"Aion Researches Into The Phenomenology Of The Self"

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1 1 1S95 



132 J95co v.9 pt.2 



C. G. (carl 

187 5-1961. en 
works. 




The Mithraic god Aion 
Roman, and-jrd century 



AION 

RESEARCHES INTO THE 
PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE SELF 



C. G. JUNG 




TRANSLATED BY R. F, C. HULL 



BOLLINGEN SERIES XX 



PANTHEON BOOKS 



COPYRIGHT 1959 BY BOLLINGEN FOUNDATION INC., NEW YORK, N. Y. 

PUBLISHED FOR BOLLINGEN FOUNDATION INC. 

BY PANTHEON BOOKS INC., NEW YORK, N. Y. 



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COLLECTED WORKS CONSTITUTE NUMBER 
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VOLUME IS NUMBER 9 OF THE COLLECTED 
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IT IS IN TWO PARTS, PUBLISHED SEPA- 
RATELY, THIS BEING PART II. 



Translated from the first part of Aion: Untersuchungen zur Symbolgeschichte 
(Psychologische Abhandlungen, VIII), published by Rascher Verlag, Zurich, 1951. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 52-8757 

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY H. WOLFF 

NEW YORK, N. Y. 



r,' J 

EDITORIAL NOTE 



Volume g of the Collected Works Is devoted to studies of the 
specific archetypes of the collective unconscious. Part I, entitled 
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious., is composed of 
shorter essays; Part II, Aion, is a long monograph on the arche- 
type of the self. The author has agreed to a modification of the 
sub-title of Aion, which in the Swiss edition appeared in two 
forms, ''Researches into the History of Symbols" and "Contribu- 
tions to the Symbolism of the Self." The first five chapters were 
previously published, with small differences, in Psyche and Sym- 
bol: A Selection 'from the Writings of C. G. Jung } edited by 
Violet S. de Laszlo (Anchor Books, Garden City, New York, 
1958). 



TRANSLATOR'S NOTE 



Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following persons, 
whose translations have been consulted during the preparation 
of the present work: Mr. William H. Kennedy, for reference to 
his translation of portions of Aion., chapters 2 and 3, issued as 
"Shadow, Animus, and Anima" by the Analytical Psychology 
Club of New York, 1950; Dr. Hildegarde Nagel, for reference 
to her translation of the original Eranos-Jahrbuch version (1949) 
of "Concerning the Self," in Spring, 1951, which original ver- 
sion the author later expanded into Aion, chapters 4 and 5; and 
Miss Barbara Hannah and Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz, for 
helpful advice with the remaining chapters. Especial thanks are 
due to Mr. A. S. B. Glover, who (unless otherwise noted) trans- 
lated the Latin and Greek texts throughout. References to pub- 
lished sources are given for the sake of completeness. 



V, 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

EDITORIAL NOTE V 

LIST OF PLATES viii 

FOREWORD ix 

I. The Ego 3 

II. The Shadow 8 

III. The Syzygy: Anima and Animus 1 1 

TV. The Self 23 

V. Christ, a Symbol o the Self 36 

VI. The Sign of the Fishes 72 

VII. The Prophecies of Nostradamus 95 

VIII. The Historical Significance of the Fish 103 

IX. The Ambivalence of the Fish Symbol 118 

X. The Fish in Alchemy 126 
i. The Medusa, 126 2. The Fish, 137 3. The Fish 
Symbol of the Catharists, 145 

XI. The Alchemical Interpretation of the Fish 154 
XII. Background to the Psychology of Christian 

Alchemical Symbolism *73 

XIII. Gnostic Symbols of the Self 184 

XIV. The Structure and Dynamics of the Self 222 
XV. Conclusion 266 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 27 1 

INDEX 3 O1 

vli 



LIST OF PLATES 
The MIthralc god Aion 

Roman, snd-grd century. Museo Profano, Vatican. P: Alinari. 

frontispiece 

I. The Four Elements 

Michael Maier, Scrutinium chymicum (1687), Emblema XVII, p. 49. 

following page #50 

II. The Trinity 

From a manuscript by Joachim of Flora. Graphics Collection, Zurich 

Central Library, B x 606, following page 254 



V11I 



FOREWORD 



The theme of this work * Is the idea of the Aeon (Greek, A ion). 
My investigation seeks, with the help of Christian, Gnostic, and 
alchemical symbols of the self, to throw light on the change of 
psychic situation within the "Christian aeon." Christian tradi- 
tion from the outset is not only saturated with Persian and 
Jewish ideas about the beginning and end of time, but is filled 
with intimations of a kind of enantiodromian reversal of domi- 
nants. I mean by this the dilemma of Christ and Antichrist. 
Probably most of the historical speculations about time and the 
limitation of time were influenced, as the Apocalypse shows, by 
astrological ideas. It is therefore only natural that my reflections 
should gravitate mainly round the symbol of the Fishes^ for the 
Pisces aeon is the synchronistic concomitant of two thousand 
years of Christian development. In this time-period not only 
was the figure of the Anthropos (the "Son of Man 1 ') progres- 
sively amplified symbolically, and thus assimilated psychologi- 
cally, but it brought with it changes in man's attitude that had 
already been anticipated by the expectation of the Antichrist 
in the ancient texts. Because these texts relegate the appearance 
of Antichrist to the end of time, we are justified in speaking o 
a "Christian aeon/' which, it was presupposed, would find its 
end with the Second Coming. It seems as if this expectation 
coincides with the astrological conception of the "Platonic 
month" of the Fishes. 

i [In the Swiss edition, this foreword begins as follows: "In this volume (VIII of 
the Psychologische Abhandlungen) I am bringing out two works which, despite 
their inner and outer differences, belong together in so far as they both treat 
of the great theme of this book, namely the idea of the Aeon (Greek, Aion). 
While the contribution of my co-worker, Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz, describes 
the psychological transition from antiquity to Christianity by analysing the Pas- 
sion of St. Perpetua, my own investigation seeks, with the help of* etc., as above. 
Dr. von Franz's "Die Passio Perpetuae" is omitted from the present volume. 
EDITORS.] 

ix 



FOREWORD 



The immediate occasion for my proposing to discuss these 
historical questions is the fact that the archetypal image of 
wholeness, which appears so frequently in the products of the 
unconscious, has its forerunners in history. These were Identi- 
fied very early with the figure of Christ, as I have shown in my 
book Psychology and Alchemy (chapter 5). I have been re- 
quested so often by my readers to discuss the relations between 
the traditional Christ-figure and the natural symbols of whole- 
ness that I finally decided to take this task in hand. Considering 
the unusual difficulties of such an undertaking, my decision did 
not come easily to me, for, in order to surmount all the ob- 
stacles and possibilities of error, a knowledge and caution would 
be needed which, unfortunately, are vouchsafed me only in 
limited degree. I am moderately certain of my observations on 
the empirical material, but I am fully aware of the risk I am 
taking in drawing the testimonies of history into the scope of 
my reflections. I think I also know the responsibility I am tak- 
ing upon myself when, as though continuing the historical 
process of assimilation, I add to the many symbolical amplifica- 
tions of the Christ-figure yet another, the psychological one, or 
even, so it might seem, reduce the Christ-symbol to a psycho- 
logical image of wholeness. My reader should never forget, how- 
ever, that I am not making a confession o faith or writing a 
tendentious tract, but am simply considering how certain 
things could be understood from the standpoint of our modern 
consciousness things which I deem it valuable to understand, 
and which are obviously in danger of being swallowed up in the 
abyss of incomprehension and oblivion; things, finally, whose 
understanding would do much to remedy our philosophic clis- 
orientation by shedding light on the psychic background and 
the secret chambers of the soul. The essence of this book was 
built up gradually, in the course of many years, in countless 
conversations with people of all ages and all walks of life; with 
people who in the confusion and uprootedness of our society 
were likely to lose all contact with the meaning o European 
culture and to fall Into that state of suggestibility which Is the 
occasion and cause of the Utopian mass-psychoses of our time. 

I write as a physician, with a physician's sense of respon- 
sibility, and not as a proselyte. Nor do I write as a scholar, 
otherwise I would wisely barricade myself behind the safe walls 

x 



FOREWORD 



o my specialism and not, on account of my inadequate knowl- 
edge of history, expose myself to critical attack and damage my 
scientific reputation. So far as my capacities allow, restricted as 
they are by old age and illness, I have made every effort to docu- 
ment my material as reliably as possible and to assist the veri- 
fication of my conclusions by citing the sources. 

C. G. JUNG 
May 1950 



XI 



AION 



RESEARCHES INTO THE PHENOMENOLOGY 
OF THE SELF 



These things came to pass, they say, that Jesus 
might be made the first sacrifice in the discrim- 
ination of composite natures. 

HIPPOLYTUS., ElenchoSj VII, 27, 8 



THE EGO 

Investigation of the psychology of the unconscious con- 
fronted me with facts which required the formulation of new 
concepts. One of these concepts is the self. The entity so denoted 
is not meant to take the place of the one that has always been 
known as the ego, but includes it in a supraordinate concept. 
We understand the ego as the complex factor to which all con- 
scious contents are related. It forms, as it were, the centre of the 
field of consciousness; and, in so far as this comprises the em- 
pirical personality, the ego is the subject of all personal acts of 
consciousness. The relation of a psychic content to the ego forms 
the criterion of its consciousness, for no content can be con- 
scious unless it is represented to a subject. 

With this definition we have described and delimited the 
scope of the subject. Theoretically, no limits can be set to the 
field of consciousness, since it is capable of indefinite extension. 
Empirically, however, it always finds its limit when it comes up 
against the unknown. This consists of everything we do not 
know, which, therefore, is not related to the ego as the centre 
of the field of consciousness. The unknown falls into two groups 
of objects: those which are outside and can be experienced by 
the senses, and those which are inside and are experienced im- 
mediately. The first group comprises the unknown in the outer 
world; the second the unknown in the inner world. We call this 
latter territory the unconscious. 

The ego, as a specific content of consciousness, is not a sim- 
ple or elementary factor but a complex one which, as such, 
cannot be described exhaustively. Experience shows that it rests 
on two seemingly different bases: the somatic and the psychic, 
The somatic basis is inferred from the totality of endosomatic 
perceptions, which for their part are already of a psychic nature 
and are associated with the ego, and are therefore conscious. 
They are produced by endosomatic stimuli, only some of which 

3 



AION 

cross the threshold o consciousness. A considerable proportion 
of these stimuli occur unconsciously, that is, subliminally. The 
fact that they are subliminal does not necessarily mean that their 
status is merely physiological, any more than this would be true 
of a psychic content. Sometimes they are capable of crossing the 
threshold, that is, of becoming perceptions. But there is no 
doubt that a large proportion of these endosomatic stimuli are 
simply incapable of consciousness and are so elementary that 
there is no reason to assign them a psychic natureunless of 
course one favours the philosophical view that all life-processes 
are psychic anyway. The chief objection to this hardly demon- 
strable hypothesis is that it enlarges the concept of the psyche 
beyond all bounds and interprets the life-process in a way not 
absolutely warranted by the facts. Concepts that are too broad 
usually prove to be unsuitable instruments because they are too 
vague and nebulous. I have therefore suggested that the term 
"psychic" be used only where there is evidence of a will capable 
of modifying reflex or instinctual processes. Here I must refer 
the reader to my paper "On the Nature of the Psyche," l where 
I have discussed this definition of the "psychic" at somewhat 
greater length. 

The somatic basis of the ego consists, then, of conscious and 
unconscious factors. The same is true of the psychic basis: on 
the one hand the ego rests on the total field of consciousness, 
and on the other, on the sum total of unconscious contents. 
These fall into three groups: first, temporarily subliminal con- 
tents that can be reproduced voluntarily (memory); second, 
unconscious contents that cannot be reproduced voluntarily; 
third, contents that are not capable of becoming conscious at all. 
Group two can be inferred from the spontaneous irruption of 
subliminal contents into consciousness. Group three is hypo- 
thetical; it is a logical inference from the facts underlying group 
two. This contains contents which have not yet irrupted into 
consciousness, or which never will. 

When 1 said that the ego *'rests" on the total field of con- 
sciousness I do not mean that it consists of this. Were that so, it 
would be indistinguishable from the field of consciousness as a 
whole. The ego is only the latter's point of reference, grounded 
on and limited by the somatic factor described above, 

1 1 954/55 version: "The Spirit of Psychology." 

4 



THE EGO 



; Although its bases are in themselves relatively unknown and 
unconscious, the ego is a conscious factor par excellence. It is 
even acquired, empirically speaking, during the individual's 
lifetime. It seems to arise in the first place from the collision 
between the somatic factor and the environment, and, once 
established as a subject, it goes on developing from further col- 
lisions with the outer world and the inner. 

Despite the unlimited extent of its bases, the ego is never 
more and never less than consciousness as a whole. As a con- 
scious factor the ego could, theoretically at least, be described 
completely. But this would never amount to more than a pic- 
ture of the conscious personality; all those features which are 
unknown or unconscious to the subject would be missing. A 
total picture would have to Include these. But a total descrip- 
tion of the personality is, even in theory, absolutely impossible, 
because the unconscious portion of it cannot be grasped cogni- 
tively. This unconscious portion, as experience has abundantly 
shown, is by no means unimportant. On the contrary, the most 
decisive qualities in a person are often unconscious and can be 
perceived only by others, or have to be laboriously discovered 
with outside help. 

Clearly, then, the personality as a total phenomenon does 
not coincide with the ego, that is, with the conscious personality, 
but forms an entity that has to be distinguished from the ego. 
Naturally the need to do this is incumbent only on a psychology 
that reckons with the fact of the unconscious, but for such a 
psychology the distinction is of paramount importance. Even for 
jurisprudence it should be of some importance whether certain 
psychic facts are conscious or not for instance, in adjudging the 
question of responsibility. 

I have suggested calling the total personality which, though 
present, cannot be fully known, the self. The ego is, by defini- 
tion, subordinate to the self and is related to it like a part to the 
whole, Inside the field of consciousness it has, as we say, free 
will. By this I do not mean anything philosophical, only the 
well-known psychological fact of "free choice/' or rather the sub- 
jective feeling of freedom. But, just as our free will clashes with 
necessity in the outside world, so also it finds its limits outside 
the field of consciousness in the subjective inner world, where 
it comes into conflict with the facts of the self. And just as 

5 



AION 

circumstances or outside events "happen" to us and limit our 
freedom, so the self acts upon the ego like an objective occur- 
rence which free will can do very little to alter. It is, indeed, well 
known that the ego not only can do nothing against the self, but 
is sometimes actually assimilated by unconscious components 
of the personality that are in the process of development and 
is greatly altered by them. 

It is, in the nature of the case, impossible to give any general 
description of the ego except a formal one. Any other mode of 
observation would have to take account of the individuality 
which attaches to the ego as one of Its main characteristics. Al- 
though the numerous elements composing this complex factor 
are, in themselves, everywhere the same, they are infinitely 
varied as regards clarity, emotional colouring, and scope. The 
result of their combination the ego is therefore, so far as one 
can judge, individual and unique, and retains its identity up 
to a certain point. Its stability is relative, because far-reaching 
changes of personality can sometimes occur. Alterations of this 
kind need not always be pathological; they can also be develop- 
mental and hence fall within the scope of the normal. 

Since it is the point of reference for the field of conscious- 
ness, the ego Is the subject of all successful attempts at adapta- 
tion so far as these are achieved by the will. The ego therefore 
has a significant part to play in the psychic economy. Its position 
there is so important that there are good grounds for the prej- 
udice that the ego is the centre of the personality, and that the 
field of consciousness is the psyche per se. If we discount certain 
suggestive ideas in Leibniz, Kant, Schelling, and Schopenhauer, 
and the philosophical excursions of Gams and von Hartmann, It 
is only since the end of the nineteenth century that modern 
psychology, with its inductive methods, has discovered the 
foundations of consciousness and proved empirically the exist- 
ence of a psyche outside consciousness. With this discovery the 
position of the ego, till then absolute, became relativized; that 
Is to say, though It retains its quality as the centre of the field of 
consciousness, it is questionable whether it is the centre of the 
personality. It is part of the personality but not the whole of; It. 
As I have said, it is simply impossible to estimate how large or 
how small its share is; how free or how dependent it Is on the 
qualities of this " extra-conscious" psyche. We can only say that 

6 



THE EGO 



its freedom is limited and its dependence proved in ways that 
are often decisive. In my experience one would do well not to 
underestimate its dependence on the unconscious. Naturally 
there is no need to say this to persons who already overestimate 
the latter's importance. Some criterion for the right measure is 
afforded by the psychic consequences of a wrong estimate, a 
point to which we shall return later on. 

We have seen that, from the standpoint of the psychology of 
consciousness, the unconscious can be divided into three groups 
of contents. But from the standpoint of the psychology of the 
personality a twofold division ensues: an "extra-conscious" 
psyche whose contents are personal, and an "extra-conscious" 
psyche whose contents are impersonal and collective. The first 
group comprises contents which are integral components of the 
individual personality and could therefore just as well be con- 
scious; the second group forms, as it were, an omnipresent, un- 
changing, and everywhere identical quality or substrate of the 
psyche per se. This is, of course, no more than a hypothesis. But 
we are driven to it by the peculiar nature of the empirical ma- 
terial, not to mention the high probability that the general 
similarity of psychic processes in all individuals must be based 
on an equally general and impersonal principle that conforms 
to law, just as the instinct manifesting itself in the individual is 
only the partial manifestation of an instinctual substrate com- 
mon to all men. 



II 

THE SHADOW 

*3 Whereas the contents of the personal unconscious are ac- 
quired during the individual's lifetime, the contents of the col- 
lective unconscious are invariably archetypes that were present 
from the beginning. Their relation to the Instincts has been dis- 
cussed elsewhere. 1 The archetypes most clearly characterized 
from the empirical point of view are those which have the most 
frequent and the most disturbing Influence on the ego. These 
are the shadow, the anima, and the animus. 2 The most accessible 
of these, and the easiest to experience, is the shadow, for its 
nature can in large measure be inferred from the contents of the 
personal unconscious. The only exceptions to this rule are those 
rather rare cases where the positive qualities of the personality 
are repressed, and the ego In consequence plays an essentially 
negative or unfavourable role. 

*4 The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole 
ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow 
without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of It 
involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as pres- 
ent and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of 
self-knowledge, and It therefore, as a rule, meets with consider- 
able resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psycho therapeutic 
measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending 
over a long period. 

*5 Closer examination of the dark characteristics that is, the 
Inferiorities constituting the shadow reveals that they have an 
emotional nature, a kind of autonomy, and accordingly an ob- 
sessive or, better, possessive quality. Emotion, incidentally, Is 

1 "Instinct and Unconscious" and 4 *On the Nature of the Psyche." 

2 The contents of this and the following chapter are taken from a lecture deliv- 
ered to the Swiss Society for Practical Psychology, in Zurich, 1948. The material 
was first published in the Wiener Zeitschrift fur Nervenheilkunde und deren 
Grenzgebiete, I (1948) : 4. 

8 



THE SHADOW 



not an activity of the individual but something that happens to 
him. Affects occur usually where adaptation is weakest, and at 
the same time they reveal the reason for its weakness, namely a 
certain degree of inferiority and the existence of a lower level 
of personality. On this lower level with its uncontrolled or 
scarcely controlled emotions one behaves more or less like a 
primitive, who is not only the passive victim of his affects but 
also singularly incapable of moral judgment. 

16 Although, with insight and good will, the shadow can to 
some extent be assimilated into the conscious personality, expe- 
rience shows that there are certain features which offer the most 
obstinate resistance to moral control and prove almost impos- 
sible to influence. These resistances are usually bound up with 
projections,, which are not recognized as such, and their recogni- 
tion is a moral achievement beyond the ordinary. While some 
traits peculiar to the shadow can be recognized without too 
much difficulty as one's own personal qualities, in this case both 
insight and good will are unavailing because the cause of the 
emotion appears to lie, beyond all possibility of doubt, in the 
other person. No matter how obvious it may be to the neutral 
observer that it is a matter of projections, there is little hope 
that the subject will perceive this himself. He must be con- 
vinced that he throws a very long shadow before he is willing to 
withdraw his emotionally- toned projections from their object. 

*7 Let us suppose that a certain individual shows no inclina- 
tion whatever to recognize his projections. The projection-mak- 
ing factor then has a free hand and can realize its object if it has 
one or bring about some other situation characteristic of its 
power. As we know, it is not the conscious subject but the 
unconscious which does the projecting. Hence one meets with 
projections, one does not make them. The effect of projection is 
to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a 
real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections 
change the world into the replica of one's own unknown face. In 
the last analysis, therefore, they lead to an autoerotic or autistic 
condition in which one dreams a world whose reality remains 
forever unattainable. The resultant sentiment d'incompletude 
and the still worse feeling of sterility are in their turn explained 
by projection as the malevolence of the environment, and by 
means of this vicious circle the isolation is intensified. The more 



AION 

projections are thrust In between the subject and the environ- 
ment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions. A 
forty-five-year-old patient who had suffered from a compulsion 
neurosis since he was twenty and had become completely cut off 
from the world once said to me: "But I can never admit to my- 
self that I've wasted the best twenty-five years of my life!" 

18 It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own 
life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of see- 
ing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how 
he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of 
coursefor consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a 
faithless world that recedes further and further into the dis- 
tance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illu- 
sions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, 
which in the end will completely envelop him. 

*9 One might assume that projections like these, which are so 
very difficult if not impossible to dissolve, would belong to the 
realm of the shadow that is, to the negative side of the person- 
ality. This assumption becomes untenable after a certain point, 
because the symbols that then appear no longer refer to the 
same but to the opposite sex, in a man's case to a woman and 
vice versa. The source of projections is no longer the shadow 
which is always of the same sex as the subject but a contrasexual 
figure. Here we meet the animus of a woman and the anima of a 
man, two corresponding archetypes whose autonomy and uncon- 
sciousness explain the stubbornness of their projections. Though 
the shadow is a motif as well known to mythology as anima and 
animus, it represents first and foremost the personal uncon- 
scious, and its content can therefore be made conscious without 
too much difficulty. In this it differs from anima and animus, 
for whereas the shadow can be seen through and recognized 
fairly easily, the anima and animus are much further away from 
consciousness and in normal circumstances are seldom if ever 
realized. With a little self-criticism one can see through the 
shadow so far as its nature is personal. But when it appears as 
an archetype, one encounters the same difficulties as with anima 
and animus. In other words, it is quite within the bounds of 
possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, 
but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into 
the face of absolute evil. 

10 



Ill 

THE SYZYGY: ANIMA AND ANIMUS 

20 What, then, is this projection-making factor? The East calls 
it the "Spinning Woman" l Maya, who creates illusion by her 
dancing. Had we not long since known it from the symbolism 
of dreams, this hint from the Orient would put us on the right 
track: the enveloping, embracing, and devouring element points 
unmistakably to the mother, 2 that is, to the son's relation to the 
real mother, to her imago, and to the woman who is to become 
a mother for him. His Eros is passive like a child's; he hopes to 
be caught, sucked in, enveloped, and devoured. He seeks, as it 
were, the protecting, nourishing, charmed circle of the mother, 
the condition of the infant released from every care, in which 
the outside world bends over him and even forces happiness 
upon him. No wonder the real world vanishes from sight! 

21 If this situation is dramatized, as the unconscious usually 
dramatizes it, then there appears before you on the psychological 
stage a man living regressively, seeking his childhood and his 
mother, fleeing from a cold cruel world which denies him under- 
standing. Often a mother appears beside him who apparently 
shows not the slightest concern that her little son should become 
a man, but who, with tireless and self-immolating effort, neglects 
nothing that might hinder him from growing up and marrying. 
You behold the secret conspiracy between mother and son, and 
how each helps the other to betray life. 

22 Where does the guilt lie? With the mother, or with the son? 
Probably with both. The unsatisfied longing of the son for life 
and the world ought to be taken seriously. There is in him a 

1 Erwin Rousselle, "Seelische Ftihrung im lebenden Taoismus," PI. I, pp. 150, 170. 
Rousselle calls the spinning woman the "animal soul." There is a saying that 
runs, "The spinner sets in motion." I have defined the anima as a personification 
of the unconscious. 

2 Here and in what follows, the word "mother" is not meant in the literal sense 
but as a symbol of everything that functions as a mother. 

11 



AION 

desire to touch reality, to embrace the earth and fructify the 
field of the world. But he makes no more than a series of fitful 
starts, for his initiative as well as his staying power are crippled 
by the secret memory that the world and happiness may be had 
as a giftfrom the mother. The fragment of world which he, like 
every man, must encounter again and again is never quite the 
right one, since it does not fall into his lap, does not meet him 
half way, but remains resistant, has to be conquered, and sub- 
mits only to force. It makes demands on the masculinity of a 
man, on his ardour, above all on his courage and resolution 
when it comes to throwing his whole being into the scales. For 
this he would need a faithless Eros, one capable of forgetting his 
mother and undergoing the pain of relinquishing the first love 
of his life. The mother, foreseeing this danger, has carefully in- 
culcated into him the virtues of faithfulness, devotion, loyalty, 
so as to protect him from the moral disruption which is the risk 
of every life adventure. He has learnt these lessons only too well, 
and remains true to his mother. This naturally causes her the 
deepest anxiety (when, to her greater glory, he turns out to be 
a homosexual, for example) and at the same time affords her an 
unconscious satisfaction that is positively mythological. For, in 
the relationship now reigning between them, there is consum- 
mated the immemorial and most sacred archetype of the mar- 
riage of mother and son. What, after all, has commonplace 
reality to offer, with its registry offices, pay envelopes, and 
monthly rent, that could outweigh the mystic awe of the hieros 
games? Or the star-crowned woman whom the dragon pursues, 
or the pious obscurities veiling the marriage of the Lamb? 

23 This myth, better than any other, illustrates the nature o 
the collective unconscious. At this level the mother is both old 
and young, Demeter and Persephone, and the son is spouse and 
sleeping suckling rolled into one. The imperfections of real life, 
with its laborious adaptations and manifold disappointments, 
naturally cannot compete with such a state of indescribable ful- 
filment. 

24 In the case of the son, the projection-making factor is iden- 
tical with the mother-imago, and this is consequently taken to 
be the real mother. The projection can only be dissolved when 
the son sees that in the realm of his psyche there is an image not 
only of the mother but of the daughter, the sister, the beloved, 



THE SYZYGY: ANIMA AND ANIMUS 



the heavenly goddess, and the chthonic Baubo. Every mother 
and every beloved is forced to become the carrier and embodi- 
ment of this omnipresent and ageless image, which corresponds 
to the deepest reality in a man. It belongs to him, this perilous 
image of Woman; she stands for the loyalty which in the inter- 
ests of life he must sometimes forgo; she is the much needed 
compensation for the risks, struggles, sacrifices that all end in 
disappointment; she is the solace for all the bitterness of life. 
And, at the same time, she is the great illusionist, the seductress, 
who draws him into life with her Maya and not only into life's 
reasonable and useful aspects, but into its frightful paradoxes 
and ambivalences where good and evil, success and ruin, hope 
and despair, counterbalance one another. Because she is his 
greatest danger she demands from a man his greatest, and if he 
has it in him she will receive it. 

25 This image is "My Lady Soul," as Spitteler called her. I have 
suggested instead the term "anima," as indicating something 
specific, for which the expression "soul" is too general and too 
vague. The empirical reality summed up under the concept of 
the anima forms an extremely dramatic content of the uncon- 
scious. It is possible to describe this content in rational, scien- 
tific language, but in this way one entirely fails to express its 
living character. Therefore, in describing the living processes of 
the psyche, I deliberately and consciously give preference to 
a dramatic, mythological way of thinking and speaking, because 
this is not only more expressive but also more exact than an 
abstract scientific terminology, which is wont to toy with the 
notion that its theoretic formulations may one fine day be 
resolved into algebraic equations. 

26 The projection-making factor is the anima, or rather the 
unconscious as represented by the anima. Whenever she appears, 
in dreams, visions, and fantasies, she takes on personified form, 
thus demonstrating that the factor she embodies possesses all the 
outstanding characteristics of a feminine being. 3 She is not an 
invention of the conscious, but a spontaneous product of the 

3 Naturally, she is a typical figure in belles-lettres. Recent publications on the 
subject of the anima include Linda Fierz-David, The Dream of Poliphilo, and my 
"Psychology of the Transference." The anima as a psychological idea first appears 
in the i6th-cent. humanist Richardus Vitus. Cf. niy Mysterium Coniunctionis, 
"The Riddle of Bologna." 



AION 

unconscious. Nor is she a substitute figure for the mother. On 
the contrary, there is every likelihood that the numinous quali- 
ties which make the mother-imago so dangerously powerful 
derive from the collective archetype of the anima, which is in- 
carnated anew in every male child. 

2 7 Since the anima is an archetype that is found in men, it is 
reasonable to suppose that an equivalent archetype must be 
present in women; for just as the man is compensated by a 
feminine element, so woman is compensated by a masculine 
one. I do not, however, wish this argument to give \he impres- 
sion that these compensatory relationships were arrived at by 
deduction. On the contrary, long and varied experience was 
needed in order to grasp the nature of anima and animus em- 
pirically. Whatever we have to say about these archetypes, there- 
fore, is either directly verifiable or at least rendered probable 
by the facts. At the same time, I am fully aware that we are dis- 
cussing pioneer work which by its very nature can only be 
provisional. 

28 Just as the mother seems to be the first carrier of the projec- 
tion-making factor for the son, so is the father for the daughter. 
Practical experience of these relationships is made up of many 
individual cases presenting all kinds of variations on the same 
basic theme. A concise description of them can, therefore, be 
no more than schematic. 

29 Woman is compensated by a masculine element and there- 
fore her unconscious has, so to speak, a masculine imprint. This 
results in a considerable psychological difference between men 
and women, and accordingly I have called the projection-mak- 
ing factor in women the animus, which means mind or spirit. 
The animus corresponds to the paternal Logos just as the 
anima corresponds to the maternal Eros. But I do not wish or 
intend to give these two intuitive concepts too specific a defini- 
tion. I use Eros and Logos merely as conceptual aids to describe 
the fact that woman's consciousness is characterized more by 
the connective quality of Eros than by the discrimination and 
cognition associated with Logos. In men, Eros, the function of 
relationship, is usually less developed than Logos. In women, on 
the other hand, Eros is an expression of their true nature, while 
their Logos is often only a regrettable accident. It gives rise to 
misunderstandings and annoying interpretations in the family 



THE SYZYGY: ANIMA AND ANIMUS 



circle and among friends. This is because it consists of opinions 
instead of reflections, and by opinions I mean a priori assump- 
tions that lay claim to absolute truth. Such assumptions, as 
everyone knows, can be extremely irritating. As the animus is 
partial to argument, he can best be seen at work in disputes 
where both parties know they are tight. Men can argue in a very 
womanish way, too, when they are anima-possessed and have 
thus been transformed into the animus of their own anima. 
With them the question becomes one of personal vanity and 
touchiness (as if they were females); with women it is a question 
of power, whether of truth or justice or some other "ism" for 
the dressmaker and hairdresser have already taken care of their 
vanity. The "Father" (i.e., the sum of conventional opinions) 
always plays a great role in female argumentation. No matter 
how friendly and obliging a woman's Eros may be, no logic on 
earth can shake her if she is ridden by the animus. Often the 
man has the feelingand he is not altogether wrong that only 
seduction or a beating or rape would have the necessary power 
of persuasion. He is unaware that this highly dramatic situa- 
tion would instantly come to a banal and unexciting end if he 
were to quit the field and let a second woman carry on the battle 
(his wife, for instance, if she herself is not the fiery war horse). 
This sound idea seldom or never occurs to him, because no man 
can converse with an animus for five minutes without becom- 
ing the victim of his own anima. Anyone who still had enough 
sense of humour to listen objectively to the ensuing dialogue 
would be staggered by the vast number of commonplaces, mis- 
applied truisms, cliches from newspapers and novels, shop- 
soiled platitudes of every description interspersed with vulgar 
abuse and brain-splitting lack of logic. It is a dialogue which, 
irrespective of its participants, is repeated millions and millions 
of times in all the languages of the world and always remains 
essentially the same. 

3 This singular fact is due to the following circumstance: 
when animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of 
power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduc- 
tion. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two 
are equally likely to fall in love (a special instance of love at first 
sight). The language of love is of astonishing uniformity, using 
the well-worn formulas with the utmost devotion and fidelity, 

15 



AION 

so that once again the two partners find themselves in a banal 
collective situation. Yet they live in the illusion that they are 
related to one another in a most individual way. 

3 1 In both its positive and its negative aspects the anirna /animus 
relationship is always full of "animosity/' i.e., it is emotional, 
and hence collective. Affects lower the level of the relationship 
and bring it closer to the common instinctual basis, which no 
longer has anything individual about it. Very often the rela- 
tionship runs its course heedless of its human performers, who 
afterwards do not know what happened to them. 

32 Whereas the cloud of "animosity" surrounding the man is 
composed chiefly of sentimentality and resentment, in woman it 
expresses itself in the form of opinionated views, interpreta- 
tions, insinuations, and misconstructions, which all have the 
purpose (sometimes attained) of severing the relation between 
two human beings. The woman, like the man, becomes wrapped 
in a veil of illusions by her demon-familiar, and, as the daughter 
who alone understands her father (that is, is eternally right in 
everything), she is translated to the land of sheep, where she is 
put to graze by the shepherd of her soul, the animus. 

33 Like the anima, the animus too has a positive aspect. 
Through the figure of the father he expresses not only conven- 
tional opinion butequally what we call "spirit," philosophical 
or religious ideas in particular, or rather the attitude resulting 
from them. Thus the animus is a psychopomp, a mediator be- 
tween the conscious and the unconscious and a personification 
of the latter. Just as the anima becomes, through integration, 
the Eros of consciousness, so the animus becomes a Logos; and 
in the same way that the anima gives relationship and related- 
ness to a man's consciousness, the animus gives to woman's 
consciousness a capacity for reflection, deliberation, and self- 
knowledge. 

34 The effect of anima and animus on the ego is in principle 
the same. This effect is extremely difficult to eliminate because, 
in the first place, it is uncommonly strong and immediately fills 
the ego-personality with an unshakable feeling o lightness and 
righteousness. In the second place, the cause of the effect is pro- 
jected and appears to lie in objects and objective situations. 
Both these characteristics can, I believe, be traced back to the 
peculiarities of the archetype. For the archetype, of course, exists 

16 



THE SYZYGY: ANIMA AND ANIMUS 



a priori. This may possibly explain the often totally irrational 
yet undisputed and indisputable existence of certain moods and 
opinions. Perhaps these are so notoriously difficult to influence 
because of the powerfully suggestive effect emanating from the 
archetype. Consciousness is fascinated by it, held captive, as if 
hypnotized. Very often the ego experiences a vague feeling of 
moral defeat and then behaves all the more defensively, de- 
fiantly, and self-righteously, thus setting up a vicious circle 
which only increases its feeling of inferiority. The bottom is 
then knocked out of the human relationship, for, like megalo- 
mania, a feeling of inferiority makes mutual recognition im- 
possible, and without this there is no relationship. 
35 As I said, it is easier to gain insight into the shadow than 
into the anima or animus. With the shadow, we have the advan- 
tage of being prepared in some sort by our education, which 
has always endeavoured to convince people that they are not 
one-hundred-per-cent pure gold. So everyone immediately un- 
derstands what is meant by "shadow," "inferior personality," 
etc. And if he has forgotten, his memory can easily be refreshed 
by a Sunday sermon, his wife, or the tax collector. With the 
anima and animus, however, things are by no means so simple. 
Firstly, there is no moral education in this respect, and secondly, 
most people are content to be self-righteous and prefer mutual 
vilification (if nothing worse!) to the recognition of their pro- 
jections. Indeed, it seems a very natural state of affairs for men 
to have irrational moods and women irrational opinions. Pre- 
sumably this situation is grounded on instinct and must remain 
as it is to ensure that the Empedoclean game of the hate and 
love of the elements shall continue for all eternity. Nature is 
conservative and does not easily allow her courses to be altered; 
she defends in the most stubborn way the inviolability of the 
preserves where anima and animus roam. Hence it is much more 
difficult to become conscious of one's anima/animus projections 
than to acknowledge one's shadow side. One has, of course, to 
overcome certain moral obstacles, such as vanity, ambition, con- 
ceit, resentment, etc., but in the case of projections all sorts of 
purely intellectual difficulties are added, quite apart from the 
contents of the projection, which one simply doesn't know how 
to cope with. And on top of all this there arises a profound 
doubt as to whether one is not meddling too much with nature's 

17 



AION 

business by prodding into consciousness things which it would 
have been better to leave asleep. 

36 Although there are, in my experience, a fair number of peo- 
ple who can understand without special intellectual or moral 
difficulties what is meant by anima and animus, one finds very 
many more who have the greatest trouble in visualizing these 
empirical concepts as anything concrete. This shows that they 
fall a little outside the usual range of experience. They are 
unpopular precisely because they seem unfamiliar. The conse- 
quence is that they mobilize prejudice and become taboo like 
everything else that is unexpected. 

37 So if we set it up as a kind of requirement that projections 
should be dissolved, because it is wholesomer that way and in 
every respect more advantageous, we are entering upon new 
ground. Up till now everybody has been convinced that the idea 
"my father," "my mother," etc., is nothing but a faithful reflec- 
tion of the real parent, corresponding in every detail to the 
original, so that when someone says "my father" he means no 
more and no less than what his father is in reality. This is actu- 
ally what he supposes he does mean, but a supposition of iden- 
tity by no means brings that identity about. This is where the 
fallacy of the enkekalymmenos ('the veiled one') comes in. 4 If 
one includes in the psychological equation X's picture of his 
father, which he takes for the real father, the equation will not 
work out, because the unknown quantity he has introduced does 
not tally with reality. X has overlooked the fact that his idea of 
a person consists, in the first place, of the possibly very incom- 
plete picture he has received of the real person and, in the sec- 
ond place, of the subjective modifications he has imposed upon 
this picture. X's idea of his father is a complex quantity for 
which the real father is only in part responsible, an indefinitely 
large share falling to the son. So true is this that every time he 
criticizes or praises his father he is unconsciously hitting back 
at himself, thereby bringing about those psychic consequences 
that overtake people who habitually disparage or overpraise 
themselves. If, however, X carefully compares his reactions with 
reality, he stands a chance of noticing that he has miscalculated 

4 The fallacy, which stems from Eubulidcs the Megarian, runs: "Can you recog- 
nize your father?" Yes. "Can you recognize this veiled one?" No, "This veiled one 
is your father. Hence you can recognize your father and not recognize him," 

18 



THE SYZYGY: ANIMA AND ANIMUS 



somewhere by not realizing long ago from his father's behaviour 
that the picture he has of him is a false one. But as a rule X is 
convinced that he is right, and if anybody is wrong it must be 
the other fellow. Should X have a poorly developed Eros, he 
will be either indifferent to the inadequate relationship he has 
with his father or else annoyed by the inconsistency and general 
Incomprehensibility of a father whose behaviour never really 
corresponds to the picture X has of him. Therefore X thinks he 
has every right to feel hurt, misunderstood, and even betrayed. 

3 8 One can imagine how desirable it would be in such cases to 
dissolve the projection. And there are always optimists who be- 
lieve that the golden age can be ushered in simply by telling peo- 
ple the right way to go. But just let them try to explain to these 
people that they are acting like a dog chasing its own tail. To 
make a person see the shortcomings of his attitude considerably 
more than mere "telling" is needed, for more is involved than 
ordinary common sense can allow. What one is up against here 
is the kind of fateful misunderstanding which, under ordinary 
conditions, remains forever inaccessible to insight. It is rather 
like expecting the average respectable citizen to recognize him- 
self as a criminal. 

39 I mention all this just to illustrate the order of magnitude 
to which the anima/ animus projections belong, and the moral 
and intellectual exertions that are needed to dissolve them. Not 
all the contents of the anima and animus are projected, how- 
ever. Many of them appear spontaneously in dreams and so on, 
and many more can be made conscious through active imagina- 
tion. In this way we find that thoughts, feelings, and affects are 
alive in us which we would never have believed possible. Nat- 
urally, possibilities of this sort seem utterly fantastic to any- 
one who has not experienced them himself, for a normal per- 
son "knows what he thinks." Such a childish attitude on the 
part of the "normal person" is simply the rule, so that no one 
without experience in this field can be expected to understand 
the real nature of anima and animus. With these reflections one 
gets into an entirely new world of psychological experience, 
provided of course that one succeeds in realizing them in prac- 
tice. Those who do succeed can hardly fail to be impressed by 
all that the ego does not know and never has known. This in- 
crease in self-knowledge is still very rare nowadays and is usually 

19 



AION 

paid for in advance with a neurosis, if not with something worse. 
40 The autonomy of the collective unconscious expresses itself 
in the figures of anima and animus. They personify those of its 
contents which, when withdrawn from projection, can be in- 
tegrated into consciousness. To this extent, both figures repre- 
sent -functions which filter the contents of the collective uncon- 
scious through to the conscious mind. They appear or behave 
as such, however, only so long as the tendencies of the conscious 
and unconscious do not diverge too greatly. Should any tension 
arise, these functions, harmless till then, confront the conscious 
mind in personified form and behave rather like systems split 
off from the personality, or like part souls. This comparison is 
inadequate in so far as nothing previously belonging to the ego- 
personality has split off from it; on the contrary, the two figures 
represent a disturbing accretion. The reason for their behaving 
in this way is that though the contents of anima and animus can 
be integrated they themselves cannot, since they are archetypes. 
As such they are the foundation stones of the psychic structure, 
which in its totality exceeds the limits of consciousness and 
therefore can never become the object of direct cognition. 
Though the effects of anima and animus can be made conscious, 
they themselves are factors transcending consciousness and be- 
yond the reach of perception and volition. Hence they remain 
autonomous despite the integration of their contents, and for 
this reason they should be borne constantly in mind. This is 
extremely important from the therapeutic standpoint, because 
constant observation pays the unconscious a tribute that more 
or less guarantees its co-operation. The unconscious as we know 
can never be "done with" once and for all. It is, in fact, one of 
the most important tasks of psychic hygiene to pay continual 
attention to the symptomatology of unconscious contents and 
processes, for the good reason that the conscious mind is always 
in danger of becoming one-sided, of keeping to well-worn paths 
and getting stuck in blind alleys. The complementary and com- 
pensating function of the unconscious ensures that these clan- 
gers, which are especially great in neurosis, can in some measure 
be avoided. It is only under ideal conditions, when life is still 
simple and unconscious enough to follow the serpentine path of 
instinct without hesitation or misgiving, that the compensation 
works with entire success. The more civilized, the more uncon- 

20 



THE SYZYGY: ANIMA AND ANIMUS 



scious and complicated a man is, the less he is able to follow his 
instincts. His complicated living conditions and the influence 
of his environment are so strong that they drown the quiet voice 
of nature. Opinions, beliefs, theories, and collective tendencies 
appear in its stead and back up all the aberrations of the con- 
scious mind. Deliberate attention should then be given to the 
unconscious so that the compensation can set to work. Hence it 
is especially important to picture the archetypes of the uncon- 
scious not as a rushing phantasmagoria of fugitive images but as 
constant, autonomous factors, which indeed they are. 
4 1 Both these archetypes, as practical experience shows, possess 
a fatality that can on occasion produce tragic results. They are 
quite literally the father and mother of all the disastrous entan- 
glements of fate and have long been recognized as such by the 
whole world. Together they form a divine pair, 5 one of whom, 
in accordance with his Logos nature, is characterized by pneuma 
and nous, rather like Hermes with his ever-shifting hues, while 
the other, in accordance with her Eros nature, wears the features 
of Aphrodite, Helen (Selene), Persephone, and Hecate. Both of 
them are unconscious powers, "gods" in fact, as the ancient 
world quite rightly conceived them to be. To call them by this 
name is to give them that central position in the scale of 
psychological values which has always been theirs whether con- 
sciously acknowledged or not; for their power grows in propor- 
tion to the degree that they remain unconscious. Those who do 
not see them are in their hands, just as a typhus epidemic flour- 
ishes best when its source is undiscovered. Even in Christianity 
the divine syzygy has not become obsolete, but occupies the 
highest place as Christ and his bride the Church. 6 Parallels like 
these prove extremely helpful in our attempts to find the right 

5 Naturally this is not meant as a psychological definition, let alone a metaphysi- 
cal one. As I pointed out in "The Relations between the Ego and the Uncon- 
scious" (pp. i86ff.), the syzygy consists of three elements: the femininity pertaining 
to the man and the masculinity pertaining to the woman; the experience which 
man has of woman and vice versa; and, finally, the masculine and feminine arche- 
typal image. The first two elements can be integrated into the personality by the 
process of conscious realization, but the last one cannot. 

6 "For the Scripture says, God made man male and female; the male is Christ, 
the female is the Church."~Second Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, xiv, 2 
(trans, by Lake, I, p. 151). In pictorial representations, Mary often takes the place 
of the Church. 

21 



AION 

criterion for gauging the significance of these two archetypes. 
What we can discover about them from the conscious side is so 
slight as to be almost imperceptible. It is only when we throw 
light into the dark depths of the psyche and explore the strange 
and tortuous paths of human fate that it gradually becomes clear 
to us how immense is the influence wielded by these two factors 
that complement our conscious life. 

42 Recapitulating, I should like to emphasize that the integra- 
tion of the shadow, or the realization of the personal uncon- 
scious, marks the first stage in the analytic process, and that with- 
out it a recognition of anima and animus is impossible. The 
shadow can be realized only through a relation to a partner, and 
anima and animus only through a relation to the opposite sex, 
because only in such a relation do their projections become 
operative. The recognition of anima or animus gives rise, in a 
man, to a triad, one third of which is transcendent: the mascu- 
line subject, the opposing feminine subject, and the tran- 
scendent anima. With a woman the situation is reversed. The 
missing fourth element that would make the triad a quaternity 
is, in a man, the archetype of the Wise Old Man, which I have 
not discussed here, and in a woman the Chthonic Mother. 
These four constitute a half immanent and half transcendent 
quaternity, an archetype which I have called the 'marriage 
quaternio. 7 The marriage quaternio provides a schema not 
only for the self but also for the structure of primitive society 
with its cross-cousin marriage, marriage classes, and division of 
settlements into quarters. The self, on the other hand, is a God- 
image, or at least cannot be distinguished from one. Of this the 
early Christian spirit was not ignorant, otherwise Clement o 
Alexandria could never have said that he who knows himself 
knows God. 8 

7 "Psychology of the Transference," pp. 21 iff. Cf. infra, the Naassenc quaternio t 
8 Cf. infra, par. 347. 



IV 

THE SELF 1 

43 We shall now turn to the question of whether the increase 
in self-knowledge resulting from the withdrawal of impersonal 
projections in other words, the integration of the contents of 
the collective unconscious exerts a specific influence on the ego- 
personality. To the extent that the integrated contents are parts 
of the self, we can expect this influence to be considerable. 
Their assimilation augments not only the area of the field of 
consciousness but also the importance of the ego, especially 
when, as usually happens, the ego lacks any critical approach to 
the unconscious. In that case it is easily overpowered and be- 
comes identical with the contents that have been assimilated. 
In this way, for instance, a masculine consciousness comes under 
the influence of the anima and can even be possessed by her. 

44 I have discussed the wider effects of the integration of un- 
conscious contents elsewhere 2 and can therefore omit going into 
details here. I should only like to mention that the more numer- 
ous and the more significant the unconscious contents which are 
assimilated to the ego, the closer the approximation of the ego 
to the self, even though this approximation must be a never- 
ending process. This inevitably produces an inflation of the ego, 3 
unless a critical line of demarcation is drawn between it and the 
unconscious figures. But this act of discrimination yields prac- 
tical results only if it succeeds in fixing reasonable boundaries 
to the ego and in granting the figures of the unconscious the 
self, anima, animus, and shadow relative autonomy and reality 

1 The material for this chapter is drawn from a paper, "ttber das Selbst," pub- 
lished in the Eranos-Jahrbuch 1948. 

2 "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious/' 

3 In the sense of the words used in I Cor. 5:2: "Infiati estis (Ve^vcrccfyu.ei'oi] et non 
magis luctum habuistis" (And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned) 
with reference to a case of tolerated incest with the mother ("that a man should 
have his father's wife"). 

23 



AION 

(of a psychic nature). To psychologize this reality out of exist- 
ence either is ineffectual, or else merely increases the inflation 
of the ego. One cannot dispose of facts by declaring them unreal. 
The projection-making factor, for instance, has undeniable 
reality. Anyone who insists on denying it becomes identical with 
it, which is not only dubious in itself but a positive danger to the 
well-being of the individual. Everyone who has dealings with 
such cases knows how perilous an inflation can be. No more than 
a flight of steps or a smooth floor is needed to precipitate a fatal 
fall. Besides the "pride goeth before a fall" motif there are other 
factors of a no less disagreeable psychosomatic and psychic 
nature which serve to reduce "puffed-up-ness." This condition 
should not be interpreted as one of conscious self-aggrandize- 
ment. Such is far from being the rule. In general we are not 
directly conscious of this condition at all, but can at best infer 
its existence indirectly from the symptoms. These include the re- 
actions of our immediate environment. Inflation magnifies the 
blind spot in the eye, and the more we are assimilated by the 
projection-making factor, the greater becomes the tendency to 
identify with it. A clear symptom of this is our growing disin- 
clination to take note of the reactions of the environment and 
pay heed to them. 

45 It must be reckoned a psychic catastrophe when the ego is 
assimilated by the self. The image of wholeness then remains 
in the unconscious, so that on the one hand it shares the archaic 
nature of the unconscious and on the other finds itself in the 
psychically relative space-time continuum that is characteristic 
of the unconscious as such. 4 Both these qualities are numinous 
and hence have an unlimited determining effect on ego-con- 
sciousness, which is differentiated, i.e., separated, from the un- 
conscious and moreover exists in an absolute space and an 
absolute time. It is a vital necessity that this should be so. If, 
therefore, the ego falls for any length of time under the control 
of an unconscious factor, its adaptation is disturbed and the way 
opened for all sorts of possible accidents. 

4-6 Hence it is of the greatest importance that the ego should 
be anchored in the world of consciousness and that conscious- 
ness should be reinforced by a very precise adaptation. For this, 
certain virtues like attention, conscientiousness, patience, etc., 
4 Cf. "On the Nature of the Psyche*' (1954/55 edn., pp. 4241., 44-of.), 



THE SELF 



are of great value on the moral side, just as accurate observation 
of the symptomatology of the unconscious and objective self- 
criticism are valuable on the intellectual side. 

47 However, accentuation of the ego personality and the world 
of consciousness may easily assume such proportions that the 
figures of the unconscious are psychologized and the self conse- 
quently becomes assimilated to the ego. Although this is the 
exact opposite of the process we have just described it is fol- 
lowed by the same result: inflation. The world of consciousness 
must now be levelled down in favour of the reality of the un- 
conscious. In the first case, reality had to be protected against an 
archaic, "eternal" and ''ubiquitous" dream-state; in the second, 
room must be made for the dream at the expense of the world of 
consciousness. In the first case, mobilization of all the virtues is 
indicated; in the second, the presumption of the ego can only 
be damped down by moral defeat. This is necessary, because 
otherwise one will never attain that median degree of modesty 
which is essential for the maintenance of a balanced state. It is 
not a question, as one might think, of relaxing morality itself 
but of making a moral effort in a different direction. For in- 
stance, a man who is not conscientious enough has to make a 
moral effort in order to come up to the mark; while for one who 
is sufficiently rooted in the world through his own efforts it is no 
small moral achievement to inflict defeat on his virtues by 
loosening his ties with the world and reducing his adaptive per- 
formance. (One thinks in this connection of Brother Klaus, now 
canonized, who for the salvation of his soul left his wife to her 
own devices, along with numerous progeny.) 

48 Since real moral problems all begin where the penal code 
leaves off, their solution can seldom or never depend on prece- 
dent, much less on precepts and commandments. The real moral 
problems spring from conflicts of duty. Anyone who is suf- 
ficiently humble, or easy-going, can always reach a decision with 
the help of some, outside authority. But one who trusts others as 
little as himself can never reach a decision at all, unless it is 
brought about in the manner which Common Law calls an "Act 
of God." The Oxford Dictionary defines this concept as the 
"action of uncontrollable natural forces." In all such cases there 
is an unconscious authority which puts an end to doubt by 
creating a fait accompli. (In the last analysis this is true also of 

25 



AION 

those who get their decision from a higher authority, only in 
more veiled form.) One can describe this authority either as the 
"will of God" or as an "action of uncontrollable natural forces," 
though psychologically it makes a good deal of difference how 
one thinks of it. The rationalistic interpretation of this inner 
authority as "natural forces" or the instincts satisfies the modern 
intellect but has the great disadvantage that the apparent vic- 
tory of instinct offends our moral self-esteem; hence we like to 
persuade ourselves that the matter has been decided solely by 
the rational motions of the will. Civilized man has such a fear 
of the "crimeii laesae maiestatis humanae" that whenever pos- 
sible he indulges in a retrospective coloration of the facts in 
order to cover up the feeling of having suffered a moral defeat. 
He prides himself on what he believes to be his self-control and 
the omnipotence of his will, and despises the man who lets him- 
self be outwitted by mere nature. 

49 If, on the other hand, the inner authority is conceived as 
the "will of God" (which implies that "natural forces" are divine 
forces), our self-esteem is benefited because the decision then 
appears to be an act of obedience and the result a divine inten- 
tion. This way of looking at it can, with some show of justice, 
be accused not only of being very convenient but of cloaking 
moral laxity in the mantle of virtue. The accusation, however, 
is justified only when one is in fact knowingly hiding one's own 
egoistic opinion behind a hypocritical facade of words. But this 
is by no means the rule, for in most cases instinctive tendencies 
assert themselves for or against one's subjective interests no 
matter whether an outside authority approves or not. The inner 
authority does not need to be consulted first, as it is present at 
the outset in the intensity of the tendencies struggling for deci- 
sion. In this struggle the individual is never a spectator only; 
he takes part in it more or less "voluntarily" and tries to throw 
the weight of his feeling of moral freedom into the scales of 
decision. Nevertheless, it remains a matter of doubt how much 
his seemingly free decision has a causal, and possibly uncon- 
scious, motivation. This may be quite as much an "act of God" 
as any natural cataclysm. The problem seems to me unanswer- 
able, because we do not know where the roots of the feeling of 
moral freedom lie; and yet they exist no less surely than the 
instincts, which are felt as compelling forces. 

26 



THE SELF 



5 All in all, it is not only more advantageous but more "cor- 
rect" psychologically to explain as the "will of God" the natural 
forces that appear in us as impulses. In this way we find our- 
selves living in harmony with the habitus of our ancestral psy- 
chic life; that is, we function as man has functioned at all times 
and in all places. The existence of this habitus proves its via- 
bility, for, if it were not viable, all those who obeyed it would 
long since have perished of maladaptation. On the other hand, 
by conforming to it one has a reasonable life expectancy. When 
an habitual conception guarantees as much as this there is not 
only no ground for declaring it incorrect but, on the contrary, 
every reason to take it as "true" or "correct" in the psycholog- 
ical sense. Psychological truths are not metaphysical insights; 
they are habitual modes of thinking, feeling, and behaving 
which experience has proved appropriate and useful. 

5 J So when I say that the impulses which we find in ourselves 
should be understood as the "will of God," I wish to emphasize 
that they ought not to be regarded as an arbitrary wishing and 
willing, but as absolutes which one must learn how to handle 
correctly. The will can control them only in part. It may be able 
to suppress them, but it cannot alter their nature, and what is 
suppressed comes up again in another place in altered form, but 
this time loaded with a resentment that makes the otherwise 
harmless natural impulse our enemy. I should also like the term 
"God" in the phrase "the will of God" to be understood not so 
much in the Christian sense as in the sense intended by Diotima, 
when she said: "Eros, dear Socrates, is a mighty daemon." The 
Greek words daimon and daimonion express a determining 
power which comes upon man from outside, like providence or 
fate, though the ethical decision is left to man. He must know, 
however, what he is deciding about and what he is doing. Then, 
if he obeys he is following not just his own opinion, and if he 
rejects he is destroying not just his own invention. 

52 The purely biological or scientific standpoint falls short in 
psychology because it is, in the main, intellectual only. That 
this should be so is not a disadvantage, since the methods of 
natural science have proved of great heuristic value in psycho- 
logical research. But the psychic phenomenon cannot be grasped 
in its totality by the intellect, for it consists not only of mean- 
ing but also of value., and this depends on the intensity of the 

27 



AION 



accompanying feeling-tones. Hence at least the two "rational" 
functions 5 are needed in order to map out anything like a com- 
plete diagram of a given psychic content. 

53 If, therefore, in dealing with psychic contents one makes 
allowance not only for intellectual judgments but for value 
judgments as well, not only is the result a more complete picture 
of the content in question, but one also gets a better idea of the 
particular position it holds in the hierarchy of psychic contents 
in general. The feeling-value is a very important criterion which 
psychology cannot do without, because it determines in large 
measure the role which the content will play in the psychic 
economy. That is to say, the affective value gives the measure of 
the intensity of an idea, and the intensity in its turn expresses 
that idea's energic tension, its effective potential. The shadow, 
for instance, usually has a decidedly negative feeling value, 
while the anima, like the animus, has more of a positive one. 
Whereas the shadow is accompanied by more or less definite 
and describable feeling tones, the anima and animus exhibit 
feeling qualities that are harder to define. Mostly they are felt 
to be fascinating or numinous. Often they are surrounded by an 
atmosphere of sensitivity, touchy reserve, secretiveness, painful 
intimacy, and even absoluteness. The relative autonomy of the 
anima- and animus-figures expresses itself in these qualities. In 
order of affective rank they stand to the shadow very much as 
the shadow stands in relation to ego-consciousness. The main 
affective emphasis seems to lie on the latter; at any rate it is 
able, by means of a considerable expenditure of energy, to 
repress the shadow, at least temporarily. But if for any reason 
the unconscious gains the upper hand, then the valency of the 
shadow and of the other figures increases proportionately, so 
that the scale of values is reversed. What lay furthest, away from 
waking consciousness and seemed unconscious assumes, as it 
were, a threatening shape, and the affective value increases tin* 
higher up the scale you go: ego-consciousness, shadow, anima, 
self. This reversal of the conscious waking state occurs regularly 
during the transition from waking to sleeping, and what then 
emerge most vividly are the very things that were unconscious 
by day. Every abaissement du niveau mental brings about a 
relative reversal of values. 

s Cf. Psychological Types, Defs., "Rational" and "Irrational." 

28 



THE SELF 



54 I am speaking here of the subjective feeling tone, which is 
subject to the more or less periodic changes described above. 
But there are also objective values which are founded on a con- 
sensus omnium moral, aesthetic, and religious values, for 
instance, and these are universally recognized ideals or feeling- 
toned collective ideas (Levy-Bruhl's "representations collec- 
tives"). 6 The subjective feeling-tones or "value quanta" are 
easily recognized by the kind and number of constellations, or 
symptoms of disturbance, 7 they produce. Collective ideals often 
have no subjective feeling- tone, but nevertheless retain their 
feeling-value. This value, therefore, cannot be demonstrated 
by subjective symptoms, though it may be by the attributes 
attaching to these collective ideas and by their characteristic 
symbolism, quite apart from their suggestive effect. 

55 The problem has a practical aspect, since it may easily hap- 
pen that a collective idea, though significant in itself, is be- 
cause of its lack of subjective feel ing- tonerepresented in a 
dream only by a subordinate attribute, as when a god is repre- 
sented by his theriomorphic attribute, etc. Conversely, the idea 
may appear in consciousness lacking the affective emphasis that 
properly belongs to it, and must then be transposed back into 
its archetypal context a task that is usually discharged by poets 
and prophets. Thus Holderlin, in his "Hymn to Liberty," lets 
this concept, worn stale by frequent use and misuse, rise up 
again in its pristine splendour: 

Since her arm out of the dust has raised me, 
Beats my heart so boldly and serene; 
And my cheek still tingles with her kisses, 
Flushed and glowing where her lips have been. 
Every word she utters, by her magic 
Rises new-created, without flaw; 
Hearken to the tidings of my goddess, 
Hearken to the Sovereign, and adore! 8 

56 It is not difficult to see here that the idea of liberty has been 
changed back to its original dramatic state into the shining 

6 Les Fonctions mentales dans les soci&tts infdrieures. 

7 "On Psychic Energy," pars, 148:., 2off. 

8 Samtliche Werke, I, p. 126. 

29 



AION 

figure of the anima, freed from the weight of the earth and the 
tyranny of the senses, the psychopomp who leads the way to the 
Elysian fields. 

57 The first case we mentioned, where the collective idea is 
represented in a dream by a lowly aspect of itself, is certainly the 
more frequent: the "goddess" appears as a black cat, and the 
Deity as the lapis exilis (stone of no worth). Interpretation then 
demands a knowledge of certain things which have less to do 
with zoology and mineralogy than with the existence of an his- 
torical consensus omnium in regard to the object in question. 
These "mythological" aspects are always present, even though 
in a given case they may be unconscious. If for instance one 
doesn't happen to recall, when considering whether to paint the 
garden gate green or white, that green is the colour of life and 
hope, the symbolic aspect of "green" is nevertheless present as 
an unconscious sous-entendu. So we find something which has 
the highest significance for the life of the unconscious standing 
lowest on the scale of conscious values, and vice versa. The fig- 
ure of the shadow already belongs to the realm of bodiless phan- 
tomsnot to speak of anima and animus, which do not seem to 
appear at all except as projections upon our fellow human be- 
ings. As for the self, it is completely outside the personal sphere, 
and appears, if at all, only as a religious mythologcm, and its 
symbols range from the highest to the lowest. Anyone who iden- 
tifies with the daylight half of his psychic life will therefore 
declare the dreams of the night to be null and void, notwith- 
standing that the night is as long as the day and that all con- 
sciousness is manifestly founded on unconsciousness, is rooted 
in it and every night is extinguished in it. What is more, psycho- 
pathology knows with tolerable certainty what the unconscious 
can do to the conscious, and for this reason devotes to the un- 
conscious an attention that often seems incomprehensible to the 
layman. We know, for instance, that what is small by clay is big 
at night, and the other way round; thus we also know that 
besides the small by day there always looms the big by night, 
even when it is invisible. 

