Menetekel

Counted, weighed and found to be too light - it's too late. The writing on the wall says that King Belshazzar gambled away his life. The same may apply to us today if we take a serious look at the self-inflicted destruction of our living conditions, the ecocide. The corona pandemic and the war are like symptoms of a great, hopeless doom. What does it do to us, how does it feel? Hardly anyone is able to face up to the guilt and fear of extinction, and the danger of mental derailment, including collective psychosis, is great. This essay presents old stories and new imaginations that do not deny the horror, but can lead to a hopeful future. After all, the prophet Jonah managed to save the doomed city of Nineveh. The mythologies surrounding the Babylonian kings Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar show the connections between man-made ecological disasters and cultural patterns of coping with them. The legends about the Golem or Bulgakov's "Master and Margerita" also deal with the relationship between politics and the unconscious in culture. In 1933, shortly before his emigration, the Jewish psychoanalyst Ernst Bernhard dreamed of the "Great Solution" of a reconciliation between Pilate and Jesus. Ultimately, it is a book of hope. Jörg Rasche, MD, medical specialist, psychotherapist and Jungian psychoanalyst, leads the reader into a world of symbols and mythologies that help to shed light on our apocalyptic times. What we make of it is (still?) up to us.