28: Carl Jung • Seven Sermons to the Dead (Part II)

INTRO:

“…When something long since passed away comes back again in a changed world—it is new. To give birth to the ancient in a new time is creation. This is the creation of the new, and that redeems me. The task — is to give birth to the old in a new time.”

Dr. Carl Jung wrote these words on January 27th, 1914, in a chapter of The Red Book he titled The Way of the Cross. By this point, he had already been absorbed in his Red Book explorations for over a month. By late January 1914, he is in the thick of it—spending consecutive evenings engaging with his unconscious—carrying on dialogues with prophets, Gods, spirits, and symbolic figures through deep states of meditation.

In a preface to his book, Transformations of the Libido, Jung writes about this pivotal time in 1914. Stating:

“I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: “what is the myth you are living?” I found no answer to this question, and had to admit that I was not living with a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust . . . So in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get to know “my” myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks—for—so I told myself—how could I, when treating my patients, make due allowance for the personal factor, for my personal equation, which is yet so necessary for a knowledge of the other person, if I was unconscious of it?”

The Red Book is a work of creative genius. And in studying it over these last two years I’ve been struck by this realization: Jung is not only exploring his personal unconscious, but he is on a deliberate journey to reach ‘the core of mythos itself.’ To find a place in the mind’s substructures where religion is created—where the gods are born.

Does he find it? It’s unclear. But what he does find cannot be easily explained, and he cannot explain it himself. And more-so, those pivotal experiences cannot be accounted for by any theories of psychology in his time.

And so, in failing to find an adequate explanation for these numinous depths in the present world, Jung turns to the past instead. And that’s when he rediscovers the Gnostic Scriptures. These are works he admittedly explored before, while working on his 1912 book: Psychology of the Unconscious. Concerning this time period, when he first reads the Gnostic writings he says:

“I read like mad and worked with feverish interest through a mountain of mythological material, then through the Gnostic writers, and ended in total confusion.”

But once Jung begins to plumb the depths of his own being, and is astounded at the nature of those experiences, he begins to search for parallels in literature and religious texts. And that is when he rediscovers the Gnostic Scriptures, being now able to see them from a new perspective.

One of Jung’s biographers, an author named Barbara Hannah, knew him very closely, and she confirms this, saying:

“At all events, Jung told me more than once that the first parallels he found to his own experience were in the Gnostic texts, that is, those reported in the Elenchos of Hippolytus.”

Jung sought out parallels to the mythopoetic depths he was engaging with and he found them in the Gnostic writings from nearly two thousand years ago. And this is what ultimately inspires him to write his own Gnostic Scripture: The Seven Sermons to the Dead.

This is Creative Codex, I am your host, MJDorian. Today we will continue to plumb the depths of the Seven Sermons. With Sermons Three & Four. If you missed Sermons One & Two just scroll down in the podcast feed to Episode 27. Check that out and come back. It will give you a much richer picture of this rare and inspired work.

On this episode we will answer these questions: Who is Abraxas? And why is he a ‘god above gods’? Who is Basilides? And why does Jung credit him as the writer of the Seven Sermons? And what leads Jung to have this creative breakthrough? Does it come from a point of inner turmoil or inspired grace? It’s time we find out.

Let’s begin…

[Title music]

Sermon Three

[read from Red Book version]

“Abraxas is the God who is difficult to grasp. His power is
greatest, because man does not see it. From the sun he draws the
summum bonum; 99 from the devil the infinum malum; but from
Abraxas LIFE, altogether indefinite, the mother of good and evil.

“Life seems to be smaller and weaker than the summum
bonum; therefore it is also hard to conceive that Abraxas’s power
transcends even the sun’s, which is the radiant source of all vital
force.

“Abraxas is the sun, and at the same time the eternally sucking
gorge of emptiness, of the diminisher and dismemberer, of the devil.
The power of Abraxas is twofold; but you do not see it, because
in your eyes the warring opposites of this power are canceled out.

“What the Sun God speaks is life, what the devil speaks is
death. But Abraxas speaks that hallowed and accursed word that is at
once life and death.

“Abraxas produces truth and lying, good and evil, light and
darkness, in the same word and in the same act. Therefore Abraxas is
terrible.

“He is as splendid as the lion in the instant he strikes down his
victim. He is as beautiful as a spring day.

“He is the great and the small Pan alike.

“He is Priapos.

“He is the monster of the underworld, a thousand-armed polyp,
a coiled knot of winged serpents, frenzy.

“He is the hermaphrodite of the earliest beginning.