58 This knowledge is an essential prerequisite for any integra- 
tionthat is to say a content can only be integrated when its 
double aspect has become conscious and when it is grasped not 
merely intellectually but understood according to its feeling- 
go 



THE SELF 



value. Intellect and feeling, however, are difficult to put into 
one harness they conflict with one another by definition. Who- 
ever identifies with an intellectual standpoint will occasionally 
find his feeling confronting him like an enemy in the guise of 
the anima; conversely, an intellectual animus will make violent 
attacks on the feeling standpoint. Therefore, anyone who wants 
to achieve the difficult feat of realizing something not only intel- 
lectually, but also according to its feeling-value, must for better 
or worse come to grips with the anima /animus problem in order 
to open the way for a higher union, a coniunctio oppositorum. 
This is an indispensable prerequisite for wholeness. 

59 Although "wholeness" seems at first sight to be nothing but 
an abstract idea (like anima and animus), it is nevertheless em- 
pirical in so far as it is anticipated by the psyche in the form of 
spontaneous or autonomous symbols. These are the quaternity 
or mandala symbols, which occur not only in the dreams of 
modern people who have never heard of them, but are widely 
disseminated in the historical records of many peoples and many 
epochs. Their significance as symbols of unity and totality is 
amply confirmed by history as well as by empirical psychology. 
What at first looks like an abstract idea stands in reality for 
something that exists and can be experienced, that demonstrates 
its a priori presence spontaneously. Wholeness is thus an objec- 
tive factor that confronts the subject independently of him, like 
anima or animus; and just as the latter have a higher position in 
the hierarchy than the shadow, so wholeness lays claim to a posi- 
tion and a value superior to those of the syzygy. The syzygy 
seems to represent at least an essential part of it, if not actually 
the two halves of the totality formed by the royal brother-sister 
pair, and hence the tension of opposites from which the divine 
child 9 is born as the symbol of unity. 

60 Unity and totality stand at the highest point on the scale of 
objective values because their symbols can no longer be distin- 
guished from the imago Dei. Hence all statements about the 
God-image apply also to the empirical symbols of totality. Expe- 
rience shows that individual mandalas are symbols of order, and 
that they occur in patients principally during times of psychic 

Cf . my "Psychology of the Child Archetype"; also Psychology and Alchemy, 
index, s.v. "films Philosophorum," "child," "hermaphrodite." 

31 



AION 

disorientation or re-orientation. As magic circles they bind and 
subdue the lawless powers belonging to the world of darkness, 
and depict or create an order that transforms the chaos into a 
cosmos. 10 To the conscious mind the mandala appears at first as 
an unimpressive point or dot, 11 and a great deal of hard and 
painstaking work as well as the integration of many projections 
are generally required before the full range of the symbol can 
be anything like completely understood. If this insight were 
purely intellectual it could be achieved without much difficulty, 
for the world-wide pronouncements about the God within us 
and above us, about Christ and the corpus mysticum^ the per- 
sonal and suprapersonal atman, etc., are all formulations that 
can easily be mastered by the philosophic intellect. This is the 
common source of the illusion that one is then in possession of 
the thing itself. But actually one has acquired nothing more 
than its name, despite the age-old prejudice that the name mag- 
ically represents the thing, and that it is sufficient to pronounce 
the name in order to posit the thing's existence. In the course 
of the millennia the reasoning mind has been given every oppor- 
tunity to see through the futility of this conceit, though that has 
done nothing to prevent the intellectual mastery of a thing from 
being accepted at its face value. It is precisely our experiences 
in psychology which demonstrate as plainly as could be wished 
that the intellectual "grasp" of a psychological fact produces no 
more than a concept of it, and that a concept is no more than a 
name, a flatus vocis. These intellectual counters can be bandied 
about easily enough. They pass lightly from hand to hand, for 
they have no weight or substance. They sound full but are hol- 
low; and though purporting to designate a heavy task and obli- 
gation, they commit us to nothing. The intellect is undeniably 
useful in its own field, but is a great cheat and illusionist outside 
of it whenever it tries to manipulate values. 

61 It would seem that one can pursue any science with the intel- 
lect alone except psychology, whose subject- the psychehas 
more than the two aspects mediated by sense-perception and 
thinking. The function of valuefeelingis an integral part of 
our conscious orientation and ought not to be missing in a psy- 
chological judgment of any scope, otherwise the model we are 
trying to build of the real process will be incomplete. Every 

10 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, Part II, ch. 3. H [Cf. infra, par. 340.] 



THE SELF 



psychic process has a value quality attached to it, namely its 
feeling- tone. This indicates the degree to which the subject is 
affected by the process or how much it means to him (in so far 
as the process reaches consciousness at all). It is through the 
"affect" that the subject becomes involved and so comes to feel 
the whole weight of reality. The difference amounts roughly to 
that between a severe illness which one reads about in a text- 
book and the real illness which one has. In psychology one pos- 
sesses nothing unless one has experienced it in reality. Hence a 
purely intellectual insight is not enough, because one knows 
only the words and not the substance of the thing from inside. 

There are far more people who are afraid of the unconscious 
than one would expect. They are even afraid of their own 
shadow. And when it comes to the anima and animus, this fear 
turns to panic. For the syzygy does indeed represent the psychic 
contents that irrupt into consciousness in a psychosis (most 
clearly of all in the paranoid forms of schizophrenia). 12 The 
overcoming of this fear is often a moral achievement of un- 
usual magnitude, and yet it is not the only condition that must 
be fulfilled on the way to a real experience of the self. 

The shadow, the syzygy, and the self are psychic factors of 
which an adequate picture can be formed only on the basis of 
a fairly thorough experience of them. Just as these concepts 
arose out of an experience of reality, so they can be elucidated 
only by further experience. Philosophical criticism will find 
everything to object to in them unless it begins by recognizing 
that they are concerned with -facts, and that the "concept" is 
simply an abbreviated description or definition of these facts. 
Such criticism has as little effect on the object as zoological criti- 
cism on a duck-billed platypus. It is not the concept that mat- 
ters; the concept is only a word, a counter, and it has meaning 
and use only because it stands for a certain sum of experience. 
Unfortunately I cannot pass on this experience to my public. 
I have tried in a number of publications, with the help of case 
material, to present the nature of these experiences and also the 
method of obtaining them. Wherever my methods were really 
applied the facts I give have been confirmed. One could see the 

12 A classic case is the one published by Nelken: "Analytische Beobachtungen 
ubcr Phantasien eines Schizophrenen." Another is Schreber's Memoirs of My 
Nervous Illness. 

33 



AION 

moons of Jupiter even in Galileo's day if one took the trouble 
to use his telescope. 

6 4 Outside the narrower field of professional psychology these 
figures meet with understanding from all who have any knowl- 
edge of comparative mythology. They have no difficulty in rec- 
ognizing the shadow as the adverse representative of the dark 
chthonic world, a figure whose characteristics are universal. The 
syzygy is immediately comprehensible as the psychic prototype 
of all divine couples. Finally the self, on account of its empirical 
peculiarities, proves to be the eidos behind the supreme ideas 
of unity and totality that are inherent in all monotheistic and 
monistic systems. 

6 5 I regard these parallels as important because it is possible, 
through them, to relate so-called metaphysical concepts, which 
have lost their root connection with natural experience, to liv- 
ing, universal psychic processes, so that they can recover their 
true and original meaning. In this way the connection is re- 
established between the ego and projected contents now formu- 
lated as "metaphysical" ideas. Unfortunately, as already said, 
the fact that metaphysical ideas exist and are believed in does 
nothing to prove the actual existence of their content or of the 
object they refer to, although the coincidence of idea and reality 
in the form of a special psychic state, a state of grace, should not 
be deemed impossible, even if the subject cannot bring it about 
by an act of will. Once metaphysical ideas have lost their capac- 
ity to recall and evoke the original experience they have not 
only become useless but prove to be actual impediments on the 
road to wider development. One clings to possessions that have 
once meant wealth; and the more ineffective, incomprehensible, 
and lifeless they become the more obstinately people cling to 
them. (Naturally it is only sterile ideas that they cling to; living 
ideas have content and riches enough, so there is no need to 
cling to them.) Thus in the course of time the meaningful turns 
into the meaningless. This is unfortunately the fate o meta- 
physical ideas. 

66 Today it is a real problem what on earth such ideas can 
mean. The world so far as it has not completely turned its back 
on traditionhas long ago stopped wanting to hear a "message"; 
it would rather be told what the message means. The words that 
resound from the pulpit are incomprehensible and cry for an 

34 



THE SELF 



explanation. How has the death of Christ brought us redemp- 
tion when no one feels redeemed? In what way is Jesus a God- 
man and what is such a being? What is the Trinity about, and 
the parthenogenesis, the eating of the body and the drinking of 
the blood, and all the rest of it? What connection can there be 
between the world of such concepts and the everyday world, 
whose material reality is the concern of natural science on the 
widest possible scale? At least sixteen hours out of twenty-four 
we live exclusively in this everyday world, and the remaining 
eight we spend preferably in an unconscious condition. Where 
and when does anything take place to remind us even remotely 
of phenomena like angels, miraculous feedings, benedictions, 
the resurrection of the dead, etc.? It was therefore something of 
a discovery to find that during the unconscious state of sleep 
intervals occur, called "dreams," which occasionally contain 
scenes having a not inconsiderable resemblance to the motifs of 
mythology. For myths are miracle tales and treat of all those 
things which, very often, are also objects of belief. 
67 In the everyday world of consciousness such things hardly 
exist; that is to say, until 1933 only lunatics would have been 
found in possession of living fragments of mythology. After this 
date the world of heroes and monsters spread like a devastating 
fire over whole nations, proving that the strange world of myth 
had suffered no loss of vitality during the centuries of reason 
and enlightenment. If metaphysical ideas no longer have such a 
fascinating effect as before, this is certainly not due to any lack 
of primitivity in the European psyche, but simply and solely to 
the fact that the erstwhile symbols no longer express what is 
now welling up from the unconscious as the end result of the 
development of Christian consciousness through the centuries. 
This end-result is a true antimimon pneuma, a false spirit of 
arrogance, hysteria, woolly-mindedness, criminal amorality, and 
doctrinaire fanaticism, a purveyor of shoddy spiritual goods, 
spurious art, philosophical stutterings, and Utopian humbug, 
fit only to be fed wholesale to the mass man of today. That is 
what the post-Christian spirit looks like. 



V 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 

68 The dechristianlzation o our world, the Luciferian develop- 
ment of science and technology, and the frightful material and 
moral destruction left behind by the second World War have 
been compared more than once with the eschatological events 
foretold in the New Testament. These, as we know, are con- 
cerned with the coming of the Antichrist: "This is Antichrist, 
who denieth the Father and the Son." * "Every spirit that dis- 
solveth Jesus . . . is Antichrist ... of whom you have heard 
that he cometh." 2 The Apocalypse is full of expectations of ter- 
rible things that will take place at the end of time, before the 
marriage of the Lamb. This shows plainly that the anima Chris- 
tiana has a sure knowledge not only of the existence of an 
adversary but also of his future usurpation of power. 

6 9 Why my reader will ask do I discourse here upon Christ 
and his adversary, the Antichrist? Our discourse necessarily 
brings us to Christ, because he is the still living myth of our 
culture. He is our culture hero, who, regardless of his historical 
existence, embodies the myth of the divine Primordial Man, the 
mystic Adam. It is he who occupies the centre of the Christian 
mandala, who is the Lord of the Tetramorph, i.e., the four sym- 
bols of the evangelists, which are like the four columns of his 
throne. He is in us and we in him. His kingdom is the pearl of 
great price, the treasure buried in the field, the grain of mus- 
tard seed which will become a great tree, and the heavenly 

1 1 John 2 : 22 (DV), 

2 I John 4 : 3 (DV). The traditional view o the Church is based on II Thessalo- 
nians 2 : gffi,, which speaks of the apostasy, of the &vQpuTrQs ry$ &vQ(jta$ (man of 
lawlessness) and the v^s TTJS ebrajXeYas (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 /car' Mpyeio.v rov <ra.rava (according to the working of Satan). Above all, 
he will reveal himself by his lying and deceitfulness. Daniel 11 : sjGff. is regarded 
as a prototype. 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



city. 3 As Christ is in us, so also is his heavenly kingdom. 4 
7 These few, familiar references should be sufficient to make 
the psychological position of the Christ symbol quite clear. 
Christ exemplifies the archetype of the self. 5 He represents a 
totality of a divine or heavenly kind, a glorified man, a son of 
God sine macula peccati, unspotted by sin. As Adam secundus 
he corresponds to the first Adam before the Fall, when the latter 
was still a pure image of God, of which Tertullian (d. 222) says: 
"And this therefore is to be considered as the image of God in 
man, that the human spirit has the same motions and senses as 
God has, though not in the same way as God has them." 6 Origen 
(185-254) is very much more explicit: The imago Dei imprinted 
on the soul, not on the body, 7 is an image of an image, "for my 
soul is not directly the image of God, but is made after the like- 
ness of the former image." 8 Christ, on the other hand, is the 

3 For "city" cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pp. lo^fi. 

4 'H pao-i\ia TOV 0eov evrbs bpiav gartv (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 : 2of.) 
"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 Oxyrhyn- 
chlis say: . . . ^ fiacr[i\ia r&v ovpav&v] evrbs vfJL&v [e]cm [icai otms civ eavrbv] 
7^a5 Tavryv eup^fcret] eavrobs yvwcrecrQe KT\- (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. Mar- 
tian., II, 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. Chad- 
wick, p. 4.88.) 

8/n Lucam homilia, VIII (Migne, P.G V vol. 13, col. 1820): "Si considerem Domi- 
num Salvatorem imaginem esse invisibilis Dei, et videam anirnam meam factam 
ad imaginem conditoris, ut imago esset imaginis: neque enim anima mea spe- 
cialiter 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). 

37 



AION 

true image of God, 9 after whose likeness our inner man is made, 
invisible, incorporeal, incorrupt, and immortal. 10 The God- 
image in us reveals itself through "prudentia, iustitia, modera- 
tio, virtus, sapientia et disciplina." n 

7 1 St. Augustine (354-430) distinguishes between the God- 
image which is Christ and the image which is implanted in 
man as a means or possibility of becoming like God. 12 The God- 
image is not in the corporeal man, but in the anima rationalis, 
the possession of which distinguishes man from animals. "The 
God-image is within, not in the body. . . . Where the under- 
standing is, where the mind is, where the power of investigating 
truth is, there God has his image." 13 Therefore we should re- 
mind ourselves, says Augustine, that we are fashioned after the 
image of God nowhere save in the understanding: ". . . but 
where man knows himself to be made after the image of God, 

9 De principiisj I, ii, 8 (Migne, JP.G., vol. 11, col. 156): "Salvator figura est sub- 
stantiae vel subsistentiae Dei" (The Saviour is the figure of the substance or sub- 
sistence of God). In Genesim homilta, I, 13 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 156): "Quae 
est ergo alia imago Dei ad cuius imaginis similitudinem factus est homo, nisi 
Salvator nosier, qui est primogcnitus 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. f vol. is, col. 107): "Imago autem Dei invisibilis salvaior" (But the 
image of the invisible God is the saviour). 

10 in Gen. horn., I, 13 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 155): "Is autem qui aci imaginem 
Dei factus est et ad similitudinem, interior homo nostcr est, invisibilis et incor- 
poralis, 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., TV, 37 (Migne, P.O., vol. 11, col. 412). 

12 Retractationes, I, xxvi (Migne, P.L.* vol. 33, col. 626): "(Unigenitus) . . . tan- 
tummodo imago est, non ad imaginem" (The Only-Begotten . . . alone is the 
image, not after the image). 

13 Enarrationes in Psalmos, XL VIII, Sermo II (Migne, P.L., vol. 36, col. 564): 
"Imago Dei intus est, non est in corpore . . . ubi est intellectus, ubi cst mcns, 
ubi ratio invcstigandae vcritatis etc. ibi habet Deus imaginem suiim." Also ibid., 
Psalm XLII, 6 (Migne, PJL. f vol. 36, col. 480): "Ergo intclligimus habcrc nos 
aliquid ubi imago Dei est, men tern scilicet atque rationcm" (Therefore we under- 
stand 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 quacritur in Dei 
imagine" (Truth is sought in the image of God), but against this the Liber dc 
vera religione says: "in intcriorc homine habitat veritas" (truth dwells in the 
inner man). From this it is clear that the imago Dei coincides with the interior 
homo. 

38 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



there he knows there Is something more in him than is given to 
the beasts/' 14 From this it is clear that the God-image is, so to 
speak, identical with the anima rationalis. The latter Is the 
higher spiritual man, the homo coelestis of St Paul. 15 Like 
Adam before the Fall, Christ is an embodiment of the God- 
image, 16 whose totality is specially emphasized by St. Augustine. 
"The Word," he says, "took on complete manhood, as it were in 
its fulness: the soul and body of a man. And if you would have 
me put it more exactlysince even a beast of the field has a 'soul' 
and a body when I say a human soul and human flesh, I mean 
he took upon him a complete human soul." 17 
72 The God-image in man was not destroyed by the Fall but 
was only damaged and corrupted ("deformed"), and can be 
restored through God's grace. The scope of the integration is 
suggested by the descensus ad inferoSj the descent of Christ's 
soul to hell, its work of redemption embracing even the dead. 
The psychological equivalent of this is the integration of the 
collective unconscious which forms an essential part of the indi- 
viduation process. St. Augustine says: "Therefore our end must 
be our perfection, but our perfection is Christ," 18 since he is the 
perfect God-image. For this reason he is also called "King." His 
bride (sponsa) is the human soul, which "in an inwardly hidden 
spiritual mystery is joined to the Word, that two may be in one 
flesh," to correspond with the mystic marriage of Christ and the 
Church. 19 Concurrently with the continuance of this hieros 

l^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." 
151 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, PJL., vol. 38, col. 1124): "(Verbum) suscepit to turn 
quasi plenum honrinem, animam et corpus hominis. Et si aliquid scrupulosius 
vis audire; quia animam et camera habet et pecus, cum dico animam humanam 
et carnem humanam, totam animam humanam accepit." 

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

19 Contra Faustum, XXII, 38 (Migne, PX., vol. 42, col. 424): "Est enim et sancta 
Ecclesia Dornino Jesu Christo in occulto uxor. Occulte quippe atque intus in 
abscondito secreto spiritual! 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 

39 



AION 

gamos in the dogma and rites of the Church, the symbolism 
developed in the course of the Middle Ages into the alchemical 
conjunction of opposites, or "chymical wedding," thus giving 
rise on the one hand to the concept of the lapis philosophorum, 
signifying totality, and on the other hand to the concept of 
chemical combination. 

73 The God-image in man that was damaged by the first sin 
can be "reformed" 20 with the help of God, in accordance with 
Romans 12 : 2: "And be not conformed to this world, but be 
transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove 
what is ... the will of God" (RSV). The totality images which 
the unconscious produces in the course of an individuation 
process are similar "reformations" of an a priori archetype (the 
mandala). 21 As I have already emphasized, the spontaneous sym- 
bols of the self, or of wholeness, cannot in practice be distin- 
guished from a God-image. Despite the word /jtcra/xo/x^oiV^c ('be 
transformed') in the Greek text of the above quotation, the 
"renewal" (waKOLvaxn?, reformatio) of the mind is not meant as 
an actual alteration of consciousness, but rather as the restora- 
tion of an original condition, an apocatastasis. This is in exact 
agreement with the empirical findings of psychology, that there 
is an ever-present archetype of wholeness 22 which may easily 
disappear from the purview of consciousness or may never be 
perceived at all until a consciousness illuminated by conversion 
recognizes it in the figure of Christ. As a result of this "anam- 
nesis" the original state of oneness with the God-image is re- 
stored. It brings about an integration, a bridging of the split in 
the personality caused by the instincts striving apart in different 
and mutually contradictory directions. The only time the split 

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 Gocl, so that they are two in one llesh." 
St. Augustine is referring here to Eph. 5 : 3 if.: "For this cause shall a man leave 
his father and mother, and shall he 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 Trinitatc, XIV, 22 (Migne, PX. vol. 42, col. 1053): "Reforma- 
mini in novitate mentis vostrac, ut incipiat ilia imago ab illo rcformati, 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. iso). 

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

22 Psychology and Alchemy, pp. 207$. 

40 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



does not occur is when a person is still as legitimately uncon- 
scious of his instinctual life as an animal. But it proves harmful 
and impossible to endure when an artificial unconsciousness 
a repressionno longer reflects the life of the instincts. 

74 There can be no doubt that the original Christian concep- 
tion of the imago Dei embodied in Christ meant an all- 
embracing totality that even includes the animal side of man. 
Nevertheless the Christ-symbol lacks wholeness in the modern 
psychological sense, since it does not include the dark side of 
things but specifically excludes it in the form of a Luciferian 
opponent. Although the exclusion of the power of evil was 
something the Christian consciousness was well aware of, all it 
lost in effect was an insubstantial shadow, for, through the doc- 
trine of the privatio boni first propounded by Origen, evil was 
characterized as a mere diminution of good and thus deprived 
of substance. According to the teachings of the Church, evil is 
simply "the accidental lack of perfection." This assumption 
resulted in the proposition "omne bonum a Deo, omne malum 
ab homine." Another logical consequence was the subsequent 
elimination of the devil in certain Protestant sects. 

75 Thanks to the doctrine of the privatio boni, wholeness 
seemed guaranteed in the figure of Christ. One must, however, 
take evil rather more substantially when one meets it on the 
plane of empirical psychology. There it is simply the opposite 
of good. In the ancient world the Gnostics, whose arguments 
were very much influenced by psychic experience, tackled the 
problem of evil on a broader basis than the Church Fathers. For 
instance, one of the things they taught was that Christ "cast off 
his shadow from himself." 23 If we give this view the weight it 

23 Irenaetis (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, 1 1, i), 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 (/coi TQVTQV [Xptrrdj>] ^v are appeva virdpxovra diroKofiavra 
d<f>* eavrov ryv <TKL&V, dvadpafjieiv ds rb IDufaoj^a icrX.), 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. 45! 

41 



AION 

deserves, we can easily recognize the cut-off counterpart in the 
figure of Antichrist. The Antichrist develops in legend as a per- 
verse imitator of Christ's life. He is a true OVTI^L^OV Trvev^a, an 
imitating spirit of evil who follows in Christ's footsteps like a 
shadow following the body. This complementing of the bright 
but one-sided figure of the Redeemer we even find traces of it 
in the New Testament must be of especial significance. And 
indeed, considerable attention was paid to it quite early. 

7 6 If we see the traditional figure of Christ as a parallel to the 
psychic manifestation of the self, then the Antichrist would cor- 
respond to the shadow of the self, namely the dark half of the 
human totality, which ought not to be judged too optimistically. 
So far as we can judge from experience, light and shadow are so 
evenly distributed in man's nature that his psychic totality 
appears, to say the least of it, in a somewhat murky light. The 
psychological concept of the self, in part derived from our 
knowledge of the whole man, but for the rest depicting itself 
spontaneously in the products of the unconscious as an arche- 
typal quaternity bound together by inner antinomies, cannot 
omit the shadow that belongs to the light figure, for without it 
this figure lacks body and humanity. In the empirical self, light 
and shadow form a paradoxical unity. In the Christian concept, 
on the other hand, the archetype is hopelessly split into two 
irreconcilable halves, leading tiltimately to a metaphysical dual- 
ismthe final separation of the kingdom of heaven from the 
fiery world of the damned. 

77 For anyone who has a positive attitude towards Christianity 
the problem of the Antichrist is a hard nut to crack. It is noth- 
ing less than the counterstroke of the devil, provoked by God's 
Incarnation; for the devil attains his true stature as the adver- 
sary of Christ, and hence of God, only after the rise of Chris- 
tianity, while as late as the Book of Job he was still one of God's 
sons and on familiar terms with Yahweh. 24 Psychologically the 
case is clear, since the dogmatic figure of Christ is so sublime 
and spotless that everything else turns dark beside it. It is, in 
fact, so one-sidedly perfect that it demands a psychic comple- 
ment to restore the balance. This inevitable opposition led very 
early to the doctrine of the two sons of God, of whom the elder 
24 Cf. R. ScMrf, "Die Gestalt cles Satans im Altcn Testament," 

42 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



was called Satanael. 25 The coming of the Antichrist is not just a 
prophetic predictionit is an inexorable psychological law 
whose existence, though unknown to the author of the Johan- 
nine Epistles, brought him a sure knowledge of the impending 
enantiodromia. Consequently he wrote as if he were conscious 
of the inner necessity for this transformation, though we may be 
sure that the idea seemed to him like a divine revelation. In 
reality every intensified differentiation of the Christ-image 
brings about a corresponding accentuation of its unconscious 
complement, thereby increasing the tension between above and 
below. 

78 in making these statements we are keeping entirely within 
the sphere of Christian psychology and symbolism. A factor that 
no one has reckoned with, however, is the fatality inherent in 
the Christian disposition itself, which leads inevitably to a re- 
versal of its spirit not through the obscure workings of chance 
but in accordance with psychological law. The ideal of spiritu- 
ality striving for the heights was doomed to clash with the ma- 
terialistic earth-bound passion to conquer matter and master the 
world. This change became visible at the time of the "Renais- 
sance." The word means "rebirth, ' and it referred to the renewal 
of the antique spirit. We know today that this spirit was chiefly 
a mask; it was not the spirit of antiquity that was reborn, but the 
spirit of medieval Christianity that underwent strange pagan 
transformations, exchanging the heavenly goal for an earthly 
one, and the vertical of the Gothic style for a horizontal perspec- 
tive (voyages of discovery, exploration of the world and of 
nature). The subsequent developments that led to the Enlighten- 
ment and the French Revolution have produced a world-wide 
situation today which can only be called "antichristian" in a 
sense that confirms the early Christian anticipation of the "end 
of time." It is as if, with the coming of Christ, opposites that 
were latent till then had become manifest, or as if a pendu- 
lum had swung violently to one side and were now carrying out 
the complementary movement in the opposite direction. No 
tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to 
hell. The double meaning of this movement lies in the nature of 
the pendulum. Christ is without spot, but right at the begin- 
ning of his career there occurs the encounter with Satan, the 

25 "The Spirit Mercurius" (Swiss cdn., pp. inf.). 

43 



AION 

Adversary, who represents the counterpole of that tremendous 
tension in the world psyche which Christ's advent signified. He 
is the "mysterium iniquitatis" that accompanies the "sol iusti- 
tiae" as inseparably as the shadow belongs to the light, in exactly 
the same way, so the Ebionites 26 and Euchites 27 thought, that 
one brother cleaves to the other. Both strive for a kingdom: one 
for the kingdom of heaven, the other for the "principatus huius 
mundi." We hear of a reign of a "thousand years" and of a "corn- 
ing of the Antichrist," just as if a partition of worlds and epochs 
had taken place between two royal brothers. The meeting with 
Satan was therefore more than mere chance; it was a link in the 
chain. 

79 Just as we have to remember the gods of antiquity in order 
to appreciate the psychological value of the anima /animus 
archetype, so Christ is our nearest analogy of the self and its 
meaning. It is naturally not a question of a collective value 
artificially manufactured or arbitrarily awarded, but of one that 
is effective and present per se, and that makes its effectiveness 
felt whether the subject is conscious of it or not. Yet, although 
the attributes of Christ (consubstantiality with the Father, co- 
eternity, filiation, parthenogenesis, crucifixion, Lamb sacrificed 
between opposites, One divided into Many, etc.) undoubtedly 
mark him out as an embodiment of the self, looked at from the 
psychological angle he corresponds to only one half of the arche- 
type. The other half appears in the Antichrist. The latter is 
just as much a manifestation of the self, except that he consists 
of its dark aspect. Both are Christian symbols, and they have the 
same meaning as the image of the Saviour crucified between two 
thieves. This great symbol tells us that the progressive develop- 
ment and differentiation of consciousness leads to an ever more 
menacing awareness of the conflict and involves nothing less 
than a crucifixion of the ego, its agonizing suspension between 
irreconcilable opposites. 28 Naturally there can be no question 

26 Jewish Christians who formed a Gnostic-syncrcCistic party, 

27 A Gnostic sect mentioned in Epiphanius, Panarium adversus octogiiita h(tcreses f 
LXXX, 1-3, and in Michael Pscllus, DC daemonibus (in Marsilius Ficinus, Auc~ 
tores Platonici [lamhlichus de mysteriis Acgyptiorutri], Venice, 1497). 

28 "Oportuit autem ut alter illorum cxtremorum isque optimus appcllarctur Dei 
filius propter suam cxccllcntiam; alter vero ipsi ex diamctro oppositus, inali clac- 
monis, Satanac diabolique filius diccrelur" (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- 

44 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



of a total extinction of the ego, for then the focus of conscious- 
ness would be destroyed, and the result would be complete un- 
consciousness. The relative abolition of the ego affects only 
those supreme and ultimate decisions which confront us in 
situations where there are insoluble conflicts of duty. This 
means, in other words, that in such cases the ego is a suffering 
bystander who decides nothing but must submit to a decision and 
surrender unconditionally. The "genius" of man, the higher 
and more spacious part of him whose extent no one knows, has 
the final word. It is therefore well to examine carefully the psy- 
chological aspects of the individuation process in the light of 
Christian tradition, which can describe it for us with an exact- 
ness and impressiveness far surpassing our feeble attempts, even 
though the Christian image of the self Christlacks the shadow 
that properly belongs to it. 

The reason for this, as already indicated, is the doctrine of 
the Summum Bonum. Irenaeus says very rightly, in refuting the 

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. 362). 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 Prin- 
cipalities" down to the evil spirits and impure demons "do not have it the con- 
trary virtue substantially" ("non substantialiter id habeant scl. virtus adversaria"), 
and that they were not created evil but chose the condition of wickedness 
("malitiae gradus") of their own free will. (De principiis, I, vin, 4; in Migne, P.G.., 
vol. ix, 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 per- 
fected in evil) (De principiis, II, ix, 2; in Migne, F.G V vol. 11, 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. 

45 



AION 

Gnostics, that exception must be taken to the "light of their 
Father/' because it "could not illuminate and fill even those 
things which were within it/' 29 namely the shadow and the 
void. It seemed to him scandalous and reprehensible to suppose 
that within the pleroma of light there could be a "dark and 
formless void." For the Christian neither God nor Christ could 
be a paradox; they had to have a single meaning, and this holds 
true to the present day. No one knew, and apparently (with a 
few honourable exceptions) no one knows even now, that the 
hybris of the speculative intellect had already emboldened the 
ancients to propound a philosophical definition of God that 
more or less obliged him to be the Summum Bonum. A Protes- 
tant theologian has even had the temerity to assert that "God 
can only be good." Yahweh could certainly have taught him a 
thing or two in this respect, if he himself is unable to see his 
intellectual trespass against God's freedom and omnipotence. 
This forcible usurpation of the Summum Bonum naturally has 
its reasons, the origins of which lie far back in the past (though 
I cannot enter into this here). Nevertheless, it is the effective 
source of the concept of the privatio boni., which nullifies the 
reality of evil and can be found as early as Basil the Great 
(330-79) and Dionysius the Areopagite (and half of the 4th 
century), and is fully developed in Augustine. 

81 The earliest authority of all for the later axiom "Omne 
bonum a Deo, omne malum ab homine" is Tatian (2nd cen- 
tury), who says: "Nothing evil was created by God; we ourselves 
have produced all wickedness/' 30 This view is also adopted by 
Theophilus of Antioch (snd century) in his treatise Ad Autoly- 
cum. 31 

82 Basil says: 

You must not look upon God as the author of the existence of evil, 
nor consider that evil has any subsistence in itself [l$t<w woorcwnv 
rov KCLKQV elvat]. For evil does not subsist as a living being does, nor 
can we set before our eyes any substantial essence [oMav evwrooraTw] 
thereof. For evil is the privation [Wepr/cns] of good. , . . And thus 
evil does not inhere in its own substance [ev ISia wap], but arises 

29 Adv. haer., II, 4, 3. 30 Oratio ad Graecos (Migne, F.G V vol. 6, col. 829). 

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



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



from the mutilation [^pai/jtao-tv] of the soul. 32 Neither is it uncreated, 
as the wicked say who set up evil for the equal of good . . . nor Is 
it created. For if all things are of God, how can evil arise from 
good? 3S 

83 Another passage sheds light on the logic of this statement. In 
the second homily of the Hexaemeron, Basil says: 

It is equally impious to say that evil has its origin from God, be- 
cause the contrary cannot proceed from the contrary. Life does not 
engender death, darkness is not the origin of light, sickness is not 
the maker of health. . . , Now if evil is neither uncreated nor 
created by God, whence comes its nature? That evil exists no one 
living in the world will deny. What shall we say, then? That evil is 
not a living and animated entity, but a condition [Stamens] of the soul 
opposed to virtue, proceeding from light-minded [paOvpon] persons 
on account of their falling away from good. . . . Each of us should 
acknowledge that he is the first author of the wickedness in him. 34 

84 The perfectly natural fact that when you say "high" you 
immediately postulate "low" is here twisted into a causal rela- 
tionship and reduced to absurdity, since it is sufficiently obvious 
that darkness produces no light and light produces no darkness. 
The idea of good and evil, however, is the premise for any moral 
judgment. They are a logically equivalent pair of opposites and, 
as such, the sine qua non of all acts of cognition. From the 
empirical standpoint we cannot say more than this. And from 
this standpoint we would have to assert that good and evil, being 
coexistent halves of a moral judgment, do not derive from one 
another but are always there together. Evil, like good, belongs 
to the category of human values, and we are the authors of moral 
value judgments, but only to a limited degree are we authors of 
the facts submitted to our moral judgment. These facts are 
called by one person good and by another evil. Only in capital 
cases is there anything like a consensus generalis. If we hold with 
Basil that man is the author of evil, we are saying in the same 
breath that he is also the author of good. But man is first and 

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

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

34 De spiritu sancto (Migne, P.G V vol. 29, col. 37). Cf. Nine Homilies of the 
Plexaemeron, trans, by Blomfield Jackson, pp. 6if. 

47 



AION 

foremost the author merely of judgments; in relation to the facts 
judged, his responsibility is not so easy to determine. In order 
to do this, we would have to give a clear definition of the extent 
of his free will. The psychiatrist knows what a desperately diffi- 
cult task this is. 

8 5 For these reasons the psychologist shrinks from metaphysical 
assertions but must criticize the admittedly human foundations 
of the privatio boni. When therefore Basil asserts on the one 
hand that evil has no substance of its own but arises from a 
" mutilation of the soul," and if on the other hand he is con- 
vinced that evil really exists, then the relative reality of evil is 
grounded on a real "mutilation" of the soul which must have an 
equally real cause. If the soul was originally created good, then 
it has really been corrupted and by something that is real, even 
if this is nothing more than carelessness, indifference, and frivol- 
ity, which are the meaning of the word paOv^a. When something 
I must stress this with all possible emphasisis traced back to 
a psychic condition or fact, it is very definitely not reduced to 
nothing and thereby nullified, but is shifted on to the plane of 
psychic reality, which is very much easier to establish empirically 
than, say, the reality of the devil in dogma, who according to the 
authentic sources was not invented by man at all but existed 
long before he did. If the devil fell away from God of his own 
free will, this proves firstly that evil was in the world before 
man, and therefore that man cannot be the sole author of it, 
and secondly that the devil already had a "mutilated" soul for 
which we must hold a real cause responsible. The basic flaw in 
Basil's argument is the petitio principii that lands him in in- 
soluble contradictions: it is laid down from the start that the 
independent existence of evil must be denied even in face of the 
eternity of the devil as asserted by dogma. The historical reason 
for this was the threat presented by Manichaean dualism. This 
is especially clear in the treatise of Titus of Bostra (d, c. 370), 
entitled Adversus Manichaeos?* where he states in refutation 
of the Manichaeans that, so far as substance is concerned, there 
is no such thing as evil. 

86 John Chrysostom (c. 344-407) uses, instead of <rre'p/<ro? (priva- 
tio), the expression ocTpoTn? row KaXov (deviation, or turning away, 

S5 Migne, P.G., vol. 18, cols, ii$%L 

4 8 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



from good). He says: "Evil is nothing other than a turning away 
from good, and therefore evil is secondary in relation to good." 36 
87 Dionysius the Areopagite gives a detailed explanation of evil 
in the fourth chapter of De divinis nominibus. Evil, he says, can- 
not come from good, because if it came from good it would not 
be evil. But since everything that exists comes from good, every- 
thing is in some way good, but "evil does not exist at all" (TO 

OV OTtv). 



Evil in its nature is neither a thing nor does it bring anything 
forth. 

Evil does not exist at all and is neither good nor productive of 

good [OVK cm KaOoXov TO KGLKOV OVT ayaOov ovTe dya$07rotoi/J. 

All things which are, by the very fact that they are, are good and 
come from good; but in so far as they are deprived of good, they 
are neither good nor do they exist. 

That which has no existence is not altogether evil, for the abso- 
lutely non-existent will be nothing, unless it be thought of as sub- 
sisting in the good superessentially [ K ara TO wc/oouo-tov]. Good, then, 
as absolutely existing and as absolutely non-existing, will stand in 
the foremost and highest place [TTO\\^ vporcpov vvepiSpvpevov], while 
evil is neither in that which exists nor in that which does not exist 

[rO & KCLKOV OVT Iv TOCS Q\MJLV) Ot)T Iv TOLS p 



These quotations show with what emphasis the reality of 
evil was denied by the Church Fathers. As already mentioned, 
this hangs together with the Church's attitude to Manichaean 
dualism, as can plainly be seen in St. Augustine. In his polemic 
against the Manichaeans and Marcionites he makes the follow- 
ing declaration: 

For this reason all things are good, since some things are better than 
others and the goodness of the less good adds to the glory of the 
better. . . . Those things we call evil, then, are defects in good 
things, and quite incapable of existing in their own right outside 
good things. . . . But those very defects testify to the natural good- 
ness of things. For what is evil by reason of a defect must obviously 
be good of its own nature. For a defect is something contrary to 
nature, something which damages the nature of a thing and it can 

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

37Migne, P.O., vol. 3, cols. 716-18. Cf. the Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, 

trans, by John Parker, I, pp. 53$. 

49 



AION 

do so only by diminishing that thing's goodness. Evil therefore is 
nothing but the privation of good. And thus it can have no existence 
anywhere except in some good thing. ... So there can be things 
which are good without any evil in them, such as God himself, and 
the higher celestial beings; but there can be no evil things without 
good. For if evils cause no damage to anything, they are not evils; if 
they do damage something, they diminish its goodness; and if they 
damage it still more, it is because It still has some goodness which 
they diminish; and if they swallow it up altogether, nothing of its 
nature is left to be damaged. And so there will be no evil by which 
it can be damaged, since there is then no nature left whose goodness 
any damage can diminish. 38 

9 The Liber Sententiarum ex Augustino says (CLXXVI): 
"Evil is not a substance, 39 for as It has not God for its author, it 

38 "Nunc vero icleo sunt omnia bona, quia sunt aliis alia meliora, et bonitas 
inferiorum addit 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 natura rum. 
Quod enim maliim est per vitium, profecto bonum est per naturam. Vitium 
quippc contra naturam est, quia naturae nocet; nee noceret, nisi bonum cius 
minueret. Non est ergo malum nisi privatio boni. Ac per hoc nusquam est nisi 
in re aliqua bona. . . . Ac per hoc bona sine malis esse possum, sicut ipsc Deus, 
et quaeque superiora coelcstia; mala vero sine bonis esse non possunt. Si enim 
nihil nocent, mala non sunt; si autem nocent, bonum minuunt; ct si amplius 
nocent, habent adhuc bonum quod minuant; et si totum consumunt, nihil 
naturae rernancbit qui noceatur; ac per hoc nee malum erit a quo noceatur, 
quando natura defucrit, cuius bonum nocendo minualur." (Contra advcrsarium 
legis et prophetarwn, 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. Quacst. XVI; "Cum Dcus omnia bona crcaverit, 
nihilque sit quod non ab illo conditum sit, unde malum? Resp. Malum natura 
non est; sed privatio boni hoc nomcn accepit, Benique bonum potcst esse sine 
malo, sed malum non potest esse sine bono, nee potcst esse malum ubi non fucrit 
bonurn. . . . Ideoque quando dicimus bonum, naturam laudamus; quando did- 
mus malum, non naturam sed vitium, quod est bonae naturae conlrarium rcpre- 
hendimus." (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.) 

so "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). 

50 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



does not exist; and so the defect of corruption is nothing else 
than the desire or act of a misdirected will." 40 Augustine agrees 
with this when he says: "The steel is not evil; but the man who 
uses the steel for a criminal purpose, he is evil." 41 

9 1 These quotations clearly exemplify the standpoint of Diony- 
sius and Augustine: evil has no substance or existence in itself, 
since it is merely a diminution of good, which alone has sub- 
stance. Evil is a vitium, a bad use of things as a result of errone- 
ous decisions of the will (blindness due to evil desire, etc.). 
Thomas Aquinas, the great theoretician of the Church, says with 
reference to the above quotation from Dionysius: 

One opposite is known through the other, as darkness is known 
through light. Hence also what evil is must be known from the 
nature of good. Now we have said above that good is everything 
appetible; and thus, since every nature desires its own being and its 
own perfection, it must necessarily be said that the being and per- 
fection of every created thing is essentially good. Hence it cannot 
be that evil signifies a being, or any form or nature. Therefore it 
must be that by the name of evil is signified the absence of good. 42 

Evil is not a being, whereas good is a being. 43 

That every agent works for an end clearly follows from the fact 
that every agent tends to something definite. Now that to which 
an agent tends definitely must needs be befitting to that agent, since 
the latter would not tend to it save on account of some fittingness 
thereto. But that which is befitting to a thing is good for it. There- 
fore every agent works for a good. 44 

92 *- St. Thomas himself recalls the saying of Aristotle that '"the 
thing is the whiter, the less it is mixed with black," 45 without 
mentioning, however, that the reverse proposition: "the thing is 
the blacker, the less it is mixed with white/' not only has the 
same validity as the first but is also its logical equivalent. He 

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

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

42 Summa theologies I, q. 48, ad i (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 bonurn" (Summa contra Gentiles, III, ch. 3, trans, by the English 
Dominican Fathers, vol. Ill, p. 7). 

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

51 



AION 

might also have mentioned that not only darkness is known 
through light, but that, conversely, light is known through dark- 
ness. 

93 As only that which works is real, so, according to St. Thomas, 
only good is real in the sense of "existing." His argument, how- 
ever, introduces a good that is tantamount to "convenient, suf- 
ficient, appropriate, suitable." One ought therefore to translate 
"omne agens agit propter bonum" as: "Every agent works for 
the sake of what suits it." That's what the devil does too, as we 
all know. He too has an "appetite" and strives after perfection 
not in good but in evil. Even so, one could hardly conclude from 
this that his striving is "essentially good." 

94 Obviously evil can be represented as a diminution of good, 
but with this kind of logic one could just as well say: The tem- 
perature of the Arctic winter, which freezes our noses and ears, 
is relatively speaking only a little below the heat prevailing at 
the equator. For the Arctic temperature seldom falls much lower 
than 230 C. above absolute zero. All things on earth are 
"warm" in the sense that nowhere is absolute zero even approxi- 
mately reached. Similarly, all things are more or less "good," 
and just as cold is nothing but a diminution of warmth, so evil 
is nothing but a diminution of good. The privatio boni argu- 
ment remains a euphemistic petitio principii no matter whether 
evil is regarded as a lesser good or as an effect of the fmiteness 
and limitedness of created things. The false conclusion neces- 
sarily follows from the premise "Deus = Summum Bonum," 
since it is unthinkable that the perfect good could ever have 
created evil. It merely created the good and the less good (which 
last is simply called "worse" by laymen). 46 Just as we freeze 
miserably despite a temperature of 230 above absolute zero, so 
there are people and things that, although created by God, are 
good only to the minimal and bad to the maximal degree. 

95 It is probably from this tendency to deny any reality to evil 
that we get the axiom "Omne bonum a Deo, omne malum ab 
homine." This is a contradiction of the truth that he who 
created the heat is also responsible for the cold ("the goodness 
of the less good"). We can certainly hand it to Augustine that 

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. 

5* 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



all natures are good, yet just not good enough to prevent their 
badness from being equally obvious. 



96 One could hardly call the things that have happened, and 
still happen, in the concentration camps of the dictator states an 
"accidental lack of perfection" it would sound like mockery. 

97 Psychology does not know what good and evil are in them- 
selves; it knows them only as judgments about relationships. 
"Good" is what seems suitable, acceptable, or valuable from a 
certain point of view; evil is its opposite. If the things we call 
good are "really" good, then there must be evil things that are 
"real" too. It is evident that psychology is concerned with a 
more or less subjective judgment, i.e., with a psychic antithesis 
that cannot be avoided in naming value relationships: "good" 
denotes something that is not bad, and "bad" something that is 
not good. There are things which from a certain point of view 
are extremely evil, that is to say dangerous. There are also things 
in human nature which are very dangerous and which therefore 
seem proportionately evil to anyone standing in their line of 
fire. It is pointless to gloss over these evil things, because that 
only lulls one into a sense of false security. Human nature is 
capable of an infinite amount of evil, and the evil deeds are as 
real as the good ones so far as human experience goes and so far 
as the psyche judges and differentiates between them. Only un- 
consciousness makes no difference between good and evil. Inside 
the psychological realm one honestly does not know which of 
them predominates in the world. We hope, merely, that good 
does i.e., what seems suitable to us. No one could possibly say 
what the general good might be. No amount of insight into the 
relativity and fallibility of our moral judgment can deliver us 
from these defects, and those who deem themselves beyond good 
and evil are usually the worst tormentors of mankind, because 
they are twisted with the pain and fear of their own sickness. 

98 Today as never before it is important that human beings 
should not overlook the danger of the evil lurking within them. 
It is unfortunately only too real, which is why psychology must 
insist on the reality of evil and must reject any definition that 
regards it as insignificant or actually non-existent. Psychology is 
an empirical science and deals with realities. As a psychologist, 

53 



AION 

therefore, I have neither the inclination nor the competence 
to mix myself up with metaphysics. Only, I have to get polemical 
when metaphysics encroaches on experience and interprets it 
in a way that is not justified empirically. My criticism of the 
privatio boni holds only so far as psychological experience goes. 
From the scientific point of view the privatio boni, as must be 
apparent to everyone, is founded on a petitio principii, where 
what invariably comes out at the end is what you put in at the 
beginning. Arguments of this kind have no power of convic- 
tion. But the fact that such arguments are not only used but are 
undoubtedly believed is something that cannot be disposed of 
so easily. It proves that there is a tendency, existing right from 
the start, to give priority to ''good/* and to do so with all the 
means in our power, whether suitable or unsuitable. So if Chris- 
tian metaphysics clings to the privatio boni, it is giving expres- 
sion to the tendency always to increase the good and diminish 
the bad. The privatio boni may therefore be a psychological 
truth. I presume to no judgment on this matter. I must only 
insist that in our field of experience white and black, light and 
dark, good and bad, are equivalent opposites which always predi- 
cate one another. 

99 This elementary fact was correctly appreciated in the so- 
called Clementine Homilies, 47 a collection of Gnostic-Christian 
writings dating from about A.D. 150. The unknown author un- 
derstands good and evil as the right and left hand of God, and 
views the whole of creation in terms of syzygies, or pairs of oppo- 
sites. In much the same way the folloxver of Bardesanes, Marinas, 
sees good as "light" and pertaining to the right hand (Sc&oV), and 
evil as "dark" and pertaining to the left hand (apt<rTe/wV)- 4H The 
left also corresponds to the feminine. Thus in Ivenacas (Adv. 
haer., I, 30, 3), Sophia Prounikos is called Sinistra. "Clement" 
finds this altogether compatible with the idea of God's unity. 

47 Harnack (Lehrbuch der Dogrnengeschichte y 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 and century/' He 
thinks that Islam is far superior to this theology. Yahwch and Allah are im- 
reflected 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-image, as Harnack thinks. Fear of psychology 
should not be carried too far. 
48)<?r Dialog des Adamantius, III, 4 (ed. by van cle Sande Bakhuyxen, p. 119). 

54 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



Provided that one has an anthropomorphic God-image and 
every God-image is anthropomorphic in a more or less subtle 
way the logic and naturalness of "Clement" 's view can hardly 
be contested. At all events this view, which may be some two hun- 
dred years older than the quotations given above, proves that 
the reality of evil does not necessarily lead to Manichaean dual- 
ism and so does not endanger the unity of the God-image. As a 
matter of fact, it guarantees that unity on a plane beyond the 
crucial difference between the Yahwistic and the Christian 
points of view. Yahweh is notoriously unjust, and injustice is 
not good. The God of Christianity, on the other hand, is only 
good. There is no denying that "Clement" 's theology helps us to 
get over this contradiction in a way that fits the psychological 
facts. 

It is therefore worth following up "Clement" 's line of 
thought a little more closely. "God," he says, "appointed two 
kingdoms [ao-iAeias] and two ages [atowxs], determining that the 
present world should be given over to evil [iro-rypu], because it is 
small and passes quickly away. But he promised to preserve 
the future world for good, because it is great and eternal." 
"Clement" goes on to say that this division into two corresponds 
to the structure of man: the body comes from the female, who is 
characterized by emotionality; the mind comes from the male, 
who stands for rationality. He calls body and mind the "two 
triads." 49 

Man is a compound of two mixtures [<upaju.ar<ov, lit. 'pastes'], the 
female and the male. Wherefore also two ways have been laid before 
him those of obedience and of disobedience to law; and two king- 
doms have been established the one called the kingdom of heaven, 
and the other the kingdom of those who are now rulers upon 
earth. ... Of these two, the one does violence to the other. More- 
over these two rulers are the swift hands of God. 

That is a reference to Deuteronomy 32 : 39: "I will kill and I 
will make to live" (DV). He kills with the left hand and saves 
with the right. 



49 The female or somatic triad consist of eTrtev^ta (desire), dpyri (anger), and 
\07ri7 (grief); the male, of Xoyia^os (reflection), JVWO-LS (knowledge), and <j)6pos 
(fear). Cf. the triad of functions in "The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy- 
tales," Part I of vol. 9, pars. 425$. 

55 



AION 

These two principles have not their substance outside of God, for 
there is no other primal source [dpx 7 ?]* Nor nave tne 7 been sent forth 
from God as animals, for they were of the same mind [ofioSo^oi] with 
him. . . . But from God were sent forth the four first elements- 
hot and cold, moist and dry. In consequence of this, he is the 
Father of every substance [ovo-tas], but not of the knowledge which 
arises from the mixing of the elements. 50 For when these were com- 
bined from without, choice [Trpoaipeo-is] was begotten in them as a 
child. 51 

That is to say, through the mixing o the four elements in- 
equalities arose which caused uncertainty and so necessitated 
decisions or acts of choice. The four elements form the fourfold 
substance of the body (rerpayei/T)? rov o-w/Aaros oixria) and also of 
evil (rov wovrjpov). This substance was "carefully discriminated 
and sent forth from God, but when it was combined from with- 
out, according to the will of him who sent it forth, there arose, 
as a result of the combination, the preference which rejoices in 

evils [y /ca/co6s -^aipovcra Trpoat'peors]." 52 

101 The last sentence is to be understood as follows: The four- 
fold substance is eternal (o&ra det) and God's child. But the 
tendency to evil was added from outside to the mixture willed 

by God (/cara rrjv TOV 0ov ftovXycrw eo> 77] Kpaoret, o~vfji/3/3'qKev). TllUS 

evil is not created by God or by any one else, nor was it pro- 
jected out of him, nor did it arise of itself. Peter, who is engaged 
in these reflections, is evidently not quite sure how the matter 
stands. 

J os It seems as if, without God's intending it (and possibly with- 
out his knowing it) the mixture of the four elements took a 
wrong turning, though this is rather hard to square with Clem- 
ent's idea of the opposite hands of God "doing violence to one 
another." Obviously Peter, the leader of the dialogue, finds it 
rather difficult to attribute the cause of evil to the Creator in 
so many words. 

10 3 Pseudo-Clement of Rome espouses a Petrine Christianity dis- 
tinctly "High Church" or ritualistic in flavour. This, taken tO- 
co P. de Lagarde (Clementina, p. 190) has here . . . 7r<n?? oti<rta$ . . . oif<n?$ 
yv^fji'rjS' The reading ov TTJS seems to me to make more sense. 
53 Ch. Ill: TTJS fj^era ryv Kpaaiv- 

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

56 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



gether with his doctrine of the dual aspect of God, brings him 
into close relationship with the early Jewish- Christian Church, 
where, according to the testimony of Epiphanius, we find the 
Ebionite notion that God had two sons, an elder one, Satan, 
and a younger one, Christ. 53 Michaias, one of the speakers in the 
dialogue, suggests as much when he remarks that if good and 
evil were begotten in the same way they must be brothers. 54 
104 In the (Jewish-Christian?) apocalypse, the "Ascension of 
Isaiah," we find, in the middle section, Isaiah's vision of the 
seven heavens through which he was rapt. 55 First he saw Sam- 
mael and his hosts, against whom a "great battle" was raging in 
the firmament. The angel then wafted him beyond this into the 
first heaven and led him before a throne. On the right of the 
throne stood angels who were more beautiful than the angels on 
the left. Those on the right "all sang praises with one voice," 
but the ones on the left sang after them, and their singing was 
not like the singing of the first. In the second heaven all the 
angels were more beautiful than in the first heaven, and there 
was no difference between them, either here or in any of the 
higher heavens. Evidently Sammael still has a noticeable influ- 
ence on the first heaven, since the angels on the left are not so 
beautiful there. Also, the lower heavens are not so splendid as 
the upper ones, though each surpassed the other in splendour. 
The devil, like the Gnostic archons, dwells in the firmament, 
and he and his angels presumably correspond to astrological 
gods and influences. The diminution of splendour, going all the 
way up to the topmost heaven, shows that his sphere interpene- 
trates with the divine sphere of the Trinity, whose light in turn 
filters down as far as the lowest heaven. This paints a picture of 
complementary opposites balancing one another like right and 
left hands. Significantly enough, this vision, like the Clementine 
Homilies, belongs to the pre-Manichaean period (second cen- 
tury), when there was as yet no need for Christianity to fight 
against its Manichaean competitors. It might easily be a descrip- 

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

54 Clement. Horn. 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. 

57 



AION 

tlon of a genuine yang-yin relationship, a picture that comes 
closer to the actual truth than the privatio boni. Moreover, it 
does not damage monotheism in any way, since it unites the 
opposites just as yang and yin are united in Tao (which the 
Jesuits quite logically translated as "God"). It is as if Mani- 
chaean dualism first made the Fathers conscious of the fact that 
until then, without clearly realizing it, they had always believed 
firmly in the substantiality of evil. This sudden realization 
might well have led them to the dangerously anthropomorphic 
assumption that what man cannot unite, God cannot unite 
either. The early Christians, thanks to their greater unconscious- 
ness, were able to avoid this mistake. 

10 5 Perhaps we may risk the conjecture that the problem of the 
Yahwistic God-image, which had been constellated in men's 
minds ever since the Book of Job, continued to be discussed in 
Gnostic circles and in syncretistic Judaism generally, all the 
more eagerly as the Christian answer to this question namely 
the unanimous decision in favour of God's goodness nc did not 
satisfy the conservative Jews. In this respect, therefore, it is sig- 
nificant that the doctrine of the two antithetical sons of God 
originated with the Jewish Christians living in Palestine. Inside 
Christianity itself the doctrine spread to the Bogomils and 
Catharists; in Judaism it influenced religious speculation and 
found lasting expression in the two sides of the cabalistic Tree 
of the Sephiroth, which were named hesed (love) and din (jus- 
tice). A rabbinical scholar, Zwi Werblowsky, has been kind 
enough to put together for me a number of passages from 
Hebrew literature which have bearing on this problem: 

10 ^ R. Joseph taught: "What is the meaning of the verse, 'And 
none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the 
morning?' (Exodus 12 : 82.) 5T Once permission has been granted 
to the destroyer, he does not distinguish between the righteous 
and the wicked. Indeed, he even begins with the righteous." ns 
Commenting on Exodus 33 : 5 ("If for a single moment I should 
go up among you, I would consume you"), the midrash says: 
"Yahweh means he could wax wroth with you for a moment 

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

58 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



for that is the length of his wrath, as is said in Isaiah 26 : 20, 
'Hide yourselves for a little moment until the wrath is past' 
and destroy you." Yahweh gives warning here of his unbridled 
irascibility. If in this moment of divine wrath a curse is uttered, 
it will indubitably be effective. That is why Balaam, "who 
knows the thoughts of the Most High/' 59 when called upon by 
Balak to curse Israel, was so dangerous an enemy, because he 
knew the moment of Yahweh's wrath. 60 

i7 God's love and mercy are named his right hand., but his 
justice and his administration of it are named his left hand.. 
Thus we read in I Kings 22 : 19: "I saw the Lord sitting on his 
throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his 
right hand and on his left." The midrash comments; 4< ls there 
right and left on high? This means that the intercessors stand 
on the right and the accusers on the left." 61 The comment on 
Exodus 15:6 ("Thy right hand, O Lord, glorious in power, thy 
right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy") runs; "When the chil- 
dren of Israel perform God's will, they make the left hand his 
right hand. When they do not do his will, they make even the 
right hand his left hand." 62 "God's left hand dashes to pieces; 
his right hand is glorious to save." 63 

108 The dangerous aspect of Yahweh's justice comes out in the 
following passage: "Even so said the Holy One, blessed be He: 
If I create the world on the basis of mercy alone, its sins will be 
great; but on the basis of justice alone the world cannot exist. 
Hence I will create it on the basis of justice and mercy, and may 
it then stand!" 64 The midrash on Genesis 18 : 23 (Abraham's 
plea for Sodom) says (Abraham speaking): "If thou desirest the 
world to endure, there can be no absolute justice, while if thou 
desirest absolute justice, the world cannot endure. Yet thou 
wouldst hold the cord by both ends, desiring both the world and 
absolute justice. Unless thou forgoest a little, the world cannot 
endure." 65 

59 Numbers 24 : 16. 60 Zera'im I, Berakoth 7a (BT, p. 31). 

61 Midrash Tanchuma Shemoth XVII. 

62 cf. Pentateuch with Tar gum Onkelos , . . and Rashi's Commentary, trans, by 
M. Roscnbaum and A. M. Silbermann, II, p. 76. 

63 Midrash on Song of Sol. 2 : 6. 

MBereshith Rabba XII, 15 (Midrash Kabbah translated into English, ed. by 
H. Freedman and M. Simon, I, p. 99; slightly modified). 
65 Ibid. XXXIX, 6 (p. 315). 

59 



AION 

10 9 Yahweh prefers the repentant sinners even to the righteous, 
and protects them from his justice by covering them with his 
hand or by hiding them under his throne. 66 

1 10 With reference to Habakkuk 2 : 3 ("For still the vision awaits 
its time. ... If it seem slow, wait for it"), R. Jonathan says: 
''Should you say, We wait [for his coming] but He does not, it 
stands written (Isaiah 30 : 18), 'Therefore will the Lord wait, 
that he may be gracious unto you.' . . . But since we wait and 
he waits too, what delays his coming? Divine justice delays it." 67 
It is in this sense that we have to understand the prayer of 
R. Jochanan: "May it be thy will, O Lord our God, to look upon 
our shame and behold our evil plight. Clothe thyself in thy 
mercies, cover thyself in thy strength, wrap thyself in thy lov- 
ing-kindness, and gird thyself with thy graciousness, and may 
thy goodness and gentleness come before thee." 68 God is prop- 
erly exhorted to remember his good qualities. There is even a 
tradition that God prays to himself: "May it be My will that 
My mercy may suppress My anger, and that My compassion may 
prevail over My other attributes." 69 This tradition is borne out 
by the following story: 

R. Ishmael the son of Elisha said: I once entered the innermost 
sanctuary to offer incense, and there I saw Akathriel 70 Jah Jahweh 
Zebaoth 71 seated upon a high and exalted throne. He said to me, 
Ishmael, my son, bless me! And I answered him: May it be Thy 
will that Thy mercy may suppress Thy anger, and that Thy com- 
passion may prevail over Thy other attributes, so that Thou mayest 
deal with Thy children according to the attribute of mercy and 
stop short of the limit of strict justice! And He nodded to me with 
His head. 72 

111 It is not difficult to see from these quotations what was the 
effect of Job's contradictory God-image. It became a subject for 
religious speculation inside Judaism and, through the medium 

MMo'cd IV, Pesahim 119 (BT f p. 613); Nezikin VI, Sanhedrin II, 103 (BT f 
pp. 698*1), WNczikin VI, Sanhedrin II, 97 (BT f p. 659; modified). 

**Zerafim I, Berakoth i6b (JUT, p. 98; slightly modified). 09 Ibid, 7,1 (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'tm I, Berakoth 7 (BT, p. 30; slightly modified). 

60 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



of the Cabala, it evidently had an influence on Jakob Bohme. In 
his writings we find a similar ambivalence, namely the love and 
the ''wrath-fire" of God, in which Lucifer burns for ever. 73 

1 * * Since psychology is not metaphysics, no metaphysical dualism 
can be derived from, or imputed to, its statements concerning 
the equivalence of opposites. 74 It knows that equivalent oppo- 
sites are necessary conditions inherent in the act of cognition, 
and that without them no discrimination would be possible. 
It is not exactly probable that anything so intrinsically bound 
up with the act of cognition should be at the same time a prop- 
erty of the object. It is far easier to suppose that it is primarily 
our consciousness which names and evaluates the differences be- 
tween things, and perhaps even creates distinctions where no 
differences are discernible. 

