The Gnostic Jung

Including

C.G. Jung, Robert Segal, Robert Segal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317761952
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Gnosticism was for C.G. jung the chief prefiguration of his analytical psychology. In this volume Robert Segal, an authority on theories of myth and Gnosticism, has searched the Jungian corpus for Jung's main discussions of this ancient form of spirituality. The progression in Gnosticism from sheer bodily existence to the release of the immaterial spark imprisoned in the body - and the reunion of that spark with the godhead - represents for Jung the psychological progression from ego consciousness to the ego's rediscovery of the unconscious, and the ego's integration with the unconscious to forge the self.Included in this volume are both Jung's sole work devoted entirely to Gnosticism, "Gnostic Symbols of the Self, " and his own Gnostic myth, "Seven Sermons to the Dead." The book also contains key essays by Father Victor White and Gilles Quispel, whose "C.G. Jung und die Gnosis" is here translated for the first time. In his extensive introduction Segal discusses the parallel for Jung between ancient Gnostic and contemporary Jungian patients, the Jungian meaning of Gnostic myths and of the Seven Sermons, Jung's possible misinterpretation of Gnosticism, and the common characterization of Jung himself as a Gnostic.

Part 1. Jung’s Chief Writings on Gnosticism

Chapter 1. Jung’s Main Psychological Interpretation of Gnosticism

While Jung discusses Gnosticism in passing throughout his writings, his one work devoted to Gnosticism is “Gnostic Symbols of the Self.” This essay offers a psychological interpretation of such standard Gnostic symbols as the magnet, water, fish, the serpent, Logos, circle, the quaternity, androgyny, and marriage. More important, the essay interprets psychologically the plot and characters of Gnostic myths. The immaterial godhead symbolizes the unconscious in its primordial, undifferentiated state. The Demiurge, together with the differentiated matter over which he rules, symbolizes the ego. Anthropos (“Primal Man” or “Original Man”), Christ, the Son, and God all symbolize the self. The Gnostic cosmogony, according to which the Demiurge is created by the godhead, reigns confidently over the material world, and only eventually discovers that there is a god higher than he, symbolizes the emergence of the ego out of the unconscious, the forgetting of the unconscious by the ego, and the ego’s eventual reconnection with the unconscious to form the self. See, in my introduction, the sections on “A Jungian Interpretation of Gnostic Myths” and “Jung’s Equations.”

“Gnostic Symbols of the Self,” CW 9 ii, pars. 287–346

1

Since all cognition is akin to recognition, it should not come as a surprise to find that what I have described as a gradual process of development had already been anticipated, and more or less prefigured, at the beginning of our era. We meet these images and ideas in Gnosticism, to which we must now give our attention; for Gnosticism was, in the main, a product of cultural assimilation and is therefore of the greatest interest in elucidating and defining the contents constellated by prophecies about the Redeemer, or by his appearance in history, or by the synchronicity of the archetype.¹

In the Elenchos of Hippolytus the attraction between the magnet and iron is mentioned, if I am not mistaken, three times. It first appears in the doctrine of the NAASSENES, who taught that the four rivers of Paradise correspond to the eye, the ear, the sense of smell, and the mouth. The mouth, through which prayers go out and food goes in, corresponds to the fourth river, the Euphrates. The well-known significance of the “fourth” helps to explain its connection with the “whole” man, for the fourth always makes a triad into a totality. The text says: “This is the water above the firmament,² of which, they say, the Saviour spoke: ‘If you knew who it is that asks, you would have asked him, and he would have given you a spring of living water to drink.’³ To this water comes every nature to choose its own substances, and from this water goes forth to every nature that which is proper to it, more [certainly] than iron to the Heracleian stone,”⁴ etc.

As the reference to John 4:10 shows, the wonderful water of the Euphrates has the property of the aqua doctrinae, which perfects every nature in its individuality and thus makes man whole too. It does this by giving him a kind of magnetic power by which he can attract and integrate that which belongs to him. The Naassene doctrine is, plainly, a perfect parallel to the alchemical view already discussed: the doctrine is the magnet that makes possible the integration of man as well as the lapis.

In the PERATIC doctrine, so many ideas of this kind reappear that Hippolytus even uses the same metaphors, though the meaning is more subtle. No one, he says, can be saved without the Son:

But this is the serpent. For it is he who brought the signs of the Father down from above, and it is he who carries them back again after they have been awakened from sleep, transferring them thither from hence as substances proceeding from the Substanceless. This, they say, is [what is meant by] the saying, “I am the Door.”⁵ But they say he transfers them to those whose eyelids are closed,⁶ as naphtha draws everywhere the fire to itself,⁷ more than the Heracleian stone draws iron…⁸ Thus, they say, the perfect race of men, made in the image [of the Father] and of the same substance [homoousion], is drawn from the world by the Serpent, even as it was sent down by him; but naught else [is so drawn].⁹

