At the end of “Second Day”, Jung reduces the paralysed Izdubar from a giant to an egg and carries him into a human dwelling. Chapter X of Liber Secundus, “The Incantations”, does not immediately break the shell. It remains with incubation. Where earlier chapters advance through dialogue, conflict and reflection, this one is composed of poetic spells and large images. Jung no longer explains the god; he builds warmth, rhythm and protection around the divine egg.
The form of The Red Book changes markedly here. Words do not merely transmit propositions. They invoke, affirm and guard like ritual speech. Images are not illustrations added to an argument; they participate in the work of transformation. A theoretical summary alone would therefore miss the chapter’s central fact: the renewal of divinity cannot be completed by definition.
Why Treatment Becomes Incubation
Izdubar was wounded when modern knowledge penetrated his world. Further explanation would repeat the injury. The egg requires a place where it can remain without being forced to justify itself.
Incubation does not directly manufacture an outcome. The human being supplies warmth, attention and time but cannot command the life within to hatch on schedule. Jung moves from solver of a problem to guardian of a process.
Why the God Becomes a Human Child
Traditional religion calls human beings children of God. This chapter reverses the direction: if the father God dies, a divine child must arise from the maternal heart of the human being. Whatever one’s biological sex, the psyche must assume an incubating function.
The ego does not arbitrarily invent a god. A new form of divinity requires human soul, body, language and time. The old god rules from outside and demands obedience; the new god appears as an embryo requiring love, restraint and protection from display.
Mother, Father, Maiden and Holy Man
In the incantations Jung becomes mother, father, maiden, holy man from the East and even the animal astonished before the sacred event. Roles normally distributed among external figures are gathered within one psyche.
Difference is not erased. Each position offers a distinct function—gestation, form, openness, guidance and instinctive witness. The divine egg matures through the participation of several psychological capacities. A single heroic ego cannot perform the task.
“I Am the Egg”: Container and Content Form Together
Jung not only protects the egg but identifies himself as the egg surrounding and nourishing the divine seed. The subject no longer observes transformation from outside; he becomes its container.
A container is not an empty box. It needs a boundary strong enough to protect and permeable enough for warmth and life to move. If too weak, the emerging content disperses; if too hard, it cannot grow. Later Jungian psychology will develop the idea of containment, but here it first appears as an immediate incubating experience.
God as Emptiness and Fullness, Darkness and Light
The third incantation describes God as eternal emptiness and fullness, darkness and brightness, below and above. Divinity no longer signifies light, order and goodness alone. It becomes a whole within which opposite forces coexist.
This contrasts with Ammonius, who allowed Christian light while rejecting Helios and darkness. The new god cannot achieve purity by expelling half of life. He must form a structure capable of bearing contradiction.
Unity of opposites does not abolish distinction. Darkness and light remain different; destruction and creation are not ethically identical. Unity means that their relation can be contained, not that every action is equally justified.
Why Images Belong to the Transformation
Each group of incantations is bound to imagery. Colour, geometry, serpent, sun, plant and eastern ornament create a visual meditation. The purpose is not to extract one interpretation but to let consciousness remain with relations not yet fully speakable.
Jung would later emphasise meditation and imagination in alchemical work. Here they are not yet a finished method. We see him using painting and writing to give inward images stable form. Art is not decoration added after experience; it is a technique by which experience becomes bearable and preservable.
Brahmanaspati and the Golden Womb
The images and inscriptions introduce Brahmanaspati from Vedic tradition and Hiranyagarbha, the golden womb or cosmic egg. Izdubar belongs to a Mesopotamian field, while the incantations also draw upon Christian nativity, Egyptian solar myth and Indian creation imagery.
Jung is not producing a historically uniform world religion. Several traditions provide languages for one psychological process. Their differences remain. What they share is the image of divinity not descending in completed power but developing within a dark enclosure.
Serpent, Depth and Cool Light
A black serpent rises from fiery depths towards the cool light above. Other images recall the Egyptian solar myth in which the sun is threatened each night by the serpent of chaos. Solar consciousness never achieves permanent victory; it repeatedly passes through darkness.