“He is the lord of toads and frogs, which live in the water and
go up on the land, whose chorus ascends at noon and at midnight.

“He is the fullness that seeks union with emptiness.

“He is holy begetting,

“He is love and its murder,

“He is the saint and his betrayer,

“He is the brightest light of day and the darkest night of
madness.

“To look upon him, is blindness.

“To recognize him is sickness.

“To worship him is death.

“To fear him is wisdom.

“Not to resist him is redemption.

“God dwells behind the sun, the devil behind the night. What
God brings forth out of the light, the devil sucks into the night. But
Abraxas is the world, its becoming and its passing.

Upon every gift that comes from the sun god the devil lays his
curse.

“Everything that you request from the Sun God produces a deed
from the devil. Everything that you create with the Sun God gives effective
power to the devil.

“That is terrible Abraxas.

“He is the mightiest created being and in him creation is afraid
of itself.

“He is the manifest opposition of creation to the Pleroma and
its nothingness.

“He is the son’s horror of the mother.

“He is the mother’s love for the son.

“He is the delight of the earth and the cruelty of the heavens.

“At his sight man’s face congeals.

“Before him there is no question and no reply.

“He is the life of creation.

“He is the effect of differentiation.

“He is the love of man.

“He is the speech of man.

“He is the appearance and the shadow of man.

“He is deceptive reality.”

Now the dead howled and raged, for they were incomplete.

[…]

If you are confused…good. This text is meant to challenge you. Meant to unshackle your intellect’s claim on reality. It is meant to dissolve your reasoning through metaphors. To open you up to something else. Something outside of the confines of the unyielding solidity of your perceptions. This false comfort in our grasp on reality.

This is one of the main characteristics of spiritual and esoteric texts. The Seven Sermons fits comfortably in a timeless tradition of such writings, under the umbrella of Western Esotericism. A tradition of esoteric philosophy that often embraces paradox, and forces you to ‘hold it steady’ in your mind… until it breaks… [dissolving and falling music cue]

So who, or what, is Abraxas?

Abraxas is a God who is notoriously difficult to pin down. For starters, Abraxas is genderless, above the realm of duality, so from here on we will refer to it as—it.

Any mention of it in texts as a ‘he’ is purely formal. You know, we have this strange penchant as humans to anthropomorphize our gods and give them gender, perhaps to make them easier to conceptualize. But if gods exist largely above the human domain, outside of duality, then it would stand that they are genderless.

So why do we default to calling gods by pronouns? I think it’s a failure of imagination. We are so surrounded by duality, that we project masculine and feminine on everything around us. In that regard, it brings to mind our own mental rigidity. Calling a God it seems somehow much less personal than ‘he’ or ‘she.’ I feel like the term, ‘it,’ seems to shift our relationship from one with a being to one with a force of the universe. Ultimately, we like to entertain the idea that we can have a personal relationship with deity.

But as we’ll see with Abraxas, there is nothing warm and fuzzy about it. And as Jung states, Abraxas is not meant to be worshipped but it is meant to be feared.

So where does Abraxas come from?

Again we reach a problem. It’s close to impossible to answer this question. And we have the early Christian church to thank for that, because the Christian church, in its dominant hold on society of the early centuries, Current Era, went through great lengths to destroy manuscripts of traditions they labeled as pagan or heretical. Which basically included everything that wasn’t canonically Christian. I mean they went on a book burning spree like their survival depended on it.

This includes writers of the Gnostic tradition. Until the Nag Hammadi discovery of 1945, much of what we had from the Gnostics were fragments of their scriptures and critical essays about them written by authors of the Christian church. Authors who paint them as sex crazed heathens.

For example, in a document called Against Heresies, dated to 375 Current Era, written by St. Epiphanius, there is this colorful description of the Gnostic’s sexual perversions:

[music]

“And when the wretches have had intercourse with one another in the passion of illicit sexual activity, then they lift up their blasphemy to heaven. The woman and the man take the male emission in their own hands and stand gazing toward heaven with the impurity in their hands; and of course they pray—I refer to the so-called Stratiotics and Gnostics—offering what is in their hands aptly to the parent of the entirety.

And they say: ‘We offer unto you this gift, the body of Christ the anointed’

And then they eat it, partaking of their own filthiness. And they say:

‘This is the body of Christ the anointed, and this is the Passover, because of which our bodies feel passion and are constrained to confess the passion of Christ the anointed.’

And likewise with the woman’s emission: when it happens that she has her period, her menstrual blood is gathered and they mutually take it in their hands and eat it. And they say:

‘This is the blood of Christ the anointed.’

