All of us are capable of evil. But I think when we fear evil out there, we are really projecting out, really externalizing something still within us.
If I might perhaps add an appendage on to Jung’s work, the Shadow self layers nicely onto the gut energy centers and neurological centers, particularly the unmyelinated vagus nerve.
I don’t think anyone incapable or unwilling to see evil in the world can ever really tap into the personal power we were all meant to have. We all live half lives (most of us: I like to think there are some people out there I would REALLY like to meet), compared to what is possible.
In sacrificial culture they had regular access to this part, and it likely felt like something transcendent when they touched the primal animal in themselves, with all the energy and vigor it released. These Satanists–and we can speak with certainty when we posit their existence, since they are increasingly proud of it–no doubt find release in their rituals. They do something.
I remember talking with a woman many years ago in Europe who had participated in a Satanic ritual, and it scared the shit out of her, because some very real, quite tangible stuff happened. I don’t doubt this. There is a barmaid in my town I think was into that sort of thing in her twenties. I can still feel the stain on her.
But the point I wanted to make is that I have a merger I need to make. I have long noticed that I will sometimes feel a compelling need to seek out the weird and anomalous on the internet. Sometimes it is the Graham Hancock stuff, sometimes ghosts, sometimes UFO’s, sometimes serial killers, but all of it is “out there”.
Our animal instincts present themselves to us, initially, as something foreign, as something alien. And what I now realize is that some instinctual part of me, some intuitive part of me, was trying to tell me that all that WAS me. It was not out there at all, and that I could find some really interesting experiences making the acquaintance of my shadow, of my gut, of my viscera, of my stolen rage,and my potential power.
Yes.