Aion, by C.G. Jung

What is the mind? What is the mind of a human? What is the mind of the one who investigates the human? Can the human mind understand itself? Can a human mind understand the mind of an other? This is psychology.

Re: Aion, by C.G. Jung

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This formula expresses not only the psychological self but also the dogmatic figure of Christ. As an historical personage Christ is unitemporal and unique; as God, universal and eternal. Likewise the self: as the essence of individuality it is unitemporal and unique; as an archetypal symbol it is a God-image and therefore universal and eternal. [77] Now if theology describes Christ as simply "good" and "spiritual," something "evil" and "material" -- or "chthonic" -- is bound to arise on the other side, to represent the Antichrist. The resultant quaternion of opposites is united on the psychological plane by the fact that the self is not deemed exclusively "good" and "spiritual"; consequently its shadow turns out to be much less black. A further result is that the opposites of "good" and "spiritual" need no longer be separated from the whole:

Image

This quaternio characterizes the psychological self. Being a totality, it must by definition include the light and dark aspects, in the same way that the self embraces both masculine and feminine and is therefore symbolized by the marriage quaternio. [78] This last is by no means a new discovery, since according to Hippolytus it was known to the Naassenes. [79] Hence individuation is a "mysterium coniunctionis," the self being experienced as a nuptial union of opposite halves [80] and depicted as a composite whole in mandalas that are drawn spontaneously by patients.

It was known, and stated, very early that the man Jesus, the son of Mary, was the principium individuationis. Thus Basilides [81] is reported by Hippolytus as saying: "Now Jesus became the first sacrifice in the discrimination of the natures [], and the Passion came to pass for no other reason than the discrimination of composite things. For in this manner, he says, the sonship that had been left behind in a formless state [] ... needed separating into its components [], in the same way that Jesus was separated." [82] According to the rather complicated teachings of Basilides, the "non-existent" God begot a threefold sonship (). The first "son," whose nature was the finest and most subtle, remained up above with the Father. The second son, having a grosser () nature, descended a bit lower, but received "some such wing as that with which Plato ... equips the soul in his Phaedrus." [83] The third son, as his nature needed purifying (), fell deepest into "formlessness." This third "sonship" is obviously the grossest and heaviest because of its impurity. In these three emanations or manifestations of the non-existent God it is not hard to see the trichotomy of spirit, soul, and body ( ). Spirit is the finest and highest; soul, as the ligamentum spiritus et corporis, is grosser than spirit, but has "the wings of an eagle," [84] so that it may lift its heaviness up to the higher regions. Both are of a "subtle" nature and dwell, like the ether and the eagle. in or near the region of light. whereas the body, being heavy, dark, and impure, is deprived of the light but nevertheless contains the divine seed of the third sonship, though still unconscious and formless. This seed is as it were awakened by Jesus, purified and made capable of ascension (), [85] by virtue of the fact that the opposites were separated in Jesus through the Passion (i.e., through his division into four). [86] Jesus is thus the prototype for the awakening of the third sonship slumbering in the darkness of humanity. He is the "spiritual inner man." [87] He is also a complete trichotomy in himself, for Jesus the son of Mary represents the incarnate man, but his immediate predecessor is the second Christ, the son of the highest archon of the hebdomad, and his first prefiguration is Christ the son of the highest archon of the ogdoad, the demiurge Yahweh. [88] This trichotomy of Anthropos figures corresponds exactly to the three sonships of the non-existing God and to the division of human nature into three parts. We have therefore three trichotomies:

Image

I. First sonship Second sonship Third sonship
II. Christ of the Ogdoad Christ of the Hebdomad Jesus the Son of Mary
III. Spirit Soul Body


It is in the sphere of the dark, heavy body that we must look for the , the "formlessness" wherein the third sonship lies hidden. As suggested above, this formlessness seems to be practically the equivalent of "unconsciousness." G. Quispel has drawn attention to the concepts of in Epiphanius [89] and in Hippolytus, [90] which are best translated by "unconscious." , and all refer to the initial state of things, to the potentiality of unconscious contents, aptly formulated by Basilides as (the non-existent, many-formed, and all-empowering seed of the world). [91]

This picture of the third sonship has certain analogies with the medieval filius philosophorum and the filius macrocosmi, who also symbolize the world-soul slumbering in matter. [92] Even with Basilides the body acquires a special and unexpected significance, since in it and its materiality is lodged a third of the revealed Godhead. This means nothing less than that matter is predicated as having considerable numinosity in itself, and I see this as an anticipation of the "mystic" significance which matter subsequently assumed in alchemy and -- later on -- in natural science. From a psychological point of view it is particularly important that Jesus corresponds to the third sonship and is the prototype of the "awakener" because the opposites were separated in him through the Passion and so became conscious, whereas in the third sonship itself they remain unconscious so long as the latter is formless and undifferentiated. This amounts to saying that in unconscious humanity there is a latent seed that corresponds to the prototype Jesus. Just as the man Jesus became conscious only through the light that emanated from the higher Christ and separated the natures in him, so the seed in unconscious humanity is awakened by the light emanating from Jesus, and is thereby impelled to a similar discrimination of opposites. This view is entirely in accord with the psychological fact that the archetypal image of the self has been shown to occur in dreams even when no such conceptions exist in the conscious mind of the dreamer. [93]

***

I would not like to end this chapter without a few final remarks that are forced on me by the importance of the material we have been discussing. The standpoint of a psychology whose subject is the phenomenology of the psyche is evidently something that is not easy to grasp and is very often misunderstood. If, therefore, at the risk of repeating myself, I come back to fundamentals, I do so only in order to forestall certain wrong impressions which might be occasioned by what I have said, and to spare my reader unnecessary difficulties.

The parallel I have drawn here between Christ and the self is not to be taken as anything more than a psychological one, just as the parallel with the fish is mythological. There is no question of any intrusion into the sphere of metaphysics, i.e., of faith. The images of God and Christ which man's religious fantasy projects cannot avoid being anthropomorphic and are admitted to be so; hence they are capable of psychological elucidation like any other symbols. Just as the ancients believed that they had said something important about Christ with their fish symbol, so it seemed to the alchemists that their parallel with the stone served to illuminate and deepen the meaning of the Christ-image. In the course of time, the fish symbolism disappeared completely, and so likewise did the lapis philosophorum. Concerning this latter symbol, however, there are plenty of statements to be found which show it in a special light -- views and ideas which attach such importance to the stone that one begins to wonder whether, in the end, it was Christ who was taken as a symbol of the stone rather than the other way round. This marks a development which -- with the help of certain ideas in the epistles of John and Paul -- includes Christ in the realm of immediate inner experience and makes him appear as the figure of the total man. It also links up directly with the psychological evidence for the existence of an archetypal content possessing all those qualities which are characteristic of the Christ-image in its archaic and medieval forms. Modern psychology is therefore confronted with a question very like the one that faced the alchemists: Is the self a symbol of Christ, or is Christ a symbol of the self?

In the present study I have affirmed the latter alternative. I have tried to show how the traditional Christ-image concentrates upon itself the characteristics of an archetype -- the archetype of the self. My aim and method do not purport to be anything more in principle than, shall we say, the efforts of an art historian to trace the various influences which have contributed towards the formation of a particular Christ-image. Thus we find the concept of the archetype in the history of art as well as in philology and textual criticism. The psychological archetype differs from its parallels in other fields only in one respect: it refers to a living and ubiquitous psychic fact, and this naturally shows the whole situation in a rather different light. One is then tempted to attach greater importance to the immediate and living presence of the archetype than to the idea of the historical Christ. As I have said, there is among certain of the alchemists, too, a tendency to give the lapis priority over Christ. Since I am far from cherishing any missionary intentions, I must expressly emphasize that I am not concerned here with confessions of faith but with proven scientific facts. If one inclines to regard the archetype of the self as the real agent and hence takes Christ as a symbol of the self, one must bear in mind that there is a considerable difference between perfection and completeness. The Christ-image is as good as perfect (at least it is meant to be so), while the archetype (so far as known) denotes completeness but is far from being perfect. It is a paradox, a statement about something indescribable and transcendental. Accordingly the realization of the self, which would logically follow from a recognition of its supremacy, leads to a fundamental conflict, to a real suspension between opposites (reminiscent of the crucified Christ hanging between two thieves), and to an approximate state of wholeness that lacks perfection. To strive after teleiosis in the sense of perfection is not only legitimate but is inborn in man as a peculiarity which provides civilization with one of its strongest roots. This striving is so powerful, even, that it can turn into a passion that draws everything into its service. Natural as it is to seek perfection in one way or another, the archetype fulfils itself in completeness, and this is a of quite another kind. Where the archetype predominates, completeness is forced upon us against all our conscious strivings, in accordance with the archaic nature of the archetype. The individual may strive after perfection ("Be you therefore perfect -- -- as also your heavenly Father is perfect." [94]) but must suffer from the opposite of his intentions for the sake of his completeness. "I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me." [95]

The Christ-image fully corresponds to this situation: Christ is the perfect man who is crucified. One could hardly think of a truer picture of the goal of ethical endeavour. At any rate the transcendental idea of the self that serves psychology as a working hypothesis can never match that image because, although it is a symbol, it lacks the character of a revelatory historical event. Like the related ideas of atman and tao in the East, the idea of the self is at least in part a product of cognition, grounded neither on faith nor on metaphysical speculation but on the experience that under ceitain conditions the unconscious spontaneously brings forth an archetypal symbol of wholeness. From this we must conclude that some such archetype occurs universally and is endowed with a certain numinosity. And there is in fact any amount of historical evidence as well as modern case material to prove this. [96] These naive and completely uninfluenced pictorial representations of the symbol show that it is given central and supreme importance precisely because it stands for the conjunction of opposites. Naturally the conjunction can only be understood as a paradox, since a union of opposites can be thought of only as their annihilation. Paradox is a characteristic of all transcendental situations because it alone gives adequate expression to their indescribable nature.

Whenever the archetype of the self predominates, the inevitable psychological consequence is a state of conflict vividly exemplified by the Christian symbol of crucifixion -- that acute state of unredeemedness which comes to an end only with the words "consummatum est." Recognition of the archetype, therefore, does not in any way circumvent the Christian mystery; rather, it forcibly creates the psychological preconditions without which "redemption" would appear meaningless. "Redemption" does not mean that a burden is taken from one's shoulders which one was never meant to bear. Only the "complete" person knows how unbearable man is to himself. So far as I can see, no relevant objection could be raised from the Christian point of view against anyone accepting the task of individuation imposed on us by nature, and the recognition of our wholeness or completeness, as a binding personal commitment. If he does this consciously and intentionally, he avoids all the unhappy consequences of repressed individuation. In other words, if he voluntarily takes the burden of completeness on himself, he need not find it "happening" to him against his will in a negative form. This is as much as to say that anyone who is destined to descend into a deep pit had better set about it with all the necessary precautions rather than risk falling into the hole backwards.

The irreconcilable nature of the opposites in Christian psychology is due to their moral accentuation. This accentuation seems natural to us, although, looked at historically, it is a legacy from the Old Testament with its emphasis on righteousness in the eyes of the law. Such an influence is notably lacking in the East, in the philosophical religions of India and China. Without stopping to discuss the question of whether this exacerbation of the opposites, much as it increases suffering, may not after all correspond to a higher degree of truth, I should like merely to express the hope that the present world situation may be looked upon in the light of the psychological rule alluded to above. Today humanity, as never before, is split into two apparently irreconcilable halves. The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.

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Notes:

1. I John 2 : 22 (DV).

2. I John 4 : 3 (DV). The traditional view of the Church is based on II Thessalonians 2: 3ff., which speaks of the apostasy, of the (man of lawlessness) and the (son of perdition) who herald the coming of the Lord. This "lawless one" will set himself up in the place of God, but will finally be slain by the Lord Jesus "with the breath of his mouth." He will work wonders (according to the working of Satan). Above all, he will reveal himself by his lying and deceitfulness. Daniel 11 : 36ff. is regarded as a prototype.

3. For "city" cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pp. 104ff.

4. (The kingdom of God is within you [or "among you"]). "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say. Lo here! or, lo there'" for it is within and everywhere. (Luke 17: 20f.) "It is not of this [external] world:' (John 18: 36.) The likeness of the kingdom of God to man is explicitly stated in the parable of the sower (Matthew 13: 24. Cf. also Matthew 13: 45, 18: 23, 22: 2). The papyrus fragments from Oxyrhynchus say: ... . (The kingdom of heaven is within you, and whosoever knoweth himself shall find it. Know yourselves.) Cf. James, The Apocryphal New Testament, p. 26, and Grenfell and Hunt, New Sayings of Jesus, p. 15.

5. Cf. my observations on Christ as archetype in "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity," pars. 226ff.

6. "Et haec ergo imago censenda est Dei in homine, quod eosdem motus et sensus habeat humanus animus, quos et Deus, licet non tales quales Deus" (Adv. Marcion., n, xvi; in Migne, P.L., vol. 2, col. 304).

7. Contra Celsum, VIII, 49 (Migne, P.G., vol. 11, col. 1590): "In anima, non in corpore impressus sit imaginis conditoris character" (The character of the image of the Creator is imprinted on the soul, not on the body). (Cf. trans. by H. Chadwick, p. 488.)

8. In Lucam homilia, VIII (Migne, P.G., vol. 13, col. 1820): "Si considerem Domi- num Salvatorem imaginem esse invisibilis Dei, et videam animam meam factam ad imaginem conditoris, ut imago esset imaginis: neque enim anima mea specialiter imago est Dei, sed ad similitudinem imaginis prioris effecta est" (If I consider that the Lord and Saviour is the image of the invisible God, I see that my soul is made after the image of the Creator, so as to be an image of an image; for my soul is not directly the image of God, but is made after the likeness of the former image).

9. De principiis, I. ii, 8 (Migne, P.G., vol. 11, col. 156): "Salvator figura est substantiae vel subsistentiae Dei" (The Saviour is the figure of the substance or subsistence of God). In Genesim homilia, I, 13 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12. col. 156): "Quae est ergo alia imago Dei ad cuius imaginis similitudinem factus est homo, nisi Salvator noster, qui est primogenitus omnis creaturae?" (What else therefore is the image of God after the likeness of which image man was made, but our Saviour, who is the first born of every creature?) Selecta in Genesim, IX, 6 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 107): "Imago autem Dei invisibilis salvator" (But the image of the invisible God is the saviour).

10. In Gen. hom., I, 13 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 155): "Is autem qui ad imaginem Dei factus est et ad similitudinem, interior homo noster est, invisibilis et incorporalis, et incorruptus atque immortalis" (But that which is made after the image and similitude of God is our inner man, invisible, incorporeal, incorrupt, and immortal).

11. De princip., IV, 117 (Migne, P.G., vol. 11, col. 412).

12. Retractationes, I, xxvi (Migne, P.L., vol. 32, col. 626): "(Unigenitus) ... tantummodo imago est, non ad imaginem" (The Only-Begotten ... alone is the image, not after the image).

13. Enarrationes in Psalmos, XLVIII, Sermo II (Migne. P.L., vol. 36, col. 564): "Imago Dei intus est, non est in corpore ... ubi est intellectus, ubi est mens, ubi ratio investigandae veritatis etc. ibi habet Deus imaginem suam," Also ibid., Psalm XLII, 6 (Migne, P.L., vol. 36, col. 480): "Ergo intelligimus habere nos aliquid ubi imago Dei est. mentem scilicet atque rationem" (Therefore we understand that we have something in which the image of God is, namely mind and reason). Sermo XC, 10 (Migne, P.L., vol. 38, col. 566): "Veritas quaeritur in Dei imagine" (Truth is sought in the image of God), but against this the Liber de vera religione says: "in interiore homine habitat veritas" (truth dwells in the inner man). From this it is clear that the imago Dei coincides with the interior homo.

14. Enarr. in Ps., LIV, 3 (Migne, P.L., vol. 36, col. 629): " ... ubi autem homo ad imaginem Dei factum se novit, ibi aliquid in se agnoscit amplius esse quam datum est pecoribus."

15. I Cor. 15: 47.

16. In Joannis Evangelium, Tract. LXXVIII, 3 (Migne, P.L., vol. 35, col. 1836): "Christus est Deus, anima rationalis et caro" (Christ is God, a rational soul and a body).

17. Sermo CCXXXVII, 4 (Migne, P.L., vol. 38, col. 1124): "(Verbum) suscepit totum quasi plenum hominem, animam et corpus hominis. Et si aliquid scrupulosius vis audire; quia an imam et camem habet et pecus, cum dico animam humanam et carnem humanam, totam animam humanam accepit."

18. Enarr. in Ps., LIV, 1 (Migne, P.L., vol. 36, col. 628).

19. Contra Faustum, XXII, 38 (Migne, P.L., vol. 42, col. 424): "Est enim et sancta Ecclesia Domino Jesu Christo in occulto uxor. Occulte quippe atque intus in abscondito secreto spirituali anima humana inhaeret Verbo Dei, ut sint duo in carne una." Cf. St. Augustine's Reply to Faustus the Manichaean (trans. by Richard Stothert, p. 433): "The holy Church, too, is in secret the spouse of the Lord Jesus Christ. For it is secretly, and in the hidden depths of the spirit, that the soul of man is joined to the word of God, so that they are two in one flesh." St. Augustine is referring here to Eph. 5: 3If.: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church."

20. Augustine, De Trinitate, XIV, 22 (Migne, P.L., vol. 42, col. 1053): "Reforma mini in novitate mentis vostrae, ut incipiat illa imago ab illo reformari, a quo formata est" (Be reformed in the newness of your mind; the beginning of the image's reforming must come from him who first formed it) (trans. by John Burnaby, p. 120).

21. Cf. "Concerning Mandala Symbolism," in Part I of vol. 9.

22. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 323ff.

23. Irenaeus (Adversus haereses, II. 5, I) records the Gnostic teaching that when Christ, as the demiurgic Logos, created his mother's being, he "cast her out of the Pleroma -- that is, he cut her off from knowledge." For creation took place outside the pleroma, in the shadow and the void. According to Valentinus (Adv. haer., I. 11, 1). Christ did not spring from the Aeons of the pleroma. but from the mother who was outside It. She bore him. he says, "not without a kind of shadow." But he, "being masculine,' cast off the shadow from himself and returned to the Pleroma , while his mother, "being left behind in the shadow, and deprived of spiritual substance, ' there gave birth to the real "Demiurge and Pantokrator of the lower world.' But the shadow which lies over the world is, as we know from the Gospels, the princeps huius mundi, the devil. Cf. The Writings of Irenaeus, I, pp. 45f.

24. Cf. R. Scharf, "Die Gestalt des Satans im Alten Testament."

25. "The Spirit Mercurius," par. 271.

26. Jewish Christians who formed a Gnostic-syncretistic party.

27. A Gnostic sect mentioned in Epiphanius, Panarium adversus octoginta haereses, LXXX, 1-3, and in Michael Psellus, De daemonibus (in Marsilius Ficinus, Auctores Platonici [Iambichus de mysteriis Aegyptiorum), Venice, 1497).

28. "Oportuit autem ut alter illorum extremorum isque optimus appellaretur Dei filius propter suam excellentiam; alter vero ipsi ex diametro oppositus, mali daemonis, Satanae diabolique filius diceretur" (But it is fitting that one of these two extremes, and that the best, should be called the Son of God because of his excel- lence, and the other, diametrically opposed to him, the son of the evil demon, of Satan and the devil) (Origen, Contra Celsum, VI. 45; in Migne. P.G., vol. 11, col. 1367; cf. trans. by Chadwick. p. 562). The opposites even condition one another: "Ubi quid malum est ... ibi necessario bonum esse malo contrarium .... Alterum ex altero sequitur: proinde aut utrumque tollendum est negandumque bona et mala esse; aut admisso altero maximeque malo, bonum quoque admissum oportet." (Where there is evil ... there must needs be good contrary to the evil. ... The one follows from the other; hence we must either do away with both, and deny that good and evil exist, or if we admit the one, and particularly evil. we must also admit the good.) (Contra Celsum, II, 51; in Migne, P.G., vol. 11, col. 878; cf. trans. by Chadwick, p. 106.) In contrast to this clear, logical statement Origen cannot help asserting elsewhere that the "Powers, Thrones, and Principalities" down to the evil spirits and impure demons "do not have it -- the contrary virtue -- substantially" ("non substantialiter id habeant scl. virtus adversaria''), and that they were not created evil but chose the condition of wickedness ("malitiae grad us") of their own free will. (De principiis, I, VIII, 4; in Migne, P.G., vol. II, col. 179.) Origen is already committed, at least by implication, to the definition of God as the Summum Bonum, and hence betrays the inclination to deprive evil of substance. He comes very close to the Augustinian conception of the privatio boni when he says: "Certum namque est malum esse bono carere" (For it is certain that to be evil means to be deprived of good). But this sentence is immediately preceded by the following: "Recedere autem a bono, non aliud est quam effici in malo" (To turn aside from good is nothing other than to be perfected in evil) (De principiis, II, IX, 2; in Migne, P.G., vol. II, cols. 226-27). This shows clearly that an increase in the one means a diminution of the other, so that good and evil represent equivalent halves of an opposition.

29. Adv. haer., II, 4, 3.

30. Oratio ad Graecos (Migne, P.G., vol. 6, col. 829).

31. Migne, P.G., vol. 6, col. 1080.

32. Basil thought that the darkness of the world came from. the shadow cast by the body of heaven. Hexaemeron, II, 5 (Migne, P.G., vol. 29, col. 40).

33. Homilia: Quod Deus non est auctor malorum (Migne, P.G., vol. 31, cot 341).

34. De spiritu sancto (Migne, P.G., vol. 29, col. 37). Cf. Nine Homilies of the Hexaemeron, trans. by Blomfield Jackson, pp. 61f.

35. Migne, P.G., vol. 18, cols. 1132f.

36. Responsiones ad orthodoxas (Migne, P.G., vol. 6, cols. 1313-14).

37. Migne, P.G., vol. 11, cols. 716-18. Cf. the Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, trans. by John Parker, I, pp. 53ff.

38. "Nunc vero ideo sunt omnia bona, quia sunt aliis alia meliora, et bonitas inferiorum add it laudibus meliorum .... Ea vero quae dicuntur mala, aut vitia sunt rerum bonarum, quae omnino extra res bonas per se ipsa alicubi esse non possunt. ... Sed ipsa quoque vitia testimonium perhibent bonitati naturarum. Quod enim malum est per viti urn, profecto bonum est per naturam. Vitium quippe contra naturam est, quia naturae nocet; nec noceret, nisi bonum eius minueret. Non est ergo malum nisi privatio boni. Ac per hoc nusquam est nisi in re aliqua bona .... Ac per hoc bona sine mal is esse possunt, sicut ipse Deus, et quaeque superiora coelestia; mala vero sine bonis esse non possunt. Si enim nihil nocent, mala non sunt; si autem nocent, bonum minuunt; et si amplius nocent, habent adhuc bonum quod minuant; et si to turn consumunt, nihil naturae remanebit qui noceatur; ac per hoc nec malum erit a quo noceatur, quando natura defuerit, cuius bonum nocendo minuatur." (Contra adversarium legis et prophetarum, I, 4f.; in Migne, P.L., vol. 42, cols. 606-7.) Although the Dialogus Quaestionum LXV is not an authentic writing of Augustine's, it reflects his standpoint very clearly. Quaest. XVI: "Cum Deus omnia bona creaverit, nihilque sit quod non ab ilIo conditum sit, unde malum? Resp. Malum natura non est; sed privatio boni hoc nomen accepit. Denique bonum potest esse sine malo, sed malum non potest esse sine bono, nec potest esse malum ubi non fuerit bonum .... Ideoque quando didmus bonum, naturam laudamus; quando didmus malum, non naturam sed vitium, quod est bonae naturae contrarium reprehendimus," (Question XVI: Since God created all things good and there is nothing which was not created by him, whence arises evil? Answer: Evil is not a natural thing, it is rather the name given to the privation of good. Thus there can be good without evil, but there cannot be evil without good, nor can there be evil where there is no good .... Therefore, when we call a thing good, we praise its inherent nature; when we call a thing evil, we blame not its nature, but some defect in it contrary to its nature, which is good.)

39. "Iniquity has no substance" (CCXXVIII). "There is a nature in which there is no evil -- in which, indeed, there can be no evil. But it is impossible for a nature to exist in which there is no good" (CLX).

40. Augustini Opera omnia, Maurist edn., X, Part 2, cols. 2561-2618.

41. Sermones supposititii, Sermo I, 3, Maurist edn., V, col. 2287.

42. Summa theologica, I, q. 48, ad 1 (trans. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, II, p. 264).

43. Ibid., I, q. 48, ad 3 (trans., p. 268).

44. "... Quod autem conveniens est alicui est illi bonum. Ergo omne agens agit propter bonum" (Summa contra Gentiles, III, ch. 3, trans. by the English Dominican Fathers, vol. III, p. 7).

45. Summa theologica, I, q. 48, ad 2 (trans., II, p. 266, citing Aristotle's Topics, iii, 4).

46. In the Decrees of the 4th Lateran Council we read: "For the devil and the other demons as created by God were naturally good, but became evil of their own motion." Denzinger and Bannwart. Enchiridion symbolorum, p. 189.

47. Harnack (Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, p. 332) ascribes the Clementine Homilies to the beginning of the 4th cent. and is of the opinion that they contain "no source that could be attributed with any certainty to the 2nd century." He thinks that Islam is far superior to this theology. Yahweh and Allah are unreflected God-images, whereas in the Clementine Homilies there is a psychological and reflective spirit at work. It is not immediately evident why this should bring about a disintegration of the God-concept, as Harnack thinks. Fear of psychology should not be carried too far.

48. Der Dialog des Adamantius, III, 4 (ed. by van de Sande Bakhuyzen, p. 119).

49. The female or somatic triad consist of (desire), (anger), and (grief); the male, of (reflection), (knowledge), and (fear). Cf. the triad of functions in "The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy- tales," Part I of vol. 9. pars. 425ff.

50. P. de Lagarde (Clementina, p. 190) has here ... ... . The reading seems to me to make more sense.

51. Ch. .

52. The Clementine Homilies and the Apostolical Constitutions, trans. by Thomas Smith et al., pp. 312ff. (slightly modified).

53. Panarium, ed. by Oehler, I, p. 267.

54. Clement. Hom. XX, ch. VII. Since there is no trace in pseudo-Clement of the defensive attitude towards Manichaean dualism which is so characteristic of the later writers, it is possible that the Homilies date back to the beginning of the 3rd cent., if not earlier.

55. Hennecke. Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, pp. 309ff.

56. Cf. Matt. 19: 17 and Mark 10: 18.

57. A reference to the slaying of the first-born in Egypt.

58. Nezikin I, Baba Kamma 60 (in The Babylonian Talmud, trans. and ed. by Isidore Epstein, p. 348 [hereafter abbr. BT]; slightly modified).

59. Numbers 24: 16.

60. Zera'im I, Berakoth 7a (BT, p. 31).

61. Midrash Tanchuma Shemoth XVII.

62. Cf. Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos ... and Rashi's Commentary, trans. by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, II, p. 76.

63. Midrash on Song of Sol. 2 : 6.

64. Bereshith Rabba XII, 15 (Midrash Rabbah translated into English, ed. by H. Freedman and M. Simon, I, p. 99; slightly modified).

65. Ibid. XXXIX, 6 (p. 315).

66. Mo'ed IV, Pesahim 119 (BT, p. 613); Nezikin VI, Sanhedrin II, 103 (BT, pp. 698ff.).

67. Nezikin VI, Sanhedrin II, 97 (BT, p. 659; modified).

68. Zera'im I, Berakoth 16b (BT, p. 98: slightly modified).

69. Ibid. 7a (p. 30).

70. "Akathriel" is a made· up word composed of ktr = kether (throne) and el, the name of God.

71. A string of numinous God names, usually translated as "the Lord of Hosts."

72. Zera'im I, Berakoth 7 (BT, p. 30; slightly modified).

73. Aurora, trans. by John Sparrow, p. 423.

74. My learned friend Victor White, O.P., in his Dominican Studies (II, p. 399). thinks he can detect a Manichaean streak in me. I don't go in for metaphysics. but ecclesiastical philosophy undoubtedly does, and for this reason I must ask what are we to make of hell, damnation, and the devil, if these things are eternal? Theoretically they consist of nothing. and how does that square with the dogma of eternal damnation? But if they consist of something. that something can hardly be good. So where is the danger of dualism? In addition to this my critic should know how very much I stress the unity of the self, this central archetype which is a complexio oppositorum par excellence. and that my leanings are therefore towards the very reverse of dualism.

75. It has been objected that Christ cannot have been a valid symbol of the self, or was only an illusory substitute for it. I can agree with this view only if it refers strictly to the present time, when psychological criticism has become possible, but not if it pretends to judge the pre-psychological age. Christ did not merely symbolize wholeness, but, as a psychic phenomenon, he was wholeness. This is proved by the symbolism as well as by the phenomenology of the past, for which -- be it noted -- evil was a privatio boni. The idea of totality is, at any given time, as total as one is oneself. Who can guarantee that our conception of totality is not equally in need of completion? The mere concept of totality does not by any means posit it.

76. Just as the transcendent nature of light can only be expressed through the image of waves and particles.

77. Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 323ff., and "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious," pars. 398ff.

78. Cf. "The Psychology of the Transference," pars. 425ff.

79. Elenchos, V, 8, 2 (trans. by F. Legge, I, p. 131). Cf. infra, pars. 358ff.

80. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 334, and "The Psychology of the Transference," pars. 457ff.

81. Basilides lived in the 2nd cent.

82. Elenchos, VII. 27, 12 (cf. Legge trans., II, p. 79).

83. Ibid., VII, 22, 10 (cf. II, pp. 69-70).

84. Ibid., VII, 22, 15 (II, p. 70). The eagle has the same significance in alchemy.

85. This word also occurs in the well-known passage about the krater in Zosimos. (Berthelot, Alch. grecs, III, li, 8: .

86. I must say a word here about the horos doctrine of the Valentinians in Irenaeus (Adv. haer, I, 2, 2ff.) Horos (boundary) is a "power" or numen identical with Christ, or at least proceeding from him. It has the following synonyms: (boundary-fixer), (he who leads across), (emancipator), (redeemer), (cross). In this capacity he is the regulator and mains~tay of the universe, like Jesus. When Sophia was "formless and shapeless as an embryo, Christ took pity on her, stretched her out through his Cross and gave her form through his power," so that at least she acquired substance (Adv. haer., I, 4). He also left behind for her an "intimation of immortality." The identity of the Cross with Horos, or with Christ, is dear from the text, an image that we find also in Paulin us of Nola:

" ... regnare deum super omnia Christum,
qui cruce dispensa per quattuor extima ligni
quattuor adtingit dimensum partibus orbem,
ut trahat ad uitam populos ex omnibus oris."


(Christ reigns over all things as God, who, on the outstretched cross, reaches out through the four extremities of the wood to the four parts of the wide world, that he may draw unto life the peoples from all lands.) (Carmina, ed. by Wilhelm Hartel, Carm. XIX, 639ff., p. 140.) For the Cross as God's "lightning" cf. "A Study in the Process of Individuation," pars. 535f.

87. Elenchos, VII, 27, 5 (Legge trans., II, p. 78).

88. Ibid., VII, 26, 5 (II, p. 75).

89. Panarium, XXXI, 5 (Oehler edn., I, p. 314).

90. Elenchos, VII, 22, 16 (Legge trans., II, p. 71). Cf. infra, pars. 298ff.

91. Ibid., 20, 5 (cf. II, p. 66). Quispel, "Note sur 'Basilide'."

92. With reference to the psychological nature of Gnostic sayings, see Quispel's "Philo und die altchristliche Haresie," p. 432, where he quotes Irenaeus (Adv. haer., II, 4, 2): "Id quod extra et quod intus dicere eos secundum agnitionem et ignorantiam, sed non secundum localem sententiam" (In speaking of what is outward and what is inward, they refer, not to place, but to what is known and what is not known). (Cf. Legge, I, p. 127.) The sentence that follows immediately after this -- "But in the Pleroma, or in that which is contained by the Father, everything that the demiurge or the angels have created is contained by the unspeakable greatness, as the centre in a circle" -- is therefore to be taken as a description of unconscious contents. Quispel's view of projection calls for the critical remark that projection does not do away with the reality of a psychic content. Nor can a fact be called "unreal" merely because it cannot be described as other than "psychic." Psyche is reality par excellence.

93. Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 52ff., 122ff., and "A Study in the Process of Individuation," pars. 542, 550, 581f.

