You cannot kill a god, who is by definition immortal. Neither can you kill an archetype, for an archetype is a basic human drive. We carry the archetypes deep within us; they are integral parts of our human nature that must be lived out. When an archetype is not lived out with consciousness or dignity, as von Franz says, it "loads up with energy and becomes inhuman."
This happens not only on the level of the individual, but on the level of the collecitive unconscious, the psyche of a whole society. Carl Jung has said of this phenomenon:
The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us are not elemental happeinings of a physical or biological kind, but are psychic events. We are threatened in a fearful way by wars and revolutions that are nothing else than psychic epidemics. At any moment a few million people may be seized by a madness, and then we have another world war or a devastating revolution. Instead of being exposed to wild beasts, tumbling rocks, and inundating waters, man is exposed today to the elemental forces of his own psyche.
This was brought home one day when a friend took me to an air show. Thousands of people were in the crowd -- I'd never been to such a thing before. My friend said, "You know, there's a tremendous amount of collective power in a group like this. They will demand blood, and they're strong enough to get it." At that very moment a small plane crashed and burned right in front of us. I could feel the Dionysian energy galvanize the crowd, which was at once thrilled and horrified. It was a terrible form, but nonetheless the god was served.
