29 Carl Jung • Seven Sermons (Part III)

What leads someone like Dr. Carl Jung, at the halfway point of his life, to write The Seven Sermons to the Dead? A work that is a modern Gnostic scripture inspired by texts from a spiritual tradition of nearly two thousand years ago.

I think we can agree, that this is not something most 41 year olds do. To take a lost near ancient spiritual tradition and pen a scripture in the style of that tradition which bears a strikingly meaningful relationship to it and yet, is wholly original and not derivative.

Then again, Jung isn’t most 40 year olds.

[music]

It’s important to acknowledge: The Seven Sermons isn’t written as an intellectual exercise, it’s a text borne with creative force. As Jung mentions in Memories, Dreams, Reflections: in the days leading up to its writing, he feels a compulsion bubbling forth, something is calling to be brought into form. He mentions that his home seems to be filled with spirits, and they all dissipate when he begins writing.

What do we call that? Is it inspiration? …Or is it possession?

Is inspiration–the thing which compels an artist to their work desk–a form of possession? A compelling force from one’s unconscious.

Even if we forego the metaphysical implications, that a spiritual energy is at work, when we really look at moments of inspiration in our own life and in this moment in Jung’s life, doesn’t it resemble a form of possession of the intellect?

We can confirm this impression because in those moments, and I’ve experienced this as well, if one resists the compulsion, there is a discomfort–a physiological reaction. The cells of your body want to move in a direction, and your inaction stands in their way.

The poet, W.H. Auden once famously wrote: “We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.”

… “We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.”

Jung completes the Seven Sermons in a weekend. And the tension inside his house and himself, dissipates with its completion.

As we mentioned in Part One of this Seven Sermons series, creative works we dedicate ourselves to, they take on a lifecycle of their own, and they have their own wants and needs too–which are often expressed through our physiology.

When Jung was working with Anielle Jaffe on his autobiography, called Memories, Dreams, Reflections he told her:

“A book of mine is always a matter of fate. There is something unpredictable about the process of writing, and I cannot prescribe for myself any predetermined course. Thus this ‘autobiography’ is now taking a direction quite different from what I had imagined at the beginning. It has become a necessity for me to write down my early memories. If I neglect to do so for a single day, unpleasant physical symptoms immediately follow. As soon as I set to work they vanish and my head feels perfectly clear.”

Welcome to Creative Codex. I am your host, MJDorian.

On this episode, we are going to dive back into the Seven Sermons one last time, we already covered Sermons 1 & 2 in Part 1, and Sermons 3 & 4 in Part 2. On this episode, we will complete the cycle with Sermons five, six, and seven.

We will aim to finally and conclusively answer the question: Why was Gnosticism so important to Jung? We will also explore: What is the relationship between spirituality and sexuality? What is the significance of the dove and the serpent in religious symbolism? And according to Jung’s Seven Sermons: what is the goal of life?

In coming to understand the answers to these question, we will come to understand Jung himself, and the bold mission of his work.

This is episode 29, Carl Jung’s Seven Sermons to the Dead, Part 3.

Let’s begin…

[Calling Up The Dead music]

Chapter Three: The Preacher’s Son

In Parts 1 and 2 of this Seven Sermons Series, we tried to understand this mystifying text through its three layers of meaning: the philosophical, the spiritual, and the psychological.

This gives us multiple angles of attack with which to comprehend the text, and to appreciate it the way Jung understood it. But it seems we missed one layer of meaning which is especially important: the personal.

How does the ‘Seven Sermons to the Dead’ fit into Jung’s personal world, his psyche. After all, when an artist feels the compulsion to create such a significant work it’s never from one isolated motivation. Jung had a philosophical, spiritual, and psychological interest in this work, but he also had a personal one.

For example: if I want to write a brilliant song, only being motivated by the idea of making a quick buck is not gonna cut it. The song is likely to end up sounding derivative or predictable. It’s going to lack something meaningful. That doesn’t mean that’s a bad motivation, but rather, it’s not interesting enough for your creative drive. It only gets one wheel turning, instead of two, or three, or more.