They do this for when they read in apocryphal books: ‘I beheld a tree bearing twelve crops per year, and he said to me, ‘This is the tree of life’

They interpret the passage allegorically as referring to the woman’s monthly emissions.”

[end music]

Wow. This was written in 375 Current Era, and it sounds to me like this St. Epiphanius is enjoying thinking about this a little too much. It’s like an erotic fan fiction about Gnostics. From someone who abstains from sex, he certainly likes to think about it a lot.

St. Epiphanius then proceeds to proclaim one of the Gnostic’s most heinous crimes, they have sex not for child bearing but for pleasure. Inconceivable. To really bring the point home he even mentions they eat their own babies… I’m not even joking.

All this stuff was obviously written as church propaganda to demonize anyone not falling in line with the early Christian Church. This is relevant for us because it seems to imply that Gnosticism had a degree influence and presence in the culture of the time. This is confirmed by the fact that Church authors felt threatened enough by it to write these official ‘hit pieces.’ These exaggerations fit for tabloid smear campaigns.

In another less ridiculous source, the writings of St. Irenaues, written around 180 Current Era, he states that the Gnostics say “they are no longer Jews; on the other hand, they have come to be no longer Christians.” This seems to be a more truthful description. We can imagine that Gnostics were in a middle ground, a liminal space, and it is clear that they were influenced by native Greek and Jewish traditions. Which resulted in a very unique and rich belief system. Essentially a form of Christianity that disregards popes and priests, you can see why that’s a problem. Gnosticism places the onus of responsibility on the individual, as the directing force of spiritual experience and transformation. On top of that, Gnostics have a cosmology that accounts for multiple gods, but we’ll get to that a little later.

How does Abraxas fit into all of this?

This deity of Abraxas first seems to appear in Greek Magical Papyri; belonging to local folk magic traditions. These are parchments with Greek spells and incantations, and it is here that we have our earliest representations of Abraxas, the earliest of which are from 100 BCE. It’s highly likely that Abraxas existed earlier, through regional folk magic in Alexandria, Egypt, but these are the earliest parchments that survive.

Abraxas is consistently represented in these parchments and even on carved gems, called Abraxas-stones, as a surreal chimera-like creature. It has a rooster head, with a male torso, and serpents for legs. In its left arm it holds a shield and in its right hand it wields a whip. It’s a striking icon, very strange, even by modern standards. At times, in some depictions, it rides in a chariot drawn by four white horses.

To better understand the symbolism being used here let’s turn to the book, The Gnostic Jung, by author, Stephan Hoeller. Concerning Abraxas he writes:

[music]

“The most frequently mentioned explanations of the symbols embodied in the Abraxas figure are as follows. The head of the rooster symbolizes vigilant wakefulness and is related to both the human heart and to the universal heart, the sun, the rising of which is invoked by the matutinal clarion call of the chanticleer. The human torso is the embodiment of the principle of logos, or articulated thought, which is regarded as the unique power of the human being. The legs shaped like snakes indicate prudence whereby the dynamic rulership of universal being governs its own all-powerful energies. The shield held in the right hand is symbolic of wisdom, the great protector of all divine warriors. The whip, held in the left hand, denotes relentless, driving power of life that spurs all existence on. The four white horses drawing the chariot, represent the tetramorphic forces whereby the universal libido or psychic energy expresses itself, variously called the four ethers of the power of the sun, the four elements of earth, water, fire and air, and in Jungian psychological terms, the four functions of human consciousness, sensation, feeling, thinking and intuition.”

In addition to this symbolic understanding there is an esoteric significance to name Abraxas in the letters themselves. When the God is mentioned in these ancient texts and stones, it is always written in Greek letters. Each one of those letters has a numeric value, those being:

Alpha: 1, Beta: 2, Rho-100, Alpha: 1, Xi: 60, Alpha: 1, and Sigma: 200. Which totals 365.

Which is symbolic of the 365 days of the year AND the 365 spiritual realms through which Gnostics believe a consciousness must pass while on this Earth to rise out of this plan of existence. Yes, the Gnostics describe 365 heavens and designate a ruler for each heaven with its own name. Abraxas stands above these heavens, outside of their influence.

