“As clarified and interpreted by Jungian scholar John Sandford, the thought of Carl Jung on the Self - the archetype of wholeness whose nature it is to unite opposites - is very useful in trying to comprehend the mythical creation and character of the ‘blues god’:

The traditional Christian attitude as it has been mediated through the Church has rejected too much.  It has refused to accept the shadow side of the personality and has rejected the dark side of the Self.  It has insisted upon an impossible standard of perfection and has not acknowledged the necessity, even value, of a wholeness that comes about through imperfection, not through perfection.*

In other words, there must be an attempt to integrate into the human consciousness all (including evil) belonging to its essential wholeness that has been rejected and repressed.

“Because the unity of opposites (such as good and evil) is an essential aspect of wholeness, when the dark side is excluded from the Self it must necessarily be manifested elsewhere…”

- Jon Michael Spencer, “God in Secular Music Culture  The Theodicy of the Blues as the Paradigm of Proof”

Black Sacred Music:  A Journal of Theomusicology, ed. Jon Michael Spencer, vol. 3 no. 2, Fall 1989

* John A. Sanford, “The Problem of Evil in Christianity and Analytical Psychology,” in Carl Jung and Christian Spirituality, ed. Robert L. Moore