But let’s say you just read a thought provoking novel that thoroughly engaged your imagination and you just broke up with your soulmate… well, now you’ve got a soup cooking, a confluence of factors: the intention to write a hit song, the influence of an engaging work of fiction, and the impulse to express your deep seated emotions.

Often, when artists feel a compulsion, a creative force pushing them forward, it is a confluence of factors. This is something which is becoming more and more clear to me over the years of studying these creative geniuses.

Great works, consequential works, are never borne out of a singular drive or motivation. They always arise from a confluence of factors.

In Jung’s case, this includes: his obsessive interest in trying to understand Gnostic scriptures, his intellectual pursuit in connecting psychology to ancient traditions, and his intention to communicate a new model for understanding the unconscious mind. This is an impressive confluence of factors that begins to compel something out of Jung to the surface, but the secret ingredient here is the factor we haven’t much explored: Jung’s personal relationship to religious experience.

At this point in our study, we might assume that Jung must have been raised a devout Christian and dutifully attended church every Sunday as a schoolboy. But this is only half true. As he recounts in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, in his youth, he actually hated going to church. But since his father was a Protestant minister, he was forced to attend.

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections he states:

“I hated going to church. The one exception was Christmas Day. The Christmas carol “This Is the Day The Lord Has Made” pleased me enormously. And then in the evening, of course, came the Christmas tree. Christmas was the only Christian festival I could celebrate with fervor. All others left me cold.”

He grew up listening to his father preaching and giving sermons to his own small parish. Add to that, his mother’s side had six clergyman and his father’s side had three, including his father. Jung mentions he heard many ‘religious conversations, theological discussions, and sermons’ while growing up.

In the same book he shares more about these early experiences with religion. When he was six years old, his parents took him on an excursion to the town of Arlesheim, in Switzerland. He says:

[music]

“We came to a church, and my mother said, “That is a Catholic church.” My curiosity, mingled with fear, prompting me to slip away from my mother and peer through the open door into the interior. I just had time to glimpse the big candles on a richly adorned altar (it was around Easter) when I suddenly stumbled on a step and struck my chin on a piece of iron.

I remember that I had a gash that was bleeding badly when my parents picked me up. My state of mind was curious: on the one hand I was ashamed because my screams were attracting the attention of the churchgoers, and on the other hand I felt that I had done something forbidden.

For years afterward I was unable to set foot inside a Catholic church without a secret fear of blood and falling and Jesuits. That was the aura or atmosphere that hung about it, but at the same time it always fascinated me.

The proximity of a Catholic priest made me even more uneasy, if that were possible. Not until I was in my thirties was I able to confront Mater Ecclesia without this sense of oppression.”

[end cue]

These early experiences give us some insight to what lurks in the foundation of Jung’s mind, in the bedrock of his personal unconscious.

This next one is one of my favorites, although it isn’t specifically about religion, but more about art and antiquity:

[music]

“About that time–I must have still been a very little fellow, no more than six years old–an aunt took me to Basel and showed me the stuffed animals in the museum. We stayed a long time, because I wanted to look at everything very carefully. At four o’clock the bell rang, a sign that the museum was about to close.

My aunt nagged at me, but I could not tear myself away from the showcases. In the meantime the room had been locked, and we had to go by another way to the staircase, through the gallery of antiquities. Suddenly I was standing before these marvelous figures!

Utterly overwhelmed, I opened my eyes wide, for I had never seen anything so beautiful. I could not look at them long enough.

My aunt pulled me by the hand to the exit–I trailing always a step behind her–crying out, “Disgusting boy, shut your eyes; disgusting boy, shut your eyes!”

Only then did I see that the figures were naked and wore fig leaves. I hadn’t noticed it at all before. Such was my first encounter with the fine arts. My aunt was simmering with indignation, as though she had been dragged through a pornographic institute.”

[end music]

By the age of 12, Jung was a conscientious student, who enjoyed his solitude in nature, saying: “Nature seemed to me full of wonders, and I wanted to steep myself in them. Every stone, every plant, every single thing seemed alive and indescribably marvelous. I immersed myself in nature, crawled, as it were, into the very essence of nature and away from the human world.”