In the book, The Gnostic Jung, Stephan Hoeller states this:

“The 365 zones of the inner realm, which are outwardly manifest as the same number of days, represent the sum total of psychological obstacles which stand in the way of the freedom of the soul, causing its death-like entombment in limitation. It is thus evident that Abraxas, who is the power capable of liberating us from this cyclic bondage, would have held a great appeal for the Alexandrian Gnostic seekers after spiritual freedom. Not only does Abraxas bring freedom from the tedium of time—which brings frustration, old age, illness, and untimely death—but he also stops the wheel of the cycles. Thus, he puts an end to repetitious experience, the blind, unconscious reliving of aeons of unprofitable cosmic busy-work resulting in nothing but further involvement in concerns that are irrelevant to the soul.”

There is still one more symbolic layer of meaning: the seven letters in Abraxas’ name denote the seven days of the week, and likewise, the seven ruling planets of traditional astrology. If Abraxas was an important figure in folk magic of the Greco-Roman period, it’s important to understand that in such traditions, the seven ruling planets held notable importance. The seven ruling planets are those most easily seen with the naked eye: the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and the Sun. This concept was so ingrained in human culture of the time that there are still echoes of it modern times. Take for example the days of the week: each day is named after one of the seven ruling planets in their Latin form.

Monday, Moon: Dies Lunae
Tuesday, Mars: Dies Martis
Wednesday, Mercury: Dies Mercurii
Thursday, Jupiter: Dies Jovis
Friday, Venus: Dies Veneris
Saturday, Saturn: Dies Saturni
Sunday, Sun: Dies Solis

This is still endlessly fascinating to me. The idea that the past leaves these echoes, many of which we are largely unaware of until someone reveals it to us.

And so, the name Abraxas, not only symbolizes the 365 days of the year, according to the Greek alphabet, but also the 365 inner realms of the Gnostics as well as the seven days of the week and likewise the seven ruling planets.

It is in the teachings of the Gnostic teacher, Basilides of Alexandria, that Abraxas is clearly stated to be ruler of the 365 realms. It is a deity or force positioned above them. And that is why Jung chooses to credit the Seven Sermons to Basilides. The cosmology he speaks of in the Seven Sermons is not one he invents, but one which he studied from the works of Basilides and the commentaries of those works from the early Church authors. Barbara Hannah, one of Jung’s close friends and biographers mentions this in her biography: Jung, His Life & Work, when she states:

“At all events, Jung told me more than once that the first parallels he found to his own experience were in the Gnostic texts, that is, those reported in the Elenchos of Hippolytus.”

In that work, which in English is called The Refutation of All Heresies, by Hippolytus, I found this passage in Chapter 14 of Book 7, concerning the rulers of the 365 heavens:

“…in regard of which there is extant among the Basilidians a very prolix and verbose treatise, where they allege that there are three hundred and sixty-five heavens, and that the great Archon of these is Abraxas, from the fact that his name comprises the computed number 365, so that, of course, the calculation of the title includes all existing things, and that for these reasons the year consists of so many days.”

It’s in passages like these that Jung finds his myth. Or at least, the myth which for the period between 1913 – 1916 aids him best on his unique journey. And the myth which confirms for him a parallel to his own experiences, those in which he engages with the numinous depths of his own being throughout The Red Book.

So why is Abraxas so important to Jung? Does it hold some psychological significance to him the way that the Pleroma, differentiation, and individuation do?

I will preface my answer by saying that I have not read this interpretation anywhere else, from any author or scholar. This is entirely my own, and something I have arrived at through my own extensive reflection and study of the Seven Sermons. Note that what I will say next is not how I understand Abraxas, but rather how I believe Jung understood it.

Why is Abraxas so important to Jung?

Firstly, Abraxas is a symbol of the dissolution of opposites. Part of a key concept in Jungian theory—the resolution of disharmony between opposing forces in the psyche. In the Collected Works, Vol. 10, paragraph 154, Jung states:

“Every good quality has its bad side, and nothing that is good can come into the world without directly producing a corresponding evil. This is a painful fact.”

Secondly, Abraxas represents a metaphysical concept: the separation from celestial and astrological influences. The realization of which results in the transcendence of the physical plane. Because Abraxas exists above creation, it does not fall under the influence of gods, the celestial powers and astrological charts.

So what does this mean to Jung? Is he interpreting the significance of this psychologically?

We can understand the concept of celestial and astrological influences on the spiritual being as the personal and collective unconscious influences on the psyche. The Zodiac and the conception of the study of celestial influences on our character was an early form of psychology. Think about it, the idea of consulting a fortune teller or your tribe’s astrological expert, telling them your marital problems or issues with your family, they then offer emotional support, talk therapy, they consult the stars and return with advice for your situation. It was civilization’s first attempts at psychology, in a form that complimented the understanding of the cosmos and our relationship in it at that time.

