Friday, December 26, 2008

Tahatowan’s Scarab.

Henry and John Thoreau stopped on the banks of the Concord River on a Sunday evening in October 1837. Henry began to point out imagined Indian scenes. “Here,” he said, “stood Tahatowan”, and "there" (pointing to a spot) “is Tahatowan’s arrowhead.” Henry unconsciously picked up the first stone that came to hand and gave it to John. It was “a most perfect arrow-head, as sharp as if just from the hands of the Indian fabricator.”

One hundred years later, Carl Jung listened to a patient’s account of her dream about a golden scarab. There was a sound behind him. He reached back and caught a flying insect that had been tapping on the window. Jung handed the insect to his patient with the words, “Here is your golden scarab.” It was a gold-green scarabaeid beetle. This moment was the breakthrough in the therapy.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, Oct. 29, 1837; Carl G. Jung, “Synchronicity, An Acausal Connecting Principle,” The Collected Works of Carl Jung, Volume 8, p. 843.

Here stood Tahatowan. See February 15, 1857 ("Shattuck says that the principal sachem of our Indians, Tahattawan, lived 'near Nahshawtuck hill.'")

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