Overcoming evil

This creative spontaneity which springs from the essential depths or center of the personality is represented by a horse, and because it is a kind of semi-unconscious reaction, it is the one thing which can overcome the attack of evil when that has taken form, when it has combined itself with a certain intelligence and with the tradition of the past. We are now, to my mind, in such a situation. Mankind is not threatened only by brutal murderous impulses, though they do break out here and there, as probably always will occur where the mob gets wild and animal forces get loose. The real danger for us is when these forces combine with high scientific intelligence. In atomic physics they combine with the highest achievements of scientific knowledge. This combination cannot be compared practically, but our story says there is, in spite of everything, one thing superior to it: a return to the innermost genuineness of the depths of our own psyche with its invincible clairvoyance and natural knowledge. With that we can possibly overcome even these diabolical forces.

- Marie Louise von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, p. 294