94. Matt. 5: 48 (DV).

95. Rom. 7: 21 (AV).

96. Cf. the last two papers in Part I of vol. 9.
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Re: Aion, by C.G. Jung

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Part 1 of 2

Chapter 6: THE SIGN OF THE FISHES

The figure of Christ is not as simple and unequivocal as one could wish. I am not referring here to the enormous difficulties arising out of a comparison of the Synoptic Christ with the Johannine Christ, but to the remarkable fact that in the hermeneutic writings of the Church Fathers, which go right back to the days of primitive Christianity, Christ has a number of symbols or "allegories" in common with the devil. Of these I would mention the lion, snake (coluber, 'viper'), bird (devil = nocturna avis), raven (Christ = nycticorax, 'night-heron'), eagle, and fish. It is also worth noting that Lucifer, the Morning Star, means Christ as well as the devil. [1] Apart from the snake, the fish is one of the oldest allegories. Nowadays we would prefer to call them symbols, because these synonyms always contain more than mere allegories, as is particularly obvious in the case of the fish symbol. It is unlikely that is simply an anagrammatic abbreviation of , [2] but rather the symbolical designation for something far more complex. (As I have frequently pointed out in my other writings, I do not regard the symbol as an allegory or a sign, but take it in its proper sense as the best possible way of describing and formulating an object that is not completely knowable. It is in this sense that the creed is called a "symbolum.") The order of the words gives one more the impression that they were put together for the purpose of explaining an already extant and widely disseminated "Ichthys." [3] For the fish symbol, in the Near and Middle East especially, has a long and colourful prehistory, from the Babylonian fish-god Oannes and his priests who clothed themselves in fish-skins, to the sacred fish-meals in the cult of the Phoenician goddess Derceto-Atargatis and the obscurities of the Abercius inscription. [4] The symbol ranges from the redeemer-fish of Manu in farthest India to the Eucharistic fish-feast celebrated by the "Thracian riders" in the Roman Empire. [5] For our purpose it is hardly necessary to go into this voluminous material more closely. As Doelger and others have shown, there are plenty of occasions for fish symbolism within the original, purely Christian world of ideas. I need only mention the regeneration in the font, in which the baptized swim like fishes. [6]

In view of this wide distribution of the fish symbol, its appearance at a particular place or at a particular moment in the history of the world is no cause for wonder. But the sudden activation of the symbol, and its identification with Christ even in the early days of the Church, lead one to conjecture a second source. This source is astrology, and it seems that Friedrich Muenter [7] was the first to draw attention to it. Jeremias [8] adopts the same view and mentions that a Jewish commentary on Daniel, written in the fourteenth century, expected the coming of the Messiah in the sign of the Fishes. This commentary is mentioned by Muenter in a later publication [9] as stemming from Don Isaac Abarbanel, who was born in Lisbon in 1437 and died in Venice in 1508. [10] It is explained here that the House of the Fishes () is the house of justice and of brilliant splendour ( in ). Further, that in anno mundi 2365, [11] a great conjunction of Saturn () and Jupiter () took place in Pisces. [12] These two great planets, he says, are also the most important for the destiny of the world, and especially for the destiny of the Jews. The conjunction took place three years before the birth of Moses. (This is of course legendary.) Abarbanel expects the coming of the Messiah when there is a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces. He was not the first to express such expectations. Four hundred years earlier we find similar pronouncements; for instance, Rabbi Abraham ben Hiyya, who died about 1136, is said to have decreed that the Messiah was to be expected in 1464, at the time of the great conjunction in Pisces; and the same is reported of Solomon ben Gabirol (1020-70). [13] These astrological ideas are quite understandable when one considers that Saturn is the star of Israel, and that Jupiter means the "king" (of justice). Among the territories ruled by the Fishes, the house of Jupiter, are Mesopotamia, Bactria, the Red Sea, and Palestine. [14] Chiun (Saturn) is mentioned in Amos 5: 26 THE SIGN OF THE FISHES as "the star of your god." [15] James of Sarug (d. 521) says the Israelites worshipped Saturn. The Sabaeans called him the "god of the Jews." [16] The Sabbath is Saturday, Saturn's Day. Albumasar [17] testifies that Saturn is the star of Israel. [18] In medieval astrology Saturn was believed to be the abode of the devil. [19] Both Saturn and Ialdabaoth, the demiurge and highest archon, have lion's faces. Origen elicits from the diagram of Celsus that Michael, the first angel of the Creator, has "the shape of a lion." [20] He obviously stands in the place of Ialdabaoth, who is identical with Saturn, as Origen points out. [21] The demiurge of the Naassenes is a "fiery god, the fourth by number." [22] According to the teachings of Apelles, who had connections with Marcion, there was a "third god who spoke to Moses, a fiery one, and there was also a fourth, the author of evil." [23] Between the god of the Naassenes and the god of Apelles there is evidently a close relationship, and also, it appears, with Yahweh, the demiurge of the Old Testament.

Saturn is a "black" star, [24] anciently reputed a "maleficus." "Dragons, serpents, scorpions, viperes, renards, chats et souris, oiseaux nocturnes et autres engeances sournoises sont le lot de Saturne," says Bouche-Leclercq. [25] Remarkably enough, Saturn's animals also include the ass, [26] which on that account was rated a theriomorphic form of the Jewish god. A pictorial representation of it is the well·known mock crucifixion on the Palatine. [27] Similar traditions can be found in Plutarch, [28] Diodorus, Josephus, [29] and Tacitus. [30] Sabaoth, the seventh archon, has the form of an ass. [31]Tertullian is referring to these rumours when he says: "You are under the delusion that our God is an ass's head," and that "we do homage only to an ass." [32] As we have indicated, the ass is sacred to the Egyptian Set. [33] In the early texts, however, the ass is the attribute of the sun-god and only later became an emblem of the underworldly Apep and of evil (Set). [34]

According to medieval tradition, the religion of the Jews originated in a conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn, Islam in , Christianity in , and the Antichrist in . [35] Unlike Saturn, Jupiter is a beneficent star. In the Iranian view Jupiter signifies life, Saturn death. [36] The conjunction of the two therefore signifies the union of extreme opposites. In the year 7 B.C. this famed conjunction took place no less than three times in the sign of the Fishes. The greatest approximation occurred on May 29 of that year, the planets being only 0.21 degrees apart, less than half the width of the full moon. [37] The conjunction took place in the middle of the commissure "near the bend in the line of the Fishes." From the astrological point of view this conjunction must appear especially significant, because the approximation of the two planets was exceptionally large and of an impressive brilliance. In addition, seen heliocentrically. it took place near the equinoctial point. which at that time was located between and . that is, between fire and water. [38] The conjunction was characterized by the important fact that Mars was in opposition (), which means, astrologically, that the planet correlated with the instincts stood in a hostile relationship to it, which is peculiarly characteristic of Christianity. If we accept Gerhardt's calculation that the conjunction took place on May 29, in the year 7 B.C., then the position of the sun -- especially important in a man's nativity -- at Christ's birth would be in the double sign of the Twins. [39] One thinks involuntarily of the ancient Egyptian pair of hostile brothers, Horus and Set, the sacrificer and the sacrificed (cf. n. 27, on Set's "martyrdom"), who in a sense prefigure the drama of the Christian myth. In the Egyptian myth it is the evil one who is sacrificed on the "slave's post." [40] But the pair of brothers Heru-ur (the "older Horus") and Set are sometimes pictured as having one body with two heads. The planet Mercury is correlated with Set, and this is interesting in view of the tradition that Christianity originated in a conjunction of Jupiter with Mercury. In the New Kingdom (XIXth dynasty) Set appears as Sutech in the Nile delta. In the new capital built by Rameses II, one district was dedicated to Amon, the other to Sutech. [41] It was here that the Jews were supposed to have done slave-labour.

In considering the double aspect of Christ, mention might be made of the legend of Pistis Sophia (3rd cent.), which also originated in Egypt. Mary says to Jesus:

When thou wert a child, before the spirit had descended upon thee, when thou wert in the vineyard with Joseph, the spirit came down from the height, and came unto me in the house, like unto thee, and I knew him not, but thought that he was thou. And he said unto me, "Where is Jesus, my brother, that I may go to meet him?" And when he had said this unto me, I was in doubt, and thought it was a phantom tempting me. I seized him and bound him to the foot of the bed which was in my house, until I had gone to find you in the field, thee and Joseph; and I found you in the vineyard, where Joseph was putting up the vine-poles. And it came to pass, when thou didst hear me saying this thing unto Joseph, that thou didst understand, and thou wert joyful, and didst say, "Where is he, that I may see him?" And it came to pass, when Joseph heard thee say these words, that he was disturbed. We went up together, entered into the house and found the spirit bound to the bed, and we gazed upon thee and him, and found that thou wert like unto him. And he that was bound to the bed was unloosed, he embraced thee and kissed thee, and thou also didst kiss him, and you became one. [42]


It appears from the context of this fragment that Jesus is the "truth sprouting from the earth," whereas the spirit that resembled him is "justice [] looking down from heaven." The text says: "Truth is the power which issued from thee when thou wast in the lower regions of chaos. For this cause thy power hath said through David, 'Truth hath sprouted out of the earth,' because thou wert in the lower regions of chaos." [43] Jesus, accordingly, is conceived as a double personality, part of which rises up from the chaos or hyle, while the other part descends as pneuma from heaven.

One could hardly find the or 'discrimination of the natures' that characterizes the Gnostic Redeemer, exemplified more graphically than in the astrological determination of time. The astrological statements that were quite possible in antiquity all point to the prominent double aspect [44] of the birth that occurred at this particular moment of time, and one can understand how plausible was the astrological interpretation of the Christ-Antichrist myth when it entered into manifestation at the time of the Gnostics. A fairly old authority, earlier anyway than the sixth century, which bears striking witness to the antithetical nature of the Fishes is the Talmud. This says:

Four thousand two hundred and ninety-one years after the Creation [A.D. 530], the world will be orphaned. There will follow the war of the tanninim [sea-monsters], the war of Gog and Magog, [45] and then the Messianic era; only after seven thousand years will the Holy One, blessed be He, set up his world anew. R. Abba, the son of Raba, said, It was taught: after five thousand years. [46]


The Talmud commentator Solomon ben Isaac, alias Rashi (1039-1105), remarks that the tanninim are fishes, presumably basing himself on an older source, since he does not give this as his own opinion, as he usually does. This remark is important, firstly because it takes the battle of the fishes as an eschatological event (like the fight between Behemoth and Leviathan), and secondly because it is probably the oldest testimony to the antithetical nature of the fishes. From about this period, too -- the eleventh century -- comes the apocryphal text of a Johannine Genesis in which the two fishes are mentioned, this time in unmistakably astrological form. [46a] Both documents fall within the critical epoch that opened with the second millennium of the Christian era, about which I shall have more to say in due course.

The year 531 is characterized astronomically by a conjunction of and in Gemini. This sign stands for a pair of brothers, and they too have a somewhat antithetical nature. The Greeks interpreted them as the Dioscuri ('boys of Zeus'), the sons of Leda who were begotten by the swan and hatched out of an egg. Pollux was immortal, but Castor shared the human lot. Another interpretation takes them as representing Apollo and Heracles or Apollo and Dionysus. Both interpretations suggest a certain polarity. Astronomically, at any rate, the air sign Gemini stands in a quartile and therefore unfavourable aspect to the conjunction that took place in the year 7 B.C. The inner polarity of may perhaps shed light on the prophecy about the war of the tanninim, which Rashi interprets as fishes. From the dating of Christ's birth it would appear, as said, that the sun was in Gemini. The motif of the brothers is found very early in connection with Christ, for instance among the Jewish Christians and Ebionites. [47]

From all this we may risk the conjecture that the Talmudic prophecy was based on astrological premises.

The precession of the equinoxes was a fact well known to the astrologers of antiquity. Origen, helped out by the observations and calculations of Hipparchus, [48] uses it as a cogent argument against an astrology based on the so-called "morphomata" (the actual constellations). [49] Naturally this does not apply to the distinction already drawn in ancient astrology between the morphomata and the (the fictive signs of the zodiac). [50] If we take the 7,000 years mentioned in the prophecy as anno mundi 7000, the year denoted would be A.D. 3239. By then the spring-point will have moved from its present position 18 degrees into Aquarius, the next aeon, that of the Water Carrier. As an astrologer of the second or third century would be acquainted with the precession, we may surmise that these dates were based on astrological considerations. At all events the Middle Ages were much concerned with the calculation of coniunctiones maximae and magnae, as we know from Pierre d'Ailly and Cardan. [51] Pierre d'Ailly reckoned that the first coniunctio maxima (in ) after the creation of the world took place in 5027 B.C.) while Cardan relegated the tenth conjunction to A.D. 3613. [52] Both of them assumed the lapse of too large an interval between conjunctions in the same sign. The correct astronomical interval is about 795 years. Cardan's conjunction would accordingly take place in the year A.D. 3234. For astrological speculation this date is naturally of the greatest importance.

As to the 5,000 years, the date we get is A.D. 1239. This was an epoch noted for its spiritual instability, revolutionary heresies and chiliastic expectations, and at the same time it saw the founding of the mendicant orders, which injected new life into monasticism. One of the most powerful and influential voices to announce the coming of a "new age of the spirit" was Joachim of Flora (d. 1202), whose teachings were condemned by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. He expected the opening of the seventh seal in the fairly near future, the advent of the "everlasting gospel" and the reign of the "intellectus spiritualis," the age of the Holy Ghost. This third aeon, he says, had already begun with St. Benedict, the founder of the Benedictine Order (the first monastery was supposed to have been built a few years after 529). One of Joachim's followers, the Franciscan friar Gerard of Bargo San Donnino, proclaimed in his Introductorius in evangelium aeternum, which appeared in 1254 in Paris, that Joachim's three main treatises were in fact the everlasting gospel, and that in the year 1260 this would replace the gospel of Jesus Christ. [53] As we know, Joachim saw monasticism as the true vehicle of the Holy Ghost and for this reason he dated the secret inception of the new era from the lifetime of St. Benedict, whose founding of the Benedictine Order revived monasticism in the West.

To Pierre d'Ailly the time of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) had already seemed significant. About the year 1189, he says, the revolutions of Saturn were once again completed ("completae anno Christi 1189 vel circiter"). He complains that the Pope had condemned a treatise of Abbot joachim, [54] and also the heretical doctrine of Almaricus. [55] This last is the theological philosopher Amalric of Bene (d. 1204), who took part in the widespread Holy Ghost movement of that age. It was then, too, he says, that the Dominican and Franciscan mendicant orders came into existence, "which was a great and wonderful thing for the Christian church." Pierre d'Ailly thus lays stress on the same phenomena that struck us as being characteristic of the time, and further regards this epoch as having been foretold in astrology.

139 The date for the founding of the monastery of Monte Cassino brings us very close to the year 530, which the Talmud prophesied would be a critical one. In Joachim's view not only does a new era begin then, but a new "status" of the world -- the age of monasticism and the reign of the Holy Ghost. Its beginning still comes within the domain of the Son, but Joachim surmises in a psychologically correct manner that a new status -- or, as we would say, a new attitude -- would appear first as a more or less latent preliminary stage, which would then be followed by the fructificatio, the flower and the fruit. In Joachim's day the fruition was still in abeyance, but one could observe far and wide an uncommon agitation and commotion of men's spirits. Everyone felt the rushing wind of the pneuma; it was an age of new and unprecedented ideas which were blazoned abroad by the Cathari, Patarenes, Concorricci, Waldenses, Poor Men of Lyons, Beghards, Brethren of the Free Spirit, "Bread through God," [56] and whatever else these movements were called. Their visible beginnings all lay in the early years of the eleventh century. The contemporary documents amassed by Hahn throw a revealing light on the ideas current in these circles:

Item, they believe themselves to be God by nature without distinction
. . . and that they are eternal. . . .
Item, that they have no need of God or the Godhead.
Item, that they constitute the kingdom of heaven.
Item, that they are immutable in the new rock, that they rejoice
in naught and are troubled by naught.
Item, that a man is bound to follow his inner instinct rather
than the truth of the Gospel which is preached every day....
They say that they believe the Gospel to contain poetical matters
which are not true. [57]


These few examples may suffice to show what kind of spirit animated these movements. They were made up of people who identified themselves (or were identified) with God, who deemed themselves supermen, had a critical approach to the gospels, followed the promptings of the inner man, and understood the kingdom of heaven to be within. In a sense, therefore, they were modern in their outlook, but they had a religious inflation instead of the rationalistic and political psychosis that is the affliction of our day. We ought not to impute these extremist ideas to Joachim, even though he took part in that great movement of the spirit and was one of its outstanding figures. One must ask oneself what psychological impulse could have moved him and his adherents to cherish such bold expectations as the substitution of the "everlasting gospel" for the Christian message or the supersession of the second Person in the Godhead by the third, who would reign over the new era. This thought is so heretical and subversive that it could never have occurred to him had he not felt himself supported and swept along by the revolutionary currents of the age. He felt it as a revelation of the Holy Ghost, whose life and procreative power no church could bring to a stop. The numinosity of this feeling was heightened by the temporal coincidence -- "synchronicity" -- of the epoch he lived in with the beginning of the sphere of the "antichristian" fish in Pisces. In consequence, one might feel tempted to regard the Holy Ghost movement and Joachim's central ideas as a direct expression of the antichristian psychology that was then dawning. At any rate the Church's condemnation is thoroughly understandable, for in many ways his attitude to the Church of Jesus Christ comes very close to open insurrection, if not downright apostasy. But if we allow some credence to the conviction of these innovators that they were moved by the Holy Ghost, then another interpretation becomes not only possible but even probable.

That is to say, just as Joachim supposed that the status of the Holy Ghost had secretly begun with St. Benedict, so we might hazard the conjecture that a new status was secretly anticipated in Joachim himself. Consciously, of course, he thought he was bringing the status of the Holy Ghost into reality, just as it is certain that St. Benedict had nothing else in mind than to put the Church on a firm footing and deepen the meaning of the Christian life through monasticism. But, unconsciously -- and this is psychologically what probably happened -- Joachim could have been seized by the archetype of the spirit. There is no doubt that his activities were founded on a numinous experience, which is, indeed, characteristic of all those who are gripped by an archetype. He understood the spirit in the dogmatic sense as the third Person of the Godhead, for no other way was possible, but not in the sense of the empirical archetype. This archetype is not of uniform meaning, but was originally an ambivalent dualistic figure [58] that broke through again in the alchemical concept of spirit after engendering the most contradictory manifestations within the Holy Ghost movement itself. The Gnostics in their day had already had clear intimations of this dualistic figure. It was therefore very natural, in an age which coincided with the beginning of the second Fish and which was, so to speak, forced into ambiguity, that an espousal of the Holy Ghost in its Christian form should at the same time help the archetype of the spirit to break through in all its characteristic ambivalence. It would be unjust to class so worthy a personage as Joachim with the bigoted advocates of that revolutionary and anarchic turbulence, which is what the Holy Ghost movement turned into in so many places. We must suppose, rather, that he himself unwittingly ushered in a new "status," a religious attitude that was destined to bridge and compensate the frightful gulf that had opened out between Christ and Antichrist in the eleventh century. The antichristian era is to blame that the spirit became non-spiritual and that the vitalizing archetype gradually degenerated into rationalism, intellectualism, and doctrinairism, all of which leads straight to the tragedy of modern times now hanging over our heads like a sword of Damocles. In the old formula for the Trinity, as Joachim knew it, the dogmatic figure of the devil is lacking, for then as now he led a questionable existence somewhere on the fringes of theological metaphysics, in the shape of the mysterium iniquitatis. Fortunately for us, the threat of his coming had already been foretold in the New Testament -- for the less he is recognized the more dangerous he is. Who would suspect him under those high-sounding names of his, such as public welfare, lifelong security, peace among the nations, etc.? He hides under idealisms, under -isms in general, and of these the most pernicious is doctrinairism, that most unspiritual of all the spirit's manifestations. The present age must come to terms drastically with the facts as they are, with the absolute opposition that is not only tearing the world asunder politically but has planted a schism in the human heart. We need to find our way back to the original, living spirit which, because of its ambivalence, is also a mediator and uniter of opposites, [59] an idea that preoccupied the alchemists for many centuries.

If, as seems probable, the aeon of the fishes is ruled by the archetypal motif of the hostile brothers, then the approach of the next Platonic month, namely Aquarius, will constellate the problem of the union of opposites. It will then no longer be possible to write off evil as the mere privation of good; its real existence will have to be recognized. This problem can be solved neither by philosophy, nor by economics, nor by politics, but only by the individual human being, via his experience of the living spirit, whose fire descended upon Joachim, one of many, and, despite all contemporary misunderstandings, was handed onward into the future. The solemn proclamation of the Assumptio Mariae which we have experienced in our own day is an example of the way symbols develop through the ages. The impelling motive behind it did not come from the ecclesiastical authorities, who had given clear proof of their hesitation by postponing the declaration for nearly a hundred years, [60] but from the Catholic masses, who have insisted more and more vehemently on this development. Their insistence is, at bottom, the urge of the archetype to realize itself. [61]

The repercussions of the Holy Ghost movement spread, in the years that followed. to four minds of immense significance for the future. These were Albertus Magnus (1193-1280); his pupil Thomas Aquinas, the philosopher of the Church and an adept in alchemy (as also was Albertus); Roger Bacon (c. 1214-c. 1294), the English forerunner of inductive science; and finally Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327). the independent religious thinker, now enjoying a real revival after six hundred years of obscurity. Some people have rightly seen the Holy Ghost movement as the forerunner of the Reformation. At about the time of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries we find also the beginnings of Latin alchemy. whose philosophical and spiritual content I have tried to elucidate in my book Psychology and Alchemy. The image mentioned above (par. 139) of "immutability in the new rock" bears a striking resemblance to the central idea of philosophical alchemy, the lapis philosophorum, which is used as a parallel to Christ, the "rock," the "stone," the "corner-stone." Priscillian (4th cent.) says: "We have Christ for a rock, Jesus for a cornerstone." [62] An alchemical text speaks of the "rock which is smitten thrice with Moses' rod, so that the waters flow forth freely." [63] The lapis is called a "sacred rock" and is described as having four parts. [64] St. Ambrose says the water from the rock is a prefiguration of the blood that flowed from Christ's side. [65] Another alchemical text mentions the "water from the rock" as the equivalent of the universal solvent, the aqua permanens. [66] Khunrath, in his somewhat florid language, even speaks of the "Petroleum sapientum." [67] By the Naassenes, Adam was called the "rock" and the "cornerstone." [68] Both these allegories of Christ are mentioned by Epiphanius in his Ancoratus) and also by Firmicus Maternus. [69] This image, common to ecclesiastical and alchemical language alike, goes back to I Corinthians 10: 4 and I Peter 2: 4.

The new rock, then, takes the place of Christ, just as the everlasting gospel was meant to take the place of Christ's message. Through the descent and indwelling of the Holy Ghost the sonship, is infused into every individual, so that everybody who possesses the Holy Ghost will be a new rock, in accordance with I Peter 2 : 5: "Be you also as living stones built up." [70] This is a logical development of the teaching about the Paraclete and the filiation, as stated in Luke 6: 35: "You shall be sons of the Highest," and John 10: 34: "Is it not written in your law: I said, you are gods?" The Naassenes, as we know, had already made use of these allusions and thus anticipated a whole tract of historical development -- a development that led via monasticism to the Holy Ghost movement, via the Theologia Germanica direct to Luther, and via alchemy to modern science.

Let us now turn back to the theme of Christ as the fish. According to Dodger, the Christian fish symbol first appeared in Alexandria around A.D. 200; [71] similarly, the baptismal bath was described as a piscina (fish-pond) quite early. This presupposes that the believers were fishes, as is in fact suggested by the gospels (for instance Matt. 4: 19). There Christ wants to make Peter and Andrew "fishers of men," and the miraculous draught of fishes (Luke 5: 10) is used by Christ himself as a paradigm for Peter's missionary activity.

A direct astrological aspect of Christ's birth is given us in Matthew 2: 1ff. The Magi from the East were star-gazers who, beholding an extraordinary constellation, inferred an equally extraordinary birth. This anecdote proves that Christ, possibly even at the time of the apostles, was viewed from the astrological standpoint or was at least brought into connection with astrological myths. The latter alternative is fully confirmed when we consider the apocalyptic utterances of St. John. Since this exceedingly complex question has been discussed by those who are more qualified than I, we can support our argument on the well-attested fact that glimpses of astrological mythology may be caught behind the stories of the worldly and otherworldly life of the Redeemer. [72]

Above all it is the connections with the age of the Fishes which are attested by the fish symbolism, either contemporaneously with the gospels themselves ("fishers of men," fishermen as the first disciples, miracle of loaves and fishes), or immediately afterwards in the post-apostolic era. The symbolism shows Christ and those who believe in him as fishes, fish as the food eaten at the Agape, [73] baptism as immersion in a fish-pond, etc. At first sight, all this points to no more than the fact that the fish symbols and mythologems which have always existed had assimilated the figure of the Redeemer; in other words, it was a symptom of Christ's assimilation into the world of ideas prevailing at that time. But, to the extent that Christ was regarded as the new aeon, it would be clear to anyone acquainted with astrology that he was born as the first fish of the Pisces era, and was doomed to die as the last ram [74] (, lamb) of the declining Aries era. [75] Matthew 27: 15ff. hands down this mythologem in the form of the old sacrifice of the seasonal god. Significantly enough, Jesus's partner in the ceremony is called Barabbas, "son of the father." There would be some justification for drawing a parallel between the tension of opposites in early Christian psychology and the fact the zodiacal sign for Pisces () frequently shows two fishes moving in opposite directions, but only if it could be proved that their contrary movement dates from pre-Christian times or is at least contemporary with Christ. Unfortunately, I know of no pictorial representation from this period that would give us any information about the position of the fishes. In the fine bas-relief of the zodia from the Little Metropolis in Athens, Pisces and Aquarius are missing. There is one representation of the fishes, near the beginning of our era, that is certainly free from Christian influence. This is the globe of the heavens from the Farnese Atlas in Naples. The first fish, depicted north of the equator, is vertical, with its head pointing to the celestial Pole; the second fish, south of the equator, is horizontal, with its head pointing West. The picture follows the astronomical configuration and is therefore naturalistic. [76] The zodiac from the temple of Hathor at Denderah (1st cent. B.C.) shows the fishes, but they both face the same way. The planisphere of Timochares, [77] mentioned by Hipparchus, has only one fish where Pisces should be. On coins and gems from the time of the emperors, and also on Mithraic monuments, [78] the fishes are shown either facing the same way or moving in opposite directions. [79] The polarity which the fishes later acquired may perhaps be due to the fact that the astronomical constellation shows the first (northerly) fish as vertical, and the second (southerly) fish as horizontal. They move almost at right angles to one another and hence form a cross. This countermovement, which was unknown to the majority of the oldest sources, was much emphasized in Christian times, and this leads one to suspect a certain tendentiousness. [80]

Although no connection of any kind can be proved between the figure of Christ and the inception of the astrological age of the fishes, the simultaneity of the fish symbolism of the Redeemer with the astrological symbol of the new aeon seems to me important enough to warrant the emphasis we place upon it. If we try to follow up the complicated mythological ramifications of this parallel, we do so with intent to throw light on the multifarious aspects of an archetype that manifests itself on the one hand in a personality, and on the other hand synchronistically, in a moment of time determined in advance, before Christ's birth. Indeed, long before that, the archetype had been written in the heavens by projection, so as then, "when the time was fulfilled," to coincide with the symbols produced by the new era. The fish, appropriately enough, belongs to the winter rainy season, like Aquarius and Capricorn (, the goatfish). [81] As a zodiacal sign, therefore, it is not in the least remarkable. It becomes a matter for astonishment only when, through the precession of the equinoxes, the spring-point moves into this sign and thus inaugurates an age in which the "fish" was used as a name for the God who became a man, who was born as a fish and was sacrificed as a ram, who had fishermen for disciples and wanted to make them fishers of men, who fed the multitude with miraculously multiplying fishes, who was himself eaten as a fish, the "holier food," and whose followers are little fishes, the "pisciculi." Assume, if you like, that a fairly widespread knowledge of astrology would account for at least some of this sym- bolism in certain Gnostic-Christian circles. [82] But this assumption does not apply when it comes to eyewitness accounts in the synoptic gospels. There is no evidence of any such thing. We have no reason whatever to suppose that those stories are disguised astrological myths. On the contrary, one gets the impression that the fish episodes are entirely natural happenings and that there is nothing further to be looked for behind them. They are "Just So" stories, quite simple and natural, and one wonders whether the whole Christian fish symbolism may not have come about equally fortuitously and without premeditation. Hence one could speak just as well of the seemingly fortuitous coincidence of this symbolism with the name of the new aeon, the more so as the age of the fishes seems to have left no very clear traces in the cultures of the East. I could not maintain with any certainty that this is correct, because I know far too little about Indian and Chinese astrology. As against this, the fact that the traditional fish symbolism makes possible a verifiable prediction that had already been made in the New Testament is a somewhat uncomfortable proposition to swallow.

The northerly, or easterly, fish, which the spring-point entered at about the beginning of our era, [83] is joined to the southerly, or westerly, fish by the so-called commissure. This consists of a band of faint stars forming the middle sector of the constellation, and the spring-point gradually moved along its southern edge. The point where the ecliptic intersects with the meridian at the tail of the second fish coincides roughly with the sixteenth century, the time of the Reformation, which as we know is so extraordinarily important for the history of Western symbols. Since then the spring-point has moved along the southern edge of the second fish, and will enter Aquarius in the course of the third millennium. [84] Astrologically interpreted, the designation of Christ as one of the fishes identifies him with the first fish, the vertical one. Christ is followed by the Antichrist, at the end of time. The beginning of the enantiodromia would fall, logically, midway between the two fishes. We have seen that this is so. The time of the Renaissance begins in the immediate vicinity of the second fish, and with it comes that spirit which culminates in the modern age. [85]
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Re: Aion, by C.G. Jung

Postby admin » Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:41 am

Part 2 of 2

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Notes:

1. Early collections of such allegories in the Ancoratus of Epiphanius, and in Augustine, Contra Faustum. For nycticorax and aquila see Eucherius, Liber formularum spiritalis intelligentiae, cap. 5 (Migne, P.L., vol. 50, col. 740).

2. Augustine (City of God, trans. by J. Healey, II, p. 196) relates how the former proconsul Flaccianus, with whom he had a conversation about Jesus, produced a book containing the songs of the Erythraean Sibyl, and showed him the passage where the above words, forming the acrostic , are themselves the acrostic for a whole poem, an apocalyptic prophecy of the Sibyls:

"Iudicii signum tellus sudore madescet,
E coelo Rex adveniet per saecla futurus:
Scilicet in came praesens ut iudicet orbem.
Unde Deum cement incredulus atque fidelis
Celsum cum Sanctis, aevi iam termino in ipso.
Sicanimae cum carne aderunt quas judicat ipse ..."
(In sign of doomsday the whole earth shall sweat.
Ever to reign a king in heavenly seat
Shall come to judge all flesh. The faithful and
Unfaithful too before this God shall stand,
Seeing him high with saints in time's last end.
Corporeal shall he sit, and thence extend
His doom on souls ... ) (Ibid., p. 437.)


The Greek original is in Oracula Sibyllina, ed. John Geffcken, p. 142. [For Augustine's explanation of the discrepancy in the acrostic, see Healey trans., II, p. 196. -- EDITORS.]

3. Cf. Jeremias, The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East, I, p. 76, n. 2.

4. From this inscription I will cite only the middle portion, which says: "Everywhere I had a travelling companion, since I had Paul sitting in the chariot. But everywhere Faith drew me onward, and everywhere he set before me for food a fish from the source, exceeding great and pure, which a holy virgin had caught. And he offered this fish to the friends to eat, having good wine, a mixed drink with bread." See Ramsay, "The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia," p. 424.

5. Cf. the material in Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, V, pp. 13ff.

6. Doelger, Das Fischsymbol in fruhchristlicher Zeit.

7. Sinnbilder und Kunstvorstellungen der alten Christen (1825). p. 49. Muenter mentions Abrabanel (sic) here. "who in all probability drew on older sources."

8. Op. cit., p. 76.

9. Der Stern der Weisen (1827). pp. 54ff.

10. Isaac Abravanel (Abarbanel) ben jehuda. Ma'yene ha-Yeshu'ah ("Sources of Salvation" -- A Commentary on Daniel. Ferrara. 1551).

11. Corresponding to 1396 B.C.

12. Actually the conjunction took place in Sagittarius (). The coniunctiones magnae of the water trigon () fall in the years 1800 to 1600 and 1000 to 800 B.C.

13. Anger. "Der Stern der Weisen und das Geburtsjahr Christi," p. 396, and Gerhardt, Der Stern des Messias, pp. 54f.

14. Gerhardt. p. 57. Ptolemy and. following him, the Middle Ages associate Pales- tine with Aries.

15. "Ye have borne Siccuth your king and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves" (RV). Stephen refers to this in his defence (Acts 7: 43): "And you took unto you the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your god Rempham." "Rempham" (), is a corruption of Kewan (Chiun).