"8 I have gone into the doctrine of the privatio boni at such 
length because it is in a sense responsible for a too optimistic- 
conception of the evil in human nature and for a too pessimistic 
view of the human soul. To offset this, early Christianity, with 
unerring logic, balanced Christ against an Antichrist. For how 
can you speak of "high" if there is no "low," or "right" if there 
is no "left," of "good" if there is no "bad," and the one is as real 
as the other? Only with Christ did a devil enter the world as the 
real counterpart of God, and in early Jewish-Christian circles 
Satan, as already mentioned, was regarded as Christ's elder 
brother. 

X1 4 But there is still another reason why I must lay such critical 
stress on the privatio boni. As early as Basil we meet with the 
tendency to attribute evil to the disposition (Sia&o-w) of the soul, 
and at the same time to give it a "non-existent" character. Since, 
according to this author, evil originates in human frivolity 

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. 

6l 



AION 

and therefore owes its existence to mere negligence, it exists, 
so to speak, only as a by-product of psychological oversight, and 
this is such a quantite negligeable that evil vanishes altogether 
in smoke. Frivolity as a cause of evil is certainly a factor to be 
taken seriously, but it is a factor that can be got rid of by a 
change of attitude. We can act differently, if we want to. Psy- 
chological causation is something so elusive and seemingly un- 
real that everything which is reduced to it inevitably takes on 
the character of futility or of a purely accidental mistake and is 
thereby minimized to the utmost. It is an open question how 
much of our modern undervaluation of the psyche stems from 
this prejudice. This prejudice is all the more serious in that it 
causes the psyche to be suspected of being the birthplace of all 
evil. The Church Fathers can hardly have considered what a 
fatal power they were ascribing to the soul. One must be posi- 
tively blind not to see the colossal role that evil plays in the 
world. Indeed, it took the intervention of God himself to deliver 
humanity from the curse of evil, for without his intervention 
man would have been lost. If this paramount power of evil is 
imputed to the soul, the result can only be a negative inflation 
i.e., a daemonic claim to power on the part of the unconscious 
which makes it all the more formidable. This unavoidable con- 
sequence is anticipated in the figure of the Antichrist and is 
reflected in the course of contemporary events, whose nature is 
in accord with the Christian aeon of the Fishes, now running 
to its end. 

In the world of Christian ideas Christ undoubtedly repre- 
sents the self. 75 As the apotheosis of individuality, the self has 
the attributes of uniqueness and of occurring once only in time. 
But since the psychological self is a transcendent concept, ex- 
pressing the totality of conscious and unconscious contents, it 

75 It has been objected that Christ cannot have been a valid symbol o 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 notedevil 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. 

62 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



can only be described in antinomial terms; 76 that is, the above 
attributes must be supplemented by their opposites if the tran- 
scendental situation is to be characterized correctly. We can do 
this most simply in the form of a quaternion of opposites: 



116 



UNITEMPORAL 



UNIQUE 



UNIVERSAL 



ETERNAL 



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 an individual thing it is unitemporal and 
unique; as an archetypal symbol it is a God-image and there- 
fore universal and eternal. 77 Now if theology describes Christ 
as simply "good" and "spiritual," something "evil" and "ma- 
terial" 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: 



SPIRITUAL 



MATERIAL OR CHTHONIG 



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

77 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pp. ggff., and "The Relations between the Ego 
and the Unconscious," pp. 2$5ff. 

63 



AION 

!1 7 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 qua- 
ternio This last is by no means a new discovery, since accord- 
ing to Hippolytus it was known to the Naassenes. 79 Hence 
individuation is a "mysterium coniunctionis," the self being ex- 
perienced as a nuptial union of opposite halves 80 and depicted 
as a composite whole in mandalas that are drawn spontaneously 
by patients. 

ll It was known, and stated, very early that the man Jesus, the 
son of Mary, was the principium individuationis. Thus Basili- 
des 81 is reported by Hippolytus as saying: "Now Jesus became 
the first sacrifice in the separation of categories [^vXoicptwyo-ts], 
and the Passion came to pass for no other reason than the separa- 
tion of composite things. For in this manner, he says, the son- 
ship that had been left behind in a formless state [apop&a] . . . 
needed separating into its components [<j>v\oKpwrj6ijvai\ 9 in the 
same way that Jesus was separated." 82 According to the rather 
complicated teachings of Basilides, the "non-existent" God be- 
got a threefold sonship (worrjs). The first "son," whose nature 
was the finest and most subtle, remained up above with the 
Father. The second son, having a grosser (Vax^epeoTepa) 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 (aTro/catfapo-ts), fell deep- 
est 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 (irvevi*aTu<6v, 
\l/vx<*Kov 9 vapKLKov) , 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 

78 Cf. "Psychology of the Transference/' pp. 222ff. 

WElenchos, V, 8, 2 (trans* by F. Legge, I, p. 131). 

80 Psychology and Alchemy f p 219, and "Psychology of the Transference/' 

pp. 246$. 81 Basilides lived in the 2nd cent. 

%%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. 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



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 
(avaSpo/^), 85 by virtue of the fact that the opposites were sepa- 
rated 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 cor- 
responds 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: 

85 This word also occurs in the well-known passage about the krater in Zosimos. 
(Berthelot, Alch. grecs, III, li, 8: dj/afya^e eiri rb yevos TO <TQV* 
86 1 must say a word here about the horos doctrine of the Valentinians in 
Irenaeus (Adv. haer, I, 2, sff.) Horos (boundary) is a "power" or numen iden- 
tical with Christ, or at least proceeding from him. It has the following synonyms: 
dpoOerys (boundary-fixer), ^ercryoryefo (he who leads across), /capTricmfc (eman- 
cipator), XvTp&rys (redeemer), a-ravpos (cross). In this capacity he is the regulator 
and mainstay of the universe, like Jesus. When Sophia was "formless and shape- 
less 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 clear from the text, an 
image that we find also in Paulinus of Nola: 

"... regnare deum super omnia Christum, 
qui cruce dispensa per quattuor extima Hgni 
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, 639$., p. 140.) For the Cross as God's "lightning" cf., in Part I 
of vol. 9, "A Study in the Process of Individuation." 

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

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

65 



AION 
I II III 

First sonship Christ of the Ogdoad Spirit 

Second sonship Christ of the Hebdomad Soul 

Third sonship Jesus the Son of Mary Body 

J1 9 It is in the sphere of the dark, heavy body that we must look 
for the a/xop^ta, the "formlessness*' wherein the third sonship lies 
hidden. As suggested above, this formlessness seems to be prac- 
tically the equivalent of "unconsciousness." Attention has been 
drawn to the concepts of dyi/coo-ta in Epiphanius 89 and avoyrov 
in Hippolytus, 90 which are best translated by "unconscious." 
*A(jLop<j>ia, ayvwcria, and avo^rov all refer to the initial state of things, 
to the potentiality of unconscious contents, aptly formulated by 

Basilides as OVK ov OTrepfia TOV KOcrfAov TToAv/x-op^ov O{JLOV /cat TroXvovaiov 

(the non-existent, many-formed, and all-empowering seed of the 
world). 91 

120 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 sig- 
nificance, since in it and its materiality is lodged a third o 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 par- 

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

^Elenchos, VII, 22, 16 (Legge trans., II, p. 71). Cf. infra, pars. ggSff. 

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

92 With reference to the psychological nature of Gnostic sayings, see QuispeTs 
"Philo und die altchristliche Haresie," p. 432, where he quotes Ircnaeus (Adv. 
haer. f II, 4, 2): "Id quod extra ct quod intus dicere eos sccundum agnitioncm 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. 

66 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



ticularly 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 con- 
scious, whereas in the third sonship itself they remain uncon- 
scious 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 emanat- 
ing from Jesus, and is thereby impelled to a similar discrimina- 
tion of opposites. This view is entirely in accord with the psy- 
chological 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 re- 
marks 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 some- 
thing 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 o 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 elu- 
cidation 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 

S3 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pp. 47ff. and 9 iff., and "A Study in the Process of 
Individuation" in Part I of vol. 9. 

6 7 



AION 

disappeared completely, and so likewise did the lapis philoso- 
phorum. 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 cer- 
tain 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 con- 
tent possessing all those qualities which are characteristic of the 
Christ-image in its archaic and medieval forms. Modern psy- 
chology 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 concen- 
trates upon itself the characteristics of an archetype the arche- 
type of the self. My aim and method do not purport to be any- 
thing 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 liv- 
ing 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 ex- 
pressly 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 

68 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



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 rec- 
ognition 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 TfAetWt? 
completionin this sense 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. Nat- 
ural as it is to seek perfection in one way or another, the arche- 
type fulfils itself in completeness, and this is a rcXaWw of quite 
another kind. Where the archetype predominates, completeness 
is forced upon us against all our conscious strivings, in accord- 
ance with the archaic nature of the archetype. The individual 
may strive after perfection ("Be you therefore perfect reXetot 
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 work- 
ing 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 certain conditions the unconscious spon- 
taneously brings forth an archetypal symbol of wholeness. From 
this we must conclude that some such archetype occurs uni- 
versally 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 uninflu- 
enced pictorial representations of the symbol show that it is 
given central and supreme importance precisely because it 

94 Matt. 5 : 48 (DV). 5 Rom. 7:21 (AV). 

96 Cf. the last two papers in Part I of vol. 9. 

69 



AION 

stands for the conjunction of opposites. Naturally the conjunc- 
tion can only be understood as a paradox, since a union of oppo- 
sites 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. 

12 5 Whenever the archetype of the self predominates, the in- 
evitable 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, there- 
fore, does not in any way circumvent the Christian mystery; 
rather, it forcibly creates the psychological preconditions with- 
out which "redemption" would appear meaningless. "Redemp- 
tion" does not mean that a burden is taken from one's shoulders 
which one was never meant to bear. Only the "complete" per- 
son 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 whole- 
ness or completeness, as a binding personal commitment. If he 
does this consciously and intentionally, he avoids all the un- 
happy 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. 

l *6 The irreconcilable nature of the opposites in Christian psy- 
chology 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. To- 
day humanity, as never before, is split into two apparently irrec- 

70 



CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 



oncilable 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 contradictions, the world 
must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite 
halves. 



VI 

THE SIGN OF THE FISHES 

12 7 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 herme- 
neutic writings of the Church Fathers, which go right back to 
the days of primitive Christianity, Christ has a number of sym- 
bols or "allegories" in common with the devil. Of these I would 
mention the lion, snake (coluber,, Viper'), bird (devil = noc- 
turna 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 Ix^s * s simply an anagrammatic 
abbreviation of "I^o-ofo] Xfpurro?] [eoi3] Y[tos] S[a>r4>], 2 but rather 



1 Early collections of such allegories in the Ancoratus of Epiphanius, and in 
Augustine, Contra Faustum. For nycticorax and aquila see Eucherius, Liber for- 
mularum 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 Sibyls, and showed him the passage 
where the above words, forming the acrostic 'IxOvs, are themselves the acrostic 
for a whole poem, an apocalyptic prophecy of the Sibyls: 

"ludicii signum tell us sudore madescet, 

E coelo Rex adveniet per saecla futurus: 

Scilicet in carne praesens ut iudicet orbem. 

Unde Deum cernent incredulus atque fidelis 

Celsum cum Sanctis, aevi iam termino in ipso. 

Sic animae 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. 

72 



THE SIGN OF THE FISHES 



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 formu- 
lating 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 dis- 
seminated "Ichthys." 3 For the fish symbol, in the Near and 
Middle East especially, has a long and colourful prehistory, from 
the Babylonian fish-god Cannes 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 cele- 
brated by the "Thracian riders" in the Roman Empire. 5 For our 
purpose it is hardly necessary to go into this voluminous ma- 
terial more closely. As Doelger and others have shown, there 
are plenty o occasions for fish symbolism within the original, 
purely Christian world of ideas. I need only mention the regen- 
eration in the font, in which the baptized swim like fishes. 6 
128 i n 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 

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 Augus- 
tine'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: "Every- 
where I had a travelling companion, since I had Paul sitting on 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. igff. 

6 Doelger, 'IX9T2: Das Fischsymbol in friihchristlicher Zeit. 

73 



AION 

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 i5o8. 10 It is explained here that the House of the 
Fishes (}) is the house of justice and of brilliant splendour 
(U in X). Further, that in anno mundi 2365, n a great conjunc- 
tion of Saturn ( 1? ) and Jupiter (u) 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 expec- 
tations. Four hundred years earlier we find similar pronounce- 
ments; for instance, Rabbi Abraham ben Hiyya, who died about 
1136, is said to have ordained that the Messiah was to be ex- 
pected 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 con- 
siders 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 

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

8 Op. cit, p. 76. 

Der Stern der Weisen (1827), pp. 54*?. 

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

11 Corresponding to 1396 B.C. 

12 Actually the conjunction took place in Sagittarius (>?<). The coniunctiones 
magnae of the water trigon (, nt ^Q 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 Ger- 
hardt, Der Stern des Messias, pp. 54! 

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

74 



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. Al- 
bumasar 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 laldabaoth, 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 laldabaoth, who is 
identical with Saturn, as Origen points out. 21 The demiurge of 
the Naassenes is a "fiery god, the fourth by number/' 22 Accord- 
ing 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 evi- 
dently a close relationship, and also, it appears, with Yahweh, 
the demiurge of the Old Testament. 

129 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 

is "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" ('Po^d), is a corruption of Kewan (Chiun). 

16 Dozy and de Goeje, "Nouveaux documents pour 1'^tude de la religion des 

Harraniens," p. 350. 17 Abu Ma'shar, d. 885. 

18 Gerhardt, p. 57. Also Pierre d'Ailly, Concordantia astronomic cum theologia, 

etc., fol. g4 (Venice, 1490): "But Saturn, as Messahali says, has a meaning which 

concerns the Jewish people or their faith." 

10 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. 3526:. 

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 

75 



AION 



a theriomorphic form of the Jewish god. A pictorial representa- 
tion o it is the well-known mock crucifixion on the Palatine. 27 
Similar traditions can be found in Plutarch, 28 Diodorus, Jose- 
phus, 29 and Tacitus. 30 Sabaoth, the seventh archon, has the form 
o 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 
130 According to medieval tradition, the religion of the Jews 
originated in a conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn, Islam in 
U 6 9 , Christianity in U 6 5 , and the Antichrist in U 6 C . 35 



Megarian philosopher Diodoros. But the reason for the Saturn-ass analogy prob- 
ably 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 physio gnomici 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. (Manette, Dende'rah, 
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. Mar- 
cus, I, pp. sasff.) 30 The Histories, trans, by W. H. Fyfe, II, pp. 2041?. 
31 Epiphanius, Panarium, ed. Oehler, I, p. 184. 

ZZApologeticus adversus gentes, XVI (Migne, PJL. f vol. i, cols. 364-65; cf. trans, 
by S. Thelwall, I, pp. 84^). 

33 Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, in Moralia, trans, by Babbitt, pp. 77, 123. In 
ch. 31 Plutarch states that the legend of Set's flight on an ass and of his two sons 
Hierosolymtis and Judaeus is not Egyptian, but pertained to the 'louScu/ca- 

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. aS* 1 (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 sig- 
nifies 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 de- 
lay in the sign/' Cf. also Pierre d'Ailly, Concordantia, etc., fol. d8 r . J. H. Heideg- 
ger (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 $ c5 H 

76 



THE SIGN OF THE FISHES 



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, be- 
cause the approximation of the two planets was exceptionally 
large and of an impressive brilliance. In addition, seen helio- 
centrically, it took place near the equinoctial point, which at 
that time was located between T and K> that is, between fire 
and water. 38 The conjunction was further qualified by the im- 
portant fact that Mars was in opposition, which means, astro- 
logically, 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 con- 
junction took place on May 29, in the year 7 B.C V then the posi- 
tion of the sun especially important in a man's nativity at 
Christ's birth would be in the double sign of the Twins?* One 



to Christianity, $ 6 ^ to Judaism, $ <5 $ to Islam, and according to 
him 6 $ signifies idolatry ("Commentarium in Ptolemaeum De astrorum 
Judiciis," p. 188). 

36 Christensen, Le Premier Homme et le premier roi dans Vhistoire Ugendaire 
des Iraniens, part i, 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'Ailly 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- 7 O1 )> sa Y s that ^ od 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 heliocentrically, the conjunction took place just 
in front of the equinoctial point, and this gives it a special significance astro- 
logically. Pierre d'Ailly (Concordantia, etc., fol. b*) says: "But a great conjunc- 
tion is that of Saturn and Jupiter in the beginning of the Ram/' These con- 

77 



AION 

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 corre- 
lated with Set, and this is interesting in view of the tradition that 
Christianity originated in a conjunction of Jupiter with Mer- 
cury. In the New Kingdom (XlXth 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, 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 

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 posi- 
tions are those between two trigons. Albumasar (De magnis coniunc., tract. 3, 
diff. i, fol. D 8*) says they manifest themselves "in changes of parties and offices 
and in changes of the laws and ... in the coming of prophets and of prophesy- 
ing and of miracles in parties and offices of state." 

40 Crucifixion was a well-known punishment for slaves. Furthermore, the Cross 
with a snake on it, instead of the Crucified, is often found in medieval works 
of art, 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. 

78 



THE SIGN OF THE FISHES 



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 

132 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 [WIDOW?] 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. 

*33 One could hardly find the ^vAo/cpiw/w, or 'discrimination of 
the natures' that characterizes the Gnostic Redeemer, presented 
more graphically than in the astrological determination of time. 
The astrological predictions that were quite possible in antiquity 
all point to the prominent double aspect 44 of the birth that oc- 
curred at this particular moment of time, and one can under- 
stand how plausible the myth of Christ and the Antichrist, then 
entering into manifestation, must have appeared to the astro- 
logical intellects of that epoch. 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 

42 pistis Sophia, Mead trans., pp. ii8f., 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" 
(ffwrypes) in Pistis Sophia (Mead trans., pp. 2, 17, and elsewhere). 

45 Also mentioned in the Chronique of Tabari (I, ch. 23, p. 67). There Anti- 
christ 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 

79 



AION 

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 anti- 
thetical nature of the fishes. From about this period, too the 
eleventh centurycomes the apocryphal text of a Johannine 
Genesis in which the two fishes are mentioned, this time in un- 
mistakably astrological form. 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. 



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 Com- 
pendium 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. 1 1) 
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. 8*) calls the sixth "clima" (inclination towards the 
Pole) that of Gog and Magog, and correlates it with Gemini and Virgo. 
**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 snd cent. A.D. 

80 



THE SIGN OF THE FISHES 



134 ^ The year 531 is characterized astronomically by a conjunc- 
tion of U 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 is 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 X may perhaps shed light on the prophecy about the 
war of the tanninirn, 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 Chris- 
tians and Ebionites. 47 

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

*3 6 The precession of the equinoxes was a fact well known to 
the astrologers of antiquity. Origen, helped out by the observa- 
tions and calculations of Hipparchus, 48 uses it as a cogent argu- 
ment 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 <oSta vo^ra (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 

47 Epiphanius, Panarium, XXX (Oehler edn., I, pp. 24-off.). 

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

40 Origen, Commentaria in Genesim, torn. Ill, i, 14, 11 (Migne, F.G.j 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 [i 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, 

81 



AION 

spring-point will have moved from its present position 18 de- 
grees 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 Mid- 
dle Ages were much concerned with the calculation of coniunc- 
tiones maximae and magnae, as we know from Pierre d'Ailly 
and Cardan. 51 Pierre d'Ailly reckoned that the first coniunctio 
maxima (u 6 in T) after the creation of the world took 
place in 5027 B.C., while Cardan relegated the tenth conjunction 
to A.D. 361 3. 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 astro- 
logical speculation this date is naturally of the greatest impor- 
tance. 

137 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 spiritu- 
alis," 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 Borgo San Donnino, proclaimed in his Intro- 
ductorius in evangelium aeternum, which appeared in 1254 in 
Paris, that Joachim's three main treatises were in fact the ever- 
lasting gospel, and that in the year 1260 this would replace the 

51 The theory of the conjunctions was set down in writing by the Arabs about 
the middle of the gth 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. 



THE SIGN OF THE FISHES 



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. Bene- 
dict, whose founding of the Benedictine Order revived monas- 
ticism in the West. 

138 To Pierre d'Ailly the time of Pope Innocent III (i 198-1216) 
had already seemed significant. About the year 1 189, he says, the 
revolutions of Saturn were once again completed ("completae 
anno Christi 1 189 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 Chris- 
tian church." Pierre d'Ailly thus lays stress on the same phe- 
nomena that struck us as being characteristic of the time, and 
further regards this epoch as having been foretold in astrology. 

*39 The date for the founding of the monastery of Monte Cas- 
sino 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 begin- 
ning still comes within the domain of the Son, but Joachim sur- 
mises 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 fructificatWj 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 

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 sym- 
bolorum, pp. igoff. 

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



AION 

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 cen- 
tury. 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 dis- 
tinction . . . 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, fol- 
lowed 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 move- 
ment of the spirit and was one of its outstanding figures. One 
must ask oneself what psychological impulse could have moved 

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 nee Deo nee 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. 779!) 

84 



THE SIGN OF THE FISHES 



him and his adherents to cherish such bold expectations as the 
substitution of the "everlasting gospel" for the Christian mes- 
sage 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 revolu- 
tionary 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 dawn- 
ing. At any rate the Church's condemnation is thoroughly under- 
standable, 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 an- 
other interpretation becomes not only possible but even prob- 
able. 

14* 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, uncon- 
sciouslyand 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 numi- 
nous 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 arche- 
type. This archetype is not of uniform meaning, but was orig- 
inally an ambivalent dualistic figure 58 that broke through again 

58 Cf . "The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales," in Part I of vol. 9. 

85 



AION 

in th& 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 inti- 
mations of this dualistic figure. It was therefore very natural, 
in an age which coincided with the beginning of the Pisces era 
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 mys- 
terium iniquitatis. Fortunately for us, the threat of his coming 
had already been foretold in the New Testamentfor 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.jThe present age must come to terms 
drastically with the factVas 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 ambiva- 
lence, is also a mediator and uniter of opposites, 59 an idea that 
preoccupied the alchemists for many centuries. 

59 "The Spirit Mercurius" (Swiss edn., pp. isSfL), and "A Psychological Approach 
to the Dogma of the Trinity," pars. 257$. 

86 



THE SIGN OF THE FISHES 



142 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 ecclesi- 
astical 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 

43 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. 12,14-0. 
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 move- 
ment as the forerunner of the Reformation. At about the time 
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries we find also the begin- 
nings of Latin alchemy, whose philosophical and spiritual con- 
tent I have tried to elucidate in my book Psychology and Al- 
chemy. 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- 

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.] 

8 7 



AION 

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." 6S 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. m 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, com- 
mon to ecclesiastical and alchemical language alike, goes back to 
I Corinthians 10 : 4 and I Peter 2 : 4. 

144 The new rock, then, takes the place of Christ, just as the 
everlasting gospel was meant to take the place of Christ's mes- 
sage. Through the descent and indwelling of the Holy Ghost 
the vtoTijs, 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 

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

63 Thomas Aquinas, pseud., "Aurora, sive Aurea hora," p. 194: "He struck the 
rock and the metallic waters flowed out." 

^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. 8 5 .) 

65 Explanations 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, 34! (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. 

69JDe errore profanarum religionum, 20, i. 

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

"Shepherd" of Hernias* 

88 



THE SIGN OF THE FISHES 



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 The- 
ologia Germanica direct to Luther, and via alchemy to modern 
science. 

145 Let us now turn back to the theme of Christ as the fish. Ac- 
cording to Doelger, 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 gos- 
pels (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. 

146 A direct astrological aspect of Christ's birth is given us in 
Matthew 2 : iff. 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 astro- 
logical standpoint or was at least brought into connection with 

71 Doelger, IX6TS-* Das Fischsymbol, I, p. 18. Though the Abercius inscription, 
which dates from the beginning of the $rd cent, (after A.D. 216), is of importance 
in this connection, it is of doubtful Christian origin. Dieterich (Die Grabschrift 
des Aberkios), in the course of a brilliant argument, demonstrates that the "holy 
shepherd" mentioned in the inscription is Attis, the Lord of the sacred Ram 
and the thousand-eyed shepherd of glittering stars. One of his special forms 
was Elogabal of Emera, the god of the emperor Heliogabalus, who caused the 
hieros gamos of his god to be celebrated with Urania of Carthage, also called 
Virgo coelestis. Heliogabalus was a gallus (priest) of the Great Mother, whose 
fish only the priests might eat. The fish had to be caught by a virgin. It is con- 
jectured that Abercius had this inscription written in commemoration of his 
journey to Rome to the great hieros gamos, sometime after A.D. 216. For the same 
reasons there are doubts about the Christianity of the Pectorios inscription at 
Autun, in which the fish figures too: "E<r0(.e irv . . . , i-^Q^v %-x, uv va^&fiais 
T%0itt X<$pra dpa \i\atu deff-rrora fftarep: "Eat . . . (reading uncertain), holding 
the fish in the hands. Nourish now with the fish, I yearn, Lord Saviour." Prob- 
able reading: viv&uv instead of irewdcav. CL Cabrol and Leclercq, Dictionnaire 
d'archdologie chrttienne, XIII, cols. 28840% "Pectorios." The first three distichs 
of the inscription make the acrostic Ichthys. Dating is uncertain (grd-sth cent.). 
Cf. Doelger, I, pp. isff. 

89 



AION 

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 other- 
worldly life of the Redeemer. 72 

147 Above all it is the connections with the age of the Fishes 
which are attested by the fish symbolism, either contemporane- 
ously with the gospels themselves ("fishers of men/' fishermen 
as the first disciples, miracle of loaves and fishes), or immedi- 
ately 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 pre- 
vailing 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 (apviov, lamb) of the declining 
Aries era. 75 Matthew 27 : 158:. hands down this mythologem in 

721 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 alien Volher und des 
Christentums. 

73 According to Tertullian (Adversus Marcionem, I, cap. XIV; Migne, PX V vol. 2, 
col. 262) the fish signifies "the holier food." Cf. also Goodenough, Jewish Sym- 
bols, V, pp. 4iff. 

74 Origen, In Genesim horn. 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. 

75isler, Orpheus The Fisher, pp. 51$. 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 in- 
volved in the formation of symbolic images, hence sexuality as well. Sex is not 

9 



THE SIGN OF THE FISHES 



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 (>) fre- 
quently 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 natural- 
istic. 76 The zodiac from the temple of Hathor at Denderah (ist 
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 



"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, PL I, and Eisler, The Royal Art of Astrology, PL 5, following 
p. 164. 78 Gaedechens, Der Marmorne Himmelsglobus. 

79 Cumont, Textes et monuments, II. 

91 



AION 

angles to one another and hence form a cross. This counter- 
movement, 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 

148 Although no connection of any kind can be proved be- 
tween 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 ramifica- 
tions 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 synchro- 
nistically, 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 (aiyoKtpw, the goat- 
fish). 81 As a zodiacal sign, therefore, it is not in the least remark- 
able. 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 knowl- 
edge of astrology would account for at least some of this sym- 

80 See the two fishes in Lambspringk's symbols (Mus. herm., p. 343), represent- 
ing 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 com- 
pared 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-Matter composite returning to its Unique Principle." 

81 Capricorn V3 or 3. 

92 



THE SIGN OF THE FISHES 



holism in certain Gnostic-Christian circles. 82 But this assump- 
tion 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 dis- 
guised astrological myths. On the contrary, one gets the impres- 
sion 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 premedita- 
tion. Hence one could speak just as well of the seemingly for- 
tuitous 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 main- 
tain 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 weak 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 between the two fishes coincides roughly with the six- 
teenth century, the time of the Reformation, which as we know 
is so extraordinarily important for the history of Western sym- 
bols. Since then the spring-point has moved along the southern 
edge of the second fish, and will enter Aquarius in the course of 

82 A clear reference to astrology can be found in Pistis Sophia, where Jesus con- 
verses 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. 

93 



AION 

the third millennium. 84 Astrologically interpreted, the designa- 
tion 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 

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. Astro- 
logically 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 also 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. 28of.) 



94 



VII 

THE PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS 

150 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 coin- 
cides with the fact that the Church suffered a schism in the six- 
teenth 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 con- 
fronted with a crisis of Western civilization whose outcome 
appears to be exceedingly dubious. 

15 1 With this background in mind, I would like to mention the 
astrological prophecies of Nostradamus, written in a letter x to 
Henry II of France, on June 27, 1558. After detailing a year 
characterized, among other things, by U 6 with $ Q ff ? 
he says: 

1 Printed in the Amsterdam edition of the Vrayes Centuries et Propheties de 
Maistre Michel Nostredame (1667), pp. g6ff. 

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, $ 6 $ signifies "the law of Mahomet" (Comment, in PtoL, p. 188). 
This aspect could therefore indicate an attack by Islam. Albumasar regards 
Zf 6 $ 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. con- 
iunct., tract. I, diff. 4, p. a8*). 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. 

95 



AION 

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 renova- 
tion 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 coniunc- 
tio maxima, 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 

3 Where Roman Christendom succumbed to Islam. 

* The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus, trans, and ed. by H. C. Roberts, 

pp. 23 iff. 

5 D 7^ to 8*, div. 2, cap. 60 and 61. C. also Thorndike, A History of Magic and 

Experimental Science, IV, p. 102. 

96 



THE PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS 



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. e . . Yet, despite the indeterminate state- 
ment 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 prob- 
ability that after the sect of Mahomet none other will come save 
the law of the Antichrist. 6 

*54 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* In Part III of his 
book, chapter 1 7, Pierre d'Ailly criticizes this view and calls it a 
"false deduction." In his treatise against * 'supers titiosos astrono- 
mos," 1410, he maintains that the Christian religion should not 
be brought under astrological laws. He was alluding in particu- 
lar to Roger Bacon, who had revived the theory that Christianity 
was under the influence of the planet Mercury. Pierre d'Ailly 

6"Et post illam erit complementum 10 revolutionum saturnalium anno Christ! 
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 tune et magnae et mirabiles alterationes mundi 
et mutationes futurae sunt, et maxims circa leges et sectas, nam cum praedicta 
coniunctione et illis revolutionibus Saturni ad hoc concurret revolutio sen 
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 licet de adventu sui 
determinate tempore vel momento haberi non possit humanitus certitude. . . . 
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 ilia tempora fieri mutationem 
sectarum et secundum eos post machometum erit aliquis potens, qui legem 
foedam et magicam constituet. Ideo verisimili probabilitate credi potest, quod 
post sectam machometi nulla secta veniet, nisi lex antichristi." 
7 Concordantia, etc., fol. b 5. 

97 



AION 

held that only superstitions and heretical opinions were astro- 
logically 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 improve- 
ment on 1 789. Both dates are suggestive, and a knowledge of sub- 
sequent 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 enantio- 
dromia 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 T, 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 

8 Cf. Thorndike, IV, p. 103. 

9 In classical usage renovatio can have the meaning of the modern word "revolu- 
tion," 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 "e*crasez I'infctme!" 

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. 

121 cannot claim to have understood Pierre d'Ailly's argument. Here is the 
text (Second treatise, ch. 60, "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 coniunc- 
tionem et illud complementum dictarum 10 revolutionum erit status octavae 
sphaerae circiter per annos 25 quod sic patet: quia status octavae sphaerae erit 

98 



THE PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS 



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 particu- 
larly appropriate to the movable signs" (T 5, ==, Itf). 13 Accord- 
ing to Pierre d'Ailly, a Saturn period came to an end in 1 1 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 signalizesby 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 

157 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, 

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 con- 
junction 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. 

16 Cf. "The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales," in Part I of vol. 9. 

99 



AION 

as St. Eucherius of Lyons (d. 450) remarks, 16 goes back to Jere- 
miah i : 14: "From the north shall an evil wind break forth 
upon all the inhabitants of the land/ 1 17 and other passages such 
as Isaiah 14 : igf.: 

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 

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." 

22Enar. in Ps. XL VII, 3; Migne, PJL. f vol. 36, col. 534. 

WSancti Victoris Parisiensis Gregorianum; Migne, P.L V vol. 193, cols. 5gf. 

24 Allusion to the lower triad. 

1OO 



THE PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS 



false, of fitting and unfitting." 25 "That is the smoke/ 1 says Adam 
Scotus, "which the prophet Ezekiel, in his vision of God, saw 
coming from the north," 2e 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." 2S 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 : 2i. 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." 80 
159 In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that Nos- 
tradamus warns against the usurper from the north when fore- 
telling the coming of the Antichrist. Even before the Reforma- 
tion the Antichrist was a popular figure in folklore, as the 
numerous editions of the "Entkrist" 31 in the second half of the 



tripartite tabernaculo, III, c. 9; Migne, PX V vol. 198, col. 761, Adam 
Scotus speaks of the "darkness of the smoke from the north." Pseudo-Clement 
(Homilies, XIX, 22) stresses "the sins o 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. i : 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. i : 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, 
PJL. f vol. 76, cols. 54, 55). 

30 Jer. i : i$f. 31 Cf. Symbols of Transformation, par. 565. 

1O1 



AION 

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. 

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

*6i After this excursion, let us turn back to our fish symbolism. 

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

33 So in Giovanni Nanni (1432-1502). See Thorndike, IV, pp. 



VIII 

THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE 
OF THE FISH 

162 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 Herrnes Kriophoros (the "ram- 
bearer") 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 popu- 
larized in the "Shepherd" of Hermas (snd century). Like the 
"giant fish" mentioned in the Abercius inscription, 2 the shep- 
herd 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 coin- 
cides 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 under- 
gone 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. 

16 3 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 : i: "A 
woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, 

1 Eisler, Orpheus The Fisher, pp. 5 iff. 2 [Cf. par. 127, n. 4.] 

3 Poimandres, pp. gaff. 

103 



AION 

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 

16 4 The mother-goddess and the star-crowned woman of the 
Apocalypse counts as oneis usually thought of as a virgin 

(Trap&Vos, Virgo). The Christmas message, *H TrapOtvos rero/cev, avgel 

<ws (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. 

165 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 invol- 
untary witness to the truth of Christianity. 

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

5 Bouch6-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. 6g2f. This passage is not in the older 
editions of the Panarium, since it was discovered only recently in a ms. at Venice. 

104 



THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FISH 



166 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 inter- 
preted 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 (<7rot^<uW) the pagans with an iron 
staff"? 

16 7 As this passage contains an allusion on the one hand to 
the Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 66 : 7,* 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 remark- 
ably bizarre figure with seven horns and seven eyes cannot pos- 
sibly be explained in Christian terms." Also, the "lamb" de- 
velops 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 : 156:.). He is likened 
to the "lion of the tribe of Judah" (Rev. 5 : 5). This lamb, who 
is reminiscent of Psalm 2 : 9 ("You shall break them with a rod 
of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel"), rather 
gives one the sinister impression of a daemonic ram, 11 and not 
at all that of a lamb who is led meekly to the slaughter. The 
lamb of the Apocalypse belongs, without doubt, to the cate- 
gory 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, 

7 Boll, pp. 12 iff. 

8 "Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was de- 
livered 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 i : 6), so that God is described 
under the aspect of Ezekiel's vision and is thought of in Yahwistic terms an 
"umbra in lege"! 

105 



AION 

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 re- 
sentment 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 Bere- 
shith Rabbati of Moses ha-Darshan that Elias found in Bethle- 
hem 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 

168 This story describes a Messiah who, though born in Bethle- 
hem, is wafted by divine intervention into the Beyond (sea = 
unconscious). From the very beginning his childhood is so 

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

13 [Cf. Num. 16. EDITORS.] i^Wunsche, Die Leiden des Messias, p. 91. 

106 



THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FISH 



threatened that he is scarcely able to live. The legend is sympto- 
matic 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 in- 
terlude is not so far off the 530 years mentioned in the Tal- 
mudic 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 32 : 17, the "first-born 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 Yah- 
weh." 1S 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 Anti- 
christ 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 

iSTargum on Canticles 4 : 5 in The Targum to The Song of Songs, p. 50. 
Wiinsche, p. in. 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 Wiinsche, p. 100. IT Ibid., p. 114. 13 Ibid., p. 115. 

19 Armilus or Armillus = 'PwjutiXos, the Antichrist. Methodius: "Romulus, who 
is also Armaeleus." 20 Wiinsche, p. 120. 

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

107 



AION 

the victorious one, but is ultimately thought of as his antag- 
onist. 22 

169 As these traditions show, the above-mentioned weakness of 
the Messianic element consists in a split which in the end be- 
comes 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 Chris- 
tianity 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. 

22Bousset, The Antichrist Legend, p. in. 

wpahlavi Texts, trans, by E. W. West, p. 193. 

24 Cf. the above-mentioned opposition between mercy and justice in God's 

nature. Cf. also "Answer to Job." 

108 



THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FISH 

Thou hast breached all his walls; 

thou hast laid his strongholds in ruins. 25 

*7 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 every- 
thing that happens to the God-image has an effect on the latter. 
Any uncertainty about the God-image causes a profound uneasi- 
ness 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 bewilder- 
ment 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 men- 
tion 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. 

171 As Bousset has plausibly suggested, the duality of the apoc- 
alyptic 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 nullifica- 
tion of it by the Church fathers, and shows that this question 

25 Psalm 89 : ssff. 

109 



AION 

had already become topical at the beginning of the third cen- 
tury. 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 him- 
self.'* 27 Valentinus lived sometime in the first half of the second 
century, and the Apocalypse was probably written about A.D. 90, 
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 Dyophysites 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 compre- 

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

27lrenaeus, Adv. haer., I, 11, i (Roberts /Rambaut trans., I, p. 46). 
28 Doctrine of the Valentinian Secundus (ibid., I, p. 46). 

29)e oratione, 27: ". . . so that that supreme sinner and blasphemer against 
the Holy Ghost may be kept from sin through all this present age, and here- 
after 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.] 

110 



THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FISH 

hend the whole, but it is probable that the whole is uncon- 
sciously present in the ego. This would be equivalent to the 
highest possible state of reXetWts (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 coin- 
cidence 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 redemp- 
tory name Joshua 33 (Yehoshua, Yeshua, Gr. lesous) is con- 
nected 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 

30 Namely Piscis Austrinus, the "Southern Fish," which merges with Pisces and 
whose principal star is FomalhauL 31 Matt. 12 : 39, 16 : 4; Luke n : sgf. 

32 Cf, Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes, and my Symbols of Transforma- 
tion, pars. goSff. 33"Yahweh is salvation." 

34 Koran, Sura 18. Cf. "Concerning Rebirth," in Part I of vol. 9, and Vollers, 
"Chidher," p. 241. 

Ill 



AION 

1 74 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 South- 
ern 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, lascivi- 
ous" 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. Their 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 Baby- 
lonian culture-hero Cannes 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 devilis caught. 38 In Jewish tradition 
the Leviathan is a sort of eucharistic food stored up for the 

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 BoucheXLeclercq, 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 tena- 
cious 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. 

112 



THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FISH 

faithful in Paradise. After death, they clothe themselves in fish- 
robes. 39 Christ is not only a fisher but the fish that is "eucha- 
ristically" 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 Tobias: the angel Raphael helps 
Tobias 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 : iff.). 

*75 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 

!7 6 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 de- 

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

40 Cf. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, V, pp. 4iff. 

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, 
'IX6TS, I, p. 4. Tertullian (De baptismo, cap. I) says: "But we little fishes, after 
the example of our 'IX8TS 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 
ist cent.) were named after various kinds of fishes. (Abot de Rabbi Nathan, 
cap. 40 [cf. trans, by J. Goldin, p. 166], cited in Scheftelowitz, p. 5.) 

43 Pohl, Das Ichthysmonument von Autun, and Doelger, I, pp. i2ff. 

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



AION 

voured by the water monsters. 45 He then grows mightily, fairy- 
tale 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 autoch- 
thonous. 

Since the Fishes stand for mother and son, the mythological 
tragedy of the son's early death and resurrection is already im- 
plicit in them. Being the twelfth sign of the Zodiac, Pisces de- 
notes 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 eschato- 
logical 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 siKth, 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 

45 De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, II, pp. 334! 
46Shatapatha Brahmana (Eggeling trans., pp. 2i6ff.). 

47Doelger, I, p. 23. Keshava means 'having much or fine hair,' a cognomen 
of Vishnu. 48 ibid,, pp. 2 iff. 

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 kind- 
ness' [Eph. 2 : 7]" (On Iton/ Chad wick trans., p. 304). 

114 



THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FISH 

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. More- 
over, the astrological evidence up to the second century A.D. is 
by no means of such a kind that the Christ/Antichrist antithe- 
sis 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 essential. 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 what- 
ever for supposing that the zodion of the Fishes could have 
served as the Ichthys prototype. 

178 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 some- 
times 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. ioo. 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 prob- 
ably the "very great fish" of the Abercius inscription, corre- 
sponding to the "fish from the fountain" mentioned in a 

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 
orientates dans le paganisme romain, pp. 108-9, 2 55~57-) Tne cnief deit 7 * tne 
Philistines was called Dagon, derived from dag, 'fish/ 

51 rb irorripiov rijs e$\oylas: 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 jildischen Kunst, 
pp. i22f. and 134! 



AION 

religious debate at the court of the Sassanids (5th century). The 
fountain refers to the Babylonian Hera, but in Christian lan- 
guage it means Mary, who in orthodox as well as in Gnostic 
circles (Acts of Thomas) was addressed as ^-p}, 'fountain/ Thus 
we read in a hymn of Synesius (c. 350): Ilaya Trayw, dpxw apxd, 
pifwv pi'fa, fjiova* d ^ovaScov, /crA. (Fountain of fountains, source of 
sources, root of roots, monad of monads art thou.) 56 The foun- 
tain of Hera was said to contain the one fish (povov l\0vv} 
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 "fish from the fountain" 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 athana- 
sias is the flesh of Leviathan, the "Messianic fish," as Scheftelo- 
witz says. The Talmud Sanhedrin says that the Messiah "will 
not come until a fish is sought for an invalid and cannot be pro- 
cured." 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 pre- 
historic monsters seem to represent a pair of opposites, the one 
being unquestionably a land animal, and the other aquatic. 

SSWirth, Aus orientalischen Chroniken, p. 199. 

57 Ibid., pp. 161, igf. 

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

59 Eisler, Orpheus-The Fisher, PL LXIV. 

60 See Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 28. 

61 Scheftelowitz, p. 9; from the Talmud Nezikin VI, Sanhedrin II (BT f p. 662). 
Cf. the effdte TTIV&UV in the Pectorios inscription. 

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

63 Psychological Types (1923 edn., pp. sssff.)- 

116 



THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FISH 

J 79 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. . . . 

180 Always the hope of a Messiah is connected with the appear- 
ance 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 from a trust- 
worthy source. The 'Very great 65 and pure fish from the foun- 
tain" 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" (els 
Ovs) recorded in the "Happenings in Persia." 67 



64 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. 



67 T& ev Jlepaidt, irpaxO&ra (Wirth, p. 151). 



117 



IX 

THE AMBIVALENCE OF THE FISH SYMBOL 

According to the Syrian Apocalypse of Baruch (29 : iff.), 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." l 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 dupli- 
cation 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 Levi- 
athan 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 

1 Charles, II, p. 497, modified. 

2 Midrash Tanchuma, Lev. n : i and Deut. 29 : 9; cited in Scheftelowitz, pp. ggf. 

3 Talmud, Nezikin III, Baba Bathra (J3T, 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., I, pp. 14-15). 

118 



THE AMBIVALENCE OF THE FISH SYMBOL 



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. 

1 2 He comments: "It is remarkable that the two adjectives brh 
and f qltn are the ones which qualify, in Isaiah 27 : i, a particu- 
larly 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. 

18 3 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 

184 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 tend- 
ency, 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 

5 Cf. the Midrash Tanchuma. 

6 "Note compl^mentaire sur le poeme de Mot et Alei'n," 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 for the Perplexed, p. 303). Accordingly 
Leviathan is a kind of super-animal, just as Yahweh is a kind of superman. 



AION 

a fish would appear in place of Leviathan, the monstrous ani- 
mals of tradition having meanwhile faded into mere attributes 
of death and the devil. 

l8 5 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 normally mixes with the unconscious shadow, the two 
together forming a double and often antagonistic personality. 
If we apply this experience from the domain of practical psy- 
chology 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 crea- 
ture, 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 Augus- 
tine Christ the fish is "drawn from the deep," 9 so in II Esdras 
13 : sff. the "man" came out of the sea like a wind. His appear- 
ance was heralded by an eagle and a lion, theriomorphic sym- 
bols 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 Imhullu, the north wind. 11 The word tebuna comes 

9 Confessions, Sheed trans., p. 275. 10 Cf. Goodenough, V, pp. 5 iff. 

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). 

120 



THE AMBIVALENCE OF THE FISH SYMBOL 



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 de- 
velopment of consciousness whereby they become assimilated 
and humanized. The fish changes, via the warm-blooded quad- 
ruped, 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. 

*86 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 Cannes, 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 Oxy- 
rhynchus worshipped a fish. Plutarch 1T 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 

187 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 

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

13 n Esdras is a Jewish text written at the end of the ist cent. A.D. 

14 Cuniont, Les Religions orientates, p. 255. 

15 Ibid., pp. 108-9, 2 5 6 - 16 Eis ler, Orpheus The Fisher, p. 20. 

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

18 'IX9TS, I, p. 126. The risen Christ ate of a broiled fish (Luke 24 : 42). 

121 



AION 

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 oxyrhyn- 
chus, 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, im- 
pulsive, irrational, and truculent." 21 Because of their voracious- 
ness, 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 comes 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 hiero- 
glyph for Set has as a determinative the sign for a stone, or else 

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. isof.). 

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

23 Budge, II, pp. 24 if. Cf. Christ's transfiguration in the presence of Moses and 
Elias (Matt. 17 : 4), and the "Saviour of the twins" in Pistis Sophia. 



THE AMBIVALENCE OF THE FISH SYMBOL 



the unidentified Set-animal with long ears. There are paintings 
showing the heads of Hera-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 per- 
sonifications 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 

188 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 help- 
ing 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 "be- 
hind 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. Ezekiel says, furthermore (i : 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 (i : 26, RSV): "And above the solid plate that was 
over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appear- 
ance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was 
a likeness as it were of a human form." 

189 In view of the close ties between Israel and Egypt an inter- 
mingling of symbols is not unlikely. 25 What is remarkable, how- 
ever, is that in Arab tradition the region round the heavenly 
Pole is seen in the form of a fish. Qazvini says: "The Pole can 

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." 

123 



AION 

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 con- 
scious reflection, however, the coincidence of opposites becomes 
a major problem, which we do everything possible to circum- 
vent. That is why the position of the devil in Christian dogma 
is so very unsatisfactory. When there are such gaps in our collec- 
tive ideas, in the dominants of our conscious orientation, we 
can count with absolute certainty on the existence of comple- 
mentary 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 

26 Lit., 'daughters of the bier', presumably mourning women who walk ahead of 
the coffin. Cf. Ideler, Untersuchungen iiber den Ursprung und die Bedeutung der 
Sternnamen, p. 11. 27 Ibid., p. 15. 28j e remias, p. 22. 

29 Ibid., p. 33. 30 Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, pp. 8ff. 

124 



THE AMBIVALENCE OF THE FISH SYMBOL 



this sort remained totally unconscious so far as the adepts were 
concerned. What they were aiming at was a more or less con- 
scious restoration of the primitive God-iinage. 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 aspect appertain to the same divine being in a way 
that bears comparison with the views of Clement of Rome. 
192 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 ad- 
versary; 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 apos- 
trophizes Lucifer thus: "And dost thou strive perversely to- 
wards 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 

31 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 446. 

32 Garnerius, in Migne, PJL., vol. 193, col. 49. 

33 Tractatus de gradibus superbiae, in Migne, FX V 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.) 



X 
THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 

i. The Medusa 

J 93 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 sym- 
bol for the arcane substance and the lapis is perhaps question- 
able, 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 (nth- 
isth 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 distinctions, " * together with 
the "Aenigmata ex Visione Arislei" and "In Turbam philoso- 
phorurn 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 Neopla tonic 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* 

194 Now these "Allegoriae" 4 are our earliest source for the 
alchemical fish symbolism. For this reason we may assign a 

1 This treatise was not printed together with the Turba, like the others, but it 
appears to belong to the same category. The a8th Distinctio contains the "Dicta 
Belini" (Belinus zr Apollonius of Tyana), 

2 Cf. Ruska, Turba P kilos op horum. 

3 Cf. the edn. of Preisendanz. 

4 Printed in Artis auriferae (1593), I, pp. iggff.; Theatrum chemicum, V, pp. 64-ff.; 
and Manget, Bibliotheca chemica curiosa (1702), I, pp. 4670:., 494ff. 

126 



THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 



fairly Dearly date to the alchemical fish-before the eleventh cen- 
tury, In any case. 5 There is nothing to suggest that it is of Chris- 
tian 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 denot- 
ing the prima materia as well as the end product of the process, 
variously called lapis philosophorum, elixir vitae, aurum nos- 
trum, 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 
lapiSj means nothing other than the self, as I have explained in 
a detailed examination of its various attributes and peculiari- 
ties. 

*95 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, 'yel- 
lowing') 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. 

! 9 6 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- 

5 1 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 in- 
stance, the "procedure of Salmanas" (Berthelot, Alch. grecs, V, viii, 5) for produc- 
ing the "round pearl." Fish-glue was often used as an agglutinant. 

6 "Allegoriae," in Art. aurif. y I, p. 141: "Est in mari piscis rotundus, ossihus et 
corticibus carens, et habet in se pinguedinem, mirificam virtutem, quae si lento 
igne coquatur, donee eius pinguedo et humor prorsus recedit . . . et quousque 
lucescat, aqua maris imbuatur." 

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

127 



AION 

shell or mollusc. 8 At all events, it is some kind of round organ- 
ism that lives in the sea, presumably a scyphomedusa or jelly- 
fish, 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 Scy- 
phomedusae belong), they are equipped with tentacles; these 
contain the thread-cells or nernatocysts with which they poison 
their prey. 

*97 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 him- 
self 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** in the same 
breath 14 as the pulmo marinus, which swims freely on the sur- 
face, 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 con- 
fused 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 

8 See du Cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis, s.v. 
"cortex." 

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

10 From vrj^a, '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, 
l* Hist, nat., XVIII, 35. 

15 IX, 47 (Rackham /Jones trans., Ill, p. 220). 
16 XXXII, 10. 

1*8 



THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 



amoris vis inextinguibilis" (the inextinguishable power of true 
love). 17 

*9 8 Such an interpretation sounds very strange to modern ears. 
But for the Middle Ages Dalles Vergangliche ist nur ein Gleich- 
nis" 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 elab- 
orate. "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 : i, 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. 

199 As the quotation from the Song of Solomon shows, the in- 
terpretation 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 bright- 
ness, having all fire's power of burning, but without any light. 
. . . Such a conception describes the fire of hell." ld This fire is 
"concupiscentia," the "scintilla voluptatis" (spark of lechery). 

200 it is curious how often the medieval symbolists give dia- 
metrically opposed interpretations of the same symbol, ap- 
parently without becoming aware of the far-reaching and 

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. 

129 



AION 



dangerous possibility that the polarity 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 sub- 
terranean or submarine 20 fire. The "Gloria mundi/' for in- 
stance, 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 

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. i46ff., and Ruska, "Die Vision des Arisleus," pp. saff.) 

21 Mus. herm* (1678), pp. 2461*. 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 iyth cent. It was 
highly esteemed and was considered especially dangerous. In the Theatr. chem. 
(1661), VI, pp. 5i$ff., 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, con- 
temners, 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 punish- 
ments 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 quern occultatum occlu- 
sumque illi habent. . . . Item, ignis nobilissimus ignis est, quern 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 . . ." 

130 



THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 



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 "J ust as in these three God the Father, God the Son, 
and God the Holy Ghost unite themselves, 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 

201 Another treatise says of the water that it is the "hiding-place 
and dwelling-place of the whole treasure." 2S 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 

202 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 

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 mundLin 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. 

131 



AION 

203 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 
quatemity 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 

*4 In the "Introitus apertus" of Philalethes the arcane substance 
is named "chalybs" (steel). This, he says, is the "ami 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, fol- 
low 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 

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. 

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. 



THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 



flesh and blood, the supreme Medicine in the three monarchies 
of the earth/' 37 

205 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 88 
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 re- 
joice, but the fool will pay small heed to these things, and will 
not learn wisdom, even though he see the outward-turned cen- 
tral Pole marked with the notable sign 39 of the Almighty/' 

206 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 

37 philalethes, "Introitus apertus," MILS, herm., pp. 654!: ". . . ignis infernalis, 
secretus . . . mundi miraculum, virtutum superiorum in inferioribus systema, 
quare signo ilium notabili 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 carnem sanguinemque dabit, 
summam in tribus Terrae Monarchiis medicinam." 

(Cf. Waite, trans., The Hermetic Museum Restored and Enlarged, II, pp. 
i66f.) 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 Physi- 
cian" (Swiss edn., p. 36). Ruland (Lexicon of Alchemy, p. 36) 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. 

133 



AION 

East, West and by the turning of the compass to the north. 40 
Together they form a cross, i.e., a quaternity, which pertains to 
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 hemi- 
sphere 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. 

207 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 dis- 
orientation reached the point where he simply did not know 
what profession he wanted to take up. Then a dream carne to 
his help and showed him his goal in the fullest sense: 

208 fj e 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. 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 uncon- 
scious. 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." 

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



THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 



209 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 shat- 
tering 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 alchem- 
ical idea cannot be denied a certain grandeur. What is particu- 
larly 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 numi- 
nous one in its own right. 

210 Picinellus feels that his stella marts, "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 some- 
thing in man, namely his tongue, speech, and powers of expres- 
sion, 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, defil- 
ing the whole body, setting on fire the wheel of birth, and set 
on fire by hell." 42 

211 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 

41 Cf. my "Concerning Mandala Symbolism." 

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). 

135 



AION 

even sets on fire the "wheel of birth." The r/ooxos rij<s 
(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* 5 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 rpoxo's, 
'wheel'. The basic meaning of the horoscope is that, by mapping 
out the positions of the planets and their relations to one an- 
other (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 rep- 
resents, in essence, a system of original and fundamental quali- 
ties in a person's character, and can therefore be regarded as an 
equivalent of the individual psyche. Priscillian (d. 385) evi- 
dently 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 o 

^Psychology and Alchemy, par. 109. 

45 "The Spirit Mercurius" (Swiss edn., pp. 78 and 99). 

46 P. Nigidius Figulus lived in the ist cent. B.C. 

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

136 



THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 



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 re- 
garded as the horoscope. "Setting fire to the wheel" is therefore 
a figurative expression for a catastrophic revolt of all the origi- 
nal components of the psyche, a conflagration resembling panic 
or some other uncontrollable, and hence fatal outburst of emo- 
tion. 49 The total nature of the catastrophe is explained by the 
central position of the so-called "tongue," the diabolical ele- 
ment whose destructiveness is an essential part of every psyche. 
Seen in this light, the Stella marts stands for the fiery centre in 
us from which creative or destructive influences come. 

2. The Fish 

213 In our discussion of medieval fish symbolism we have so far 
been concerned only with a fish in name, the jelly-fish, without 
taking due account of the fact that this is not a fish at all in the 
zoological sense, andmore 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 numer- 
ous synonyms for the tincture, he remarks: "Likewise they com- 
pared it to fishes. Hence Mundus says in the Turba: Take one 
part fish-gall and one part calf s urine, etc. And in the 'Aenig- 
mata sapientum' it says: There is in our sea a small round fish, 
without bones or legs \crurib us\" 50 Since the gall mentioned in 
the quotation can only come from a real fish, Hoghelande obvi- 
ously 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 o integument, the incomprehensible "corticibus" of 

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 there- 
fore 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 "Pannenides," due to 
Arabic transcription: (Bar)Mnds. See Ruska, p. 25. 

137 



AION 

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, Pales- 
tine, and Libya, is six fingers long, and is a "pisciculus rotun- 
dus." It has two stones in its head and another one in the third 
vertebra of the tail (spondilo), or notochord. This stone is espe- 
cially 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 knowing it: for it is 
the dragon's stone (dracontius lapis). 55 

214 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. For 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, 

51 "Ossibus et corticibus carens." 

52 Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. "Hgaturae": "Corrigia or ligatura of Aphrodite. 
Ligaturae, alligaturae and alligamenta are amulets for dispelling diseases. Subal' 
ligaturae 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." 

55Delatte, Textes latins et vieux frangais relatifs aux Cyranides^ Fasc. XCIII, 

p. 56. 5&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." 

138 



THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 



and a powerful alexipharmic. Even though there are no dragons 
nowadays, the text says, these draconites are occasionally found 
in the heads o water-snakes. Ruland asserts that he has seen 
such stones, blue or black in colour. 

215 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, in- 
serted "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 Philos- 
ophers, 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 "black- 
ness" 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." ee 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." 

216 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 

59 Lucidus (see above, n. 54), 'brilliant, shining/ can also mean "white/ thus con- 
trasting 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 "Area arcani/* ibid., p. 314. 

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

64 Philosophia reformat^ p. 305. 

65 pantheus, Ars transmutationis metallicae (1519), fol. g r . 

66 Opera omnia chemica (1649), P- 3 1 ?' 

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

139 



AION 

a uniting symbol, 68 and hence its magical and divine properties. 
Our draconite, too, is endowed with extraordinary powers ("po- 
tentissimus valde"), which make it eminently suitable as the 
'ligature of Aphrodite," i.e., love-magic. Magic exercises a com- 
pulsion that asserts itself against the conscious mind and will of 
the victim; that is to say, a strange will arises in him and proves 
stronger than his ego. The only comparable effect capable of 
psychological verification is that exerted by unconscious con- 
tents, which by their compelling power demonstrate their affin- 
ity with or dependence on man's totality, that is, the self and 
its "karmic" functions. 69 We have already seen that the alchemi- 
cal 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." T0 

217 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. 

218 The text says of this fish: 

For that which we take, in order to prepare from it the Philo- 
sophical 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 

68 Psychology and Alchemy, "The Christ-Lapis 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. 

TO 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 compre- 
hensa." The abbreviated title of this treatise as printed in Vol. VI of Theatr. 
chem. is "Instructio de arbore solari." 

140 



THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 



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 de- 
clare 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 puri- 
fying all bodies that are poisoned. 72 

72 "Quia illud quod accipimus lit opus Philosophicum ex eo praeparemus, nihil 
aliud est quam pisciculus Echen[e]is sanguine et ossibus spinosis carens, et in 
profunda parte centri magni maiis mundi est inclusus. Hie 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, ilium qui ut Theophrastus loquitur, artem illam non callet, 
qua Lunam de firmamento trahat, et de coelo super terrain adducat, et in aquarn 
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, tune 
ipsum occultum secretum sapientum docemus, quomodo pisc[ic]ulum Remora 
dictum naturaliter cito et facile capere possit, qui navigia magni maris 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 noverunt. Sed ut clarum 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 instruam, qui potestatem habet, pisc[ic]ulum 



AION 

* 1 9 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, de- 
rives from a time when alchemy had almost given up its labora- 
tory 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 
mundL" The world-soul or, in this case, the world-spirit is a 
projection of the unconscious, there being no method or appara- 
tus 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 any- 
thing 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 uncon- 
scious 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 "Aenig- 
mata." 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 

Echen[e]is vel Remora dictum ex centre 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." 

142 



THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 



thing that helps him is the "cunning secret o 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 im- 
proved 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 obvi- 
ously 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 ex- 
pressed 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 

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 o the Turba., correspond to the 
vvo-eis of the alchemist Democritus (ist cent.). See Berthelot, Alch. grecs. They are 
substances or states of substances. 
77 "Omne quo indiget/' 

143 



AION 

terribly dependent on the ceaseless presence of God. 78 Only 
absolute totality can renew itself out of itself and generate itself 
anew. 

222 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 Small- 
est, 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. 

223 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 mar- 
vel enough at the mysterious powers of the Echeneis. His amaze- 
ment 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." 

224 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 Oxy- 
rhynchus 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" 

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," pp. 2 22 ff. EDITORS.] 

80 Opera, p. 10. 81 Grenfell and Hunt, New Sayings of Jesus,, p. 16. 

144 



THE FISH IX ALCHEMY 



that point the way to the kingdom of heaven (motif of the "help- 
ful 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 uncon- 
scious 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 patho- 
logical 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 illus- 
tration 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 Gatharists 

225 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, pub- 
lished by Benoist in his Histoire des Albigeois et des Vaudois, 
in 169 1. 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 be- 
fore 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. Pene- 
trating beneath the surface of the earth, "he found two fishes 
lying upon the waters, and they were like oxen yoked for 
ploughing, holding the whole earth by command of the in- 
visible Father from sunset to sunrise [or, from West to East]. 

82 Mus. herm.j p. 345. 

83. Regarding the combination of fish and bird in ancient mythology, cf. Good- 
enough, V, pp. 58ff. and figs. 63, 66, 69. 
84 Cited by Hahn, Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter, II, pp. 

145 



AION 

And when he went down, he found hanging clouds which cov- 
ered 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 i as a model, created the world and mankind. 

226 A prominent Catharist, 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 convic- 
tion that the world was created by the devil is found in many of 
the sects. The alchemist Johannes de Rupescissa was in all proba- 
bility a member of the Poor Men of Lyons, 87 who were influ- 
enced by the Catharists. In any case, he could be considered as 
a connecting link with this tradition. 

* 2 7 What strikes us most of all in this text is the fact that it con- 
tains the Old Bulgarian word Osob. Karl Meyer, in his Old 
Church Slavonic dictionary, 88 gives ocofo as /car" ISiav: ocotfa 
(osoba) means in Russian, Polish, and Czech 'individual, per- 
sonality/ "His osob" could therefore be translated as "that 

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 Concerned, with 
whom our Johannine revelation originated. In the Summa Fratris Reneri ("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." 

88Altkirchenslavisch-griechi$ches Worterbuch des Codex SuprasUensis. 