Astrological and celestial forces are the influences of the unconscious mind. Don’t your impulses and motivations sometimes feel like powers outside of your control?

[music]

Abraxas then comes to represent the full integration of unconscious material. The summit point at which all aspects of the individual psyche—conscious and unconscious—are seen and brought into harmonious co-existence. The fully realized being that has transcended all influences, and risen through the 365 realms of heaven—or unseen layers of the unconscious—to ultimate Selfhood.

[music]

Intermission:

We’ve reached the halfway point of the episode, at this time we’ll take a brief intermission. I hope you’re enjoying Part Two of Carl Jung’s Seven Sermons to the Dead. It’s been a very challenging text to decipher, but the work has been tremendously rewarding.

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Now back to Dr. Carl Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead.

[transition]

Before the Intermission, we explored the psychological implications of Jung’s interest in Abraxas. Jung sees embodied in Abraxas a deity which symbolizes transcendence over duality and the full integration of unconscious material.

Despite the spiritual sounding nature of this text, it’s important to understand that Jung isn’t some Franciscan monk or sage-like figure on a mountaintop transmitting some higher truth after transcending the needs of his corporeal form. He’s just like the rest of us. At his work desk, at night, sifting through his thoughts and insights. And it’s important to understand that because it shows us that the depth of his insights is not inaccessible, it is within reach for each of us. It just takes practice and the willingness to engage such inner work.

This becomes crystal clear in the entries that precede the Seven Sermons, in the Red Book. In the chapter called Scrutinies, we see Jung wrestling with an existential problem, it is an inner turmoil between the different parts of himself.

Here is a passage from that chapter that illustrate this:

[music]

“I resist, I cannot accept this hollow nothing that I am.
What am I? What is my I? I always presuppose my I. Now it stands
before me—I before my I. I speak now to you, my I:

We are alone and our being together threatens to become
unbearably boring. We must do something, devise a pastime; for
example, I could educate you. Let us begin with your main flaw,
which strikes me first: you have no correct self-esteem. Have you no
good qualities that you can be proud of? You believe that being
capable is an art. But one can also learn such skills to some extent.
Please, do so. You find it difficult—well, all beginnings are difficult.

Soon you will be able to do it better. Do you doubt this? That is
of no use; you must be able to do it, or else I cannot live with you.
Ever since the God has arisen and spreads himself in whichever fiery
heavens, to do whatever he does, what exactly I do not know, we
have depended upon one another. Therefore you must think about
improving, or else our life together will become wretched. So pull
yourself together and value yourself! Don’t you want to?
Pitiful creature! I will torment you a bit if you do not make an
effort. What are you moaning about? Perhaps the whip will help?
Now that gets under your skin, doesn’t it? Take that—and that.
What does it taste of? Of blood, presumably? Of the Middle Ages: In
majorem Dei gloriam?

Or do you want love, or what goes by that name? One can also
teach with love, if blows do not bear fruit. So should I love you?
Press you tenderly to myself?

I truly believe that you are yawning.

How now, you want to speak? But I won’t let you, otherwise
in the end you will claim that you are my soul. But my soul is with
the fire worm, with the son of the frog who has flown to the
heavens above, to the upper sources. Do I know what he is doing
there?

But you are not my soul, you are my bare, empty nothing—I,
this disagreeable being, whom one cannot even deny the right to
consider itself worthless.

One could despair over you: your sensitivity and desirousness
exceed any reasonable measure. And I should live with you, of all
people? I must, since the strange misfortune occurred that gave me a
son and took him away.

I regret that I must speak such truths to you. Yes, you are
laughably sensitive, self righteous, unruly, mistrustful, pessimistic,
cowardly, dishonest with yourself, venomous, vengeful; one can
hardly speak about your childish pride, your craving for power, your
desire for esteem, your laughable ambition, your thirst for fame
without feeling sick. The playacting and pomposity become you badly
and you abuse them to the best of your ability.

Do you believe that it is a pleasure rather than a horror to live
together with you? No, three times no! But I promise you that I will
tighten the vise around you and slowly pull off your skin. I will give
you the chance to be flayed.

You, you of all people wanted to tell other people what to do?
Come here, I will stitch a cloth of new skin onto you, so that
you can feel its effect.

You want to complain about others, and that one has done an
injustice to you, not understood you, misinterpreted you, hurt your
feelings, ignored you, not recognized you, falsely accused you, and
what else? Do you see your vanity in this, your eternally ridiculous
vanity?