16. Dozy and de Goeje, "Nouveaux documents pour l'etude de la religion des Harraniens," p. 350.

17. Abu Ma'shar, d. 885.

18. Gerhardt, p. 57. Also Pierre d'Ailly, Concordantia astronomie cum theologia, etc., fol. g4 (Venice, 1490): "But Saturn, as Messahali says, has a meaning which concerns the Jewish people or their faith."

19. Reitzenstein, Poimandres, p. 76.

20. Contra Celsum, VI, 30 (trans. by H. Chadwick, p. 345).

21. Ibid., VI, 31: "But they say that this angel like unto a lion has a necessary connection with the star Saturn." Cf. Pistis Sophia, trans. by Mead, p. 47, and Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, pp. 352ff.

22. Hippolytus, Elenchos, V, 7, 30 (Legge trans., I, p. 128).

23. Ibid., VII, 38, I (cf. Legge trans., II, p. 96).

24. Hence the image of Saturn worshipped by the Sabaeans was said to be made of lead or black stone. (Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, II, p. 383.)

25. L'Astrologie grecque, p. 317.

26. Bouche-Leclercq (p. 318) conjectures one of the known classical "etymologies," namely an onos (ass) contained in Kronos (Saturn), based on a joke aimed at the Megarian philosopher Diodoros. But the reason for the Saturn-ass analogy probably lies deeper, that is, in the nature of the ass itself, which was regarded as a "cold, intractable, slow-witted, long-lived animal." (From the Greek bestiary cited by Bouche-Leclercq.) In Polemon's bestiary I find the following description of the wild ass: "Given to flight, timid, stupid, untamed, lustful, jealous, killing its females" (Scriptores physiognomici graeci et latini, I, p. 182).

27. A possible model might be the Egyptian tradition of the martyrdom of Set. depicted at Denderah. He is shown tied to the "slave's post," has an ass's head. and Horus stands before him with a knife in his hand. (Mariette, Denderah, plates vol. IV. pI. 56.)

28. Quaestiones convivales, IV, 5.

29. Contra Apionem, II, 7-8 (8off.). (Cf. trans. by H. St. J. Thackeray and R. Marcus, I, pp. 325fg.)

30. The Histories, trans. by W. H. Fyfe, II, pp. 204ff.

31. Epiphanius, Panarium, ed. Oehler. I. p. 184.

32. Apologeticus adversus gentes, XVI (Migne, P.L., vol. I, cols. 364-65; cf. trans. by S. Thelwall, I. pp. 84f.).

33. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, in Moralia, pp. 77, 123. In ch. 31 Plutarch states that the legend of Set's flight on an ass and of the fathering of his two sons Hierosolymus and Judaeus is not Egyptian, but pertained to the .

34. In the Papyrus of Ani (ed. E. A. W. Budge. p. 248) a hymn to Ra says: "May I advance upon the earth; may I smite the Ass; may I crush the evil one (Sebau); may I destroy Apep in his hour."

35. Albumasar, Lib. II, De magnis coniunctionibus, tract. I, diff. 4, p. a8r (1489): "If (Jupiter) is in conjunction with Saturn, it signifies that the faith of the citizens thereof is Judaism .... And if the moon is in conjunction with Saturn it signifies doubt and revolution and change, and this by reason of the speed of the corruption of the moon and the rapidity of its motion and the shortness of its delay in the sign." Cf. also Pierre d'Ailly, Concordantia, etc., fol. d8r. J. H. Heidegger (Quaestiones ad textum Lucae VII, 12-17, 1655) says in ch. IX that Abu Mansor (= Albumasar), in his sixth tractate, in the Introductio maior, connects the life of Christ, like that of Mahomet, with the stars. Cardan ascribes to Christianity, to Judaism, to Islam, and according to him signifies idolatry ("Commentarium in Ptolemaeum De astrorum Judiciis," p. 188).

36. Christensen, Le Premier Homme et le premier roi dans l'histoire legendaire des Iraniens, part 1, p. 24.

37. Gerhardt, Stern des Messias, p. 74.

38. Calculated on the basis of Peters and Knobel, Ptolemy's Catalogue of Stars.

39. Medieval astrologers cast a number of ideal horoscopes for Christ. Albumasar and Albertus Magnus took Virgo as the ascendent; Pierre d'Ailly (1356-1420), on the other hand, took Libra, and so did Cardan. Pierre d'AilIy says: "For Libra is the human sign, that is, of the Liberator of men, [the sign) of a prudent and just and spiritual man" (Concordantia, etc., cap. 2). Kepler, in his Discurs von der grossen Conjunction (1623; p. 701), says that God himself marked "such great conjunctions as these with extraordinary and marvellous stars visible in high heaven, also with notable works of his divine Providence." He continues: "Accordingly he appointed the birth of his Son Christ our Saviour exactly at the time of the great conjunction in the signs of the Fishes and the Ram, near the equinoctial point." Seen heliocentricaIly. the conjunction took place just in front of the equinoctial point, and this gives it a special significance astrologically. Pierre d'AiIly (Concordantia, etc., fol. br) says: "But a great conjunction is that of Saturn and Jupiter in the beginning of the Ram." These con- junctions occur every 20 years and take place every 200 years in the same trigon. But the same position can only recur every 800 years. The most significant positions are those between two trigons. Albumasar (De magnis coniunc., tract. 3, diff. I, fol. D 8r) says they manifest themselves "in changes of parties and offices and in changes of the laws and ... in the coming of prophets and of prophesying and of miracles in parties and offices-of state."

40. Crucifixion was a well-known punishment for slaves. The Cross with a snake on it, instead of the Crucified, is often found in medieval times [Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 217], and also in the dreams and fantasy-images of modern people who know nothing of this tradition. A characteristic dream of this sort is the following: The dreamer was watching a Passion play in the theatre. On the way to Golgotha, the actor taking the part of the Saviour suddenly changed into a snake or crocodile.

41. Erman, Die Religion der Agypter, p. 137.

42. Pistis Sophia, Mead trans., pp. 118f., slightly modified.

43. Cf. the fish that Augustine says was "drawn from the deep."

44. In this connection mention should be made of the "Saviour of the twins" () in Pistis Sophia (Mead trails., pp. 2, 17, and elsewhere). 45 Also mentioned in the Chronique of Tabari (I, ch. 23, p. 67). There Antichrist is the king of the Jews, who appears with Gog and Magog. This may be an allusion to Rev. 20: 7f.: "And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog. to gather them together to battle" (AV).

Graf von Wackerbarth (Merkwurdige Geschichte der weltberuhmten Gog und Magog, p. 19) relates from an English "History of the World." which came out in German in 1760, that the Arab writers say the "Yajui" were "of more than ordinary size." whereas the "Majui" were "not more than three spans high." This story, despite the obscurity of its origins, points to the antithetical nature of Gog and Magog. who thus form a parallel to the Fishes. Augustine interprets "the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog" as. respectively (Gog), tectum, 'roof' or 'house,' and (Magog) de tecto, 'he that comes out of the house': "Ut illae sint tectum, ipse de tecto." That is to say the nations are the house, but the devil dwells in the house and comes out of it. (City of God, Healey trans., II. p. 286.) On Augustine is based the Compendium theologicae veritatis (Venice, 1492), which was attributed in turn to Albertus Magnus, Hugh of Strasbourg, and John of Paris. It is our main source for the Antichrist legend. With reference to Augustine it says (Libell. 7, cap. II) that Gog means "occultatio" (concealment). Magog "detectio" (revelation). This corroborates the antithetical nature of Gog and Magog at least for the Middle Ages. It is another instance of the motif of the hostile brothers, or of duplication. Albumasar (tract. 4. diff. 12, f. 8r) calls the sixth "clima" (inclination towards the Pole) that of Gog and Magog. and correlates it with Gemini and Virgo.

46. Nezikin VI, Sanhedrin II (BT, p. 658). R. Hanan ben Tahlifa. into whose mouth this prophecy is put. is mentioned in the list of Amoraim (teachers of the Talmud) and lived in the 2nd cent. A.D.

46a. Cf. infra. pars. 225ff.

47. Epiphanius, Panarium, XXX (Oehler edn., I, pp. 240ff.).

48. Hipparchus is supposed to have discovered the precession. Cf. Boll, Sphaera, p. 199, n. 1.

49. Origen, Commentaria in Genesim, tom. III, i, 14, 11 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 79): "There is indeed a theory that the zodiacal circle, just like the planets, is carried back from setting to rising [or: from west to east], within a century by one degree; ... since the twelfth part [1 zodion] is one thing when conceived in the mind, another when perceived by the senses; yet from that which is conceived only in the mind, and can scarcely, or not even scarcely, be held for certain, the truth of the matter appears." The Platonic year was then reckoned as 36,000 years. Tycho Brahe reckoned it at 24,120 years. The constant for the precession is 50.3708 seconds and the total cycle (360°) takes 25,725.6 years.

50. Bouche-Leclercq, p. 591, n. 2; Knapp, Antiskia; Boll, Sphaera.

51. The theory of the conjunctions was set down in writing by the Arabs about the middle of the 9th cent., more particularly by Messahala. Cf. Strauss, Die Astrologie des Johannes Kepler.

52. With his estimate of 960 years between two coniunctiones maximae, Pierre d'Ailly would also arrive at A.D. 3613.

53. This period around the year 1240 would, from the astrological standpoint, be characterized by the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Libra, in 1246. Libra is another double sign with a pneumatic nature (air trigon), like Gemini, and for this reason it was taken by Pierre d'Ailly as Christ's ascendent.

54. At the Lateran Council, 1215. Cf. Denzinger and Bannwart, Enchiridion symbolorum, pp. 190ff.

55. "His teaching is to be held not so much heretical as insane," says the decree.

56. Hahn, Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter, II, p. 779: " ... some who under the name of a false and pretended religious order, whom the common folk call Beghards and Schwestrones or 'Brod durch Gott'; but they call themselves Little Brethren and Sisters of the fellowship of the Free Spirit and of Voluntary Poverty."

57. "Item credunt se esse Deum per naturam sine distinctione ... se esse aeternos . . . "Item quod nullo indigent nec Deo nec Deitate. "Item quod sunt ipsum regnum coelorum. "Item quod sunt etiam immutabiles in nova rupe, quod de nullo gaudent, et de nullo turbantur. "Item quod homo magis tenetur sequi instinctum interiorem quam veritatem Evangelii quod cottidie praedicatur ... dicunt, se credere ibi (in Evangelio) esse poetica quae non sunt vera:' (Hahn, II, pp. 779f.)

58. Cf. "The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales," pars. 396ff.

59. "The Spirit Mercurius," pars. 284ff., and "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity," pars. 257ff.

60. [Although Mary's Immaculate Conception was declared de fide by Pope Pius IX in 1854, by the bull Ineffabilis Deus, her Assumption was not defined as part of divine revelation until 1950. -- EDITORS.]

61. [Cf. "Psychology and Religion," par. 122, and "Answer to Job," pars. 748ff.]

62. Opera, ed. G. Schepps, p. 24.

63. Cf. Aurora Consurgens (ed. van Franz), p. 127: "this great and wide sea smote the rock and the metallic waters flowed forth."

64. Musaeum hermeticum (1678), p. 212: "Our stone is called the sacred rock, and is understood or signified in four ways." Cf. Ephesians 3: 18. The Pyramid Text of Pepi I mentions a god of resurrection with four faces: "Homage to thee, O thou who hast four faces .... Thou art endowed with a soul, and thou dost rise (like the sun) in thy boat ... carry thou this Pepi with thee in the cabin of thy boat, for this Pepi is the son of the Scarab." (Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, I, p. 85.)

65. Explanationes in Psalmos, XXXVIII: "In the shadow there was water from the rock, as it were the blood of Christ."

66. Mylius, Philosophia reformata (1622). p. 112: "Whence the philosopher brought forth water from the rock and oil out of the flinty stone."

67. Von hylealischen Chaos (1597). p. 272.

68. Hippolytus, Elenchos, V, 7, 34f. (Legge trans., I, p. 129). Reference is also made here to the "stone cut from the mountain without hands" (Daniel 2 : 45), a metaphor used by the alchemists.

69. De errore profanarum religionum, 20, 1.

70. Cf. the building of the seamless tower (church) with "living stones" in the "Shepherd" of Hermas.

71. Doelger, Das Fischsymbol, I, p. 18. Though the Abercius inscription, which dates from the beginning of the 3rd cent. (after A.D. 216), is of importance in this connection, it is of doubtful Christian origin. Dieterich (Die Grabschrift des Aberkios), in the course of a brilliant argument, demonstrates that the "holy shepherd" mentioned in the inscription is Attis, the Lord of the sacred Ram and the thousand-eyed shepherd of glittering stars. One of his special forms was Elogabal of Emera, the god of the emperor Heliogabalus, who caused the hieros gamos of his god to be celebrated with Urania of Carthage, also called Virgo coelestis. Heliogabalus was a gallus (priest) of the Great Mother, whose fish only the priests might eat. The fish had to be caught by a virgin. It is conjectured that Abercius had this inscription written in commemoration of his journey to Rome to the great hieros gamos, sometime after A.D. 216. For the same reasons there are doubts about the Christianity of the Pectorios inscription at Autun, in which the fish figures too: " "Eat ... (reading uncertain), holding the fish in the hands. Nourish now with the fish, I yearn, Lord Saviour." Probable reading: instead of . Cf. Cabrol and Leclercq, Dictionnaire d'archtiologie chrtitienne, XIII, cols. 2884ff., "Pectorios." The first three distichs of the inscription make the acrostic Ichthys. Dating is uncertain (3rd-5th cent.). Cf. Doelger, I, pp. 12ff.

72. I refer particularly to Boll, Aus der Offenbarung Johannis. The writings of Arthur Drews have treated the astrological parallels with -- one can well say -- monomaniacal thoroughness, not altogether to the advantage of this idea. See Der Sternenhimmel in der Dichtung und Religion der allen Volker und des Christentums.

73. Religious meal. According to Tertullian (Adversus Marcionem, I, cap. XIV; Migne, P.L., vol. 2, col. 262) the fish signifies "the holier food." Cf. also Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, V, pp. 41ff.

74. Origen, In Genesim hom. VIII, 9 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 208): "We said ... that Isaac bore the form of Christ, but that the ram also seems no less to bear the form of Christ." Augustine (City of God, XVI, 32, I) asks: "Who was that ram by the offering whereof was made a complete sacrifice in typical blood ... who was prefigured thereby but Jesus ... ?" For the Lamb as Aries in the Apocalypse see Boll, Aus der Offenbarung Johannis.

75. Eisler, Orpheus -- The Fisher, pp. 51ff. There is also a wealth of material in Eisler's paper "Der Fisch als Sexualsymbol," though it contains little that would help to interpret the fish-symbol, since the question puts the cart before the horse. It has long been known that all the instinctual forces of the psyche are involved in the formation of symbolic images, hence sexuality as well. Sex is not "symbolized" in these images, but leaps to the eye, as Eisler's material clearly shows. In whatsoever a man is involved, there his sexuality will appear too. The indubitably correct statement that St. Peter's is made of stone, wood, and metal hardly helps us to interpret its meaning, and the same is true of the fish symbol if one continues to be astonished that this image, like all others, has its manifest sexual components. With regard to the terminology, it should be noted that something known is never "symbolized," but can only be expressed allegorically or semiotically.

76. Thiele, Antike Himmelsbilder, p. 29.

77. Boll, Sphaera, PI. I, and Eisler, The Royal Art of Astrology, P1. 5, following p. 164.

78. Gaedechens, Der Marmome Himmelsglobus.

79. Cumont, Textes et monuments, II.

80. See the two fishes in Lambspringk's symbols (Mus. herm., p. 343), representing at the same time the opposites to be united. Aratus (Phaenomena, Mair trans., p. 401) mentions only the higher position of the northern fish as compared with the southern one. without emphasizing their duality or opposition. Their double character is. however. stressed in modern astrological speculation. (E. M. Smith, The Zodia, p. 279.) Senard (Le Zodiaque, p. 446) says: "The fish ... swimming from above downwards symbolizes the movement of involution of Spirit in Matter; that ... which swims from below upwards. the movement of evolution of the Spirit-Mauer composite returning to its Unique Principle."

81. Capricorn or .

82. A clear reference to astrology can be found in Pistis Sophia, where Jesus converses with the "ordainers of the nativity": "But Jesus answered and said to Mary: If the ordainers of the nativity find Heimarmene and the Sphere turned to the left in accordance with their first circulation, then their words will be true. and they will say what must come to pass. But if they find Heimarmene or the Sphere turned to the right, then they will not say anything true. because I have changed their influences and their squares and their triangles and their octants." (Cf. Mead trans., p. 29.)

83. The meridian of the star "O" in the commissure passed through the spring-point in A.D. 11. and that of the star "a 113" in 146 B.C. Calculated on the basis of Peters and Knobel, Ptolemy's Catalogue of Stars.

84. Since the delimitation of the constellations is known to be somewhat arbitrary, this date is very indefinite. It refers to the actual constellation of fixed stars, not to the zodion noeton, i.e., the zodiac divided into sectors of 30 ͦ each. Astrologically the beginning of the next aeon, according to the starting-point you select, falls between A.D. 2000 and 2200. Starting from star "O" and assuming a Platonic month of 2,143 years, one would arrive at A.D. 2154 for the beginning of the Aquarian Age, and at A.D. 1997 if you start from star "a 113." The latter date agrees with the longitude of the stars in Ptolemy's Almagest.

85. Modern astrological speculation likewise associates the Fishes with Christ: "The fishes ... the inhabitants of the waters, are fitly an emblem of those whose life being hid with Christ in God, come out of the waters of judgment without being destroyed [an allusion to the fishes which were not drowned in the Deluge! -- C.G.J.] and shall find their true sphere where life abounds and death is not: where, for ever surrounded with the living water and drinking from its fountain, they 'shall not perish, but have everlasting life.' ... Those who shall dwell for ever in the living water are one with Jesus Christ the Son of God. the Living One." (Smith, The Zodia, pp. 280f.)
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Re: Aion, by C.G. Jung

Postby admin » Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:42 am

Chapter 7: THE PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS

The course of our religious history as well as an essential part of our psychic development could have been predicted more or less accurately, both as regards time and content, from the precession of the equinoxes through the constellation of Pisces. The prediction, as we saw, was actually made and coincides with the fact that the Church suffered a schism in the sixteenth century. After that an enantiodromian process set in which, in contrast to the "Gothic" striving upwards to the heights, could be described as a horizontal movement outwards, namely the voyages of discovery and the conquest of Nature. The vertical was cut across by the horizontal, and man's spiritual and moral development moved in a direction that grew more and more obviously antichristian, so that today we are confronted with a crisis of Western civilization whose outcome appears to be exceedingly dubious.

With this background in mind, I would like to mention the astrological prophecies of Nostradamus, written in a letter [1] to Henry II of France, on June 27, 1558. After detailing a year characterized, among other things, by with [2] he says:

Then the beginning of that year shall see a greater persecution against the Christian Church than ever was in Africa, [3] and it shall be in the year 1792, at which time everyone will think it a renovation of the age.... And at that time and in those countries the infernal power shall rise against the Church of Jesus Christ. This shall be the second Antichrist, which shall persecute the said Church and its true vicar by means of the power of temporal kings, who through their ignorance shall be seduced by tongues more sharp than any sword in the hands of a madman.... The persecution of the clergy shall have its beginning in the power of the Northern Kings joined by the Eastern ones. And that persecution shall last eleven years, or a little less, at which time the chief Northern king shall fail. [4]


However, Nostradamus thinks that "a united Southern king" will outlast the Northern one by three years. He sees a return of paganism ("the sanctuary destroyed by paganism"), the Bible will be burned, and an immense blood-bath will take place: "So great tribulations as ever did happen since the first foundation of the Christian Church." All Latin countries will be affected by it.

There are historical determinants that may have moved Nostradamus to give the year 1792 as the beginning of the new aeon. For instance, Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly, basing himself on Albumasar, writes in his Concordantia [5] on the eighth coniunctio maxima ( in ), which had been calculated for 1693:

And after that shall be the fulfilment of ten revolutions of Saturn in the year 1789, and this will happen after the said conjunction, in the course of ninety-seven years or thereabouts .... This being so, we say that if the world shall endure until then, which God alone knows, then there will be many and great and marvellous changes and transformations of the world, especially as concerns law-giving and religious sects, for the said conjunction and the revolutions of Saturn will coincide with the revolution or reversal of the upper orb, i.e., the eighth sphere, and from these and other premises the change of sects will be known .... Whence it may be concluded with some probability that this is the time when the Antichrist shall come with his law and his damnable sects, which are utterly contrary and inimical to the law of Christ; for, being human, we can have no certainty with regard to the time and the moment of his coming .... Yet, despite the indeterminate statement that he will come at approximately that time, it is possible to have a probable conjecture and a credible hypothesis in accordance with the astronomical indications. If, therefore, the astronomers say that a change of sects will occur about that time, then, according to them, a Mighty One will come after Mahomet, who will set up an evil and magical law. Thus we may surmise with credible probability that after the sect of Mahomet none other will come save the law of the Antichrist. [6]


In connection with the calculation of the year 1693, Pierre d'Ailly quotes Albumasar as saying that the first coniunctio maxima of Saturn and Jupiter took place anno mundi 3200. To this Albumasar added 960 years, which brings us to A.D. 1693 as the year of the eighth coniunctio maxima. [7] In Part III of his book, chapter 17, Pierre d'Ailly criticizes this view and calls it a "false deduction." In his treatise against "superstitiosos astronomos," 1410, he maintains that the Christian religion should not be brought under astrological laws. He was alluding in particular to Roger Bacon, who had revived the theory that Christianity was under the influence of the planet Mercury. Pierre d'Ailly held that only superstitions and heretical opinions were astrologically influenced, and especially the coming of the Anti-christ. [8]

We are probably right in assuming that these calculations were known to Nostradamus, who proposed 1792 as an improvement on 1789. Both dates are suggestive, and a knowledge of subsequent events confirms that the things that happened around that time were significant forerunners of developments in our own day. The enthronement of the "Deesse Raison" was, in fact, an anticipation of the antichristian trend that was pursued from then onwards.

The "renovation of the age" might mean a new aeon, and it coincides in a remarkable way with the new system of dating, the revolutionary calendar, which began with September 22, 1792, and had a distinctly antichristian character. [9] What had been brewing up long beforehand then became a manifest event; in the French Revolution men witnessed the enantiodromia that had set in with the Renaissance and ran parallel with the astrological fish symbol. The time seemed a significant one astrologically, for a variety of reasons. In the first place this was the moment when the precession of the equinoxes reached the tail of the second fish. [10] Then, in the year 1791, Saturn was in , a fiery sign. Besides that, tradition made use of the theory of maximal conjunctions [11] and regarded the year of the eighth coniunctio maxima -- 1693 -- as a starting-point for future calculations. [12] This critical year was combined with another tradition basing itself on periods of ten revolutions of Saturn, each period taking three hundred years. Pierre d' Ailly cites Albumasar, who says in his Magnae coniunctiones: "They said that the change shall come when ten revolutions of Saturn have been completed, and that the permutation of Saturn is particularly appropriate to the movable signs" (). [13] According to Pierre d'Ailly, a Saturn period came to an end in 11 B.C., and he connects this with the appearance of Christ. Another period ended in A.D. 289: this he connects with Manichaeism. The year 589 foretells Islam, and 1189 the significant reign of Pope Innocent III; 1489 announces a schism of the Church, and 1789 signalizes -- by inference -- the coming of the Antichrist. Fantasy could do the rest, for the archetype had long been ready and was only waiting for the time to be fulfilled. That a usurper from the North would seize power [14] is easily understood when we consider that the Antichrist is something infernal, the devil or the devil's son, and is therefore Typhon or Set, who has his fiery abode in the North. Typhon's power is triadic, possessing two confederates, one in the East and one in the South. This power corresponds to the "lower triad." [15]

Nostradamus, the learned physician and astrologer, would certainly have been familiar with the idea of the North as the region of the devil, unbelievers, and all things evil. The idea, as St. Eucherius of Lyons (d. 450) remarks, [16] goes back to Jeremiah 1: 14: "From the north shall an evil wind break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land," [17] and other passages such as Isaiah 14: 12f.:

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far north. [18]


The Benedictine monk Rhabanus Maurus (d. 856) says that "the north wind is the harshness of persecution" and "a figure of the old enemy." [19] The north wind, he adds, signifies the devil, as is evident from Job 26: 7: "He stretcheth out the north over the empty space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing." [20] Rhabanus interprets this as meaning that "God allows the devil to rule the minds of those who are empty of his grace," [21] St. Augustine says: "Who is that north wind, save him who said: I will set up my seat in the north, I will be like the most High? The devil held rule over the wicked, and possessed the nations," etc. [22]

The Victorine monk Garnerius says that the "malign spirit" was called Aquilo, the north wind. Its coldness meant the "frigidity of sinners." [23] Adam Scotus imagined there was a frightful dragon's head in the north from which all evil comes. From its mouth and snout it emitted smoke of a triple nature, [24] the "threefold ignorance, namely of good and evil, of true and false, of fitting and unfitting." [25] "That is the smoke," says Adam Scotus, "which the prophet Ezekiel, in his vision of God, saw coming from the north," [26] the "smoke" of which Isaiah speaks. [27] The pious author never stops to think how remarkable it is that the prophet's vision of God should be blown along on the wings of the north wind, wrapped in this devilish smoke of threefold ignorance. Where there is smoke, there is fire. Hence the "great cloud" had "brightness round about it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming bronze." [28] The north wind comes from the region of fire and, despite its coldness, is a "ventus urens" (burning wind), as Gregory the Great calls it, referring to Job 27: 21. [29] This wind is the malign spirit, "who rouses up the flames of lust in the heart" and kindles every living thing to sin. "Through the breath of evil incitement to earthly pleasures he makes the hearts of the wicked to burn." As Jeremiah 1: 13 says, "I see a boiling pot, facing away from the north." In these quotations from Gregory we hear a faint echo of the ancient idea of the fire in the north, which is still very much alive in Ezekiel, whose cloud of fire appears from the north, whence "an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land." [30]

In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that Nostradamus warns against the usurper from the north when foretelling the coming of the Antichrist. Even before the Reformation the Antichrist was a popular figure in folklore, as the numerous editions of the "Entkrist" [31] in the second half of the fifteenth century show. [32] This is quite understandable in view of the spiritual events then impending: the Reformation was about to begin. Luther was promptly greeted as the Antichrist, and it is possible that Nostradamus calls the Antichrist who was to appear after 1792 the "second Antichrist" because the first had already appeared in the guise of the German reformer, or much earlier with Nero or Mohammed. [33] We should not omit to mention in this connection how much capital the Nazis made out of the idea that Hitler was continuing and completing the work of reformation which Luther had left only half finished.

From the existing astrological data, therefore, and from the possibilities of interpreting them it was not difficult for Nostradamus to predict the imminent enantiodromia of the Christian aeon; indeed, by making this prediction, he placed himself firmly in the antichristian phase and served as its mouthpiece.

After this excursion, let us turn back to our fish symbolism.

_______________

Notes:

1. Printed in the Amsterdam edition of the Vrayes Centuries et Propheties de Maistre Michel Nostredame (1667). pp. 96ff.

2. According to the old tradition the conjunction of Jupiter and Mercury. as mentioned above. is characteristic of Christianity. The quartile aspect between Mercury and Mars "injures" Mercury by "martial" violence. According to Cardan, signifies "the law of Mahomet" (Comment. in Ptol., p. 188). This aspect could therefore indicate an attack by Islam. Albumasar regards in the same way: "And if Mars shall be in conjunction with him (Jupiter). it signifies the fiery civilization and the pagan faith" (De magn. coniunct., tract. I. diff. 4. p. a8r). On the analogy of history the evil events to come are ascribed to the crescent moon. but one never reflects that the opponent of Christianity dwells in the European unconscious. History repeats itself.

3. Where Roman Christendom succumbed to Islam.

4. The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus, trans. and ed. by H. C. Roberts. pp. 231ff.

5. D 7V to 8r, div. 2, cap. 60 and 61. Cf. also Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, IV, p. 102.

6. "Et post ilIam erit complementum 10 revolutionum saturnalium anno Christi 1789 et hoc erit post dictam coniunctionem per annos 97 vel prope .... His itaque praesuppositis dicimus quod si mundus usque ad ilIa tempora duraverit, quod solus deus novit, multae tunc et magnae et mirabiles alterationes mundi et mutationes futurae sunt, et maxime circa leges et sectas, nam cum praedicta coniunctione et iIIis revolutionibus Saturni ad hoc concurret revolutio seu reversio superioris orbis, id est, octavae sphaerae per quam et per alia praemissa cognoscitur sectarum mutatio ... Unde ex his probabiliter concluditur quod forte circa ilia tempora veniet Antichristus cum lege sua vel secta damnabili, quae maxime adversa erit et contraria legi Christi; nam Iicet de adventu sui determinato tempore vel momenta haberi non possit humanitus certitudo .... Tamen indeterminate loquendo quod circa ilia tempora venturus sit potest haberi probabilis coniectura et verisimilis suspicio per astronomica iudicia. Cum enim dictum sit secundum astronomos circa illa tempora fieri mutationem sectarum et secundum eos post machometum erit aliquis potens, qui legem foedam et magicam constituet. Ideo verisimili probahilitate credi potest, quod post sectam machometi nulla secta veniet, nisi lex antichristi."

7. Concordantia, etc., fol. b 5.

8. Cf. Thorndike, IV, p. 103.

9. In classical usage renovatio can have the meaning of the modern word "revolution," whereas even in late Latin revolutio still retains its original meaning of "revolving." As the text shows, Nostradamus thought of this moment (1791) as the climax of a long-standing persecution of the Church. One is reminded of Voltaire's "ecrasez l'infame!"

10. There is nothing to suggest that a conscious attempt was made to prophesy on the basis of the precession.

11. Conjunctions in Aries were regarded as such, at least as a rule. o ͦ Aries is the spring-point.

12. I cannot claim to have understood Pierre d'Ailly's argument. Here is the text (Second treatise, ch. 50, "De octava coniunctione maxima"): "Et post illam erit complementum 10 revolutionum saturnalium anno Christi 1789 et hoc erit post dictam coniunctionem per annos 97 vel prope et inter dictam coniunctionem et illud complementum dictarum 10 revolutionum erit status octavae sphaerae circiter per annos 25 quod sic patet: quia status octavae sphaerae erit anno 444 post situm augmentationum [reading uncertain], quae secundum tabulas astronomicas sunt adaequatae ad annum Christi 1320 perfectum, et ideo anno Christi 1764, quibus annis si addas 25, sunt anni 1789 quos praediximus. Unde iterum patet quod ab hoc anno Christi 1414 usque ad statum octavae sphaerae erunt anni 253 perfecti." (And after that shall be the fulfilment of 10 revolutions of Saturn to the year 1789, and this shall be after the said conjunction for 97 years or thereabouts, and between the said conjunction and that fulfilment of the 10 revolutions there shall be a standstill of the eighth sphere for about 25 years, which is evident from this: that the standstill of the eighth sphere shall be in the 444th year after the position of the augmentations, which according to the astronomical tables are assigned to the end of the year of Christ 1320, that is the year of Christ 1764, and if you add 25 years to this, you arrive at the year 1789 aforesaid. Hence it is again evident that from this year of Christ 1414 to the standstill of the eighth sphere there will be 253 complete years.)

13. Fol. d 6.

14. It is not clear from the text whether the same "persecution" is meant, or a new one. The latter would be possible.

15. Cf. "The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy tales," pars. 425f., 436ff.

16. Migne, P.L., vol. 50, col. 740.

17. "Ab Aquilone pendetur malum super omnes habitatores terrae" (DV).

18. "Quomodo cecidisti de coelo, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris? corruisti in terram qui vulnerabas gentes? Qui dicebas in corde tuo: in caelum conscendam, super astra Dei exaltabo solium meum, sedebo in monte testamenti, in lateribus Aquilonis" (trans. is AV; last line RSV).

19. Migne, P.L., vol. 112, col. 860.

20. This is an obvious analogy of the pneuma brooding on the face of the deep.

21. "... quod illorum mentibus, qui gratia sua vacui, diabolum Deus dominari permittit."

22. Enar. in Ps. XLVII, 3; Migne, P.L., vol. 36, col. 534.

23. Sancti Victoris Parisiensis Gregorianum; Migne, P.L., vol. 193, cols. 59f.

24. Allusion to the lower triad.

25. De tripartito tabernaculo, III, c. g; Migne, P.L., vol. 198, col. 761. Adam Scotus speaks of the "darkness of the smoke from the north." Pseudo-Clement (Homilies, XIX, 22) stresses "the sins of unconsciousness" (agnoia). Honorius of Autun (Speculum de mysteriis ecclesiae; Migne, P.L., vol. 172, col. 833) says: "By the north, where the sun lies hidden under the earth, Matthew is meant, who describes the divinity of Christ hidden under the flesh." This confirms the chthonic nature of the triad.