146 



THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 



which is peculiar to him." 89 This, In the case of the devil, would 
naturally be fire. 90 

228 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 interpre- 
tation 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 

229 Although the two fishes mentioned in the 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 be- 
fore 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 son- 
ship: "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 

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, PJL., vol. 40, col. 48). The derivation of the two 
fishes from II Esdras 6 : 4gfL (Soederberg, La Religion des Cathares, p, 97) seems 
to me questionable. The passage runs (Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, 
H, 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 Catharist 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). 



AION 

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 confes- 
sion of faith made before the emperor Alexius Comnenus by 
the Bogomil bishop Basilius in the year 1 1 1 1 , 95 

23 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 commis- 
sure ( = 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 com- 
pared 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. 

23 1 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 

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

95 Migne, P.G., vol. 130, cols, isgoff. 

9 6 This interpretation accords with modern astrological speculations. 
97 Concerning such symbols, see Neumann, The Origins and History of Con- 
sciousness. 98 Ripley, Chymische Schrifften (1624), p. 25. 

148 



THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 



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 plough- 
ing does not begin, like all other things, in the east, but in the 
west. This motif turns up again in alchemy. "Know," says Rip- 
ley, "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 differ- 
ent colours," etc." 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 ruled by two principles. The fishes in this 
context are parallel, like the oxen, and point to the same goal, 
although one is Christ and the other the Antichrist. 
232 This, roughly, would be the early medieval line of reasoning 
(if such an expression be permitted). I do not know whether 
the argument we have outlined was ever discussed consciously. 
It would nevertheless be possible, since the Talmudic prophecy 
concerning the year 530 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 sym- 
bolic form. For it was about this time (nth cent.) that the Jew- 
ish 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. 

9 Ibid., p. 33f. 

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

H9 



AION 

2 33 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 repre- 
sents 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 synchro- 
nicity, that is, its occurrence at a time that had been fixed 
astrologically. 

234 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 ap- 
peared 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 man by which was 
meant the aqua permanens or arcane substance. They are des- 
ignated "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 

235 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 move- 
ments 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 sci- 
ence, leading ultimately to the increasingly devilish develop- 
ments we have lived to experience in our own day, and to the 
evaporation of Christianity under the assaults of rationalism, 
intellectualism, materialism, and "realism." 

101 According to Irenaeus, the Gnostics held that the demiurge was the younger 
brother of Christ. 102 Mus. herm. f p. 343. 

150 



THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 



236 In conclusion,, I would like to give a concrete example of the 
way the symbol of the fish springs out of the unconscious autoch- 
thonously. 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 re- 
placed 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 trans- 
parent and I could see the bottom. WB 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 giv- 
ing something back to the river. Immediately afterwards I had 
a fishing-rod in my hand. I sat down on a rock and started fish- 
ing. 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 earthy grass and 
flowers sprang up, and the bushes expanded into a great -forest. 
A gust of wind blew and set everything in motion. Then, sud- 
denly, 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 
saidj quietly but distinctly: 'The patient ones in the innermost 
realm are given the fishj 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 

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." 



AION 

another circle ran round me, this time touching the other bank. 
At the same time I saw into the distance and a colourful land- 
scape 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 9 and here the voice paused for a moment, 
as if deliberating' the fourth realm joins on to the first. 10 * It is 
the highest and the lowest at once, for the highest and the low- 
est come together. They are at bottom one.' " Here the dreamer 
awoke with a roaring in her ears. 

23? 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 knowl- 
edge 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. Fish- 
ing is an intuitive attempt to "catch" unconscious contents 
(fishes). Silver and gold, in alchemical parlance, 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 reXaot. The 
first circle that touches the water illustrates the partial integra- 
tion 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 1 . 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 natu- 
rally produce a mandala, the outermost circle paradoxically 
coinciding with the centre, and recalling the old image for God; 

104 Cf. ch. XII. 105 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, s.v. "coniunctio." 

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

lOTDeussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophic, I, pt. iii, pp. 336fL and 

"The Spirit Mercurius" (Swiss edn., pp. i26ff.). 

108 Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 26 and 209, and "A Psychological Approach to 

the Dogma of the Trinity," pars. i84ff. 

152 



THE FISH IN ALCHEMY 



"God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and the circumfer- 
ence nowhere." 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." 

238 The dream sums up in condensed form the whole symbolism 
of the individuation process in a person who was totally un- 
acquainted with the literature of the subject. Cases of this kind 
are by no means rare and ought to make us think. They demon- 
strate the existence of an unconscious "knowledge" of the indi- 
viduation process and its historical symbolism. 



XI 

THE ALCHEMICAL INTERPRETATION 
OF THE FISH 

239 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 sail or 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 

1 "The Echenais 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. "Echenais." Cited from the ms. of a bestiary.) This pas- 
sage is taken verbatim from the Liber etymologiarum (Lib. XII, cap. VI) of 
Isidore of Seville. There the name of the fish is "echinus," 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 p. 140, n.) 

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.) 

154 



THE ALCHEMICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE FISH 

(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 equiva- 
lent 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. 

240 The "magnet of the wise" which is to draw the wonder-work- 
ing fish to the surface can, our text says, be taught. The content 
of this secret teaching is the real arcanum of alchemy: the dis- 
covery or production of the prima materia. The "doctrine 5 * 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 Concern- 
ing 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- 
ficultiesunderstandably 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, sym- 
bolized by such terms as water of life, cloud, heaven, shadow, 
sea, mother, moon, dragon, Venus, chaos, massa confusa, Micro- 
cosmos, etc. 

24 * In the long lists of names one that frequently figures is "mag- 
nesia," though this should certainly not be understood as the 

3 Diet i onnaire mytho-hermetique (1787), s.v. "Magnus." 

4 Ci Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 4256?. 



AION 

magnesium oxide of the pharmacopoeia. 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 "Aristo teles 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 Uni- 
versal, 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 Phi- 
losophorum/' n 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" de- 
noted the hermaphroditic transformative substance. 15 For the 
alchemists, magnesia is associated with "magnes" (magnet) not 
only phonetically, bat 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 

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

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

7 The corpus Magnesiae is the "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., Ill, pp. 88f. 

9 Mylius calls the tenth grade of the process "the exaltation, which is the in- 
genious ennohling of our whitened magnesia" (p. 129). Hence the Rosarium 
philosopher um (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. 

i& 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.) 

i* "Duodecim tractatus," Theatr. chem., IV, p. 499. 

is Berthelot, Intro., p. 255. 

i& "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. 

156 



THE ALCHEMICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE FISH 

[which Is] the calamlnary and the living Stone, yielding and 
repelling by local motion." 1T 

242 This text shows clearly enough that the real alchemical pro- 
cedure 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 expres- 
sions used for the unconscious, that is, for the hidden part of 
the psyche that had slipped into the unknown chemical com- 
pound 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 hood- 
winked in this way, for there were plenty of hints in the classical 
texts that could have put them on the right track. Unfortu- 
nately, 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. 

243 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?" 1S Dorn writes: "The magnetic 
stone teaches us, for in it the power of magnetizing and attract- 
ing iron is not seen [with the eyes]; it is a spirit hidden within, 
not perceptible to the sense/' 19 The numinous effect which* the 

17 "Rosinus ad Sarratantam" (Art. aurif. y I, p. 511): "Recipe ergo hunc lapidem 
animalem: id est animam in se habentem, scilicet Mercurialem sensibilem: id est, 
sentientem praesentiam et infiuentiam magnesiae et magnetis et calaminarem [et 
lapidem] 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 metalHcae 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 every thing is a prison, wherein the 
powers of the soul of things are detained and held in fetters, so that their natural 

157 



AION 

incomprehensible power of magnetism had upon our fore- 
fathers 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 [vehe- 
menter 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 ad- 
miration. . . . 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 reac- 
tion 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 stone that 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 an 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 

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, tune accendi- 
tur" (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. 

1 5 8 



THE ALCHEMICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE FISH 

things which, by God's blessing, I have seen with my own 
eyes." 24 

244 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 "per- 
ceives" 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 lead- 
ing 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 usu- 
ally attributed to the alchemist Democritus: "Nature rejoices 
in nature; nature subdues nature; nature rules over nature." 26 

245 Just as magnes and magnesia form a pair, so the lapis anima- 
tus sive vegetabilis 27 is a Rebis or hermaphrodite that is born of 
the royal marriage. We have, then, two contrasting pairs, form- 
ing 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 coin- 
ciding 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 

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" (Epipha- 
nius, 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. f I, p. 252). 

26 A-rjfjLOKpiTov twitch KO! fivfrtKa. 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. 

2T Vegetabilis in our texts means living' when applied to Mercurius, 'vivifying' 
when applied to the Quinta Essentia. 

28 Cf. "Psychology of the Transference/' pars. 4336:., and "Phenomenology of the 
Spirit in Fairytales/' in Part I of vol. 9, pars. 429*1. 

29 Psychological Types (1923 edn., pp. 2341!.). 

159 



AION 

substance is magnesia, sometimes the water, sometimes the mag- 
net, 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 dis- 
solved, 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 Philo- 
sophical fluid who think to dissolve perfect metals by natural 
and physical means." 31 

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

247 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 

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 Soils 
et Lunae. Unde liquet illos Mercurii seu menstrui Philosophic! 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). 

160 



THE ALCHEMICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE FISH 

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 mag- 
net'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 includes 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. 

248 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 ' Veri- 
tas," which for him is hidden in natural things and at the same 
time is obviously a "moral" concept. This truth is the "medi- 
cine, 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 sub- 
stance," 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 



y, Dictionnaire mytho-hermetique, s.v. "Aimant." 

34 ". . . medicina, corrigens et transmutans id, quod non est amplius, in id quod 
fuit ante corruptionem, 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. 5571). 



AION 

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 forti- 
fied by like, by peace rather than by war." 37 

2 49 Thus the doctrine, which may be consciously acquired 
"through a kind of divine inspiration/ 5 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 doctrinethe "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 treas- 
ure hidden in the prima materia., which was thought to be out- 
side 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 with- 
out. 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 transforma- 
tion. 

2 5<> Helped by these reflections, Dorn comes to realize the funda- 
mental importance of self-knowledge: "See, therefore, that thou 

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

162 



THE ALCHEMICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE FISH 

goest forth such as thou desirest the work to be which thou 
seekest." 3S 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 formu- 
lates 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 in- 
wardly . . . 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 in- 
wardly, 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?* which he does not know but learns to know by 
experience of outward things. Therefore Dorn exhorts the al- 
chemist: "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 
25 1 Since knowledge of the world dwells in his own bosom, the 
adept should draw such knowledge out of his knowledge of him- 
self, 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, 

38 "Fac igitur ut tails evadas, quale tuum esse vis quod quaesieris opus" (p. 277). 
39". . . non possumus de quovis dubio certiores fieri, quam experiendo, nee 
melius quam in nobis ipsis" ("Phllosophia 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." ("Specu- 
lativae 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.) 

163 



AION 

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 eccen- 
tricity. 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 edu- 
cated 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, of the 
"firmament" or ''Olympus/' as Paracelsus calls it. 43 This interior 
microcosm was the unwitting object of alchemical research. To- 
day 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 Dorn's "formerly 
one" and "separated by a divine act of creation." 
252 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." 

43 An idea that reached its full development 200 years later in Leibniz' mon- 
adology, 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 pic- 
cure-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" (1954/55 edn -> PP- 40 iff.). 

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

164 



THE ALCHEMICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE FISH 

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 

253 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 orig- 
inate 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 con- 
sciousness was created to the end that it may (i) 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)." 

254 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 un- 
less it "accords with reason." As a result, the danger that lack 
of understanding will be replaced by lip-service, affectation, 

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

165 



AION 

and forced belief or else by resignation and indifference has 
long since come to pass. 

2 55 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 : isff.). 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 perspec- 
tive and can weigh up the motives of human action, offers some 
guarantee that the end-result will not turn out too badly. 

256 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 perfects the "changing of the natures." The trans- 

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

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, 
amor eius (rei) et dilectio in te augebitur" (p. 37). 49 pp. 40! 

166 



THE ALCHEMICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE FISH 

formation Is brought about by the coniunctio, which forms the 
essence of the work. 50 

257 The "Rosinus ad Sarratantarn 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 over- 
looked 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 spiritus rector of our fate. The 
self as such does not become conscious by itself, but has always 
been taught, if at all, through a tradition of knowing (the 
purusha I 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 

so "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: "Mar- 
riage is the mingling of the subtle with the dense/* Cf. "Psychology of the Trans- 
ference," 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 "Hie 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). 

167 



AION 

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.) 

258 The treatise of Rosinus contains a parallel to Morienus: 53 
"This stone is something which is fixed more in thee [than else- 
where], 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 divi- 
sion; 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 

259 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. Fixa- 
tion 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 

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 "Hie 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 divi- 
sionem; et in te inseparabiliter manet, scil. per scientiam. Aliter in te fixa, scil. 
in Mercuric sapientum; 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 prin- 
cipium et contra." (Art. aurif,, I, pp. 31 if.) 

56 "The Spirit Mercurius" (Swiss edn., pp. iooff.). 

168 



THE ALCHEMICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE FISH 

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 dis- 
turbances 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 fairy- 
tales 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 con- 
sciousness, 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 per- 
versions suitably camouflaged in social, religious, or political 
garb. 

260 The old master saw the alchemical opus as a kind of apoca- 
tastasis, 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 con- 
scious happening. 

261 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 be- 
tween 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 para- 
doxically in man and yet at the same time outside him. 

169 



AION 

262 The "incorrupt medicament," the lapis 9 says Dorn, can be 
found nowhere save in heaven, for heaven "pervades all the ele- 
ments with invisible rays meeting together from all parts at the 
centre of the earth, and generates and hatches forth all crea- 
tures." "No man can generate in himself, but [only] in that 
which is like him, which is from the same [heaven]." 57 

263 \Ve 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 some- 
thing 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 dis- 
similar things, such as heaven, the elements, man, etc., was neces- 
sary only for the work of generation. Everything separated must 
be united again in the production of the stone, so that the orig- 
inal state of unity shall be restored. But, says Dorn, "thou wilt 
never make from others the One which thou seekest, unless 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 in- 
tent. . . . See therefore that thou goest forth such as thou de- 
sirest the work to be which thou seekest." 5S 

264 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 supra- 
ordinate totality, necessarily transcendental as well. Dorn rec- 
ognized the identity of the stone with the transformed man when 
he exclaimed: "Transmute yourselves from dead stones into 

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 fades quod quaeris, nisi prius ex te ipso fiat 
unum. . . . Nam talis est voluntas Dei, ut pii pium consequantur opus quod 
quaerunt, et perfect! perficiant aliud cui fuerint intend. . . . Fac igitur ut talis 
evadas, quale tuum esse vis quod quaesieris opus" (p. 276!). 

170 



THE ALCHEMICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE FISH 

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 "truth." 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 

265 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: "Fur- 
ther, 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 sup- 
ported? 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. 

266 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 formu- 
lations than his successor Jakob Bohme, has remained com- 
pletely 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 

59 "Transmutemini de lapidibus mortuis In vivos lapides philosophicos!" (p. 267). 
This is an allusion to I Peter 2 : 41": "Come to him, to that living stone, rejected 
by men but in God's sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be your- 
selves built [up] . . ." (RSV). 

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

61 "Ulterius, ut definition! veri faciamus satis, dicimus esse, vero nihil adesse, nam 
uni quid adest, quaeso, quid etiam deest, aut quid contra niti potest? cum mail 
vere praeter illud unum existit" (p. 268). 

171 



AION 

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. 



172 



XII 

BACKGROUND TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF 

CHRISTIAN ALCHEMICAL SYMBOLISM 

267 "Mater Alchimia" could serve as the name of a whole epoch. 
Beginning, roughly, with Christianity, it gave birth in the six- 
teenth 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 Hip- 
polytus 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 mod- 
ern 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. 

268 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 sci- 
ence 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 

173 



AION 

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 the psychic factor. Sig- 
nificantly 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 con- 
nection, since its working hypothesis consists precisely in the 
reality of the psyche. What is significant here is the exact oppo- 
site, namely the psyche's collision with physics. 1 

26 9 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 out- 
side, 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. 

27 Our Christian doctrine is a highly differentiated symbol that 
expresses the transcendent psychicthe God-image and its prop- 
erties, to speak with Dorn. The Creed is a "symbolum." This 
comprises practically everything of importance that can be ascer- 
tained 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 Chris- 
tianity 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. 

271 Although dogma, like mythology in general, expresses the 
quintessence of inner experience and thus formulates the opera- 
tive principles of the objective psyche, i.e., the collective uncon- 

1 Cf. "On the Nature of the Psyche" (1954/55 edn., pp. 424!?., 438ff.). 

174 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRISTIAN ALCHEMICAL SYMBOLISM 

scious, 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., opera- 
tivefact. 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 substi- 
tute, 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 nine- 
teen 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 genera- 
tions. The last witch was burnt in Europe the year my grand- 
father was born, and barbarism with its degradation of human 
nature has broken out again in the twentieth century. 
272 I mention these facts in order to illustrate how thin is the 
wall that separates us from pagan times. Besides that, the Ger- 
manic peoples never developed organically out of primitive 
polydemonism to polytheism and its philosophical subtleties, 
but in many places accepted Christian monotheism and its doc- 
trine of redemption only at the sword's point of the Roman le- 
gions, 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 neces- 
sitated, a certain inflexibility of dogma. Much the same thing 

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

175 



AION 

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. 

2 73 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 uproot- 
ing himself, for they do not express our Western past, but re- 
main 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. 

274 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 twen- 
tieth 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 

176 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRISTIAN ALCHEMICAL SYMBOLISM 

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 as- 
sumed 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. 
275 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, 

3 Kerygmatics rr preaching, declaration of religious truth. 

177 



AION 



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. 

276 The bridge from dogma to the inner experience of the indi- 
vidual has broken down. Instead, dogma is "believed"; 4 it is 
hypostatized, as the Protestants hypostatize the Bible, illegiti- 
mately making it the supreme authority, regardless of its con- 
tradictions and controversial interpretations. (As we know, any- 
thing can be authorized out of the Bible.) Dogma no longer 
formulates anything, no longer expresses anything; it has be- 
come 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 sup- 
ported 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? 

*77 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. Prot- 
estantism 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 

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. 

178 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRISTIAN ALCHEMICAL SYMBOLISM 

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, be- 
cause nobody really understands what it is all about. How else 
can one explain the notorious drift away from dogma? 

278 It may strike my reader as strange thatt a physician and psy- 
chologist should be so insistent about dogma. But I must 
emphasize it, and for the same reasons that once moved the al- 
chemist to attach special importance to his "theoria." His doc- 
trine 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 the instinct. 7 

279 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 

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

"i "On the Nature of the Psyche'* (1954/55 edn., p. 423). 

179 



AION 

is "psychologized" and dissolved in smoke. No reasonable per- 
son 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. 

280 Myths and fairytales give expression to unconscious proc- 
esses, 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. 

281 For this reason the ancients often compared the symbol to 
water, a case in point being tao 3 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 bap- 
tismal water, or the elixir point to the therapeutic character of 
the mythological background from which this idea comes. Physi- 
cians 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 psy- 
chotherapy knows that, though there are many interim solu- 
tions, there is, at the bottom of every neurosis, a moral problem 
of opposites that cannot be solved rationally, and can be an- 
swered only by a supraordinate third, by a symbol which ex~ 

180 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRISTIAN ALCHEMICAL SYMBOLISM 

presses 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 revela- 
tion into their world of ideas. They continued the w r ork of the 
Gnostics (who were, most of them, not so much heretics as the- 
ologians) 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. 

282 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 assimila- 
tion 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 hun- 
dred 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 tradi- 
tion neuroticize the masses and prepare them for collective 
hysteria. Collective hysteria calls for collective therapy, which 
consists in abolition of liberty and terrorization. Where rational- 
istic 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! be- 
tween 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 pas- 
sionately. The connecting link here is the archetype of the God- 

181 



AION 

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 Kvpto? r5v Trve^arwv, 
not only "Lord of the spirits/' but "Lord over the (evil) spirits," 
which is one of the essential meanings of the Christian Kyrios. 8 

28 4 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 hid- 
den 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 sub- 
jective realm, which dogma calls Christ. Alchemy gives us, in 
the lapis j 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 tran- 
scendent 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? Only, this would be a 
much more exacting task, running into great detail and requir- 
ing 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. 

8 5 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 cap- 
ture of Leviathan (with the Cross as the hook, and the Crucified 
as the bait) is highly characteristic: a content (fish) of the uncon- 
scious (sea) has been caught and has attached itself to the Christ- 
figure. Hence the expression used by St. Augustine: "de pro- 
fundo levatus" (drawn from the deep). This is true enough of 
the fish; but of Christ? The image of the fish came out of the 

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 Un- 
conscious"; and my commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRISTIAN ALCHEMICAL SYMBOLISM 

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 w r ay Christ became an inner experience, the "Christ with- 
in." 

286 As I have show T n, the alchemical fish symbolism leads direct 
to the lapis, the salvator, servator, and deus terrenus; that is, psy- 
chologically, 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 assim- 
ilation 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 con- 
scious development. 10 

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



183 



XIII 
GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



28 7 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 cul- 
tural 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 

288 i n 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 

i Unfortunately it is not possible for me to elucidate or even to document this 
statement here. But, as Rhine's ESP (extrasensory perception) experiments show, 
any intense emotional interest or fascination is accompanied by phenomena 
which can only be explained by a psychic relativity of time, space, and causality. 
Since the archetypes usually have a certain numinosity, they can arouse just that 
fascination which is accompanied by synchronistic phenomena. These consist in 
the meaningful coincidence of two or more causally unrelated facts. For details 

1 would refer the reader to my "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle." 

2 Genesis 1:7. & Non-verbatim quotation from John 4 : 10. 

184 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



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. 

289 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. 

290 In the PERATIC doctrine, so many ideas of this kind reappear 
that Hippolytus even uses the same metaphors, though in a more 
subtle way. No one, we are told, 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 Hera- 
cleian 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 

291 Here the magnetic attraction does not come from the doc- 
trine or the water but from the "Son/* who is symbolized by the 
serpent, as in John 3 : i4. 10 Christ is the magnet that draws to 



Sj V, 9, i8f. (Cf. Legge trans., I, pp. i4$f.) "Heracleian stone" = magnet. 
5 John 10 : 9: "I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved.'* 
61 use the reading: Kafi^ova-Lv d<j>8aKfjLov jSXe^apoy. Does this mean those who 
close their eyes to the world? 

7 The naphtha analogy reappears in the teachings of the Basilidians (Elenchos, 
VII, 24, 6f.). There it refers to the son of the highest archon, who comprehends 
the vo-fj^ara airb TTJS paicaptas vlorijros (idea of the blessed sonship). Hippolytus* 
exposition seems to be a trifle confused at this point, 

8 Several metaphors now follow, and it should be noted that they are the same 
as in the passage previously quoted (V, 9, 19). 

9 Elenchos, V, 17, 8ff. (Cf. Legge trans., I, pp. 158!) 

10 "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son 
of man be lifted up.** 

185 



AION 

itself those parts or substances In man that are of divine origin, 
the varptKol xapa/cr^pe? (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 un- 
known 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 con- 
tent 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 cold-blooded 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 are localized to the corresponding organic or physiological 
functions. For instance, the symptoms may be distinctly corre- 
lated with the cerebrospinal and the sympathetic nervous sys- 
tem. 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 (cy/ce^aXov) and the 
"Son" with the cerebellum and spinal cord (Trapcy/ce^aA.^ 
$pa/covrotS??s). The snake does in fact symbolize "cold-blooded/* 
inhuman contents and tendencies of an abstractly intellectual as 
well as a concretely animal nature: in a word, the extra-human 
quality in man. 

292 The third reference to the magnet is to be found in Hippoly- 
tus' account of the SETHIAN doctrine. This has remarkable 
analogies with the alchemical doctrines of the Middle Ages, 

186 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



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 (TO Six^at Ka * x^p' 1 1 
ovyKKpap.va). 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 ma- 
teria. 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 (o>? cr/%o<? (rrpos) 
*Hpa/cAetoj/ XiOov), like iron to the magnet/ 13 - 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 

293 Here the magnetic attraction comes from the Logos. This 
denotes a thought or idea that has been formulated and articu- 
lated, hence a content and a product of consciousness. Conse- 
quently the Logos is very like the aqua doctrinae, but whereas 
the Logos has the advantage of being an autonomous person- 
ality, 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, 

11 Here, as in the previous passages about the magnet, mention is made of 
electron (amber) and the sea-hawk, emphasis being laid on the bird's centre. 
iSElenchos, V, 21, 8 (Legge trans., I, p. 168). The ray of light (radius) plays an 
analogous role in alchemy. Dorn (Theatr. chem., I, p. 276) speaks of the "invisible 
rays of heaven meeting together at the centre of the earth," and there, as 
Michael Maier says, shining with a "heavenly light like a carbuncle*' (Symbola 
aureae mensae, 1617, p. 377). The arcane substance is extracted from the ray, and 
constitutes its "shadow" (umbra), as the "Tractatus aureus" says (Ars chemica, 
1566, p. 15). The aqua permanens is extracted from the rays of the sun and moon 
by the magnet (Mylitis, Philosophia reformata, p. 314), or the rays of the sun are 
united in the "silver water" (Beatus, "Aurelia occulta/' Theatr. chem., IV, p. 563), 

187 



AION 

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, commu- 
nicated 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, Aga- 
thodaimon). 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 abstrac- 
tion of the bodily and personal son of God on the one hand, and 
on the other the dynamic power of thoughts and words. 

294 It is clear that these three symbols seek to describe the un- 
knowable 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. 

188 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



295 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 they never made their appear- 
ance, it would have meant that the annunciation of the Christ- 
figure was ineffective. These phenomena not only prove the 
effectiveness of the annunciation, but provide the necessary 
conditions in which the annunciation can take effect. In other 
words, the symbols represent the prototypes of the Christ-figure 
that were slumbering in man's unconscious and were then called 
awake by his actual appearance in history and, so to speak, 
magnetically attracted. That is why Meister Eckhart uses the 
same symbolism to describe Adam's relation to the Creator on 
the one hand and to the lower creatures on the other. 13 

296 This magnetic process revolutionizes the ego-oriented psyche 
by setting up, in contradistinction to the ego, another goal or 
centre which is characterized by all manner of names and sym- 
bols: fish, serpent, centre of the sea-hawk, 14 point, monad, cross, 
paradise, and so on. The myth of the ignorant demiurge who 
imagined he was the highest divinity illustrates the perplexity 
of the ego when it can no longer hide from Itself the knowledge 
that it has been dethroned by a supraordinate authority. The 
"thousand names" of the lapis philosophorum correspond to 
the innumerable Gnostic designations for the Anthropos, which 
make it quite obvious what is meant: the greater, more com- 
prehensive Man, that indescribable whole consisting of the sum 
of conscious and unconscious processes. This objective whole, 
the antithesis of the subjective ego-psyche, is what I have called 
the self, and this corresponds exactly to the idea of the An- 
thropos. 



297 When, in treating a case of neurosis, we try to supplement 
the inadequate attitude (or adaptedness) of the conscious mind 

13 "And therefore the highest power, seeing her stability in God, communicates 
it to the lowest, that they may discern good and evil. In this union Adam 
dwelt, and while this union lasted he had all the power of creatures in his highest 
power. As when a lodestone exerts its power upon a needle and draws it to itself, 
the needle receives sufficient power to pass on to all the needles beneath, which 
it raises and attaches to the lodestone." (Meister Eckhart, trans, by Evans, I, 
p. 274, slightly modified.) 14 [Cf. n. n, supra.] 

189 



AION 

by adding to It contents of the unconscious, our aim is to create 
a wider personality whose centre of gravity does not necessarily 
coincide with the ego, but which, on the contrary, as the pa- 
tient's insights increase, may even thwart his ego-tendencies. 
Like a magnet, the new centre attracts to itself that which is 
proper to it, the "signs of the Father," i.e., everything that per- 
tains to the original and unalterable character of the individual 
ground-plan. All this is older than the ego and acts towards it as 
the "blessed, nonexistent God" of the Basilidians acted towards 
the archon of the Ogdoad, the demiurge, and paradoxically 
enough as the son of the demiurge acted towards his father. 
The son proves superior in that he has knowledge of the message 
from above and can therefore tell his father that he is not the 
highest God. This apparent contradiction resolves itself when 
we consider the underlying psychological experience. On the 
one hand, in the products of the unconscious the self appears as 
it were a priori, that is, in well-known circle and quaternity sym- 
bols which may already have occurred in the earliest dreams of 
childhood, long before there was any possibility of conscious- 
ness or understanding. On the other hand, only patient and 
painstaking work on the contents of the unconscious, and the 
resultant synthesis of conscious and unconscious data, can lead 
to a "totality," which once more uses circle and quaternity sym- 
bols for purposes of self-description. 15 In this phase, too, the 
original dreams of childhood are remembered and understood. 
The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the 
nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, ex- 
pressed this paradox through the symbol of the uroboros, the 
snake that bites its own tail. 

298 The same knowledge, formulated differently to suit the age 
they lived in, was possessed by the Gnostics. The idea of an un- 
conscious was not unknown to them. For instance, Epiphanius 
quotes an excerpt from one of the Valentinian letters, which says: 
"In the beginning the Autopator contained in himself every- 
thing that is, in a state of unconsciousness [lit., 'not-knowing': 
]." 16 It was Professor G. Quispel who kindly drew my 



15 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. i27ff v and "A Study in the Process of 
Individuation/ 1 in Part I of vol. 9. 

16 'E| apXVS & AvToirdrwp avrbs ev eaurw 7re/>tet%e TCL iravra &vra iv eauraJ iv 
ayvuo-iq. /cr\. Panarium, XXXI, cap. V (Oehler edn., I, p. 314). 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



attention to this passage. He also points out the passage in Hip- 
poly tus: 6 Uajyp ... 6 avWQ7]Tos KOI avovcrios, 6 /Z9?re appe.v ft?yT QrjXv, 

which he translates: "le Pere . . . qui est depourvu de con- 
science et de substance, celui qui est ni masculin, ni feminin." 17 
So the "Father" is not only unconscious and without the quality 
of being, but also nirdvandva, without opposites, lacking all 
qualities and therefore unknowable. This describes the state of 
the unconscious. The Valentinian text gives the Autopator more 
positive qualities: "Some called him the ageless Aeon, eternally 
young, male and female, who contains everything in himself 
and is [himself] contained by nothing." In him was li/ma, con- 
sciousness, which "conveys the treasures of the greatness to 
those who come from the greatness." But the presence of IWOKL 
does not prove that the Autopator himself is conscious, for the 
differentiation of consciousness results only from the syzygies 
and tetrads that follow afterwards, all of them symbolizing 
processes of conjunction and composition, *Ew>ta must be 
thought of here as the latent possibility of consciousness. Oehler 
translates it as menSj Cornarius as intelligentia and notio. 
299 St. Paul's concept of fyvoia (ignorantia) may not be too far 
removed from ayv&a-ia, since both mean the initial, unconscious 
condition of man. When God "looked down" on the times of 
ignorance, the Greek word used here, tnrepiSwv (Vulgate: despi- 
ciens) has the connotation *to disdain, despise/ 18 At all events, 
Gnostic tradition says that when the highest God saw what 
miserable, unconscious creatures these human beings were 
whom the demiurge had created, who were not even able to 
walk upright, he immediately got the work of redemption under 
way. 19 And in the same passage in the Acts, Paul reminds the 
Athenians that they were "God's offspring," 20 and that God, 
looking back disapprovingly on "the times of ignorance," had 
sent the message to mankind, commanding "all men every- 

17 Elenchos } VI, 42, 4; Quispel, "Note sur 'Basilide/ " p. 1 15. 
is Acts 17 : 30. 

19 Cf. Scott, Hermetica (I, pp. 150!:.) where there is a description of the krater 
filled with Nous which God sent down to earth. Those whose hearts strive after 
consciousness (yvapi%ov<ra eiri rl ye^ovas) can "baptize" themselves in t-he krater 
and thereby obtain Nous. "God says that the man filled with Nous should know 
himself" (pp. is6f.). 

20 Tevos ovv virdpxovres rov 6eov (Acts 17 : 29). 



AION 

where to repent." Because that earlier condition seemed to be 
altogether too wretched, the perdvoia (transformation o mind) 
took on the moral character of repentance of sins, with the result 
that the Vulgate could translate it as "poenitentiam agere." 21 
The sin to be repented, of course, is ayvoia or ayvoxria, uncon- 
sciousness. 22 As we have seen, it is not only man who is in this 
condition, but also, according to the Gnostics, the avewfajTos, the 
God without consciousness. This idea is more or less in line 
with the traditional Christian view that God was transformed 
during the passage from the Old Testament to the New, and, 
from being the God of wrath, changed into the God of Love 
a thought that is expressed very clearly by Nicolaus Caussin in 
the seventeenth century. 23 

3 In this connection I must mention the results of Riwkah 
Scharf's examination of the figure of Satan in the Old Testa- 
ment. 24 With the historical transformation of the concept of 
Satan the image of Yahweh changes too, so that one can well say 
that there was a differentiation of the God-image even in the 
Old Testament, not to speak of the New. The idea that the 
world-creating Deity is not conscious, but may be dreaming, is 
found also in Hindu literature: 

Who knows how it was, and who shall declare 
Whence it was born and whence it came? 
The gods are later than this creation; 
Who knows, then, whence it has sprung? 

Whence this created world came, 

And whether he made it or not, 

He alone who sees all in the highest heaven 

Knows or does not know. 25 

21 Likewise the peravoeiTe of the Baptist (Matt. 3 : 2). 

22 cf. the TO TTJS dyvotas dfidprij^a, 'sin of unconsciousness* in "Clement of Rome" 
(Horn. XIX, cap. XXII), referring to the man who was born blind (John 9 : i). 

23 Polyhistor symbolicus, p. 348: "God, formerly the God of vengeance, who with 
thunders and lightnings brought the world to disorder, took his rest in the lap 
of a Virgin, nay, in her womb, and was made captive by love." 

24 "Die Gestalt des Satans im Alten Testament." 

25 Rig-Veda, X, 129. (CL MacNicol trans., Hindu Scriptures, p. 37.) 

192 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



301 Meister Eckhart's theology knows a "Godhead" of which no 
qualities, except unity and being, 26 can be predicated; 27 it "is 
becoming," it is not yet Lord of itself, and it represents an 
absolute coincidence of opposites: "But its simple nature is of 
forms formless; of becoming becomingless; of beings beingless; 
of things thingless," etc. 28 Union of opposites is equivalent to 
unconsciousness, so far as human logic goes, for consciousness 
presupposes a differentiation into subject and object and a rela- 
tion between them. Where there is no "other," or it does not yet 
exist, all possibility of consciousness ceases. Only the Father, the 
God "welling" out of the Godhead, "notices himself," becomes 
"beknown to himself," and "confronts himself as a Person." So, 
from the Father, comes the Son, as the Father's thought of his 
own being. In his original unity "he knows nothing" except the 
"suprareal" One which he is. As the Godhead is essentially un- 
conscious, 29 so too is the man who lives in God. In his sermon on 
"The Poor in Spirit" (Matt. 5 : 3), the Meister says: "The man 
who has this poverty has everything he was when he lived not in 
any wise, neither in himself, nor in truth, nor in God. He is so 
quit and empty of all knowing that no knowledge of God is alive 
in him; for while he stood in the eternal nature of God, there 
lived in him not another: what lived there was himself. And so 
we say this man is as empty of his own knowledge as he was 
when he was not anything; he lets God work what he will, and 
he stands empty as when he came from God." 30 Therefore he 
should love God in the following way: "Love him as he is: a not- 
God, a not-spirit, a not-person, a not-image; as a sheer, pure, 
clear One, which he is, sundered from all secondness; and in 
this One let us sink eternally, from nothing to nothing. So help 
us God. Amen." 31 

26 "Being" is controversial. The Master says: "God in the Godhead is a spiritual 
substance, so unfathomable that we can say nothing about it except that it is 
naught [niht ensi]. To say it is aught [iht] were more lying than true." (Cf. 
Evans trans., I, p. 354.) 

27 "To this end there is no way, it is beyond all ways." (Cf. ibid., p. 211.) 

28 ". . . von formen formelds, von werdenne werdelos, von wesenne weselds und 
ist von sachen sache!6s." (Cf. ibid., p. 352.) 

29 "[The will] is the nobler in that it plunges into unknowing, which is God." 
Cf. ibid., p. 351. Cf. also n. 16, supra: dyvuffia* 

30 Evans, I, p. 219. 

31 End of the sermon "Renovamini spiritu" (Eph. 4 : 23). Ibid., pp. 247! 

193 



AION 

3 02 The world-embracing spirit of Meister Eckhart knew, with- 
out discursive knowledge, the primordial mystical experience of 
India as well as of the Gnostics, and was itself the finest flower 
on the tree of the "Free Spirit" that flourished at the beginning 
of the eleventh century. Well might the writings of this Master 
lie buried for six hundred years, for "his time was not yet come." 
Only in the nineteenth century did he find a public at all 
capable of appreciating the grandeur of his mind. 

33 These utterances on the nature of the Deity express trans- 
formations of the God-image which run parallel with changes in 
human consciousness, though one would be at a loss to say which 
is the cause of the other. The God-image is not something in- 
vented, it is an experience that conies upon man spontaneously 
as anyone can see for himself unless he is blinded to the truth 
by theories and prejudices. The unconscious God-image can 
therefore alter the state of consciousness, just as the latter can 
modify the God-image once it has become conscious. This, obvi- 
ously, has nothing to do with the "prime truth," the unknown 
Godat least, nothing that could be verified. Psychologically, 
however, the idea of God's ayvwcria, or of the avewoijTo* 0eos, is of 
the utmost importance, because it identifies the Deity with the 
numinosity of the unconscious. The atman f purusha philosophy 
of the East and, as we have seen, Meister Eckhart in the West 
both bear witness to this. 

304 N ow if psychology is to lay hold of this phenomenon, it can 
only do so if it expressly refrains from passing metaphysical 
judgments, and if it does not presume to profess convictions to 
which it is ostensibly entitled on the ground of scientific experi- 
ence. But of this there can be no question whatever. The one 
and only thing that psychology can establish is the presence of 
pictorial symbols, whose interpretation is in no sense fixed be- 
forehand. It can make out, with some certainty, that these 
symbols have the character of "wholeness" and therefore presum- 
ably mean wholeness. As a rule they are "uniting" symbols, repre- 
senting the conjunction of a single or double pair of opposites, 
the result being either a dyad or a quaternion. They arise from 
the collision between the conscious and the unconscious and 
from the confusion which this causes (known in alchemy as 
"chaos" or "nigredo"). Empirically, this confusion takes the 
form of restlessness and disorientation. The circle and qua- 

194 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



ternity symbolism appears at this point as a compensating prin- 
ciple of order, which depicts the union of warring opposites as 
already accomplished, and thus eases the way to a healthier and 
quieter state (' "salvation"). For the present, it is not possible for 
psychology to establish more than that the symbols of wholeness 
mean the wholeness of the individual. 32 On the other hand, it 
has to admit, most emphatically, that this symbolism uses images 
or schemata which have always, in all the religions, expressed 
the universal "Ground," the Deity itself. Thus the circle is a 
well-known symbol for God; and so (in a certain sense) is the 
cross, the quaternity in all its forms, e.g., EzekleFs vision, the 
Rex gloriae with the four evangelists, the Gnostic Barbelo 
("God in four") and Kolorbas ("all four"); the duality (tao, 
hermaphrodite, father-mother); and finally, the human form 
(child, son, anthropos) and the individual personality (Christ 
and Buddha), to name only the most important of the motifs 
here used. 

35 All these images are found, empirically, to be expressions for 
the unified wholeness of man. The fact that this goal goes by the 
name of "God" proves that it has a numinous character; and in- 
deed, experiences, dreams, and visions of this kind do have a 
fascinating and impressive quality which can be spontaneously 
felt even by people who are not prejudiced in their favour by 
prior psychological knowledge. So it is no wonder that naive 
minds make no distinction between God and the image they 
have experienced. Wherever, therefore, we find symbols indica- 
tive of psychic wholeness, we encounter the naive idea that they 
stand for God. In the case of those quite common Romanesque 
pictures of the Son of Man accompanied by three angels with 
animal heads and one with a human head, for example, it would 
be simpler to assume that the Son of Man meant the ordinary 
man and that the problem of one against three referred to the 
well-known psychological schema of one differentiated and 
three undifferentiated functions. But this interpretation would, 
according to the traditional view, devalue the symbol, for it 

32 There are people who, oddly enough, think it a weakness in me that I refrain 
from metaphysical judgments. A scientist's conscience does not permit him to 
assert things he cannot prove or at least show to be probable. No assertion has 
ever yet brought anything corresponding to it into existence. "What he says, is" 
is a prerogative exclusive to God. 



AION 

means the second Person of the Godhead in its universal, four- 
fold aspect. Psychology cannot of course adopt this view as its 
own; it can only establish the existence of such statements and 
point out, by way of comparison, that essentially the same sym- 
bols, in particular the dilemma of one and three, often appear 
in the spontaneous products of the unconscious, where they 
demonstrably refer to the psychic totality of the individual. 
They indicate the presence of an archetype of like nature, one 
of whose derivates would seem to be the quaternity of functions 
that orient consciousness. But, since this totality exceeds the 
individual's consciousness to an indefinite and indeterminable 
extent, it invariably includes the unconscious in its orbit and 
hence the totality of all archetypes. But the archetypes are com- 
plementary equivalents of the "outside world" and therefore 
possess a "cosmic" character. This explains their numinosity and 
"godlikeness." 



36 To make my exposition more complete, I would like to men- 
tion some of the Gnostic symbols for the universal * 'Ground'* or 
arcanum, and especially those synonyms which signify the 
"Ground." Psychology takes this idea as an image of the uncon- 
scious background and begetter of consciousness. The most im- 
portant of these Images is the figure of the demiurge. The 
Gnostics have a vast number of symbols for the source or origin, 
the centre of being, the Creator, and the divine substance 
hidden in the creature. Lest the reader be confused by this 
wealth of images, he should always remember that each new 
image is simply another aspect of the divine mystery immanent 
in all creatures. My list of Gnostic symbols is no more than an 
amplification of a single transcendental idea, which is so com- 
prehensive and so difficult to visualize in itself that a great many 
different expressions are required in order to bring out its vari- 
ous aspects. 

307 According to Irenaeus, the Gnostics held that Sophia repre- 
sents the world of the Ogdoad, 33 which is a double quaternity. 



haereses, I, 30, 3. In the system of Barbelo-Gnosis (ibid., 29, 4) the 
equivalent of Sophia is UpotviKos, who "sinks into the lower regions." The name 
Prunicus (7r/>oiWi/cos) means both 'carrying a burden* and 'lewd/ The latter con- 
notation is more probable, because this Gnostic sect believed that, through the 

196 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



In the form of a dove, she descended into the water and begot 
Saturn, who is identical with Yahweh. Saturn, as we have already 
mentioned, is the "other sun," the sol niger of alchemy. Here he 
is the "primus Anthropus." He created the first man, who could 
only crawl like a worm. 34 Among the Naassenes, the demiurge 
Esaldaios, "a fiery god, the fourth by number/' is set up against 
the Trinity of Father, Mother, and Son. The highest is the 
Father, the Archanthropos, who is without qualities and is called 
the higher Adam. In various systems Sophia takes the place of 
the Protanthropos. 35 Epiphanius mentions the Ebionite teach- 
ing that Adam, the original man, is identical with Christ. 36 In 
Theodor Bar-Kuni the original man is the five elements (i.e., 
4 -j- i). 37 In the Acts of Thomas, the dragon says of itself: "I am 
the son ... of him that hurt and smote the four brethren 
which stood upright." 38 

3 8 The primordial image of the quaternity coalesces, for the 
Gnostics, with the figure of the demiurge or Anthropos. He is, 
as it were, the victim of his own creative act, for, when he 

sexual act, they could recharge Barbelo with the pneuma that was lost in the 
world. In Simon Magus it is Helen, the fL-^rrjp and ewoia> who "descended to the 
lower regions . . . and generated the inferior powers, angels, and firmaments/' 
She was forcibly held captive by the lower powers (Irenaeus, I, 27, 1-4). She 
corresponds to the much later alchemical idea of the "soul in fetters" (cf. Dorn, 
Theatr. chem. f I, pp. 298, 497; Mylius, Phil, ref., p. 262; Rosarium philosophorum 
in Art. aurif., II, p. 284; "Platonis liber quartorum," Theatr. chem., V, pp. 
185!; Vigenere, Theatr. chem.,, VI, p. 19). The idea derives from Greek alchemy 
and can be found in Zosimos (Berthelot, Alch. grecs, III, xlix, 7; trans, in Psy- 
chology and Alchemy f pars. 4562.). In the "Liber quartorum" it is of Sabaean 
origin. See Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus (II, p. 494): "The soul 
once turned towards matter, fell in love with it, and, burning with desire to 
experience bodily pleasures, was no longer willing to tear herself away from it. 
So was the world born/* Among the Valentinians, Sophia Achamoth is the 
Ogdoad. In Pistis Sophia (trans, by Mead, p. 362) she is the daughter of Barbelo. 
Deluded by the false light of the demon Authades, she falls into imprisonment 
in chaos. Irenaeus (I, 5, 2) calls the demiurge the Heptad, but Achamoth the 
Ogdoad. In I, 7, 2 he says that the Saviour is compounded of four things in 
repetition of the first Tetrad. A copy of the Four is the quaternity of elements 
(I, 17, i), and so are the four lights that stand round the Autogenes of Barbelo- 
Gnosis (I, 29, 2). 34 Adv. haer. y I, 24, i. 

35 Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, p. 170. 36 Panarium, XXX, 3. 

37 Theodor Bar-Kuni, Inscriptiones mandaites des coupes de Khouabir, Part 2, 
p. 185. 

38 The Apocryphal New Testament, ed. James, p. 379. 

197 



AION 

descended into Physis, he was caught in her embrace. 39 The 
image of the anima mundi or Original Man latent in the dark of 
matter expresses the presence of a transconscious centre which, 
because of its quaternary character and its roundness, must be 
regarded as a symbol of wholeness. We may assume, with due 
caution, that some kind of psychic wholeness is meant (for in- 
stance, conscious -j- unconscious), though the history of the sym- 
bol shows that it was always used as a God-image, Psychology, as 
I have said, is not in a position to make metaphysical statements. 
It can only establish that the symbolism of psychic wholeness 
coincides with the God-image, but it can never prove that the 
God-image is God himself, or that the self takes the place of 
God. 

309 This coincidence comes out very clearly in the ancient Egyp- 
tian Heb-Sed festival, of which Colin Campbell gives the follow- 
ing description: "The king comes out of an apartment called 
the sanctuary, then he ascends into a pavilion open at the four 
sides, with four staircases leading up to it. Carrying the emblems 
of Osiris, he takes his seat on a throne, and turns to the four 
cardinal points in succession. , . It is a kind of second en- 
thronement . , . and sometimes the king acts as a priest, mak- 
ing offerings to himself. This last act may be regarded as the 
climax of the deification of the king." 40 

3*0 All kingship is rooted in this psychology, and therefore, for 
the anonymous individual of the populace, every king carries 
the symbol of the self, All his insignia crown, mantle, orb, 
sceptre, starry orders, etc. show him as the cosmic Anthropos, 
who not only begets, but himself is, the world. He is the homo 
maximuS; whom we meet again in Swedenborg's speculations. 
The Gnostics, too, constantly endeavoured to give visible form 
and a suitable conceptual dress to this being, suspecting that 
he was the matrix and organizing principle of consciousness. As 
the "Phrygians" (Naassenes) say in Hippolytus, 41 he is the "un- 
divided point/* the "grain of mustard seed" that grows into the 
kingdom of God. This point is "present in the body/' But this 
is known only to the Trveo^ariKoi, the "spiritual" men as opposed 
to the t/ajxt/coi and the vXiKoi ("material" men). He is TO p^a TOV 



39Bousset, pp. 1148:. 

40 The Miraculous Birth of King Amon-Hotep HI, p. 81. 

41 Elenchos, V, 9, 5! (Legge trans., I, pp. i4o.). 

108 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



t, the utterance of God (sermo Dei), and the "matrix of the 
Aeons, Powers, Intelligences, Gods, Angels, and Emissary 
Spirits, of Being and Non-Being, of Begotten and Unbegotten, 
of the Non-Intelligible Intelligible, of the Years, Moons, Days, 
Hours. . . ." This point, "being nothing and consisting of 
nothing/' becomes a "certain magnitude incomprehensible by 
thought. 9 ' Hippolytus accuses the Naassenes of bundling every- 
thing into their thought like the syncretists, for he obviously 
cannot quite understand how the point, the "utterance of God/' 
can have a human form. The Naassenes, he complains, also 
call him the "polymorphous Attis," the young dying son of the 
Great Mother, or, as the hymn cited by Hippolytus says, TO 
/combes aKovo-pa Tea?, the 'dark rumour of Rhea.' In the hymn he 
has the synonyms Adonis, Osiris, Adam, Corybas, Pan, Bacchus, 
and iroLfjt,rjv XOJK&V do-rpoJi/, 'shepherd of white stars/ 

The Naassenes themselves considered Naas, the serpent, to 
be their central deity, and they explained it as the "moist sub- 
stance," in agreement with Thales of Miletus, who said water 
was the prime substance on which all life depended. Similarly, 
all living things depend on the Naas; "it contains within itself, 
like the horn of the one-horned bull, the beauty of all things/' 
It "pervades everything, like the water that flows out of Edem 
and divides into four sources" (apxas). "This Edem, they say, is 
the brain." Three of the rivers of Paradise are sensory functions 
(Pison = sight, Gihon = hearing, Tigris = smell), but the 
fourth, the Euphrates, is the mouth, "the seat of prayer and the 
entrance of food." As the fourth function it has a double sig- 
nificance, 42 denoting on the one hand the purely material ac- 
tivity of bodily nourishment, while on the other hand it "glad- 
dens, 43 feeds, and forms [xapaK-n?pifi] the spiritual, perfect [reAetov] 
man." 44 The "fourth" is something special, ambivalenta 
daimonion. A good example of this is in Daniel 3 : 24f., where 
the three men in the burning fiery furnace are joined by a 
fourth, whose form was "like a son of God/' 

The water of the Euphrates is the "water above the firma- 
ment," the "living water of which the Saviour spoke," 45 and 

42 Psychology and Alchemy, index, s.v. "Axiom of Maria." 

43 eixfrpaivGi, a play on the word e^paff^s, 'well-speaking.* 

44 Elenchos, V, 9, 15*?. [Cf. Legge, I, p. 143.] 

45 An allusion to John 4 : 10. 

199 



AION 

possessing, as we have seen, magnetic properties. It is that 
miraculous water from which the olive draws its oil and the 
grape the wine. "That man," continues Hippolytus, as though 
still speaking of the water of the Euphrates, "is without honour 
in the world." 46 This is an allusion to the re'Aeios avQpwnos. In- 
deed, this water is the "complete man/* the p%ta $ov, the Word 
sent by God. "From the living water we spiritual men choose 
that which is ours," 47 for every nature, when dipped in this 
water, "chooses its own substances . . . and from this water 
goes forth to every nature that which is proper to it." 48 The 
water or, as we could say, this Christ is a sort of panspermia, a 
matrix of all possibilities, from which the Tn/ev/mrt/co? chooses 
"his Osob," his idiosyncrasy, 49 that "flies to him more [quickly] 
than iron to the magnet." But the "spiritual men" attain their 
proper nature by entering in through the "true door," Jesus 
Makarios (the blessed), and thus obtaining knowledge of their 
own wholeness, i.e., of the complete man. This man, unhon- 
oured in the world, is obviously the inner, spiritual man, who 
becomes conscious for those who enter in through Christ, the 
door to life, and are illuminated by him. Two images are 
blended here: the image of the "narrow gate," 50 and that of 
John 14 : 6: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one 
comes to the Father but through me." 51 They represent an 
integration process that is characteristic of psychological indi- 
viduation. As formulated, the water symbol continually coa- 
lesces with Christ and Christ with the inner man. This, it seems 
to me, is not a confusion of thought but a psychologically cor- 
rect formulation of the facts, since Christ as the "Word" is in- 
deed the "living water" and at the same time the symbol of the 
inner "complete" man, the self. 

For the Naassenes, the universal "Ground" is the Original 
Man, Adam, and knowledge of him is regarded as the begin- 

46 Legge, I, p. 144. 47 Elenchos, V, 9, 21. 

48V, 9, 19 (Legge trans., p. 144). 

49 This means the integration of the self, which is also referred to in very similar 
words in the Bogomil document discussed above (pars. 225!?.), concerning the 
devil as world creator. He too finds what is "proper" (tdtov) to him. 
so Matt. 7 : 14: "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth. unto 
life." 

51 The passage discussed here is in Elenchos, V, 9, 4ff. (Legge trans., I, p. 140). 

2OO 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



ning of perfection and the bridge to knowledge of God. 52 He 
Is male/female; from him come "father and mother"; 5S he con- 
sists of three parts: the rational (voepoV), the psychic, and the 
earthly (XOIKOV). These three "came down together into one man, 
Jesus," and "these three men spoke together, each of them from 
his own substance to his own," i.e., from the rational to the 
rational, etc. Through this doctrine Jesus is related to the 
Original Man (Christ as second Adam). His soul is "of three 
parts and (yet) one" a Trinity. 54 As examples of the Original 
Man the text mentions the Cabiros 55 and Oannes. The latter 
had a soul capable of suffering, so that the "figure (TrAaoyjia) of 
the great, most beautiful and perfect man, humbled to a slave," 
might suffer punishment. He is the "blessed nature, at once 
hidden and revealed, of everything that has come to be and 
will be," "the kingdom of heaven which is to be sought within 
man" (Ivros avQpuirov), even "in children of seven years." 56 For 
the Naassenes, says Hippolytus, place the "procreative nature of 
the Whole in the procreative seed." 57 On the face of it, this 
looks like the beginnings of a "sexual theory" concerning the 
underlying psychic substance, reminiscent of certain modern 
attempts in the same vein. But one should not overlook the fact 
that in reality man's procreative power is only a special instance 
of the "procreative nature of the Whole." "This, for them, is 
the hidden and mystical Logos," which, in the text that follows, 
is likened to the phallus of Osiris "and they say Osiris is water/' 
Although the substance of this seed is the cause of all things, it 
does not partake of their nature. They say therefore: "I become 
what I will, and I am what I am." For he who moves everything 
is himself unmoved. "He, they say, is alone good." 58 A further 
synonym is the ithyphallic Hermes Kyllenios. "For they say 
Hermes is the Logos, the interpreter and fashioner of what has 

52 Elenchos, V, 6, 6: Oeov Se ypiaffts a-n-rj prur /tez>?? reXeiWis ("Knowledge of God is 

perfect wholeness"). 

5SV, 6, 5 (Legge trans., I, p. 120). 54 v, 6, 6f. (p. 121). 

55 Nicknamed jcaXXiVcus, 'with beautiful children* or *the beautiful child/ (Elen- 
chos, V, 7, 4.) 

56 According to Hippocrates, a boy at seven years old is half a father. (Elenchos, 
V, 7, si-) 

57 Ti]v tipxeyovav <pti<riv rtav 8\cw ev dpx&yovtp cnrep/iari. Archegonos is the tribal 
father. 

5& With express reference to Matt. 19: 17: "One is good, God." 

2O1 



AION 



been, is, and will be." That is why he is worshipped as the 
phallus, because he, like the male organ, "has an urge 
from below upwards." 59 



3*4 The fact that not only the Gnostic Logos but Christ himself 
was drawn into the orbit of sexual symbolism is corroborated by 
the fragment from the Interrogationes maiores Mariae, quoted 
by Epiphanius. 60 It is related there that Christ took this Mary 
with him on to a mountain, where he produced a woman from 
his side and began to have intercourse with her: ". . . seminis 
sui defluxum assumpsisset, indicasse illi, quod oporteat sic 
facere, ut vivamus." 61 It is understandable that this crude sym- 
bolism should offend our modern feelings. But it also appeared 
shocking to Christians of the third and fourth centuries; and 
when, in addition, the symbolism became associated with a 
concretistic misunderstanding, as appeared to be the case in cer- 
tain sects, it could only be rejected. That the author of the 
Interrogationes was by no means ignorant of some such reaction 
is evident from the text itself. It says that Mary received such a 
shock that she fell to the ground. Christ then said to her: 
"Wherefore do you doubt me, O you of little faith?" This was 
meant as a reference to John 3:12: "If I have told you earthly 
things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you 
heavenly things?" and also to John 6 : 54: "Unless you eat the 
flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in 
you." 

315 This symbolism may well have been based, originally, on 
some visionary experience, such as happens not uncommonly 
today during psychological treatment. For the medical psy- 
chologist there is nothing very lurid about it. The context itself 
points the way to the right interpretation. The image expresses 
a psychologem that can hardly be formulated in rational terms 
and has, therefore, to make use of a concrete symbol, just as a 
dream must when a more or less "abstract" thought comes up 
during the abaissement du niveau mental that occurs in sleep. 
These "shocking" surprises, of which there is certainly no lack 

59 Cf. Legge trans., p. 128. 60 Panarium, XXVI, cap. VIII. ' 

61 ". . . partaking of his flowing semen, showed that this was to be done, that 

we might have life." 

202 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



In dreams, should always be taken "as-i," even though they 
clothe themselves in sensual imagery that stops at no scurrility 
and no obscenity. They are unconcerned with offensiveness, 
because they do not really mean it. It is as if they were stammer- 
ing in their efforts to express the elusive meaning that grips 
their attention. 62 

3*6 The context of the vision (John 3:12) makes it clear that 
the image should be taken not concretistically but symbolically; 
for Christ speaks not of earthly things but of a heavenly or 
spiritual mystery a "mystery" not because he is hiding some- 
thing or making a secret of it (indeed, nothing could be more 
blatant than the naked obscenity of the vision!) but because Its 
meaning is still hidden from consciousness. The modern method 
of dream-analysis and interpretation follows this rule. 63 If we 
apply it to the vision, we arrive at the following result: 

3*7 i. The MOUNTAIN means ascent, particularly the mystical, 
spiritual ascent to the heights, to the place of revelation where 
the spirit is present. This motif is so well known that there is no 
need to document it. 64 

3*8 2. The central significance of the CHRIST-FIGURE for that 
epoch has been abundantly proved. In Christian Gnosticism it 
was a visualization of God as the Archanthropos (Original Man 
= Adain), and therefore the epitome of man as such: "Man 
and the Son of Man/' Christ is the inner man who is reached by 
the path of self-knowledge, "the kingdom of heaven within 

62 On the other hand, I cannot rid myself of the impression that dreams do 
occasionally twist things in a scurrilous way. This may have led Freud to the 
singular assumption that they disguise and distort for so-called "moral" reasons. 
However, this view is contradicted by the fact that dreams just as often do the 
exact opposite. I therefore incline to the alchemical view that Mercurius the 
unconscious Nous is a "trickster." [Cf. "The Spirit Mercurius" and "The Psy- 
chology of the Trickster Figure." EDITORS.] 

63 But not the Freudian, "psychoanalytical" method, which dismisses the mani- 
fest dream-content as a mere "facade," on the ground that the psychopathology 
of hysteria leads one to suspect incompatible wishes as dream-motifs. The fact 
that the dream as well as consciousness rest on an instinctual foundation has 
nothing to do either with the meaning of the dream-figures or with that of the 
conscious contents, for the essential thing in both cases is what the psyche has 
made of the instinctual impulse* The remarkable thing about the Parthenon is 
not that it consists of stone and was built to gratify the ambitions of the Atheni- 
ans, but that it is the Parthenon. 

64 Cf. "Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales," Part I of vol. 9. 

203 



AION 

you." As the Anthropos he corresponds to what is empirically 
the most important archetype and, as judge of the living and 
the dead and king of glory, to the real organizing principle of the 
unconscious, the quaternity, or squared circle of the self. 65 
In saying this I have not done violence to anything; my views 
are based on the experience that mandala structures have the 
meaning and function of a centre of the unconscious person- 
ality. 66 The quaternity of Christ, which must be borne in mind 
in this vision, is exemplified by the cross symbol, the rex gloriae, 
and Christ as the year. 

3*9 3. The production of the WOMAN from his side suggests that 
he is interpreted as the second Adam. Bringing forth a woman 
means that he is playing the role of the Creator-god in Genesis. 67 
Just as Adam, before the creation of Eve, was supposed by vari- 
ous traditions to be male/female, 68 so Christ here demonstrates 
his androgyny in a drastic way. 69 The Original Man is usually 
hermaphroditic; in Vedic tradition too he produces his own 
feminine half and unites with her. In Christian allegory the 
woman sprung from Christ's side signifies the Church as the 
Bride of the Lamb. 

320 The splitting of the Original Man into husband and wife 
expresses an act of nascent consciousness; it gives birth to a pair 
of opposites, thereby making consciousness possible. For the 
beholder of the miracle, Mary, the vision was the spontaneous 
visualization or projection of an unconscious process in herself. 
Experience shows that unconscious processes are compensatory 
to a definite conscious situation. The splitting in the vision 
would therefore suggest that it is compensating a conscious con- 
dition of unity. This unity probably refers in the first place to 
the figure of the Anthropos, the incarnate God, who was then in 
the forefront of religious interest. He was, in Origen's words, 

65 cf. "The Psychology of Eastern Meditation," pars. 942! 

66 Cf. "A Study in the Process of Individuation," in Part I of vol. 9. 

67 This is consistent with his nature as the Logos and second Person of the 
Trinity. 

68 Naturally this view is rejected by the Church. 

69 Three different interpretations of Christ are combined here. Such contamina- 
tions are characteristic not only of Gnostic thinking but of all unconscious image- 
formation. 

