Girolamo Cardano (Hieronimus Cardanus, Jerome Cardan) lived 1501-1576. He was a true Renaissance man: doctor, mathematician, astrologer, physicist, musician, politician, and philosopher. His mathematical formulas for solving quadratic equations and his invention of the Cardan shaft (the universal joint in a drive shaft) are known to this day.

Ten of his dreams, recorded in two of his books, reveal obsessions with how long he'll live and what death is like. Here are two samples, 26 years apart.

DREAM 1: APE (c.1521, age c.20)

Cardanus sees an ape that can speak with a human voice. This being a miracle, Cardanus decides to ask him how long he still has to live.

The ape answers: "Four years."

Cardanus: "Not more?"

The ape: "No."

[He lived, of course, 55 more years.]

DREAM 2: MULE (1547, age 46)

On August 15, 1547, I saw Johannes Baptista Specianus seize my hand. He'd been a judge for capital crimes, and died recently. Still, I knew that he was dead and withdrew my hand.

I asked him, however, "Now that you're dead and I'm dreaming, do tell me something about the life where you are now."

To this he replied, "Nothing is left of which you believe the opposite" (Nihil superest cuius oppositum tu credis).

After that he vanished, and a thin, pale-faced young man with a long face appeared in his place, in a scholar's long gown whose fur was turned outside in; on the outside it was ashen. He too was dead, but unknown to me. I asked him, "What lies ahead of me?"

He answered, "I won't tell you, because it would sadden you too much."

I said, "What, will I die?"

"No," he answered, "you will be wounded by a male or female mule, but will then make a great profit without much work."

"What's your name?"

"Hieronymus Frige, the son whose name corresponds to Johannes Baptista (or so I believe), who will not outlive me."

EDITOR'S NOTE

Confused? Me too. You're gonna die, but the afterlife's just what you think, but I won't tell your future, it's so sad, oh all right, I'll tell you, you'll get easy money and be kicked by a mule, hey, I'll outlive John the Baptist, oh, wait, I'm already dead...

My source is a seminar led by Carl Jung in 1940; the participants spent nearly 100 pages speculating on this dream series and its contradictions. Jung says Cardano voiced the doubts of his age: the medieval certainty of an afterlife has waned. Dream figures always give him such maddening replies--but like Wile E. Coyote, this guy's persistent. "It failed today, so let's try the same tomorrow!"

Jung adds that such self-critical, self-examining, platitude-questioning Renaissance men were literally the first self-aware people in history. Consciousness existed before, but not true self-awareness. And of course Jungian psychologists, aware of the unconscious, are the most evolved and self-aware of modern men. Modest, too!

It's quite a revealing seminar. Mostly about Jung and his groupies.

As a shaman who tries hard to stay naïve, who thinks theory, like uranium, is dangerous in heaps--I don't know who these apes and spooks are, but I know I'd quit asking those particular clowns those questions after a few rounds of this.

Find better questions. Or better apes.

--Chris Wayan--

SOURCE: Carl Jung's Dream Interpretation Ancient and Modern, 2014 reprint, p. 122-25.

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