26. Ezek. 1: 4: "And I saw, and behold a whirlwind came out of the north, and a great cloud ..."

27. Isaiah 14: 31: "Howl, O gate, cry, O city, all Philistia is thrown down, for a smoke shall come from the north, and there is none that shall escape his troop."

28. Ezek. 1: 4.

29. "A burning wind shall take him up and carry him away; and as a whirlwind shall snatch him from his place" (In Expositionem beati Job Moralia; Migne, P.L., vol. 76, cols. 54, 55).

30. Jer. 1: 13f.

31. Cf. Symbols of Transformation, par. 565.

32. The text of the various mss. is supposed to go back to the Compendium theologicae veritatis of Hugh of Strasbourg (13th cent). Cf. Kelchner, Der Enndkrist, p. 7.

33. So in Giovanni Nanni (1432-1502). See Thorndike, IV, pp. 263ff.
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Re: Aion, by C.G. Jung

Postby admin » Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:43 am

Chapter 8: THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FISH

In addition to the "pisciculi Christianorum," the shepherd and the lamb play, as we know only too well, an almost greater role in Christian allegory, and Hermes Kriophoros (the "rambearer") became the prototype of the "good shepherd," the tutelary god of flocks. Another prototype, in his capacity as shepherd, was Orpheus. [1] This aspect of the Poimen gave rise to a figure of similar name in the mystery cults, who was popularized in the "Shepherd" of Hermas (2nd century). Like the "giant fish" mentioned in the Abercius inscription, [2] the shepherd probably has connections with Attis, both temporally and regionally. Reitzenstein even conjectures that the "Shepherd" of Hermas derives from the Poimandres writings, which are of purely pagan origin. [3] Shepherd, ram, and lamb symbolism coincides with the expiring aeon of Aries. In the first century of our era the two aeons overlap, and the two most important mystery gods of this period, Attis and Christ, are both characterized as shepherds, rams, and fishes. The Poimen symbolism has undergone such thorough elaboration at the hands of Reitzenstein that I am in no position to add anything illuminating in this respect. The case is somewhat different with the fish symbol. Not only are the sources more copious, but the very nature of the symbol, and in particular its dual aspects, give rise to definite psychological questions which I should like to go into more closely.

Like every hero, Christ had a childhood that was threatened (massacre of the innocents, flight into Egypt). The astrological "interpretation" of this can be found in Revelation 12: 1: "A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars." She is in the pangs of birth and is pursued by a dragon. She will give birth to a man-child who shall "rule the nations with a rod of iron." This story carries echoes of numerous kindred motifs in East and West, for instance that of Leto and Python, of Aphrodite and her son, who, when pursued, leapt into the Euphrates and were changed into fishes, [4] and of Isis and Horus in Egypt. The Syrian Greeks identified Derceto-Atargatis and her son Ichthys with the constellation of the Fishes. [5]

The mother-goddess-and the star-crowned woman of the Apocalypse counts as one-is usually thought of as a virgin (, virgo). The Christmas message, (the virgin has brought forth, the light increases), is pagan. Speaking of the so-called Korion in Alexandria, Epiphanius [6] says that on the night of the Epiphany (January 5/6) the pagans held a great festival:

They stay up the whole night singing songs and playing the flute, offering these to the images of the gods; and, when the revelries of the night are over, after cock-crow, they go down with torches into a subterranean sanctuary and bring up a carved wooden image, which is laid naked on a litter. On its forehead it has the sign of the cross, in gold, and on both its hands two other signs of the same shape, and two more on its knees; and the five signs are all fashioned in gold. They carry this carved image seven times round the middle of the temple precincts, to the sound of flutes and tambourines and hymns, and after the procession they carry it down again into the crypt. But if you ask them what this mysterious performance means, they answer: Today, at this hour, the Kore, that is to say the virgin, has given birth to the Aeon.


Epiphanius expressly states that he is not telling this of a Christian sect, but of the worshippers of idols, and he does so in order to illustrate the idea that even the pagans bear involuntary witness to the truth of Christianity.

Virgo, the zodiacal sign, carries either a wheat-sheaf or a child. Some authorities connect her with the "woman" of the Apocalypse. [7] At any rate, this woman has something to do with the prophecy of the birth of a Messiah at the end of time. Since the author of the Apocalypse was supposed to be a Christian, the question arises: To whom does the woman refer who is interpreted as the mother of the Messiah, or of Christ? And to whom does the son of the woman refer who (translating the Greek literally) shall "pasture () the pagans with an iron staff"?

As this passage contains an allusion on the one hand to the Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 66: 7, [8] and on the other to Yahweh's wrath (Psalm 2: 9 [9]), it would seem to refer in some way to the future rebirth of the Messiah. But such an idea is quite impossible in the Christian sphere. Boll [10] says of the description of the "lamb" in Revelation 5: 6ff.: "This remarkably bizarre figure with seven horns and seven eyes cannot possibly be explained in Christian terms." Also, the "lamb" develops some very unexpected peculiarities: he is a bellicose lamb, a conqueror (Rev. 17 : 14). The mighty ones of the earth will have to hide from his wrath (Rev. 6: 15ff.). He is likened to the "lion of the tribe of Judah" (Rev. 5: 5). This lamb, who is reminiscent of Psalm 2: 9 ("Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel"), rather gives one the sinister impression of a daemonic ram, [11] and not at all of a lamb who is led meekly to the slaughter. The lamb of the Apocalypse belongs, without doubt, to the category of horned monsters mentioned in these prophecies. One must therefore consider the question whether the author of the Apocalypse was influenced by an idea that was in some sense antithetical to Christ, perhaps by a psychological shadow-figure, an "umbra Jesu" which was united at the end of time with the triumphant Christ, through an act of rebirth. This hypothesis would explain the repetition of the birth myth and also the curious fact that so important an eschatological expectation as the coming of the Antichrist receives but scant mention in the Apocalypse. The seven-horned ram is just about everything that Jesus appears not to be. [12] He is a real shadow-figure, but he could not be described as the Antichrist, who is a creature of Satan. For although the monstrous, warlike lamb is a shadow-figure in the sense that he is the counterpart of the lamb who was sacrificed, he is not nearly so irreconcilable with Christ as the Antichrist would have to be. The duplication of the Christ-figure cannot, therefore, be traced back to this split between Christ and Antichrist, but is due rather to the anti-Roman resentment felt by the Jewish Christians, who fell back on their god of vengeance and his warlike Messiah. The author of the Apocalypse may have been acquainted with Jewish speculations known to us through later tradition. We are told in the Bereshith Rabbati of Moses ha-Darshan that Elias found in Bethlehem a young woman sitting before her door with a newborn child lying on the ground beside her, flecked with blood. She explained that her son had been born at an evil hour, just when the temple was destroyed. Elias admonished her to look after the child. When he came back again five weeks later, he asked about her son. "He neither walks, nor sees, nor speaks, nor hears, but lies there like a stone," said the woman. Suddenly a wind blew from the four corners of the earth, bore the child away, and plunged him into the sea. Elias lamented that it was now all up with the salvation of Israel, but a bath kol (voice) said to him:

It is not so. He will remain in the great sea for four hundred years, and eighty years in the rising smoke of the children of Korah, [13] eighty years under the gates of Rome, and the rest of the time he will wander round in the great cities until the end of the days comes. [14]


This story describes a Messiah who, though born in Bethlehem, is wafted by divine intervention into the Beyond (sea = unconscious): From the very beginning his childhood is so threatened that he is scarcely able to live. The legend is symptomatic of an extraordinary weakness of the Messianic element in Judaism and the dangers attending it, which would explain the delay in the Messiah's appearance. For 560 years he remains latent, and only then does his missionary work begin. This interlude is not so far off the 530 years mentioned in the Talmudic prophecy (cf. par. 133), near enough anyway for us to compare them, if we take this legend as referring to Christ. In the limitless sea of Jewish speculation mutual contacts of this sort are more likely to have occurred than not. Thus the deadly threat to the Messiah and his death by violence is a motif that repeats itself in other stories, too. The later, mainly Cabalistic tradition speaks of two Messiahs, the Messiah ben Joseph (or ben Ephraim) and the Messiah ben David. They were compared to Moses and Aaron, also to two roes, and this on the authority of the Song of Solomon 4: 5: "Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins." [15] Messiah ben Joseph is, according to Deuteronomy 33: 17, the "firstling of his bullock," and Messiah ben David rides on an ass.[16] Messiah ben Joseph is the first, Messiah ben David the second. [17] Messiah ben Joseph must die in order to "atone with his blood for the children of Yahweh." [18] He will fall in the fight against Gog and Magog, and Armilus will kill him. Armilus is the Anti-Messiah, whom Satan begot on a block of marble. [19] He will be killed by Messiah ben David in his turn. Afterwards, ben David will fetch the new Jerusalem down from heaven and bring ben Joseph back to life. [20] This ben Joseph plays a strange role in later tradition. Tabari, the commentator on the Koran, mentions that the Antichrist will be a king of the Jews, [21]and in Abarbanel's Mashmi'a Yeshu'ah the Messiah ben Joseph actually is the Antichrist. So he is not only characterized as the suffering Messiah in contrast to the victorious one, but is ultimately thought of as his antagonist. [22]

As these traditions show, the above-mentioned weakness of the Messianic element consists in a split which in the end becomes a complete polarity. This development is foreshadowed in Persian religious literature, in the pre-Christian idea of an enantiodromia of the great time-periods, and the deterioration of goodness. The Bahman Yast calls the fourth Iron Age "the evil sovereignty of the demons with dishevelled hair of the race of Wrath." [23] On the other hand, the splitting of the Messiah into two is an expression of an inner disquiet with regard to the character of Yahweh, whose injustice and unreliability must have shocked every thoughtful believer ever since the time of Job. [24] Job puts the problem in unequivocal terms, and Christianity gave an equally unequivocal answer. Jewish mysticism, on the other hand, went its own way, and its speculations hover over depths which Christian thinkers have done their utmost to cover up. I do not want to elaborate this theme here, but will mention as an example a story told by Ibn Ezra. In Spain, he says, there was a great sage who was reputed to be unable to read the Eighty-ninth Psalm because it saddened him too much. The verses in question are:

I will not remove from him my steadfast love,
or be false to my faithfulness.
I will not violate my covenant,
or alter the word that went forth from my lips.
Once for all I have sworn my holiness:
I will not lie to David.
His line shall endure for ever,
his throne as long as the sun before me.
Like the moon it shall be established for ever;
the witness in the skies is sure. Selah!
But now thou hast cast off and rejected,
thou art full of wrath against thy anointed.
Thou hast renounced the covenant with thy servant;
thou hast trodden his crown in the dust. Thou hast breached all his walls;
thou hast laid his strongholds in ruins. [25]


It is the same problem as in Job. As the highest value and supreme dominant in the psychic hierarchy, the God-image is immediately related to, or identical with, the self, and everything that happens to the God-image has an effect on the latter. Any uncertainty about the God-image causes a profound uneasiness in the self, for which reason the question is generally ignored because of its painfulness. But that does not mean that it remains unasked in the unconscious. What is more, it is answered by views and beliefs like materialism, atheism, and similar substitutes, which spread like epidemics. They crop up wherever and whenever one waits in vain for the legitimate answer. The ersatz product represses the real question into the unconscious and destroys the continuity of historical tradition which is the hallmark of civilization. The result is bewilderment and confusion. Christianity has insisted on God's goodness as a loving Father and has done its best to rob evil of substance. The early Christian prophecy concerning the Antichrist, and certain ideas in late Jewish theology, could have suggested to us that the Christian answer to the problem of Job omits to mention the corollary, the sinister reality of which is now being demonstrated before our eyes by the splitting of our world: the destruction of the God-image is followed by the annulment of the human personality. Materialistic atheism with its utopian chimeras forms the religion of all those rationalistic movements which delegate the freedom of personality to the masses and thereby extinguish it. The advocates of Christianity squander their energies in the mere preservation of what has come down to them, with no thought of building on to their house and making it roomier. Stagnation in these matters is threatened in the long run with a lethal end.

As Bousset has plausibly suggested, the duality of the apocalyptic Christ is the outcome of Jewish-Gnostic speculations whose echoes we hear in the traditions mentioned above. The intensive preoccupation of the Gnostics with the problem of evil stands out in startling contrast to the peremptory nullification of it by the Church fathers, and shows that this question had already become topical at the beginning of the third century. In this connection we may recall the view expressed by Valentinus, [26] that Christ was born "not without a kind of shadow" and that he afterwards "cast off the shadow from himself." [27] Valentinus lived sometime in the first half of the second century, and the Apocalypse was probably written about A.D. go, under Domitian. Like other Gnostics, Valentinus carried the gospels a stage further in his thinking, and for this reason it does not seem to me impossible that he understood the "shadow" as the Yahwistic law under which Christ was born. The Apocalypse and other things in the New Testament could easily have prompted him to such a view, quite apart from the more or less contemporaneous ideas about the demiurge and the prime Ogdoad that consists of light and shadow. [28] It is not certain whether Origen's doubt concerning the ultimate fate of the devil was original; [29] at all events, it proves that the possibility of the devil's reunion with God was an object of discussion in very early times, and indeed had to be if Christian philosophy was not to end in dualism. One should not forget that the theory of the privatio boni does not dispose of the eternity of hell and damnation. God's humanity is also an expression of dualism, as the controversy of the Monophysites and Dyopnysites in the early Church shows. Apart from the religious significance of the decision in favour of a complete union of both natures, I would mention in passing that the Monophysite dogma has a noteworthy psychological aspect: it tells us (in psychological parlance) that since Christ, as a man, corresponds to the ego, and, as God, to the self, he is at once both ego and self, part and whole. Empirically speaking, consciousness can never comprehend the whole, but it is probable that the whole is unconsciously present in the ego. This would be equivalent to the highest possible state of (completeness or perfection).

I have dwelt at some length on the dualistic aspects of the Christ-figure because, through the fish symbolism, Christ was assimilated into a world of ideas that seems far removed from the gospels -- a world of pagan origin, saturated with astrological beliefs to an extent that we can scarcely imagine today. Christ was born at the beginning of the aeon of the Fishes. It is by no means ruled out that there were educated Christians who knew of the coniunctio maxima of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces in the year 7 B.C., just as, according to the gospel reports, there were Chaldaeans who actually found Christ's birthplace. The Fishes, however, are a double sign.

At midnight on Christmas Eve, when (according to the old time-reckoning) the sun enters Capricorn, Virgo is standing on the eastern horizon, and is soon followed by the Serpent held by Ophiuchus, the "Serpent-bearer." This astrological coincidence seems to me worth mentioning, as also the view that the two fishes are mother and son. The latter idea has a quite special significance because this relationship suggests that the two fishes were originally one. In fact, Babylonian and Indian astrology know of only one fish. [30] Later, this mother evidently gave birth to a son, who was a fish like her. The same thing happened to the Phoenician Derceto-Atargatis, who, half fish herself, had a son called Ichthys. It is just possible that "the sign of the prophet Jonah" [31] goes back to an older tradition about an heroic night sea journey and conquest of death, where the hero is swallowed by a fish ("whale-dragon") and is then reborn. [32] The redemptory name Joshua [33] (Yehoshua, Yeshua, Gr. Iesous) is connected with the fish: Joshua is the son of Nun, and Nun means 'fish.' The Joshua ben Nun of the Khidr legend had dealings with a fish that was meant to be eaten but was revived by a drop of water from the fountain of life. [34]

The mythological Great Mothers are usually a danger to their sons. Jeremias mentions a fish representation on an early Christian lamp, showing one fish devouring the other. [35] The name of the largest star in the constellation known as the Southern Fish -- Fomalhaut, 'the fish's mouth' -- might be interpreted in this sense, just as in fish symbolism every conceivable form of devouring concupiscentia is attributed to fishes, which are said to be "ambitious, libidinous, voracious, avaricious, lascivious" -- in short, an emblem of the vanity of the world and of earthly pleasures ("voluptas terrena"). [36] They owe these bad qualities most of all to their relationship with the mother- and love-goddess Ishtar, Astarte, Atargatis, or Aphrodite. As the planet Venus, she has her "exaltatio" in the zodiacal sign of the fishes. Thus, in astrological tradition as well as in the history of symbols, the fishes have always had these opprobrious qualities attached to them, [37] while on the other hand laying claim to a special and higher significance. This claim is based -- at least in astrology -- on the fact that anyone born under Pisces may expect to become a fisherman or a sailor, and in that capacity to catch fishes or hold dominion over the sea -- an echo of the primitive totemistic identity between the hunter and his prey. The Babylonian culture-hero Oannes was himself a fish, and the Christian Ichthys is a fisher of men par excellence. Symbologically, he is actually the hook or bait on God's fishing-rod with which the Leviathan -- death or the devil -- is caught. [38] In Jewish tradition the Leviathan is a sort of eucharistic food stored up for the faithful in Paradise. After death, they clothe themselves in fish-robes. [39] Christ is not only a fisher but the fish that is "eucharistically" eaten. [40] Augustine says in his Confessions: "But [the earth] eats the fish that was drawn from the deep, at the table which you have prepared for them that believe; for the fish was drawn from the deep in order to nourish the needy ones of the earth." [41] St. Augustine is referring to the meal of fishes eaten by the disciples at Emmaus (Luke 24: 43). We come across the "healing fish" in the story of Tobit: the angel Raphael helps Tobit to catch the fish that is about to eat him, and shows him how to make a magic "smoke" against evil spirits from the heart and liver of the fish, and how he can heal his father's blindness with its gall (Tobit 6: 1ff.).

St. Peter Damian (d. 1072) describes monks as fishes, because all pious men are little fishes leaping in the net of the Great Fisher. [42] In the Pectorios inscription (beginning of the fourth century), believers are called the "divine descendants of the heavenly fish." [43]

The fish of Manu is a saviour, [44] identified in legend with Vishnu, who had assumed the form of a small goldfish. He begs Manu to take him home, because he was afraid of being devoured by the water monsters. [45] He then grows mightily, fairytale fashion, and in the end rescues Manu from the great flood. [46] On the twelfth day of the first month of the Indian year a golden fish is placed in a bowl of water and invoked as follows: "As thou, O God, in the form of a fish, hast saved the Vedas that were in the underworld, so save me also, O Keshava!" [47] De Gubernatis and other investigators after him tried to derive the Christian fish from India. [48] Indian influence is not impossible, since relations with India existed even before Christ and various spiritual currents from the East made themselves felt in early Christianity, as we know from the reports of Hippolytus and Epiphanius. Nevertheless, there is no serious reason to derive the fish from India, for Western fish symbolism is so rich and at the same time so archaic that we may safely regard it as autochthonous.

Since the Fishes stand for mother and son, the mythological tragedy of the son's early death and resurrection is already implicit in them. Being the twelfth sign of the Zodiac, Pisces denotes the end of the astrological year and also a new beginning. This characteristic coincides with the claim of Christianity to be the beginning and end of all things, and with its eschatological expectation of the end of the world and the coming of God's kingdom. [49] Thus the astrological characteristics of the fish contain essential components of the Christian myth; first, the cross; second, the moral conflict and its splitting into the figures of Christ and Antichrist; third, the motif of the son of a virgin; fourth, the classical mother-son tragedy; fifth, the danger at birth; and sixth, the saviour and bringer of healing. It is therefore not beside the point to relate the designation of Christ as a fish to the new aeon then dawning. If this relationship existed even in antiquity, it must obviously have been a tacit assumption or one that was purposely kept secret; for, to my knowledge, there is no evidence in the old literature that the Christian fish symbolism was derived from the zodiac. Moreover, the astrological evidence up to the second century A.D. is by no means of such a kind that the Christ/Antichrist antithesis could be derived causally from the polarity of the Fishes, since this, as the material we have cited shows, was not stressed as in any way significant. Finally, as Doelger rightly emphasizes, the Ichthys was always thought of as only one fish, though here we must point out that in the astrological interpretation Christ is in fact only one of the fishes, the role of the other fish being allotted to the Antichrist. There are, in short, no grounds whatever for supposing that the zodion of the Fishes could have served as the Ichthys prototype.

Pagan fish symbolism plays in comparison a far greater role. [50] The most important is the Jewish material collected by Scheftelowitz. The Jewish "chalice of benediction" [51] was sometimes decorated with pictures of fishes, for fishes were the food of the blessed in Paradise. The chalice was placed in the dead man's grave as a funerary gift. [52] Fishes have a wide distribution as sepulchral symbols. The Christian fish occurs mainly in this connection. Devout Israelites who live "in the water of the doctrine" are likened to fishes. This analogy was self-evident around A.D. 100. [53] The fish also has a Messianic significance. [54] According to the Syrian Apocalypse of Baruch, Leviathan shall rise from the sea with the advent of the Messiah. [55]This is probably the "very great fish" of the Abercius inscription, corresponding to the "fish from the fountain" mentioned in a religious debate at the court of the Sassanids (5th century). The fountain refers to the Babylonian Hera, but in Christian language it means Mary, who in orthodox as well as in Gnostic circles (Acts of Thomas) was invoked as ,'fountain.' Thus we read in a hymn of Synesius (c. 350):, . (Fountain of fountains, source of sources, root of roots, monad of monads art thou.) [56] The fountain of Hera was also said to contain the one fish () that is caught by the "hook of divinity" and "feeds the whole world with its flesh." [57] In a Boeotian vase-painting the "lady of the beasts" [58] is shown with a fish between her legs, or in her body, [59] presumably indicating that the fish is her son. Although, in the Sassanid debate, the legend of Mary was transferred to Hera, the "one fish" that is hooked does not correspond to the Christian symbol, for in Christian symbology the crucifix is the hook or bait with which God catches Leviathan, [60] who is either death or the devil ("that ancient serpent") but not the Messiah. In Jewish tradition, on the other hand, the pharmakon athanasias is the flesh of Leviathan, the "Messianic fish," as Schefte1owitz says. The Talmud Sanhedrin says that the Messiah "will not come until a fish is sought for an invalid and cannot be procured." [61] According to the Apocalypse of Baruch, Behemoth as well as Leviathan [62] is a eucharistic food. This is assiduously overlooked. As I have explained elsewhere, [63]Yahweh's two prehistoric monsters seem to represent a pair of opposites, the one being unquestionably a land animal, and the other aquatic.

Since olden times, not only among the Jews but all over the Near East, the birth of an outstanding human being has been identified with the rising of a star. Thus Balaam prophesies (Num. 24: 17):

I shall see him, but not now,
I shall behold him, but not nigh;
a star shall come forth out of Jacob.


Always the hope of a Messiah is connected with the appearance of a star. According to the Zohar, the fish that swallowed Jonah died, but revived after three days and then spewed him out again. "Through the fish we shall find a medicament for the whole world." [64] This text is medieval but comes horn a trustworthy source. The "very great [65] and pure fish from the fountain" mentioned in the Abercius inscription is, in the opinion of Scheftelowitz, [66] none other than Leviathan, which is not only the biggest fish but is held to be pure, as Scheftelowitz shows by citing the relevant passages from Talmudic literature. In this connection we might also mention the "one and only fish" ( ) recorded in the "Happenings in Persia." [67]

_______________

Notes:

1. Eisler. Orpheus -- The Fisher, pp. 51ff.

2 .[Cf. par. 127. n. 4.]

3. Poimandres, pp. 32ff.

4. Eisler, The Royal Art of Astrology, p. 107.

5. Bouche-Leclercq, L'Astrologie grecque, p. 147. For the relation of the gyne (woman) to the zodiacal sign Virgo see Boll, Aus der Offenbarung Johannis, p. 122.

6. Panarium, LI, 22, Oehler edn., Part 3, pp. 632f. This passage is not in the older editions of the Panarium, since it was discovered only recently in a ms. at Venice.

7. Boll, pp. 121ff.

8. "Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child."

9. "Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel."

10. Boll, p. 44.

11. His eyes signify the "seven Spirits of God" (Rev. 5: 6) or the "seven eyes of the Lord" (Zech. 4: 10). The Lamb stands with the seven angels before God's throne, as Satan did with the sons of God (Job 1: 6), so that God is described under the aspect of Ezekiel's vision and is thought of in Yahwistic terms -- an "umbra in lege"!

12. That is, if we disregard passages like Matt. 21: 19 and 22: 7 and Luke 19: 27.

13. [Cf. Num. 16. -- EDlTORS.]

14. Wunsche, Die Leiden des Messias, p. 91.

15. Targum on Canticles 4: 5 in The Targum to The Song of Songs, p. 50. Wunsche, p. 111. In the Zohar the Messiah is called "Mother." Schoettgen, Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae, II, p. 10. Cf. also the "Saviour of the twins" in Pistis Sophia (above, par. 133, n. 44).

16. Zohar, trans. by H. Sperling and M. Simon, II, p. 358: "Hence it is written of him [the Messiah] that he will be 'poor and riding on an ass ...' (Zech. 12: 9)." Also Wunsche, p. 100.

17. Ibid., p. 114.

18. Ibid., p. 115.

19. Armilus or Armillus = , the Antichrist. Methodius: "Romulus, who is also Armaeleus."

20. Wunsche, p. 120.

21. Chronique of Tabari, I, ch. 23, p. 67.

22. Bousset, The Antichrist Legend, p. 111.

23. Pahlavi Texts, trans. by E. W. West, p. 193.

24. Cf. the opposition between mercy and justice in God's nature, supra. pars. 108ff.

25. Psalm 89: 33ff. (RSV).

26. He was, it seems, a cleric, who is said to have been a candidate for the episcopal see in Rome.

27. Irenaeus, Adv. haer., I, 11, 1 (Roberts/Rambaut trans., I, p. 46).

28. Doctrine of the Valentinian Secundus (ibid., I, p. 46).

29. De oratione, 27: " ... so that that supreme sinner and blasphemer against the Holy Ghost may be kept from sin through all this present age, and hereafter in the age to come from its beginning to its end be treated I know not how" (... ita ut summus ille peccator et in Spiritum sanctum blasphemus per totum hoc praesens saeculum a peccato detineatur, et post haec in futuro ab initio ad finem sit nescio quomodo tractandus), thus giving rise to the view that "even the devil will some day be saved." [Cf. alternative trans. by J. E. L. Oulton and H. Chadwick, p. 304.]

30. Namely Piscis Austrinus, the "Southern Fish," which merges with Pisces and whose principal star is Fomalhaut.

31. Matt. 12: 39, 16: 4; Luke 11: 29f.

32. Cf. Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes, and my Symbols of Transformation, pars. 308ff.

33. "Yahweh is salvation."

34. Koran, Sura 18. Cf. "Concerning Rebirth," pars. 244f., and Vollers, "Chidher," p. 241.

35. Jeremias, The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient East, p. 76. This lamp has never been traced.

36. Picinellus, Mundus symbolicus (1680-81), Lib. VI. cap. I.

37. Bouche-Leclercq, p. 147.

38. How closely the negative and the positive meanings are related can be seen from the fish-hook motif, attributed to St. Cyprian: "Like a fish which darts at a baited hook, and not only does not lay hold of the bait along with the hook, but is itself hauled up out of the sea; so he who had the power of death did indeed snatch away the body of Jesus unto death, but did not observe that the hook of the Godhead was concealed therein, until he had devoured it: and thereupon remained fixed thereto."

Stephen of Canterbury (Liber allegoricus in Habacuc, unavailable to me) says: "It is the bait of longed-for enjoyment that is displayed in the hook, but the tenacious hidden hook is consumed along with the bait. So in fleshly concupiscence the devil displays the bait of pleasure, but the sting of sin lies hid therein." In this regard see Picinellus, Lib. VI, cap. I.

39. Scheftelowitz, "Das Fisch-Symbol im Judentum und Christentum," p. 365.

40. Cf. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, V, pp. 41ff.

41. Lib. XIII. cap. XXI. (Cf. trans. by F. J. Sheed. p. 275, modified.)

42. "The cloister of a monastery is indeed a fishpond of souls, and fish live there· in" (Picinellus. Mundus).

An Alexandrian hymn from the 2nd cent. runs:

"Fisher of men, whom Thou to life dost bring!
From the evil sea of sin
And from the billowy strife
Gathering pure fishes in,
Caught with sweet bait of life."


(Writings of Clement of Alexandria, trans. by W. Wilson, I, p. 344.) Cf. Doelger, I, p. 4. Tertullian (De baptismo, cap. I) says: "But we little fishes, after the example of our Jesus Christ, are born in water, nor have we safety in any other way than by permanently abiding in (that) water." (Trans. by S. Thelwall. I, pp. 231-32.) The disciples of Gamaliel the Elder (beginning of 1st cent.) were named after various kinds of fishes. (Abot de Rabbi Nathan, cap. 40 [cf. trans. by J. Goldin, p. 1661, cited in Scheftelowitz, p. 5.)

48. Pohl, Das Ichthysmonument von Autun, and Doelger, I. pp. 12ff.

44. "I will save thee." Shatapatha Brahmana (trans. by J. Eggeling, I [i.e., XII], p. 216).

45. De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, II, pp. 334f.

46. Shatapatha Brahmana (Eggeling trans., pp. 216ff.).

47. Doelger, I, p. 23. Keshava means 'having much or fine hair: a cognomen of Vishnu.

48. Ibid., pp. 21ff.

49. Origen (De oratione, cap. 27): " ... as the last month is the end of the year, after which the- beginning of another month ensues, so it may be that, since several ages complete as it were a year of ages, the present age is 'the end: after which certain 'ages to come' will ensue, of which the age to come is the begin- ning, and in those coming ages God will 'shew the riches of his grace in kindness' (Eph. 2: 7]" (Oulton/Chadwick trans., p. 304).

50. Especially noteworthy is the cult of the dove and the fish in the Syrian area. There too the fish was eaten as "Eucharistic" food. (Cumont, Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain, pp. 108-9. 255-57.) The chief deity of the Philistines was called Dagon, derived from dag, 'fish.'

51. : calix benedictionis (I Cor. 10: 16. DV).

52. Scheftelowitz, p. 375.

53. Ibid., p. 3.

54. Cf. Goodenough, V, pp. 35ff.

55. At the same time "Behemoth shall be revealed from his place ... and then they shall be food for all that are left." (Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, II, p. 497.) The idea of Leviathan rising from the sea also links up with the vision in II Esdras 13: 25. of the "man coming up from the midst of the sea." Cf. Charles. II. p. 579, and Wischnitzer-Bernstein, Symbole und Gestalten der judischen Kunst, pp. 122f. and 134f.

56. Wirth, Aus orientalischen Chroniken, p. 199.

57. Ibid., pp. 161, 19f.

58. [Cf. Neumann. The Great Mother, ch. 14 and pl. 134. -- EDITORS.]

59. Eisler, Orpheus -- The Fisher, PI. LXIV.

60. See Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 28.

61. Scheftelowitz, p. 9; from the Talmud Nezikin VI, Sanhedrin II (BT; p. 662). Cf. the in the Pectorios inscription, supra, p. 89n.

62. A passage in Moses Maimonides (Guide tor the Perplexed, trans. by M. Fried lander, p. 303) has bearing on the interpretation of Leviathan. Kirchmaier (Disputationes Zoologicae, 1736, p. 73) cites it as follows: "Speaking of these same things Rabbi Moses Maimon says that Leviathan possesses a [universal] combination (complexum generalem) of bodily peculiarities found separate in different animals." Although this rationalistic author dismisses the idea as "nugatory," it nevertheless seems to me to hint at an archetype ("complexum gmeralem") of the "spirit of gravity."

63. Psychological Types, pars. 456ff.

64. M Scheftelowitz, p. 10. Cf. Matt. 12: 39 and 16: 4, where Christ takes the sign of the prophet Jonah as a sign of the Messianic age and a prefiguration of his own fate. Cf. also Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, V, pp. 47ff.

65. .

66. Pp. 7f.

67. (Wirth, p. 151).
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Re: Aion, by C.G. Jung

Postby admin » Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:44 am

Chapter 9: THE AMBIVALENCE OF THE FISH SYMBOL

According to the Syrian Apocalypse of Baruch (29: 1ff.), the time preceding the coming of the Messiah falls into twelve parts, and the Messiah will appear in the twelfth. As a time-division, the number twelve points to the zodia, of which the twelfth is the Fishes. Leviathan will then rise out of the sea. "The two great sea monsters which I created on the fifth day of creation and which I have preserved until that time shall then be food for all who are left." [1] Since Behemoth is unquestionably not a sea-animal, but one which, as a midrash says, "pastures on a thousand mountains," [2] the two "sea monsters" must be a duplication of Leviathan. And as a matter of fact, he does appear to be divided as to sex, for there is a male and a female of the species. [3] A similar duplication is suggested in Isaiah 27: 1: "In that day, the Lord with his sore and great strong sword shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent, and he shall slay the dragon [Vulgate: whale] that is in the sea." This duplication gave rise in medieval alchemy to the idea of two serpents fighting each other, one winged, the other wingless. [4] In the Book of Job, where Leviathan appears only in the singular, the underlying polarity comes to light in his opposite number, Behemoth. A poem by Meir ben Isaac describes the battle between Leviathan and Behemoth at the end of time, in which the two monsters wound each other to death. Yahweh then cuts them up and serves them as food to the devout. [5] This idea is probably connected with the old Jewish Passover, which was celebrated in the month of Adar, the fish. In spite of the distinct duplication of Leviathan in the later texts, it is very likely that originally there was only one Leviathan, authenticated at a very early date in the Ugarit texts from Ras Shamra (c. 2000 B.C.). Virolleaud gives the following translation:

Quand tu frapperas Ltn, le serpent brh
Tu acheveras le serpent 'qltn,
Le puissant aux sept tetes.