204 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



the "Vir Unus," 70 the One Man. It was with this figure that 
Mary was confronted in her vision. If we assume that the recipi- 
ent of the vision was in reality a womanan assumption that is 
not altogether without grounds then what she had been missing 
in the pure, deified masculinity of Christ was the counterbalanc- 
ing femininity. Therefore it was revealed to her: "I am both, 
man and woman/' This psychologem is still incorporated to- 
day in the Catholic conception of Christ's androgynity as the 
"Virgo de Virgine," though this is more a sententia communis 
than a conclusio. Medieval iconography sometimes shows Christ 
with breasts, in accordance with Song of Solomon 1:1: "For 
thy breasts are better than wine" (DV). In Mechthild of Magde- 
burg, the soul remarks that when the Lord kissed her, 71 he had, 
contrary to expectation, no beard. The tokens of masculinity 
were lacking. Mechthild had a vision similar to Mary's, dealing 
with the same problem from a different angle: she saw herself 
transported to a "rocky mountain" where the Blessed Virgin 
sat, awaiting the birth of the divine child. When it was born, 
she embraced it and kissed it three times. As the text points out, 
the mountain is an allegory of the "spiritualis habitus," or 
spiritual attitude. "Through divine inspiration she knew how 
the Son is the innermost core [medulla] of the Father's heart." 
This medulla is "strengthening, healing, and most sweet"; God's 
"strength and greatest sweetness" are given to us through the 
Son, the "Saviour and strongest, sweetest Comforter," but "the 
innermost [core] of the soul is that sweetest thing." 72 From this 
it is clear that Mechthild equates the "medulla" with the 
Father's heart, the Son, and the inner man. Psychologically 
speaking, "that sweetest thing" corresponds to the self, which is 
indistinguishable from the God-image. 

321 There is a significant difference between the two visions. 
The antique revelation depicts the birth of Eve from Adam on 

70 Gregory the Great, Expositiones in Hbrum I Regum, Lib. I, cap. I (Migne, 
PJL., vol. 79, col. 23): "For God and man is one Christ. Therefore in that he is 
called one, he is shown to be incomparable." In accordance with the spirit of the 
age, his incomparability or uniqueness is explained by the "excellence of his 
virtue." It is, however, significant in itself. 

71 "He offered her his rosy [sicl] mouth to kiss" (Liber gratiae spiritualis, fol. J 
ivv). 

72 "Medulla vero animae est illud dulcissimum." Ibid., fol. B. 

205 



AION 

the spiritual level of the second Adam (Christ), from whose side 
the feminine pneuma, or second Eve, i.e., the soul, appears as 
Christ's daughter. As already mentioned, in the Christian view 
the soul is interpreted as the Church: she is the woman who 
"embraces the man" 73 and anoints the Lord's feet. Mechthild's 
vision is a continuation of the sacred myth: the daughter-bride 
has become a mother and bears the Father in the shape of the 
Son. That the Son is closely akin to the self is evident from the 
emphasis laid on the quaternary nature of Christ: he has a 
"fourfold voice" (quadruples vox) his heart has four kinds 
of pulse, 75 and from his countenance go forth four rays of 
light. 76 In this image a new millennium is speaking. Meister 
Eckhart, using a different formulation, says that "God is born 
from the soul," and when we come to the Cherubinic Wan- 
derer 77 of Angelus Silesius, God and the self coincide absolutely. 
The times have undergone a profound change: the procreative 
power no longer proceeds from God, rather is God born from 
the soul. The mythologem of the young dying god has taken on 
psychological form a sign of further assimilation and conscious 
realization. 

322 4. But to turn back to the first vision: the bringing forth of 
the woman is followed by COPULATION. The hieros gamos on the 
mountain is a well-known motif, 78 just as, in the old alchemical 
pictures, the hermaphrodite has a fondness for elevated places. 
The alchemists likewise speak of an Adam who always carries 
his Eve around with him. Their coniunctio is an incestuous act, 
performed not by father and daughter but, in accordance with 
the changed times, by brother and sister or mother and son. The 
latter variant corresponds to the ancient Egyptian mythologem 
of Amen as Ka-mutef, which means 'husband of his mother,' or 
of Mut, who is the "mother of her father and daughter of her 

73 Gregory the Great; Migne, P.L., vol. 79, col. 23. Cf. Jerem. 31 : 22: "A woman 
shall compass a man" (AV). 

74 Liber gratiae spiritualis, fol. A vii*. The quaternity refers to the four gospels. 

75 Ibid., fol. B iiv. 
76Ibid.,fol.BviiT. 

77 Cf. Flitch, Angelus Silesius, pp. i28ff. 

78 For instance, the hieros gamos of Zeus and Hera on "the heights of Gargaros," 
Iliad, XIV, 2468:. (Cf. Rieu trans., p. 266.) 

206 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



son." 79 The idea of self-copulation is a recurrent theme in 
descriptions of the world creator: for instance, God splits into 
his masculine and feminine halves, 80 or he fertilizes himself in 
a manner that could easily have served as a model for the Inter- 
rogationes vision, if literary antecedents must be conjectured. 
Thus the relevant passage in the Heliopolitan story of the Crea- 
tion runs: "I, even I, had union with my clenched hand, I 
joined myself in an embrace with my shadow, I poured seed into 
my mouth, my own, I sent forth issue in the form of Shu, I sent 
forth moisture in the form of Tefnut." 81 

3 2 3 Although the idea of self-fertilization is not touched on in 
our vision, there can be no doubt that there is a close connec- 
tion between this and the idea of the cosmogonic self-creator. 
Here, however, world creation gives place to spiritual re- 
newal. That is why no visible creature arises from the taking in 
of seed; it means a nourishing of life, "that we may live." And 
because, as the text itself shows, the vision should be understood 
on the "heavenly" or spiritual plane, the pouring out (a-n-oppoia) 
refers to a Ao'yos cr^p^cm/co's, which in the language of the gospels 
means a living water "springing up into eternal life." The 
whole vision reminds one very much of the related alchemical 
symbolisms. Its drastic naturalism, unpleasantly obtrusive in 
comparison with the reticence of ecclesiastical language, points 
back on the one hand to archaic forms of religion whose ideas 
and modes of expression had long since been superseded, but 
forwards, on the other, to a still crude observation of Nature 
that was just beginning to assimilate the archetype of man. This 
attempt continued right up to the seventeenth century, when 
Johannes Kepler recognized the Trinity as underlying the struc- 
ture of the universe in other words, when he assimilated this 
archetype into the astronomer's picture of the world. 82 

79 Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alien Agypter, p. 94. 

80 In the ancient Egyptian view God is "Father and Mother," and "begets and 
gives birth to himself" (Brugsch, p. 97). The Indian Prajapati has intercourse 
with his own split-off feminine half. 

81 Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, I, pp. giof. 

82 I owe this idea to a lecture delivered by Professor W. Pauli, in Zurich, on the 
archetypal foundations of Kepler's astronomy. Cf. his "The Influence of Arche- 
typal Ideas" etc. 

207 



AION 



324 After this digression on the phallic synonyms for the Origi- 
nal Man, we will turn back to Hippolytus' account of the central 
symbols of the Naassenes and continue with a list of statements 
about Hermes. 

325 Hermes is a conjurer of spirits (^xaywyos), a guide of souls 
(i/ruxovofj.*), and a begetter of souls (ifaxw otnos). But the souls 
were "brought down from the blessed Man on high, the arch- 
man Adamas, . . . into the form of clay, that they might serve 
the demiurge of this creation, Esaldaios, a fiery god, the fourth 
by number." 8S Esaldaios corresponds to laldabaoth, the highest 
archon, and also to Saturn. 84 The "fourth" refers to the fourth 
Person the devil who is opposed to the Trinity. laldabaoth 
means "child of chaos"; hence when Goethe, borrowing from 
alchemical terminology, calls the devil the "strange son of 
chaos," the name is a very apt one. 

326 Hermes is equipped with the golden wand. 85 With it he 
"drops sleep on the eyes of the dead and wakes up the sleepers." 
The Naassenes referred this to Ephesians 5 : 14: "Awake, O 
sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you 
light." Just as the alchemists took the well-known allegory of 
Christ, the lapis angularis or cornerstone, for their lapis philoso- 
phorum, so the Naassenes took it as symbolizing their Protan- 
thropos Adam, or more precisely, the "inner man/' who is a 
rock or stone, since he came from the vlrfnj TOV 'ASa/mi/ros, "fallen 
from Adamas the arch-man on high." 86 The alchemists said 
their stone was "cut from the mountain without hands," 87 and 
the Naassenes say the same thing of the inner man, who was 
brought down "into the form of oblivion." 8S In Epiphanius the 

83 Elenchos, V, 7, 30! (Cf. Legge trans., I, p. 128.) 

84 Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, pp. 352! 

85 Here Hippolytus cites the text of Odyssey, XXIV, 2. 
%$Elenchos, V, 7, 36 (Legge trans., I, pp. isgf.). 

87 Daniel 2 : 34: "Thus thou sawest, till a stone was cut out of a mountain with- 
out hands" (DV). This was the stone that broke in pieces the clay and iron feet 
of the statue, 

88 Efc rb TrXaa-pa rijs XiJ0ij$, i.e., lethargia, the state of forgetfulness and sleep 
resembling that of the dead. The "inner man" is as if buried in the somatic man. 
He is the "soul in fetters" or "in the prison of the body," as the alchemists say. 
Lethe corresponds to the modern concept of the unconscious. 

208 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



mountain is the arch-man Christ, from whom the stone or inner 
man was cut. As Epiphanius interprets it, this means that the 
inner man is begotten "without human seed/' "a small stone 
that becomes a great mountain." 89 

$ 2 7 The Protanthropos is the Logos, whom the souls follow 
"twittering," as the bats follow Hermes in the nekyia. He leads 
them to Oceanus and in the immortal words of Homerto "the 
doors of Helios and the land of dreams." "This is Oceanus, the 
origin of gods and men, ever ebbing and flowing, now forth, 
now back." Men are born from the ebb, and gods from the flow. 
"It is this, they say, that stands written: 'I have said, you are 
gods, and all of you the sons of the most High.' " 90 Here the 
affinity or identity of God and man is explicit, in the Holy 
Scriptures.no less than in the Naassene teachings. 

6 

328 The Naassenes, as Hippolytus says, 91 derived all things from 
a triad, which consists firstly of the "blessed nature of the 
blessed Man on high, Adamas," secondly of the mortal nature of 
the lower man, and thirdly of the "kingless race begotten from 
above," to which belong "Mariam the sough t-f or one, and 
Jothor 92 the great wise one, and Sephora 9S the seer, and Moses 
whose generation was not in Egypt." 94 Together these four form 
a marriage quaternio 95 of the classic type: 

HUSBAND WIFE 

SISTER BROTHER 

89 Ancoratus, 40. Cf. Daniel 2 : 35: "But the stone that struck the statue became 

a great mountain and filled the whole earth" (DV). 

WElenchos, V, 7, 37 (Legge trans., I, p. 130). Cf. Psalm 82 (Vulg. 81) : 6, to which 

reference is made in Luke 6 : 35 and John 10 : 34. 

91V, 8, 2 (ibid., p. 131). 

92 'Io6<ap = Jethro, the priest-king of Midian and the father-in-law of Moses. 

93 Zipporah, the wife of Moses. 

94 This is probably an allusion to the pneumatic nature of the "generation" pro- 
duced by Moses, for, according to Elenchos, V, 7, 41, "Egypt is the body" (Legge 
trans., I, p. 130). 

95 The marriage quaternio is the archetype to which the cross-cousin marriage 
corresponds on a primitive level. I have given a detailed account of it ip "Psychol- 
ogy of the Transference," pp. 21 iff. 

209 



AION 

Their synonyms are: 

MOTHER FATHER 

QUEEN KING 

THE UNKNOWN WOMAN THE DISTANT LOVER 

ANIMA ANIMUS 

529 Moses corresponds to the husband, Sephora to the wife; 
Mariam (Miriam) is the sister of Moses; Jothor (Jethro) is the 
archetype of the wise old man and corresponds to the father- 
animus, if the quaternio is that of a woman. But the fact that 
Jothor is called "the great wise one" suggests that the quaternio 
is a man's. In the case of a woman the accent that falls here on 
the wise man would fall on Mariam, who would then have the 
significance of the Great Mother. At all events our quaternio 
lacks the incestuous brother-sister relationship, otherwise very 
common. Instead, Miriam has something of a mother signif- 
icance for Moses (cf. Exodus 2 : 4.$.), As a prophetess (Exodus 
15 : 2 of.) she is a "magical" personality. When Moses took a 
Moor to wife the "Ethiopian woman" this incensed Miriam 
so much that she was smitten with leprosy and became "as white 
as snow" (Numbers 12 : 10). Miriam is therefore not altogether 
unsuited to play the role of the anima. The best-known anima- 
figure in the Old Testament, the Shulamite, says: "I am black, 
but comely" (Song of Songs i : 5). In the Chymical Wedding of 
Christian Rosenkreutz, the royal bride is the concubine of the 
Moorish king. Negroes, and especially Ethiopians, play a con- 
siderable role in alchemy as synonyms of the caput corvi and 
the nigredo.^ They appear in the Passion of St. Perpetua 97 as 
representatives of the sinful pagan world. 

330 The triad is characterized by various names that may be 
onomatopoetic: Kaulakau, Saulasau, Zeesar. 98 Kaulakau means 
the higher Adam, Saulasau the lower, mortal man, and Zeesar 
is named the "upwards-flowing Jordan." The Jordan was caused 

96 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy , par. 484. 

97 See the study by Marie-Louise von Franz. 

98 These words occur in the Hebrew of Isaiah 28 : 10, where they describe what 
"men with stammering lips and alien tongue" speak to the people. [The Hebrew 
runs: "tsaw latsaw, tsaw latsaw, kaw lakaw, kaw lakaw, zeer sham, zeer sham." 
EDITORS.] AV: "For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line 
upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a little." 

210 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



by Jesus to flow up-stream; It is the rising flood and hence, as 
already mentioned, the begetter of gods. "This, they say, Is the 
human hermaphrodite In all creatures, whom the ignorant call 
'Geryon of the threefold body' [that is, <s IK y^ peWa, 'flowing 
from the earth']; but the Greeks name it the celestial horn of 
the moon/* The text defines the above-mentioned quaternity, 
which is identical with the upwards-flowing Jordan, the her- 
maphrodite, Geryon of the threefold body, and the horn of the 
moon, as the cosmogonic Logos (John i : iff.), and the "life that 
was in him" (John i : 4) as a "generation of perfect men" 

(reAetot dv^pwrot). 99 

S3 1 This Logos or quaternity is "the cup from which the king, 
drinking, draws his omens, 100 or the beaker of Anacreon. The 
cup leads Hippolytus on to the wine miracle at Cana, which, he 
says, "showed forth the kingdom of heaven"; for the kingdom 
of heaven lies within us, like the wine in the cup. Further paral- 
lels of the cup are the Ithyphallic gods of Samothrace and the 
Kyllenic Hermes, who signify the Original Man as well as the 
spiritual man who is reborn. This last is "in every respect con- 
substantial" with the Original Man symbolized by Hermes. For 
this reason, says Hippolytus, Christ said that one must eat of his 
flesh and drink of his blood, for he was conscious of the individ- 
ual nature of each of his disciples, and also of the need of each 
"to come to his own special nature." 101 

33 2 Another synonym is Corybas, who was descended from the 
crown of the head and from the unformed (axapaKTypio-Tov) brain, 
like the Euphrates from Eden, and permeates all things. His 
image exists unrecognized "in earthly form." He is the god 
who dwells in the flood. I need not describe this symbol here, as 
I have already discussed it at some length in one of my Para- 
celsus studies. 102 So far as Corybas is concerned, the parallel 
between him and the Protanthropos is explained by the ancient 
view that the corybants were the original men. 103 The name 
"Corybas" does not denote a particular personality, but rather 
the anonymous member of a collectivity, such as the Curetes, 

99 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 550. [Cf. Legge trans., I, p. 131.] 

100 Cf. Genesis 44 : 5. 

101 Elenchos, V, 8, 12 (Legge trans., I, p. 133). 

102 "Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon" (Swiss edn., pp. 
lOSRoscher, Lexikon, II, part i, col. 1608, s.v. "Kuretes." 



AION 

Cabiri, Dactyls, etc. Etymologically, it has been brought into 
connection with Kopv<f>y (crown of the head), though this is not 
certain. 104 Corybas seems in our text to be the name of a single 
personality the Kyllenic Hermes, who appears here as synony- 
mous with the Cabiri of Samothrace. With reference to this 
Hermes the text says: "This the Thracians . . . call Cory- 
bas." 105 I have suggested in an earlier publication 106 that this 
unusual single personality may perhaps be a product of con- 
tamination with the Corybos of the Dionysus legend, because he 
too seems to have been a phallic being, as we learn from a 
scholium to Lucian's De dea Syria. 107 

333 From the centre of the "perfect man" flows the ocean (where, 
as we have said, the god dwells). The "perfect" man is, as Jesus 
says, the "true door," through which the "perfect" man must go 
in order to be reborn. Here the problem of how to translate 
"teleios" becomes crucial; for we must ask why should anyone 
who is "perfect" need renewal through rebirth? 108 One can 
only conclude that the perfect man was not so perfected that 
no further improvement was possible. We encounter a similar 
difficulty in Philippians 3:12, where Paul says: "Not that I 
. . . am already perfect" (rereXecw^at). But three verses further on 
he writes: "Let us then, as many as are perfect (re'Aeioi) be of this 
mind." The Gnostic use of reAeto? obviously agrees with Paul's. 
The word has only an approximate meaning and amounts to 
much the same thing as ^veu^cm/cos, 'spiritual/ 109 which is not 
connected with any conception of a definite degree of perfection 
or spirituality. The word "perfect" gives the sense of the Greek 
Te'Aetos correctly only when it refers to God. But when it applies 
to a man, who in addition is in need of rebirth, it can at most 
mean "whole" or "complete," especially if, as our text says, the 

104 Ibid., col. 1607. 105 Elenchos, V, 8, 13 (Legge trans., I, p. 133). 

106 "The Spirit Mercurius" (Swiss edn., p. 123). 

107 Roscher, col. 1392, s.v. "Korybos," where the text is given in full. The descent 
from the brain may be an allusion to the ancient idea that the sperm was con- 
ducted down from the head to the genitals, through the spinal cord. [Cf. Onians, 
The Origins of European Thought, p. 234. EDITORS.] 

108 The alchemists say very aptly: "Perfectum non perficitur" (that which is per- 
fect is not perfected). 

109 Elenchos, V, 8, 22, describes the TrvevfjLaTucot as "perfect men endowed with 
reason," from which it is clear that the possession of an anima rationalis is what 
makes the "spiritual" man. 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



complete man cannot even be saved unless he passes through 
this door. 110 

334 The father of the "perfectus" Is the higher man or Protan- 
thropos, who Is "not clearly formed" and "without qualities." 
Hippolytus goes on to say that he is called Papa (Attis) by the 
Phrygians, He is a bringer of peace and quells "the war of the 
elements" in the human body, 111 a statement we meet again 
word for word in medieval alchemy, where the filius philoso- 
phorum ''makes peace between enemies or the elements." 112 
This "Papa" is also called i/eW (cadaver), because he is buried in 
the body like a mummy in a tomb. A similar idea is found in 
Paracelsus; his treatise De vita longa opens with the words: 
"Life, verily, is naught but a kind of embalmed mummy, which 
preserves the mortal body from the mortal worms." 113 The 
body lives only from the "Mumia/' through which the "pere- 
grinus microcosmus," the wandering microcosm (corresponding 
to the macrocosm), rules the physical body. 114 His synonyms are 
the Adech, Archeus, Protothoma, Ides, Idechtrum, etc. He is the 

no Elenchos, V, 8, 21 (Legge trans., I, p. 134). Cramer (BibL-theol. Worterbuch 
der Neutestamentlichen Grazitdt) gives as the meaning of reXetos 'complete, per- 
fect, lacking nothing, having reached the destined goal/ Bauer (Griech.-deutsch. 
Worterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments, col. 1344) has, with refer- 
ence to age, 'mature, full-grown/ and with reference to the mysteries, 'initiated/ 
Lightfoot (Notes on the Epistles of St Paul, p. 173) says: "TeAeios is properly that 
of which the parts are fully developed, as distinguished from ^\6K\r]pos, that in 
which none of the parts are wanting, 'full-grown/ as opposed to J^TTIOS, 'child- 
ish/ or ircuSia, 'childhood/ " Teleios is the man who has received Nous: he has 
gnosis (knowledge). Cf. Guignebert, "Quelques remarques sur la perfection 
(reXetWts) et ses voies dans le mystere paulinien/' p. 419. Weiss (The History of 
Primitive Christianity, II, p. 576) declares that it is just the "consciousness of 
imperfection and the will to progress that is the sign of perfection/' He bases 
this on Epictetus (Enchiridion., 51, if.), where it says that he who has resolved 
to progress (wpoKoirreiv) is, by anticipation, already "perfect." 
Hi First mentioned at V, 8, 19. [Cf. Legge, I, p. 134.] 

112 Hermetis Trismegtsti Tractatus vere Aureus cum scholiis (1610), p. 44. 

113 Published 1562 by Adam von Bodenstein. In Paracelsus Sdmtliche Werke, ed. 
Sudhoff, III, p. 249. 

H4 De origine Morborum invisibilium., beginning of Book IV, says of the Mumia: 
"All the power of herbs and of trees is found in the Mumia; not only the power 
of the plants grown of earth, but also of water, all the properties of metals, all the 
qualities of marcasites, all the essence of precious stones. How should I count all 
these things, and name them? They are all within man, no fewer and no less, as 
strong and as powerful, in the Mumia." (Volumen Paramirum, pp. 29 iff.) 



AION 

"Protoplast" (the first-created), and, as Ides, "the door whence 
all creatures are created." 115 (Cf. the "true door" above!) The 
Mumia is born together with the body and sustains it, 118 though 
not to the degree that the "supercelestial Mumia" does, 117 The 
latter would correspond to the higher Adam of the Naassenes. 
Of the Ideus or Ides Paracelsus says that in it "only One Man 
is laid . . . and he is the Protoplast." 11S 

335 The Paracelsian Mumia therefore corresponds in every way 
to the Original Man, who forms the microcosm in the mortal 
man and, as such, shares all the powers of the macrocosm. Since 
it is often a question of cabalistic influences in Paracelsus, it 
may not be superfluous in this connection to recall the figure of 
the cabalistic Metatron. In the Zohar the Messiah is described 
as the "central column" (i.e., of the Sephiroth system), and of 
this column it is said: "The column of the centre is Metatron, 
whose name is like that of the Lord. It is created and constituted 
to be his image and likeness, and it includes all gradations from 
Above to Below and from Below to Above, and binds [them] 
together in the centre." lld 

S3 6 The dead man, Hippolytus continues, will rise again by 
passing through the "door of heaven." Jacob saw the gate of 
heaven on his way to Mesopotamia, "but they say Mesopotamia 
is the stream of the great ocean that flows from the midst of the 
perfect man." This is the gate of heaven of which Jacob said: 
"How terrible is this place! This is no other but the house of 
God, and the gate of heaven." 12 The stream that flows out of 
the Original Man (the gate of heaven) is interpreted here as the 
flood-tide of the ocean, which, as we have seen, generates the 
gods. The passage quoted by Hippolytus probably refers to 
John 7 : 38 or to an apocryphal source common to both. The 
passage in John "He who believes in me, as the scripture has 
said, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" refers to 
a nonbiblical source, which, however, seemed scriptural to the 
author. Whoever drinks of this water, in him it shall be a foun- 

115 Fragmentarische Ausarbeitungen zur Anatomie (Sudhoff, III, p. 462). 

116 The Mumia is, accordingly, an alexipharmic. (De mumia libellus; ibid., p. 375.) 

117 De vita longa, Lib. IV, cap. VII (ibid., p. 284). 

118 Fragmentarische Ausarbeitungen zur Anatomie (loc. cit.). 

119 Zohar, cited in Schoettgen, Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae, II, p. 16. 

120 Gen. 28 : 17 (DV). 

214 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



tain of water springing up into eternal life, says Origen. 121 This 
water is the "higher" water, the aqua doctrinae, the rivers from 
the belly of Christ, and the divine life as contrasted with the 
"lower" water, the aqua abyssi, where the darknesses are, and 
where dwell the Prince of this world and the deceiving dragon 
and his angels. 122 The river of water is the "Saviour" himself. 123 
Christ is the river that pours into the world through the four 
gospels, 124 like the rivers of Paradise. I have purposely cited the 
ecclesiastical allegories in greater detail here, so that the reader 
can see how saturated Gnostic symbolism is in the language of 
the Church, and how, on the other hand, particularly in Origen, 
the liveliness of his amplifications and interpretations has much 
in common with Gnostic views. Thus, to him as to many of his 
contemporaries and successors, the idea of the cosmic corre- 
spondence of the "spiritual inner man" was something quite 
familiar: in his first Homily on Genesis he says that God first 
created heaven, the whole spiritual substance, and that the 
counterpart of this is "our mind, which is itself a spirit, that is, 
it is our spiritual inner man which sees and knows God." 125 
337 These examples of Christian parallels to the partly pagan 
views of the Gnostics may suffice to give the reader a picture of 
the mentality of the first two centuries of our era, and to show 
how closely the religious teachings o that age were connected 
with psychic facts. 

121 in Genesim horn. XI, 3 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 224): "And that ye may see 
the well of vision, and take from it the living water, which shall be in you a 
fountain of water springing up unto eternal life." 

122 ibid., I, 2 (col. 148). 

123 in Numeros horn. XVII, 4 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, cols. 707!): "For these para- 
dises upon the waters are like and akin to that paradise in which is the tree of 
life. And the waters we may take to be either the writings of the apostles and 
evangelists, or the aid given by the angels and celestial powers to such souls; for 
by these they are watered and inundated, and nourished unto all knowledge and 
understanding of heavenly things; although our Saviour also is the river which 
maketh glad the city of God; and the Holy Spirit not only is himself that river, 
but out of those to whom he is given, rivers proceed from their belly/' 

124 See the valuable compilation of patristic allegories in Rahner, "Flumina de 
ventre Christi/' pp. 26gff. The above reference Is on p. 370 and comes from 
Hippolytus* Commentary on Daniel, I, 17 (Werke, I, pp. a8f.). 

125 In Genesim Horn, I, 2 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 147). 

215 



AION 



S3 8 Now let us come back to the symbols listed by Hippolytus. 
The Original Man in his latent state so we could interpret the 
term dxapa/cr^ptcjTos is named Aipolos> "not because he feeds he- 
goats and she-goats," but because he is acnroXcxs, the Pole that 
turns the cosmos round. 126 This recalls the parallel ideas of the 
alchemists, previously mentioned, about Mercurius, who is 
found at the North Pole. Similarly the Naassenes named Aipolos 
in the language of the Odyssey Pro teus. Hippolytus quotes 
Homer as follows: "This place is frequented by the Old Man of 
the Sea, immortal Proteus the Egyptian . . . who always tells 
the truth . . ." 127 Homer then continues: ". . . who owes 
allegiance to Poseidon and knows the sea in all its depths." 12S 
Proteus is evidently a personification of the unconscious: 129 it 
is difficult to "catch this mysterious old being ... he might see 
me first, or know I am there and keep away/' One must seize 
him quickly and hold him fast, in order to force him to speak. 
Though he lives in the sea, he comes to the lonely shore at the 
sacred noon-tide hour, like an amphibian, and lies down to 
sleep among his seals. These, it must be remembered, are warm- 
bloodedthat is to say, they can be thought of as contents of the 
unconscious that are capable of becoming conscious, and at cer- 
tain times they appear spontaneously in the light and airy world 
of consciousness. From Proteus the wandering hero learns how 
he may make his way homewards "over the fish-giving sea," and 
thus the Old Man proves to be a psychopomp. 130 Ov m^acr/eerac, 
Hippolytus says of him, which can best be translated by the 
French colloquialism "il ne se laisse pas rouler." "But," the text 
goes on, "he spins round himself and changes his shape." He 
behaves, therefore, like a revolving image that cannot be 
grasped. What he says is v^/xep'nfc, 'in sooth/ infallible; he is a 



s, V, 8, 34 (Legge, I, p. 137). This is a play on the words alir6\os (from 
a*yo7r<5Xos), 'goat-herd/ and denr6\o$ (from del iroXeiv, 'ever turning'). Hence 
iroXos = the earth's axis, the Pole. 
127 Odyssey, trans, by Rouse, p. 65. 128 ibid., trans, by Rieu, p. 74. 

129 He has something of the character of the "trickster" (cf. n. 62, supra). 

130 Proteus has much in common with Hermes: above all, the gift of second sight 
and the power of shape-shifting. In Faust (Part II, Act 5) he tells the Homuncu- 
lus how and where to begin his labours. 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



"soothsayer." So it is not for nothing that the Naassenes say that 
"knowledge of the complete man is deep indeed and hard to 
comprehend." 

339 Subsequently, Proteus is likened to the green ear o corn in 
the Eleusinian mysteries. To him is addressed the cry of the 
celebrants: "The Mistress has borne the divine boy, Brimo has 
borne Brimos!" A "lower" correspondence to the high Eleu- 
sinian initiations, says Hippolytus, is the dark path of Per- 
sephone, who was abducted by the god of the underworld; it 
leads "to the grove of adored Aphrodite, who rouses the sickness 
of love." Men should keep to this lower path in order to be 
initiated "into the great and heavenly" mysteries. 131 For this 
mystery is "the gate of heaven" and the "house of God," where 
alone the good God dwells, who is destined only for the spiritual 
men. They should put off their garments and all become wp^iot, 
'bridegrooms/ "robbed of their virility by the virgin spirit." 1S2 
This is an allusion to Revelation 14 : 4: ". . . for they are vir- 
gins. These . . . follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." 153 

131 When I visited the ancient pagoda at Turukalukundram, southern India, a 
local pundit explained to me that the old temples were purposely covered on the 
outside, from top to bottom, with obscene sculptures, in order to remind ordi- 
nary people of their sexuality. The spirit, he said, was a great danger, because 
Yama, the god of death, would instantly carry off these people (the "imperfecti") 
if they trod the spiritual path directly, without preparation. The erotic sculp- 
tures were meant to remind them of their dharma (law), which bids them fulfil 
their ordinary lives. Only when they have fulfilled their dharma can they tread 
the spiritual path. The obscenities were intended to arouse the erotic curiosity of 
visitors to the temples, so that they should not forget their dharma; otherwise 
they would not fulfil it. Only the man who was qualified by his karma (the fate 
earned through works in previous existences), and who was destined for the life 
of the spirit, could ignore this injunction with impunity, for to him these obsceni- 
ties mean nothing. That was also why the two seductresses stood at the entrance 
of the temple, luring the people to fulfil their dharma, because only in this way 
could the ordinary man attain to higher spiritual development. And since the 
temple represented the whole world, all human activities were portrayed in it; 
and because most people are always thinking of sex anyway, the great majority 
of the temple sculptures were of an erotic nature. For this reason too, he said, 
the lingam (phallus) stands in the sacred cavity of the adyton (Holy of Holies), in 
the garbha griha (house of the womb). This pundit was a Tantrist (scholastic; 
tantra = 'book*). 

132 Their prototypes are the emasculated Attis and the priests of Eleusis, who, 
before celebrating the hieros games, were made impotent with a draught of 
hemlock. 

133 Cf. Matt. 5 : 8: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." 

217 



AION 



340 Among the objective symbols of the self I have already men- 
tioned the Naassene conception of the apeptaro* cmy/wj, the indi- 
visible point. This conception fully accords with that of the 
"Monad" and "Son of Man" in Monoi'mos. Hippolytus says: 

Monoi'mos . . . thinks that there is some such Man as Oceanus, of 
whom the poet speaks somewhat as follows: Oceanus, the origin 
of gods and of men. 134 Putting this- into other words, he says that 
the Man is All, the source of the universe, unbegotten, incor- 
ruptible, everlasting; and that there is a Son of the aforesaid Man, 
who is begotten and capable of suffering, and whose birth is outside 
time, neither willed nor predetermined . . . This Man is a single 
Monad, uncompounded [and] indivisible, [yet] compounded [and] 
divisible; loving and at peace with all things [yet] warring with all 
things and at war with itself in all things; unlike and like [itself], 
as it were a musical harmony containing all things . . . showing 
forth all things and giving birth to all things. It is its own mother, 
its own father, the two immortal names. The emblem of the com- 
plete Man, says Monoimos, is the jot or tittle. 135 This one tittle is 
the uncompounded, simple, unmixed Monad, having its composi- 
tion from nothing whatsoever, yet composed of many forms, of 
many parts. That single, indivisible jot is the many-faced, thousand- 
eyed and thousand-named, the jot of the iota. This is the emblem 
of that complete and indivisible Man. . . . The Son of the Man is 
the one iota, the one jot flowing from on high, full and filling all 
things, containing in himself everything that is in the Man, the 
Father of the Son of Man. 136 

134 A condensation of Iliad, XIV, 2oof. and 246: "I am going to the ends of the 
fruitful earth to visit Ocean, the forbear of the gods, and Mother Tethys . . . 
even Ocean Stream himself, who is the forbear of them all." (Rieu trans., pp. 262!) 

135 The iota (T^V fitav Kepalav), the smallest Greek character, corresponding to our 
"dot" (which did not exist in Greek). CL Luke 16 : 17: "And it is easier for 
heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fall." Also Matt. 5 : 18. 
This may well be the origin of the iota symbolism, as Irenaeus (Adv. haer., I, 
3, 2) suggests. 

13$ Elenchos, VIII, 12, 5*f. (Legge, pp. loyff.). All this is a Gnostic paraphrase of 
John i and at the same time a meaningful exposition of the psychological self. 
The relationship of the t to the self is the same as that of the Hebrew letter 
Yod 0) to the lapis in the cabala. The Original Man, Adam, signifies the small 
hook at the top of the letter Yod. (Shaare Kedusha, III, i.) 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



34 1 This paradoxical idea of the Monad in Monoi'mos describes 
the psychological nature of the self as conceived by a thinker of 
the second century under the influence of the Christian message. 

342 A parallel conception is to be found in Plotinus, who lived 
a little later (c. 205-70). He says in the Enneads: "Self-knowledge 
reveals the fact that the souFs natural movement is not in a 
straight line, unless indeed it have undergone some deviation. 
On the contrary, it circles around something interior, around a 
centre. Now the centre is that from which proceeds the circle, 
that is, the soul. The soul will therefore move around the centre, 
that is, around the principle from which she proceeds; and, 
trending towards it, she will attach herself to it, as indeed all 
souls should do. The souls of the divinities ever direct themselves 
towards it, and that is the secret of their divinity; for divinity 
consists in being attached to the centre. . . . Anyone who with- 
draws from it is a man who has remained un-unified, or who is 
a brute." 137 

343 Here the point is the centre of a circle that is created, so to 
speak, by the circumambulation of the soul. But this point is the 
"centre of all things," a God-image. This is an idea that still 
underlies the mandala-symbols in modern dreams. 138 

344 Of equal significance is the idea, also common among the 
Gnostics, of the omvftfc or spark. 139 It corresponds to the scintilla 
vitae, the "little spark of the soul" in Meister Eckhart, 140 which 
we meet with rather early in the teachings of Saturninus. 141 
Similarly Heraclitus, "the physicist," is said to have conceived 
the soul as a "spark of stellar essence." 142 Hippolytus says that 
in the doctrine of the Sethians the darkness held "the bright- 

137 Ennead, VI, 9, 8 (Guthrie trans., p. 163, slightly mod.). 

138 See "A Study in the Process of Individuation" and "Concerning Mandala 
Symbolism" in Part I of vol. 9. 

isdBousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, p. 321, says: "[The Gnostics believed] 

that human beings, or at any rate some human beings, carry within them from 

the beginning a higher element [the spinther] deriving from the world of light, 

which enables them to rise above the world of the Seven into the upper world of 

light, where dwell the unknown Father and the heavenly Mother." 

140 Meerpohl, "Meister Eckharts Lehre vom Seelenfunklein." 

i^llrenaeus, Adv. haer., I, 24. The pneumatikoi contain a small part of the 

Pleroma (II, 29). Cf. the doctrine of Satorneilos in Hippolytus, Elenchos, VII, 28, 

3 (Legge trans., II, pp. 8of.). 

142 Macrobius, Commentarium in Somnium Scipionis, XIV, 19. 

219 



AION 

ness and the spark of light in thrall," 143 and that this 'Very small 
spark'* was finely mingled in the dark waters 144 below, 145 Simon 
Magus 146 likewise teaches that in semen and milk there is a very 
small spark which "increases and becomes a power boundless 
and immutable." 147 

345 The symbol of the point is found also in alchemy, where it 
stands for the arcane substance; in Michael Maier 148 it signifies 
"the purity or homogeneity of the essence." It is the "punctum 
solis" 149 in the egg-yolk, which grows into a chick. In Khunrath 
it represents Sapientia in the form of the "salt-point"; 15 in 
Maier it symbolizes gold. 151 To the scholiast of the "Tractatus 
aureus" it is the midpoint, the "circulus exiguus" and "media- 
tor" which reconciles the hostile elements and "by persistent 
rotation changes the angular form of the square into a circular 
one like itself." 152 For Dorn the "punctum vix intelligibile" is 



143 Elenchos, V, 19, 7: "Iva e;o r&v ffTrivQtjpa 

144 This idea reappears in alchemy in numerous variations. Cf. Michael Maier, 
Symbola aureae mensae, p. 380, and Scrutinium chymicum, Emblema XXXI: 
"The King swimming in the sea, and crying with a loud voice: Whosoever shall 
bring me out, shall have a great reward." Also "Aurora consurgens," I, cap. 6: 
"Therefore I have laboured with crying night after night, my jaws are become 
hoarse, who is the man that liveth, knowing and understanding, to deliver my 
soul from the hand of hell?" 

145 Elenchos, V, 21, i: Tbv a-irivOijpa rbv e\dxurrov kv TOLS aKorewoLs tiSacri KCLTOJ 



146 Elenchos, VI, 17, 7. Cf. "'Transformation Symbolism in the Mass/* par. 359. 

147 Cf. the vision reported by Wickes, The Inner World of Man, p. 245. It is a 
typical piece of individuation symbolism: "Then I saw that on the shaft there 
hung a human figure that held within itself all the loneliness of the world and 
of the spaces. Alone, and hoping for nothing, the One hung and gazed down 
into the void. For long the One gazed, drawing all solitude unto itself. Then 
deep in the fathomless dark was born an infinitesimal spark. Slowly it rose from 
the bottomless depth, and as it rose it grew until it became a star. And the star 
hung in space just opposite the figure, and the white light streamed upon the 
Lonely One." Conversely, it is related of Zoroaster that he drew down sparks 
from a star, which scorched him. (Bousset, p. 146.) 

148 Maier, De circulo physico quadrato (1616), p. 27. 

149 Or punctus soils. "In the egg therefore are four things: earth, water, air, and 
fire; but the 'punctum solis' is apart from these four, in the midst of the yolk 
(which) is the chick." (Turba, Sermo IV.) Ruska (Turba philosophorum, p. 51) 
puts "saliens" instead of "solis" ("springing point" instead of "sun-point"), in the 
belief that all the copyists repeated the same error. I am not so sure of this. 

150 Von hylealischen Chaos, p. 194. 151 De circulo quadrato, p. 27. 
152 Theatr. chem. f IV, p. 691. 

220 



GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF 



the starting point of creation. 153 Similarly John Dee says that all 
things originated from the point and the monad. 154 Indeed, God 
himself is simultaneously both the centre and the circumference. 
In Mylius the point is called the bird of Hermes. 155 In the 
"Novum lumen" it is spirit and fire, the life of the arcane sub- 
stance, similar to the spark. 156 This conception of the point is 
more or less the same as that of the Gnostics. 

346 From these citations we can see how Christ was assimilated 
to symbols that also meant the kingdom of God, for instance 
the grain of mustard-seed, the hidden treasure, and the pearl of 
great price. He and his kingdom have the same meaning. Objec- 
tions have always been made to this dissolution of Christ's per- 
sonality, but what has not been realized is that it represents at 
the same time an assimilation and integration of Christ into the 
human psyche. 157 The result is seen in the growth of the human 
personality and in the development of consciousness. These 
specific attainments are now gravely threatened in our anti- 
christian age, not only by the sociopolitical delusional systems, 
but above all by the rationalistic hybris which is tearing our 
consciousness from its transcendent roots and holding before 
it immanent goals. 

153 "Physica genesis," Theatr. chem. f I, p. 382. 

l54M0n&s hieroglyphica (first edn., 1564). Also in Theatr. chem. (1602), II, p. 218. 

155phiL ref.j p. 131. 156 Mus. herm. f p. 559. 

157 Here I would like to cite a theological opinion: "Jesus is a synthesis and a 

growth, and the resultant form is one which tells of a hundred forces which went 

to its making. But the interesting thing is that the process did not end with the 

closing of the canon. Jesus is still in the making." Roberts, "Jesus or Christ? 

A Reply," p. 124. 



221 



XIV 

THE STRUCTURE AND 
DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 



347 The examples given in the previous chapter should be suf- 
ficient to describe the progressive assimilation and amplifica- 
tion of the archetype that underlies ego-consciousness. Rather 
than add to their number unnecessarily, I will try to summarize 
them so that an over-all picture results. From various hints 
dropped by Hippolytus, it is clear beyond a doubt that many of 
the Gnostics were nothing other than psychologists. Thus he 
reports them as saying that "the soul is very hard to find and to 
comprehend/' * and that knowledge of the whole man is just as 
difficult. "For knowledge of man is the beginning of wholeness 

), but knowledge of God is perfect wholeness (aTrrjpTKT^vT) 
." Clement of Alexandria says in the Paedagogus (III, 
i): "Therefore, as it seems, it is the greatest of all disciplines to 
know oneself; for when a man knows himself, he knows God." 
And Monoi'mos, in his letter to Theophrastus, writes: "Seek him 
from out thyself, and learn who it is that taketh possession of 
everything in thee, saying: my god, my spirit, my understanding, 
my soul, my body; and learn whence is sorrow and joy, and love 
and hate, and waking though one would not, and sleeping 
though one would not, and getting angry though one would not, 
and falling in love though one would not. And if thou shouldst 
closely investigate these things, thou wilt find Him in thyself, 
the One and the Many, like to that little point [/cepaia] for in thy- 
self thou wilt find the starting-point of thy transition and of thy 
deliverance." 2 

348 One cannot help being reminded, in reading this text, of the 
Indian idea of the Self as brahman and atman, for instance in 

1 Elenchos, V, 7, 8 (Legge trans., I, p. 123). 
2Elenchos, VIII, 15, ifip. Cf. Legge trans., II, p. 10. 

222 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

the Kena Upanishad: "By whom willed and directed does the 
mind fly forth? By whom commanded does the first breath move? 
Who sends forth the speech we utter here? What god is it that 
stirs the eye and ear? The hearing of the ear, the thinking of the 
mind, the speaking of the speech . . . That which speech can- 
not express, by which speech is expressed . . . which the mind 
cannot think, by which the mind thinks, know that as Brah- 
man." * 

349 Yajfiyavalkya defines it in indirect form in the Brihadaran- 
yaka Upanishad: "He who dwells in all beings, yet is apart from 
all beings, whom no beings know, whose body is all beings, who 
controls all beings from within, he is your Self, the inner con- 
troller, the immortal. . . . There is no other seer but he, no 
other hearer but he, no other perceiver but he, no other knower 
but he. He is your Self, the inner controller, the immortal. All 
else is of sorrow. 4 

35 In Monoi'mos, who was called "the Arab," Indian influences 
are not impossible. His statement is significant because it shows 
that even in the second century 5 the ego was considered the 
exponent of an all-embracing totality, the self a thought that 
by no means all psychologists are familiar with even today. 
These insights, in the Near East as in India, are the product of 
intense introspective observation that can only be psychological. 
Gnosis is undoubtedly a psychological knowledge whose con- 
tents derive from the unconscious. It reached its insights by 
concentrating on the "subjective factor/ 7 6 which consists empiri- 
cally in the demonstrable influence that the collective uncon- 
scious exerts on the conscious mind. This would explain the 
astonishing parallelism between Gnostic symbolism and the 
findings of the psychology of the unconscious. 

35i I would like to illustrate this parallelism by summarizing the 
symbols previously discussed. For this purpose we must first of 
all review the facts that led psychologists to conjecture an arche- 
type of wholeness, i.e., the self. These are in the first place 
dreams and visions; in the second place, products of active 
imagination in which symbols of wholeness appear. The most 

3 Based on Radhakrishnan, The Principal Upanishads, pp. 581!. 

4 Ibid., pp. 228f. 

5 Hippolytus lived c. A.D. 230. Monoimos must therefore antedate him. 

6 Psychological Types (1923 edn., pp. 4711!.). 



AION 

Important of these are geometrical structures containing ele- 
ments of the circle and quaternity; 7 namely, circular and spheri- 
cal forms on the one hand, which can be represented either 
purely geometrically or as objects; and, on the other hand, 
quadratic figures divided into four or in the form of a cross. 
They can also be four objects or persons related to one another 
in meaning or by the way they are arranged. Eight, as a multiple 
of four, has the same significance. A special variant of the qua- 
ternity motif is the dilemma of 3 -f- i. Twelve (3 X 4) seems to 
belong here as a solution of the dilemma and as a symbol of 
wholeness (zodiac, year). Three can be regarded as a relative 
totality, since it usually represents either a spiritual totality that 
is a product of thought, like the Trinity, 8 or else an instinctual, 
chthonic one, like the triadic nature of the gods of the under- 
worldthe "lower triad." Psychologically, however, three if the 
context indicates that it refers to the self should be understood 
as a defective quaternity or as a stepping-stone towards it. 9 
Empirically, a triad has a trinity opposed to it as its comple- 
ment. The complement of the quaternity is unity. 10 
352 From the circle and quaternity motif is derived the symbol 
of the geometrically formed crystal and the wonder-working 
stone. From here analogy formation leads on to the city, castle, 
church, 11 house, room, 12 and vessel. 13 Another variant is the 
wheel. The former motif emphasizes the ego's containment in 
the greater dimension of the self; the latter emphasizes the rota- 
tion which also appears as a ritual circumambulation. Psycho- 
logically, it denotes concentration on and preoccupation with 
a centre, conceived as the centre of a circle and thus formulated 
as a point. This leads easily enough to a relationship to the 
heavenly Pole and the starry bowl of heaven rotating round it. 
A parallel is the horoscope as the "wheel of birth." 

7 The circle has the character of wholeness because of its "perfect" form; the 
quaternity, because four is the minimum number of parts into which the circle 
may naturally be divided. 

8 Cf. "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity," pars. iSsff. 

9 Cf. "Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales" in Part I of vol. 9, and 
"A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity." 

10 Five corresponds to the indistinguishability of quaternity and unity. 

11 Cf. the building of the church with living stones in the "Shepherd" of Hennas. 

12 Wilhelm, The Secret of the Golden Flower, p. 40. 
^Psychology and Alchemy, par. 338. 

224 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

353 The image of the house, room, and vessel brings us to their 
content the inhabitant of the house or city, and the water con- 
tained in the vessel. The inhabitant, in his turn, has a relation- 
ship to the quaternity, and to the fifth as the unity of the four. 
The water appears in modern dreams and visions as a blue ex- 
panse reflecting the sky, as a lake, as four rivers (e.g., Switzer- 
land as the heart of Europe with the Rhine, Ticino, Rhone, and 
Inn, or the Garden of Eden with the Gihon, Pison, Hiddekel, 
and Euphrates), as healing water and consecrated water, etc. 
Sometimes the water is associated with fire, or even combined 
with it as fire-water (wine, alcohol). 

354 The inhabitant of the quadratic space leads to the human 
figure. Apart from the geometrical and arithmetical symbols, 
this is the commonest symbol of the self. It is either a god or a 
godlike human being, a prince, a priest, a great man, an his- 
torical personality, a dearly loved father, an admired example, 
the successful elder brother in short, a figure that transcends 
the ego personality of the dreamer. There are corresponding 
feminine figures in a woman's psychology. 

355 Just as the circle is contrasted with the square, so the qua- 
ternity is contrasted with the 3 + 1 motif, and the positive, 
beautiful, good, admirable, and lovable human figure with a 
daemonic, misbegotten creature who is negative, ugly, evil, 
despicable and an object of fear. Like all archetypes, the self has 
a paradoxical, antinomial character. It is male and female, old 
man and child, powerful and helpless, large and small. The self 
is a true "complexio oppositorum," 14 though this does not 
mean that it is anything like as contradictory in itself. It is 
quite possible that the seeming paradox is nothing but a reflec- 
tion of the enantiodromian changes of the conscious attitude, 
which can have a favourable or an unfavourable effect on the 
whole. The same is true of the unconscious in general, for its 
frightening figures may be called forth by the fear which the 
conscious mind has of the unconscious. The importance of con- 
sciousness should not be underrated; hence it is advisable to re- 
late the contradictory manifestations of the unconscious causally 
to the conscious attitude, at least in some degree. But conscious- 
ness should not be overrated either, for experience provides too 

14 A definition of God in Nicholas of Cusa. Cf . "Psychology of the Transference/' 
par. 537. 



AION 

many incontrovertible proofs of the autonomy of unconscious 
compensatory processes for us to seek the origin of these an- 
tinomies only in the conscious mind. Between the conscious and 
the unconscious there is a kind of "uncertainty relationship," 
because the observer is inseparable from the observed and al- 
ways disturbs it by the act of observation. In other words, exact 
observation of the unconscious prejudices observation of the 
conscious and vice versa. 15 

35 6 Thus the self can appear in all shapes from the highest to the 
lowest, inasmuch as these transcend the scope of the ego person- 
ality in the manner of a daimonion. It goes without saying that 
the self also has its theriomorphic symbolism. The commonest 
of these images in modern dreams are, in my experience, the 
elephant, horse, bull, bear, white and black birds, fishes, and 
snakes. Occasionally one comes across tortoises, snails, spiders, 
and beetles. The principal plant symbols are the flower and the 
tree. Of the inorganic products, the commonest are the moun- 
tain and lake. 

357 Where there is an undervaluation of sexuality the self is 
symbolized as a phallus. Undervaluation can consist in an 
ordinary repression or in overt devaluation. In certain differ- 
entiated persons a purely biological interpretation and evalua- 
tion of sexuality can also have this effect. Any such conception 
overlooks the spiritual and "mystical" implications of the sexual 
instinct. 16 These have existed from time immemorial as psychic 
facts, but are devalued and repressed on rationalistic and 
philosophical grounds. In all such cases one can expect an un- 
conscious phallicism by way of compensation. A good example 
of this is the mainly sexualistic approach to the psyche in Freud. 



35 8 Coming now to the Gnostic symbols of the self, we find that 
the Naassenes of Hippolytus lay most emphasis on the human 
images; of the geometrical and arithmetical symbols the most 
important are the quaternity, the ogdoad, the trinity, and unity. 
Here we shall give our attention mainly to the totality symbol 
of the quaternity, and above all to the symbol mentioned in 

15 For case histories on the mandala motif see the last two papers in Part I 
of vol. 9. 

16 Cf. Hurwitz, "Archetypische Motive in der chassidischen Mystik," ch. VI. 

226 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 



section 6 of the last chapter, which I would like to call, for short, 
the Moses Quaternio. We shall then consider the second Naas- 
sene Quaternio, the one with the four rivers of Paradise, which 
I shall call the Paradise Quaternio. Though differently consti- 
tuted, the two quaternios express roughly the same idea, and in 
what follows I shall try not only to relate them to one another 
psychologically, but also to bring out their connection with 
later (alchemical) quaternary structures. In the course o these 
investigations, we shall see how far the two quaternios are char- 
acteristic of the Gnostic age, and how far they can be correlated 
with the archetypal history of the mind in the Christian aeon. 
The quaternity in the Moses Quaternio 17 is evidently con- 



359 



structed according to the following schema: 



The Higher Adam 



Miriam, Mother' 
Sister-Anima 



Jcthro, physical 
end spiritual father 




Zipporah, wife of Moses 
and daughter of Jethro 



The Lower Adam 

The Moses Quaternio 

3 6 The "lower Adam" corresponds to the ordinary mortal man, 
Moses to the culture-hero and lawgiver, and thus, on a person- 
alistic level, to the "father"; Zipporah, as the daughter of a king 

17 Elenchos, V, 8, 2. 

227 



AION 

and priest, to the "higher mother/' For the ordinary man, these 
two represent the "royal pair/' which for Moses corresponds on 
the one hand to his "higher man/' and on the other hand to his 
anima, Miriam. 18 The "higher" man is synonymous with the 
"spiritual, inner" man, who is represented in the quaternio by 
Jethro. Such is the meaning of the quaternio when seen from 
the standpoint of Moses. But since Moses is related to Jethro as 
the lower Adam, or ordinary man, is to Moses, the quaternio 
cannot be understood merely as the structure of Moses' per- 
sonality, but must be looked at from the standpoint of the lower 
Adam as well. We then get the following quaternio: 

MOSES ZIPPORAH 

as culture-hero as higher mother 

THE LOWER ADAM EVE 

as ordinary man as ordinary woman 

361 From this we can see that the Naassene quaternio is in a 
sense unsymmetrical, since it leads to a senarius (hexad) with an 
exclusively upward tendency: Jethro and Miriam have to be 
added to the above four as a kind of third storey, as the higher 
counterparts of Moses and Zipporah. We thus get a gradual pro- 
gression, or series of steps leading from the lower to the higher 
Adam. This psychology evidently underlies the elaborate lists of 
Valentinian syzygies. The lower Adam or somatic man conse- 
quently appears as the lowest stage of all, from which there can 
be only an ascent. But, as I have already pointed out, the four 
persons in the Naassene quaternio are chosen so skilfully that 
it leaves room not only for the incest motif, which is never lack- 
ing in the marriage quaternio, but also for the extension of the 
ordinary man's psychic structure downwards, towards the sub- 
human, the dark and evil side represented by the shadow. That 
is to say, Moses marries the "Ethiopian woman," and Miriam, 
the prophetess and mother-sister, becomes "leprous," which is 
clear proof that her relation to Moses has taken a negative turn. 
This is further confirmed by the fact that Miriam "spoke 
against" Moses and even stirred up his brother Aaron against 
him. Accordingly, we get the following senarius: 

18 Cf. "Psychology of the Transference," pp. 21 iff. 

228 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

THE LOWER ADAM EVE 

MOSES ETHIOPIAN WOMAN 

JETHRO, the heathen priest MIRIAM, the "white" leper 

3 62 Though nothing is said against Jethro, "the great wise one/' 
in the Bible story, yet as a Midianite priest he did not serve 
Yahweh and did not belong to the chosen people, but departs 
from them to his own country. 19 He seems also to have borne 
the name Reguel ("friend of God") and to have helped Moses 
with his superior wisdom. He is, accordingly, a numinous per- 
sonality, the embodiment of an archetype, obviously that of the 
"wise old man" who personifies the spirit in myth and folklore. 
The spirit, as I have shown elsewhere, 20 has a dichotomous 
nature. Just as Moses in this case represents his own shadow by 
taking to wife the black daughter of the earth, so Jethro, in his 
capacity as heathen priest and stranger, has to be included in the 
quaternio as the "lower" aspect of himself, with a magical and 
nefarious significance (though this is not vouched for in the 
text). 21 

3 6 3 As I have already explained, the Moses Quaternio is an indi- 
vidual variant of the common marriage quaternio found in folk- 
lore. 22 It could therefore be designated just as well with other 
mythical names. The basic schema of the cross-cousin marriage: 

HUSBAND COUSIN AS WIFE 

HUSBAND'S SISTER WIFE'S BROTHER 

has numerous variants; for instance the sister can be replaced 
by the mother or the wife's brother by a fatherlike figure. But 
the incest motif remains a characteristic feature. Since the 
schema is a primary one characterizing the psychology of love 
relationships and also of the transference, it will, like all char- 
acterological schemata, obviously manifest itself in a "favour- 
able" and an "unfavourable" form, for the relationships in ques- 
tion also exhibit the same ambivalence: everything a man does 
has a positive and a negative aspect. 

19 Exodus 18 : 27. 

20 "Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales" in Part I of vol. 9, sec. 3. 

21 Since the whole Shadow Quaternio is a symmetrical construction, the "good 
Wise Man" must here be contrasted with a correspondingly dark, chthonic figure. 

22 Cf. "Psychology of the Transference," pars. 4255. 

229 



AION 

364 The reader, therefore, should not let himself be put off by 
the somewhat scurrilous Gnostic nomenclature. The names are 
accidental, whereas the schema itself is universally valid. The 
same is true of the "Shadow Quaternio," for which I have kept 
the same names because the biography of Moses offers certain 
features that are well suited to illustrate the shadow. 

3 6 5 The lower senarius reaches its nadir not in the 'lower 
Adam" but in his dark, theriomorphic prefiguration the ser- 
pent who was created before man, or the Gnostic Naas. Accord- 
ingly we have the structures shown on the facing page. 

3 66 This schema is no idle parlour game, because the texts make 
it abundantly clear that the Gnostics were quite familiar with 
the dark aspect of their metaphysical figures, so much so that 
they caused the greatest offence on that account. (One has only 
to think of the identification of the good God with Priapus, 23 or 
of the Anthropos with the ithyphallic Hermes.) It was, more- 
over, the Gnostics e.g., Basilides who exhaustively discussed 
the problem of evil (iroOev TO /ca/cov? 'whence comes evil?'). The 
serpentine form of the Nous and the Agathodaimon does not 
mean that the serpent has only a good aspect. Just as the 
Apophis-serpent was the traditional enemy of the Egyptian sun- 
god, so the devil, "that ancient serpent," 24 is the enemy of 
Christ, the "novus Sol." The good, perfect, spiritual God was 
opposed by an imperfect, vain, ignorant, and incompetent 
demiurge. There were archontic Powers that gave to mankind 
a corrupt "chirographum" (handwriting) from which Christ 
had to redeem them. 25 

3 6 7 With the dawn of the second millennium the accent shifted 

23 In the gnosis of Justin. See Hippolytus, Elenchos> V, 26, 32 (Legge trans., I, 
p. 178): 6 8e &ya66s e<m Jlpiairos (But the Good One is Priapus). 

24 Rev. 12 : 9. 

25 Coloss. 2 : 14: "Blotting out the handwriting of the decree that was against us, 
which was contrary to us. And he hath taken the same out of the way, fastening it 
to the cross" (DV). The handwriting is imprinted on the body. This view is con- 
firmed by Orosius ("Ad Aurelium Augustum commonitorium de errore Priscil- 
lianistarum et Origenistarum," p. 153), who says that in the opinion of Pris- 
cillian the soul, on descending through the spheres into birth, was caught by the 
powers of evil, and at the behest of the victor ("victoris principis") was cast into 
separate bodies, upon which a "handwriting" was written. The parts of the soul 
received a divine chirographum, but the parts of the body are imprinted with 
the signs of the zodiac (caeli signa}. 

230 



Anthropos (the higher Adam) 



The higher Jethro ^~ 



The higher Moses 




The lower Jethro 



The positive Miriam 



The wise Zipporah 



Man (the lower Adam) 

A. The Anthropos Quaternio 




The negative Miriam 



The Ethiopian woman 



Serpent 

B. Hie Shadow Quaternio 



AION 



more and more towards the dark side. The demiurge became 
the devil who had created the world, and, a little later, alchemy 
began to develop its conception of Mercurius as the partly ma- 
terial., partly immaterial spirit that penetrates and sustains all 
things, from stones and metals to the highest living organisms. 
In the form of a snake he dwells inside the earth, has a body, 
soul, and spirit, was believed to have a human shape as the 
homunculus or homo altus, and was regarded as the "earthly 
God." 26 From this we can see clearly that the serpent was either 
a forerunner of man or a distant copy of the Anthropos, and 
how justified is the equation Naas = Nous = Logos = Christ 
= Higher Adam. The medieval extension of this equation to- 
wards the dark side had, as I have said, already been prepared 
by Gnostic phallicism. This appears as early as the fifteenth cen- 
tury In the alchemical Codex Ashburnham n66, 2T and in the 
sixteenth century Mercurius was identified with Hermes Kyl- 
lenios. 28 



It is significant that Gnostic philosophy found its continua- 
tion in alchemy. 29 "Mater Alchimia" is one of the mothers of 
modern science, and modern science has given us an unparal- 
leled knowledge of the "dark" side of matter. It has also pene- 
trated into the secrets of physiology and evolution, and made 
the very roots of life itself an object of investigation. In this 
way the human mind has sunk deep into the sublunary world 

26 "The Spirit Mercurius." 

27 See Psychology and Alchemy f fig. 131. 

28 In "Chrysopoeia" (in Gratarolus, Verae alchemiae artisque metallicae, 1561, 
pp. 26gff.), which Augurellus dedicated to Pope Leo X. It contains an invocation 
of the alma soror of Phoebus: 

"Tu quoque, nee coeptis Cylleni audacibus usquam 

Defueris, tibi nam puro de fonte perennis 

Rivulus argentum, vulgo quod vivere dicunt, 

Sufficit, et tantis praestat prirnordia rebus." 
(You too, Cyllenian, this bold enterprise 
Fail not, the stream from whose pure spring supplies 
The silver men call "quick," the primal state 
And first beginning of a work so great. [Trans, by A. S. B. Glover.]) 

29 In the Western Roman Empire there is a gap in this development, extending 
from the grd to about the nth cent., that is, to the time of the first translations 
from the Arabic. 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

of matter, thus repeating the Gnostic myth of the Nous, who, 
beholding his reflection in the depths below, plunged down and 
was swallowed in the embrace of Physis. The climax of this de- 
velopment was marked in the eighteenth century by the French 
Revolution, in the nineteenth century by scientific materialism, 
and in the twentieth century by political and social "realism/' 
which has turned the wheel of history back a full two thousand 
years and seen the recrudescence of the despotism, the lack of 
individual rights, the cruelty, indignity, and slavery of the pre- 
Christian world, whose "labour problem" was solved by the 
"ergastulum" (convict-camp). The "total reversal of all values" 
is being enacted before our eyes. 

