Jung is drawing a line here that most people cross without noticing. The allegory explains — it cashes out meaning in a currency already in circulation. The sign points to something already known and agreed upon. But the symbol does something neither of those can do: it holds open a space of not-yet-knowing, and holds it in a way that keeps the unknown generative rather than merely frustrating. The "darkly divined" is not a failure of comprehension; it is the very condition that makes the symbol alive.

What the passage asks you to notice is the difference between spirit that you possess and spirit that possesses you. Spirit translated cleanly into concept sits inside what you already are — it confirms, it elaborates, it returns to you exactly what you deposited. There is a version of depth work that operates entirely in that register: you learn the vocabulary, you name the complex, and the naming soothes without disturbing. The symbol refuses this. It arrives as something not yet yours, pointing past the edge of what ego-consciousness can domesticate, and whatever lives there has not been pre-digested by your existing framework. The incalculable possibilities Jung mentions are incalculable precisely because they have not yet been reduced to what you can already think.