Spirit Of Gravity

Almost in the cradle are we presented with heavy words and values: this dowry calls itself ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’. For its sake we are forgiven for being alive. And we suffer little children to come to us, to prevent them in good time from loving themselves: the Spirit of Gravity is the cause of that.

Nietzsche identifies the Spirit of Gravity as the primordial force that loads inherited moral values onto individuals from birth, suppressing self-love and authentic being.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883thesis

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Come, let us kill the Spirit of Gravity! I have learned to walk: since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to move.

Zarathustra explicitly names the killing of the Spirit of Gravity as the precondition for the progressive freedom of walking, running, and flying — a developmental arc toward self-propelled becoming.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883thesis

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For to its possessor is all possession well concealed, and of all treasure-pits one’s own is last excavated — so causeth the spirit of gravity.

Jung’s seminar cites Nietzsche’s linkage of the Spirit of Gravity to the deep psychological difficulty of self-excavation, associating it with sloth and the failure to engage one’s own authentic depths.

Jung, C.G., Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988supporting

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You have always approached trustfully all that is fearful. You have always wanted to caress every monster. A touch of warm breath, a little soft fur on its paw — and at once you have been ready to love and entice it.

This passage from the Zarathustra corpus explores the solitary man’s dangerous openness to love, providing contextual texture around the themes of self-overcoming and emotional weight that surround the Spirit of Gravity.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883aside

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Truly, Zarathustra is no veering wind nor whirlwind; and although he is a dancer, he is by no means a tarantella dancer!

Zarathustra’s self-identification as a dancer rather than a whirlwind situates the lightness-versus-gravity polarity in the broader symbolic vocabulary of the text.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883aside

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