3 6 9 The development briefly outlined here seems to have been 
anticipated in medieval and Gnostic symbolism, just as the 
Antichrist was in the New Testament. How this occurred I will 
endeavour to describe in what follows. We have seen that, as 
the higher Adam corresponds to the lower, so the lower Adam 
corresponds to the serpent. For the mentality of the Middle 
Ages and of late antiquity, the first of the two double pyramids, 
the Anthropos Quaternio, represents the world of the spirit, or 
metaphysics, while the second, the Shadow QuaterniOj repre- 
sents sublunary nature and in particular man's instinctual dis- 
position, the "flesh" to use a Gnostic-Christian term which has 
its roots in the animal kingdom or, to be more precise, in the 
realm of warm-blooded animals. The nadir of this system is 
the cold-blooded vertebrate, the snake, 30 for with the snake the 
psychic rapport that can be established with practically all warm- 
blooded animals comes to an end. That the snake, contrary to 
expectation, should be a counterpart of the Anthropos is cor- 
roborated by the factof especial significance for the Middle 
Ages that it is on the one hand a well-known allegory of Christ, 
and on the other hand appears to be equipped with the gift of 
wisdom and of supreme spirituality. 31 As Hippolytus says, the 
Gnostics identified the serpent with the spinal cord and the 
medulla. These are synonymous with the reflex functions. 

370 The second of, these quaternios is the negative of the first; 
it is its shadow. By "shadow" I mean the inferior personality, the 
lowest levels of which are indistinguishable from the instinctu- 

30 Synonymous with, the dragon, since draco also means snake, 
si g oy TrvevfiariKUTaTov, 'the most spiritual animal/ 

233 



AION 

ality of an animal. This is a view that can be found at a very 
early date, in the idea of the Trpocr^V *h>xn> the 'excrescent 
soul' 32 of Isidorus. 33 We also meet it in Origen, who speaks of 
the animals contained in man. 34 Since the shadow, in itself, is 
unconscious for most people, the snake would correspond to 
what is totally unconscious and incapable of becoming con- 
scious, but which, as the collective unconscious and as instinct, 
seems to possess a peculiar wisdom of its own and a knowledge 
that is often felt to be supernatural. This is the treasure which 
the snake (or dragon) guards, and also the reason why the snake 
signifies evil and darkness on the one hand and wisdom on the 
other. Its unrelatedness, coldness, and dangerousness express 
the instinctuality that with ruthless cruelty rides roughshod 
over all moral and any other human wishes and considerations 
and is therefore just as terrifying and fascinating in its effects as 
the sudden glance of a poisonous snake. 

37 1 In alchemy the snake is the symbol of Mercurius non vulgi, 
which was bracketed with the god of revelation, Hermes. Both 
have a pneumatic nature. The serpens Mercurii is a chthonic 
spirit who dwells in matter, more especially in the bit of original 
chaos hidden in creation, the massa confusa or globosa. The 
snake-symbol in alchemy points back to historically earlier 
images. Since the opus was understood by the alchemists as a 
recapitulation or imitation of the creation of the world, the 
serpent of Mercurius, that crafty and deceitful god, reminded 
them of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and therefore of the 
devil, the tempter, who on their own admission played all sorts 
of tricks on them during their work. Mephistopheles, whose 
"aunt is the snake," is Goethe's version of the alchemical famil- 
iar, Mercurius. Like the dragon, Mercurius is the slippery, 
evasive, poisonous, dangerous forerunner of the hermaphrodite, 
and for that reason he has to be overcome. 

372 For the Naassenes Paradise was a quaternity parallel with 

32 in Valentinus the "appendages" are spirits indwelling in man. Clement of 
Alexandria, 112 and 114 (pp. 64!:.). 

33 Isidorus was the son of Basilides. See Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, II, 
20, 113 (trans, by Wilson, II, p. 65). The "outgrowths" are animal souls, as of 
wolves, monkeys, lions, etc. 

34 in Levit. horn. V, 2 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, col. 450): "So when thou seest that 
thou hast all the things the world has, doubt not that thou hast within thee 
even the animals which are offered in sacrifice." 

234 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

the Moses quaternio and of similar meaning. Its fourfold nature 
consisted in the four rivers, Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Phrat. 35 
The serpent in Genesis is an illustration of the personified tree- 
numen; hence it is traditionally represented in or coiled round 
the tree. It is the tree's voice, which persuades Eve in Luther's 
version that "it would be good to eat of the tree, and pleasant 
to behold that it is a lusty tree." In the fairytale of "The Spirit 
in the Bottle," Mercurius can likewise be interpreted as a tree- 
numen. 36 In the Ripley Scroll Mercurius appears as a snake in 
the shape of a Melusina descending from the top of the Philo- 
sophical Tree ("tree of knowledge"). 37 The tree stands for the 
development and phases of the transformation process, 38 and its 
fruits or flowers signify the consummation of the work. 39 In the 
fairytale Mercurius is hidden in the roots of a great oak-tree, 
i.e., in the earth. For it is in the interior of the earth that the 
Mercurial serpent dwells. 

373 For the alchemists Paradise was a favourite symbol of the 
albedo* the regained state of innocence, and the source of its 
rivers is a symbol of the aqua permanens. 41 For the Church 
Fathers Christ is this source, 42 and Paradise means the ground 
of the soul from which the fourfold river of the Logos bubbles 
forth. 43 We find the same symbol in the alchemist and mystic 
John Pordage: divine Wisdom is a "New Earth, the heavenly 
Land. . . . For from this Earth grew all the Trees of Life. . . . 
Thus did Paradise . . . rise up from the Heart and Centre of 
this New Earth, and thus did the lost Garden of Eden flourish in 
greenness/' 44 

35 Euphrates. 36 "The Spirit Mercurius." 

37 See Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 257. 38 Ibid., par. 357. 

39 Ibid., fig. 122, and "The 'Arbor philosophical " (Swiss edn., pp. 4276:.). 

40 Ripley, Cantilena, verse s8f., and Chymische schrifften, p. 51; also Mylius, 
Phil, ref., p. 124. 

41 "A land to be watered with the clear water of paradise" (Hollandus, "Frag- 
mentum de lapide," Theatr. chem., II, p. 142). The "Tractatus Aristotelis ad 
Alexandrum Magnum (conscriptus et collectus a quodam Christiano Philoso- 
pho)," Theatr. chem., II, p. 885, compares the "practica Aristotelis" with the 
water of paradise, which makes man "whole" (incolumem) and immortal: "From 
this water all true Philosophers have had life and infinite riches." 

42 Didymus of Alexandria, De trinitate (Migne, P.G., vol. 39, col. 456). 

43 St Ambrose, Explanationes in Psalmos, Ps. 45, 12 (Corp. Script. Eccl. Lot., 
LXIV, p. 337). Cf. Rahner, "Flumina de ventre Christi," pp. 26gff. 

44 Sophia (1699), p. 9. 

235 



AION 



374 The snake symbol brings us to the images o Paradise, tree, 
and earth. This amounts to an evolutionary regression from the 
animal kingdom back to plants and inorganic nature, epitomized 
in alchemy by the secret of matter, the lapis. Here the lapis is 
not to be understood as the end product of the opus but rather 
as its initial material. This arcane substance was also called lapis 
by the alchemists. The symbolism here described can be repre- 
sented diagrammatically as another quaternio or double pyra- 
mid: 

Serpent 



Gihon JSJ ..._.-..-. /_ 




Hiddekel 



Euphrates 



Pison 



Lapis 

C. The Paradise Quaternio 



375 The lapis was thought of as a unity and therefore often 
stands for the prima materia in general. But just as the latter 
is a bit of the original chaos which was believed to be hidden 
somewhere in metals, particularly in mercury, or in other sub- 
stances, and is not in itself a simple thing (as the name "massa 
confusa" shows), so too the lapis consists of the four elements or 

236 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

has to be put together from them. 45 In the chaos the elements 
are not united, they are merely coexistent and have to be com- 
bined through the alchemical procedure. They are even hostile 
to one another and will not unite o their own accord. They 
represent, therefore, an original state of conflict and mutual 
repulsion. This image serves to illustrate the splitting up or 
unfolding of the original unity into the multiplicity of the 
visible world. Out of the split-up quaternity the opus puts to- 
gether the unity of the lapis in the realm of the inorganic. As 
the filius macrocosmi and a living being, the lapis is not just an 
allegory but is a direct parallel of Christ 46 and the higher Adam, 
of the heavenly Original Man, of the second Adam (Christ), and 
of the serpent. The nadir of this third quaternio is therefore a 
further counterpart of the Anthropos. 

376 As already mentioned, the constitution of the lapis rests on 
the union of the four elements, 47 which in their turn represent 
an unfolding of the unknowable inchoate state, or chaos. This is 
the prima materia, the arcanum, the primary substance, which 
in Paracelsus and his followers is called the increatum and is 
regarded as coeternal with God a correct interpretation of the 
Tehom in Genesis 1:2: "And the [uncreated] earth was with- 
out form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; 
and the Spirit of God [brooded] over the face of the waters." 
This primary substance is round (massa globosa, rotundum, 
o-ro6Xtov vrpoyyvXov) , like the world and the world-soul; it is in 
fact the world-soul and the world-substance in one. It is the 
"stone that has a spirit/* 4S in modern parlance the most elemen- 
tary building-stone in the architecture of matter, the atom, 
which is an intellectual model. The alchemists describe the 

45 The lapis is made of the four elements, like Adam. The centre of the squared 
circle is the "mediator, making peace between the enemies or elements, so that 
they may love one another in a meet embrace" ("Tractatus aureus," Theatr. 
chem., IV, p. 691). 

46 Cf. the evidence for this in Psychology and Alchemy, "The Christ-Lapis 
Parallel" 

47 Mylius (Phil. ref.,, p. 15) identifies the elements that constitute the lapis with 
corpus, spiritus, and anima: corpus is matter, earth, and spiritus is the nodus 
(bond) animae et corporis, and therefore corresponds to fire. Water and air, which 
would properly characterize the anima, are also "spirit." Three of the elements 
are "moving," one (earth) "unmoving." Cf. n. 89, infra. 

48 Quotation from Ostanes in Zosimos, "Sur Tart" (Berthelot, Alch. grecs, HI, 
vi, 5). 



377 



AION 

"round element" now as primal water, now as primal fire, or as 
pneuma, primal earth, or "corpusculum nostrae sapientiae," 
the little body of our wisdom. 49 As water or fire it is the uni- 
versal solvent; as stone and metal it is something that has to be 
dissolved and changed into air (pneuma, spirit). 

This lapis symbolism can once more be visualized diagrain- 
matically as a double pyramid: 

Lapis 




Earth 



Fire 



Rotundum 

D. The Lapis Quaternio 

Zosimos calls the rotundum the omega element (O), which 
probably signifies the head. 50 The skull is mentioned as the ves- 
sel of transformation in the Sabaean treatise 'Tlatonis liber 
quartorum," 51 and the "Philosophers" styled themselves "chil- 
dren of the golden head/' 52 which is probably synonymous with 
"filii sapientiae." The vas is often synonymous with the lapis, 
so that there is no difference between the vessel and its content; 

49 "Aurora consurgens/' Art. aurif., I, p. 208. 

50 Cf. my remarks on the significance of the head in "Transformation Symbolism 
in the Mass/' pars. 3656:. "Head" also means "beginning," e.g., "head of the Nile," 
etc. 51 Theatr. chem. f V, p. 151. 52 Berthelot, III, x, i. 

238 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

in other words, it is the same arcanum. 53 According to the old 
view the soul is round 54 and the vessel must be round too, like 
the heavens or the world. 55 The form of the Original Man is 
round. Accordingly Dorn says that the vessel "should be made 
from a kind of squaring of the circle, so that the spirit and the 
soul of our material, separated from its body, may raise the body 
with them to the height of their own heaven." 56 The anony- 
mous author of the scholia to the "Tractatus aureus" also writes 
about the squaring of the circle and shows a square whose cor- 
ners are formed by the four elements. In the centre there is a 
small circle. The author says: "Reduce your stone to the four 
elements, rectify and combine them into one, and you will have 
the whole magistery. This One, to which the elements must be 
reduced, is that little circle in the centre of this squared figure. It 
is the mediator, making peace between the enemies or ele- 
ments." 57 In a later chapter he depicts the vessel, "the true 
philosophical Pelican/' 58 as shown on the next page. 59 

53. "There is one stone, one medicine, one vessel, one method, one disposition" 
(Rosarium philosophorum, Art. aurif. f II, 206). "In our water all modes of things 
are brought about. ... In the said water they are made as in an artificial vessel, 
which is a mighty secret" (Mylius, Phil, re/., p. 245). "The Philosophical vessel is 
their water" (ibid., p. 33). This saying comes from de Hoghelande's treatise in 
Theatr. chern., I, p. 199. There we find: "Sulphur also is called by Lully the vessel 
of Nature," and Haly's description of the vessel as "ovum." The egg is content and 
container at once. The vas naturals is the aqua permanens and the "vinegar" of 
the Philosophers. ("Aurora consurgens," Part II, Art. aurif., I, p. 203.) 

54 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogue on Miracles, trans. Scott and Bland, Dist. I, 
chs. XXXII and XXXIV. 

55 in Olympiodorus the transforming vessel is the "spherical phial" or ftpyavov 
KVK\IKOV (circular apparatus). (Berthelot, II, iv, 44.) "The spagiric vessel is to be 
made after the likeness of the natural vessel. For we see that all heaven and the 
elements have the likeness of a spherical body" (Dorn, Theatr. chem., I, p. 430). 
"The end of all this master-work is, that the Philosophic Mercury be placed in the 
heavenly sphere" (ibid, p. 499). Trevisanus calls the vessel the rotundum cubile, 
"round bridal bed" ("Liber de alchemia," Theatr. chem., I, p. 790). 

56 "Congeries," Theatr. chem., I, pp. 574! 57 ibid., IV, p. 691. 

58 "Nor is any other to be sought after in all the world." The Pelican is a dis- 
tilling vessel, but the distillate, instead of dripping into the receiver, runs back 
into the belly of the retort. We could take this as illustrating the process of con- 
scious realization and the reapplication of conscious insights to the unconscious. 
"It restored their former security of life to those once near to death," the author 
says of the Pelican, which, as we know, is an allegory of Christ. 

59 Cf, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 123. 

239 



AION 

37 8 He comments: "A is the inside, as it were the origin and 
source from which the other letters flow, and likewise the final 
goal to which all the others flow back, as rivers flow into the 
ocean or into the great sea." This explanation is enough to show 
that the vessel is nothing else but a mandala, symbolizing the 
self or the higher Adam with his four emanations (like Horus 
with his four sons). The author calls it the "Septenarius magicus 
occultus" (the hidden magic number, seven). 60 Likewise Maria 




the Prophetess says: "The Philosophers teach everything except 
the Hermetic vessel, because that is divine and is hidden from the 
Gentiles by the Lord's wisdom; and they who know it not, 
know not the true method, because of their ignorance of the 
vessel of Hermes." Theobald de Hoghelande adds: "Senior says 
that the vision thereof is more to be sought after than [knowl- 
edge of] the Scriptures." Maria the Prophetess says: "This is the 
vessel of Hermes, which the Stoics hid, and it is no nigromantic 
vessel, but is the measure of thy fire \mensura ignis wi]. 61 

60 That is, counting the letters F and G (not included in the diagram), which 
signify Above and Below. 

61 Art. aurif., I 3 p. 324; Theatr. chem., I, p. 199; Art. aurif., I, p. 323. 

240 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

379 It is clear from these quotations that the vessel had a great 
and unusual significance. 62 Philalethes, summing up the innu- 
merable synonyms for Mercurius, says that Mercurius is not 
only the key to the alchemical art, and "that two-edged sword 
in the hand of the cherub who guards the way to the tree of 
life/' but also "our true, hidden vessel, the Philosophic garden, 
wherein our Sun rises and sets/' 63 This helps us to understand, 
more or less, the strange advice given by Johannes de Rupescissa: 
"Have a vessel made after the manner of a cherub, which is the 
figure of God, and have six wings, after the fashion of six arms, 
turning back on themselves; and above, a round head . . . and 
put within this vessel the said burning water," etc. 64 The defini- 
tion of the cherub as "the figure of God" suggests that Ru- 
pescissa is referring here to the vision of Ezekiel, which was 
arranged in such a way that a horizontal section through it 
would produce a mandala divided into four parts. This, as I 
have already mentioned, is equivalent to the squaring of the 
circle, from which, according to one alchemical recipe, the ves- 
sel should be constructed. The mandala signifies the human or 
divine self, the totality or vision of God, as in this case is quite 
clear. Naturally a recipe of this sort can only be understood 
"philosophically," that is psychologically. It then reads: make 
the Hermetic vessel out of your psychic wholeness and pour into 
it the aqua permanens, or aqua doctrinae, one of whose syno- 
nyms is the vinum ardens (cf. Rupescissa's "burning water"). 
This would be a hint that the adept should "inwardly digest" 
and transform himself through the alchemical doctrine. 

380 In this connection we can also understand what the Aurora 
consurgens (Part II) means when it speaks of the v as naturale 
as the matrix: it is the "One in which there are three things, 
namely water, air, and fire. They are three glass alembics, in 
which the son of the Philosophers is begotten. Therefore they 
have named it tincture, blood, and egg." 65 The three alembics 
are an allusion to the Trinity. That this is in fact so can be seen 
from the illustration on page 249 of the 1588 edition of Pandora, 
where, beside the three alembics immersed in a great cooking- 
pot, there stands the figure of Christ, with blood pouring from 

62 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 338. 6&Mus. herm., p. 770. 

64 La Vertu et la propriety de la quinte essence (1581), p. 26. 

65 Art. aurif. f I, p. 203. 



AION 

the lance wound in his breast ("flumina de ventre Christi"!). 66 
The round Hermetic vessel in which the mysterious transforma- 
tion is accomplished is God himself, the (Platonic) world-soul 
and man's own wholeness. It is, therefore, another counterpart 
of the Anthropos, and at the same time the universe in its 
smallest and most material form. So it is easy to see why the first 
attempts to construct a model of the atom took the planetary 
system as a prototype. 



The quaternity is an organizing schema par excellence, 
something like the crossed threads in a telescope. It is a system 
of co-ordinates that is used almost instinctively for dividing up 
and arranging a chaotic multiplicity, as when we divide up the 
visible surface of the earth, the course of the year, or a collec- 
tion of individuals into groups, 67 the phases of the moon, the 
temperaments, elements, alchemical colours, and so on. Thus, 
when we come upon a quaternio among the Gnostics, we find in 
it an attempt, more or less conscious, to organize the chaotic 
medley of numinous images that poured in upon them. As we 
have seen, the arrangement took a form that derives from the 
primitive cross-cousin marriage, namely the marriage quater- 
nio. 68 This differs from the primitive form in that the sister- 
exchange marriage has sloughed off its biological character, the 
sister's husband no longer being the wife's brother but another 
close relative (such as the wife's father in the Moses Quaternio), 
or even a stranger. The loss of the cousin- and brother-attribute 
is compensated as a rule by magical qualities, such as more 
exalted rank, magical powers, and the like, both in the case of 
the husband's sister and the wife's brother. That is to say, an 
anima-animus projection takes place. This modification brings 
with it a great cultural advance, for the very fact of projection 
points to a constellation of the unconscious in the husband-wife 
relationship, which means that the marriage has become psy- 
chologically complicated. It is no longer a state of mere bio- 

66 See the illustration on p. 99 in my Paracelsica, 

6T Marriage classes and settlements. 

68 "Psychology of the Transference/' pars. 4336:. [Cf. Layard, Stone Men of 

Malekula, chs. 5 and 6, and "The Incest Taboo and the Virgin Archetype," pp. 

2 66ff. EDITORS.] 

242 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

logical and social coexistence, but is beginning to turn into a 
conscious relationship. This happens when the original cross- 
cousin marriage becomes obsolete as a result of the further dif- 
ferentiation of marriage classes into a six-, eight-, or twelve-class 
system. The cause of the activation of the unconscious that goes 
hand in hand with this development is the regression of the 
endogamous tendency the "kinship libido" which can no 
longer find adequate satisfaction owing to the increasing 
strangeness of the marriage partner. 69 

3 8 * Besides the marriage quaternio, the Gnostics also used the 
quaternity of the rivers of Paradise as a means of organizing 
their numerous symbols. There are thus two (compensatory) 
attempts, in the symbols we have listed, to organize the appar- 
ently disconnected images. This accords with our experience of 
the series of pictures produced during active imagination and in 
chaotic psychic states. In both cases quaternity symbols appear 
from time to time. 70 They signify stabilization through order as 
opposed to the Instability caused by chaos, and have a compensa- 
tory meaning. 

3 8 3 The four quaternios depicted above are first and foremost an 
attempt to arrange systematically the almost limitless wealth of 
symbols in Gnosticism and its continuation, alchemy. But such 
an arrangement of principles also proves useful for understand- 
ing the individual symbolism of modern dreams. The images we 
encounter in this field are even more varied, and so confusing 
in their complexity that some kind of organizing schema is abso- 
lutely essential. As it is advisable to proceed historically, I have 
taken the Moses Quaternio as a starting point, because it derives 
directly from the primitive schema of the cross-cousin marriage. 
Naturally this quaternio has only a paradigmatic significance. 
One could base the system just as easily on any other marriage 
quaternio, but not on any other quaternity, such as, for instance, 
Horus and his four sons. This quaternity is not aboriginal 
enough, for it misses out the antagonistic, feminine element. 71 

69 "Psychology of the Transference," par. 438. 

70 Case material in Psychology and Alchemy, part II. Triadic symbols also occur, 
but they are rarer. 

71 The Gnostic quaternio is naturally later than the Horus quaternity in point of 
time, but psychologically it is older, because in it the feminine element reassumes 
its rightful place, as is not the case with the patriarchal Horus quaternio. 

243 



AION 



It is most important that just the extreme opposites, masculine- 
feminine and so on, should appear linked together. That is why 
the alchemical pairs of opposites are linked together in qua- 
ternities, e.g., warm-cold, dry-moist. Applied to the Moses 
Quaternio, the following schema of relationships would result: 



JETHRO 
Father 



MOSES 
Brother 



MIRIAM 

Sister 



ZIPPORAH 

Daughter 

384 Whereas the first double pyramid, the Anthropos Quaternio, 
corresponds to the Gnostic model, the second one is a construc- 
tion derived psychologically from the first, but based on the data 
contained in the Biblical text used by the Gnostics. The psycho- 
logical reasons for constructing a second quaternio have already 
been discussed. That the second must be the "shadow" of the 
first is due to the fact that the lower Adam, the mortal man, 
possesses a chthonic psyche and is therefore not adequately ex- 
pressed by a quaternity supraordinate to him. If he were, he 
would be an unsymmetrical figure, just as the higher Adam is 
unsymmetrical and has to be complemented by a subordinate 
quatemity related to him like his shadow or his darker reflection. 

S 8 5 Now just as the Anthropos Quaternio finds its symmetrical 
complement in the lower Adam, so the lower Adam is balanced 
by the subordinate Shadow Quaternio, constructed after the 
pattern of the upper one. The symmetrical complement of the 
lower Adam is the serpent. The choice of this symbol is justified 
firstly by the well-known association of Adam with the snake: 
it is his chthonic daemon, his familiar spirit. Secondly, the snake 
is the commonest symbol for the dark, chthonic world of in- 
stinct. It mayas frequently happens be replaced by an equiv- 
alent cold-blooded animal, such as a dragon, crocodile, or fish. 

244 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

But the snake is not just a nefarious, chthonic being; it is also, 
as we have already mentioned, a symbol of wisdom, and hence 
of light, goodness, and healing. 72 Even in the New Testament 
it is simultaneously an allegory of Christ and of the devil, just 
as we have seen that the fish was. Similarly the dragon, which 
for us has only a negative meaning, has a positive significance 
in China, and sometimes in Western alchemy too. The inner 
polarity of the snake-symbol far exceeds that of man. It is overt, 
whereas man's is partly latent or potential. The serpent sur- 
passed Adam in cleverness and knowledge and can outwit him. 
She is older than he, and is evidently equipped by God with a 
superhuman intelligence, like that son of God who took over 
the role of Satan. 73 

386 Just as man culminates above in the idea of a "light" and 
good God, so he rests below on a dark and evil principle, tradi- 
tionally described as the devil or as the serpent that personifies 
Adam's disobedience. And just as we symmetrized man by the 
serpent, so the serpent has its complement in the second Naas- 
sene quaternio, or Paradise Quaternio. Paradise takes us into 
the world of plants and animals. It is, in fact, a plantation or 
garden enlivened by animals, the epitome of all the growing 
things that sprout out of the earth. As serpens mercurialis, the 
snake is not only related to the god of revelation, Hermes, but, 
as a vegetation numen, calls forth the "blessed greenness/ 1 all 
the budding and blossoming of plant life. 74 Indeed, this serpent 
dwells even in the interior of the earth and is the pneuma that 
lies hidden in the stone 

387 The symmetrical complement of the serpent, then, is the 
stone as representative of the earth. Here we enter a later de- 
velopmental stage of the symbolism, the alchemical stage, whose 
central idea is the lapis. Just as the serpent forms the lower 
opposite of man, so the lapis complements the serpent. It corre- 
sponds, on the other hand, to man, for it is not only represented 

72 Like, for instance, the Aesculapian and Agathodaimon serpent. 
73Scharf, "Die Gestalt des Satans im Alien Testament," p. 151. 

74 "Q blessed greenness, which givest birth to all things, whence know that no 
vegetable and no fruit appears in the bud but that it hath a green colour. Like- 
wise know that the generation of this thing is green, for which reason the 
Philosophers have called it a bud." (Ros. phil, Art. aurif., H, p. 220.) 

75 Cf. the Ostanes quotation in Zosimos (Berthelot, III, vi, 5). 

245 



AION 

in human form but even has "body, soul, and spirit," is an 
homunculus and, as the texts show, a symbol of the self. It is, 
however, not a human ego but a collective entity, a collective 
soul, like the Indian hiranyagarbha, 'golden seed/ The stone is 
the "father-mother" of the metals, an hermaphrodite. Though 
it is an ultimate unity, it is not an elementary but a composite 
unity that has evolved. For the stone we could substitute all 
those "thousand names" which the alchemists devised for their 
central symbol, but nothing different or more fitting would have 
been said. 

3 88 This choice of symbol, too, is not arbitrary, but is docu- 
mented by alchemical literature from the first to the eighteenth 
century. The lapis is produced, as we have already seen, from 
the splitting and putting together of the four elements, from 
the rotundum. The rotundum is a highly abstract, transcendent 
idea, which by reason of its roundness 76 and wholeness refers to 
the Original Man, the Anthropos. 

389 Accordingly our four double pyramids would arrange them- 
selves in a circle and form the well-known uroboros. As the 
fifth stage, the rotundum would then be identical with the first; 
that is to say, the heavy darkness of the earth, metal, has a secret 
relationship to the Anthropos. That is obvious in alchemy, but 
occurs also in the history of religion, where the metals grow 
from Gayomart's blood. 77 This curious relationship is explained 
by the identity of the lowest, most material thing with the high- 
est and most spiritual, which we have already met in the inter- 
pretation of the serpent as a chthonic and at the same time the 
"most spiritual" animal. In Plato the rotundum is the world- 
soul and a "blessed God." 78 

76 A hint that rotation may be a principle of matter. 

77 According to the report of the Damdad-Nashk (Reitzenstein and Schader, 
Studien zum antiken Syncrettsmus aus Iran und Griechenland, p. 18) Gayomart 
is the Original Man in the theosophical version of Zarathustra's system. Yima, on 
the other hand, is the Original Man of ancient Aryan legend. His name is Yimo 
kshaeto, 'the shining Yima.' According to the Mainyo-i-Khard, the metals were 
created from his body. (Kohut, "Die talmudisch-midraschische Adamssage," pp. 68, 
70.) In the Bundahish., Gayomart's body consisted of metals. (Christensen, "Le 
Premier Homme et le premier roi dans 1'histoire lgendaire des Iraniens," p. 21.) 

78 [Cf. "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity," par. 185. 
EDITORS.] 

246 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 
6 

39 We shall now try to condense the argument of the previous 
chapter and represent it graphically. Vertically arranged, our 
schema looks like this: 

Anihropos 



Chriitus 




Diabolus 



Rotundum 



In the diagram I have emphasized the point of greatest ten- 
sion between the opposites, namely the double significance of 
the serpent, which occupies the centre of the system. Being an 
allegory of Christ as well as of the devil, it contains and sym- 
bolizes the strongest polarity into which the Anthropos falls 
when he descends into Physis. The ordinary man has not 
reached this point of tension: he has it merely in the uncon- 
scious, i.e., in the serpent. 79 In the lapis,, the counterpart of man, 

79 Most people do not have sufficient range of consciousness to become aware of 
the opposites inherent in human nature. The tensions they generate remain for 
the most part unconscious, but can appear in dreams. Traditionally, the snake 
stands for the vulnerable spot in man: it personifies his shadow, i.e., his weakness 
and unconsciousness. The greatest danger about unconsciousness is proneness to 
suggestion. The effect of suggestion is due to the release of an unconscious 

247 



AION 

the opposites are so to speak united, but with a visible seam or 
suture, namely the symbol of the hermaphrodite. This mars the 
idea of the lapis just as much as the all-too-human element mars 
Homo sapiens. In the higher Adam and in the rotundum the 
opposition is invisible. But presumably the one stands in abso- 
lute opposition to the other, and if both are identical as In- 
distinguishable transcendental entities, this is one of those 
paradoxes that are the rule: a statement about something meta- 
physical can only be antinomial. 

The arrangement in the uroboros gives the following 
picture: 

A nthropos-Rot undum 



Lapis 




Homo 



Serpent 



This arrangement shows the stronger tension between an- 
thropos-rotundum and serpens on the one hand, and the lesser 

dynamic, and the more unconscious this is, the more effective it will be. Hence 
the ever-widening split between conscious and unconscious increases the danger 
of psychic infection and mass psychosis. With the loss of symbolic ideas the bridge 
to the unconscious has broken down. Instinct no longer affords protection against 
unsound ideas and empty slogans. Rationality without tradition and without a 
basis in instinct is proof against no absurdity. 

248 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

tension between homo and lapis on the other, expressed by 
the distance of the points in question from one another. The 
arrows indicate the descent into Physis and the ascent towards 
the spiritual. The lowest point is the snake. The lapis, however, 
though of decidedly material nature, is also a spiritual symbol, 
while the rotundum connotes a transcendent entity symbolized 
by the secret of matter and thus comparable to the concept of 
the atom. The antinomial development of the concepts is in 
keeping with the paradoxical nature of alchemy. 

392 The lapis quaternity, which is a product of alchemical 
gnosis, brings us to the interesting physical speculations of 
alchemy. In the Scrutinium chymicum (1687) Michael Maier 
(1568-1622), there is a picture 80 of the four elements as four 
different stages of fire (Plate I). 

393 As the picture shows, the four spheres are filled with fire. 
The author comments with the following verses: 

Naturae qui imitaris opus, tibi quattuor orbes 
Quaerendi, interius quos levis ignis agat. 

Imus Vulcanum referat, bene monstret at alter 
Mercurium, Lunam tertius orbis habet: 

Quartus, Apollo, tuus, naturae auditur et ignis, 
Ducat in arte manus ilia catena tuas. 

From this we learn that the lowest sphere corresponds to 
Vulcan, the earthly (?) fire; the second to Mercurius, the vegeta- 
tive life-spirit; the third to the moon, the female, psychic prin- 
ciple; and the fourth to the sun, the male, spiritual principle. It 
is evident from Maier's commentary that he is concerned on the 
one hand with the four elements and on the other with the four 
kinds of fire which are responsible for producing different states 
of aggregation. His ignis elementalis re et nomine would, 
according to its place in the sequence, correspond to Vulcan; 
the fire of Mercurius to air; the third fire to water and the 
moon; and the fourth, which would correspond to the sun, he 
calls "terreus" (earthly). According to Ripley, whom Maier 
quotes, the ignis elementalis is the fire "which lights wood"; it 
must therefore be the ordinary fire. The sun-fire, on the other 
hand, seems to be the fire in the earth, which today we would 

80 Emblema XVII, p. 49. 

249 



AION 

call "volcanic/' and corresponds to the solid state of aggrega- 
tion ("terreus"). We thus get the following series: 

VIGENERE SERIES RIPLEY SERIES 

ignis mundi intelligibilis rr ignis naturalis 82 = 

ignis caelestis = ignis innaturalis 83 = 

ignis elementaris = ignis contra naturam 84 = 

ignis in fernalis 81 = ignis elementalis = 

MAIER SERIES 

ignis t erreus rr SulfuraetMercurii=: Sun (Apollo) = earth 

ignis aqueus = aquae = Moon (Luna) = water 

ignis aerius = dracones = Mercurius = air 

ignis elementalis = ignis elementalis = Ordinary fire = fire 

(Vulcan) 

STATES OF AGGREGATION 

= solid 
= liquid 
= gas 
= flame 

394 The remarkable thing about this paralleling of states of 
aggregation with different kinds of fire is that it amounts to a 
kind of phlogiston theory not, of course, explicit, but clearly 
hinted at: fire is peculiar to all the states of aggregation and is 
therefore responsible for their constitution. This idea is old 85 
and can be found as early as the Turba,, where Dardaris says: 
"The sulphurs are souls which were hidden in the four bodies 
[elements]." 8e Here the active principle (anima) is not fire, but 
sulphur. The idea, however, is the same, namely that the ele- 
ments or states of aggregation can be reduced to a common 
denominator. Today we know that the factor common to an- 
tagonistic elements is molecular movement,, and that the states 

81 Vigenere comments: "The intelligible fire of the world: is all light. The heavenly 
fire: partakes of heat and light. The elemental fire: less in light, heat, and glow. 
The infernal fire: opposed to the intelligible, of heat and burning without any 
light." ("De igne et sale," Theatr. chem., VI, p. 39.) 

82 "is present in everything." 83 "The heat of ashes and baths/' 

84 "Tortures bodies, is the dragon." 85 The oldest source is Heraclitus. 

86 Turba, ed. by Ruska, Sermo XLIII, p. 149. 

250 




I. The Four Elements 
From Michael Maier, Scrutinium chymicum (1687) 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

of aggregation correspond to different degrees of this move- 
ment. Molecular movement in its turn corresponds to a certain 
quantum of energy, so that the common denominator of the 
elements is energy. One of the stepping-stones to the modern 
concept of energy is Stahl's phlogiston theory, 87 which is based 
on the alchemical premises discussed above. We can see in them, 
therefore, the earliest beginnings of a theory of energy. 88 

395 The phlogiston theory adumbrated by the alchemists did 
not get as far as that, but it points unmistakably in that direc- 
tion. Moreover, all the mathematical and physical elements 
from which a theory of energy could have been constructed were 
known in the seventeenth century. Energy is an abstract con- 
cept which is indispensable for exact description of the be- 
haviour of bodies in motion. In the same way bodies in motion 
can only be apprehended with the help of the system of space- 
time co-ordinates. Wherever movement is established, it is done 
by means of the space-time quaternio, which can be expressed 
either by the axiom of Maria, 3 -f- i, or by the sesquitertian pro- 
portion, 3 : 4. This quaternio could therefore replace that of the 
four elements, where the unit that corresponds to the time-co- 
ordinate, or the fourth in the alchemical series of elements, is 
characterized by the fact that one element has an exceptional 
position, like fire or earth. 89 

39 6 The exceptional position of one of the factors in a quater- 
nity can also be expressed by its duplex nature. For instance, 
the fourth of the rivers of Paradise, the Euphrates, signifies the 
mouth through which food goes in and prayers go out, as well 
as the river and the Logos. In the Moses Quaternio, Moses* wife 
plays the double role of Zipporah and the Ethiopian woman. If 
we construct a quaternity from the divine equivalents of Maier's 

87 G. E. Stahl (1660-1734) supposed that all combustible (i.e., oxidizable) sub- 
stances contain an igneous principle. It was assumed to be weightless, or even to 
possess a negative weight. Cf. H. E. Fierz-David, Die Entwicklungsgeschichte der 
Chemie, pp. 148!:. 

88 Psychologically, of course, the primitive idea of mana is very much older, but 
here we are talking of scientific concepts. The sulphur = anima equation still con- 
tains a trace of the original mana theory. Earlier, mana was characteristically mis- 
understood as animism. 

80 Fire as spiritual, the other elements material; earth unmoving, the others 
moving. 

251 



AION 



four elements Apollo, Luna, Mercurius, Vulcan we get a mar- 
riage quaternio with a brother-sister relationship: 



Apollo 



Luna 



Vulcan 



Mercurius duplex 



In alchemy Mercurius is male-female and frequently appears 
as a virgin too. This characteristic (3 -j- i, or 3 : 4) is also appar- 
ent in the space-time quaternio: 



Height 



Width 



Depth 



Time 



397 If we look at this quaternio from the standpoint of the 
three-dimensionality of space, then time can be conceived as a 
fourth dimension. But if we look at it in terms of the three 
qualities of time past, present, future- then static space, in 
which changes of state occur, must be added as a fourth term. 
In both cases, the fourth represents an incommensurable Other 
that is needed for their mutual determination. Thus we measure 
space by time and time by space. The Other, the fourth, corre- 
sponds in the Gnostic quaternities to the fiery god, "the fourth 
by number," to the dual wife of Moses (Zipporah and the Ethi- 
opian woman), to the dual Euphrates (river and Logos), to the 
fire 90 in the alchemical quaternio of elements, to Mercurius 
duplex in Maier's quaternio of gods, and in the "Christian 



90 Bohme calls the "fire of Nature" 
De signatura rerum (1682), p. 279. 



the "fourth form." "Tabula principiorum," 
252 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

Quaternity" if such an expression be permitted 91 to Mary or 
the devil. These two incompatible figures are united in the 
Mercurius duplex of alchemy. 92 

398 The space-time quaternio is the archetypal sine qua non for 
any apprehension of the physical world indeed, the very pos- 
sibility of apprehending it. It is the organizing schema par excel- 
lence among the psychic quaternities. In its structure it cor- 
responds to the psychological schema of the functions. 93 The 
3 : i proportion frequently occurs in dreams and in spontaneous 
mandala-dra wings. 

399 An individual, modern parallel to the diagram of quaterni- 
ties arranged on top of one another, coupled with the idea of 
ascent and descent, can be found among the illustrations to my 
paper on mandala pictures. 94 The same idea also appears in 
the pictures relating to a case described there at some length, 
and dealing with vibrations that formed "nodes." 95 Each of 
these nodes signified an outstanding personality, as was true 
also of the picture in the first case. A similar motif may well 
underlie the representation of the Trinity here appended 
(Plate II), from the manuscript of a treatise by Joachim of 
Flora. 96 

91 The doctrine of Sabellius (beginning of the and cent.) concerning the preworldly 
Monad, the "silent and unacting God" and its three prosopa (modes of manifesta- 
tion), calls for further investigation, as it bequeathed to posterity the first begin- 
nings of a quaternary view of the Deity. Thus Joachim of Flora makes the follow- 
ing accusation against Peter Lombard: "Quod in suis dixit Sententiis, quoniam 
quaedam summa res est Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus et ilia non est generans, 
neque genita, neque procedens: unde asserit quod ille non tarn Trinitatem, quam 
quaternitatem astruebat in Deo, videlicet tres personas, et illam communem 
essentiam quasi quartam." (As he [Peter] says in his Book of Sentences, For a cer- 
tain supreme Something is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and It neither begets, nor 
is begotten, nor proceeds. On this basis Joachim asserts that the Lombard ascribed 
not Trinity, but Quaternity to God, that is to say, three Persons, and that common 
Something as a fourth). (Fourth Lateran Council, 1215. Decrees, Cap. 2; Denzinger 
and Bannwart, Enchiridion, p. 190.) Cf. "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma 
of the Trinity/' pars. 24$fi. 

92 cf "The Spirit Mercurius." 

93 The three relatively differentiated functions and one undifferentiated, "inferior" 
function. Cf. Psychological Types, and the diagrams in Jacobi, The Psychology of 
C. G. Jung. 

94 See, in Part I of vol. 9, "A Study in the Process of Individuation," fig. 2. 

95 Ibid., Picture 3 and accompanying text. 

96 Zurich Central Library, Graphics Collection, B x 606. 



AION 

4 I would like, in conclusion, to mention the peculiar theory 
o world creation in the Clementine Homilies. In God, pneuma 
and soma are one. When they separate, pneuma appears as the 
Son and "archon of the future Aeon/' but soma, actual sub- 
stance (oMa) or matter (vXrj), divides into four, corresponding to 
the four elements (which were always solemnly invoked at 
initiations). From the mixing of the four parts there arose the 
devil, the "archon of this Aeon," and the psyche of this world. 
Soma had become psychized (lpfnjx ov ) : "God rules this world 
as much through the devil as through the Son, for both are in his 
hands/' 97 God unfolds himself in the world in the form of 
syzygies (paired opposites), such as heaven/earth, day/night, 
male/female, etc. The last term of the first series is the Adam/ 
Eve syzygy. At the end of this fragmentation process there fol- 
lows the return to the beginning, the consummation of the 
universe (reAevrr/ T<S!/ Trai/rwv) through purification and annihila- 
tion. 98 

401 Anyone who knows alchemy can hardly avoid being struck 
by the likeness which "Clement" 's theory bears to the basic con- 
ceptions of the alchemists, if we disregard its moral aspects. 
Thus we have the "hostile brothers," Christ and the devil, who 
were regarded as brothers in the Jewish-Christian tradition; the 
tetrameria into four parts or elements; the paired opposites and 
their ultimate unity; the parallel of the lapis and Mercurius 
with Christ and, because of the snake or dragon symbolism, also 
with the devil; and finally, the figure of Mercurius duplex and 
of the lapis, which unites the opposites indivisibly in itself. 



402 if we look back over the course our argument has taken, we 
see at the beginning of it two Gnostic quaternities, one of which 
is supraordinate, and the other subordinate, to man, namely the 
"Positive Moses" or Anthropos Quaternio, and the Paradise 
Quaternio." It is probably no accident that Hippolytus men- 

97 Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, I, p. 334. 

98 Condensed from the reconstruction by Uhlhorn, in Realencyklopddie fur 
Protestantische Theologie und Kirche, ed. by Hauck, IV, pp. 1738:. 

99 To avoid misunderstandings I would like to emphasize that "Paradise" is used 
here not in the metaphorical sense, as "future heaven" or the Abode of the 
Blessed, but in the sense of the earthly Garden of Eden* 

254 




II. The Trinity 
From a manuscript by Joachim of Flora 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

tions precisely these two quaternaries, or that the Naassenes 
know only these, for the position of man is, in their system, 
closely connected with the higher Adam but is separated from 
the chthonic world of plants and animals, namely Paradise. Only 
through his shadow has he a relationship to the serpent with its 
dual meaning. This situation is altogether characteristic of the 
age of Gnosticism and early Christianity. Man in those days was 
close to the "kingless [i.e., independent] race," that is, to the 
upper quaternity, the kingdom of heaven, and looked upward. 
But what begins above does not rise higher, but ends below. 
Thus we felt impelled to symmetrize the lower Adam of the 
Naassenes by a Shadow Quaternio, for just as he cannot ascend 
direct to the higher Adam since the Moses Quaternio lies in 
between so we have to assume a lower, shadowy quaternity 
corresponding to the upper one, lying between him and the 
lower principle, the serpent. This operation was obviously un- 
known in the Gnostic age, because the unsymmetrical upward 
trend seemed to disturb nobody, but rather to be the very thing 
desired and "on the programme." If, therefore, we insert be- 
tween Man and Serpent a quaternity not mentioned in the 
texts, we do so because we can no longer conceive of a psyche 
that is oriented exclusively upwards and that is not balanced by 
an equally strong consciousness of the lower man. This is a 
specifically modern state of affairs and, in the context of Gnostic 
thinking, an obnoxious anachronism that puts man in the centre 
of the field of consciousness where he had never consciously 
stood before. Only through Christ could he actually see this 
consciousness mediating between God and the world, and by 
making the person of Christ the object of his devotions he gradu- 
ally came to acquire Christ's position as mediator. Through the 
Christ crucified between the two thieves man gradually attained 
knowledge of his shadow and its duality. This duality had al- 
ready been anticipated by the double meaning of the serpent. 
Just as the serpent stands for the power that heals as well as 
corrupts, so one of the thieves is destined upwards, the other 
downwards, and so likewise the shadow is on one side regrettable 
and reprehensible weakness, on the other side healthy instinc- 
tivity and the prerequisite for higher consciousness. 
43 Thus the Shadow Quaternio that counterbalances man's 

255 



AION 

position as mediator only falls into place when that position has 
become sufficiently real for him to feel his consciousness of him- 
self or his own existence more strongly than his dependence on 
and governance by God. Therefore, if we complement the up- 
ward-tending pneumatic attitude that characterizes the early 
Christian and Gnostic mentality by adding its opposite counter- 
part, this is in line with the historical development. Man's 
original dependence on a pneumatic sphere, to which he clung 
like a child to its mother, was threatened by the kingdom of 
Satan. From him the pneumatic man was delivered by the Re- 
deemer, who broke the gates of hell and deceived the archons; 
but he was bound to the kingdom of heaven in exactly the 
same degree. He was separated from evil by an abyss. This 
attitude was powerfully reinforced by the immediate expecta- 
tion of the Second Coming. But when Christ did not reappear, 
a regression was only to be expected. When such a great hope is 
dashed and such great expectations are not fulfilled, then the 
libido perforce flows back into man and heightens his conscious- 
ness of himself by accentuating his personal psychic processes; 
in other words, he gradually moves into the centre of his field 
of consciousness. This leads to separation from the pneumatic 
sphere and an approach to the realm of the shadow. Accordingly, 
man's moral consciousness is sharpened, and, as a parallel to this, 
his feeling of redemption becomes relativized. The Church has 
to exalt the significance and power of her ritual in order to put 
limits to the inrush of reality. In this way she inevitably becomes 
a "kingdom of this world." The transition from the Anthropos 
to the Shadow Quaternio illustrates an historical development 
which led, in the eleventh century, to a widespread recognition 
of the evil principle as the world creator. 

44 The serpent and its chthonic wisdom form the turning-point 
of the great drama. The Paradise Quaternio with the lapis, that 
comes next, brings us to the beginnings of natural science 
(Roger Bacon, 1214-94; Albertus Magnus, 1193-1280; and the 
alchemists), whose main trend differs from the pneumatic not by 
180 but only by 90 that is to say, it cuts across the spiritual 
attitude of the Church and is more an embarrassment for faith 
than a contradiction of it. 

45 From the lapis, Le., from alchemy, the line leads direct to 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

the quaternlo of alchemical states of aggregation, which, as we 
have seen, is ultimately based on the space-time quatemio. The 
latter comes into the category of archetypal quaternities and 
proves, like these, to be an indispensable principle for organiz- 
ing the sense-impressions which the psyche receives from bodies 
in motion. Space and time form a psychological a priori, an 
aspect of the archetypal quaternity which is altogether indis- 
pensable for acquiring knowledge of physical processes. 

406 The development from the second to the fourth quaternio 
illustrates the change in man's picture of the world during the 
course of the second millennium. The series ends with the con- 
cept of the rotundum, or of rotation as contrasted with the static 
quality o the quaternity which, as we have said, proves to be 
of prime importance for apprehending reality. The rise of scien- 
tific materialism connected with this development appears on 
the one hand as a logical consequence, on the other hand as a 
deification of matter. This latter aspect is based, psychologically, 
on the fact that the rotundum coincides with the archetype of 
the Anthropos. 

407 With this insight the ring of the uroboros closes, that symbol 
of the opus circulare of Nature as well as of the "Art." 



408 Our quaternio series could also be expressed in the form of 
an equation, where A stands for the initial state (in this case the 
Anthropos), A\ for the end state, 99 * and BCD for intermediate 
states. The formations that split off from them are denoted In 
each case by the small letters abed. With regard to the con- 
struction of the formula, we must bear in mind that we are con- 
cerned with the continual process of transformation of one and 
the same substance. This substance, and its respective state of 
transformation, will always bring forth its like; thus A will pro- 
duce a and B b; equally, b produces B and c G. It is also assumed 
that a is followed by b and that the formula runs from left to 
right. These assumptions are legitimate in a psychological 
formula. 

409 Naturally the formula cannot be arranged in linear fashion 

99a [Thus, in the following schema of the formula, A and A! coincide. EDITORS.] 

257 



AION 

but only in a circle, which for that reason moves to the right, 
A produces its like, a. From a the process advances by contin- 
gence to b, which in turn produces B. The transformation turns 
rightwards with the sun; that is, it is a process o becoming con- 
scious, as is already indicated by the splitting (discrimination) 
of A B C D each time into four qualitatively discrete units. 100 
Our scientific understanding today is not based on a quaternity 
but on a trinity of principles (space, time, causality). 101 Here, 
however, we are moving not in the sphere of modern scientific 
thinking, but in that of the classical and medieval view of the 
world, which up to the time of Leibniz recognized the principle 
of correspondence and applied it naively and unreflectingly. 
In order to give our judgment on A expressed by abc the char- 
acter of wholeness, we must supplement our time-conditioned 
thinking by the principle of correspondence or, as I have called 
it, synchronicity^ The reason for this is that our description 
of Nature is in certain respects incomplete and accordingly ex- 
cludes observable facts from our understanding or else formu- 
lates them in an unjustifiably negative way, as for instance in 
the paradox of "an effect without a cause." 103 Our Gnostic 
quaternity is a naive product of the unconscious and therefore 
represents a psychic fact which can be brought into relationship 
with the four orienting functions of consciousness; for the 
rightward movement of the process is, as I have said, the expres- 
sion of conscious discrimination 104 and hence an application of 
the four functions that constitute the essence of a conscious 
process. 

The whole cycle necessarily returns to its beginning, and 
does so at the moment when D, in point of contingence the 
state furthest removed from A , changes into a 3 by a kind of 
enantiodromia. We thus have: 

100 Corresponding to the oft-mentioned phylokrinesis. 

101 1 am not counting the space-time continuum of modern physics. 

102 Cf. "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle." 

103 [Jeans, Physics and Philosophy, pp. 127, 151. EDITORS.] 

104 The immediate cause is the rightward movement of our writing. The right, so 
to speak, is ruled by conscious reason: the right is "right" in all senses (upright, 
downright, forthright, etc.). The left is the side of the heart, the emotions, where 
one is affected by the unconscious. 

258 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 



\ 



\/ \/ 

d s b 

II !! 

D B 





b 2 di 

The formula reproduces exactly the essential features of the 
symbolic process of transformation. It shows the rotation of the 
mandala, 105 the antithetical play of complementary (or com- 
pensatory) processes, then the apocatastasis, i.e., the restoration 
of an original state of wholeness, which the alchemists expressed 
through the symbol of the uroboros, and finally the formula 
repeats the ancient alchemical tetrameria, 106 which is implicit 

d 

in the fourfold structure of unity: A = a c. What the for- 

\ / 

b 

mula can only hint at, however, Is the higher plane that is 
reached through the process of transformation and integration. 
The "sublimation" or progress or qualitative change consists in 
an unfolding of totality into four parts four times, which means 
nothing less than its becoming conscious. When psychic con- 
tents are split up into four aspects, it means that they have been 
subjected to discrimination by the four orienting functions of 
consciousness. Only the production of these four aspects makes 
a total description possible. The process depicted by our for- 
mula changes the originally unconscious totality into a conscious 
one. The Anthropos A descends from above through his Shadow 
B into Physis C ( = serpent), and, through a kind of crystalliza- 
tion process D ( = lapis} that reduces chaos to order, rises again 

105 Cf. "On Mandala Symbolism," figs. 19, 21, 37, 60. 

106 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 189 and ogf., in relation to the four 
regimina and dispositiones. 

259 



AION 

to the original state, which in the meantime has been trans- 
formed from an unconscious into a conscious one. Consciousness 
and understanding arise from discrimination, that is, through 
analysis (dissolution) followed by synthesis, as stated in sym- 
bolical terms by the alchemical dictum: "Solve et coagula" (dis- 
solve and coagulate). The correspondence is represented by the 
identity of the letters a, a^ a 2 , a^ and so on. That is to say, we 
are dealing all the time with the same factor, which in the for- 
mula merely changes its place, whereas psychologically its name 
and quality change too. At the same time it becomes clear that 
the change of place is always an enantiodromian change of situa- 
tion, corresponding to the complementary or compensatory 
changes in the psyche as a whole. It was in this way that the 
changing of the hexagrams in the I Ching was understood by 
the classical Chinese commentators. Every archetypal arrange- 
ment has its own numinosity, as is apparent from the very 
names given to it. Thus a to d is the "kingless race," a\ to di 
is the "Shadow Quaternio," which is annoying, because it 
stands for the all-too-human human being (Nietzsche's "Ugliest 
Man"), 107 a 2 to d% is "Paradise/' which speaks for itself, and 
finally a s to d s is the world of matter, whose numinosity in the 
shape of materialism threatens to suffocate our world. What 
changes these correspond to in the history of the human mind 
over the last two thousand years I need hardly specify in detail. 
The formula presents a symbol of the self, for the self is not 
just a static quantity or constant form, but is also a dynamic 
process. In the same way, the ancients saw the imago Dei in man 
not as a mere imprint, as a sort of lifeless, stereotyped impres- 
sion, but as an active force. The four transformations represent 
a process of restoration or rejuvenation taking place, as it were, 
inside the self, and comparable to the carbon-nitrogen cycle in 
the sun, when a carbon nucleus captures four protons (two of 
which immediately become neutrons) and releases them at the 
end of the cycle in the form of an alpha particle. The carbon 
nucleus itself comes out of the reaction unchanged, "like the 
Phoenix from the ashes." 108 The secret of existence, i.e., the 
existence of the atom and its components, may well consist in a 
continually repeated process of rejuvenation, and one comes to 

107 [Cf. Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans, by Common, pp. 303 iff. EDITORS.] 

108 Gamow, Atomic Energy, p. 72. 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

similar conclusions in trying to account for the numinosity of 
the archetypes. 

412 I am fully aware of the extremely hypothetical nature of this 
comparison, but I deem it appropriate to entertain such reflec- 
tions even at the risk of being deceived by appearances. Sooner 
or later nuclear physics and the psychology of the unconscious 
will draw closer together as both of them, independently of one 
another and from opposite directions, push forward into tran- 
scendental territory, the one with the concept of the atom, the 
other with that of the archetype. 

4*3 The analogy with physics is not a digression since the sym- 
bolical schema itself represents the descent into matter and 
requires the identity of the outside with the inside. Psyche can- 
not be totally different from matter, for how otherwise could it 
move matter? And matter cannot be alien to psyche, for how else 
could matter produce psyche? Psyche and matter exist in one 
and the same world, and each partakes of the other, otherwise 
any reciprocal action would be impossible. If research could 
only advance far enough, therefore, we should arrive at an ulti- 
mate agreement between physical and psychological concepts. 
Our present attempts may be bold, but I believe they are on the 
right lines. Mathematics, for instance, has more than once 
proved that its purely logical constructions which transcend all 
experience subsequently coincided with the behaviour of things. 
This, like the events I call synchronistic, points to a profound 
harmony between all forms of existence. 

4*4 Sine analogy formation is a law which to a large extent gov- 
erns the life of the psyche, we may fairly conjecture that our 
to all appearances purely speculative construction is not a new 
invention, but is prefigured on earlier levels of thought. Gen- 
erally speaking, these prefigurations can be found in the multi- 
farious stages of the mystic transformation process, as well as in 
the different degrees of initiation into the mysteries. We also 
find them in the classical as well as Christian trichotomy con- 
sisting of the pneumatic, the psychic, and the hylic. One of the 
most comprehensive attempts of this kind is the sixteenfold 
schema in the Book of Platonic Tetralogies. 109 I have dealt with 

109 An anonymous Harranite treatise entitled "Platonis liber quartorum," printed 
in Theatr. chem.,V (1622), pp. 114$-; conjectured to have been translated from the 
Arabic in the i2th cent. 



AION 

this In detail in Psychology and Alchemy and can therefore limit 
myself here to the basic points. The schematization and analogy- 
formation start from four first principles: i. the work of nature, 
2. water, 3. composite natures, 4. the senses. Each of these four 
starting-points has three stages of transformation, which to- 
gether with the first stage make sixteen parts in all. But besides 
this fourfold horizontal division of each of the principles, each 
stage has its correspondence in the vertical series: 

I II III IV 

1. Opus naturalium Aqua Naturae compositae Sensus 

2. Divisio naturae Terra Naturae discretae Discretio intellectualis 

3. Anima Aer SimpUcia Ratio 

4. Intellectus Ignis Aetheris simplicioris Arcanum 

415 This table of correspondences shows the various aspects of 
the opus alchemicunij which was also bound up with astrology 
and the so-called necromantic arts. This is evident from the use 
of significant numbers and the invocation or conjuring up of the 
familiar spirit. Similarly, the age-old art of geomancy 110 is based 
on a six teen-part schema: four central figures (consisting of Sub- 
or Superiudex, ludex, and two Testes), four nepotes (grand- 
sons), four sons, four mothers. (The series is written from right 
to left.) These figures are arranged in a schema of astrological 
houses, but the centre that is empty in the horoscope is replaced 
by a square containing the four central figures. 

4*6 Athanasius Kircher 111 produced a quaternity system that is 
worth mentioning in this connection: 

I. Unum =. Monas monadike = Deus = Radix omnium = Mens sim- 
plicissima ~ Divina essentia = Exemplar divinum. 

(The One = First Monad = God = Root of all things = Simplest 
understanding = Divine Essence = Divine Exemplar.) 

II. 10 ( i + 2 -}- 5 + ./ = 10) = Secunda Monas = dekadike = Dyas = 
Mundus intellectualis =. Angelica intelligentia = Compositio ab uno et 
altero = .., ex oppositis. 

no Fludd, "De animae intellectualis scientia seu Geomantia," Fasciculus geoman- 
ticus (1687), pp. 35! 

ill Arithmologia, sive De abditis numerorum mysteriis (1665), PP- 26off. I have 
to thank Dr. M.-L. von Franz for calling my attention to this. 

262 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

(. . , Second Monad = tenth = duality = spiritual world = intel- 
ligence of the angels = composition of the One and the other = i.e., from 
opposites.) 

III. jo 2 = 100 = Tertia Monas = hekatontadike = Anima = Intelli- 
gentia. 

(. . . Third Monad zz hundredth = soul = intelligence.) 

IV. io s = 1000 = Quarta Monas = chiliadike = Omnia sensibilia 
Corpus = ultima et sensibilis Unionum explicatio. 

(. . . Fourth Monad = thousandth = all concrete things = body = 
final and concrete unfolding of unities.) 

417 Kircher comments that whereas the senses affect only the 
body, the first three unities are objects of understanding. So if 
one wants to understand what is perceived by the senses (sensi- 
bilia), this can only be done through the mind. "Everything 
perceived by the senses must therefore be elevated to reason or to 
the intelligence or to absolute unity. When in this way we shall 
have brought the absolute unity back to the infinitely simple 
from all perceptible, rational or intellectual multiplicity, then 
nothing more remains to be said, and then the Stone too is not 
so much a Stone as no Stone, for everything is the simplest unity. 
And even as the absolute unity of that concrete and rational 
Stone has God for an exemplar, so likewise its intellectual unity 
is the intelligence. You can see from these unities how the per- 
ceiving senses go back to reason, and reason to intelligence, and 
intelligence to God, where in a perfect cycle is found the begin- 
ning and the consummation." 112 

418 Kircher's system shows certain affinities with our series of 
quaternios. Thus the Second Monad is a duality consisting of 
opposites, corresponding to the angelic world that was split by 
Lucifer's fall. Another significant analogy is that Kircher con- 
ceives his schema as a cycle set in motion by God as the prime 
cause, and unfolding out of itself, but brought back to God 
again through the activity of human understanding, so that the 
end returns once more to the beginning. (That Kircher should 
choose the lapis as an example of discriminate [discretae] natures 
is obvious enough in terms of alchemy, because the lapis is the 
arcanum that contains God or that part of God which is hidden in 
matter.) This, too, is an analogy of our formula. The alchemists 

112 Ibid., p. 266. 

263 



AION 

were fond of picturing their opus as a circulatory process, as 
a circular distillation or as the uroboros, the snake biting its own 
tail, and they made innumerable pictures of this process. Just as 
the central idea of the lapis Philosophorum plainly signifies the 
self, so the opus with its countless symbols illustrates the process 
of individuation, the step-by-step development of the self from 
an unconscious state to a conscious one. That is why the lapis, as 
prima materia, stands at the beginning of the process as well as 
at the end. 113 According to Michael Maier, the gold, another 
synonym for the self, comes from the opus circulatorium of the 
sun. This circle is "the line that runs back upon itself (like the 
serpent that with its head bites its own tail), wherein that eternal 
painter and potter, God, may be discerned." lw In this circle, 
Nature "has related the four qualities to one another and drawn, 
as it were, an equilateral square, since contraries are bound to- 
gether by contraries, and enemies by enemies, with the same 
everlasting bonds." Maier compares this squaring of the circle 
to the "homo quadratus," the four-square man, who "remains 
himself come weal come woe. 115 He calls it the "golden house, 
the twice-bisected circle, the four-cornered phalanx, the ram- 
part, the city wall, the four-sided line of battle." 116 This circle 
is a magic circle consisting of the union of opposites, "immune 
to all injury/' 

4*9 Independently of Western tradition, the same idea of the 
circular opus can be found in Chinese alchemy: "When the 
Light is allowed to move in a circle, all the powers of Heaven and 
Earth, of the Light and the Dark, are crystallized," says the text 
of the Golden Flower.^ 7 

42 The opyavov /cu/cAwcov, the circular apparatus that assists the cir- 
cular process, is mentioned as early as Olympiodorus. 118 Dorn is 
of the opinion that the "circular movement of the Physio- 
chemists" comes from the earth, the lowest element. For the fire 
originates in the earth and transforms the finer minerals and 
water into air, which, rising up to the heavens, condenses there 
and falls down again. But during their ascent the volatilized ele- 
ments take "from the higher stars male seeds, which they bring 

US Documentation in Psychology and Alchemy, pp. 306 n., 309, etc. 
114 De circulo physico quadrato, p. 16. 115 Ibid., p. 17. 

