““One result of active imagination, according to some reports, is an increase in synchronistic and paranormal phenomena. 32 This was certainly true of Jung. In 1916, Jung again felt that something within wanted to get out. An eerie restlessness seemed to permeate his home. Jung, I have to say, was lucky to have his house in Küsnacht, where he retired to a room, his “intellectual cave,” decorated in colored glass, to commune with his interior voices; he demanded and got absolute silence, and neither his children nor Emma—nor even the maid—were allowed to enter.33 As his maternal grandfather did, Jung felt the presence of the dead. His children seemed to feel it, too. One daughter saw a strange white figure; another had her blankets snatched from her at night. His son drew a picture of a fisherman he had seen in a dream: a flaming chimney rose from the fisherman’s head, and a devil flew through the air, cursing the fisherman for stealing his fish. An angel warned the devil that he couldn’t hurt the fisherman because he only caught bad fish. Jung had yet to mention Philemon the Kingfisher to his family. Then, on a Sunday afternoon, the doorbell rang loudly when it was clear no one was there. The pressure increased and Jung finally demanded “What in the world is this?” Then he heard the voices. “We have come back from Jerusalem,” they said, “where we found not what we sought,” the beginning of one of the strangest works of “automatic writing,” Jung’s Seven Sermons to the Dead, which he attributed to “Basilides in Alexandria, the City where the East toucheth the West.””