You complain that the torment has not yet come to an end?
Let me tell you: it has only just begun. You have no patience
and no seriousness. Only when it concerns your pleasure do you
praise your patience. I will double the torment so that you learn
patience.

You find the pain unbearable, but there are other things that
hurt even more, and you can inflict them on others with the greatest
naivety and absolve yourself all unknowingly.

But you will learn silence. For this I will pull out your tongue—
with which you have ridiculed, blasphemed and—even worse—joked.
I will pin all your unjust and depraved words one by one to your
body with needles so that you can feel how evil words stab.”

 

This writing is deeply personal. Enough so that it almost feels wrong, in a sense, to be reading it, or sharing it… Jung is critiquing his ego from an objective perspective. But it is so instructive to know that Jung was not some sage-like archetype figure, that he was as human as the rest of us. And it is instructive to know that it is ‘ok’ to have confrontations with yourself. In fact, it is even a necessary and healthy part of our growth process. To call yourself out on your own bullshit.

It is how we come to terms with our own contradictions, how we reconcile our inner paradoxes. To bring it back to the figure of Abraxas, how we neutralize the tension between opposing forces within us.

One of the lasting influences that studying The Red Book has had on me is that it inspired me to keep a journal. Multiple journals—in fact. I have a ‘dream journal’ where I record the details of my dreams, as thoroughly as possible. I have a ‘reflection journal,’ where I elaborate, analyze, and explore personal thoughts, experiences, as well as occasionally analyze dreams. And in the traditions of old, I have an ‘esoteric journal,’ a kind of ‘magicians notebook,’ in which I record and explore stranger and more esoteric or metaphysical thoughts, correspondences, and insights.

These three journals: dream journal, reflection journal, and esoteric journal, aren’t modeled after any specific tradition I’ve read about anywhere. They came about over the last two years as I felt inclinations to write, elaborate on, or analyze different aspects of my life experiences and thoughts. All of this was no doubt compelled by the spirit of Jung’s work, which has been a steady source of inspiration for the last five years.

And that’s why sharing this writing of Jung, which is at first glance, deeply personal, serves a greater purpose. There is a great benefit to having an outlet for your most personal and vulnerable thoughts. The kind of thoughts which you hope no one will ever read. That’s where the most important work is done, as Jung would say, ‘in the place you least want to look.’

So if sharing such deeply personal writing even inspires one person listening to begin plumbing the depths of their own inner world… then it is worth it.

It is this inner turmoil, in the days that follow, which leads Jung to write the Seven Sermons. This buildup of energy leads to a kind of revelatory breaking point. As Jung describes in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he mentions the house was filled with a kind of buzzing energy, and that the air was thick. The type of charged emotional state, which he mentions, is more inclined to produce parapsychological phenomena.

Sermon Four

[bells and music]

“The following night, the dead came running sooner, filling the place with their mutterings, and said:

Speak to us about Gods and devils, accursed one!

The Sun God is the highest good, the devil the opposite. Thus you have two Gods. But there are many high and good things and many great evils. Among these are two devil Gods; one is the Burning One, the other the Growing One.

The burning one is EROS, in the form of a flame. It shines by consuming.

The growing one is the TREE OF LIFE. It greens by heaping up growing living matter.

Eros flames up and dies. But the tree of life grows with slow and constant increase through measureless periods of time.

Good and evil unite in the flame.

Good and evil unite in the growth of the tree. In their divinity, life and love stand opposed.

The number of Gods and devils is as innumerable as the host of stars.

Each star is a God, and each space that a star fills is a devil. But the empty fullness of the whole is the Pleroma.

Abraxas is the effect of the whole, and only the ineffective opposes him.

Four is the number of the principal Gods, as four is the number of the world’s measurements.

One is the beginning, the Sun God.

Two is Eros, for he binds two together and spreads himself out in brightness.

Three is the Tree of Life, for it fills space with bodies.

Four is the devil, for he opens all that is closed. He dissolves everything formed and physical; he is the destroyer in whom everything becomes nothing.

Happy am I who can recognize the multiplicity and diversity of the Gods. But woe unto you, who replace this incompatible multiplicity with a single God. In so doing you produce the torment of incomprehension, and mutilate the creation whose nature and aim is differentiation. How can you be true to your own nature when you try to turn the many into one? What you do unto the Gods is done likewise unto you. You all become equal and thus your nature is maimed.

