categories
which depends on external things changes with them; but the symbolism of
the functional categories, which reflects these powers remains constant.
The types with their intro-determination belong to the functional
categories; and so they picture the constant characters.

That experience to which the suggestions of symbolism (brought to verbal
expression by means of introversion) point as to a possible spiritual
development, corresponds to a religious ideal; when intensively lived out
this development is called mysticism. [We can define mysticism as that
religious state which struggles by the shortest way towards the
accomplishment of the end of religion, the union with the divinity; or as
an intensive cultivation of oneself in order to experience this union.] It
presents itself if instead of looking backward we gaze forward from our
elementary types to the beyond. But let us not forget that we can regard
mysticism only as the most extreme, and therefore psychically the most
internal, unfolding of the religious life, as the ideal which is hardly to
be attained, although I consider that much is possible in this direction.
If my later examination carries us right into the heart of mysticism,
without making the standpoint clear every time, we now know what
restrictions we must be prepared for.

If I take the view that those powers, whose images (generally veiled in
symbolism) are the elementary types, do not change, I do not intend to
imply that it is not possible to sublimate them. With the increasing
education of man they support a sublimation of the human race which yet
shows in recognizable form the fundamental nature of the powers. One of
the most important types, in which this transformation process is
consummated and which refines the impulse and yet allows some of its
character to remain, is the type mother, i.e., incest. Among religious
symbols we find countless incest images but that the narrow concept of
incest is no longer suited to their psychological basis (revealed through
analysis) has been, among psychoanalysts, quite clearly recognized by
Jung. Therefore in the case of every symbolism tending to ethical
development, the anagogic point of view must be considered, and most of
all in religious symbolism. The impulse corresponding to the religious
incest symbols is preeminently to be conceived in the trend toward
introversion and rebirth which will be treated of later. [Vid. note C, at
the end of th