Here the magnetic attraction does not come from the doctrine or the water but from the “Son,” who is symbolized by the serpent, as in John 3:14.¹⁰ Christ is the magnet that draws to itself those parts or substances in man that are of divine origin, the πaτϱιϰοὶ χαϱαϰτῆϱες (signs of the Father), and carries them back to their heavenly birthplace. The serpent is an equivalent of the fish. The consensus of opinion interpreted the Redeemer equally as a fish and a serpent; he is a fish because he rose from the unknown depths, and a serpent because he came mysteriously out of the darkness. Fishes and snakes are favourite symbols for describing psychic happenings or experiences that suddenly dart out of the unconscious and have a frightening or redeeming effect. That is why they are so often expressed by the motif of helpful animals. The comparison of Christ with the serpent is more authentic than that with the fish, but, for all that, it was not so popular in primitive Christianity. The Gnostics favoured it because it was an old-established symbol for the “good” genius loci, the Agathodaimon, and also for their beloved Nous. Both symbols are of inestimable value when it comes to the natural, instinctive interpretation of the Christ-figure. Theriomorphic symbols are very common in dreams and other manifestations of the unconscious. They express the psychic level of the content in question; that is to say, such contents are at a stage of unconsciousness that is as far from human consciousness as the psyche of an animal. Warm-blooded or coldblooded vertebrates of all kinds, or even invertebrates, thus indicate the degree of unconsciousness. It is important for psychopathologists to know this, because these contents can produce, at all levels, symptoms that correspond to the physiological functions and are localized accordingly. For instance, the symptoms may be distinctly correlated with the cerebrospinal and the sympathetic nervous system. The Sethians may have guessed something of this sort, for Hippolytus mentions, in connection with the serpent, that they compared the “Father” with the cerebrum (ἐγϰέϕαλον) and the “Son” with the cerebellum and spinal cord (παϱελϰεϕαλίς δϱαϰοντοειδής). The snake does in fact symbolize “coldblooded,” inhuman contents and tendencies of an abstractly intellectual as well as a concretely animal nature: in a word, the extrahuman quality in man.

The third reference to the magnet is to be found in Hippolytus’ account of the SETHIAN doctrine. This has remarkable analogies with the alchemical doctrines of the Middle Ages, though no direct transmission can be proved. It expounds, in Hippolytus’ words, a theory of “composition and mixture”: the ray of light from above mingles with the dark waters below in the form of a minute spark. At the death of the individual, and also at his figurative death as a mystical experience, the two substances unmix themselves. This mystical experience is the divisio and separatio of the composite (τὸδιχάσαι ϰαὶ χωϱίσαι τὰ συγϰεϰϱαμένα). I purposely give the Latin terms used in medieval alchemy, because they denote essentially the same thing as do the Gnostic concepts. The separation or unmixing enables the alchemist to extract the anima or spiritus from the prima materia. During this operation the helpful Mercurius appears with the dividing sword (used also by the adept!), which the Sethians refer to Matthew 10:34: “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” The result of the unmixing is that what was previously mixed up with the “other” is now drawn to “its own place” and to that which is “proper” or “akin” to it, “like iron to the magnet” (ὧςσίδηϱος [πϱὸς] Ἡϱάϰλειον λίθον).¹¹ In the same way, the spark or ray of light, “having received from the teaching and learning its proper place, hastens to the Logos, which comes from above in the form of a slave … more [quickly] than iron [flies] to the magnet.”¹²

Here the magnetic attraction comes from the Logos. This denotes a thought or idea that has been formulated and articulated, hence a content and a product of consciousness. Consequently the Logos is very like the aqua doctrinae, but whereas the Logos has the advantage of being an autonomous personality, the latter is merely a passive object of human action. The Logos is nearer to the historical Christ-figure, just as the “water” is nearer to the magical water used in ritual (ablution, aspersion, baptism). Our three examples of magnetic action suggest three different forms of magnetic agent:

1. The agent is an inanimate and in itself passive substance, water. It is drawn from the depths of the well, handled by human hands, and used according to man’s needs. It signifies the visible doctrine, the aqua doctrinae or the Logos, communicated to others by word of mouth and by ritual.

2. The agent is an animate, autonomous being, the serpent. It appears spontaneously or comes as a surprise; it fascinates; its glance is staring, fixed, unrelated; its blood cold, and it is a stranger to man: it crawls over the sleeper, he finds it in a shoe or in his pocket. It expresses his fear of everything inhuman and his awe of the sublime, of what is beyond human ken. It is the lowest (devil) and the highest (son of God, Logos, Nous, Agathodaimon). The snake’s presence is frightening, one finds it in unexpected places at unexpected moments. Like the fish, it represents and personifies the dark and unfathomable, the watery deep, the forest, the night, the cave. When a primitive says “snake,” he means an experience of something extrahuman. The snake is not an allegory or metaphor, for its own peculiar form is symbolic in itself, and it is essential to note that the “Son” has the form of a snake and not the other way round: the snake does not signify the “Son.”

3. The agent is the Logos, a philosophical idea and abstraction of the bodily and personal son of God on the one hand, and on the other the dynamic power of thoughts and words.

It is clear that these three symbols seek to describe the unknowable essence of the incarnate God. But it is equally clear that they are hypostatized to a high degree: it is real water, and not figurative water, that is used in ritual. The Logos was in the beginning, and God was the Logos, long before the Incarnation. The emphasis falls so much on the “serpent” that the Ophites celebrated their eucharistic feast with a live snake, no less realistic than the Aesculapian snake at Epidaurus. Similarly, the “fish” is not just the secret language of the mystery, but, as the monuments show, it meant something in itself. Moreover, it acquired its meaning in primitive Christianity without any real support from the written tradition, whereas the serpent can at least be referred back to an authentic logion.

All three symbols are phenomena of assimilation that are in themselves of a numinous nature and therefore have a certain degree of autonomy. Indeed, had...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Note on the Text
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction The Gnostic Jung
• Part 1. Jung's Chief Writings on Gnosticism
• Part 2. Jung's Own Gnostic Myth
• Part 3. Other Authorities on Jungian Psychology and Gnosticism
• Index