Equality prevails not for the sake of God, but only for the sake of man. For the Gods are many, while men are few. The Gods are mighty and endure their manifoldness. Like the stars, they abide in solitude, separated by vast distances. Therefore they dwell together and need communion, so that they may bear their separateness. For redemption’s sake I teach you the reprehensible, for whose sake I was rejected.

The multiplicity of the Gods corresponds to the multiplicity of men.

Numberless Gods await the human state. Numberless Gods have been men. Man shares in the nature of the Gods. He comes from the Gods and goes unto God.

Thus, just as it is no use to reflect upon the Pleroma, it is not worthwhile to worship the multiplicity of the Gods. Least of all does it serve to worship the first God, the effective fullness, and the summum bonum. By our prayer we can add nothing to it, and take nothing from it; because effective emptiness gulps down everything. The bright Gods form the heavenly world. It is the manifold and extends and increases infinitely. The Sun God is the supreme lord of the world.

The dark Gods form the earthly world. It is simple and diminishes and declines infinitely. The devil is its nethermost lord, the moon spirit, satellite of the earth, smaller, colder, and more dead than the earth.

There is no difference between the might of the heavenly and earthly Gods. The heavenly Gods magnify, the earthly Gods diminish. Both directions are immeasurable.”

 

So what is Jung-Basilides saying here?

This Sermon Four is a bit tricky, it takes on more of the spirit of religious texts. And it may surprise some listeners to hear the mention of multiple gods, even more-so, numberless gods. How do we interpret such statements? And can we still find some psychological significance being conveyed here?

(There’s two major points to make that will help frame things a bit here. One of them concerns the concept of celestial gods and terrestrial gods, which we’ll get to in a little bit.)

First, it’s useful to start with this reflection…

In Sermon Four, Jung raises a very interesting philosophical question:

What characteristics of ‘being’ exist outside the individual?

Let’s take the problem of good and evil. In the preceding text, of Sermon Three, Jung uses the terms sommum bonum and infinum malum. These are stand-ins for good and evil. He says: “Hard to know is the deity of Abraxas. Its power is the greatest, because man perceiveth it not. From the sun he draweth the sommum bonum; from the devil the infinum malum; but from Abraxas, LIFE, altogether indefinite, the mother of good and evil.”

Sommum bonum is latin for: the highest good. Infinum malum is also latin for the lowest evil. Throughout Sermon Three and Four Jung associates the highest good with the sun or sun-god and the lowest evil with the devil.

I would argue that ‘good’ exists in the space between people and not in the individual alone. It is some aspect of being that comes to life from our interaction with other living things rather than just from some hidden compartment in the brain. The potential seed for good, with the DNA of ‘good,’ exists in each individual, but it only blossoms forth from the interplay between points of consciousness.

We can perhaps agree that these characteristics of being exist outside the individual…

Could we not call those gods?

They are some aspect of being that seems to exist beyond a single lifetime, even beyond any particular culture or society. Some form of being that seems to survive and blossom again irrespective of race, creed, or environment… Would we not call that a god? Is that how the ancients intuitively understood gods? It does seem they speak of them in this way in religious texts.

Could one useful definition of gods be: all the forces of being outside of the individual? That seems to be what Jung is implying here. The highest good, the lowest evil, Abraxas, Eros—the burning one, the Tree of Life—the growing one…

This is akin to the archetypes. The gods, much like the archetypes, exist beyond any singular individuals or societies. They have a life of their own, which begins as a seed potential in each individual, and blossoms forth in the interplay between points of consciousness.

[music interlude]

While studying Sermon Four, and trying to make sense of it, I was reminded of a philosophical text from the body of writing attributed to the figure: Hermes Trismegistus. This was a mysterious sage-like figure who is credited to have been one of the first alchemists in ancient Egypt, and whose teachings passed down through the centuries to the Greco-Roman era. His true history is strange enough to warrant an episode of its own, so I won’t dwell on it too long, and risk getting us off track.

But I do want to share a particularly insightful passage from a manuscript of Hermes Trismegistus called The Asclepius. Among the Gnostic Scriptures found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, bundled together with them, were the works of Hermes Trismegistus. These works have nothing to do with Gnosticism or Christianity, but they were bundled together because they both blossomed out of the same Greco-Roman time period and region from the first to third centuries Current Era.

In the work of Hermes Trismegistus, we see the claim put forward that there is one God, with a capital ‘G’ but there are also innumerable other gods. You see where I’m going with this?

In Sermon Four, as Jung-Basilides describes the existence of innumerable gods and the multiplicity of the divine, I couldn’t help but think of the writings of Hermes Trismegistus, which are from the same exact time period as the Gnostic Scriptures which influenced Jung.

