Emma Jung and Maris Louise von Franz:

The Grail Legend

Merlin as a Mysterious Spiritual Power

Merlin stands in the background of King Arthur’s Round Table as a mysterious spiritual power.

At first glance, his dual or multiple aspect and his knavish and clownish characteristics lend him a Mephistophelian quality, but his knowledge of the past and future betoken a greater degree of consciousness than is possessed by Arthur and his knights who are, indeed, remarkably unconscious and unthinking.

It is due to this greater consciousness that Merlin, like the Grail, functions as a form of projected conscience, in that he exposes the mistakes and crimes of the people.

As the prophet of hell put into the world by the Devil he is, moreover, clearly distinguishable as the Antichrist.

In this role, the already often stressed motif of Judas is taken up once more but without the betrayal reaching the point of consummation, for the power of good is shown to be stronger than evil and thanks to his mother’s virtue, Merlin’s devilish inheritance cannot work itself out.

This negative trait appears most clearly in his magic power and in his enjoyment of playing tricks on others and fooling them.

As the Antichrist, Merlin would expand the Trinity into a quaternity. It is part of the essential quality of the quaternary number, considered as a psychic symbol, that the fourth does not just follow the three as one more unit but that, according to the saying of Maria Prophetissa, “. . . out of the third comes the one as the fourth…”

The Grail Legend

Page 366

Jung remained faithful to his wife Emma in one way only serious scholars can understand: He promised never to talk or write about the Grail Legend, as Emma Jung spent thirty years of her life researching the Grail story.

She died in 1955 before she could finish and publish her work.

In keeping with his promise to her, Jung asked Marie-Louise von Franz to complete his wife’s life-long endeavor.

Source: van Waddy, Jung Society of Atlanta, 2006