The serpent cannot be identified with evil alone. It carries danger, instinct, renewal and movement between upper and lower worlds. Destroying it would remove energy from the depths; allowing it to rule would swallow the forming order. Incubation sustains this unstable relation.
The Cost of Readiness: Sword, Armour and Distant Goals
One incantation speaks of throwing down the sword, wearing women’s clothing, breaking the fortress, playing like a child in sand, destroying armour, making the great small and the small great, and exchanging the furthest goal for the nearest task. These acts dismantle heroic control.
Sword, fortress and armour once supplied strength and defence, but they obstruct incubation. The egg does not require conquest of the world. It requires care for the smallest and most vulnerable thing immediately present. Readiness comes not from accumulating further power but from allowing power to cease occupying the entire psyche.
We Need Life, Not Power
The final incantation asks the god for light and warmth while explicitly refusing power. Human beings do not want to rule; they want to live. This is the ethical centre of the chapter.
Great divine images easily join authority, domination and collective mobilisation. Jung instead encloses the god within an egg and asks him to warm life. If new divinity merely enlarges the ego’s power, it repeats the failure of old religion and heroic ideals. Its value must appear as vitality, relation and illumination rather than control over others.
Original Experience, Later Theory, Contemporary Interpretation
The original experience is Jung’s composition of incantations and images around the egg, together with his identification as multiple figures and as the containing vessel. Later theory may recognise early forms of active imagination, union of opposites, the Self, mandala and alchemical vessel.
Contemporary interpretation may discuss creative incubation, non-verbal processing, art therapy, attention and emotional regulation. The spells should not be treated as a reproducible clinical technique, and the cross-cultural images should not be declared identical. They belong first to Jung’s particular experiment.
Conclusion: Renewal Requires Time, Not an Immediate Answer
“The Incantations” pauses outward argument and protects a small inward life. The wounded Izdubar cannot return in his former gigantic shape. He must become small, enclosed, warmed and newly formed.
Jung learns that important inward contents cannot always be accelerated through explanation. At times explanation must stop, while sustained attention, image, rhythm and life hold a space. “The Opening of the Egg” will describe Izdubar’s return. The shell can open because Jung does not break it prematurely here.
Questions and Answers
1. Where does “The Incantations” appear?
It is Chapter X of Liber Secundus, between Izdubar’s transformation into an egg and the opening of that egg.
2. Why does Jung not use more argument to heal the god?
The god was wounded by explanatory knowledge and now needs protection rather than further penetration.
3. What does incubation mean?
The subject offers warmth, attention and time without forcing inward life to form immediately.
4. Why does God become a human child?
A new form of divinity requires the human soul as a place of growth.
5. Does this mean that the ego invents God at will?
No. The person cares for what appears but cannot fully control what it will become.
6. Why does Jung assume several roles?
Mother, father, maiden, holy man and animal provide gestation, form, openness, guidance and instinctive witness.
7. What does “I am the egg” mean?
The subject becomes the psychological container of transformation rather than an external observer.
8. Why is God both empty and full, dark and bright?
New divinity must bear opposites rather than preserve purity by excluding half of life.
9. Does unity of opposites erase ethics?
No. It contains contradiction without declaring every action equally valid.
10. What do the images do?
They give stable form to inward relations that concepts cannot yet fully express.
11. Why are Indian and Egyptian images included?
Several traditions offer symbolic languages of creation, sun, darkness and the cosmic egg.
12. Is the black serpent simply evil?
No. It also bears instinct, danger, renewal and movement between depth and height.
13. What does laying down sword and armour mean?
Heroic control must withdraw so that vulnerable new life can be cared for.
14. Why exchange the distant goal for the nearest task?
Transformation begins with the concrete work that can be carried now, not with grand ambition.
15. Why does Jung reject divine power?
He seeks light, warmth and life rather than authority over others.
16. What is the chapter’s central insight?
The wounded god cannot be repaired by will. He must be patiently contained and incubated within the human soul.
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