Here is an excerpt I put together from the manuscript titled ‘The Asclepius’ by Hermes Trismegistus:

[music]

“…God made man both good and capable of immortality, because of his two
natures: the divine and the mortal. Through God’s will it was ordained that man was thus
made superior both to the gods, who are formed only of an immortal nature, and to all
other creatures. Because of this, man is united to the gods in kinship and he therefore
worships them through religion and through purity of mind. For their part the gods look
down on all human affairs with tender love and take care of them.”

“And since I have spoken of the kinship and fellowship of men with the gods, Asclepius,
acknowledge the power and strength of Man. Just as the Lord and Father, or God, is the
creator of the heavenly gods, so Man is the maker of the gods in temples, who are
content to be close to human beings. Man not only receives light, but he gives it. Not
only does Man progress towards God, but he forms gods.”

“But the forms of gods which men create are taken from two natures: from the divine,
which is purer and far more god-like; and from that which is within men, that is, from
matter. Having been formed from such matter, they are not represented by heads alone,
but by the whole body with all its members. Thus humanity is always reminded of its own
nature and origin as it continues to represent divinity in this way. So just as the Father
and Lord has made the eternal gods to be similar to Himself, so humanity has made its
gods in the likeness of its own features.”

[end music cue]

What’s interesting again to note here is that the works of Hermes Trismegistus and the scriptures of Gnosticism don’t belong to the same tradition. Yet they seem to share the same spirit, in a sense, one which values the individual experience over any official church authority, and one which accounts more a multitude of gods.

Which brings us to our final point:

There is a very useful function to gods, which we—as a rationalistic society—have almost all but forgotten. Embodying abstract concepts like good and evil in the form of gods gives us a much more direct relationship with complex philosophical ideas. Whether you believe in their metaphysical existence or not: gods are effective vehicles for our ideals.

For example: many ancient cultures have some form of deity for Earth itself, one well known example being Gaia, as mother Earth. A belief in Gaia comes with a respect and reverence for our planet and nature. By projecting this ideal outward, you not only highlight its importance, that Earth should be respected, but you can now have a relationship with it, you can talk to Gaia, have dreams about her, and feel a closeness to nature that is difficult to reproduce with cold theory and hard fact alone.

This is what the mythopoetic imagination is all about. If there is nothing else you remember from this episode, remember this term: mythopoetic imagination. It represents the mind’s natural tendency to create narratives, symbols, myths, and even gods from our life experiences.

This is what Jung is exploring in The Red Book. He is attempting to get to the origin point of religion—the core of mythos itself. To find a place in the mind’s substructures where religion is created—where the gods are born.

[music]

At this point in his career, Jung has not yet elaborated on his conception of the archetypes and the collective unconscious. But it is through intuitions like these, which he explores in the Seven Sermons, that you can start to see something being formulated… something coming into form. It becomes all the more clear if we take stock of what we have learned so far from Sermons One through Four.

Let’s recap:

Sermon One: We explored the Pleroma, the concept of differentiation, and the principium individuationis. The Pleroma acts as a stand-in for the unconscious. The concept of differentiation describes one of the core functions of the mind: to distinguish the differences of every thing and experience around us. And the principium individuationis introduces Jung’s first written account of the Jungian concept of Individuation.

Sermon Two: Elaborates on the mental process of differentiation, stating that it creates the pairs of opposites. And it’s implied that the concept of ‘effective fullness’ represents the goal of Individuation: a fully embodied and realized Self.

Sermon Three: Introduces us to Abraxas, a deity that stands above the influence of the celestial and terrestrial forces. Abraxas is the ultimate symbol to the Gnostics and to Jung of transcendence over duality and the full integration of unconscious material.

Sermon Four: Presents the case for gods as vehicles for our ideals. Gods as embodiments of complex philosophical theories, which give us the opportunity to have an intuitive and imaginative relationship with our highest ideals. A convincing argument for engaging with our mythopoetic imagination.

On the next Creative Codex…

[title music]

We explore Sermons Five, Six, and Seven. Where we face the questions:

What is the relationship between spirituality and sexuality?

What is the purpose of Communion with the Gods?

What is the true symbolic meaning of the white dove and the ancient serpent?

And what is the Goal of Man?

All this and more on the conclusion of: Carl Jung’s Seven Sermons to the Dead.

[end title music]

CONCLUSION:

Thank you for listening to Part 2 of Carl Jung’s Seven Sermons to the Dead.

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