He comments: "It is remarkable that the two adjectives brh and 'qltn are the ones which qualify, in Isaiah 27: 1, a particularly dangerous species of serpent which we call Leviathan, in Hebrew Liviatan." [6] From this period, too, there are pictures of a fight between Baal and the serpent Ltn, [7] remarkable in that the conflict is between a god and a monster and not between two monsters, as it was later.

We can see from the example of Leviathan how the great "fish" gradually split into its opposite, after having itself been the opposite of the highest God and hence his shadow, the embodiment of his evil side. [8]

With this splitting of the monster into a new opposite, its original opposition to God takes a back seat, and the monster is now in conflict either with itself or with an equivalent monster (e.g., Leviathan and Behemoth). This relieves God of his own inner conflict, which now appears outside him in the form of a hostile pair of brother monsters. In later Jewish tradition the Leviathan that Yahweh fought with in Isaiah develops a tendency, on the evidence cited by Scheftelowitz, to become "pure" and be eaten as "eucharistic" food, with the result that, if one wanted to derive the Ichthys symbol from this source, Christ as a fish would appear in place of Leviathan, the monstrous animals of tradition having meanwhile faded into mere attributes of death and the devil.

This split corresponds to the doubling of the shadow often met with in dreams, where the two halves appear as different or even as antagonistic figures. This happens when the conscious ego-personality does not contain all the contents and components that it could contain. Part of the personality then remains split off and mixes with the normally unconscious shadow, the two together forming a double -- and often antagonistic -- personality. If we apply this experience from the domain of practical psychology to the mythological material under discussion, we find that God's monstrous antagonist produces a double because the God-image is incomplete and does not contain everything it logically ought to contain. Whereas Leviathan is a fishlike creature, primitive and cold-blooded, dwelling in the depths of the ocean, Behemoth is a warm-blooded quadruped, presumably something like a bull, who roams the mountains (at least in later tradition). Hence he is related to Leviathan as a higher, superior creature to a lower, inferior one, rather like the winged and the wingless dragon in alchemy. All winged beings are "volatile," i.e., vapours and gases, in other words pneuma. Just as in Augustine Christ the fish is "drawn from the deep," [9] so in II Esdras 13: 2ff. the "man" came out of the sea like a wind. His appearance was heralded by an eagle and a lion, theriomorphic symbols which greatly affrighted the prophet in the same way that Behemoth inspired chiefly terror in Job. The fish drawn from the deep has a secret connection with Leviathan: he is the bait with which Leviathan is lured and caught. This fish is probably a duplication of the great fish and stands for its pneumatic aspect. It is evident that Leviathan has such an aspect, because he, like the Ichthys, is eucharistic food. [10] That this doubling represents an act of conscious realization is clear from Job 26: 12, where we are told that Yahweh smote Rahab "by his understanding" (tebuna). Rahab, the sea monster, is cousin german to Tiamat, whom Marduk split asunder by filling her up with Inihullu, the north wind. [11] The word tebuna comes from bin, 'to separate, split, part asunder' -- in other words, to discriminate, which is the essence of conscious realization. [12] In this sense Leviathan and Behemoth represent stages in the development of consciousness whereby they become assimilated and humanized. The fish changes, via the warm-blooded quadruped, into a human being, and in so far as the Messiah became, in Christianity, the second Person of the Trinity, the human figure split off from the fish hints at God's incarnation. [13] What was previously missing in the God-image, therefore, was the human element.

The role of the fish in Jewish tradition probably has some connections with the Syrophoenician fish cult of Atargatis. Her temples had pools with sacred fishes in them which no one was allowed to touch. [14] Similarly, meals of fish were ritually eaten in the temples. "This cult and these customs, which originated in Syria, may well have engendered the Ichthys symbolism in Christian times," says Cumont. [15] In Lycia they worshipped the divine fish Orphos or Diorphos, the son of Mithras and the "sacred stone," Cybele. [16] This god is a variant of the Semitic fish-deities we have already mentioned, such as Oannes, the Babylonian Nun, Dagon, and Adonis, whom the Greeks called Ichthys. Fish offerings were made to Tanit in Carthage and to Ea and Nina in Babylon. Traces of a fish cult can be found in Egypt too. The Egyptian priests were forbidden to eat fish, for fishes were held to be as unclean as Typhon's sea. "All abstain from sea-fish," observes Plutarch. According to Clement of Alexandria, the inhabitants of Syene, Elephantine, and Oxyrhynchus worshipped a fish. Plutarch [17] says it was the custom to eat a broiled fish before the door of one's house on the ninth day of the first month. Doelger inclines to the view that this custom paved the way for the eucharistic fish in Christianity. [18]

The ambivalent attitude towards the fish is an indication of its double nature. It is unclean and an emblem of hatred on the one hand, but on the other it is an object of veneration. It even seems to have been regarded as a symbol for the soul, if we are to judge by a painting on a late Hellenistic sarcophagus. The mummy lies on a lion-shaped bier, and under the bier are the four Canopic jars, the lids representing the four sons of Horus, three of them with animal heads and one with a human head. Over the mummy there floats a fish, [19] instead of the usual soul-bird. It is clear from the painting that the fish is an oxyrhynchus, or barbel, one of the three most abominated fishes, which was said to have devoured the phallus of Osiris after he had been dismembered by Typhon (Set). [20] Barbels were sacred to Typhon, who is "that part of the soul which is passionate, impulsive, irrational, and truculent." [21] Because of their voraciousness, fishes were regarded in the Middle Ages as an allegory of the damned. [22] The fish as an Egyptian soul-symbol is therefore all the more remarkable. The same ambivalence can be seen in the figure of Typhon/Set. In later times he was a god of death, destruction, and the desert, the treacherous opponent of his brother Osiris. But earlier he was closely connected with Horus and was a friend and helper of the dead. In one of the Pyramid Texts he and Heru-ur (the "older Horus") help Osiris to climb up to heaven. The floor of heaven consists of an iron plate, which in places is so close to the tops of the mountains that one can climb up to heaven with the help of a ladder. The four corners of the iron plate rest on four pillars, corresponding to the four cardinal points. In the Pyramid Texts of Pepi I, a song of praise is addressed to the "ladder of the twin gods," and the Unas text says: "Unas cometh forth upon the Ladder which his father Ra hath made for him, and Horus and Set take the hand of Unas, and they lead him into the Tuat." [23] Other texts show that there was enmity between Heru-ur and Set because one was a god of the day and the other a god of the night. The hieroglyph for Set has as a determinative the sign for a stone, or else the unidentified Set-animal with long ears. There are paintings showing the heads of Heru-ur and Set growing out of the same body, from which we may infer the identity of the opposites they represent. Budge says: "The attributes of Heru-ur changed somewhat in early dynastic times, but they were always the opposite of those of Set, whether we regard the two gods as personifications of two powers of nature, i.e., Light and Darkness, Day and Night, or as Kosmos and Chaos, or as Life and Death, or as Good and Evil." [24]

This pair of gods represent the latent opposites contained in Osiris, the higher divinity, just as Behemoth and Leviathan do in relation to Yahweh. It is significant that the opposites have to work together for a common purpose when it comes to helping the one god, Osiris, to reach the heavenly quaternity. This quaternity is also personified by the four sons of Horus: Mestha, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Qebhsennuf, who are said to dwell "behind the thigh of the northern heaven," that is, behind the thigh of Set, whose seat is in the constellation of the Great Bear. The four sons of Horus are Set's enemies, but on the other hand they are closely connected with him. They are an analogy of the four pillars of heaven which support the four-cornered iron plate. Since three of the sons are often shown with animal heads, and one with a human head, we may point to a similar state of affairs in the visions of Ezekiel, from whose cherubim-figures the well-known symbols of the evangelists (three animals, one angel) are derived. [25] Ezekiel says, furthermore (1: 22): "Over the heads of the living creatures [the cherubim] there was the likeness of a solid plate, shining like terrible crystal, spread out above their heads," and (1: 26, RSV): "And above the solid plate that was over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness as it were of a human form."

In view of the close ties between Israel and Egypt an intermingling of symbols is not unlikely. What is remarkable, however, is that in Arab tradition the region round the heavenly Pole is seen in the form of a fish. Qazvini says: "The Pole can be seen. Round it are the smaller Benat na'sh [26] and dark stars, which together form the picture of a fish, and in its midst is the Pole." [27] This means that the Pole, which in ancient Egypt denoted the region of Set and was at the same time the abode of the four sons of Horus, was contained, so to speak, in the body of a fish. According to Babylonian tradition Anu has his seat in the northern heaven; likewise Marduk, as the highest god, world-creator and ruler of its courses, is the Pole. The Enuma Elish says of him: "He who fixes the course of the stars of heaven, like sheep shall pasture the gods all together." [28]

At the northern point of the ecliptic is the region of fire (purgatory and the entrance to the Anu-heaven). Hence the northern corner of the temple built around the tower at Nippur was called the kibla (point of orientation). In like manner the Sabaeans and Mandaeans, when praying, turn towards the north. [29] We might also mention the Mithraic liturgy in this connection: in the final vision Mithras appears, "holding the golden shoulder of a young bull. This is the constellation of the Bear, which moves and turns the heavens round." The text piles endless fire-attributes on this god, who obviously hails from the north. [30]

These Babylonian ideas about the significance of the north make it easier for us to understand why Ezekiel's vision of God came from that quarter, despite the fact that it is the birthplace of all evil. The coincidence of opposites is the normal thing in a primitive conception of God, since God, not being an object of reflection, is simply taken for granted. At the level of conscious reflection, however, the coincidence of opposites becomes a major problem, which we do everything possible to circumvent. That is why the position of the devil in Christian dogma is so very unsatisfactory. When there are such gaps in our collective ideas, in the dominants of our conscious orientation. we can count with absolute certainty on the existence of complementary or -- to be more precise -- compensatory developments in the unconscious. These compensating ideas can be found in the speculations of alchemy. We can hardly suppose that ideas of this sort remained totally unconscious so far as the adepts were concerned. What they were aiming at was a more or less conscious restoration of the primitive God-image. Hence they were able to propound paradoxes as shocking as that of God's love glowing in the midst of hell-fire, [31]which is represented as being no more than the Christian conception of God in a new but necessary relation to everything hell stands for. Above all it was Jakob Bohme who, influenced by alchemy and the Cabala equally, envisaged a paradoxical God-image in which the good and the bad aspects appertain to the same divine being in a way that bears comparison with the views of Clement of Rome.

Ancient history gives us a divided picture of the region to the north: it is the seat of the highest gods and also of the adversary; thither men direct their prayers, and from thence blows an evil pneuma, the Aquilo, "by the name whereof is to be understood the evil spirit"; [32] and finally, it is the navel of the world and at the same time hell. Bernard of Clairvaux apostrophizes Lucifer thus: "And dost thou strive perversely towards the north? The more thou dost hasten toward the heights, the more speedily shalt thou go down to thy setting." [33] The "king of the North" in Nostradamus has to be understood in the light of this passage. At the same time, it is clear from St. Bernard's words that the heights of power to which Lucifer strives are still associated with the north. [34]

_______________

Notes:

1. Charles, II, p. 497, modified.

2. Midrash Tanchuma, Lev. 11: 2 and Deut. 29: 9; cited in Scheftelowitz, pp. 39f.

3. Talmud, Nezikin III, Baba Bathra (BT, I, p. 296). The female Leviathan has already been killed by Yahweh, salted, and preserved for the end of time. The male he castrated, for otherwise they would have multiplied and swamped the earth.

4. A typical pair of opposites. Cf. the struggle between the two dragons in hexagram 2, line 6, in the I Ching (Wilhelm/Baynes trans., 1967, p. 15).

5. Cf. the Midrash Tanchuma.

6. "Note complementaire sur le poeme de Mot et Akin," p. 357.

7. Virolleaud, "La legende de Baal, dieu des Pheniciens," p. ix.

8. Perhaps an echo of this psychological development may be found in the views of Moses Maimonides, who writes that in the Book of Job (ch. 41) Yahweh "dwells longest on the nature of the Leviathan, which possesses a combination of bodily peculiarities found separate in different animals, in those that walk, those that swim, and those that fly" (Guide tor the Perplexed, p. 303). Accordingly Leviathan is a kind of super-animal, just as Yahweh is a kind of superman.

9. Confessions, Sheed trans., p. 275.

10. Cf. Goodenough, V, pp. 51ff.

11. The motif of splitting is closely related to that of penetration and perforation in alchemy. Cf. also Job 26: 13: "His hand pierced the fleeing serpent" (RSV).

12. For this information I am indebted to Dr. Riwkah Scharf.

13, II Esdras is a Jewish text written at the end of the 1st cent. A.D.

14. Cumont, Les Religions orientales, p. 255.

15. Ibid., pp. 108-9, 256.

16. Eisler, Orpheus -- The Fisher, p. 20.

17. De Iside et Osiride, cap. VII (Babbitt trans., V, p. 19).

18. , I, p. 126. The risen Christ ate of a broiled fish (Luke 24: 42).

19. Spiegelberg, "Der Fisch als Symbol der Seele," p. 574. Cf. Goodenough, V, fig. 9, where the mummy appears in the form of a fish.

20. The oxyrhynchus fish was regarded as sacred all over Egypt. Cf. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, II, p. 382; Plutarch, De Iside, cap. XLIX (Babbitt trans., V, p. 19).

21. Ibid. (pp. 120f.).

22. Picinellus, Mundus symbolicus, Lib. VI, cap. I.

23. Budge, II, pp. 241f. Cf. Christ's transfiguration in the presence of Moses and Elias (Matt. 17: 4), and the "Saviour of the twins" in Pistis Sophia.

24. Budge, II, p. 243.

25. Daniel 3: 25 may be of relevance in this connection: the three men in the burning fiery furnace, who were joined by a fourth, a "son of God."

26. Lit., 'daughters of the bier', presumably' mourning women who walk ahead of the coffin. Cf. Ideler, Untersuchungen uber den Ursprung und die Bedeutung der Sternnamen, p. 11.

27. Ibid., p. 15.

28. Jeremias, p. 22.

29. Ibid., p. 33.

30. Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, pp. 8ff.

31. Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 446.

32. Garnerius, in Migne, P.L., vol. 193, col. 49.

33. Tractatus de gradibus superbiae, in Migne, P.L., vol. 182. col. 961.

34. One of the bad qualities of the north wind ("The north wind numbs with cold" = the numbness of the evil spirit, who "hardens the hearts of the wicked"), was responsible for an alchemical hypothesis concerning the formation of coral: "The coral is a kind of vegetable which comes into being in the sea, and has roots and branches, and in its original state is moist. But when the wind blows north, it hardens, and turns into a red substance, which the seafarer sees under the water and cuts off; then, when it comes out of the water, it turns into a stone, of a red colour." ("Allegoriae super librum Turbae." Art. aurif., 1593, I. p. 143.)
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Re: Aion, by C.G. Jung

Postby admin » Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:46 am

Part 1 of 2

Chapter 10: THE FISH IN ALCHEMY

1. The Medusa


Michel Nostradamus, physician and astrologer, must surely have been acquainted with alchemy, since this art was practised mainly by physicians. Whether he knew that the fish was a symbol for the arcane substance and the lapis is perhaps questionable, but it is more than likely that he had read the classics of alchemy. Of these one of the greatest authorities is the Turba philosophorum, which had been translated very early (11th- 12th cent.) from the Arabic into Latin. At about the same time, or a little later, its appendices were also translated, namely the "Allegoriae super librum Turbae," the "Allegoriae sapientum supra librum Turbae XXIX distinctiones," [1] together with the "Aenigmata ex Visione Arislei" and "In Turbam philosophorum exercitationes." The Turba belongs to the same sphere of thought as the Tabula smaragdina, and hence is one of those late Hellenistic products that were transmitted to us by the Arabs, mainly, perhaps, through the Neoplatonic school of Harran (Thabit ibn Qurrah and others), which flourished at the beginning of the eleventh century. [2] The ideas preserved in these treatises are "Alexandrian," and the recipes, particularly those set forth in the "Allegoriae super librum Turbae," adhere closely to the spirit and letter of the Papyri Graecae Magicae. [3]

Now these "Allegoriae" [4] are our earliest source for the alchemical fish symbolism. For this reason we may assign a fairly early date to the alchemical fish-before the eleventh century, in any case. [5] There is nothing to suggest that it is of Christian origin. That, however, did not prevent it from becoming -- through the transformation of the arcane substance which it had at first represented -- a symbol of the lapis, the latter term denoting the prima materia as well as the end product of the process, variously called lapis philosophorum, elixir vitae, aurum nostrum, infans, puer, filius philosophorum, Hermaphroditus, and so on. This filius, as I have shown elsewhere, was regarded as a parallel of Christ. Thus, by an indirect route, the alchemical fish attains the dignity of a symbol for the Salvator mundi. Its father is God, but its mother is the Sapientia Dei, or Mercurius as Virgo. The filius philosophorum (or macrocosmi), otherwise the lapis, means nothing other than the self, as I have explained in a detailed examination of its various attributes and peculiarities.

The text containing the earliest reference to the fish runs: "There is in the sea a round fish, lacking bones and cortex, and having in itself a fatness, a wondrous virtue, which, if it is cooked on a slow fire until its fatness and moisture entirely disappear ... is saturated with sea-water until it begins to shine." [6] This recipe is repeated in another, possibly later, treatise of the same kind, the "Aenigmata philosophorum." [7] Here the "piscis" has become a "pisciculus," and "lucescat" has become "candescat." Common to both treatises is the ironic conclusion of the recipe: When the citrinitas (xanthosis, 'yellowing') appears, "there is formed the collyrium [eyewash] of the philosophers." If they wash their eyes with it, they will easily understand the secrets of the philosophy.

This round fish is certainly not a fish in the modern sense, but an invertebrate. This is borne out by the absence of bones and "cortex," which in medieval Latin simply means a mussel- shell or mollusc. [8] At all events, it is some kind of round organism that lives in the sea, presumably a scyphomedusa or jellyfish, which abounded in the seas of the ancient world. Its free-swimming form, the acrospedote medusa, has a round, bell or disc-shaped body of radial construction, which as a rule is divided into eight sections by means of four perradials and four interradials (whose angles may again be halved by adradials). Like all Cnidaria [9] or Nematophora [10] (to which class the Scyphomedusae belong), they are equipped with tentacles; these contain the thread-cells or nematocysts with which they poison their prey.

Our text remarks that when the "round fish" is warmed or cooked on a slow fire it "begins to shine." In other words, the heat already present in it becomes visible as light. This suggests that the author of the recipe was influenced either by Pliny himself or by some one in the same tradition. Pliny describes a fish -- the stella marina) 'star of the sea' -- which, he says, has puzzled several great philosophers. [11] This fish was said to be hot and burning, and to consume as with fire everything it touched in the sea. [12] Pliny mentions the stella marina [13] in the same breath [14] as the pulmo marinus) which swims freely on the surface, [15] and attributes to the latter so fiery a nature that when you rub it with a stick, you can straightway use the stick as a torch. [16] From this we might conclude that our author did not take zoological distinctions too seriously, and may have confused the stella marina with the pulmones. However that may be, the Middle Ages with its passion for symbols eagerly seized on the legend of the "starfish." Nicholas Caussin regarded the "fish" as a starfish and describes it as such. This animal, he says, generates so much heat that it not only sets fire to everything it touches but also cooks its own food. Hence it signifies the "veri amoris vis inextinguibilis" (the inextinguishable power of true love). [17]

Such an interpretation sounds very strange to modern ears. But for the Middle Ages "alles Vergangliche ist nur ein Gleichnis" was literally true: all ephemeral things were but a symbol of the divine drama, which to modern man has become almost meaningless. Picinellus interprets the fish in the same way, the only difference being that his amplification is much more elaborate. "This fish," he says, "glows forever in the midst of the waters, and whatsoever it touches grows hot and bursts into flames." This glow is a fire -- the fire of the Holy Ghost. He cites as his authority Ecclesiasticus 48: 1, [18] and refers also to the fiery tongues of the Pentecostal miracle. The miraculous fact that the fire of the stella marina does not go out in the water reminds him of the "divinae gratiae efficacitas" (action of divine grace), which sets on fire the hearts that are drowned in a "sea of sins." For the same reason the fish means charity and divine love, as the Song of Solomon 8: 7 testifies: "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it." The fish, so our author supposes, spreads a radiance about itself from the first moment of its life and thus is an emblem of religion, by whose light the faithful live.

As the quotation from the Song of Solomon shows, the interpretation of the burning starfish brings out its connection with profane love. Picinellus even says that the starfish is the "hieroglyph of a lover's heart," whose passion not even the entire sea can extinguish, no matter whether his love be divine or profane. This fish, says our author inconsequently, burns but gives no light. He quotes St. Basil: "Then conceive in your mind a deep pit, impenetrable darkness, fire that has no brightness, having all fire's power of burning, but without any light. ... Such a conception describes the fire of hell." [19] This fire is "concupiscentia," the "scintilla voluptatis" (spark of lechery).

It is curious how often the medieval symbolists give diametrically opposed interpretations of the same symbol, apparently without becoming aware of the far-reaching and dangerous possibility that the unity of the symbol implies the identity of the opposites. Thus we can find certain views in alchemy which maintain that God himself "glows" in this subterranean or submarine [20] fire. The "Gloria mundi," for instance, says: [21]

Take fire or unslaked lime, which the Philosophers say grows on trees. In this fire God himself glows in divine love. . . . Likewise the Natural Master says regarding the art of fire, that Mercurius is to be decomposed . . . and fixed in the unquenchable or living fire, wherein God himself glows, together with the sun, in divine love, for the solace of all men; and without this fire can the art never be brought to perfection. It is also the fire of the Philosophers, which they keep hidden away and concealed. . . . It is also the noblest fire which God created upon earth, for it has a thousand virtues. To these things the teacher replies that God has bestowed upon it such virtue and efficacy ... that with this fire is mingled the Godhead itself. And this fire purifies, as purgatory does in the lower regions. [22]


The fire is "inextinguishable." "The Philosophers call this fire the fire of the Holy Ghost." [23] It unites Mercurius with the sun "so that all three make but one thing, which no man shall part asunder." [24] "Just as in these three God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost are united, [i.e., as] the Holy Trinity in three Persons, and there yet remains the one single true God, so also the fire unites these three things: body, spirit, and soul, that is, Sun, Mercurius, and Soul." [25] "In this invisible fire the mystery of the Art is enclosed, as God the Father, Son, and Spirit in three Persons is verily included in one essence." [26] This fire is "fire and water at once." The Philosophers name it the "living fire" in honour of God, "who mingles himself with himself in the living water." [27]

Another treatise says of the water that it is the "hiding-place and dwelling-place of the whole treasure." [28] For in its midst is the "fire of Gehenna" which "contains this engine of the world in its own being." [29] The fire is caused by the "primum mobile" and is kindled by the influence of the stars. It never ceases its universal motion and is continually lit through the "influence of celestial forces." [30]

It is an "unnatural" fire, "contrary to nature." It puts bodies to the torture, it is itself the dragon that "burns furiously like hell-fire." [31] The life-spirit dwelling in nature, Phyton, has a double aspect: there is an infernal form of it, namely hell-fire, from which a hellish bath can be prepared. The treatise of Abraham Eleazar speaks of Phyton as a "god." [32]

According to Blaise de Vigenere, the fire has not two but four aspects: the intelligible, which is all light; the heavenly, partaking of heat and light; the elemental, pertaining to the lower world and compounded of light, heat, and glow (ardor); and finally the infernal, opposed to the intelligible, glowing and burning without any light. [33] Here again we encounter the quaternity which the ancients associated with fire, as we saw from the Egyptian conception of Set and the four sons of Horus, [34] and from Ezekiel's vision of the fiery region to the north. It is not at all likely that Vigenere was thinking of Ezekiel in this connection. [35]

In the "Introitus apertus" of Philalethes the arcane substance is named "chalybs" (steel). This, he says, is the "auri minera" (the prima materia of the gold), "the true key of our Work, without which no skill can kindle the fire of the lamp." Chalybs is a "spirit pre-eminently pure," a "secret, infernal, and yet most volatile fire," [36] the "wonder of the world, the system of the higher powers in the lower. For this reason the Almighty has assigned to it a most glorious and rare heavenly conjunction, even that notable sign whose nativity is declared throughout the Philosophical East to the furthest horizon of its hemisphere. The wise Magi saw it at the [beginning of the] era, and were astonished, and straightway they knew that the most serene King was born in the world. Do you, when you see his star, follow it to the cradle, and there you shall behold the fair infant. Cast aside your defilements, honour the royal child, open your treasure, offer a gift of gold; and after death he will give you flesh and blood, the supreme Medicine in the three monarchies of the earth." [37]

This passage is particularly interesting because it allows us to look deep into the world of obscure archetypal ideas that fill the mind of the alchemist. The author goes on to say that the steel. which is at the same time the "infernal fire," the "key of our Work," is attracted by the magnet, for which reason "our magnet" is the true "minera" (raw material) of the steel. The magnet has a hidden centre which "with an archetic appetite [38] turns towards the Pole, where the virtue of the steel is exalted." The centre "abounds in salt" -- evidently the sal sapientiae, for immediately afterwards the text says: "The wise man will rejoice, but the fool will pay small heed to these things, and will not learn wisdom, even though he see the outward-turned central Pole marked with the notable sign [39] of the Almighty."

In the Pole is found the heart of Mercurius, "which is the true fire wherein its Lord has his rest. He who journeys through this great and wide sea may touch at both Indies, may guide his course by the sight of the North Star, which our Magnet will cause to appear unto you." This is an allusion to the mystic journey, the "peregrinatio." As I have explained elsewhere, it leads to the four quarters, here indicated by the two Indies -- East, West -- and by the turning of the compass to the north. [40] Together they form a cross, i.e., a quaternity, which characterizes the nature of the Pole. For from the Pole the four directions radiate out, and also the division of the hemispheres (east and west of the Greenwich meridian). Thus the northern hemisphere resembles the round body of the hydromedusa, whose spherical surface is divided by four (or multiples of four) radials, and therefore looks like a globe seen from the Pole.

In this connection I would like to mention the dream of a twenty-year-old student, who got into a state of confusion when he found that the philosophical faculty for which he had opted did not suit him. He could discover no reason for this. His disorientation reached the point where he simply did not know what profession he wanted to take up. Then a dream came to his help and showed him his goal in the fullest sense:

He dreamt that he was walking in a wood. Gradually this grew more and more lonely and wild, and finally he realized that he was in a primeval forest. The trees were so high and the foliage so thick that it was almost dark on the ground. All trace of a path had long since disappeared, but, driven on by a vague sense of expectation and curiosity, he pressed forward and soon came to a circular pool, measuring ten to twelve feet across. It was a spring, and the crystal-clear water looked almost black in the dark shadows of the trees. In the middle of the pool there floated a pearly organism, about eighteen inches in diameter, that emitted a faint light. It was a jelly-fish. [40a] Here the dreamer awoke with a violent emotion: he decided there and then to study science, and he kept to this decision. I must emphasize that the dreamer was not under any psychological influence that might have suggested such an interpretation. The conclusion he drew from the dream was undoubtedly the right one, but it does not by any means exhaust the meaning of the symbol. The dream is archetypal -- a "big" dream. The wood that grows dusky and turns into a primeval forest means entry into the unconscious. The round pool with the jelly-fish in it represents a three-dimensional mandala, the self: wholeness as the goal to which the "archetic appetite" points, the magnetic north which gives the traveller his bearings on the "sea of the world."

Turning back to our text, I would emphasize, by way of recapitulation, that the infernal fire is nothing other than the Deus absconditus (hidden God) who dwells at the North Pole and reveals himself through magnetism. His other synonym is Mercurius, whose heart is to be found at the Pole, and who guides men on their perilous voyage over the sea of the world. The idea that the whole machinery of the world is driven by the infernal fire at the North Pole, that this is hell, and that hell is a system of upper powers reflected in the lower -- this is a shattering thought. But the same note is struck by Meister Eckhart when he says that, on returning to his true self, he enters an abyss "deeper than hell itself." Scurrilous as it is, the alchemical idea cannot be denied a certain grandeur. What is particularly interesting, psychologically, is the nature of the image: it is the projection of an archetypal pattern of order, [41] the mandala, which represents the idea of totality. The centering of the image on hell, which at the same time is God, is grounded on the experience that highest and lowest both come from the depths of the soul, and either bring the frail vessel of consciousness to shipwreck or carry it safely to port, with little or no assistance from us. The experience of this "centre" is therefore a numinous one in its own right.

Picinellus feels that his stella maris, "this fish which burns in the midst of the water but gives no light," besides meaning the Holy Ghost, love, grace, and religion, also symbolizes something in man, namely his tongue, speech, and powers of expression, for it is in these faculties that all psychic life is manifest. He is evidently thinking of an instinctive, unreflecting psychic activity, because at this point he cites James 3: 6: "And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity among our members, defiling the whole body, setting on fire the wheel of birth, and set on fire by hell." [42]

Hence the evil "fish" coincides with our untamed and apparently untameable propensities, which, like a "small fire that sets a great forest ablaze," [43] defiles the whole body and even sets on fire the "wheel of birth." The (rota nativitatis) is a distinctly curious expression to use in this connection. The wheel, it is explained, symbolizes the circle or course or cycle of life. This interpretation presupposes ideas akin to Buddhism, if we are not to conceive the wheel merely as the banal statistical cycle of births and deaths. How the wheel could ever be set on fire is a difficult question that cannot be answered without further reflection. We must consider, rather, that it is meant as a parallel to the defilement of the whole body -- in other words, a destruction of the soul.

Ever since the Timaeus it has been repeatedly stated that the soul is a sphere. [44] As the anima mundi, the soul revolves with the world wheel, whose hub is the Pole. That is why the "heart of Mercurius" is found there, for Mercurius is the anima mundi. [45] The anima mundi is really the motor of the heavens. The wheel of the starry universe is reflected in the horoscope, called the "thema" of birth. This is a division of the heavens into twelve houses, calculated at the moment of birth, the first house coinciding with the ascendent. Divided up in this way the firmament looks like a wheel turning, and the astronomer Nigidius [46] is said to have received the name Figulus ("potter") because the wheel of heaven turns like a potter's wheel. [47] The "thema" (that which is "set" or "ordained") is indeed a 'wheel'. The basic meaning of the horoscope is that, by mapping out the positions of the planets and their relations to one another (aspects), together with the distribution of the signs of the zodiac at the cardinal points, it gives a picture first of the psychic and then of the physical constitution of the individual. It represents, in essence, a system of original and fundamental qualities in a person's character, and can therefore be regarded as an equivalent of the individual psyche. Priscillian (d. 385) evidently took the wheel in this sense. He says of Christ: "He alone has the power to join together the Pleiades and to loose the bands of Orion. Knowing the changes of the firmament and destroying the wheel of generation, he has overcome the day of our birth by the renewal of baptism." [48] From this it is plain that in the fourth century the wheel of birth was in fact regarded as the horoscope. "Setting fire to the wheel" is therefore a figurative expression for a catastrophic revolt of all the original components of the psyche, a conflagration resembling panic or some other uncontrollable, and hence fatal outburst of emotion. [49] The total nature of the catastrophe is explained by the central position of the so-called "tongue," the diabolical element whose destructiveness is an essential part of every psyche. Seen in this light, the stella maris stands for the fiery centre in us from which creative or destructive influences come.