H6 Ibid., p. 19. H7 Wilhelm, The Secret of the Golden Flower, p. 34. 

US Berthelot, Alch. grecs, II, iv, 44. 

264 



THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE SELF 

down into the four matrices, the elements, in order to fertilize 
them spagyrically." This is the "circular distillation" 119 which 
Rupescissa says must be repeated a thousand times. 120 

The basic idea of ascent and descent can be found in the 
Tabula smaragdina, and the stages of transformation have been 
depicted over and over again, above all in the Ripley Scroll and 
its variants, which should be understood as indirect attempts 
to apprehend the unconscious processes of individuation in the 
form of pictures. 

119 "Physica genesis," Theatr. chem. y I, p. 391. 

120 La Vertu et la propriete de la quinte essence, p. 26. 



265 



XV 

CONCLUSION 

422 I have tried, in this book, to elucidate and amplify the vari- 
ous aspects of the archetype which it is most important for mod- 
ern man to understand namely, the archetype of the self. By way 
of introduction, I described those concepts and archetypes which 
manifest themselves in the course of any psychological treat- 
ment that penetrates at all deeply. The first of these is the 
SHADOW, that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and 
guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back 
into the realm of our animal ancestors and so comprise the whole 
historical aspect of the unconscious. Through analysis of the 
shadow and of the processes contained m^^w^uncoyer the 
ANIMA/ANIMUS syzygy. Looked at superficially, the shadow is cast 
5yQ^-^Qj^cIou^liliind and is as much a privation of light as the 
physical shadow that follows the body. For this superficial view, 
therefore, the psychological shadow with its moral inferiority 
might also be regarded as a privation of good. On closer inspec- 
tion, however, it proves to be a darkness that hides influential 
and autonomous" factors which can be distinguished in their own 
right/ nainelyanima and animus. When we observe them in full 
operation as the devastating, blindly obstinate demon of opin- 
ionatedness in a woman, and the glamorous, possessive, moody, 
and sentimental seductress in a man we begin to doubt whether 
the unconscious can be merely the insubstantial comet's tail of 
consciousness and nothing but a privation of light and good. 

423 If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was 
the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investi- 
gation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not 
consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also dis- 
plays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, 
appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative imposes, etc. 
On this level of understanding, evil appears more as a distortion, 
a deformation, a misinterpretation and misapplication of facts 

266 



CONCLUSION 



that in themselves are natural. These falsifications and carica- 
tures now appear as the specific effects of anima and animus, and 
the latter as the real authors of evil. But we cannot stop even at 
this realization, for it turns out that all archetypes spontaneously 
develop favourable and unfavourable, light and dark, good and 
bad effects. In the end we have to acknowledge that the self is 
a complexio oppositorum precisely because there can be no 
reality without polarity. We must not overlook the fact that 
opposites acquire their moral accentuation only within the 
sphere of human endeavour and action, and that we are unable 
to give a definition of good and evil that could be considered 
universally valid. In other words, we do not know what good 
and evil are in themselves. It must therefore be supposed that 
they spring from a need of human consciousness and that for 
this reason they lose their validity outside the human sphere. 
That is to say a hypostasis of good and evil as metaphysical en- 
tities is inadmissible because it would deprive these terms of 
meaning. If we call everything that God does or allows "good," 
then evil is good too, and "good" becomes meaningless. But 
suffering, whether it be Christ's passion or the suffering of the 
world, remains the same as before. Stupidity, sin, sickness, old 
age, and death continue to form the dark foil that sets off the 
.joyful splendour of life. 

4*4 The recognition of anima and animus is a specific experience 
that seems to be reserved mostly, or at any rate primarily, for 
psychotherapists. Nevertheless, anyone who has a little knowl- 
edge of belles-lettres will have no difficulty in forming a picture 
of the anima; she is a favourite subject for novelists, particularly 
west of the Rhine. 1 Nor is a careful study of dreams always neces- 
sary. It is not quite so easy to recognize the woman's animus, for 
his name is legion. But anyone who can stand the animosity of 
his fellows without being infected by it, and is capable at the 
same time of examining it critically, cannot help discovering 
that they are possessed. It is, however, more advantageous and 
more to the point to subject to the most rigorous scrutiny one's 
own moods and their changing influence on one's personality. 
To know where the other person makes a mistake is of little 
value. It only becomes interesting when you know where you 

1 The outstanding example in Swiss literature is Spitteler's Imago. [In English 
literature, perhaps Rider Haggard's She. EDITORS.] 

267 



AION 

make the mistake, for then you can do something about it. What 
we can improve in others is of doubtful utility as a rule, if, 
indeed, it has any effect at all. 

425 Although, to begin with, we meet the anima and animus 
mostly in their negative and unwelcome form, they are very far 
from being only a species of bad spirit. They have, as we have 
said, an equally positive aspect. Because of their numinous, sug- 
gestive power they have formed since olden times the archetypal 
basis of all masculine and feminine divinities and therefore 
merit special attention, above all from the psychologist, but also 
from thoughtful laymen. As numina, anima and animus work 
now for good, now for evil. Their opposition is that of the sexes. 
They therefore represent a supreme pair of opposites, not hope- 
lessly divided by logical contradiction but, because of the mu- 
tual attraction between them, giving promise of union and 
actually making it possible. The coniunctio oppositorum en- 
gaged the speculations of the alchemists in the form of the 
"Chymical Wedding," and those of the cabalists in the form of 
Tifereth and Malchuth or God and the Shekhinah, 2 not to speak 
of the marriage of the Lamb. 

426 The dual being born of the alchemical union of opposites, 
the Rebis or Lapis Philosophorum, is so distinctively marked in 
the literature that we have no difficulty in recognizing it as a 
symbol of the self. Psychologically the self is a union of con- 
scious (masculine) and unconscious (feminine). It stands for the 
psychic totality. So formulated, it is a psychological concept. 
Empirically, however, the self appears spontaneously in the 
shape of specific symbols, and its totality is discernible above all 
in the mandala and its countless variants. Historically, these 
symbols are authenticated as God-images. 

4 2 7 The anima/animus stage is correlated with polytheism, the 
self with monotheism. 3 The natural archetypal symbolism, de- 
scribing a totality that includes light and dark, contradicts in 
some sort the Christian but not the Jewish or Yahwistic view- 
point, or only to a relative degree. The latter seems to be closer 
to Nature and therefore to be a better reflection o immediate 
experience. Nevertheless, the Christian heresiarchs tried to sail 

2 Hurwitz, "Archetypische Motive in der chassidischen Mystik," ch. VI. 

3 This thema is the subject of an Oxford dissertation by Amy I. Allenby: A Psy- 
chological Study of the Origins of Monotheism. 

268 



CONCLUSION 



round the rocks of Manichaean dualism., which was such a dan- 
ger to the early Church, in a way that took cognizance of the 
natural symbol, and among the symbols for Christ there are 
some very important ones which he has in common with the 
devil, though this had no influence on dogma. 

428 By far the most fruitful attempts, however, to find suitable 
symbolic expressions for the self were made by the Gnostics. 
Most of them Valentinus and Basilides, for instance were in 
reality theologians who, unlike the more orthodox ones, allowed 
themselves to be influenced in large measure by natural Inner 
experience. They are therefore, like the alchemists, a veritable 
mine of information concerning all those natural symbols aris- 
ing out of the repercussions of the Christian message. At the 
same time, their ideas compensate the asymmetry of God pos- 
tulated by the doctrine of the privatio boni y exactly like those 
well-known modern tendencies of the unconscious to produce 
symbols of totality for bridging the gap between the conscious 
and the unconscious, which has widened dangerously to the 
point of universal disorientation. 

429 I am well aware that this work, far from being complete, is 
a mere sketch showing how certain Christian ideas look when 
observed from the standpoint of psychological experience. Since 
my main concern was to point out the parallelism or the differ- 
ence between the empirical findings and our traditional views, 
a consideration of the disparities due to time and language 
proved unavoidable. This was particularly so in the case of the 
fish symbol. Inevitably, we move here on uncertain ground and 
must now and then have recourse to a speculative hypothesis 
or tentatively reconstruct the context. Naturally every investi- 
gator must document his findings as fully as possible, but he 
should also venture an occasional hypothesis even at the risk 
of making a mistake. Mistakes are, after all, the foundations 
of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at 
least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. 



269 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Items of the bibliography are arranged alphabetically under 
two headings: A. Ancient volumes containing collections of alchemi- 
cal tracts by various authors; B. General bibliography, including 
cross-references to the material in section A. Short titles of the 
ancient volumes are printed in capital letters. 



A. ANCIENT VOLUMES CONTAINING 

COLLECTIONS OF ALCHEMICAL TRACTS 

BY VARIOUS AUTHORS 

ARS CHEMICA, quod sit licita recte exercentibus, probationes doc- 
tissimorum iur is consult or um. . . . Argentorati [Strasbourg], 1566. 

Contents quoted in this volume: 

i Septem tractatus seu capitula Hermetis Trismegisti aurei 

[pp. 731; usually referred to as "Tractatus aureus"] 
il Tabula smaragdina [pp. 3233] 

ARTIS AURIFERAE quam chemiam vocant. . . . Basileae [Basel], 
[1593]. 2 vols. 

Contents quoted in this volume: 

VOLUME I 

i Turba philosophorum [two versions: pp. 165, 66-139] 

i-a Allegoriae super librum Turbae [pp. 1 3945] 

II Aenigmata ex Visione Arislei philosophi et allegoriis sapi- 
entum [pp. 146-54; usually referred to as "Visio Arislei"] 

iii In Turbam philosophorum exercitationes [pp. 154-83] 

iv Aurora consurgens, quae dicitur Aurea hora [pp. 185-246] 

v [Zosimus]: Rosinus ad Sarratantam episcopum [pp. 577-3 19] 

vi Maria Prophetissa: Practica ... in artem alchemicam [pp. 

319-24] 

273 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

vii Tractatulus Aristotelis de practica lapidis philosophic! [pp. 

361-73] 
viii Interpretatio cuiusdam epistolae Alexandri Macedonum 

regis [pp. 382-88] 
ix Tractatulus Avicennae [pp. 405-37] 

VOLUME II 

x Morienus Romanus: Sermo de transmutatione metallica [pp. 

7-54] 
xi Rosarium philosophorum [pp. 204-384] 

MANGETUS, JOANNES JACOBUS (ed.). BIBLIOTHECA CHEMICA 
CURIOSA, sen Rerum ad alchemiam pertinentium thesaurus in- 
structissimus . . . Coloniae Allobrogum [Geneva], 1702. 2 vols. 

Contents quoted in this volume: 

VOLUME I 

i Allegoriae sapientum supra librum Turbae philosophorum 

XXIX distinctiones [pp. 46779] 
ii Turba philosophorum [pp. 445-65; another version, pp. 

480-94] 
iii Allegoriae supra librum Turbae [pp. 494-95] 

MUSAEUM HERMETIC UM reformatum et amplificatum . . . 
continens tractatus chimicos XXI praestantissimos . . . Franco- 
furti [Frankfurt a. M.], 1678. For translation, see (B) WAITE, The 
Hermetic Museum. 

Contents quoted in this volume: 

i [Barcius (F. von Sternberg)]: Gloria mundi, alias Paradysi 

tabula [pp. 203304] 
ii Lambspringk: De lapide philosophico figurae et emblemata 

[PP- 387-7*] 
iii Sendivogius: Novum lumen chemicum e naturae fonte et 

manuali experientia depromptum [pp. 545-600] 
iv [Sendivogius:] Novi luminis chemici Tractatus alter de sul- 

phure [pp. 60146] 
v Philalethes: Introitus apertus ad occlusum regis palatium 

[pp. 647-700] 

vi Philalethes: Metallorum metamorphosis [pp. 74174] 

274 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

THEATRUM CHEMICUM, praecipuos select orum auctorum 
tractatus . . . continens. Ursellis [Ursel] and Argentorati [Stras- 
bourg], 1602-61. 6 vols. (Vols. I-III, Ursel, 1603; Vols. IV-VI, 
Strasbourg, 1613, 1622, 1661 respectively.) 

Contents quoted in this volume: 

VOLUME I 

i Fanianus: De arte metallicae metamorphoseos ad Philo- 

ponum [pp. 28-48] 
ii Hoghelande: Liber de alchemiae difficultatibus [pp. 121- 

**5] 

iii Dorn: Ars chemistica [pp. 217-54] 
iv Dorn: Speculativae philosophiae, gradus septem vel decem 

continens [pp. 255310] 
v Dorn: Physica genesis [pp. 367-404] 
v-a Dorn: Physica Trismegisti [pp. 405-37] 
vi Dorn: Philosophia meditativa [pp. 45072] 
vii Dorn: Philosophia chemica ad meditativam comparata 

[pp. 473-517] 
viii Dorn: Congeries Paracelsicae chemicae de transmuta- 

tionibus metallorum [pp. 557-646] 
ix Bernardus Trevisanus: Liber de alchemia [pp. 773-803] 

VOLUME II 

x Ripley: Duodecim portarum axiomata philosophica [pp. 

i*3-39] 
xi Hollandus: Fragmentum de lapide [pp. 142-46] 

xii Dee: Monas hieroglyphica [pp. 218-43] 

VOLUME III 

xiii Aristoteles de perfecto Magisterio [pp. 56-118] 

VOLUME IV 

xiv Artefius: Clavis maioris sapientiae [pp. 221-40] 
xv Duodecim tractatus de lapide philosophorum [pp. 478- 

502] 

xvi Beams: Aurelia occulta philosophorum [pp. 525-81] 
xvii Hermetis Trismegisti Tractatus vere aureus de lapide 
philosophici secreto [pp. 672-797; usually referred to as 
"Tractatus aureus"] 

275 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 
VOLUME V 

xvii-a Turba philosophorum [pp. 1-57] 
xvlil Allegoriae sapientum et distinctiones XXIX supra librum 

Turbae [pp. 64-100] 

xlx Platonis liber quartorum [pp. 114-208] 
xx Tractatus Aristotelis alchymistae ad Alexandrurn Mag- 
num de lapide philosophico [pp. 880-95] 

VOLUME VI 

xxi Blaise de Vigenere: Tractatus de igne et sale [pp. 1139] 
xxii Collesson: Idea perfecta philosophiae hermeticae [pp. 

143-61] 
xxlii Fidelissima et jucunda instructio de arbore solari [pp. 

163-194] 
xxiv Grasseus: Area arcani artificiosissimi de summis naturae 

mysteriis [pp. 294-381] 
xxv [Barchius:] Summa libri quae vocatur Gloria mundi, seu 

Tabula comprehensa [pp. 513-17] 
xxvl Chartier: Scientia plumbi sacri sapientum [pp. 569-99] 

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. In Lucam homiliae. See MIGNE, P.G.,, vol. 13, cols. 1801-1902. 

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293 



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300 



INDEX 



INDEX 



In entries relating to the books of the Bible, the numbers in parentheses 
indicate the chapter and verse(s) referred to. 



Aaron, 107, 228 

abaissement du niveau mental., 28, 

202 

Abarbanel, Isaac, 74, 107 
Abba, Rabbi, 80 
Abercius inscription, 73, Sgn, 103, 

115, 117 
ablution, 187 

Abot de Rabbi Nathan, n%n 
Abraham, 59 

Abraham ben Hiyya, Rabbi, 74 
Abu Ma'shar/Abu Mansor, see 

Albumasar 
accentuation, moral, of opposites, 

70 

acetum, 160; see also vinegar 
Achamoth, see Sophia 
act of God, 25 
Acts of the Apostles, (2 : 3), 13571; 

(7 : 43)> 75 n; (17 ' 29, 3) 19 1 
Acts of Thomas, see Thomas ; Acts 

of 

Adam, 199; Adam /Eve syzygy, 254; 
carries Eve with him, 206; Christ 
and, 39, 197, 232; Eve's birth 
from, 205/; first and second, 37; 
higher, 197, 214, 232, 237, 240, 
248, 255; , and lower, 227, 
233; lower, 244, 255; male/female, 
204; mystic, 36; original man/ 
Anthropos/Protanthropos, 200, 
203, 208, 2i8n; relation to creator 
and creatures, 189; as "rock," 88, 
208; second, 201, 204; and ser- 
pent, 233, 244/ 



Adamantius, dialogue of, 5477 

Adamas (arch-man), 208, 209 

adamas (steel), 161 

Adam Scotus, ioo/ 

adaptation, weak, and emotion, 9 

Adar, month of, 119 

Adech, 213 

Adler, Alfred, 165 

Adonis, 121, 199 

"Aenigmata ex Visione Arislei," 

126, 12777,, 137-38, 142 
Aeon: Autopator as, 191; birth from 

Kore, 104 
aeon, Christian, ix 
"aes Hermetis," 156 
Aesculapius, serpent of, 245?? 
affects, 9; and anima/animus, 16; 

feeling-tone, 33 
Africa, 96, 175 
agape, 90 
Agathodaimon, 186; serpent as, 188, 

230, 245^ 

ages, two, in pseudo-Clement, 55 
aggregation, states of, 250^ 257 
ayvota, 191 

aypoja-La., 19092, 193^; God's, 194 
Ailly, Pierre d', 75 ra, j6n, 77^ 82, 

8 3* 9 6 * 97* 9 8n ' 99 

Aipolos f 216 

air, 249 

Akathriel, 60 

albedo, 148, 235 

Albertus Magnus, 77n^ Son, 87, 256 

Albigenses, 150 

Albumasar (Ja'far ibn Muhammad 
[Abu Ma'shar] al-Balkhi), 75, 76- 
78nn^ Son/ 95*1, 96, 97, 99 



303 



INDEX 



alchemy /alchemists, 89 et passim; 
beginnings of, 173; Catharism 
and, 150; Chinese, 264; and 
Christ, 182; Christ-image in, 67; 
compensation in, 124; conjunction 
of opposites in, 40; dragon in, 
120; eagle in, 6472; fish in, 126$; 
Latin, beginnings of, 87; motive 
of, 171; and natural science, 176; 
Negroes in, 210; pagan currents 
in, 176; phenomenology of sym- 
bols in, 179; physical speculations 
of, 249^; quaternio in, 232$; rise 
of, 150; significance of matter in, 
66; and "theoria," 179; uncon- 
scious in, 142 
Alciati, Andrea, 158 

alcohol, 225 

alembics, three, 241 

Alexandria, 89, 104, 15672 

Alexius Comnenus, 148 

"Allegoriae sapientum supra librum 
Turbae," 126 

"Allegoriae super librum Turbae," 
12572, 126, 127^1 

allegories, see symbols 

Allenby, Amy Ingeborg, 26872 

Almaricus, see Amalric of Bene 

Amalric of Bene, 83 

ambivalence, 13; of fish symbol, 
uStf 

Ambrose, St., 88, 23572 

Amen, 206 

Amitabha land, vision of, 15172 

Amon, 78 

Amoraim, Son 

Amos, Book of, (5 : 26), 74f 

Anacreon, beaker of, 211 

analogy formation, 261 

analysis, 260 

anamnesis, 40, 180 

Andrew, St., 89 

androgyny, of Christ, 204, 205 

angels, 146, 195 

Angelus Silesius, 206 

Anger, Rudolph, 7472 

Ani, Papyrus of, 7672 



anima, 8, 10, iff, go/, 187, 266; and 
Eros, 14; feeling-value of, 28; 
liberty as, 30; Miriam as, 210, 
228; novelists and, 267; personi- 
fication of unconscious, 1172; pos- 
session by, 23; see also anima/ 
animus 

anima/ animus: appearance of con- 
tents, 19; cannot be integrated, 
20; effects on ego, i6f; fear of, 
33; feeling-value of, 28; as func- 
tions, 20; positive aspect, 268; 
recognition of, 22, 267; relation 
to each other, 15 

anima Christiana, 36 

anima mundi, 136, 142, 160, 198, 
242 

anima rationaliSj $8f, 21272 

anima rerum, 157-5872 

animals, helpful, 145, 186 

animosity, 16, 267 

animus, 8, 10, i^ff, $of, 33, 266, 
267; and logos, 14, 16, 21; posi- 
tive aspect of, 16; see also anima/ 
animus 

annunciation, of Christ-figure, 189 

Anthropos, 246, 247, 259; Christ as, 
204; figures, ix, 65, 204; Gnostic, 
i97/; , names of, 189; and 
Hermes, 230; king as, 198; ser- 
pent/snake and, 232/7 symbol for 
God, 195; vessel as counterpart 
of, 242; see also Adam; Archan- 
thropos; Man, original; Pro tan- 
thropos 

Anthropos quaternio, 231, 233, 244, 

254 

Anthropus primus, Saturn as, 197 
Antichrist, ix, 36, 61, 62, 63, 94, 
106; astrological origin, 76; astro- 
logical prediction of, 99; as half 
archetype of self, 44; as King of 
the Jews, 7972, 107; Nostradamus 
on, 101 ; problem of, 42/; prophe- 
cies of, 109; second, 96, 102; as 
shadow of self, 42, 44 
antimimon pneuma, 35, 42 

304 



INDEX 



Antony, Mark, 144 

Ami, 124 

Apelles, 75 

Apep, 76 

Aphrodite, 21, 104, 112, 217 

Apocalypse, ix, 36, go, 105-6, no; 
see also Revelation of St. John 

apocatastasis, 40, 169, 259 

Apollo, 81, 252 

Apollonius of Tyana, 12671 

Apophis-serpent, 230 

apperception, 169 

aqua, 160; abyssi, 215; doctrinae, 
159, 180, 185, 187, 188, 215, 241; 
permanent, 88, 150, 158, 18772,, 
235, 23972, 241; roris nostri, 158 

Aquarius ($?), 82, 87, 91, 92, 93 

Aquilo, 100, 125 

Arab tradition, fish in, 123 

Aratus, 9272 

arcane substance /arcanum, 152, 157, 
159, 160, 163, 18772; artifex as, 
155; fishes as, 150; healing power 
of, 180; called lapis, 236; mag- 
nesia as, 156; in man and with- 
out, 162; refers to self, 145 

Archanthropos, 197, 203; see also 
Adam; Anthropos; Man, original; 
Protanthropos 

Archegonos, 20 in 

archetic appetite, 133, 134 

archetype(s), 8, i6/, et passim; in 
art history, 68; assimilation of, 
222; autonomous factors, 21; de- 
notes completeness, 68; good and 
bad effects of, 267; image of in- 
stinct, 179; numinosity of, 18472, 
196; self as, 167, 169; of the Spirit, 
85; totality of, 196; unconscious 
organizers of our ideas, 179; see 
also aninia; animus; brothers, 
hostile; Christ; God-man; mar- 
riage quaternio; mother, chthon- 
ic; mother-son marriage; Re- 
deemer; self; shadow; spirit of 
gravity; wholeness; wise old man 
Archeus, 133*1, 213 



archon(s): Christ and, 65; demiurge, 

190; of future/ this Aeon, 254; 

Gnostic, 57, 230; laldabaoth, 75, 

208; Sabaoth, 76 
argument, animus and, 15 
Aries (<p), 7472, 82, 9072, 98, 103; 

see also Ram 
Arisleus, 143; vision of, 13072; , 

see also "Aenigmata ex Visione 

Arislei" 
"Aristoteles de perfecto Magisterio," 

156 

Aristotle, 51 

Armilus, 107 

Ars chemica, 18772 

art, history of, archetype in, 68 

Artefius, 13272 

Artis aurtferae, 12672, 13071, 19772, 
23872, 24071, 24172 

"as if," 203 

ascendent, 8272, 148 

ascension, 65 

Ascension of Isaiah, 57 

aspersion, 187 

ass, 75/ 

assimilation, 189; ego/self, 24/; by 
projection-making factor, 24 

Assumptio Mariae, see Mary 

assumptions, 15 

Astarte, 112 

astrology, 262; Fishes in, in; Ori- 
ental, 93; Saturn in, 75^ 

Atargatis, 73, 104, in, 112, 121 

atheism, 109 

Athens: Little Metropolis, 91; St. 
Paul and, 176, 191 

atman, 32, 69, 144, 167, 194, 222 

atom, 237, 242, 249, 260 

attention, 24 

Attis, 213, 21772; as Ichthys, 15272; 
"holy shepherd," 8gn; polymor- 
phous, 199; Shepherd and, 103 

Augurellus, Joannes Aurelius, 23272 

Augustine, St., 38-40^7272, 46, 49~5^ 
52, 7272, 7972, 80, 9072, 100, 113, 
120, 147, 158, 182 

Augustus, 144 



35 



INDEX 



Aurelia occulta, iSjn 

Aurora consurgens, i56n, 22on, 
23872, 239n, 241 

aurum nostrum, 127 

Authades, 19771 

authority, inner, 2526 

autism, g 

autoerotism, projections and, 9 

Autogenes, 19772 

autonomy: of anima/ animus, 20, 28; 
of archetypes, 21; of character- 
istics of shadow, 8 

Autopator, 

Autun, 89 

avatar, 176 

Aztecs, 144 



Baal, 119 

Baba Bathra, see Talmud 

Bab a Kamma, see Talmud 

Babylon, 121 

Babylonian tradition, 124 

Bacchus, 199 

Bacon, Roger, 87, 97, 256 

Bactria, 74 

Bahman Yast, 108 

Balaam, 59, 117 

Balak, 59 

baptism, 89, 90, 1 88; see also font 

Barabbas, 91 

barbel, 122 

Barbelo, 195, 19772; Barbelo-Gnosis, 



Bardesanes, 54 

Bar-Kuni, see Theodor Bar-Kuni 

Baruch, Apocalypse of, 115, 116, 

118 

Basil the Great, St., 46-48, 82, 129 
Basilides/Basilidians, 64, 66, 18572, 

190, 230, 234n, 269 
Basilius (Bogomil bishop), 148 
bath kol, 106 
Baubo, chthonic, 13 
Bauer, Walter, 



306 



bear, as symbol, 226 

Bear, Great, see Great Bear 

Beasts, Lady of the, 116 

Beatus, Giorgius, 18771 

beetle, 226 

Beghards, 84, 150 

Beguins, 150 

Behemoth, 11572, 118, 120, 121, 123, 

14772; battle with Leviathan, 80, 

118; eucharistic food, 116 
being, in God, 193 
Belinus, 12671 
beloved, 12, 13 
Benat na'sh; 124 
Benedict, St., 82-83, 85 
Benoist, Jean, 145 
Berahoth, see Talmud 
Bereshith Rabba(ti), 5972, 106 
Bernard of Clairvaux, St., 125 
Bernardus Trevisanus, 143, 23971 
Berthelot, Marcellin, 6572, 12772, 

14372, 15672, 15972, 23872, 26472 
Bethlehem, 106 
Bible, Protestants and, 178 
bin, 121 
bird(s): allegory of Christ, 72; two 

fighting, 150; white and black, 

226 

body, 6465; in Basilides, 66 
body/mind triads, 55 
Bogomils, 58, 147, 150 
Bohme, Jakob, 61, 125, 171, 25272 
Boll, Franz Johannes, 8 in, 9072, 

9172, 10472, 105 
Bouche"-Leclercq, Auguste, 7572, 7672, 

8 in, io4n, ii2n 
Bousset, Wilhelm, 75n, io8n, 109, 

i97n, igSn, 2o8n, 2ign, 22on 
Brahe, Tycho, 8 in 
brahman, 222 
"Bread through God," 84 
breasts, Christ's, 205 
Brethren of the Free Spirit, 84, 150 
brh, 119 

Brihaddranyaka Upanishad, 223 
Brimos, 217 
brother-sister pair, 31, 210 



INDEX 



brothers, hostile, Son, 81, 87, 254; 

monsters as, 119 
Brugsch, Heinrich, 207?? 
Buddha, symbol for God, 195 
Buddhism, 136; and yoga, 176; see 

also Zen 
Budge, Ernest Alfred Wallis, 88n, 

i22tt., 123, 207n 
bull: Behemoth as, 120; Mithras 

and, 124; one-horned, 199; as 

symbol, 226 
Bundahish; 246?? 



Cabala/ cab alism/cabalists, 58, 61, 

125, 173, 2i8n, 268 
Gabiros/Cabiri, 201, 212 
Cabrol, Fernand, and Leclercq, 

Henri, 8971 

Gaesarius of Heisterbach, 23971 
calendar, revolutionary, 98 
Caligula, 144 
Campbell, Colin, 198 
Cana, miracle of, 211 
Canopic jars, 122 
Canticles, see Song of Solomon 
Capricorn (]tf) ,92, 1 1 1 
caput corvi; 210 
carbon-nitrogen cycle, 260 
Carcassonne, 145 
Cardan, Jerome, 76^ 77^ 82, 
Carthage, 121 
Carus, Paul, 6 
Cassino, Monte, 83 
castle, as symbol, 224 
Castor, 81 
cat, black, 30 
Cathari/Catharists, 58, 83, 

and alchemy, 150 
causation, psychological, 62 
causes, 165 

Caussin, Nicholas, 128, 192 
Celsus, 75 
centre, 224; in alchemy, 169; in 

man, and God-image, 171; in one- 



self and environment, 170; in 
Plotinus, 219; psychic and al- 
chemical, 171 

cerebellum, "Son" and, 186 

cerebrum, "Father'' and, 186 

Chaldaeans, 111 

chalybs, 132 

chaos, 79, 148, 155, 194, 234, 236- 
37; and cosmos, 32; magnesia as, 
156; see also massa confusa 

Charles, R. H., n$n, n8n, 147*1 

Chartier, Jean, 139^ 

chemical processes, alchemy and, 

157 

cherub /cherubim, 123, 241 
child: divine, 31; symbol for God, 

195 

China: circular opus in, 264; 
dragon symbolism in, 245; re- 
ligions of, 70 

"chirographum," 230 Sc n 

Chiun, 74, 75n 

choice: four elements and, 56; free, 

5 

Christ, 32, 255; and age of fishes, 
92, 114; as Anthropos, 204; and 
Antichrist, 61, 115; archetype of 
self, 37; of wholeness, x, 40; 
assimilation into psyche, 221; 
attributes of, and self, 44; as 
avatar of Vishnu, 176; childhood 
of, 103; common symbols with 
devil, 72; and contents of uncon- 
scious, 181; death of, 35; descent 
into hell, 39; dualistic aspects, 
111; both ego and self, no; as 
fish, see fish(es); and horoscope, 
136-37; horoscopes of, 7772; hu- 
man soul of, 39; as inner man, 
203; as king and priest, 39, 147; 
lamb and, 105-6; male/female, 
205; and Mary, in Gnostic legend, 
202; as new aeon, 90; the perfect 
man, 69; pre-existent, 148; as 
quaternion of opposites, 63; as 
rock, 88; scriptural symbols of, 
221; second, 65; and self, parallel, 



37 



INDEX 



Christ (cent.): 

42, 44; and serpent, 186, 232; 
and shadow, 41^ no; spouse of 
the Church, 21; subjective par- 
allel of, 182; symbol for God, 195; 
of self, 36^ 62 n; synoptic and 
Johannine, 72; transfiguration of, 
i22?v "uncomeliness" of, 140; 
" within," 183; as younger son of 
God, 57, 147; see also Adam; 
androgyny; Ichthys 

Christ-figure: annunciation of, 189; 
significance of, 2034 

Christ-image: anthropomorphic, 67; 
perfection of, 68-69 

Christensen, Arthur, 77^ 246*2 

Christian doctrine: and nature, 173; 
and the psyche, 174 

Christianity: astrological origin, 76; 
divine syzygy in, 21; Germanic 
acceptance of, 175; myths under- 
lying, 179; place in Western life, 

i?5 

Christmas Eve, in 

Chronos, 139 

chthonic world, shadow and, 34 

Church: as Bride of Christ /Lamb, 
21, 204; as female, 2 in; in mod- 
ern world, 176; soul as, 206; as 
symbol, 224 

Chwolsohn, Daniel, 7572, ig*jn 

cinedian fish/stone, 138-39 

circle(s): character of wholeness, 
224n; God as, 153; magic, 32; in 
Maier, 264; soul as, 219; and 
square /squaring of, 22425, 239, 
241, 264; squared, of self, 204; 
symbols, 194; of God, 195; , 
self in, 190 

circumambulation, 224 

citrinitas, 127 

city: heavenly, 37; in Oxyrhynchus 
sayings, 145; as symbol, 224 

Clement of Alexandria, 22, 



pseudo-Clement, see Clementine 
Homilies 

Clementine Homilies, 54^ IOITV, 
19277, 254 

cloud, 155 

Cnidaria, 128 

Codex Ashburnham 1166, 232 

cognition, 61, 69 

collective unconscious, 7, 164, 223, 
234; archetypes and, 8; autonomy 
of, 20; dogma and, 174-75; and 
mythology, 179 

Collesson, Johannes, 160, 162 

collision, of conscious and uncon- 
scious, 194 

collyriumj 127 

Colossians, Epistle to the, (2 : 14), 



121, 222, 

Clement of Rome, 125; Second 
Epistle to Corinthians, zin; for 



commissure, 93, 148 

compass, 134 

Compendium theologicae veritatis, 

Son 

compensation: function of uncon- 
scious, 20; in man and woman, 14 
completeness: and perfection, 68, 

69, in; voluntary, 70; see also 

wholeness 
complexio oppositorum, 6m., 225, 

267; see also coniunctio opposi- 

torum 

compulsion, 140; c. neurosis, 10 
concept, 33; merely a name, 32; 

metaphysical, 34 
Concorricci, 83, i46n 
concupiscentia, 112, 129 
confusion, 194 

coniunctiOj of Adam and Eve, 206 
coniunctio(nes) maxima(e), 82, 96, 

97, 98, in 
coniunctio oppositorum, 31, 152, 

159, 167, 268; see also opposites, 

conjunction of 
conscientiousness, 24 
consciousness: in Autopator, 191; 

broadening of, and opus, 148; 

cannot comprehend whole, 110- 

n; and causes and ends, 165; 



308 



INDEX 



differentiation of, 191; and dis- 
crimination, 260; ego and, 3, 24; 
ego as subjective, 164; founded 
on unconsciousness, 30; God- 
image and, 194; limits of its field, 
3; monsters and development of, 
121; myths and coming of, 148; 
relation of unconscious manifes- 
tations to, 225; and splitting of 
Original Man, 204; threshold of, 
4; see also ego 

consensus omnium j consensus gen- 
eralis, 29, 30, 47, 178 

constellations, 29 

consummation of universe, 254 

conversion, 40 

copulation, 206; self-, 207 

coral, 12572 

Corinthians, First Epistle to, (5 : 2), 
23n; (10 : 4), 88; (10 : 16), 11572; 
(15 : 47), 39n; Second Epistle to 
(Clement of Rome), 2 in 

Cornarius, 191 

corpus mysticum, 32 

correspondence: in opus alchemi- 
cum, 262; principle of, 258; see 
also synchronicity 

cortex, 127, 137-38 

corybants, 211 

Corybas, 199, 2ii/ 

Cory bos, 212 

cosmos, and chaos, 32 

Cramer, H., 21371 

crazes, 169 

creation: Heliopolitan story of, 207; 
and opus, 148; of world by devil, 
146 

creator: as dreaming, 192; Gnostic 
symbols for, 196 

creed, 174, 179 

crocodile, 244 

cross, 6^n, 182, 189; as quaternity 
symbol, 204, 224; and snake, 78n/ 
as symbol of God, 195 
crucifixion, 69, 70; punishment for 

slaves, 78 n 
crystal, 224 



culture hero, Christ as, 36 
Cumont, Franz, girr, 11572, 121 
Curetes, 211 
Cybele, 121 
Cyprian, St., 11272 
Gyranides, 138 



D 



Dactyls, 212 

Dagon, 11572, 121 

daimon(ion), 27, 199, 226 

Damdad-Nashk, 246*1 

damnation, eternal, 6 in 

Daniel, Book of, 74; (2 : 34), 
2o8n; (2 : 35), 209n; (2 : 45), 88n; 
(3:24;), 199; (3:25), i23n; 
(11 : fff), 3 6n 

Dardaris, 50 

daughter, 12; and father, 14, 1 6 

David, 79 

dawn-state, 148 

dealbatio, 148 

Dee, John, 221 

Degenhardus, 139 

De Gubernatis, Angelo, 114 

"De igne et sale," i32n 

deliberation, 16 

Demeter, 12 

demiurge, no, 230; Basilidian, 190; 
devil as, 150, 232; Esaldaios, 208; 
Gnostic, 150, 196, 197-98; igno- 
rant, myth of, 189; Satanael as, 
147-48; son of, 190 

Democritus (alchemist), 14372, 159 

Denderah, 76n, 91 

Denzinger, Heinrich, and Bann- 
wart, Klemens, 52n, 83n, 253n 

Derceto, 73, 104, in 
descensus ad inferos, 39 

Deus absconditus, 135 
Deussen, Paul, i$zn 

Deuteronomy, (32 : 17), 107; 

(32 : 39), 55 
devaluation, of sexuality, 226 



309 



INDEX 



devil: as Adversary, 42; his body 
of fire, 13271; in Christian dogma, 
124; counterpart of God, 61; as 
demiurge, 150, 232; and evil, 48; 
fourth person, 208; God ruling 
world through, 254; in Joachim 
of Flora, 86; Origen and fate of, 
no; in Protestantism, 41; serpent 
as, 188, 230; symbols, in common 
with Christ, 72; world created by, 
146; see also Satan 
dharma, 217/1 

Didymus of Alexandria, 23572 
Dieterich, Albrecht, 89, 12471 
dilemma, of one and three, 195, 

224, 225 
din, 58 
Diodoros (Megarian philosopher), 

76/2 

Diodorus, 76 

Dionysius the Areopagite, 46, 49, 51 
Dionysus, 81, 158 
Diorphos, 121 
Dioscorides, 156/1 
Dioscorus, 159*1 
Dioscuri, 81 
Diotima, 27 
discrimination, 121, 258, 260; of the 

natures, 79 

distillation, circular, 265 
disturbance, symptoms of, 29 
divisio, 168, 187; see also separatio 
doctrinairism, 86 
doctrine, Christian, see Christian 

doctrine 
Doelger, Franz Josef, 73, 89, ii3n, 

11471, 115, 121 
dog, 150 

dogma(s), 169, 174-75; barbarian 
peoples and, 175; "belief" in, 178; 
believers and, i78n; drift from, 
179; prejudice against, 175; rea- 
son for insistence on, 179; and 
"sacred history," 179; see also 
doctrine 

Dominican order, 83 
Domitian, no 



Dorn, Gerhard, 157, 159, 160-64, 
166, 169-71, 174, 181, 18771, 19771, 
220, 22172, 239, 264 

dove, 11572, 139, 197 

Dozy, Reinhart, and de Goeje, 
M. J., 7572 

drachates / dr aconites / dracontias, 
138, 139, 140 

draconite, see drachates 

Dragomanov, M., 14771 

dragon, 155, 197; in China, 245; 
head of, 100; and snake, 23372, 
244; stone of, i38/; winged and 
wingless, 120; and woman, 12, 
103-4; see also snake 

dream-analysis, 203 

dreams, 25, 30, 35, 142, 223, 243; 
anima/ animus in, 19; childhood, 
190; of disoriented student, 134; 
fire in, 13772; of fishes, 151-52; 
image of self in, 67; instinctual 
foundation of, 20372; mandalas in, 
31; of Passion play and snake, 
7872; quaternary symbols in, 13271; 
shadow in, 120; symbolism in, 
202 

Drews, Arthur, 9072 

dualism: in archetypal self, 42; in 
Christ-figure, in; God's human- 
ity and, no; Manichaean, 49, 55, 
5772, 58, 61, 269 

duality: man's, 255; symbol for 
God, 195 

du Cange, Charles, 12871, 13872, 15472 

"Duodecim portarum axiomata phi- 
losophica," 13171 

"Duodecim tractatus," 15671, 158 

duty, conflicts of, 25, 45 

dyad, 194 

Dyophysites, no 



Ea, 121 

eagle, 64, 72, 120 



310 



INDEX 



earth, 264 

East, Philosophical, 132 
Ebionites, 44, 81, 147, 197 
Ecclesiasticus (9 : 18 [25]), 135; 

(48 : i), 129 

echenetSj 14042, 144, 145, 15455 
echinus, see echeneis 
Eckhart, Meister, 87, 135, 189, 193 

94, 206, 219 
ecliptic, 93, 124 
Edem, 199 
Eden, Garden of, 225, 234; see also 

Paradise 
education, modern, and dissocia- 

tion, 181 



egg, 22ora, 239/1 

ego, 190; acquired during lifetime, 
5; approximation to self, 23; 
archetypes and, 8; as centre of 
personality, 6; Christ's corre- 
spondence to, no; complex na- 
ture of, 3; conscious and uncon- 
scious in, 4; dependence on 
unconscious, 7; effects of anima/ 
animus on, 16; exponent of self, 
223; individuality of, 6; inflation 
of, 2324; its knowledge of itself, 
16364; and metaphysical ideas, 
34; not coincident with conscious 
personality, 4; overpowering of, 
23; perplexity of, 189; relative 
abolition of, 45; somatic and psy- 
chic bases of, 3, 4; subjective con- 
sciousness, 164; subordinate to 
self, 5; as total consciousness, 5; 
what it is, 3; see also assimilation; 
personality 

ego-consciousness: differentiation 
from unconscious, 24; and psyche, 
164; shadow and, 28 

Egypt, 2O9n; fish-cult in, 121; flight 
of Christ to, 103; and Israel, com- 
mon symbols, 123; Jews in, 78; 
slaying of firstborn in, 58*1 

eidos, 34 

eight, 224 



Eisler, Robert, Qon, 91^ 103^ 10471, 
11672, 12 in 

Eleazar, Abraham, 131 

electron, iSjn 

elements, four, 251, 254, 264/., Plate 
I; contained in lapis, 166, 237 & 
n; hate and love of, 17; quaternity 
of, 86, 197; as stages of fire, 249 

elephant, 226 

Elephantine, 121 

Eleusis: mysteries of, 217; priests of, 



Ellas, 106, 1227Z 

elixir vitae, 127, 180 

Elogabal, 8gn 

Elysian Fields, 30 

Emmaus, 113 

emotion: not an activity, 9; and the 

shadow, 8-9 
emotionality, female, 55 
Empedocles, 17 
enantiodromia, ix, 43, 93, 95, 102, 

108, 149, 225, 258 
ends, 165 
energy, 251 
enkekalymmenos, 18 
Enlightenment, the, 43, 150 
Iwoca, 191, i97?V see also conscious- 

ness 

"Entkrist," 101 
Enuma Elish, 124 
environment: influence of, 21; pro- 

jections and, 910 
Ephesians, Epistle to the: (3 : 18), 

88n; (4 : 23), igsn; (5 : 14), 208 
Ephrem the Syrian, St., 140 
Epictetus, 2i3n 
Epidaurus, 188 
Epiphanius, 4471, 57, 66, 7sra, 76*1, 

Sin, 88, 104, 114, 147, 159^ 

197, 202, 2o8/ 
Epiphany, 104 

epiphenomenon, psyche as, 174 
equation, quaternio as, 
equinoctial point, 77671 
Erman, Adolf, 78 



INDEX 



Eros, 11, 12, 19; anima and, 14, 16, 
21; a mighty daimon, 27 

Esaldaios, 197; "the fourth," 208 

eschatological state, 169 

eschatology, in New Testament, 36 

Esdras II, 12 in; (6 : 49$), 14771; 
(13 : *ff), 120; (13 : 25), 11572 

"Ethiopian woman/' 228, 251, 252 

Ethiopians, 210 

Eubulides, i8n 

eucharist, fish and, 113, 11571, 121, 
152 

eucharistic: act of integration, 144; 
feast, of Ophites, 188; food, Levi- 
athan as, H9/ 

Eucherius, 72n, 100 

Euchites, 44, 148 

Euphrates, 104, 184-85, iggf, 211, 
225, 235, 251, 252 

Euthymios Zigabenos, 148 

evangelists, four, 36, 195; symbols 
of, 123 

Eve, 204, 205^ 206, 235; see also 
Adam 

Everlasting Gospel, see Gospel 

evil, 41, 46 ff; absolute, 10; anima/ 
animus and, 267; Christianity 
and, 109; and disposition of soul, 
61; Gnostics and, 230; and good, 
44-45 n > 4&ff> 267; and the north, 
124; principle of, as creator, 256; 
shadow and, 266-67; see also 
privatio boni 

evolution, 180 , 

exaltatiOj of Aphrodite, 112 

exaltation, 156*1 

Exodus, Book of: (2 : 4$), 210; 
(12:22), 58; (15:6), 59; 
(15.-20/), 210; (18:27), 229n; 

(33 : 5), 58 

experience: intersexual, 2 in; sen- 
sory and immediate, 3 

extrasensory perception, 18471 

eyes, seven, 10571 

Ezekiel, 101, 10571, 124, 132, 195, 
241; (i : 22), 123; (i : 20), 123 



factors: causal and final, of psychic 
existence, 165; see also subjective 
factor 

fairytales, 149, 169, 180 

faith: is absolute, 174; crumbling 
away of content, 178; and dogma, 
178; rift from knowledge, 173^ 

Fall, the, 37, 39 

Fallopius, Gabriel, 158 

Fanianus, Joannes Chrysippus, 157 

Farnese Atlas (Naples), 91 

father: and daughter, 14; demiurge 
as, 190; in female argumentation, 
15; God as, 193; idea of, i8/; in 
Moses quaternio, 227; "signs of 
the/' 190; as unconscious, 191 

father-animus, 210 

father-mother, symbol for God, 195 

fear, of unconscious, 33 

feeling, 31, 178; function of value, 

32 
feeling-tones, 28, 33; subjective and 

objective, 29 
feeling-value, 28, 31 
female, see male and female 
femininity, man's, 2 in 
Ferguson, John, i33n 
"Fidelissima et jucunda instructio 

de arbore solari," 14071, 154 
Fierz-David, Hans Eduard, 25171 
Fierz-David, Linda, i3n 
fifth, the, 225 

filius macrocosmiy 66, 127, 155, 237 
films philosophorurrij 66, 127, 155, 

213 
fire, 101, 264; in alchemy, i$off, 252; 

as dream-symbol, i32n, i37n; 

four aspects of, 132, 249^; and 

water, 225 
firmament, 164 

Firmicus Maternus, Julius, 88 
firstborn, slaying of the, 58n 
fish(es): 189, 244; aeon of the, 62; 

allegory of tie damned, 122; in 

Arab tradition, 123; assimilation 



INDEX 



of Christ-figure, 182; Atargatis 
cult and, 121; bad qualities of, 
112; beneath the earth, 145; 
Christ and, 92, 113, 120; Christ 
and age of, 92, 111; and Christ as 
Ichthys, 115; Christian significance 
of, 114; direction of, 91; "drawn 
from the deep/' 79n, 120; eaten 
by Christ, 12 in; and fire, 135-36; 
golden, dream of, 151-52; great, 
as shadow of God, 119; , split- 
ting of, 119; historical significance 
of, io^ff; in Jewish symbolism, 
115, 121; Lambspringk's symbol 
of reversed, 150; and Leviathan, 
120; miraculous draught of, 89; 
as mother and son, 111, 114; 
originally one, 111; pagan sym- 
bolism, 115/7 Platonic month of, 
ix, 149; in primitive Christianity, 
188; "round/* 127$, 137-38, 140, 
144; as ruling powers, 147, 149; as 
sepulchral symbol, 115; and ser- 
pent, 186; sign (K) of the, 72$, 
91; , a double sign, 111; , 
twelfth, of zodiac, 118; Southern, 
11 in, 112; symbol, ambivalence 
of, n8#; -, of Christ, 67, >j*ff, 
89; , in Eastern religions, 73; 
, of love and religion, 129; - , 
of self, 226; , of soul, 122; sym- 
bolism of, and self, 183; yoked, 
145, 147, 148-49; zodiacal, in 
Lambspringk, 145 

fish-deities, Semitic, 121 

fisherman, 112 

fish-glue, i27n 

five, 224 

fixation, 168 

Flaccianus, 7271 

flatus vocis, 32 

"flesh," the, 233 

flood, god who dwells in, 211 

flower, as symbol of self, 226 

Fludd, Robert, 262*1 

Fomalhaut, 1 1 1 n, 112 

font, baptismal, 73 



formlessness, 66 

four, see elements s.v. four 

"fourth," the, 184, 252 

Franciscan order, 83 

Franz, Marie-Louise von, ix, 2 ion, 



Free Spirit: Brethren of the, 84, 
150; and Eckhart, 194 

freedom: of ego, limited, 7; moral, 
26; subjective feeling of, 5 

French Revolution, 43, 98, 233 

Freud, Sigmund, 165, 2O3n; sexual- 
istic approach to psyche, 226 

frivolity, and evil, 61-62 

Frobenius, Leo, inn 

fructificatio y 83 

functions: anima /animus as, 20; 
differentiated and undifferenti- 
ated, 195; four, of consciousness, 
258, 259; quaternity of, 196; ra- 
tional, 28; reflex, 233; sensory, 
rivers as, 199; and space-time 
quaternio, 253 



Gaedechens, Rudolf, gin 

Galileo, 34 

gall, fish's, 137 

Gamaliel the Elder, 

Gamow, George, 26on 

garbha griha, 21771 

Gargaros, 2o6n 

Garnerius, 100, i25n 

gate, narrow, 200 

Gayomart, 246 

Gehenna, fire of, 131 

Gemini (X), 77> 8ora, 81, 

Genesis, Book of, 204, 235; (i : 2), 
148, 237; (i : 7), 184^; (18 : 23), 
59; (28: 17), 2i4n; (44 : 5)> 2im 

Genesis, Johannine, 80 

"genius," man's, 45 

geomancy, 261 

Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, 82 

Gerhardt, Oswald, 74n, 7572, 77 

Germanic peoples, 175 



3*3 



INDEX 



Geryon, 211 

Gihon, 199, 225, 235 

"Gloria mundi," 88 n, 130 

Gnosticism/ Gnostics, 58, 93, 181, 
192, 196^, 269; and alchemy, 173, 
232; Christ-figure in, 203; and 
demiurge, 15072; Eckhart and, 
194; and evil, 41, 46, logf; and 
Holy Ghost, 86; and magnetism, 
154; and psyche, 174; as psycholo- 
gists, 222; quaternio among, 
242^ 254^7 and symbols of self, 
i&4ff; and unconscious, 190-91; 
and water, 15972 

god: dying, 206; " earthly," Mercu- 
rius as, 232 

God: absolute, 143; of Basilidians, 
190; fish as shadow of, 119; and 
man, affinity, 209; in Old and 
New Testaments, 192; pneuma 
and soma in, 254; quaternary 
view of, 253^1; symbols for, 195; 
threefold sonship, 64; two sons of, 
147; union of natures in, no; 
will of, 26/; without conscious- 
ness, 192; of wrath and of love, 
192 

God-eating, 144 

Godhead: in Eckhart, 193; Second 
Person of, 196; unconscious, 193 

God-image: alchemy and, 125; 
anthropomorphic, 55, 67; centre 
as, 219; in Christ and man, 38; 
Christian doctrine as expressing, 
174; an experience, 194; human 
element in, 121; incomplete, 120; 
reformation of, 40; results of de- 
struction of, 109; self as, 63, 109; 
and transcendent centre in man, 
171; transformations of, and 
changes in consciousness, 194; 
and wholeness, 198; Yahwistic, 
58; see also Imago Dei 

God-man, archetype, 181-82 

"gods": anima/animus as, 21; ithy- 
phallic, 211; theriomorphic at- 
tributes of, 29 



goddess, heavenly, 13 
Goethe, J. W. von, 208, 234 
Gog and Magog, 79, Son,, 107 
gold, in alchemy, 264 
good and evil, see evil 
Goodenough, Erwin R., 73 n, 9072, 

11372, 11571, 117, 12072, 12272, i45n 
Gospel, Everlasting, 82, 85, 88 
gospels: miraculous element in, 177; 

synoptic, 93 
grace: divine, 129; restoration 

through, 39; state of, 34 
grape, 200 

Grasseus, Johannes, 139 
Gratarolus, Gulielmus, 14672, 232?? 
gravity, spirit of, n6n 
Great Bear, 123, 124 
Great Mother(s), 8972, 112, 199, 210 
green /greenness, 30, 245 
Gregory the Great, St., 101, 20572, 

2o6n 

Grenfell, B. P., and Hunt, A. S., 3771 
ground, universal, 195, 200; Gnostic 

symbols for, 196$ 
Guignebert, Charles, 21371 
gyne (woman), 10471 



H 



Habakkuk, Book of, (2 : 3), 60 

Haggard, H. Rider, 26771 

Hahn, Christoph Ulrich, 84, 14572, 

14672 

Haly, 23972 

Hanan ben Tahlifa, Rabbi, 8on 
handwriting, 230 
Hapi, 123 

Harnack, Adolf, 5472, 25471 
Harran, 126 
Hartmann, E. von, 6 
Hathor, Temple of, 91 
heaven(s), 155; in Ascension of 

Isaiah,, 57; four pillars of, 123; 

iron plate in, 122-23; kingdom 

of, 145; lapis in, 170; northern, 

123 



314 



INDEX 



Heb-Sed festival, 198 

Hecate, 21 

Heidegger, Johann Heinrich, 7671 

Heimarmene, 9371, 13771 

Helen (Selene), 21 

Helen (in Simon Magus), 19771 

Heliogabalus, 8971 

hell, 135; St. Basil on, 129; eternity 
of, no; fire of, 131, 132; God's 
love in, 125 

hemispheres, 134 

hemlock, 21772 

Hennecke, Edgar, 5771 

Henry II, of France, 95 

hep tad, 19771 

Hera, 20671; Babylonian, 116 

Heracles, 81 

Heraclitus, 219, 250 

heresies, 150 

hermaphrodite, 159, 211, 234, 248; 
and elevated places, 206; Original 
Man as, 204; stone as, 246; sym- 
bol for God, 195 

Hermaphroditus, 127 

Hernias, "Shepherd" of, 88n, 103, 
22471 

Hermes, 21, 155, 209, 234, 245; bird 
of, 221; ithyphallic, 230; Krioph- 
oros, 103; Kyllenic/Kyllenios, 
201, 211, 212, 232; Naassene view 
of, 208; "Ter Unus/' 177; see also 
Mercurius/ Mercury 

Hertz, Martin, 13671 

Heru-ur, 78, 122-23, *32W 

hesedj, 58 

hexad, 228 

hexagrams, 260 

Hiddekel, 225, 235 

hieros gamos, 12, 3940, 8971,, 206 

Hierosolymus, 7671 

Hinduism, and Buddhism, 176 

Hipparchus, 81, 91 

Hippocrates, 20 in 

Hippolytus, i, 64, 6571, 66, 7571, 
88n, 114, 139, 173, 184, 186, 187, 

191, 198, 199, 2OO, 2O1, 202, 2O8]f, 
222, 223n, 226, 23071, 233, 254 



hiranyagarbha, 246 

Hitler, Adolf, 102 

Hoghelande, Theobald de, 137, 
23972, 240 

Holderlin, Friedrich, 29 

Hollandus, Johannes Isaacus, 23571 

Holy Ghost, 135, 162; age of, 82- 
83, 85-86; espousal of, 86; fire of, 
129, 131; indwelling of, 88; 
movement, 85-86, 87, 89, 150 

Homer: Iliad, 20671, 2i8n; Odyssey, 
20877, 209, 216 

homo: altus y 232; coelestis } 39; 
maximus, 198; quadratus, 264 

homosexual, 12 

homunculus, 232, 246 

Honorius of Autun, loin 

hook, fish-, 11271 

horos., 6572 

horoscope, 136-37, 224; zodia in, 
148 

horse, 226 

Horus, 104, 122; four sons of, 122, 
123, 124, 132, 240, 243; "older," 
78; quaternio, 243; see also Heru- 
ur 

house, as symbol, 224f 

Hugh of Strasbourg, Son, 10271 

human figure, as symbol of self, 225, 
226 

Hurwitz, Sigmund, 22 6n, 26871 

hyacinth, 139 

hydromedusa, 134 

hyle, 79 

hypochondriac ideas, 169 

hysteria, 20371; collective, 181 



laldabaoth, 75, 208 

Ibn Ezra, 108 

/ Ching, 11871, 260 

Ichthys: Adonis as, 121; Christ as, 

183; Christ or Attis as, 15272; 

Christian, 112, 119-20, 121; son 

of Derceto, 104, in; see also 

fish(es) 



315 



INDEX 



ideals, collective, 29 

Idechtrum, 213 

Ideler, Christian Ludwig, 12472 

identification, with intellectual 

standpoint, 31 
identity, 18; of hunter and prey, 

112; of lowest and highest, 246 
Ides/Ideus, 213 
idiosyncrasy (-ies), 169, 200 
Ignatius Loyola, St., 165 
ignis, see fire 
ignorance, 191 

illusion, 11, 16; see also maya 
image of God: Christ and the soul 

as, 37; see also imago Dei 
imagination, active, 19, 223, 243 
imago, of mother, 11, 12, 14 
imago Dei, 31, 37, 3872, 41, 260; see 

also God-image; image of God 
Imhullu, 120 
"immutability in the new rock," 84, 

8 7 

impulses, 27 

"In Turbam philosophorum exer- 
citationes," 126 

incarnation, 179; fish and, 121 

incest, 206, 210, 228, 229 

incompletude, sentiment d f , 9 

increatum, 237 

India: development of symbol in, 
176; Eckhart and, 194; fish in, 
114; religions of, 70; thought of, 

175 

Indian influences, 223 

Indies, 133-34 

individuality, and ego, 6 

individuation, 39, 40, 45, 200; apoc- 
atastasis in, 169; Christianity and, 
70; as mysterium coniunctionis, 
64; opus and, 264; repressed, 70; 
self and, 167; stone compared 
with, 170; symbolized in dreams, 

153 

in fans, 127 

infection, psychic, 248n 
inferiority, 9, 17 
inflation, 25; of ego, 23-24; nega- 



316 



tive, 62; peril of, 24; religious, 84 
inhabitant, of house, 225 
initiation, in mysteries, 261 
Innocent III, Pope, 83, 99 
innocents, massacre of, 103 
Inquisition, 145 
insight, intellectual, insufficiency of, 

33 
instinct(s), 21, 26, 31, 40-41, 145, 

179, 234; archetype image of, 179; 

individual and common, 7; snake 

symbol of, 244 
"Instructio de arbore solari," 14072, 

*54 
integration, 30, 40, 200; of collective 

unconscious, 39; of contents of 

anima/ animus, 20; mandala and, 

32; of shadow, 22; of unconscious 

contents, 23 

intellect, and values, 32 
intellectualism, 86, 150 
intensity, of idea, 28 
"Interpretatio . . . epistolae Alex- 

andri," 16772 
Interrogationes maiores Mariae, 

202, 207 
Irenaeus, 4172,, 4546, 54, 6571, 6672, 

non, 15072, 196, 19772,, 21872, 21972 
Iron Age, fourth, 108 
iron-stone, magnetic, 15672 
irrationality, 17 
Isaac, 9072 
Isaiah, Ascension of, see Ascension 

of Isaiah 
Isaiah, Book of: (14 : 12$), 100; 

(14 : 31), 10172; (26 : 20), 59; 

(27 : i), 118, 119; (28 : 10), 21072; 

(30 : 18), 60; (33 : 14), 14472; 

(66 : 7), 105 
Ishmael, Rabbi, 60 
Ishtar, 112 

Isidore of Seville, St., 15472 
Isidorus (Gnostic), 234 
Isis, 104 

Islam, 5472, 76, 9572, 99, 176 
Israel and Egypt, common symbols, 

123 



INDEX 



J 



Jacob, 214 

Jacobi, Jolande, 25372 

Ja'far ibn Muhammad (Abu Ma'- 

shar) al-Balkhi, see Albumasar 
James, Epistle of, 135; (3 : 5), 13572; 

(3 - 6), 135 

James of Sarug, 75 

James, Montague Rhodes, 3772, 
19772 

Jeans, Sir James, 25872 

jelly-fish, 128, 134, 137-38, 15472 

Jeremiah, Book of: (i : 13), 101; 
(i : 14), 100 

Jeremias, Alfred, 7372, 74, 112, 12472 

Jesuits, 58 

Jesus, i, 65, 144, 201; faith and per- 
sonality of, 178-79; as God-man, 
35; Makarios, 200; Passion of, 64, 
65, 67; in Pistis Sophia, 78-79; 
relation to Christ, 67; and separa- 
tion of categories, 64; as third 
sonship, 67; a trichotomy, 65; as 
"truth sprouting from earth/' 79; 
see also Christ 

Jethro, 20972, 210, 228/, 244 

Joachim of Flora, 82-83, 84, 86, 87, 
149, 150, 253, Plate II 

Job, 60, 108, 120 

Job, Book of, 42, 58, 118; (26:7), 
100; (26 : 12), 120; (26 : 13), 12072; 
(27 : 21), 101; (41), 11972 

Jochanan, Rabbi, 60 

Johannes de Lugio, 14672 

John, St., 145; Epistles of, 43, 68; 
First Epistle of (4 : 3), 3672; Reve- 
lation of, see Revelation 

John, Gospel of, 148; (i), 21872; 
(i : iff), 211; (i :2), 148; (i 14), 
211; (3:12), 202, 203; (4**i) 
18472, 185, 19972; (5 : 2), 13172; 
(6 : 54), 202; (7 : 38), 214; (10 : 9), 
18572; (10 : 34), 89, 20972; (14 : 6), 
200; (18 : 36), 3772 

John the Baptist, 19272 
John Chrysostom, St., 48/ 



John of Paris, Son 

Jonah, 117; sign of, 111 

Jonathan, Rabbi, 60 

Jordan, 21011 

Joseph (father of Jesus), 78-79 

Josephus, 76 

Joshua, 111 

jot, 218 

Jothor, 209, 210 

Judaeus (son of Set), 7672 

Judaism, 58^7 Messianism in, 107 

judgments: good/ evil as, 53; moral, 

47-48 
Jung, Carl Gustav: 