It was also around this time that he notices a curious shift in his consciousness. He says:

[music]

“I had another important experience at about this time. I was taking the long road to school from Klein-Huningen, where we lived, to Basel, when suddenly for a single moment I had the overwhelming impression of having just emerged from a dense cloud.

I knew all at once: now I am myself! It was as if a wall of mist were at my back, and behind that wall there was not yet an “I.” But at this moment I came upon myself. Previously I had existed too, but everything had merely happened to me. Now I happened to myself. Now I knew: I am myself now, now I exist. Previously I had been willed to do this and that; now I willed.

This experience seemed to me tremendously important and new: there was “authority” in me.”

It was shortly after this new development, this shift in self awareness, that adolescent Jung begins to think more critically about Christianity, his father’s religion. This will lead to a shift in his personal relationship to God that will define him for his entire life.

He describes that incident:

[music]

“One fine summer day that same year I came out of school at noon
and went to the cathedral square. The sky was gloriously blue, the
day was one of radiant sunshine. The roof of the cathedral glittered, the
sun sparkling from the new, brightly glazed tiles. I was overwhelmed
by the beauty of the sight, and thought:

‘The world is beautiful and the church is beautiful, and God made all
this and sits above it far away in the blue sky on a golden throne
and…’

Here came a great hole in my thoughts, and a choking
sensation. I felt numbed, and knew only: “Don’t go on thinking now!
Something terrible is coming, something I do not want to think,
something I dare not even approach. Why not? Because I would be
committing the most frightful of sins. What is the most terrible sin?
Murder? No, it can’t be that. The most terrible sin is the sin against
the Holy Ghost, which cannot be forgiven. Anyone who commits that
sin is damned to hell for all eternity. That would be very sad for my
parents, if their only son, to whom they are so attached, should be
doomed to eternal damnation. I cannot do that to my parents. All I
need do is not go on thinking.””

Jung’s young mind was facing an existential crisis, brought on by an impending insight that would challenge the core of the Christian mythos his family life revolved around.

He came home that afternoon in an anxious state, his mother noticed and asked what was the matter, if something had happened at school. He assured her nothing had happened, but avoided telling her about his existential spiral.

He goes on:

“That night I slept badly; again and again the forbidden thought, which I did not yet know, tried to break out, and I struggled desperately to fend it off. The next two days were sheer torture, and my mother was convinced that I was ill.

But I resisted the temptation to confess, aided by the thought that it would cause my parents intense sorrow.”

The turmoil continued for a third night, becoming nearly unbearable. Jung’s youthful mind was wrestling a conundrum: there was a thought, on the brink of his conscious realization, which he intuited was sacrilegious, so he attempted to distract and delay the arrival of the thought for fear that it would be sinful to entertain it.

He was disturbed by the scenario itself: that his mind could think a thought which he did not consciously think. Where could such a thought then be coming from?

Jung goes on:

“I don’t know what it is, I really don’t, for I cannot and must not come
anywhere near this thought, for that would be to risk thinking it at
once. I haven’t done this or wanted this, it has come on me like a
bad dream. Where do such things come from? This has happened
to me without my doing. Why? After all, I didn’t create myself, I came
into the world the way God made me–that is, the way I was shaped
by my parents. Or can it have been that my parents wanted
something of this sort? But my good parents would never have had
any thoughts like that. Nothing so atrocious would ever have
occurred to them.”

I found this idea utterly absurd. Then I thought of my grandparents,
whom I knew only from their portraits. They looked benevolent and
dignified enough to repulse any idea that they might possibly be to
blame. I mentally ran through the long procession of unknown
ancestors until finally I arrived at Adam and Eve. And with them
came the decisive thought:

Adam and Eve were the first people; they had no parents, but were created directly by God, who intentionally made them as they were. They had no choice but to be exactly the way God had created them.

Therefore they did not know how they could possibly be different. They were perfect creatures of God, for He creates only perfection, and yet they committed the first sin by doing what God did not want them to do. How was that possible? They could not have done it if God had not placed in them the possibility of doing it.