2. The Fish

In our discussion of medieval fish symbolism we have so far been concerned with a fish only in name, the jelly-fish, without taking due account of the fact that this is not a fish at all in the zoological sense, and -- more important still -- is not shaped like one. It was simply the description of the "round fish" that brought it to our attention. That, however, was not the case in the Middle Ages, for we have the testimony of a sixteenth-century adept, Theobald de Hoghelande, which shows that he at least understood the fish to be a real fish. Listing the numerous synonyms for the tincture, he remarks: "Likewise they compared it to fishes. Hence Mundus says in the Turba: Take one part fish-gall and one part calf's urine, etc. And in the 'Aenigmata sapientum' it says: There is in our sea a small round fish, without bones or legs [cruribus]." [50] Since the gall mentioned in the quotation can only come from a real fish, Hoghelande obviously took the "small round fish" to be a real one, and since one can imagine a fish without bones, but hardly without skin or some kind of integument, the incomprehensible "corticibus" of the original version [51] had to be changed into "cruribus" (legs). Of course, fishes don't have legs either. But this passage from a sixteenth-century text proves that the "small round fish" of the "Aenigmata" was understood, in alchemical tradition, as a real fish and not as a jelly-fish. A round and transparent fish of a peculiar sort, without "cortices," is described in the Cyranides: the "cinedian fish" lives in the sea on the shores of Syria, Palestine, and Libya, is six fingers long, and is a "pisciculus rotundus." It has two stones in its head and another one in the third vertebra of the tail (spondilo), or notochord. This stone is especially potent and is used as a love-potion. [52] The cinedian stone is practically unknown, because it is very rare. It is also called "opsianus," [53] which is interpreted as "serotinus" (of late growth or origin) and "tardus" (slow, hesitant). It pertains to Saturn. "This stone is twin or twofold: the one is opaque and black, but the other though black is brilliant and shining like a mirror." [54] This is the stone which many seek, without finding it: for it is the dragon's stone (dracontius lapis). [55]

The only thing that can be elicited with certainty from this involved description is that the animal in question must be a vertebrate, and is therefore presumably a genuine fish. What exactly is the justification for calling it "round" is far from clear. It is obvious that the fish is mainly a mythologem, since it is said to contain the dragon's stone. This stone was known to Pliny [56] and also to the medieval alchemists, who named it draconites, dracontias, or drachates. [57] It was reputed to be a precious stone, which could be obtained by cutting off the head of a sleeping dragon. But it becomes a gem only when a bit of the dragon's soul remains inside, [58] and this is the "hate of the monster as it feels itself dying." The gem is of a white colour, and a powerful alexipharmic. Even though there are no dragons nowadays, the text says, these draconites are occasionally found in the heads of water-snakes. Ruland asserts that he has seen such stones, blue or black in colour.

The cinedian stone has a double nature, though, as the text shows, it is not at all clear. [59] One might almost conjecture that its double nature consisted originally in a white and a black variety, and that a copyist, puzzled by the contradiction, inserted "niger quidem" ('though black'). But Ruland distinctly emphasizes that "the colour of the Draconite is white." [60] Its affinity with Saturn may shed light on this dilemma. Saturn, in astrology the "star of the sun," is alchemically interpreted as black; it is even called "sol niger" and has a double nature as the arcane substance, [61] being black outside like lead, but white inside. Johannes Grasseus cites the opinion of the Augustinian monk Degenhardus concerning the lead: the lead of the Philosophers, named lead of the air (Pb aeris), contains the "shining white dove" which is called the "salt of the metals." [62] Vigenere assures us that lead, "than which nothing is more opaque," can be turned into "hyacinth" and back again to lead. [63] Quicksilver, says Mylius, [64] comes from the "heart of Saturn," in fact is Saturn, the bright silveriness of mercury contrasting with the "blackness" of lead. The "bright" water [65] that flows from the plant Saturnia is, according to Sir George Ripley, "the most perfect water and the bloom of the world." [66] How old this idea is can be seen from the remark of Hippolytus, [67] that Chronos (Saturn) is a "power of the colour of water, and all-destructive."

In view of all this, the double nature of the cinedian stone might signify the polarity and union of opposites, which is just what gives the lapis philosophorum its peculiar significance as a uniting symbo1, [68] and hence its magical and divine properties. Our draconite, too, is endowed with extraordinary powers ("potentissimus valde"), which make it eminently suitable as the "ligature of Aphrodite," i.e., love-magic. Magic exercises a compulsion that prevails over the conscious mind and will of the victim: an alien will rises up in the bewitched and proves stronger than his ego. The only comparable effect capable of psychological verification is that exerted by unconscious contents, which by their compelling power demonstrate their affinity with or dependence on man's totality, that is, the self and its "karmic" functions. [69] We have already seen that the alchemical fish symbol points ultimately to an archetype of the order of magnitude of the self. So it should not surprise us to see that the principle of "outward uncomeliness," which applies to the lead and the lapis) is also applied to Christ. The same that is said of the lapis is said of Christ by Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373): "He is clothed in figures, he is the bearer of types. . . . His treasure is hidden and of small account, but when it is laid open, it is wonderful to look upon." [70]

In a treatise of the seventeenth century, by an anonymous French author, [71] our strange hybrid, the "round fish," finally becomes a verifiable vertebrate known to zoology: Echeneis remora) the common remora or sucking-fish. It belongs to the mackerel family, and is distinguished by a large, flat, oval-shaped sucker on the top of the head in place of the dorsal fin. By means of this it attaches itself either to a larger fish or to a ship's bottom and in this wise is transported about the world.

The text says of this fish:

For that which we take, in order to prepare from it the Philosophical Work, is naught else but that little fish the Echeneis, which has no blood or spiny bones, and is shut up in that deep mid-region of the great universal sea. This little fish is extremely small, alone, and unique in its shape, but the sea is great and vast, and hence it is impossible for those to catch it who do not know in what part of the world it dwells. Believe me verily, that he who, as Theophrastus says, does not well understand the art by which he can draw down the moon from the sky and bring it from heaven to earth, and change it into water and then into earth, will never find the material of the stone of the wise, for it is not more difficult to perform the one than to find the other. Yet none the less, when we speak somewhat in confidence in the ear of a trusted friend, we teach him that hidden secret of the wise, how he can naturally, speedily, and easily catch the little fish called Remora, which is able to hold back the proud vessels of the great Ocean sea (that is the spirit of the world). Those who are not sons of the art are altogether ignorant and know not those precious treasures which are concealed by nature in the precious and heavenly Aqua Vitae of our sea. But, that I may declare to you the clear light of our unique material, or our virgin soil, and teach you in what wise you may acquire the supreme art of the sons of wisdom, it is needful that I instruct you concerning the magnet of the wise, which has the power of attracting the little fish called Echeneis or Remora from out the centre and depth of the sea. If it is caught in accordance with nature, it changes in a natural way first into water and then into earth. And this, when properly prepared by the cunning secret of the wise, has the power of dissolving all solid bodies and making them volatile, and of purifying all bodies that are poisoned. [72]


We learn from this text that the fish is found, if it can be found at all, in the centre of the ocean. But the ocean is the "spirit of the world." Our text, as the above sample shows, derives from a time when alchemy had almost given up its laboratory work and was becoming more and more of a philosophy. For an alchemist living in the early part of the seventeenth century, the "spirit of the world" is a somewhat unusual term, because the expression more commonly used was the "anima mundi." The world-soul or, in this case, the world-spirit is a projection of the unconscious, there being no method or apparatus which could provide an objective experience of this kind and thus furnish objective proof of the world's animation. This idea is nothing more than an analogy of the animating principle in man which inspires his thoughts and acts of cognition. "Soul" and "spirit," or psyche as such, is in itself totally unconscious. If it is assumed to be somewhere "outside," it cannot be anything except a projection of the unconscious. This may mean a lot or a little, according to the way you look at it. At any rate, we know that in alchemy "our sea" is a symbol for the unconscious in general, just as it is in dreams. The extremely small fish that dwells in the centre of the universal sea nevertheless has the power to stop the largest ships. From the description of the Echeneis it is evident that the author was acquainted with the "pisciculus rotundus ossibus et corticibus carens" of the "Aenigmata." Our interpretation of the round fish as the self can, accordingly, be extended to the Echeneis. The symbol of the self appears here as an "extremely small" fish in the vast ocean of the unconscious, like a man alone on the sea of the world. Its symbolization as a fish characterizes the self, in this state, as an unconscious content. There would be no hope whatever of catching this insignificant creature if a "magnet of the wise" did not exist in the conscious subject. This "magnet" is obviously something a master can teach to his pupil; it is the "theoria," the one solid possession from which the adept can proceed. For the prima materia always remains to be found, and the only thing that helps him is the "cunning secret of the wise," a theory that can be communicated.

This is affirmed by Bernardus Trevisanus (1406-1490) in his treatise "De secretissimo philosophorum opere chemico": it was the sermons of Parmenides in the Turba that first freed him from error and guided him into the right way. [73] But Parmenides says the same thing as Arisleus [74] in the Turba: "Nature is not improved save through its own nature," [75] and Bernardus adds by way of confirmation: "Thus our material cannot be improved save through itself." It was the theory of Parmenides that helped Bernardus on to the right track after much fruitless laboratory work, and there is a legend that he even succeeded in making the philosophers' stone. As to the theory, he is obviously of the opinion that its basic thought is expressed in the saying quoted above, that "nature" [76] can improve or free itself from error only in and through itself. The same idea is expressed in the repeated warning of other treatises not to mix anything from outside with the content of the Hermetic vessel, because the lapis "has everything it needs." [77]

It is not exactly probable that the alchemists always knew what they were writing, otherwise they would have dropped dead at their own enormities, and of this there is no sign in the literature. Who has everything he needs? Even the loneliest meteor circles round some distant sun, or hesitantly draws near to a cluster of brother meteors. Everything hangs together with everything else. By definition, only absolute totality contains everything in itself, and neither need nor compulsion attaches it to anything outside. This is undoubtedly the same as the idea of an absolute God who encompasses everything that exists. But which of us can pull himself out of the bog by his own pigtail? Which of us can improve himself in total isolation? Even the holy anchorite who lives three days' journey off in the desert not only needs to eat and drink but finds himself utterly and terribly dependent on the ceaseless presence of God. [78] Only absolute totality can renew itself out of itself and generate itself anew.

What is it, then, that one adept whispers into the· ear of another, fearfully looking round lest any betray them, or even guess their secret? Nothing less than this: that through this teaching the One and All, the Greatest in the guise of the Smallest, God himself in his everlasting fires, may be caught like a fish in the deep sea. Further, that he may be "drawn from the deep" by a eucharistic act of integration (called teoqualo, 'God-eating,' by the Aztecs [79]), and incorporated in the human body.

This teaching is the secret and "cunning" magnet by virtue of which the remora ("little in length / mighty in strength") stops the proud frigates in the sea, an adventure which befell the quinquereme of the emperor Caligula "in our own day," as Pliny says in his interesting and edifying tale. The little fish, that was only half a foot long, had sucked fast to the rudder on the return journey from Stura to Entium, and had brought the ship to a standstill. On returning to Rome after this journey, Caligula was murdered by his soldiers. So the Echeneis turned out to be an omen, as Pliny points out. The fish played another such trick on Mark Antony before the naval engagement with Augustus, during which Antony was killed. Pliny cannot marvel enough at the mysterious powers of the Echeneis. His amazement obviously impressed the alchemists so much that they identified the "round fish in our sea" with the remora, and in this way the remora came to symbolize that extremely small thing in the vastness of the unconscious which is charged with such fateful significance: it is the self, the atman, "smaller than small, greater than great."

The alchemical fish symbol, the Echeneis, clearly derives from Pliny. But fishes also crop up in the writings of Sir George Ripley. [80] What is more, they appear in their "messianic" role: together with the birds, they bring the stone, just as in the Oxyrhynchus sayings of Jesus [81] it is the "fowls of the air and the fishes of the sea and whatsoever is upon or beneath the earth" that point the way to the kingdom of heaven (motif of the "helpful animals"). In Lambspringk's symbols [82] the zodiacal fishes that move in opposite directions symbolize the arcane substance. All this theriomorphism is simply a visualization of the unconscious self manifesting itself through "animal" impulses. Some of these can be attributed to known instincts, but for the most part they consist of feelings of certainty, beliefs, compulsions, idiosyncrasies, and phobias that may run directly counter to the so-called biological instincts without necessarily being pathological on that account. Wholeness is perforce paradoxical in its manifestations, and the two fishes going in opposite directions, or the co-operation of birds and fishes, are an instructive illustration of this. [83] The arcane substance, as its attributes show, refers to the self, and so, in the Oxyrhynchus sayings, does the "kingdom of heaven" or the conjectural "city."

3. The Fish Symbol of the Cathars

The use of fishes as symbols for the psychopompos and for the antithetical nature of the self points to another tradition that seems to run parallel with the Echeneis. And there is, in fact, a very remarkable clue to be found, not in the literature of alchemy, but in heresiology. The document in question comes from the archives of the Inquisition at Carcassonne, published by Benoist in his Histoire des Albigeois et des Vaudois, in 1691. [84] It concerns an alleged revelation which Christ's favourite disciple John was vouchsafed as he "rested in the Lord's bosom." John wished to know what Satan's state was before his fall, and the Lord answered: "He was in such splendour that he ruled the powers of heaven." He wanted to be like God, and to this end he descended through the elements of air and water, and found that the earth was covered with water. Penetrating beneath the surface of the earth, "he found two fishes lying upon the waters, and they were like oxen yoked for ploughing the whole earth from sunset to sunrise [or, from West to East] at the command of the invisible Father. And when he went down, he found hanging clouds which covered the broad sea.... And when he went down, he found set apart therefrom his 'Osob,' which is a kind of fire." On account of the flames he could not descend any further, so he went back to heaven and announced to the angels that he was going to set up his throne on the clouds and be like the All-highest. He then treated the angels as the unjust steward treated his master's debtors, whereupon he and the angels were cast out of heaven by God.[85] But God took pity on him and allowed him and his angels to do what they liked for a week. During this time Satan, using Genesis 1 as a model, created the world and mankind.

A prominent Cathar, John de Lugio, confesses to a similar belief. [86] This belief seems to have been known in Catharist circles during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, for the conviction that the world was created by the devil is found in many of the sects. The alchemist Johannes de Rupescissa was in all probability a member of the Poor Men of Lyons, [87]who were influenced by the Cathars. In any case, he could be considered as a connecting link with this tradition.

What strikes us most of all in this text is the fact that it contains the Old Bulgarian word Osob. Karl Meyer, in his Old Church Slavonic dictionary, [88] gives (osoba) means in Russian, Polish, and Czech 'individual, personality.' "His osob" could therefore be translated as "that which is peculiar to him." [89] This, in the case of the devil, would naturally be fire. [90]

The idea of the two fishes lying on the waters, yoked like oxen for ploughing, is very strange and needs some elucidation. To this end I must recall to the reader St. Augustine's interpretation of the two fishes in the miraculous feeding of the five thousand: for him they represent the kingly and the priestly person or power, [91] because, like fishes surviving the tempests of the sea, they outlast the turbulence of the multitude. These two powers are united in Christ: he is the king and priest. [92]

Although the two fishes in the Cathar text certainly do not refer to the miraculous fishes, Augustine's interpretation tells us something of importance about the way people thought in those days: the fishes were regarded as ruling powers. Since the text is indubitably heretical and a Bogomil document at that, there can be no question of a uniform interpretation of the two fishes as Christ. It may be that they symbolize, as might easily be conjectured, two different persons or powers, from before the creation of the world: Satanael the elder son of God, and Christ the younger. In the thirtieth heresy of his Panarium, Epiphanius reports that the Ebionites believed in a double sonship: "Two, they maintain, were begotten by God, one of them Christ, the other the devil." [93] This doctrine must obviously have spread throughout the Near and Middle East, for it was there that the Bogomil doctrine of Satanael as the demiurge arose among the Paulicians and Euchites. [94] Our document is nothing but a Latin version of the report in the Panoplia of Euthymios Zigabenos, which in its turn goes back to the confession of faith made before the emperor Alexius Comnenus by the Bogomil bishop Basilius in the year 1111. [95]

Note that Satan finds the two fishes before the creation, i.e., "in the beginning," when the spirit of God still brooded upon the dark face of the waters (Gen. 1: 2). Had it been one fish only, we could interpret it as a prefiguration of the Redeemer, as the pre-existent Christ of St. John's gospel, the Logos that "was in the beginning with God." (Christ himself says in this document, with reference to John 1: 2: "But I shall sit with my Father.") There are, however, two fishes, joined by a commissure (= the yoke), which can refer only to the zodiacal fishes. The zodia are important determinants in horoscopes, modifying the influence of the planets that have moved into them, or, even if there are no planets, giving the individual houses a special character. In the present instance the fishes would characterize the ascendent, the moment of the world's birth. [96] Now we know that cosmogonic myths are, at bottom, symbols for the coming of consciousness (though I cannot go into this here). [97] The dawn-state corresponds to the unconscious; in alchemical terms, it is the chaos, the massa confusa or nigredo; and by means of the opus) which the adept likens to the creation of the world, the albedo or dealbatio is produced, the whitening, which is compared sometimes to the full moon, sometimes to sunrise. [98] It also means illumination, the broadening of consciousness that goes hand in hand with the "work." Expressed psychologically, therefore, the two fishes which the devil found on the primeval waters would signify the newly arisen world of consciousness.

The comparison of the fishes with a yoke of oxen ploughing merits special attention. Oxen stand for the motive power of the plough. In the same way, the fishes represent the driving forces of the coming world of consciousness. Since olden times the plough has stood for man's mastery over the earth: wherever man ploughs, he has wrested a patch of soil from the primal state and put it to his own use. That is to say: the fishes will rule this world and subdue it by working astrologically through man and moulding his consciousness. Oddly enough, the ploughing does not begin, like all other things, in the east, but in the west. This motif turns up again in alchemy. "Know," says Ripley, "that your beginning should be made towards sunset, and from there you should turn towards midnight, when the lights cease altogether to shine, and you should remain ninety nights in the dark fire of purgatory without light. Then turn your course towards the east, and you will pass through many different colours," etc. [99] The alchemical work starts with the descent into darkness (nigredo), i.e., the unconscious. The ploughing or mastery of the earth is undertaken "at the command of the Father." Thus God not only foresaw the enantiodromia that began in the year 1000, but also intended it. The Platonic month of the Fishes is to be ruled by two principles. The fishes in our text are parallel, like the oxen, and point to the same goal, although one is Christ and the other the Antichrist.

This, roughly, would be the early medieval line of reasoning (if we can speak of "reasoning" here). I do not know whether the argument we have outlined was ever discussed consciously. Yet it would be possible; the Talmudic prophecy concerning the year 530 (pars. 133ff.) leads one to conjecture astronomical calculations on the one hand and on the other an astrological allusion to the sign of Fishes favoured by the Jewish masters. As against this, it is possible that the fishes in our text are not a conscious reference to astrological ideas but rather a product of the unconscious. That the unconscious is quite capable of "reflections" of this kind we know well enough from dreams and the analysis of myths and fairytales. [100] The image of the fishes as such belonged to the common stock of conscious ideas and may -- unconsciously -- have expressed the meaning in symbolic form. For it was about this time (11th cent.) that the Jewish astrologers began calculating the birth of the Messiah in Pisces, and the universal feeling that a new age had commenced was given clear expression by Joachim of Flora.

The text of our Johannine revelation can hardly be earlier, or much later, than the eleventh century. With the beginning of this century, which is astrologically the middle of the Pisces aeon, heresies sprang up everywhere like mushrooms, and at the same time Christ's adversary, the second fish, alias the devil, appears as the demiurge. Historically speaking, this idea represents a kind of Gnostic Renaissance, since the Gnostic demiurge was regarded as an inferior being from whom all evil comes. [101] The significant thing about this phenomenon is its synchronicity, that is, its occurrence at a time that had been fixed astrologically.

That Catharist ideas found their way into alchemy is not altogether surprising. I have not, however, come across any texts which would prove that the Catharist fish symbol was assimilated into the alchemical tradition and so could be held responsible for Lambspringk's fish symbol, signifying the arcane substance and its inner antinomy. Lambspringk's symbol appeared not much earlier than the end of the sixteenth century and represented a revitalization of the archetype. It shows two reversed fishes swimming in the sea -- nostro mari -- by which was meant the aqua permanens or arcane substance. They are designated "spiritus et anima," and like the stag and unicorn, the two lions, the dog and wolf, and the two fighting birds, they indicate the double nature of Mercurius. [102]

If my reflections, which are based on some knowledge of the symbolic thinking of the Middle Ages, are justified, then we have here a remarkable confirmation of the views I expressed in an earlier chapter. With the year 1000 a new world begins, proclaiming its advent in a strange medley of religious movements such as the Bogomils, Cathari, Albigenses, Waldenses, Poor Men of Lyons, Brethren of the Free Spirit, Beguins, Beghards, etc., and in the Holy Ghost Movement of Joachim of Flora. These movements are also associated with the rise of alchemy, Protestantism, the Enlightenment, and natural science, leading ultimately to the increasingly devilish developments we have lived to experience in our own day, and to the evaporation of Christianity under the assaults of rationalism, intellectualism, materialism, and "realism."

In conclusion, I would like to give a concrete example of the way the symbol of the fish springs out of the unconscious autochthonously. The case in question is that of a young woman who had uncommonly lively and plastic dreams. She was very much under the influence of her father, who had a materialistic outlook and was not happily married. She shut herself off from these unfavourable surroundings by developing, at a very early age, an intense inner life of her own. As a small child, she replaced her parents by two trees in the garden. In her sixth or seventh year, she dreamt that God had promised her a golden fish. From this time forth she frequently dreamt of fishes. Later, a little while before starting psychological treatment on account of her manifold problems, she dreamt that she was "standing on the bank of the Limmat and looking down into the water. A man threw a gold coin into the river, the water became transparent and I could see the bottom. [103] There was a coral reef and a lot of fishes. One of them had a shining silver belly and a golden back." During treatment she had the following dream: "I came to the bank of a broad, flowing river. I couldn't see much at first, only water, earth, and rock. I threw the pages with my notes on them into the water, with the feeling that I was giving something back to the river. Immediately afterwards I had a fishing-rod in my hand. I sat down on a rock and started fishing. Still I saw nothing but water, earth, and rock. Suddenly a big fish bit. He had a silver belly and a golden back. As I drew him to land, the whole landscape became alive: the rock emerged like the primeval foundation of the earth, grass and flowers sprang up, and the bushes expanded into a great forest. A gust of wind blew and set everything in motion. Then, suddenly, I heard behind me the voice of Mr. X [an older man whom she knew only from photographs and from hearsay, but who seems to have been some kind of authority for her]. He said, quietly but distinctly: 'The patient ones in the innermost realm are given the fish, the food of the deep.' At this moment a circle ran round me, part of it touching the water. Then I heard the voice again: 'The brave ones in the second realm may be given victory, for there the battle is fought.' Immediately another circle ran round me, this time touching the other bank. At the same time I saw into the distance and a colourful landscape was revealed. The sun rose over the horizon. I heard the voice, speaking as if out of the distance: 'The third and the fourth realms come, similarly enlarged, out of the other two. But the fourth realm' -- and here the voice paused for a moment, as if deliberating -- 'the fourth realm joins on to the first. [104] It is the highest and the lowest at once, for the highest and the lowest come together. They are at bottom one.''' Here the dreamer awoke with a roaring in her ears.

This dream has all the marks of a "big" dream, and it also has the quality of something "thought," which is characteristic of the intuitive type. Even though the dreamer had acquired some knowledge of psychology by this time, she had no knowledge whatever of the historical fish symbol. The details of the dream may be commented on as follows: The bank of the river represents the threshold, so to speak, to the unconscious. Fishing is an intuitive attempt to "catch" unconscious contents (fishes). Silver and gold, in alchemical language, signify feminine and masculine, the hermaphrodite aspect of the fish, indicating that it is a complexio oppositorum. [105] It also brings about a magical animation. [106] The older man is a personification of the archetype of the "wise old man." We know already that the fish is a "miraculous food," the eucharistic food of the . The first circle that touches the water illustrates the partial integration of the unconscious. The battle is the conflict of opposites, maybe between consciousness and the shadow. The second circle touches the "other bank," where the union of opposites takes place. In the Indian "quicksilver system" the arcane substance is called para-da, 'leading to the other shore'; in the West it is Mercurius. [107] The fourth realm, stressed by a weighty pause, is the One that adds itself to the three and makes all four into a unity. [108] The circles naturally produce a mandala, the outermost circle paradoxically coinciding with the centre, and recalling the old image for God. "God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere." [109] The motif of the first coinciding with the fourth was expressed long ago in the axiom of Maria: "One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the One as the fourth."

The dream sums up in condensed form the whole symbolism of the individuation process in a person who was totally unacquainted with the literature of the subject. Cases of this kind are by no means rare and ought to make us think. They demonstrate the existence of an unconscious "knowledge" of the individuation process and its historical symbolism.
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Re: Aion, by C.G. Jung

Postby admin » Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:46 am

Part 2 of 2

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Notes:

1. This treatise was not printed together with the Turba, like the others, but it appears to belong to the same category. The 28th Distinctio contains the "Dicta Belini" (Belinus = Apollonius of Tyana).

2. Cf. Ruska, Turba Philosophorum.

3. Cf. the edn. of Preisendanz.

4. Printed in Artis auriferae (1593), I, pp. 139ff.; Theatrum chemicum, V, pp. 64ff; and Manget, Bibliotheca chemica curiosa (1702), I, pp. 494ff.

5. I am not counting the fish as technical alchemical material, in which capacity it was of course known even to the Greek alchemists. I would mention, for instance, the "procedure of Salmanas" (Berthelot, Alch. grecs, V, viii, 5) for producing the "round pearl." Fish-glue was often used as an agglutinant.

6. "Allegoriae," in Art. aurif., I, p. 14" "Est in mari piscis rotundus, ossibus et corticibus carens, et habet in se pinguedinem, mirificam virtutem, quae si lento igne coquatur, donec eius pinguedo et humor prorsus recedit ... et quousque lucescat, aqua maris imbuatur."

7. "Aenigmata," in Art. aurif., I, p. 149.

8. See du Cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis, s.v. "cortex." [In the Swiss Gesammelte Werke, 11, p. 59, n. 27, "corticibus" in this same passage is translated as "scales." -- EDITORS.]

9. From , urtica, 'nettle.' Hence Pliny's "sea-nettle" (Hist. nat., XXXII, xi, 53).

10. From , 'thread, tentacle.'

11. Caussin (Polyhistor symbolicus, 1618, s.v. "stella") cites Aristotle as a source.

12. Hist. nat., IX, 60. Cf. trans. by Rackham and Jones, III, pp. 346-48.

13. This could be conceived as a starfish, since, as Pliny says, it has a hard exterior.

14. Hist. nat., XVIII, 35.

15. IX, 47 (Rackham/Jones trans., III, p. 220).

16. XXXII, 10.

17. Polyhistor symbolicus, p. 414.

18. "And Elias the prophet stood up, as a fire; and his word burnt like a torch" (DV).

19. Homilia in Ps. 33. in Migne. P.G., vol. 29, col. 371.

20. This recalls the Vision of Arisleus, where the philosophers in the glass-house at the bottom of the sea suffer great torment on account of the extraordinary heat. (Art. aurif., I, pp. 146ff., and Ruska, "Die Vision des Arisleus," pp. 22ff.)

21. Mus. herm. (1678), pp. 246f. The "Gloria mundi" is an anonymous treatise, and it remains uncertain whether it was originally written in Latin or not. So far as is known, it was printed for the first time in 1620, in German. To the best of my knowledge it was first mentioned in the treatises of the 17th cent. It was highly esteemed and was considered especially dangerous. In the Theatr. chem. (1661), VI, pp. 513ff., there is a long extract from it, conjuring the reader to be discreet: "I will that all those who possess this book be admonished and besought for the love of Jesus Christ, that they conceal this art from all such as are puffed up, vainglorious, unjust oppressors of the poor, proud, worldly, scoffers, contemners, false accusers, and such unworthy folk, nor permit this writing to come into the hands of such, if they would escape the wrath of God and the punishments which he is wont to bring down upon those that are presumptuous and profane."

22 "Recipito ignem, vel calcem vivam, de qua Philosophi loquuntur, quod in arboribus crescat, in quo (igne) Deus ipse ardet amore divino .... Item, Naturalis Magister ait ad artem hanc de igne, Mercurium putrefaciendum ... et fixandum in igne indelebili, vel vivo, quo in Deus ipse ardeat, sed cum sole in amore divino, ad solatium omnium hominum; et absque isto igne ars numquam perfici poterit. Item, ignis Philosophorum quem occultatum occlusumque illi habent. ... Item, ignis nobilissimus ignis est, quem Deus in terra creavit, millenas enim virtutes habet. Ad haec respondet didascalus quod Deus tantam virtutem efficaciamque tribuerit ... ut divinitas ipsa cum hoc igne commixta siet. Et iste ignis purificat, tamquam purgatorium in inferno ..."

23. "Philosophi hunc ignem Spiritus Sancti ignem appellant."

24. "... adeo ut omneis tres, una res fiant, quas nemo separaturus siet."

25. "Pari modo quo in hisce tribus sese uniunt, Deus pater, Deus filius et Deus spiritus sanctus, S. S. Trinitas in tres personas et tamen unicus verus Deus remanet; ita quoque ignis unit hasce tres res: utpote corpus, spiritum et animam, hoc est, Solem, Mercurium et Animam" (p. 247).

26. "In igni hoc invisibili artis mysterium inclusum est, quemadmodum tribus in personis Deus Pater, Filius et Spiritus S. in una essentia vere conclusus est" (p. 248).

27. "... qui seipsum sese in vivam aquam miscet" (p. 247). Presumably taken over from the "troubled" water of the pool of Bethesda (John 5: 2).

28. "Occultatio et domicilium omnis thesauri."

29. "Continens hanc machinam Mundi in suo esse."

30. Sendivogius, "Novi luminis chemici," Mus. herm., p. 607.

31. Ripley, "Duodecim portarum," Theatr. chem., II, p. 128.

32. Uraltes Chymisches Werk (1760), pp. 79 and 81.

33. "De igne et sale," Theatr. chem., VI. p. 39.

34. They are also the sons of Set. in so far as Heru-ur and Set have one body with two heads. [For the association of fire and north, see pp. 99 and 124.]

35. The quaternary symbols that appear spontaneously in dreams always point. so far as I can see, to totality or the self. Fire means passion, affects, desires, and the emotional driving-forces of human nature in general, that is, everything which is understood by the term "libido." (Cf. Symbols of Transformation, Part II, chs. 2 and 3.) When the alchemists attribute a quaternary nature to the fire, this amounts to saying that the self is the source of energy.

36. Hell-fire is identical with the devil, who, on the authority of Artefius ("Clavis maioris sapientiae," Theatr. chem., IV, p. 237), has an outer body made of air and an inner one of fire.

37. Philalethes, "Introitus apertus," Mus. herm., pp. 654f.: " ... ignis infernalis, secretus ... mundi miraculum, virtutum superiorum in inferioribus systema, quare signo ilium notabiIi notavit Omnipotens cuius nativitas per Orientem in Horizonte Hemisphaerii sui philosophicum annunciatur, Viderunt Sapientes in Evo Magi, et obstupuerunt statimque agnoverunt Regem serenissimum in mundo natum. Tu cum ejus Astra conspexeris, sequere ad usque cunabula, ibi videbis infantem pulcrum, sordes semovendo, regium puellum honora, gazam aperi, auri donum offeras, sic tandem post mortem tibi earn em sanguinemque dabit, summam in tribus Terrae Monarchiis medicinam."

(Cf. Waite, trans., The Hermetic Museum Restored and Enlarged, II, pp. 166f.) Philalethes ("lover of truth") is a pseudonym. Waite (The Works of Thomas Vaughan: Eugenius Philaletha) conjectures the Hermetic philosopher Vaughan (1621-65), an hypothesis that is doubtful for several reasons. See also Waite, Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers, p. 187, and Ferguson, Bibliotheca Chemica, II, pp. 194 and 197.

38. From the Paracelsan concept of the "Archeus." See my "Paracelsus the Physician," par. 89 n. 56. Ruland (Lexicon of Alchemy, p. 86) defines: "Archeus is a most high, exalted, and invisible spirit, which is separated from bodies, is exalted, and ascends; it is the occult virtue of Nature, universal in all things, the artificer, the healer ... the dispenser and composer of all things."

39. Probably magnetism is meant.

40. Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 457.

40a. [Cf. Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 85 (Brit. edn., p. 91).]

41. "The Psychology of Eastern Meditation," pars. 942ff.

42. Ecclesiasticus 9: 18 (Vulg. 25): "A man full of tongue is terrible in his city (DV). Conversely, the fiery tongue is an allegory (or symbol?) of the Holy Ghost: "cloven tongues, as of fire" (Acts 2: 3).

43. James 3: 5 (RSV).

44. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 109.

45. "The Spirit Mercurius," par. 263. Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 208.

46. P. Nigidius Figulus lived in the 1st cent. B.C.

47. Hertz, De P. Nigidii Figuli Studiis atque operibus, p. 5.

48. Tract. I, 31, in Opera. For Christ as destroyer of Heimarmene see Pistis Sophia, Mead trans., p. 17.

49. Fire in this sense often appears in dreams.

50. Hoghelande, "Liber de alchemiae difficultatibus," Theatr. chem., I, p. 163. The quotation from Mundus in the Turba (Ruska, p. 128) runs: "Take therefore one part white gum at an intense heat, and one part calf's urine, and one part fish-gall, and one part substance of the gum, without which it cannot be made free from error." "Mundus" is a corruption of "Parmenides," due to Arabic transcription: (Bar)Mnds. See Ruska, p. 25.