CASE: young woman with intense 
inner life who dreamed of 
fishes, 15152 

WORKS: "Answer to Job/' 8772, 
10872; "The 'Arbor philosoph- 
ica/ " 23572; Commentary on 
The Secret of the Golden 
Flower, 18272; "Concerning 
Mandala Symbolism/' 4072, 
13572., 21972; "Concerning Re- 
birth/' inn; "Instinct and 
Unconscious/' Sn; Mysterium 
Coniunctionis, 1372; "On the 
Nature of the Psyche/' 4, 8n, 
2472,, 16472,, 17472, 17972; "On 
Psychic Energy/' 2972; Paracel- 
sica, 24272; "Paracelsus the 
Physician," 133*2; "Paracelsus 
as a Spiritual Phenomenon," 
21172; "The Phenomenology of 
the Spirit in Fairytales/* 5572, 
8572, Qgn, I 59 n > 20372, 224, 
22972; "A Psychological Ap- 
proach to the Dogma of the 
Trinity/' yjn> 86n, 15272, 22471, 
24671., 25372; Psychological 
Types, 2872, 11672, 15972, 22372, 
25372; Psychology and Alchemy, 
3172, 3772, 4072, 6372, 6472, 6772, 87, 
11672, 12572, 13472, 13672, 14072, 
15272, 15572, 182, 19072, 19772, 
19972, 23772, 23972, 24172, 24372, 
25972, 262, 26472; "The Psychol- 



317 



INDEX 



Jung, Carl Gustav (cont.)i 

ogy of the Child Archetype," 
3171; "The Psychology of East- 
ern Meditation," 15171, 20472; 
"Psychology and Religion/' 
8772., 18271; "Psychology of the 
Transference/' 1371, 22rc, 6471, 
1597?,, 16771, 20971, 22571, 22871, 
22971, 24273, 24371; "The Psy- 
chology of the Trickster Fig- 
ure," 20371; "The Relations 
between the Ego and the Un- 
conscious," 2 in, 2371, 6371, 
182 n; "The Spirit Mercurius/' 
4371, 86n, 13671,, 15271, 16871, 
20371., 21271, 23271, 23571, 25371; 
"A Study in the Process of In- 
dividuation," 6571, 6777, 19071, 
20471, 21971, 25371, 25971; Sym- 
bols of Transformation, iom, 
inn, 13271; "Synchronicity," 
18471, 25871; "Transformation 
Symbolism in the Mass/' 14471, 
22on, 23871; "Uber das Selbst/' 
2371 
Jupiter (if), 74, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 

8377, 95, 97; moons of, 34 
jurisprudence, and consciousness, 5 
justice, of Yahweh, see Yahweh 
Justin Martyr, 173, 177, 230 



Ka-mutef, 206 
Kant, Immanuel, 6 
karma , 14077, 27171 
Kaulakau, 210 
Kelchner, Ernst, 10271 
Kena Upanishad, 223 
Kepler, Johann, 7771, 173, 207 
kerygmatics, 177 
Keshava, 114 
Kewan, 7571 
Khidr legend, 1 1 1 

Khunrath, Heinrich Conrad, 88, 
156, 220 



3*8 



kibla, 124 

king(s), deification of, 198; divine 

right of, 177 
kingdom(s), heavenly /of God, 37; 

two, in pseudo-Clement, 55 
"kingless race," 260 
Kings, First Book of, 59; (22 : 19), 

59 

kingship, and self, 198 
Kircher, Athanasius, 262/ 
Kirchmaier, Georg Caspar, n6n 
Klaus, Brother, 25 
Knapp, Martin Johann, 8 in 
Kohut, Alexander, 24671 
Kolorbas, 195 
Korah, children of, 106 
Koran, 1 1 1 TI 
Kore, 104 
Korion, 104 
krater, 6571, 19171 
Kurma, 176 
Kyrios, 182 



lac virginisj 160 

"Ladder of the Twin Gods/' 122 

Lagarde, Paul A. de, 5671 

Laiblin, Wilhelm, 14971 

lake, as symbol of self, 226 

Lamb, 103; in Apocalypse, 9071, 
iO5/; Church as Bride of, 204; 
marriage of the, 12, 36, 268 

Lambspringk, 9271, 145, 150 

lamp, 112 

lapis (philosophorum), 68, 87, 127, 
139, 143, 155, 159, 182, 208, 236$, 
247$, 263; fish as symbol of, 126^; 
found only in heaven, 170; par- 
allel of Christ, 237; quaternio, 
238$; as rock, 88; and serpent, 
245; symbol of self, 268; thousand 
names of, 182, 189; "uncomeli- 
ness" of, 140; union of opposites 
in, 247/; see also stone 

lapis angularis (Christ), 208 

lapis animalis, 157 



INDEX 



lapis exilis, 30 

lapis vegetabilisj 159 

Lateran Council, Fourth, 5271, 82, 
837?, 25372 

lawlessness, man of, 3671 

Layard, John Willoughby, 242/1 

lead, 139 

Leda, 81 

left, see right and left 

legends, 169 

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 6, 16471, 
258 

lethargia, 208 n 

Lethe, and unconscious, 20871 

Leto, 104 

Leviathan, 123, 14771, 182; battle 
with Behemoth, 80, 108; eucha- 
ristic food, 112, 120; fish and, 120; 
male and female, 118 

Le*vy-Bruhl, Lucien, 29 

Lexicon medico-chymicum^ 15471 

Libavius, Andreas, 158 

liberty, idea of, 29 

libido, 13271, 256; kinship, 243 

Libra (==), 7771, 83 

Libya, 138 

life-process, psychic interpretation 
of, 4 

light, transcendent nature of, 6371 

Lightfoot, Joseph Barber, 21371 

lime, unslaked, 130; see also quick- 
lime 

lingarn, 21771 

lion(s), 120; Michael and, 75; sym- 
bol of Christ, 72; of the tribe of 
Judah, 105; two, 150 

lodestone, 18971; see also magnet 

Logos, 148, i87/, 201, 252; animus 
and, 14, 16, 21; cosmogonic, 211; 
Gnostic, 202; Hermes as, 201; as 
magnetic agent, 188; Protan- 
thropos as, 209; serpent as, 188, 
232 

\6yos ffirepfjLoriKhs, 207 

love: fish as symbol of, 129; at first 
sight, 15; God's, in hell, 125; lan- 
guage of, 15 



love-magic, 140 

love-potion, 138 

Loyola, see Ignatius 

Lucian, 212 

lucidus, 13871, 13971 

Lucifer, 72, 125 

Lugio, Johannes de, 146 

Luke, Gospel of: (5 : 10), 89; 

(6 : 35), 89, 20971; (11 : 29/), inn; 

(16 : 8), 14671; (16 : 17), 21871; 

(i? : so#), 37; (19 : j(b> l66 > 
(19 : 27), 10671; (24 : 42), 12 in; 
(24:43), 113 

Lully (Lull), Raymond, 23971 

Luna, 235; see also moon 

Luther, Martin, 89, 235; as Anti- 
christ, 102 

Lycia, 121 



M 

Maag, Victor, i82n 

Macrobius, Ambrosius Theodosius, 

21971 

macrocosm, 214 
Magi, 89, 132 
magic, 140, 242 
magnesia, 155-57, 159, 160 
magnet, 133, 154^ 184, 18771; of the 

wise, 142, 155 

magnetic agent, three forms of, 188 
magnetism, 13371; of fish, 154; 

Gnostics and, 184^ 
Magog, see Gog and Magog 
Magus, 16771 

Mahomet, 97; see also Mohammed 
Maier, Michael, 18771, 220, 249, 252, 

264, pi. I 

Maimonides, Moses, n6n, 11971 
Mainyo-i-Khard, 24671 
Majui, 8on 
maladaptation, 27 
Malchuth, 268 
male and female, 55 
man: complete, water as, 200; 

higher, in Moses quaternio, 228; 



319 



INDEX 



man (cont.): 

inner, 208^ 228; One, 205; Orig- 
inal, 198, 200, 201, 203, 204, 211, 
214, 216, 237, 239, see also Adam, 
Anthropos, Archanthropos, Pro- 
tanthropos; perfect, 2i2/; pneu- 
matic, 256; primordial, 36 

"man," in II Esdras, 120 

mana, 25121 

Mandaeans, 124 

mandala(s), 64, 152, 219, 241, 253; 
Christ in Christian, 36; rotation 
of, 259; in student's dream, 134; 
symbols of order, 31^ 135; totality 
images, 40, 268; and unconscious 
personality, 204; vessel as, 240 

Manget, Jean Jacques (Joannes 
Jacobus Mangetus), i26n 

Manichaeans/Manichaeism, 48, 49, 
55, 5772, 58, 6m,, 99, see also 
dualism 

Manu, 73; fish of, ii3f 

Marcionites, 49 

Marduk, 120, 124 

Maria, axiom of, 153, 251 

Maria the prophetess, 240 

Mariam, see Miriam 

Mariette, Francois A. F., 76n 

Marinus, 54 

Mark, Gospel of, (10 : 18), 5872 

marriage: of Christ and the Church, 
39; classes, 22; as conscious rela- 
tionship, 243; constellation of un- 
conscious in, 242; cross-cousin, 22, 
20973, 229, 242^; mingling of 
subtle with dense, 16771; of 
mother and son, 12; quaternio, 
22, 64, 209, 210, 229, 242, 252 

Mars ( $ ), 797?, 95 

Marxism, 181 

Mary: as fountain, 116; in Gnostic 
symbolism, 202, 204, 205; in Pistis 
Sophia, 78 

Mary, the Virgin, 205; Assumption, 
87; Immaculate Conception, 8771; 
as substitute for Church, 2 in 

masculinity, woman's, zin 



Masenius, Jacobus, 1547-1 

mass man and evil, 166 

massa confusa, 148, 155, 234, 236 

Mater Alchimia, 173, 232 

materialism, 109, 150, 176, 181, 233, 

257, 260 

mathematics, 261 
Matsya, 176 

matter, numinosity of, 66, 260 
Matthew, Gospel of, loin, 2Oin; 

(2 : iff), 89; (3 : 2), 19272; (4 : 19), 

% (5 : S)* 1 93 (5 : 8 )> *i7 n ; 
(5:18), 2i8n; (5:48), 6gn; 
(7 : 14), 20on; (10 : 34), 187; 
(12:39), IIITZ; (13:24), 37^; 
(13:45), 3772; (16:4), inn; 
(17 : 4), i22; (18 : 23), 37^; 
(19 : 17), 58n, 2om; (21 : 19), 
io6n; (22 : 2), 3777; (22 : 7), %6n; 

(27 : i55) 90 

maya, 11, 13 

meaning, 27 

Mechthild of Magdeburg, St., 2O5/ 

mediator, 23771., 239; animus as, 16; 

man as, 255/ 

medicament, incorrupt, 170 
medulla^ 205, 233 
medusa, 126^ 
Meerpohl, Franz, 219 
megalomania, 17 
Meir ben Isaac, 118 
melusina, 235 
memory, 4 

mendicant orders, 82, 83 
Mephistopheles, 234 
Mercurius/ Mercury ( ), 76, *]*jn, 

7 8 > 95* 97> 13* 1 3 1 > l6l I 7 l > l8 7> 
232, 249^ 252; as anima mundi, 
136; and double aspect of water, 
180; double /duplex nature of, 
150, 252/, 254; "non vulgi," 155, 
234; philosophical, see Mercurius 
"non vulgi"; and the Pole, 133, 
135; synonyms for, 241; as tree* 
numen, 235; as trickster, 
as Virgo, 127 
mercy, of Yahweh, 59, 60 



320 



INDEX 



Mesopotamia, 74, 214 

Messahala, 8%n 

Messiah(s), 106 ff y 121; ben Joseph 
and ben David, 107; birth of, 
105, 149; coming of, 74, 118; 
two, 107, 108; in Zohar, 214 

Mestha, 123 

metals, 246 

jueraz'ota, 192 

metaphysical ideas, 34, 35 

metaphysics: Jung and, 19572; psy- 
chology and, 54, 61, 67, 194, 198 

Metatron, 214 

Meyer, Karl H., 146 

Michael (angel), 75 

Michaias, 57 

microcosm/microcosmos, 155, 164, 
214; wandering, 213 

microphysics, 174 

Midrashim, 59; Midrash Tanchuma 
(Shemoth), 59*1, uSn, 11971 

mind, transformation of, 192 

Miriam, 209, 210, 228, 244 

Mithraic: liturgy, 124; monuments, 

9i 

Mithras, 121, 124 

modesty, 25 

Mohammed, 102; see also Mahomet 

molecular movement, 250/ 

mollusc, 128 

monad(s), 189, 2i8/; Kircher's, 262- 
63; in Sabellius, 253n 

monasticism, 82/, 85, 89 

monks, as fishes, 113 

Monoi'mos, 2i8/, 222/ 

Monophysites, no 

monotheism, 268 

monsters: attributes of death, 120; 
horned, 105; sea, see Behemoth, 
Leviathan; splitting of, ii9/ 

moods, 17 

Moon (D), 76, 77, 155, 249; celes- 
tial horn of, 211 

morality, 25 

Morienus Romanus, 166, 168 

morphomata, 81 



Moses, 74, 107, i22n, 209^ 210, 

227^ 244 
Moses quaternio, 227^ 243^ 251, 



Moses ha-Darshan, 106 

mother, 155; chthonic, 22; higher, 
in Moses quaternio, 228; search 
for, 11; as symbol, 11; and son, 
12; see also Great Mother(s); 
imago 

mountain, 203, 209; as symbol of 
self, 226 

Muenter, Friedrich, 74 

mumia, 2i3/ 

mummy, 122; see also mumia 

Mundus, 137 

Musaeum hermeticurrij 88n, 130^ 
1, 13371, 145^ 150^ 22in, 



mussel-shell, 127^ 

Mut, 206 

"mutilation of the soul," evil as, 48 

Mylius, Johann Daniel, 88n, 139, 

156, i87ra, 19771, 221, 235?*, *yjn, 

239^ 

mysteries, Eleusinian, 217 
mysterium coniunctionis, 64 
mysterium iniquitatis, 44, 86 
mysticism, Jewish, 108 
mythologem: of Amen, 206; dying 

god, 206; fish as, 138 
"mythological" aspects, 30 
mythology, 35; comparative, 34; 

and dogma, 179 
myths, 35, 149; cosmogonic, 148; 

gods in, 177; and unconscious 

processes, 180 



N 



Naas, 199, 230, 232 

Naassenes, 64, 75, 88, 89, iS^f, 197, 

198, 199, 200, 201, 2o8f, 241, 

226/; see also quaternio 
name, and thing, 32 
Nanni, Giovanni, iO2n 



321 



INDEX 



naphtha, 185 

Naples: Farnese Atlas, 91 

Nathan, Rabbi, ii3n 

nature: Christianity and, 174; im- 
provement of, 143; individual, o 
Christ's disciples, 211; rejoices in 
nature, 159; two powers of, 123 

natures, changing of the, 166 

Nazis, 102 

necromancy, 262 

negligence, evil and, 62 

Negroes, 210 

nekyia, 209 

Nelken, Jan, 33*1 

Nematophora, 128 

Neoplatonists, 126 

Nero, 102 

Neumann, Erich, n6n, 148*2, 183*1 

neurosis(es), 20, 180, 181, 189 

neurotic disturbances, 169 

New Testament: devil in, 86; escha- 
tology, 36; Jesus in, 179; snake in, 
245; see also names of individual 
boohs 

Nicholas of Cusa, 225*1 

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 260 

night-heron, 72 

night sea journey, 111 

Nigidius Figulus, Publius, 136 

nigredo, 148, 149, 194, 210; see also 
chaos 

Nina, 121 

Nippur, 124 

nirdvandva, 191 

nodes, 253 

North, the, 99^; in ancient history, 
125; Ezekiel and, 124; King of 
the, 125; Mithras and, 124 

North Star, 133 

Nostradamus, Michel, 95$, 125, 126 

"nothing but," 179 

nous, 21; descent to Physis, 233; 
krater filled with, 191*1; Mercu- 
rius symbol of, 168; serpent as, 
186, 188, 230, 232; unconscious, 
203*1 



"Novi luminis chemici Tractatus 

alter de sulphure," 131*1 
Numbers, Book of: (12 : 10), 210; 

(16), io6n; (24 : 16), 59*1; (24 : 17), 

117*2 
Numbers, see dyad; triad; quater- 

nity; heptad; ogdoad; three; four; 

five; eight; twelve 
Nun, 111, 121 



O 



Oannes, 73, 112, 121, 201 

observation, uncertainty of, 226 

obsessions, 169 

obsidian, 138, 139*1 

ocean /Oceanus, 209, 212, 214, 218 

Oehler, Franciscus, 191 

ogdoad, no, 196, 197*2, 226; archon 
of the, 190 

Old Testament, 70; see also names 
of individual books 

olive, 200 

Olympiodorus, 239*2, 264 

Olympus, 164 

omega element, 238 

Onians, Richard Broxton, 212*1 

Ophites, 188 

Ophiuchus, 111 

opinionatedness, 16 

opinions, 21: archetypes and, 17; 
Logos and, 15 

opposites: alchemical, linked to- 
gether, 244; anima/ animus, 268; 
annihilation of, 70; Christ /Satan, 
44-45*1; cinedian stone and, 139; 
coincidence of, 124; > in God- 
head, 193; conjunction of, 40, 70, 
194, see also coniunctio opposi- 
torum; day /night, 123; equiva- 
lence of, 61; Father as without, 
191; good/evil, 47, 123; Heru-ur/ 
Set, 123; husband/ wife, 204; 
identity of, symbols and, 129/; 
kosmos/ chaos, 123; life /death, 
123; light /darkness, 223; moral 



322 



INDEX 



accentuation of, 70; never unite 
at own level, 180; pairs of, see 
also syzygy(ies); problem of, and 
neurosis, 180; serpents, n8n; 
tension of, 31, 91, 247/; union of, 
264; , in astrology, 77, 87; , 
and salvation, 195; , in stone, 
170; , and unconsciousness, 193 

opsianus, 138 

opus, 237; as apocatastasis, 169; and 
creation of world, 148, 234; and 
individuation, 264 

Oracula sibyllina, 7371 

order: mandalas symbols of, 31; 
principle of, 195 

Origen, 37, 38, 41, 44-4571, 75, 81, 
9071, 11471, 204/, 215, 234; and 
the devil, no 

Orion, 136 

Orosius, 23on 

Orpheus, 103 

Orphos, 121 

Osiris, 122, 123, 198, 199, 201 

Osob, 146, 14772, 200 

Ostanes, 15971, 23771, 24571 

oxen, fishes and, 145, 147, i48/ 

Oxford English Dictionary, 25 

oxyrhynchus (fish), 122 

Oxyrhynchus, fish-worship at, 121 

Oxyrhynchus fragments, 3771, 144, 



paganism, 96; return of, in Europe, 

176 

pair, royal, in Moses quatemio, 228 
Palestine, 74, 138 
Pan, 199 
Pandolfus, 156 
Pandora, 241 
panic, 33 
panspermia, 200 

Pantheus, Joannes Augustinus, 139*1 
Papa, 213 
Papyri Graecae Magicae, 126 



Paracelsus, 164, 181, 213, 214, 237 

para-da, 152 

Paradise: four rivers of, 184, 199, 
215, 227, 235, 243; Garden of 
Eden, 25471; Leviathan eaten in, 
113; quaternio, 234/, 236/, 243, 
245, 254; as symbol, 189 

paradox, 70 

Parmenides, 13771, 143 

parthenogenesis, 35 

Parthenon, 20371 

Passion, of Jesus, see Jesus 

Passover, 119 

Patarenes, 83 

patience, 24 

Paul, St., 39, 174, 176, 177, 178, 191; 
Epistles of, 68; see also names of 
separate Epistles 

Pauli, W., 20771 

Paulicians, 148 

Paulinus of Nola, 6571 

pearl, round, 12771 

Pectorios inscription, 8971, 113, n6n 

pelican, 239 

penetration, ison 

Pentecost, 129 

Pepi I, 88n, 122 

Peratic doctrine, i85/ 

perception(s): conversion of stimuli 
into, 4; endosomatic, 3; psyche 
and, 32 

Perdition, Son of, 36 

peregrinatio, 133 

perfection: Christ as, 39; and com- 
pleteness, 68f; evil as lack of, 41 

perforation, 12071 

Pernety, Antoine Joseph, 155, i6o/ 

Perpetua, St., Passion of, 210 

Persephone, 12, 21, 217 

personality: changes of, 6; dissocia- 
tion of, 180; double, 120; ego as 
centre of, 6; inferior, see shadow; 
of Jesus, i78/; not coincident 
with ego, 5; self as total, 5; total 
description of, impossible, 5 
perversions, intellectual, 169 
Pesahim, see Talmud 



3*3 



INDEX 



Peter, St., 89; in Clementine 

Homilies, 56 
Peter, First Epistle of; (2 : 4), 88; 

(2 : 4/), i7in; (2 : 5), 88 
Peter Damian, St., 113 
Peter Lombard, 25371 
Peters, C. H. F., and Knobel, E. B., 

7772, 9372 

phallicism: Gnostic, 232; uncon- 
scious, 226 
phallus, 20 if, 226 
pharmakon athanasias, 116 
phenomenology, individual, and 

collective unconscious, 179 
Philalethes, Eirenaeus, 132, 13372, 

241 
Philippians, Epistle to the (3 : 12), 

212 

phlogiston theory, 2of 
phobias, 169 
Phrat, see Euphrates 
Phrygians, 198, 213; see also Naas- 

senes 

phylokrinesis, 25871 
physics: collision o psyche with, 

174; nuclear, 261; and psychology, 

261 

Physis, 198, 233, 247, 249, 259 
Phyton, 131 
Picinellus, Philippus, 11272, 11372, 

12272, 129, 135 

Pisces: aeon, middle of, 150; zodi- 
acal sign for, 91, 114; see also 

fish(es) 

pisciculi Christianorum, 103 
piscina, 89 

Piscis Austrinus, inn 
Pison, 199, 225, 235 
Pistis Sophia, 7572, 78^ 93 n, 12272, 

13772, iQ7n 
Pius IX, Pope, 87*1 
planets, influence of, 148 
Plato, 246; Phaedrus, 64; Timaeus, 

136 
Platonic Tetralogies, Book of, see 

"Platonis liber quartorum" 



"Platonis liber quartorum," 19772, 
238, 26in 

Pleiades, 136 

pleroma, 4172., 46, 66n, 21971 

Pliny, 128, 138, 144, 15672, 177 

Plotinus, 219 

plough, 148; 

Plutarch, 76, 121, i22n 

pneuma, 21, 83; and Barbelo, 19772; 
feminine, 206; in God, 254; hid- 
den in stone, 245; of Jesus, 79; 
winged beings as, 120 

Trm/^arc/cos (~ot'), 212^72;, 2197Z 

Pohl, Otto, 11371 

Poimandres, 103 

Poimen, see Hermas 

point, 189, 198^ 218, 222; in al- 
chemy, 220/ 

pole, 133-34; centre in North, 171; 
heavenly, 123^ 224; North, hid- 
den God at, 135; , magnetism 
of, 154 

Polemon, 7677 

Pollux, 81 

polydemonism, 175 

polytheism, 175, 268 

Poor Men of Lyons, 83, 146, 150 

Pordage, John, 16372, 235 

Poseidon, 216 

Prajapati, 20771 

precession of equinoxes, 81, 92, 95 

prefigurations, 261 

Preisendanz, Karl, 12672 

Priapus, 230 

prima materia^ 132, 142, 161, 162, 
237; alchemical laborant as, 168; 
anima and, 187; lapis as, 127, 236, 
264; production of, 155; as psy- 
chic situation, 155; synonyms of, 
160 

primum mobile^ 131 

principium individuationis, 64 

Priscillian, 88, 136, 23072 

privatio fcom'/privation of good, 41, 
4572, 46, 48, 50, 52, 54, 58, 61, 6272, 
no, 269; see also evil 

problems, moral, 25/ 



3*4 



INDEX 



projection(s): anima and, 13; ani- 
ma/ animus, 17, 242; dissolution 
of, i8/; effect of, g/; impersonal 
withdrawal of, 23; mandala and, 
32; in Mary, 204; and mother- 
imago, 12; reality of factor mak- 
ing, 24; and reality of psyche, 
66n; shadow and, 9 

Protanthropos, 213; Adam as, 208; 
and Corybas, 211; as Logos, 209; 
Sophia and, 197; see also Adam; 
Anthropos; Man, original; Arch- 
anthropos 

Protestantism /Protestants, 150, 178 

Proteus, 2i6/ 

Protoplast, 214 

Protothoma, 213 

Prunicus/JIpouja/cos, 19671; see also 
Sophia 

Psalms: (2 : 9), 105; (82 [Si] : 6), 
209; (89), io8f 

Psellus, Michael, 44?!, 14871 

psyche, 142, 255; aspects of, 32; 
begetter of all knowledge, 173; 
ego-consciousness of, 164; and 
evil, 62; field of consciousness, 6; 
horoscope and, 136; and life-proc- 
esses, 4; man's knowledge of, 165; 
and matter, 261; objective reality 
of, scientists and, 174; outside 
consciousness, 6; reality of, 66n; 
reasons for undervaluation of, 62 

"psychic/* use of term, 4 

psychoanalysis, 20371 

psychology, and good/evil, 53 

psychopathology, 30 

psychopomp(os): anima as, 30; ani- 
mus as, 16; fishes as symbols for, 
145; Proteus as, 216 

psychosis, 33; mass, 248n 

psychotherapy: and anima /animus, 
267; and problem of opposites, 
180 

Ptolemy, 74^ 9471 

puer, 127 

"puffed-up-ness," 24; see also infla- 
tion 



pulmo marinus, 128 

punctum I punctus soils, 22072; see 

also point 
purusha, 167, 194 
Pyramid Texts, 122 
Python, 104 



Qazvini, 123 

Qebhsennuf, 123 

'qltn, 119 

quaternio/quaternity, 159, 194, 210, 
211, 226^7 its character of whole- 
ness, 224; of Christ, 204; Chris- 
tian, 253; and circle, motif, 224; 
defective, three as, 224; in fire, 
132; in Irenaeus, 19772; Kircher's, 
262/; in man, 22; Naassene, 22rc, 
79n; of opposites, in self and 
Christ, 63f; as organizing schema, 
242; Osiris and, 123; self as, 42; 
static quality of, 257; as symbols, 
31, 195; , for God, 195; , self 
in, 190; unity complement of, 
224; see also Anthropos quater- 
nio; Horus quaternio; lapis qua- 
ternio; marriage quaternio; 
Moses quaternio; Paradise qua- 
ternio; shadow quaternio; space- 
time quaternio 

quick-lime, 158 

quicksilver, 139, 155 

"quicksilver system/' Indian, 152 

quid/quis distinction, 164, 169 

Quinta Essentia, 15971 

Quispel, Gilles, 66n, 190, 191 



R 

Ra, 122 

Radhakrishnan, Sarvapalli, 22371 
radius, see ray 
Rahab, 120 



3*5 



INDEX 



Rahner, Hugo, 215/1, 235^ 
Raison, Desse, 98 
Ram (<p), 7772; see also Aries 
ram: Christ as, 90, 92; daemonic, 

io5/; symbol of Christ and Attis, 

103; see also lamb 
Rameses II, 78 

Ramsay, William Mitchell, 73*1 
Raphael, 113 

Rashi, see Solomon ben Isaac 
Ras Shamra, 119 
rationalism, 86, 150, 221 
rationality, 248/1; male, 55 
raven, 72 
ray, 187/1 

realism, 150, 176, 233 
reality: psychic, 48; requires po- 
larity, 267 

realization, conscious, 239/1 
rebirth, 212 
Rebis, 159, 268 
Red Sea, 74 
Redeemer: archetype of, 183; as 

fish and serpent, 186; Gnostic/ 

Gnosticism and, 79, 184; and un- 

scious, affinity of, 181 
redemption, 35, 70, 175, 191, 256; 

of the dead, 39 
reflection, 16 
Reformation, the, 93, 102, 178; 

Holy Ghost movement and, 87 
reformation, of God-image, 40 
Reguel, 229; see also Jethro 
Reitzenstein, Richard, 75/1, 103; 

and Schader, H. H., 246/1 
relationship, 17; function of, 14, 

16; inadequate, 19; to partner, 22 
remora, 14O/, 144, 154/1 
Rempham, 75/1 
Renaissance, the, 43, 94, 98 
renovatio, 98/1 
renovation of the age, 98 
repentance, 192 
representations collectives, 29 
repression, 226 
resentment, 16 



resistances, shadow and, 9 
responsibility, in jurisprudence, 5 
Revelation of St. John: (5 : 5), 105; 

(5 : 6), 105/1; (5 : 6#), 105; 

(6 : 15$), 105; (12 : i), 103; 

(12:9), 23on; (14:4)' 217; 

(17 : 14), 105; (20 : 7/), 79/3; see 

also Apocalypse 
revolution, 98 n 
Rex gloriae, 195, 204 
Rhabanus M auras, 100 
Rhea, 199 
Rhine, J. B., 184/1 
right and left, 54, 59, 258/1 
righteousness, 70 
Rig-Veda, 192/2 
Ripley, Sir George, 131/1, 139, 144, 

148/1, 149, 235/1, 249 
Ripley Scroll, 235, 265 
ritual, 256; Protestantism and, 178 
rivers, four, of Paradise, 184, 199, 

215, 225, 227, 235, 243 
Roberts, R., 22 in 
rock: Christ as, 87/; inner man as, 

208 

roes, two, 107 
Romans, Epistle to: (7 : 21), 69/2; 

(12 : 2), 40 
Romulus, 107/1 
room, as symbol, 224/ 
Rosarium philosophorum, 156/1, 

197/1, 239/1, 245/1 
Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich, 21 in, 

2i2n 

Rosenkreutz, Christian, 210 
Rosinus, 156, 157, i67/ 
rota nativitatis, 136 
rotation, 246/1, 257 
rotundum, 238, 239n, 246, 248/, 257 
Rousselle, Erwin, nn 
Ruland, Martin, i33n, i38n, 139, 



Rupescissa, Johannes de, 146, 241, 

265 
Ruska, Julius, i26n, 130/1, 

220/1 



326 



INDEX 



Sabaeans, 75, 124, 

Sabaoth, 76 

Sabbath, 75 

Sabellius, 25371 

Sagittarius, 747* 

sailor, 112 

sal ammoniac, 15471 

sal sapientiae, 133, 161 

Salmanas, procedure of, 12771 

salt, 133, 157; in alchemy, 161; "of 

the metals," 139 
salvation, 195 
Salvator mundi, 127 
Sammael, 57 
Samothrace, 211, 212 
Sanhedrin, see Talmud 
sapientia, 160, 220 
Sapientia Dei, 127 
Sassanids, 116 
Satan, 43^ 10571; as elder son of 

God, 57, 61; in Old Testament, 

192; state before fall, 145; and 

two fishes, 148 
Satanael, 43, 147 
satori, 169 

Satorneilos, see Saturninus 
Saturn (i?), 74^ 7771, 81, 82, 83, 

96, 97, 98, 99; and Esaldaios, 208; 

as Gnostic symbol, 197; Jewish 

thought and, 74/7 and quicksilver, 

139; stone and, 1387 
Saturnia (plant), 139 
Saturninus, 219 
Saulasau, 210 
Saviour, compounded of four 

things, 19771 
Scharf, Riwkah, 4271,, 12 in, 192, 

24571 
Scheftelowitz, L, 113**, 116, 117, 

n8n, 119 

Schelling, F. W. J., 6 
schizophrenia, 33 
Schoettgen, Christian, 10771, 21471 
scholasticism, 172 
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 6 



Schreber, Daniel Paul, 3371 

Schwestrones, 8471 

science: alchemy and, 176; and 
faith, i73/; natural, 27; , rise 
of, 150; modern, 89; trinity in, 
258 

scintilla vitae, 219 

Scott, Walter, 19 in 

sculptures, obscene, 2i?n 

scurrility: in dreams, 203; of Gnos- 
tic nomenclature, 230 

scyphomedusa, 128 

sea, 155; "our," 142 

sea-hawk, 18772; centre of the, 189 

seal, seventh, opening of, 82 

seals, 216 

sea-nettle, i28n 

sea-urchin, i54n 

Second Coming, ix; expectation of, 
256 

Secret of the Golden Flower, i82n, 
224, 264 

secret of the wise, 143 

sects, g6/ 

Secundus, lion 

Selene, 21 

self, 23#, 33, 34; Anthropos and, 
189; antinomial character, 225; 
apotheosis of individuality, 62; 
appearance of in unconscious 
products, 190; appears in all 
shapes, 226; as archetype, 167; as 
brahman and atman, 222; Christ 
as archetype /symbol of, 36^ 62n, 
182; Christ's correspondence to, 
no; dream-symbols and, 132; 
"fixation" of, in mind, i68/; 
Gnostic symbols of, 184$, 226^; a 
God-image, 22, 205; impersonal 
unconscious and, 169; lapis as, 
127, 167; a product of cognition, 
69; as quaternion of opposites, 
63/; relation to ego, 6; religious 
mythologem, 30; round fish as, 
142, 144; supraordinate to ego, 3; 
as total personality, 5; transcen- 
dent(al), 62/, 170; union of con- 



327 



INDEX 



self (cont.): 

scions and unconscious, 268; see 

also assimilation; atman; God- 

image 
self-aggrandizement, 24; see also in- 

flation 

self-criticism, 25 
self-fertilization, 207 
self-knowledge, 16, 162^ 222; and 

alchemy, i66jff; and ends, i6$f; 

increased, 19, 23$; and knowl- 

edge of ego, 164; shadow and, 8 
Senard, Marcelle, gsn 
senarius, 228, 230 
Sendivogius, Michael, i$in 
Senior, 240 

sense-perception, see perception 
sentimentality, 16 
separatio/ separation, 168, 170; see 

also divisio 

Sephiroth, Tree of the, 58 
Sephora, 209, 210 
septenarius, 240 
serpens mercurialisJMercurii^ 160, 

234, 245 

serpent(s), 111, 189, 232, 255; fight- 
ing, 118; as magnetic agent, 188; 
Naas, 199; in Peratic doctrine, 
i85/; in shadow quaternio, 230, 
244; and stone, 245; and tension 
of opposites, 247; see also dragon; 
snake; uroboros 

Set, 76, 78, 99, i22/, 124, 132 

Sethians, i86f> 219 

sexual theory, of psychic substance, 



sexuality, 90-9 in; undervaluation 
of, 226 

Shaare Kedusha, 2i8n 

shadow, 8-10, 17, 30, 33, 155, 233^ 
255, 259, 260; Antichrist as, 41; 
of arcane substance, i87n; as- 
similation into conscious person- 
ality, 9; in Christ's birth, 4 in, 
no; consciousness of, 8; doubling 
of, 120; fear of, 33; fish as shadow 



328 



of God, 119; good qualities of, 
266; integration of, 22; and Moses 
quaternio, 228, 244; has negative 
feeling-value, 28; personal un- 
conscious and, 169; quaternio, 
229^ 23o/, 233^ 244, 255f, 260; 
represents chthonic world, 34 

Shatapatha Brahmana, 11372, 114^ 

sheep, land of, 16 

Shekinah, 268 

shepherd, 103; good, 103 

Shu, 207 

Shulamite, 210 

Sibyls, Erythraean, 72^ 

Silberer, Herbert, 16471 

Simon Magus, 197, 220 

sister, 12 

skull, 238 

slave's post, 76^ 78 

Smith, E. M., 92^ 9471 

smoke, 101 

snail, 226 

snake, 72, 233^; Aesculapian, 188; 
allegory of Christ, 233, 245, 247; 
on cross, 78n/ Mercurius as, 232; 
in New Testament, 245; signifies 
evil/ wisdom, 234; and Son, 188; 
symbolism of, 186; as symbol, of 
instinct, 244; , of self, 226; , 
of wisdom, 245 

Soderberg, Hans, 147^ 

Sodom, 59 

so I niger, Saturn as, 197 

Solomon ben Gabirol, 74 

Solomon ben Isaac, 80, 81 

solvents, 160 

soma, in God, 254 

son, 185, 186; as Father's thought of 
own being, 193; and mother, n/; 
symbol for God, 195 

son of God, serpent as, 188 

son of Man, 203, 218; pictures of, 

195 

sons of God, two, 42^ 57, 58 
Song of Solomon: (i : i), 205; (i : 5), 

210; (4:5), 107; (8:7), 129 



INDEX 



sonship, threefold, of God, 64/ 
Sophia, 65*2; Achamoth, 197*2; 

Prounikos, 54, ig6f 
"Soul, My Lady," 13 
soul: 64, 142; and anima, 13; ani- 
mal, i in; as bride of Christ, 39; 
"excrescent/' 234; fish as symbol 
of, 122; human, of Christ, 39; as 
second Eve, 206; as sphere, 136; 
"twittering," 209; world-, see 
anima mundi 

"soul in fetters," 19772, 208*2 
space-time continuum, 24, 258*1 
space- time quaternio, 251, 252, 253, 

257 

spark, 2i9/ 

Sphere, the, 93*1; soul as, 136 
spider, 226 

Spiegelberg, W., 122*2 
spinal cord, 233 
Spinning Woman, 11 
spirit, 64, 142; animus and, 16; 

archetype of, 85/; of the world, 

142 

"Spirit in the Bottle, the," 235 
spirits, seven, 105*2 
spiritus, 160, 187 
Spitteler, Carl, 13, 26772 
splitting, ii9/, i2on; of conscious/ 

unconscious, 247-4872; of Original 

Man, 204 
spondilo, 138 
spring-point, 93 
square, and circle, 224^ 264 
stabilization, 243 
stag, 150 
Stahl, G. E., 251 
star, rising of, and birth of hero, 

117 

"star of the sea," 128 
starfish, i28jfV 15472 
steel, 133; alchemical, 161; see also 

chalybs 

stella marina, i28f 
stella maris, 135, 137 
Stephen, St., 75*2 



Stephen of Canterbury, 112 

sterility, feeling of, 9 

stimuli: endosomatic, 3; uncon- 
scious, 4 

stone: animate, 159; as Christ- 
image, 67; cinedian, 138/; com- 
plement of serpent, 245; derived 
from circle and quaternity motif, 
224; dragon's, 138; Heracleian, 
185; inner man as, 208; making 
the, a "human attitude," 166; 
projection of unified self, 170; 
psychic relationship to man, 167; 
symbol of self, 246; unity of, 170; 
see also lapis 

Strauss, Heinz Arthur, 82*2 

subject, necessary to consciousness, 
3; and object, differentiation in 
consciousness, 193 

"subjective factor," 223 

sublimation, 259 

subliminal, see unconscious 

substance, metaphysical, 161 

sucking-fish, 140 

sulphur(s), 171, 239*2, 250 

Summa Fratris Reneri> 146*2 

Summum Bonum, God as, 45^ 52 

sun, 249, 260 

Sutech, 78 

swan, 81 

Swedenborg, Emanuel, 198 

Switzerland, 225 

sword, 187 

Syene, 121 

symbol (s): in alchemy, 179; autono- 
mous, 31; of Christ and the devil, 
72; dogma as, 175; Gnostic, 196^; 
for God, 195; Indian, 175; mean- 
ing of, 73; of opposite sex, 10; 
pictorial, psychology and, 194; 
polarity of, 129/7 quaternary, in 
dreams, 132; theriomorphic, 186; 
triadic, 243*2; uniting, 194; of 
unity and totality, 31; see also 
anima; animus; mandala 

symbolism: sexual, Christ and, 202; 
theriomorphic, of self, 226 



329 



INDEX 



"symbolum": as aqua doctrinae, 
180; creed as, 174 

symptoms, localization of, 186 

synchronicity, 85, 150, 168, 258; of 
archetype, 184 

Synesius of Gyrene, 116, 15971 

synthesis, 260 

Syria: cult of fish in, 121; dove and 
fish in, 115; round fish in, 138 

syzygy(-ies), 33 l $ l > *54* Adam/ 
Eve, 254; anima/ animus, lift 
266; in Clementine Homilies, 54; 
divine, in Christianity, 21; proto- 
type of divine couples, 34; Valen- 
tinian, 228; wholeness superior to, 
31; see also opposites 



Tabari, Chronique of, 7971, 107 
Tabula smaragdina, 126, 265 
Tacitus, 76 

talents, parable of the, 166 
Talmud, Babylonian, 5871, 5971, 6on, 

79, Son, 83, 107, 116, 117, 118, 

149; and astrology, 81 
Tanit, 121 
tanninim, 79, 80, 81 
Tantrlsm, 21771 
Tao, 58, 69; symbol for God, 195; 

as "valley spirit/' 180 
Targums, 
Tatian, 46 
tebuna, 120 
Tefnut, 207 
Tehom, 237 

s, 212, 

s, see completeness 

temperature, Arctic, 52 

tension: conscious /unconscious, 20; 
signified by Christ's advent, 44; 
in uroboros, 248 f; see also oppo- 
sites 

tentacles, 128 

teoqualo, 144 



Tertullian, 37, 76, gon 

tetrads, 191 

tetrameria, 254; alchemical, 259 

Tetramorph, 36 

Thabit ibn Qurrah, 126 

Thales, 157, 199 

Theatrum chemicum, 13071, 13171, 

i o0yj. i o>7 i ^nw. i/nrt> lAvn.- 



15672, 15771, 15871, 16071, 16371, 
18771, 19771, 22071, 22171, 23571, 
23771, 238/1, 23971, 24071, 26171, 
26571 

thema, 136 

Theodor Bar-Kuni, 197 

Theologia Germanica, 89 

Theophilus of Antioch, 46 

Theophrastus, 141, 222 

theoria, 142, 171, 179, 181 

Thessalonians, Second Epistle to 
the: (2 : 3^), 36n 

Thiele, Georg, 9171 

thieves, two, at crucifixion, 44, 69, 

255 

thinking, 32 

third, superordinate, 180 

Thomas, Acts of, 116, 197 

Thomas Aquinas, St., 5i/, 87, 88n, 
17871 

Thorndike, Lynn, 9671, 9871, 10271 

Thracian riders, 73 

three: as defective quaternity, 224; 
and one, motif, 225, 253; see also 
dilemma 

Tiamat, 120 

Tifereth, 268 

Tigris, 199 

Timaeus, 136 

Timochares, planisphere of, 91 

tincture, synonyms for, 137 

Titus of Bostra, 48 

Tobias, 113 

tongue(s), 135, 137; fiery, 129, 13571 

tortoise, 226 

totality, 34, 143/; becoming con- 
scious, 259; Christ as divine, 37, 
39, 41; chthonic, 224; idea of, 



330 



INDEX 



; images of, 40; spiritual, 224; 

symbols of, 31, 190; see also 

wholeness 

"Tractatulus Avicennae," 16771 
"Tractatus Aristotelis . . .," 23572 
Tractatus aureus, 18771, 220, 23777, 

* 3 . 9 . 
tradition, 181 

transference, 229 

transformation: Christian, 169; 

formula of, 259; prefigurations 

in, 261; skull as vessel of, 238; 

tree as symbol of, 235 
transition, from waking to sleeping, 

28 
treasure, guarded by dragon /snake, 

234 

tree: philosophical, 235; and ser- 
pent, 235; as symbol of self, 226 

Trevisanus, see Bernardus Trevi- 
sanus 

triad: lower, 99, 224; male and 
female, in pseudo-Clement, 55; 
in man, 22; Naassene, 209; op- 
posed to trinity, 224 

trichotomies, 657 

trickster, Mercurius as, 20372 

Trinity, the, 35, 131, 253, Plate II; 
devil lacking in, 86; divine sphere 
of, 57; dogma of, 177; Jesus' soul 
as, 201; Kepler and, 207; Naas- 
sene, 197, 226; space/ time/ causal- 
ity, 258; spiritual totality, 224; 
triad opposed to, 224 

Troad, the, 15611 

truth(s), 171; first, 178; psychologi- 
cal, 27 

Tuamutef, 123 

Tuat, 122 

Turbo, philosophorum, 126, 137, 
143, 22072, 250 

Turukalukundram, 21772 

twelve, 224 

Twins, the, see Gemini; Saviour of 
the, 7972, i22n 

Typhon, 99, 121, 122 



u 



Ugarit, 119 

Uhlhorn, 25472 

umbra Jesu, 106 

Unas, 122 

uncertainty relationship, between 
conscious and unconscious, 226 

uncomeliness, outward, 140 

unconscious: alchemy and symbol- 
ism of unconscious processes, 179; 
cannot be "done with," 20; col- 
lective, see collective unconscious; 
compensation in, 124; contents 
of, and man's totality, 140; con- 
tents of ego, three groups, 4, 7; 
dawn-state and, 148; fear of, 33; 
fishes as product of, 149; frighten- 
ing figures in, 225; Gnostics and, 
190; in Hippolytus and Epiphan- 
ius, 66; importance of, 5; integra- 
tion of contents, 23; organizing 
principle of, 204; "our sea" 
symbol of, 142; personal and im- 
personal, 7, 169; problems of inte- 
gration of, 181; processes, com- 
pensatory to conscious, 204; 
Proteus personifying, 216; self 
and the, 3; soul as projection of, 
142; theriomorphism and, 145; as 
the unknown in the inner world, 
3; without qualities, 191 

unconsciousness: and proneness to 
suggestion, 247-4872; sin of, 192*2 

uncontrollable natural forces, ac- 
tion of, 25f 

underworld, gods of, 224 

unicorn, 150 

unity, 31, 34; complement of qua- 
ternity, 224; in Kircher, 263; as 
symbol of self, 226; transcendent, 
stone as, 170 

Unknown, the: ego and, 3; two 
groups of objects in, 3 

Upanishads, see Brihaddranyaka 
and Kena 

Urania, 8972 

U 



INDEX 



uroboros, 190, 246, 248, 257, 259, 
264 



Valentinians, 6571,, 190, 191, 19772, 

228 

Valentinus, 4171, no, 23471, 269 
value, 27$; feeling as function of, 

3* 

value quanta, 29 
values, reversal of, 233 
Vamana, 176 
vas f 238; naturale, 241; see also 

vessel 

Vaughan, Thomas, 133*1 
Vedas, 204 
"veiled one," 18 
Venus ( $ ), 76, 7771, 112, 155 
veritas, 160, 161, 181; prima, 17871 
vessel: in alchemy, 238^; Hermetic, 

240; spagiric, 240; as symbol, 224/ 
Vigenere, Blaise de, 132, 139, 197^, 

250 

vinegar, 23972; see also ace turn 
viper, 72 
Vir Unus, 205 

virgin, mother-goddess as, 104 
Virgo (Ti)j), 77^, 8orc, 10471, 105; 

Mercurius as, 127 
Virolleaud, Charles, 119 
virtues, 24, 25 
Vishnu, 113, 11471, 176 
"Visio Arislei," see "Aenigmata ex 

Visione Arislei" 
visions, 223 
Vitus, Richardus, 1371 
voice, fourfold, of Christ, 206 
"volatile," winged beings as, 120 
Voltaire, 9871 
Vollers, Karl, inn 
Vulcan, 249/, 252 

W 



Wackerbarth, Graf August J. L. 
von, 80 



Waite, Arthur Edward, 13371 

Waldenses, 83, 150 

wand, golden, of Hermes, 208 

water: in alchemy, 1597, 180, 249; 
baptismal, 180; bright, 139; in 
dreams, 225; of life, 155; living, 
184, igg/, 207; magical, 187; as 
magnetic agent, 188; prime sub- 
stance, 199; real, used in ritual, 
188; of rivers of Paradise, i99/; 
symbol and, 180 

"wedding, chymical/* 40, 268 

Weiss, Johannes, 21371 

Werblowsky, Zwi, 58 

West, and Eastern thought, 176 

whale-dragon, in, 118 

wheat-sheaf, 105 

wheel: as symbol, 224; of birth, 136, 
137, 224; of heaven, 136 

White, Victor, O.P., 6m, 17871 

whitening, 148; see also albedo; 
dealbatio 

whole: present in ego, in; pro- 
creative nature of, 201 

wholeness, 169, 183; archetype of, 
40; in Christ, 41, 6271; empirical, 
31; image of, x, 24; of individual, 
195; knowledge as, 222; para- 
doxical, 145; psychic, and God- 
image, 198; restoration of, 259; 
symbols of, 40, 171, 194, 195, 198; 
, and God, 195; see also com- 
pleteness; totality 

Wickes, Frances G., 2 2 on 

Wilhelm, Richard, 26471 

will: free, 5/7 of God, 26/; and im- 
pulses, 27; omnipotence of, 26; 
and psyche, 4 

wind, north, 100, 120, 12571 

wine, 225 

Wirth, Albrecht, ii6n, 11771 

Wischnitzer-Bernstein, Rahel, 11571 

wise old man, 22, 152, 210, 229 

witches, 175 

wolf, 150 

woman: in Apocalypse, 105; clothed 
with the sun, 103; image of, 13; 



33* 



INDEX 



from side of Christ, 204; star- 
crowned, 12, 1O3/ 
Word, the, 200; see also Logos 
world situation, present, 70 
world-soul/world spirit, see anima 

mundi 

world-views, parallel, 173 
World War, second, 36 
wrath, of Yahweh, see Yahweh 
"wrath-fire," God's, 61 
Wiinsche, August, io6n, 



Yahweh, 46, 229; changing concept 
of, 192; demiurge, 65, 75; in- 
justice of, 55; justice of, 59; 
monsters of, 116, 118, 123, see 
also Behemoth, Leviathan; Saturn 
and, 197; unreliability of, 108; 
wrath of, 58^ 105 

Yajnavalkya, 223 

Yajui, Son 



Yama, 217?? 

yang/yin relationship, 58, 180 

year: Christ as, 204; Platonic, 8 in 

Yehoshua/Yeshua, see Joshua 

Yima, 24672 

yod, 2i8n 

yoga, Buddhism and, 176 



Zarathustra, 246n 
Zechariah, Book of: (4 : 10), 
Zeesar, 210 
Zen Buddhism, 169 
Zeus, 2o6n 

Zipporah, 20972, 227/, 244, 251, 252 
zodia, 118, 148 

zodiac, 94n; signs of, 81, 23on 
Zohar, 107^ 117, 214 
Zoroaster, 2 2 on 

Zosimos, 65^ i57n, 182, 197^ 237^ 
238, 



333 



The Collected Works of C. G. Jung 

1. Psychiatric Studies 

2. Experimental Researches 

3. Psychogenesis in Mental Disease 

4. Freud and Psychoanalysis 

- 5. Symbols of Transformation 

" 6. Psychological Types 

7. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology 

8. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche 

9. PART i. Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious 

* 9. PART ii, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self 

* 10. Civilization in Transition 

*n. Psychology and Religion: West and East 

-12. Psychology and Alchemy 

13. Alchemical Studies 

14. Mysterium Coniunctionis 

15. The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature 

16. The Practice of Psychotherapy 
% iy. The Development of Personality 

Final Volumes: Miscellaneous Works, Bibliography, and General 
Index 



335 



THE COLLECTED WORKS OF 

a G. JUNG 



JL HE PUBLICATION o the first complete collected edition, in 
English, of the works of C. G. Jung has been undertaken by 
Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., in England and by the Bol- 
lingen Foundation, Inc., through Pantheon Books, Inc., in the 
United States. The edition contains revised versions of works 
previously published, such as Psychology of the Unconscious, 
which is now entitled Symbols of Transformation; works orig- 
inally written in English, such as "Psychology and Religion"; 
works not previously translated, such as Aion; and, in general, 
new translations of the major body of Professor Jung's writings. 
The author has supervised the textual revision, which in some 
cases is extensive. Sir Herbert Read, Dr. Michael Fordham, and 
Dr. Gerhard Adler compose the Editorial Committee; the trans- 
lator is R. F. C. Hull. 

Every volume of the Collected Works contains material that 
either has not previously been published in English or is being 
newly published in revised form. In addition to Aion, the fol- 
lowing volumes will, entirely or in large part, be new to English 
readers: Psychiatric Studies; Archetypes and the Collective Un- 
conscious; Alchemical Studies; Mysterium Coniunctionis; The 
Spirit in Man., Art, and Literature; and The Practice of Psycho- 
therapy. 

The volumes are not being published in strictly consecu- 
tive order; but, generally speaking, works of which translations 
are lacking or unavailable are given precedence. The price of 
the volumes varies according to size; they are sold separately, 
and may also be obtained on standing order. Several of the 
volumes are extensively illustrated. Each volume contains an 
index and, in most cases, a bibliography; the final volumes will 



contain a complete bibliography of Professor Jung's writings 
and a general index of the entire edition. Subsequent works of 
the author's will be added in due course. 



*i. PSYCHIATRIC STUDIES 

On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenom- 
ena 

On Hysterical Misreading 

Cryptomnesia 

On Manic Mood Disorder 

A Case of Hysterical Stupor in a Prisoner in Detention 

On Simulated Insanity 

A Medical Opinion on a Case of Simulated Insanity 

A Third and Final Opinion on Two Contradictory Psychiatric 
Diagnoses 

On the Psychological Diagnosis of Facts 

2. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCHES 

STUDIES IN WORD ASSOCIATION 

The Associations of Normal Subjects (by Jung and Riklin) 

Experimental Observations on Memory 

On the Determination of Facts by Psychological Means 

Analysis of the Associations of an Epileptic 

The Association Method 

Reaction-Time in Association Experiments 

On Disturbances in Reproduction in Association Experiments 

The Significance of Association Experiments for Psychopathol- 

ogy 

Psychoanalysis and Association Experiments 
Association, Dream, and Hysterical Symptoms 

PSYCHOPHYSICAL RESEARCHES 

On Psychophysical Relations of the Association Experiment 
Psychophysical Investigations with the Galvanometer and Pneu- 
mograph in Normal and Insane Individuals (by Peterson 
and Jung) 

Further Investigations on the Galvanic Phenomenon and Respi- 
rations in Normal and Insane Individuals (by Ricksher and 
Jung) 
* Published 1957* 

337 



*g. PSYCHOGENESIS IN MENTAL DISEASE 
The Psychology of Dementia Praecox 
The Content of the Psychoses 
On Psychological Understanding 

A Criticism of Bleuler's "Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism" 
On the Importance of the Unconscious in Psychopathology 
On the Problem of Psychogenesis in Mental Disease 
Mental Disease and the Psyche 
On the Psychogenesis of Schizophrenia 
Schizophrenia 
Concerning Schizophrenia 

4. FREUD AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Freud's Theory of Hysteria 

The Analysis of Dreams 

The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual 

A Contribution to the Psychology of Rumour 

On the Significance of Number Dreams 

On Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis: A Correspondence 
between Dr. Jung and Dr. Loy 

The Theory of Psychoanalysis 

On Psychoanalysis 

Psychoanalysis 

Freud and Jung: Contrasts 

Appendix: Freud's Theory of Hysteria; Critical Remarks on 
Morton Prince's "Mechanism and Interpretation of 
Dreams"; Introduction to Kranefeldt's "Psychoanalysis" 

t5- SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION Illustrated 

PART I 

Introduction 

Two Kinds of Thinking 

The Miller Fantasies: Anamnesis 

The Hymn of Creation 

The Song of the Moth 

PART II 

Introduction 

The Concept of Libido 

The Transformation of Libido 

The Origin of the Hero 

* To be published 1960. 
f Published 1956. 

338 



Symbols of the Mother and of Rebirth 

The Battle for Deliverance from the Mother 

The Dual Mother 

The Sacrifice 

Epilogue 

Appendix: The Miller Fantasies 

6. PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES 

PART I 

Introduction 

The Problem of Types in the History of Classical and Medieval 

Thought 

Schiller's Ideas upon the Type Problem 
The Apollonian and the Dionysian 

The Type Problem in the Discernment of Human Character 
The Problem of Types in Poetry 
The Type Problem in Psychiatry 
The Problem of Typical Attitudes in Aesthetics 
The Problem of Types in Modern Philosophy 
The Type Problem in Biography 

PART II 

General Description of the Types 

Definitions 

Conclusion 

Four Papers on Psychological Typology 

*7- TWO ESSAYS ON ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY 

The Psychology of the Unconscious 
The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious 
Appendix: New Paths in Psychology; The Structure of the Un- 
conscious 

f8. THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS 
OF THE PSYCHE 

On Psychic Energy 

The Transcendent Function 

A Review of the Complex Theory 

The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology 

Psychological Factors Determining Human Behaviour 

Instinct and the Unconscious (continued) 

* Published 1953. 

f To be published 1960. 

339 



8. (continued) 

The Structure of the Psyche 

On the Nature of the Psyche 

General Aspects of Dream Psychology 

On the Nature of Dreams 

The Psychological Foundation of Belief in Spirits 

Spirit and Life 

Basic Postulates of Analytical Psychology 

Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung 

The Real and the Surreal 

The Stages of Life 

The Soul and Death 

Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle 

*g. PART i. ARCHETYPES AND THE 

COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS Illustrated 

Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious 

The Concept of the Collective Unconscious 

Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the 

Anima Concept 

Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype 
Concerning Rebirth 
The Psychology of the Child Archetype 
The Psychological Aspects of the Kore 
The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales 
On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure 
Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation 
A Study in the Process of Individuation 
Concerning Mandala Symbolism 

*g. PART n. AION Illustrated 

RESEARCHES INTO THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE SELF 

The Ego 

The Shadow 

The Syzygy: Anima and Animus 

The Self 

Christ, a Symbol of the Self 

The Sign of the Fishes 

The Prophecies of Nostradamus 

The Historical Significance of the Fish 

The Ambivalence of the Fish Symbol 

* Published 1959. 

340 



The Fish in Alchemy 

The Alchemical Interpretation of the Fish 
Background to the Psychology of Christian Alchemical Sym- 
bolism 

Gnostic Symbols of the Self 
The Structure and Dynamics of the Self 
Conclusion 

10. CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 

The Role of the Unconscious 

Archaic Man 

The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man 

Mind and Earth 

The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man 

A Psychological View of Conscience 

Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth 

THE EUROPEAN CRISIS 

The Fight with the Shadow 

Woman in Europe 

The Love Problem of the Student 

The Swiss Line in the European Spectrum 

Wo tan 

The State of Psychotherapy Today 

After the Catastrophe 

Epilogue to "Essays on Contemporary Events" 

Present and Future (The Undiscovered Self) 

REVIEWS AND SHORT ARTICLES 

Complications of American Psychology 

The Rise of a New World: Review of Keyserling's "America Set 

Free" 

The Dreamlike World of India 
What India Can Teach Us 

Review of Keyserling's "La Revolution Mondiale" 
Contemporary Events (A Rejoinder to Dr. Bally's Article) 

*n. PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION: WEST AND EAST 

WESTERN RELIGION 

Psychology and Religion (The Terry Lectures) 

A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity 

Transformation Symbolism in the Mass (continued) 

* Published 1958. 

341 



ii. (continued) 

Foreword to White's "God and the Unconscious" 
Foreword to Werblowsky's "Lucifer and Prometheus" 
Brother Klaus 

Psychotherapists or the Clergy 
Psychoanalysis and thfe Cure of Souls 
Answer to Job 

EASTERN RELIGION 

Psychological Commentary on "The Tibetan Book of the Great 

Liberation" 

Psychological Commentary on "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" 
Yoga and the West 

Foreword to Suzuki's "Introduction to Zen Buddhism" 
The Psychology of Eastern Meditation 
The Holy Men of India: Introduction to Zimmer's "Der Weg 

zum Selbst" 
Foreword to the "I Ching" 

*12. PSYCHOLOGY AND ALCHEMY Illustrated 

Introduction to the Religious and Psychological Problems of 

Alchemy 

Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy 
Religious Ideas in Alchemy 
Epilogue 

13. ALCHEMICAL STUDIES Illustrated 
Commentary on "The Secret of the Golden Flower" 

The Spirit Mercurius 

Some Observations on the Visions of Zosimos 
Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon 
The "Arbor philosophical 

14. MYSTERIUM CONIUNCTIONIS 

The Components of the Coniunctio 

The Paradox 

The Personification of Opposites: 

Introduction; Sol; Sulphur; Luna; Sal; Rex; Regina; 

Adam and Eve 
The Conjunction 

* Published 1953. 



i 5 . THE SPIRIT IN MAN, ART, 
AND LITERATURE 
Paracelsus 

Paracelsus the Physician 
Sigmund Freud: A Cultural Phenomenon 
Sigmund Freud: An Obituary 
Richard Wilhelm: An Obituary 
Psychology and Literature 

On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to the Poetic Art 
Picasso 
"Ulysses" 



*i6. THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHOTHERAPY Illustrated 

GENERAL PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY 

Principles of Practical Psychotherapy 

What Is Psychotherapy? 

Some Aspects of Modern Psychotherapy 

Aims of Modern Psychotherapy 

Problems of Modern Psychotherapy 

Psychotherapy and a Philosophy of Life 

Medicine and Psychotherapy 

Psychotherapy Today 

Fundamental Questions of Psychotherapy 

SPECIFIC PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY 

The Therapeutic Value of Abreaction 
The Practical Use of Dream-Analysis 
Psychology of the Transference 



"17. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 
Psychic Conflicts in a Child 

Introduction to Wickes' "Analyse der Kinderseele" 
Child Development and Education 
Analytical Psychology and Education: Three Lectures 
The Gifted Child 

The Significance of the Unconscious in Individual Education 
The Development of Personality 
Marriage as a Psychological Relationship 



* Published 1954. 

343 



Final Volumes. MISCELLANEOUS WORKS, 
BIBLIOGRAPHY, AND GENERAL INDEX 

SELECTED LETTERS AND SEMINARS 

REVIEWS, SHORT ARTICLES, ETC., OF THE PSYCHOANALYTICAL 

PERIOD 

LATER INTRODUCTIONS, ETC. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF C. G. JUNG'S WRITINGS 
GENERAL INDEX OF THE COLLECTED WORKS 



344 

244 '< 



118810