinquish power and size in order to enter human life.
The human-divine relation also changes. The human being once looked upward and obeyed; now he carries, protects and incubates. The god becomes an embryo requiring care. Responsibility replaces simple submission.
The External and Internal God
Jung suggests that a god existing only outside can become a yoke—a burden of command, authority and collective demand. Once internalised, the god does not become private property under ego control. He becomes a task to be borne in personal life.
Internalisation is not self-deification. The god in the egg is fragile and unfinished, not an achievement to display. Jung advises against showing new divinity prematurely to the crowd. A value not yet formed can easily be mocked, exploited or hardened into another institution.
Original Experience, Later Theory, Contemporary Interpretation
The original experience is Jung’s saving thought, Izdubar’s loss of weight, the journey west and the compression of the god into an egg. Later theory will describe fantasy as a creative function linking conscious and unconscious, inner and outer, while the egg becomes associated with rebirth and the Self.
Contemporary interpretation may speak of mental representation, symbolic compression, narrative reframing and creative problem-solving. The chapter is not mere positive thinking. Jung does not deny the external impasse; he discovers another level with real psychological effects.
Conclusion: Healing Changes the Relation Between God and Human Being
Izdubar is not cured in this chapter. He has changed from a dying giant into a divine egg that can be protected. The first stage of treatment is not restoration of old power but the willingness of grandeur to become small, inward and capable of new development.
“The Incantations” will unfold around this egg. Jung will no longer use scientific argument or heroic action. Image, song, attention and patience will provide warmth. The renewal of a god cannot be manufactured; it can only be guarded and awaited.
Questions and Answers
1. What situation begins “Second Day”?
Izdubar is paralysed and dying, while Jung can neither move nor abandon him.
2. What is Jung’s first rescue plan?
He proposes carrying Izdubar east in search of healing.
3. Why does the eastern plan fail?
The light and journey would destroy Jung, and returning east cannot erase modern knowledge.
4. What is the saving thought?
Izdubar is fantasy and therefore need not obey physical weight or spatial scale.
5. Does fantasy mean falsehood?
No. In The Red Book, fantasy possesses psychological reality and practical effects upon life.
6. Does calling Izdubar a fantasy diminish him?
No. It enables Jung to love, bear and rescue him in a different mode.
7. Why does Izdubar become light?
His existence moves from physical giant to psychic image and no longer follows the same laws of weight.
8. Is the solution merely changing one’s attitude?
No. External facts remain; what changes is the level on which the problem can be carried.
9. Why do Ammonius and the Red One reappear?
They show that the old moral order survives but no longer directs Jung’s path.
10. What does the small doorway indicate?
Daily life and established forms cannot admit untransformed divine magnitude.
11. Why is the god reduced to an egg?
The egg makes divinity protected, portable and capable of renewed development.
12. Has the god lost his power?
No. Power is stored in potential form and waits for conditions of growth.
13. Does internalisation mean that the ego is God?
No. It means that the individual bears responsibility for incubating divine value rather than possessing it.
14. Why should the egg remain hidden?
Unformed inward contents can be mocked, exploited or hardened prematurely by public attention.
15. Is Izdubar healed here?
No. He has received a form in which healing and rebirth become possible.
16. What is the chapter’s central insight?
When external action reaches an impasse, the reality of fantasy can alter the scale of the problem and bring the wounded god into finite human life.
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