51. "Ossibus et corticibus carens." [Cf. supra, p. 128 n. 8.]

52. Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. "ligaturae": "Corrigia or ligatura of Aphrodite. Ligaturae, alligaturae and alligamenta are amulets for dispelling diseases. Suballigaturae are magic draughts [poisons], precautionary measures [spells]," etc.

53. Opsianos lithos = 'black stone,' obsidian.

54. "Iste lapis est geminus vel duplex: unus quidem est obscurus et niger, alter autem niger quidem, lucidus et splendidus est sicut speculum."

55. Delatte, Textes latins et vieux francais relatifs aux Cyranides, Fasc. XCIII. p. 56.

56. Hist. nat., XXXVII, 10.

57. Ruland, Lexicon, pp. 128-29.

58. Ibid., p. 128: "But unless it is removed while they [the serpents] are alive, it will never become a precious stone."

59. Lucidus (see above, n. 54), 'brilliant, shining,' can also mean 'white,' thus contrasting with black. But the description would also fit the obsidian.

60. Lexicon, p. 203.

61. "The sacred lead of the wise," from which are extracted mercury, sulphur, and salt. Cf. Chartier, "Scientia plumbi sacri sapientum," Theatr. chem., VI, p. 571.

62. "Arca arcani," ibid., p. 314.

63. "De igne et sale," ibid., p. 131.

64. Philosophia reformata, p. 305.

65. Pantheus, Ars transmutationis metallicae (1519), fol. 9r.

66. Opera omnia chemica (1649), p. 317.

67. Elenchos, V, 16, 2 (Legge trans., I, p. 154).

68. Psychology and Alchemy, "The Lapis-Christ Parallel."

69. We could conceive these as hereditary influences, vestiges of ancestral life, although this idea does not suggest as much as karma does to the Indian.

70. Hymni et sermones, ed. Lamy, II, col. 770.

71. "Fidelissima et Jucunda Instructio ex manuscripto Gallico Philosophi Anonymi desumpta, per quam Pater filio suo omnia declarat, quae ad compositionem et praeparationem Lapidis Sapientum sunt necessaria, decem capitibus comprehensa." The abbreviated title of this treatise as printed in Vol. VI of Theatr. chem. is "Instructio de arbore solari."

72. "Quia illud quod accipimus ut opus Philosophicum ex eo praeparemus, nihil aliud est quam pisciculus Echen[e]is sanguine et ossibus spinosis carens, et in profunda parte centri magni maris mundi est indusus. Hic pisc[ic]ulus valde est exiguus, solus et in sua forma unicus, mare autem magnum et vastum, unde ilIum capere impossibile est illis, qui qua in parte mundi moretur ignorant. Certam mihi fidem habe, illum qui ut Theophrastus loquitur, artem illam non callet. qua Lunam de firmamento trahat, et de coelo super terram adducat. et in aquam convertat. et postea in terram mutet, nunquam materiam lapidis sapientum inventurum, unum tamen non est difficilius facere, quam alterum invenire. Nihilominus tamen, cum fido amico aliquid in au[re]m fideliter dicimus, tunc ipsum occultum secretum sapientum docemus, quomodo pisc[ic]ulum Remora dictum naturaliter cito et facile capere possit, qui navigia magni mads Oceani (hoc est spiritus mundi), superba retinere potest. qui cum filii artis non sint, prorsus ignari sunt et preciosos thesauros, per naturam in preciosa et coelesti aqua vitae nostri maris delitescentes, non novemnt. Sed ut darum lumen unicae nostrae materiae, seu terrae virgineae nostrae tibi tradam summam artem filiorum sapientiae, quomodo videlicet illam acquirere possis, te doceam, necesse est ut prius de magnete sapientum te instmam, qui potestatem habet. pisc[ic]ulum Echen[e]is vel Remora dictum ex centro et profunditate nostri maris attrahendi. Qui si secundum naturam capitur. naturaliter primo in aquam deinde in terram convertitur: Quae per artificiosum secretum sapientum debito modo praeparata potestatem habet, omnia fixa corpora dissolvendi, et volatilia faciendi et omnia corpora venenata purgandi etc."

73. "Liber de alchemia," Theatr. chem., I, p. 795.

74. Arisleus is legendary. He was regarded as the author of the Turba.

75. "Natura non emendatur nisi in sua natura."

76. "Natura" and "naturae," in the language of the Turba, correspond to the of the alchemist Democritus (1st cent.). See Berthelot, Alch. grecs. They are substances or states of substances.

77. "Omne quo indiget."

78. "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" Isaiah 33: 14.

79. [Cf. "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass," pars. 339ff. -- EDITORS.]

80. Opera, p. 10.

81. Grenfell and Hunt, New Sayings of Jesus, p. 16.

82. Mus. herm., p. 343.

83. Regarding the combination of fish and bird in ancient mythology, cf. Goodenough, V, pp. 58ff.and figs. 63, 66, 69.

84. Cited by Hahn, Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter, II. pp. 815ff.

85. In contradiction to Luke 16: 8, where "the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely."

86. Despite the fact that the sect of this John condemned the Concorricci. with whom our Johannine revelation originated. In the Summa Fratris Reineri ("De propriis opinionibus Joh. de Lugio") we read: "He says this world is of the devil." Hahn, I, p. 580.

87. Rupescissa, La Vertu et la propriete de la quinte essence (1581), p. 31: "Since it is our intention to comfort and strengthen the poor preachers of the gospel [hommes evangelisans] by means of our book, to the end that their prayers and supplications be not in vain and lost in this work, and that they be not greatly hindered in this pursuit, I will declare and give to them a secret drawn from the bosom of the secrets of the treasures of Nature, which is a thing truly worthy of wonderment, and is to be honoured."

In Rupescissa's treatise "De confectione veri lapidis" (in Gratarolus, Verae alchemiae artisque metallicae, 1561, II, p. 299) there is the following exhortation, very unusual in alchemical literature: "Credas, vir Evangelice." Presumably, this was originally an "homme evangelisant."

88. Altkirchenslavisch-griechisches Worterbuch des Codex Suprasliensis.

89 Dragomanov ("Zabelezhki vrkhy slavyanskite religioznoeticheski Legendi," p. 7) merely remarks about "suum Osob" that, in a Gipsy legend, the devil was hampered by burning sand when creating the world.

90. Cf. supra, n. 36, on Artefius.

91. "But the two fishes ... seem to signify those two persons by whom that people was governed ... that is, the kingly and the priestly" (De diversis quaestionibus, LXI, 2; Migne, P.L., vol. 40, col. 48). The derivation of the two fishes from II Esdras 6 49ff. (Soederberg, La Religion des Cathares, p. 97) seems to me questionable. The passage runs (Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, II, p. 579): "Then didst thou preserve two living creatures; the name of the one thou didst call Behemoth and the name of the other thou didst call Leviathan. And thou didst separate the one from the other...." This image does not fit in at all with the two fishes mentioned in the Cathar text.

92. "So is our Lord Jesus Christ shown to be our king. He is also our priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek" (Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus, LXI, I).

93. Cap. XVI (Oehler edn., I, p. 266).

94. Psellus, "De daemonibus," in Ficinus, Auctores Platonici (1497), fol. N. Vv.

95, Migne, P.G., vol. 130, cols. 1290ff.

96. This interpretation accords with modern astrological speculations.

97. Concerning such symbols, see Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness.

98. Ripley, Chymische Schrifften (1624), p. 25.

99. Ibid., p. 33f.

100. Cf. Laiblin, "Vom mythischen Gehalt unserer Marchen."

101. According to Irenaeus, the Gnostics held that the demiurge was the younger brother of Christ.

102. Mus. herm., p. 343.

103. The transparency of the water means that attention (value, gold) is given to the unconscious. It is an offering to the genius of the fountain. Cf. the vision of the Amitabha Land in my "Psychology of Eastern Meditation."

104. Cf. infra. pars. 395ff.

105. Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, s.v. "coniunctio."

106. The Ichthys (= Christ or Attis) is the food that bestows (immortal) life.

107. Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, I, pt. iii, pp. 396ff. and "The Spirit Mercurius," pars. 282ff.

108. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 26 and 209, and "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity," pars. 184ff.

109. [For the source of this saying, see "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity," par. 229, n. 6. -- EDITORS.]
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Re: Aion, by C.G. Jung

Postby admin » Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:47 am

Chapter 11: THE ALCHEMICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE FISH

We shall now turn to the problem raised by the anonymous French author of the "Instructio de arbore solari," the problem of how the fish is caught. The Echeneis exercises an attraction on ships that could best be compared with the influence of a magnet on iron. The attraction, so the historical tradition says, emanates from the fish and brings the vessel, whether powered by sailor oarsmen, to a standstill. [1] I mention this seemingly unimportant feature because, as we shall see, in the alchemical view the attraction no longer proceeds from the fish but from a magnet which man possesses and which exerts the attraction that was once the mysterious property of the fish. If we bear in mind the significance of the fish, it is easy to understand why a powerful attraction should emanate from this arcane centre, which might aptly be compared with the magnetism of the North Pole. [2] As we shall see in a later chapter, the Gnostics said the same thing about the magnetic effect of their central figure (point, monad, son, etc.). It is therefore a remarkable innovation when the alchemists set out to manipulate an instrument that would exert the same powers as the Echeneis, but on the Echeneis itself. This reversal of direction is important for the psychology of alchemy because it offers a parallel to the adept's claim to be able to produce the filius macrocosmi, the equivalent of Christ -- Deo concedente -- through his art. In this way the artifex or his instrument comes to replace the Echeneis and everything it stood for as the arcane substance. He has, so to speak, inveigled the secret out of the fish and seeks to draw the arcane substance to the surface in order to prepare from it the filius philosophorum, the lapis.

The "magnet of the wise" which is to draw the wonder-working fish to the surface can, our text says, be taught. The content of this secret teaching is the real arcanum of alchemy: the discovery or production of the prima materia. The "doctrine" or "theory" is personified -- or rather, concretized -- as "Mercurius non vulgi," the philosophical mercury. This conception is as ambiguous as the antique Hermes; sometimes Mercurius is a substance like quicksilver, sometimes it is a philosophy. Dom Pernety formulates it somewhat drastically: "[La matiere du mercure philosophique] a une vertu aimantive qui attire des rayons du Soleil et de la Lune le mercure des Sages." [3] Concerning the prima materia the adepts talk a great deal but say very little -- so little that in most cases one can form no conception of it whatever. [4] This attitude is proof of serious intellectual dif- ficulties -- understandably so, because in the first place no such material existed from which the lapis could be prepared, nor did anyone ever succeed in making a lapis that would have come up to expectations. Secondly, the names given to the prima materia show that it was not a definite substance at all, but rather an intuitive concept for an initial psychic situation, symbolized by such terms as water of life, cloud, heaven, shadow, sea, mother, moon, dragon, Venus, chaos, massa confusa, Micro- cosmos, etc.

In the long lists of names one that frequently figures is "magnesia," though this should certainly not be understood as the magnesium oxide of the pharrnacopoeia. [5] Magnesia is rather the "complete or conjoined mixture from which this moisture is extracted, [6] i.e., the root-matter of our stone." [7] The complicated procedure for producing the magnesia is described in the treatise "Aristoteles de perfecto Magisterio." [8] It is the whitened arcane substance. [9] Pandolfus says in the Turba: "I command you to take the hidden and venerable secret thing, which is the white magnesia." [10] In Khunrath, magnesia is synonymous with "chaos" and "Aes Hermetis." He calls it "A Catholic or Universal, that is, a Cosmic Ens or Entity, Three-in-One, naturally compounded of Body, Spirit, and Soul, the one and only true Subiectum Catholicon and true Universal Materia lapidis Philosophorum." [11] The magnesia is feminine, [12] just as the magnet is masculine by nature. [13] Hence it carries "in its belly the sal Armoniacum et vegetabile," meaning the arcane substance of the stone. [14] Even in Greek alchemy magnesia or "magnes" denoted the hermaphroditic transformative substance. [15] For the alchemists, magnesia is associated with "magnes" (magnet) not only phonetically, but also in meaning, as a recipe of Rosinus shows: "Take therefore this animate stone, the stone which has a soul in it, the mercurial, [16] which is sensible and sensitive to the presence and influence of the magnesia and the magnet, and [which is] the calaminary and the living Stone, yielding and repelling by local motion." [17]

This text shows clearly enough that the real alchemical procedure was not concerned at all with chemical processes, for if it were, the substance to be transformed would not need to be animate or endowed with sensitivity. But a psychic function was absolutely necessary to it when, as in the case of the magnesia, the adept was preoccupied with one of the innumerable expressions used for the unconscious, that is, for the hidden part of the psyche that had slipped into the unknown chemical compound by projection, and that bedevilled and befooled him in the guise of a hundred "arcane substances." Naturally only the most stupid and unobservant of the alchemists were hoodwinked in this way, for there were plenty of hints in the classical texts that could have put them on the right track. Unfortunately, we today are not so far removed from the Middle Ages: we still have to overcome considerable difficulties before we can begin to understand the real purpose of alchemy.

The "lapis animalis" of Rosinus, then, is a live thing, credited with the ability to feel or perceive the influence of the magnesia and the magnet. But the magnet, too, is a live thing. Thus, the jurisconsult and alchemist Chrysippus Fanianus, of Basel, says: "But if Thales of Miletus chose to call that stone of Hercules, the magnet, an animate thing, because we see it attract and move iron, why shall we not likewise call salt, which in wondrous wise penetrates, purges, contracts, expands, hinders, and reduces, a living thing?" [18] Dorn writes: "The magnetic stone teaches us, for in it the power of magnetizing and attracting iron is not seen [with the eyes]; it is a spirit hidden within, not perceptible to the sense." [19] The numinous effect which the incomprehensible power of magnetism had upon our forefathers is graphically described by St. Augustine: "We know that the lodestone draws iron strangely; the which, when I saw it for the first time, did send a cold shiver through me [vehementer inhorrui]." [20] Even the humanist Andrea Alciati (d. 1550) exclaims: "Wherefore he who first perceives and beholds the power of the magnet to attract iron cannot but be rapt in admiration .... And it is not enough for some to obtrude upon us that there is a certain secret power in these things, which is generally known. For how will they define that hidden force, of which they can tell us nothing but the name?" [21] The famous anatomist and astrologer Gabriel Fallopius (1490-1563) is said to have considered the magnet, together with quicksilver and purgatives, to be inexplicable marvels, "whose effect is to be wondered at with amazement," as Libavius relates in his "Ars prolatoria." [22] These utterances bear witness to the naive reaction of intelligent and thoughtful people who took what they saw to be an inexplicable miracle. So it is quite understandable if they felt that such an astonishing object was alive (like the "lapis animatus," "calx viva," etc.). The magnet, too, had a soul, like the mysterious sllonethat could feel. In the "Duodecim tractatus" [23] the magnet appears as the symbol of the aqua roris nostri (water of our dew), "whose mother is the midpoint of the heavenly and earthly Sun and Moon." This water, the famed aqua permanens, is apostrophized by the anonymous author as follows: "O holy and wonderful nature, which permittest not the sons of the doctrine to err, as thou showest in man's daily life. Further in these ... treatises I have put forward so many natural reasons, that ... the reader may understand all those things which, by God's blessing, I have seen with my own eyes." [24]

The underlying thought here is the idea of the doctrine, the "aqua doctrinae." As we have seen, the "magnet" or "heavenly dew" can be taught. Like the water, it symbolizes the doctrine itself. This is contrasted with the "animate stone" that "perceives" the influence of the magnetic pair, magnes and magnesia. The animate stone, like the magnet, is an arcane substance, and only such substances can enter into a combination finally leading to the goal of the lapis philosophorum. Dorn says: "The pagan Gentiles say that nature seeks after a nature like to itself, and rejoices in its own nature; if it is joined to another, the work of nature is destroyed." [25] This is an allusion to the axiom usually attributed to the alchemist Democritus: "Nature rejoices in nature; nature subdues nature; nature rules over nature." [26]

Just as magnes and magnesia form a pair, so the lapis animatus sive vegetabilis [27] is a Rebis or hermaphrodite that is born of the royal marriage. We have, then, two contrasting pairs, forming by mutual attraction a quaternio, the fourfold basis of wholeness. [28] As the symbolism shows, the pairs both signify the same thing: a complexio oppositorum or uniting symbol. [29] If our texts do not represent them as the same thing and as coinciding with the arcane substance, then there must be a reason for this, though it cannot be ascertained from the symbols used for the two substances to be combined. Sometimes the arcane substance is magnesia, sometimes the water, sometimes the magnet, sometimes the fish; and yet they all mean the prima materia from which the miraculous birth ensues. The distinction that the alchemists had in mind is made clear by a passage from a seventeenth-century treatise written by John Collesson, prior of the Benedictine Order: [30] "But as to that substance whereby common gold and silver are naturally and Philosophically dissolved, let no man imagine that it is any other than the general soul of the world, which by magnets and Philosophical means is attracted and drawn down from the higher bodies, and especially from the rays of the Sun and Moon. And hence it is clear that they have no knowledge whatever of Mercurius or of the Philosophical fluid who think to dissolve perfect metals by natural and physical means." [31]

Obviously a distinction must be made between two categories of symbols: first, those which refer to the extra psychic chemical substance or its metaphysical equivalent, e.g., serpens mercurialis, spiritus, anima mundi, veritas, sapientia, etc.; second, those denoting the chemical preparations produced by the adept, such as solvents (aqua, acetum, lac virginis) or their "philosophical" equivalent, the theoria or scientia, which, when it is "right," has miraculous effects on matter, as Dorn explains in his philosophical treatises. [32]

These two categories continually overlap: sometimes the arcane substance is apparently nothing but a chemical body, sometimes an idea, which today we would call a psychic content. Pernety describes this confusion very clearly in his explanation of the magnet: "But it must not be supposed that this magnet is the common magnet. They [the alchemists] have given it this name only because of its natural sympathy with what they call their steel [adamas]. This is the ore [prima materia] of their gold, and the magnet is the ore of their steel. The centre of this magnet contains a hidden salt, a menstruum for calcining the philosophical gold. This prepared salt forms their Mercury, with which they perform the magistery of the Sages in white and in red. It becomes an ore of heavenly fire, which acts as a ferment for their stone." [33] In his view, therefore, the secret of the magnet's effect lies in a salt prepared by the adept. Whenever an alchemist speaks of "salt," he does not mean sodium chloride or any other salt, or only in a very limited sense. He could not get away from its symbolic significance, and therefore included the sal sapientiae in the chemical substance. That is the salt hidden in the magnet and prepared by the adept -- on the one hand, a product of his art; on the other, already present in nature. This contradiction can be resolved very easily by taking it simply as the projection of a psychic content.

A similar state of affairs can be found in Dorn's writings. In his case it is not a question of the sal sapientiae but of the "veritas," which for him is hidden in natural things and at the same time is obviously a "moral" concept. This truth is the "medicine, improving and transforming that which is no longer into that which it was before its corruption, and that which is not into that which it ought to be." [34] It is a "metaphysical substance," hidden not only in things, but in the human body: "In the human body is concealed a certain metaphysical substance known to very few, which needeth no medicament, being itself an incorrupt medicament." [35] Therefore "it is the study of the Chemists to liberate that unsensual truth from its fetters in things of sense." [36] He that would acquire the chemical art must study the "true Philosophy" and not the "Aristotelian," adds Dorn, because the true doctrine, in Collesson's words, is the magnet whereby the "centre of truth" is liberated from bodies and whereby the bodies are transformed. "The Philosophers, through a kind of divine inspiration, knew that this virtue and heavenly vigour can be freed from its fetters; not by its contrary ... but by its like. Since therefore some such a thing is found, whether within man or outside him, which is conformable to this substance, the wise concluded that like things are to be fortified by like, by peace rather than by war." [37]

Thus the doctrine, which may be consciously acquired "through a kind of divine inspiration," is at the same time the instrument whereby the object of the doctrine or theory can be freed from its imprisonment in the body, because the symbol for the doctrine -- the "magnet" -- is at the same time the mysterious "truth" of which the doctrine speaks. The doctrine enters the consciousness of the adept as a gift of the Holy Ghost. It is a thesaurus of knowledge about the secret of the art, of the treasure hidden in the prima materia, which was thought to be outside man. The treasure of the doctrine and the precious secret concealed in the darkness of matter are one and the same thing. For us this is not a discovery, as we have known for some time that such secrets owe their existence to unconscious projections. Dorn was the first thinker to recognize with the utmost clarity the extraordinary dilemma of alchemy: the arcane substance is one and the same, whether it is found within man or outside him. The "alchymical" procedure takes place within and without. He who does not understand how to free the "truth" in his own soul from its fetters will never make a success of the physical opus, and he who knows how to make the stone can only do so on the basis of right doctrine, through which he himself is transformed, or which he creates through his own transformation.

Helped by these reflections, Dorn comes to realize the fundamental importance of self-knowledge: "See, therefore, that thou goest forth such as thou desirest the work to be which thou seekest." [38] In other words, the expectations you put into the work must be applied to your own ego. The production of the arcane substance, the "generatio Mercurii," is possible only for one who has full knowledge of the doctrine; but "we cannot be resolved of any doubt except by experiment, and there is no better way to make it than on ourselves." [39] The doctrine formulates our inner experience or is substantially dependent upon it: "Let him know that man's greatest treasure is to be found within man, and not outside him. From him it goes forth inwardly ... whereby that is outwardly brought to pass which he sees with his own eyes. Therefore unless his mind be blinded, he will see, that is, understand, who and of what sort he is inwardly, and by the light of nature he will know himself through outward things." [40] The secret is first and foremost in man; it is his true self, [41] which he does not know but learns to know by experience of outward things. Therefore Dorn exhorts the alchemist: "Learn from within thyself to know all that is in heaven and on earth, that thou mayest be wise in all things. Knowest thou not that heaven and the elements were formerly one, and were separated by a divine act of creation from one another, that they might bring forth thee and all things?" [42]

Since knowledge of the world dwells in his own bosom, the adept should draw such knowledge out of his knowledge of himself, for the self he must seek to know is a part of that nature which was bodied forth by God's original oneness with the world. It is manifestly not a knowledge of the nature of the ego, though this is far more convenient and is fondly confused with self-knowledge. For this reason anyone who seriously tries to know himself as an object is accused of selfishness and eccentricity. But such knowledge has nothing to do with the ego's subjective knowledge of itself. That is a dog chasing its own tail. The other, on the contrary, is a difficult and morally exacting study of which so-called psychology knows nothing and the educated public very little. The alchemist, however, had at the very least an indirect inkling of it: he knew definitely that as part of the whole he had an image of the whole in himself, the "firmament" or "Olympus," as Paracelsus calls it. [43] This interior microcosm was the unwitting object of alchemical research. Today we would call it the collective unconscious, and we would describe it as "objective" because it is identical in all individuals and is therefore one. Out of this universal One there is produced in every individual a subjective consciousness, i.e., the ego. This is, roughly, how we today would understand Dom's "formerly one" and "separated by a divine act of creation."

This objective knowledge of the self is what the author means when he says: "No one can know himself unless he knows what, and not who, he is, on what he depends, or whose he is [or: to whom or what he belongs] and for what end he was made." [44] The distinction between "quis" and "quid" is crucial: whereas "quis" has an unmistakably personal aspect and refers to the ego, "quid" is neuter, predicating nothing except an object which is not endowed even with personality. Not the subjective ego-consciousness of the psyche is meant, but the psyche itself as the unknown, unprejudiced object that still has to be investigated. The difference between knowledge of the ego and knowledge of the self could hardly be formulated more trenchantly than in this distinction between "quis" and "quid." An alchemist of the sixteenth century has here put his finger on something that certain psychologists (or those of them who allow themselves an opinion in psychological matters) still stumble over today. "What" refers to the neutral self, the objective fact of totality, since the ego is on the one hand causally "dependent on" or "belongs to" it, and on the other hand is directed towards it as to a goal. This recalls the impressive opening sentence of Ignatius Loyola's "Foundation": "Man was created to praise, do reverence to, and serve God our Lord, and thereby to save his soul." [45]

Man knows only a small part of his psyche, just as he has only a very limited knowledge of the physiology of his body. The causal factors determining his psychic existence reside largely in unconscious processes outside consciousness, and in the same way there are final factors at work in him which likewise originate in the unconscious. Freud's psychology gives elementary proof of the causal factors, Adler's of the final ones. Causes and ends thus transcend consciousness to a degree that ought not to be underestimated, and this implies that their nature and action are unalterable and irreversible so long as they have not become objects of consciousness. They can only be corrected through conscious insight and moral determination, which is why self-knowledge, being so necessary, is feared so much. Accordingly, if we divest the opening sentence of the "Foundation" of its theological terminology, it would run as follows: "Man's consciousness was created to the end that it may (1) recognize (laudet) its descent from a higher unity (Deum); (2) pay due and careful regard to this source (reverentiam exhibeat); (3) execute its commands intelligently and responsibly (serviat); and (4) thereby afford the psyche as a whole the optimum degree of life and development (salvet animam suam)."

This paraphrase not only sounds rationalistic but is meant to be so, for despite every effort the modern mind no longer understands our two-thousand-year-old theological language unless it "accords with reason." As a result, the danger that lack of understanding will be replaced by lip-service, affectation, and forced belief or else by resignation and indifference has long since come to pass.

The final factors at work in us are nothing other than those talents which "a certain nobleman" entrusted to his "servants," that they might trade with them (Luke 19: 12ff.). It does not require much imagination to see what this involvement in the ways of the world means in the moral sense. Only an infantile person can pretend that evil is not at work everywhere, and the more unconscious he is, the more the devil drives him. It is just because of this inner connection with the black side of things that it is so incredibly easy for the mass man to commit the most appalling crimes without thinking. Only ruthless self-knowledge on the widest scale, which sees good and evil in correct perspective and can weigh up the motives of human action, offers some guarantee that the end-result will not turn out too badly.

We find the crucial importance of self-knowledge for the alchemical process of transformation expressed most clearly in Dorn, who lived in the second half of the sixteenth century. The idea itself is much older and goes back to Morienus Romanus (7th-8th cent.), in the saying which he wrote on the rim of the Hermetic vessel: "All those who have all things with them have no need of outside aid." [46] He is not referring to the possession of all the necessary chemical substances; it is far more a moral matter, as the text makes clear. [47] God, says Morienus, made the World out of four unequal elements and set man as the "greater ornament" between them: "This thing is extracted from thee, for thou art its ore; in thee they find it, and, to speak more plainly, from thee they take it; and when thou hast experienced this, the love and desire for it will be increased in thee." [48] This "thing" is the lapis, and Morienus says that it contains the four elements and is likened to the cosmos and its structure. The procedure for making the stone "cannot be performed with hands," [49] for it is a "human attitude" (dispositio hominum). This alone accomplishes the "changing of the natures." The transformation is brought about by the coniunctio, which forms the essence of the work. [50]

The "Rosinus ad Sarratantam Episcopum" -- which, if not altogether Arabic in origin, is one of the oldest texts in Arabic style-cites Magus Philosophus: [51] "This stone is below thee, as to obedience; above thee, as to dominion; therefore from thee, as to knowledge; about thee, as to equals." [52] The passage is somewhat obscure. Nevertheless, it can be elicited that the stone stands in an undoubted psychic relationship to man: the adept can expect obedience from it, but on the other hand the stone exercises dominion over him. Since the stone is a matter of "knowledge" or science, it springs from man. But it is outside him, in his surroundings, among his "equals," i.e., those of like mind. This description fits the paradoxical situation of the self, as its symbolism shows. It is the smallest of the small, easily overlooked and pushed aside. Indeed, it is in need of help and must be perceived, protected, and as it were built up by the conscious mind, just as if it did not exist at all and were called into being only through man's care and devotion. As against this, we know from experience that it had long been there and is older than the ego, and that it is actually the secret spiritus rector of our fate. The self does not become conscious by itself, but has always been taught, if at all, through a tradition of knowing (the purusha/atman teaching, for instance). Since it stands for the essence of individuation, and individuation is impossible with· out a relationship to one's environment, it is found among those of like mind with whom individual relations can be established. The self, moreover, is an archetype that invariably expresses a situation within which the ego is contained. Therefore, like every archetype, the self cannot be localized in an individual ego-consciousness, but acts like a circumambient atmosphere to which no definite limits can be set, either in space or in time. (Hence the synchronistic phenomena so often associated with activated archetypes.)

The treatise of Rosinus contains a parallel to Morienus: [53] "This stone is something which is fixed more in thee [than elsewhere], created of God, and thou art its ore, and it is extracted from thee, and wheresoever thou art it remains inseparably with thee .... And as man is made up of four elements, so also is the stone, and so it is [dug] out of man, and thou art its ore, namely by working; and from thee it is extracted, that is by division; and in thee it remains inseparably, namely by knowledge. [To express it] otherwise, fixed in thee: namely in the Mercurius of the wise; thou art its ore: that is, it is enclosed in thee and thou holdest it [54] secretly; and from thee it is extracted when it is reduced [to its essence] by thee and dissolved; for without thee it cannot be fulfilled, and without it canst thou not live, and so the end looks to the beginning, and contrariwise." [55]

This looks like a commentary on Morienus. We learn from it that the stone is implanted in man by God, that the laborant is its prima materia, that the extraction corresponds to the so-called divisio or separatio of the alchemical procedure, and that through his knowledge of the stone man remains inseparably bound to the self. The procedure here described could easily be understood as the realization of an unconscious content. Fixation in the Mercurius of the wise would then correspond to the traditional Hermetic knowledge, since Mercurius symbolizes the Nous; [56] through this knowledge the self, as a content of the unconscious, is made conscious and "fixed" in the mind. For without the existence of conscious concepts apperception is, as we know, impossible. This explains numerous neurotic disturbances which arise from the fact that certain contents are constellated in the unconscious but cannot be assimilated owing to the lack of apperceptive concepts that would "grasp" them. That is why it is so extremely important to tell children fairytales and legends, and to inculcate religious ideas (dogmas) into grown-ups, because these things are instrumental symbols with whose help unconscious contents can be canalized into consciousness, interpreted. and integrated. Failing this, their energy flows off into conscious contents which, normally. are not much emphasized, and intensifies them to pathological proportions. We then get apparently groundless phobias and obsessions -- crazes, idiosyncrasies, hypochondriac ideas, and intellectual perversions suitably camouflaged in social, religious, or political garb.

The old master saw the alchemical opus as a kind of apocatastasis, the restoring of an initial state in an "eschatological" one ("the end looks to the beginning, and contrariwise"). This is exactly what happens in the individuation process, whether it take the form of a Christian transformation ("Except ye become as little children"), or a satori experience in Zen ("show me your original face"), or a psychological process of development in which the original propensity to wholeness becomes a conscious happening.

For the alchemist it was clear that the "centre," or what we would call the self, does not lie in the ego but is outside it, "in us" yet not "in our mind," being located rather in that which we unconsciously are, the "quid" which we still have to recognize. Today we would call it the unconscious, and we distinguish between a personal unconscious which enables us to recognize the shadow and an impersonal unconscious which enables us to recognize the archetypal symbol of the self. Such a point of view was inaccessible to the alchemist, and having no idea of the theory of knowledge, he had to exteriorize his archetype in the traditional way and lodge it in matter, even though he felt, as Dorn and others undoubtedly did, that the centre was paradoxically in man and yet at the same time outside him.

The "incorrupt medicament," the lapis, says Dorn, can be found nowhere save in heaven, for heaven "pervades all the elements with invisible rays meeting together from all parts at the centre of the earth, and generates and hatches forth all creatures." "'No man can generate in himself, but [only] in that which is like him, which is from the same [heaven)." [57]

We see here how Dorn gets round his paradox: no one can produce anything without an object that is like him. But it is like him because it comes from the same source. If he wants to produce the incorrupt medicament, he can only do so in something that is akin to his own centre, and this is the centre in the earth and in all creatures. It comes, like his own, from the same fountainhead, which is God. Separation into apparently dissimilar things, such as heaven, the elements, man, etc., was necessary only for the work of generation. Everything separated must be united again in the production of the stone, so that the original state of unity shall be restored. But, says Dorn, "thou wilt never make from others the One which thou seekest, except first there be made one thing of thyself.... For so is the will of God, that the pious shall pursue the pious work which they seek, and the perfect shall perfect the other on which they were intent.... See therefore that thou goest forth such as thou desirest the work to be which thou seekest." [58]

The union of opposites in the stone is possible only when the adept has become One himself. The unity of the stone is the equivalent of individuation, by which man is made one; we would say that the stone is a projection of the unified self. This formulation is psychologically correct. It does not, however, take sufficient account of the fact that the stone is a transcendent unity. We must therefore emphasize that though the self can become a symbolic content of consciousness, it is, as a supraordinate totality, necessarily transcendental as well. Dorn recognized the identity of the stone with the transformed man when he exclaimed: "Transmute yourselves from dead stones into living philosophical stones!" [59] But he lacked the concept of an unconscious existence which would have enabled him to express the identity of the subjective psychic centre and the objective alchemical centre in a satisfactory formula. Nevertheless, he succeeded in explaining the magnetic attraction between the imagined symbol -- the "theoria" -- and the "centre" hidden in matter, or in the interior of the earth or in the North Pole, as the identity of two extremes. That is why the theoria and the arcanum in matter are both called veritas. This truth "shines" in us, but it is not of us: it "is to be sought not in us, but in the image of God which is in us." [60]

Dorn thus equates the transcendent centre in man with the God-image. This identification makes it clear why the alchemical symbols for wholeness apply as much to the arcanum in man as to the Deity, and why substances like mercury and sulphur, or the elements fire and water, could refer to God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost. Indeed, Dorn goes even further and allows the predicate of being to this truth, and to this truth alone: "Further, that we may give a satisfactory definition of the truth, we say it is, but nothing can be added to it; for what, pray, can be added to the One, what is lacking to it, or on what can it be supported? For in truth nothing exists beside that One." [61] The only thing that truly exists for him is the transcendental self, which is identical with God.

Dorn was probably the first alchemist to sum up the results of all the symbolical terms and to state clearly what had been the impelling motive of alchemy from the very beginning. It is remarkable that this thinker, who is far more lucid in his formulations than his successor Jakob o6hme, has remained completely unknown to historians of philosophy until today. He thus shares the fate of Hermetic philosophy in general, which, for those unacquainted with modern psychology, remains a closed book sealed with seven seals. But this book has to be opened sometime if we wish to understand the mentality of the present day; for alchemy is the mother of the essential substance as well as the concreteness of modern scientific thinking, and not scholasticism, which was responsible in the main only for the discipline and training of the intellect.

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Notes:

1. "The Echenats is a small fish, half a foot in length [semipedalis], and takes its name from the fact that it holds back a ship by cleaving to it, so that though winds blow and storms rage, yet the ship seems to stand still as if rooted in the sea, and cannot be moved .... Hence the Latins call it delay (Remora)." (Du Cange, Glossarium, S.V. "Echenats." Cited from the ms. of a bestiary.) This passage is taken verbatim from the Liber etymologiarum (Lib. XII, cap. VI) of Isidore of Seville. There the name of the fish is "ethinus," which strictly speaking is a sea-urchin. Because of its radial structure, this creature comes into the same class as the starfish and the jelly-fish. (For the "Instructio," see supra, p. 140, n. 71.)

2. That the power of the Echeneis was understood to be magnetic is clear from the legend that if a salted Echeneis is let down into a mine it will attract the gold and bring it to. the surface. Cf. Masenius, Speculum imaginum veritatis occultae (1714), s.v. "Echeneis." "Magnet" is also the name given to sal ammoniac, which, when added to metallic solutions, "instantly draws all that is good in them, be it gold or tincture, to the bottom of the glass." (Lexicon medico-chymicum, 1711, p. 156.)

3. Dictionnaire mytho-hermetique (1787), s.v. "Magnes."

4. Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 425ff.

5. Berthelot says of the "Magnesie"; "Jusqu'au XVIIIe siecle, [le mot] n'a rien eu de commun avec la magnesie des chimistes d'aujourd'hui" (Alch. grecs, Introduction, p. 255). In Pliny and Dioscorides it meant the magnetic iron-stone.

6. Mylius, Phil. ref., p. 31.

7. The corpus Magnesiae is (he "root of the closed house," the "belly" in which Sol and Luna are united. ("Aurora consurgens," Part II, Art. aurif., I, p. 191.)

8. Theatr. chem., III, pp. 88f.

9. Mylius calls the tenth grade of the process "the exaltation, which is the ingenious ennobling of our whitened magnesia" (p. 129). Hence the Rosarium philosophorum (Art. aurif., II, p. 231) says: "The magnesia is the full moon."

10. Sermo XXI.

11. Von hylealischen Chaos, pp. 5f.

12. "Magnesia -- the Woman." Ruland, Lexicon, p. 216.

13. But in the region of Alexandria and in the Troad there was said to be a magnetic stone "of the feminine sex, and totally useless." (Ruland, p. 215.)

14. "Duodecim tractatus," Theatr. chem., IV, p. 499.

15. Berthelot, Intro., p. 255.

16. "Magnesia is further the mixed water congealed in air which offers resistance to the fire, the earth of the stone, our mercury, mixture of the substances. The whole therein is mercury." Ruland, p. 216.

17. "Rosinus ad Sarratantarn" (Art. aurif., I, p. 311): "Recipe ergo hunc lapidem animalem: id est animam in se habentem, scilicet Mercurialem sensibilem: id est, sentientern praesentiam et influentiam magnesiae et rnagnetis et calaminarern let lap idem] per motum localem. prosequendo et fugando vegetabilem ... ," Instead of "et lapidem" the text of 1593 has "ac apicem," which does not make sense. Rosinus is a corruption of Zosimos due to Arabic transcription.

18. De arte metallicae metamorphoseos ad Philoponum liber singularis (1576). Reprinted in Theatr. chem., I (1602), p. 44.

19. "Philosophia chemica," Theatr. chem., I, p. 497. Here Dorn discusses his view of the anima rerum: "The body ... of everything is a prison, wherein the powers of the soul of things are detained and held in fetters, so that their natural spirits are not able freely to impress their powers and activities upon them. The spirit of such insensate things in relation to its subject is similar to and of the same efficacy as undoubting faith is in man." The divine powers imprisoned in bodies are nothing other than Dionysus dispersed in matter.

20. Cf. City of God, Healey trans., II, p. 322. Augustine finds quick-lime (calx viva) equally wonderful: "Quam mirum est quod cum extinguitur, tunc accenditur" (But the wonder is that when it is killed it is quickened).

21. Emblemata (1621), Embl. CLXXI, p. 715 a.

22. Commentariorum alchymiae (1606), Part II, p. 101.

23. Theatr. chem., IV, p. 499.

24. The extraordinary importance of the water in alchemy goes back. in my view, to Gnostic sources: "And water is honoured, and they believe in it as if it were a god, going almost so far as to allege that life arises therefrom" (Epiphanius, Panarium, LXIII, cap. I).

25. "Inquiunt enim, natura naturam sibi similem appetit, et congaudet suae naturae; si alienae iungatur, destruitur opus naturae" ("Ars chemistica," Theatr. chem., I, p. 252).

26. . -- Berthelot, Alch. grecs, II, i, 3. According to the story of Democritus, this axiom was revealed to him by his deceased teacher. Synesius, in the treatise addressed to Dioscorus, priest of Serapis (Berthelot, II, iii), says that the teacher of Democritus was Ostanes, and that the axiom came from him.

27. Vegetabilis in our texts means 'living' when applied to Mercurius, 'vivifying' when applied to the Quinta Essentia.

28. Cf. "Psychology of the Transference," pars. 433ff., and "Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales," in Part I of vol. 9. pars. 429ff.

29. Psychological Types, ch. V, 3.

30. "Idea perfecta philosophiae hermeticae," Theatr. chem. (1661). VI, p. 152. The treatise was first published 1630. Of the author Collesson nothing appears to be known.

31. "Quantum autem ad substantiam, qua naturaliter et Philosophice aurum et argentum vulgare solvuntur, attinet, nemo sibi imaginari debet, ullam aliam, quam animam mundi generalem, quae per magnetes et media Philosophica trahitur et attrahitur de corporibus superioribus, maxime vero de radiis Solis et Lunae. Dnde liquet illos Mercurii seu menstrui Philosophici nullam habere cognitionem, qui naturaliter et physice metalla perfecta dissolvere cogitant."

32. "There is a certain truth in natural things which is not seen with the outward eye, but is perceived by the mind alone, and of this the Philosophers have had experience, and have ascertained that its virtue is such that it performs miracles" ("Speculativa philosophia," Theatr. chem., I, p. 298).

33. Pernety, Dictionnaire mytho-hermetique, s.v. "Aimant."

34. "... medicina, corrigens et transmutans id, quod non est amplius, in id quod fuit ante wrruptionem, ac in Melius, et id, quod non est, in id quod esse debet" (p. 267).

35. "In corpore humano latet quaedam substantia methaphysica, paucissimis nota, quae nullo ... indiget medicamento, sed ipsa medicamentum est incorruptum" (p. 265).

36. " ... Chemistarum studium, in sensualibus insensualem illam veritatem a suis compedibus liberare" (p. 271).

37. "Philosophi divino quodam afflatu cognoverunt hanc virtutem caelestemque vigorem a suis compedibus liberari posse: non contrario ... sed suo simili. Cum igitur tale quid, sive in homine sive extra ipsum inveniatur, quod huic est conforme substantiae, conduserunt sapientes similia similibus esse corroboranda. pace potius quam bello." (P. 265.)

38. "Fac igitur ut talis evadas, quale tuum esse vis quod quaesieris opus" (p. 277).

39 "... non possumus de quovis dubio certiores fieri, quam experiendo, nec melius quam in nobis ips is" ("Philosophia meditativa," Theatr. chem., I, p. 467).

40. "Cognoscat hominis in homine thesaurum existere maximum, et non extra ipsum. Ab ipso procedit interius ... per quod operatur extrinsecus id, quod oculariter videt. Ergo nisi mente caecus fuerit, videbit (id est) intelliget, quis et qualis sit intrinsecus, luceque naturae seipsum cognoscet per exteriora." ("Speculativae philosophiae," p. 307.)

41. The alchemist and mystic John Pordage (1607-81) called the inner "eternal" man an "extract and summary concept of the Macrocosm" (Sophia, 1699, p. 34).

42. "Disce ex te ipso, quicquid est et in caelo et in terra, cognoscere, ut sapiens fias in omnibus. Ignoras caelum et elementa prius unum fuisse, divino quoque ab invicem artificio separata, ut et te et omnia generare possent?" ("Speculativae philosophiae," p. 276.)

43. An idea that reached its full development 200 years later in Leibniz' monadology, and then fell into complete oblivion for another 200 years owing to the rise of the scientific trinity -- space, time, causality. Herbert Silberer, who was also interested in alchemy, says: "I would almost prefer to surrender entirely to picture- language, and to call the deepest subconsciousness our internal heaven of fixed stars." (Der Zufall und die Koboldstreiche des Unbewussten, p. 66.) Further material in "On the Nature of the Psyche," pars. 389ff.

44. "Nemo vero potest cognoscere se, nisi sciat quid, et non quis ipse sit, a quo dependeat, vel cuius sit ... et in quem finem factus sit" (p. 272).

45. Exercitia spiritualia, "Principio y Fundamento": "Homo creatus est (ad hunc finem), ut laudet Deum Dominum nostrum, ei reverentiam exhibeat, eique serviat, et per haec salvet an imam suam." See trans. by Rickaby, p. 18.

46. "De transmutatione metallica," Art. aurif., II, p. 11.

47. "Not, that is, that I should require of them riches or gifts, but that I should diligently furnish them with spiritual gifts" (p. 10).

48. "Haec enim res a te extrahitur: cuius etiam minera tu existis, apud te namque illam inveniunt, et ut verius confitear, a te accipiunt; quod quum probaveris, arnor eius (rei) et dilectio in te augebitur" (p. 117).

49. Pp. 40f.

50. "The whole perfection of the magistery consists in the taking of conjoined and concordant bodies" (p. 43). The "Interpretatio cuiusdam epistolae Alexandri Macedonum regis" (Art. aurif., I, p. 384) says: "And know that nothing is born without male and female." And in the "Tractatulus Avicennae" it is said: "Marriage is the mingling of the subtle with the dense." Cf. "Psychology of the Transference." index, s.v. "coniunctio."

51. The text has "Malus" (Art. aurif., I. p. 310), probably a miswriting of Magus. who is a known author.

52. "Hic lapis est subtus te, quantum ad obedientiam; supra te, quoad dominium; ergo a te, quantum ad scientiam; circa te, quantum ad aequales" (Art. aurif., I, p. 310).

53. The dating of these texts is very uncertain. Allowing for error, it seems to me that Morienus is the older.

54. The text has "ipsum." But the object here is "res."

55. "Hic lapis talis est res, quae in te magis fixa est, a Deo creata, et tu eius minera es ac a te extrahitur et ubicunque fueris, tecum inseparabiliter manet. ... Et ut homo ex 4 elementis est compositus, ita et lapis, et ita est ex homine, et tu es eius minera, scil. per operationem; et de te extrahitur, scil. per divisionem; et in te inseparabiliter manet, scil. per scientiam. Aliter in te fixa, scil. in Mercurio sapicntum; tu eius minera es; id est, in te est conclusa et ips[a)m occulte tenes, et ex te extrahitur, cum a te reducitur et solvitur; quia sine te compleri non potest, et tu sine ips[a] vivere non potes et sic finis respicit principium et contra." (Art. aurif., I, pp. 311f.)

56. "The Spirit Mercurius," pars. 264ff.

57. "Nemo in se ipso, sed in sui simili, quod etiam ex ipso sit, generare potest" ("Speculativae philosophiae," p. 276).

58. "... ex aliis numquam unum facies quod quaeris, nisi prius ex te ipso fiat unum ... Nam talis est voluntas Dei, ut pii pium consequantur opus quod quaerunt, et perfecti perficiant aliud cui fuerint intenti .... Fac igitur ut talia evadas, quale tuum esse vis quod quaesieris opus" (p. 276f.).

59. "Transmutemini de lapidibus mortuis in vivos lapides philosophicos!" (p. 267). This is an allusion to I Peter 2: 4f: "Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God's sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built [up] ..." (RSV).

60. "Non in nobis quaerenda [veritas], sed in imagine Dei, quae in nobis est" (p. 268).

61. "Ulterius, ut definitioni veri faciamus satis, dicimus esse, vera nihil adesse, nam uni quid adest, quaeso, quid etiam deest, aut quid contra niti potest? cum nihil vere praeter illud unum existit" (p. 268).
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Re: Aion, by C.G. Jung

Postby admin » Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:47 am

Chapter 12: BACKGROUND TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRISTIAN ALCHEMICAL SYMBOLISM

"Mater Alchimia" could serve as the name of a whole epoch. Beginning, roughly, with Christianity, it gave birth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the age of science, only to perish, unrecognized and misunderstood, and sink from sight in the stream of the centuries as an age that had been outlived. But, just as every mother was once a daughter, so too was alchemy. It owes its real beginnings to the Gnostic systems, which Hippolytus rightly regarded as philosophic, and which, with the help of Greek philosophy and the mythologies of the Near and Middle East, together with Christian dogmatics and Jewish cabalism, made extremely interesting attempts, from the modern point of view, to synthetize a unitary vision of the world in which the physical and the mystical aspects played equal parts. Had this attempt succeeded, we would not be witnessing today the curious spectacle of two parallel world-views neither of which knows, or wishes to know, anything about the other. Hippolytus was in the enviable position of being able to see Christian doctrine side by side with its pagan sisters, and similar comparisons had also been attempted by Justin Martyr. To the honour of Christian thinking it must be said that up till the time of Kepler there was no lack of praiseworthy attempts to interpret and understand Nature, in the broadest sense, on the basis of Christian dogma.

These attempts, however, inevitably came to grief for lack of any adequate knowledge of natural processes. Thus, in the course of the eighteenth century, there arose that notorious rift between faith and knowledge. Faith lacked experience and science missed out the soul. Instead, science believed fervently in absolute objectivity and assiduously overlooked the fundamental difficulty that the real vehicle and begetter of all knowledge is the psyche, the very thing that scientists knew the least about for the longest time. It was regarded as a symptom of chemical reactions, an epiphenomenon of biological processes in the brain-cells -- indeed, for some time it did not exist at all. Yet all the while scientists remained totally unaware of the fact that they were using for their observations a photographic apparatus of whose nature and structure they knew practically nothing, and whose very existence many of them were unwilling to admit. It is only quite recently that they have been obliged to take into their calculations the objective reality of this psychic factor. Significantly enough, it is microphysics that has come up against the psyche in the most tangible and unexpected way. Obviously, we must disregard the psychology of the unconscious in this connection, since its working hypothesis consists precisely in the reality of the psyche. What is significant here is the exact opposite. namely the psyche's collision with physics. [1]

Now for the Gnostics -- and this is their real secret -- the psyche existed as a source of knowledge just as much as it did for the alchemists. Aside from the psychology of the unconscious, contemporary science and philosophy know only of what is outside, while faith knows only of the inside, and then only in the Christian form imparted to it by the passage of the centuries, beginning with St. Paul and the gospel of St. John. Faith, quite as much as science with its traditional objectivity, is absolute, which is why faith and knowledge can no more agree than Christians can with one another.

Our Christian doctrine is a highly differentiated symbol that expresses the transcendent psychic -- the God-image and its properties, to speak with Dorn. The Creed is a "symbolum." This comprises practically everything of importance that can be ascertained about the manifestations of the psyche in the field of inner experience, but it does not include Nature, at least not in any recognizable form. Consequently, at every period of Christianity there have been subsidiary currents or undercurrents that have sought to investigate the empirical aspect of Nature not only from the outside but also from the inside.

Although dogma, like mythology in general, expresses the quintessence of inner experience and thus formulates the operative principles of the objective psyche, i.e., the collective unconscious, it does so by making use of a language and outlook that have become alien to our present way of thinking. The word "dogma" has even acquired a somewhat unpleasant sound and frequently serves merely to emphasize the rigidity of a prejudice. For most people living in the West, it has lost its meaning as a symbol for a virtually unknowable and yet "actual" -- i.e., operative -- fact. Even in theological circles any real discussion of dogma had as good as ceased until the recent papal declarations. a sign that the symbol has begun to fade, if it is not already withered. This is a dangerous development for our psychic health, as we know of no other symbol that better expresses the world of the unconscious. More and more people then begin looking round for exotic ideas in the hope of finding a substitute, for example in India. This hope is delusory, for though the Indian symbols formulate the unconscious just as well as the Christian ones do, they each exemplify their own spiritual past. The Indian teachings constitute the essence of several thousand years of experience of Indian life. Though we can learn a lot from Indian thought, it can never express the past that is stored up within us. The premise we start from is and remains Christianity, which covers anything from eleven to nineteen centuries of Western life. Before that, there was for most Western peoples a considerably longer period of polytheism and polydemonism. In certain parts of Europe Christianity goes back not much more than five hundred years -- a mere sixteen generations. The last witch was burnt in Europe the year my grandfather was born, and barbarism with its degradation of human nature has broken out again in the twentieth century.

I mention these facts in order to illustrate how thin is the wall that separates us from pagan times. Besides that, the Germanic peoples never developed organically out of primitive polydemonism to polytheism and its philosophical subtleties, but in many places accepted Christian monotheism and its doctrine of redemption only at the sword's point of the Roman legions, as in Africa the machine-gun is the latent argument behind the Christian invasion. [2] Doubtless the spread of Christianity among barbarian peoples not only favoured, but actually necessitated, a certain inflexibility of dogma. Much the same thing can be observed in the spread of Islam, which was likewise obliged to resort to fanaticism and rigidity. In India the symbol developed far more organically and pursued a less disturbed course. Even the great Hindu Reformation, Buddhism, is grounded, in true Indian fashion, on yoga, and, in India at least, it was almost completely reassimilated by Hinduism in less than a millennium, so that today the Buddha himself is enthroned in the Hindu pantheon as the avatar of Vishnu, along with Christ, Matsya (the fish), Kurma (the tortoise), Vamana (the dwarf), and a host of others.

The historical development of our Western mentality cannot be compared in any way with the Indian. Anyone who believes that he can simply take over Eastern forms of thought is uprooting himself, for they do not express our Western past, but remain bloodless intellectual concepts that strike no chord in our inmost being. We are rooted in Christian soil. This foundation does not go very deep, certainly, and, as we have seen, it has proved alarmingly thin in places, so that the original paganism, in altered guise, was able to regain possession of a large part of Europe and impose on it its characteristic economic pattern of slavery.

This modern development is in line with the pagan currents that were clearly present in alchemy and had remained alive beneath the Christian surface ever since the days of antiquity. Alchemy reached its greatest efflorescence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then to all appearances it began to die out. In reality it found its continuation in natural science, which led in the nineteenth century to materialism and in the twentieth century to so-called "realism," whose end is not yet in sight. Despite well-meaning assurances to the contrary, Christianity is a helpless bystander. The Church still has a little power left, but she pastures her sheep on the ruins of Europe. Her message works, if one knows how to combine her language, ideas, and customs with an understanding of the present. But for many she no longer speaks, as Paul did in the market-place of Athens, the language of the present, but wraps her message in sacrosanct words hallowed by age. What success would Paul have had with his preaching if he had had to use the language and myths of the Minoan age in order to announce the gospel to the Athenians? We overlook the unfortunate fact that far greater demands are made on present-day man than were ever made on people living in the apostolic era: for them there was no difficulty at all in believing in the virgin birth of the hero and demigod, and Justin Martyr was still able to use this argument in his apology. Nor was the idea of a redeeming God-man anything unheard of, since practically all Asiatic potentates together with the Roman Emperor were of divine nature. But we have no further use even for the divine right of kings! The miraculous tales in the gospels, which easily convinced people in those days, would be a petra scandali in any modern biography and would evoke the very reverse of belief. The weird and wonderful nature of the gods was a self-evident fact in a hundred living myths and assumed a special significance in the no less credible philosophic refinements of those myths. "Hermes ter unus" (Hermes-Thrice- One) was not an intellectual absurdity but a philosophical truth. On these foundations the dogma of the Trinity could be built up convincingly. For modern man this dogma is either an impenetrable mystery or an historical curiosity, preferably the latter. For the man of antiquity the virtue of the consecrated water or the transmutation of substances was in no sense an enormity, because there were dozens of sacred springs whose workings were incomprehensible, and any amount of chemical changes whose nature appeared miraculous. Nowadays every schoolboy knows more, in principle, about the ways of Nature than all the volumes of Pliny's Natural History put together.

If Paul were alive today, and should undertake to reach the ear of intelligent Londoners in Hyde Park, he could no longer content himself with quotations from Greek literature and a smattering of Jewish history, but would have to accommodate his language to the intellectual faculties of the modern English public. If he failed to do this, he would have announced his message badly, for no one, except perhaps a classical philologist, would understand half of what he was saying. That, however, is the situation in which Christian kerygmatics [3] finds itself today. Not that it uses a dead foreign language in the literal sense, but it speaks in images that on the one hand are hoary with age and look deceptively familiar, while on the other hand they are miles away from a modern man's conscious understanding, addressing themselves, at most, to his unconscious, and then only if the speaker's whole soul is in his work. The best that can happen, therefore, is that the effect remains stuck in the sphere of feeling, though in most cases it does not get even that far.

The bridge from dogma to the inner experience of the individual has broken down. Instead, dogma is "believed"; [4] it is hypostatized, as the Protestants hypostatize the Bible, illegitimately making it the supreme authority, regardless of its contradictions and controversial interpretations. (As we know, anything can be authorized out of the Bible.) Dogma no longer formulates anything, no longer expresses anything; it has become a tenet to be accepted in and for itself, with no basis in any experience that would demonstrate its truth. [5] Indeed, faith has itself become that experience. The faith of a man like Paul, who had never seen our Lord in the flesh, could still appeal to the overwhelming apparition on the road to Damascus and to the revelation of the gospel in a kind of ecstasy. Similarly, the faith of the man of antiquity and of the medieval Christian never ran counter to the consensus omnium but was on the contrary supported by it. All this has completely changed in the last three hundred years. But what comparable change has kept pace with this in theological circles?

The danger exists -- and of this there can be no doubt -- that the new wine will burst the old bottles, and that what we no longer understand will be thrown into the lumber-room, as happened once before at the time of the Reformation. Protestantism then discarded (except for a few pallid remnants) the ritual that every religion needs, and now relies solely on the sola fides standpoint. The content of faith, of the symbolum, is continually crumbling away. What is still left of it? The person of Jesus Christ? Even the most benighted layman knows that the personality of Jesus is, for the biographer, the obscurest item of all in the reports of the New Testament, and that, from a human and psychological point of view, his personality must remain an unfathomable enigma. As a Catholic writer pithily remarked, the gospels record the history of a man and a god at the same time. Or is only God left? In that case, what about the Incarnation, the most vital part of the symbolum? In my view one would be well advised to apply the papal dictum: "Let it be as it is, or not be at all," [6] to the Creed and leave it at that, because nobody really understands what it is all about. How else can one explain the notorious drift away from dogma?

It may strike my reader as strange that a physician and psychologist should be so insistent about dogma. But I must emphasize it, and for the same reasons that once moved the alchemist to attach special importance to his "theoria." His doctrine was the quintessence of the symbolism of unconscious processes, just as the dogmas are a condensation or distillation of "sacred history," of the myth of the divine being and his deeds. If we wish to understand what alchemical doctrine means, we must go back to the historical as well as the individual phenomenology of the symbols, and if we wish to gain a closer understanding of dogma, we must perforce consider first the myths of the Near and Middle East that underlie Christianity, and then the whole of mythology as the expression of a universal disposition in man. This disposition I have called the collective unconscious, the existence of which can be inferred only from individual phenomenology. In both cases the investigator comes back to the individual, for what he is all the time concerned with are certain complex thought-forms, the archetypes, which must be conjectured as the unconscious organizers of our ideas. The motive force that produces these configurations cannot be distinguished from the transconscious factor known as instinct. There is, therefore, no justification for visualizing the archetype as anything other than the image of instinct in man. [7]

From this one should not jump to the conclusion that the world of religious ideas can be reduced to "nothing but" a biological basis, and it would be equally erroneous to suppose that, when approached in this way, the religious phenomenon is "psychologized" and dissolved in smoke. No reasonable person would conclude that the reduction of man's morphology to a four-legged saurian amounts to a nullification of the human form, or, alternatively, that the latter somehow explains itself. For behind all this looms the vast and unsolved riddle of life itself and of evolution in general, and the question of overriding importance in the end is not the origin of evolution but its goal. Nevertheless, when a living organism is cut off from its roots, it loses the connections with the foundations of its existence and must necessarily perish. When that happens, anamnesis of the origins is a matter of life and death.

Myths and fairy tales give expression to unconscious processes, and their retelling causes these processes to come alive again and be recollected, thereby re-establishing the connection between conscious and unconscious. What the separation of the two psychic halves means, the psychiatrist knows only too well. He knows it as dissociation of the personality, the root of all neuroses: the conscious goes to the right and the unconscious to the left. As opposites never unite at their own level (tertium non datur!), a supraordinate "third" is always required, in which the two parts can come together. And since the symbol derives as much from the conscious as from the unconscious, it is able to unite them both, reconciling their conceptual polarity through its form and their emotional polarity through its numinosity.

For this reason the ancients often compared the symbol to water, a case in point being tao, where yang and yin are united. Tao is the "valley spirit," the winding course of a river. The symbolum of the Church is the aqua doctrinae, corresponding to the wonder-working "divine" water of alchemy, whose double aspect is represented by Mercurius. The healing and renewing properties of this symbolical water -- whether it be tao, the baptismal water, or the elixir -- point to the therapeutic character of the mythological background from which this idea comes. Physicians who were versed in alchemy had long recognized that their arcanum healed, or was supposed to heal, not only the diseases of the body but also those of the mind. Similarly, modern psychotherapy knows that, though there are many interim solutions, there is, at the bottom of every neurosis, a moral problem of opposites that cannot be solved rationally, and can be answered only by a supraordinate third, by a symbol which expresses both sides. This was the "veritas" (Dorn) or "theoria" (Paracelsus) for which the old physicians and alchemists strove, and they could do so only by incorporating the Christian revelation into their world of ideas. They continued the work of the Gnostics (who were, most of them, not so much heretics as theologians) and the Church Fathers in a new era, instinctively recognizing that new wine should not be put into old bottles, and that, like a snake changing its skin, the old myth needs to be clothed anew in every renewed age if it is not to lose its therapeutic effect.

The problems which the integration of the unconscious sets modern doctors and psychologists can only be solved along the lines traced out by history, and the upshot will be a new assimilation of the traditional myth. This, however, presupposes the continuity of historical development. Naturally the present tendency to destroy all tradition or render it unconscious could interrupt the normal process of development for several hundred years and substitute an interlude of barbarism. Wherever the Marxist utopia prevails, this has already happened. But a predominantly scientific and technological education, such as is the usual thing nowadays, can also bring about a spiritual regression and a considerable increase of psychic dissociation. With hygiene and prosperity alone a man is still far from health, otherwise the most enlightened and most comfortably off among us would be the healthiest. But in regard to neuroses that is not the case at all, quite the contrary. Loss of roots and lack of tradition neuroticize the masses and prepare them for collective hysteria. Collective hysteria calls for collective therapy, which consists in abolition of liberty and terrorization. Where rationalistic materialism holds sway, states tend to develop less into prisons than into lunatic asylums.

***

I have tried, in the foregoing, to indicate the kind of psychic matrix into which the Christ-figure was assimilated in the course of the centuries. Had there not been an affinity -- magnet! -- between the figure of the Redeemer and certain contents of the unconscious, the human mind would never have been able to perceive the light shining in Christ and seize upon it so passionately. The connecting link here is the archetype of the God- man, which on the one hand became historical reality in Christ, and on the other, being eternally present, reigns over the soul in the form of a supraordinate totality, the self. The God-man, like the priest in the vision of Zosimos, is a not only "Lord of the spirits," but "Lord over the (evil) spirits," which is one of the essential meanings of the Christian Kyrios. [8]

The noncanonical fish symbol led us into this psychic matrix and thus into a realm of experience where the unknowable archetypes become living things, changing their name and guise in never-ending succession and, as it were, disclosing their hidden nucleus by perpetually circumambulating round it. The lapis that signifies God become man or man become God "has a thousand names." It is not Christ; it is his parallel in the subjective realm, which dogma calls Christ. Alchemy gives us, in the lapis, a concrete idea of what Christ means in the realm of subjective experience, and under what delusive or illuminative disguises his actual presence may be experienced in its transcendent ineffability. One could demonstrate the same thing in the psychology of a modern individual, as I attempted to do in Part II of Psychology and Alchemy. [9] Only, this would be a much more exacting task, running into great detail and requiring a mass of personal biographical data with which one could fill volumes. Such an undertaking would exceed my powers. I must therefore rest content with having laid some of the historical and conceptual foundations for this work of the future.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize once again that the fish symbol is a spontaneous assimilation of the Christ-figure of the gospels, and is thus a symptom which shows us in what manner and with what meaning the symbol was assimilated by the unconscious. In this respect the patristic allegory of the capture of Leviathan (with the Cross as the hook, and the Crucified as the bait) is highly characteristic: a content (fish) of the unconscious (sea) has been caught and has attached itself to the Christ-figure. Hence the expression used by St. Augustine: "de profundo levatus" (drawn from the deep). This is true enough of the fish; but of Christ? The image of the fish came out of the depths of the unconscious as an equivalent of the historical Christ figure, and if Christ was invoked as "Ichthys," this name referred to what had come up out of the depths. The fish symbol is thus the bridge between the historical Christ and the psychic nature of man, where the archetype of the Redeemer dwells. In this way Christ became an inner experience, the "Christ within."

As I have shown, the alchemical fish symbolism leads direct to the lapis, the salvator, servator, and deus terrenus; that is, psychologically, to the self. We now have a new symbol in place of the fish: a psychological concept of human wholeness. In as much or in as little as the fish is Christ does the self mean God. It is something that corresponds, an inner experience, an assimilation of Christ into the psychic matrix, a new realization of the divine Son, no longer in theriomorphic form, but expressed in a conceptual or "philosophic" symbol. This, compared with the mute and unconscious fish, marks a distinct increase in conscious development. [10]

_______________

Notes:

1. Cf. "On the Nature of the Psyche," pars. 417ff., 438ff.

2. I was able to convince myself on the spot of the existence of this fear.

3. Kerygmatics = preaching, declaration of religious truth.

4. Father Victor White, O.P., has kindly drawn my attention to the concept of the veritas prima in St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa theol., II, II, i, I and 2): This "first truth" is invisible and unknown. It is this, and not the dogma, that underlies belief.

5. This is not to contest the legitimacy and importance of dogma. The Church is not concerned only with people who have a religious life of their own, but also with those from whom no more can be expected than that they should hold a tenet to be true and confess themselves satisfied with this formula. Probably the great majority of "believers" do not get beyond this level. For them dogma retains its role as a magnet and can therefore claim to be the "final" truth.

6. "Sit, ut est, aut non sit."

7. "On the Nature of the Psyche," par. 415.

8. Like the Old Testament "Yahweh Zebaoth," Lord of Hosts. Cf. Maag. "Jahwas Heerscharen."

9. Also in "Psychology and Religion"; "Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious"; and my commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower.

10. For the significance of conscious development in relation to mythological symbolism, see Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness.
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