That was clear, too, from the serpent, whom God had created before them, obviously so that it could induce Adam and Eve to sin. God in His omniscience had arranged everything so that the first parents would have to sin. Therefore it was God’ s intention that they should sin.”

[end music cue]

And with that, Jung says he was liberated from his existential torment. Yet of course, now he faced the greater task of confronting the world around him, which lived within a framework that did not agree with this new personal realization.

It’s remarkable to note that throughout his life, Jung would continue to be considered a kind of outcast among Christian circles. Though he dedicated so much of his time and energy to argue for the beneficial psychological functions of all religions, and of the important symbolism in the Christian myth… He was largely misunderstood or misrepresented by Christians.

In this regard, he truly aligned more with Gnosticism than any formal denomination of Christianity.

And it is also in Gnosticism that we find a direct parallel to Jung’s early insight… As we will explore later in the episode, the Gnostic creation story states that this plane of existence was created by God with both good and evil intertwined.

The existence of evil or darkness is not a flaw of its design–it is a feature.

But we will get to that later.

One final insight before we get to the Sermons… the idea of ‘preaching to the dead,’ as Jung-Basilides does in the Seven Sermons to the Dead. It’s very likely a concept that Jung encountered at some point, perhaps even in his father’s sermons.

The idea comes from a notorious passage in the First Epistle of Peter. That is Peter 4:6, which states:

“For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.”

This verse has always left the door open for Bible scholars to interpret in one of two ways. That one can preach to the dead directly and that they will benefit from that act. Or that the verse doesn’t refer to the physically dead, but rather the spiritually dead, those who aren’t in Christ or born again.

The second interpretation requires a twisting of the words, the first interpretation sounds more direct to me. The idea of preaching to the spirits of the deceased, to aid in their journey in the afterlife.

This Bible verse may be the original seed that was planted in Jung’s mind, perhaps decades before he set his pen to paper, that was yet another gear turning in the confluence of factors leading to the Seven Sermons to the Dead.

[music]

Sermon Five…

When the following night came, the dead approached noisily, pushing and shoving; they were scoffing and exclaimed “Teach us, fool, about the church and the holy communion.”

The world of the Gods is made manifest in spirituality and in sexuality. The celestial ones appear in spirituality, the earthly in sexuality.

Spirituality conceives and embraces. It is womanlike and therefore we call it
MATER COELESTIS, the celestial mother.

Sexuality engenders and creates. It is manlike, and therefore we call it
PHALLOS, the earthly father. The sexuality of man is more earthly, that of woman is more spiritual. The spirituality of man is more heavenly, it moves toward the greater.
The spirituality of woman is more earthly, it moves toward the smaller.

Mendacious and devilish is the spirituality of man, and it moves toward the smaller.
Mendacious and devilish is the spirituality of woman, and it moves toward the greater.

Each shall go to its own place. Man and woman become devils to each other if they do not separate their spiritual ways, for the essence of creation is differentiation.

The sexuality of man goes toward the earthly, the sexuality of woman goes toward the spiritual. Man and woman become devils to each other if they do not distinguish their sexuality.

Man shall know the smaller, woman the greater.

Man shall differentiate himself both from spirituality and sexuality. He shall call spirituality mother, and set her between Heaven and Earth. He shall call sexuality Phallos, and set him between himself and earth. For the Mother and the Phallos are superhuman daimons that reveal the world of the Gods. They affect us more than the Gods since they are closely akin to our essence.

If you do not differentiate yourselves from sexuality and from spirituality, and do not regard them as an essence both above and beyond you, you are delivered over to them as qualities of the Pleroma. Spirituality and sexuality are not your qualities,
not things you possess and encompass. Rather, they possess and encompass you,
since they are powerful daimons, manifestations of the Gods, and hence reach beyond you, existing in themselves.

No man has a spirituality unto himself, or a sexuality unto himself. Instead, he stands under the law of spirituality and of sexuality. Therefore no one escapes these daimons. You shall look upon them as daimons, and as a common task and danger, a common burden that life has laid upon you.

Thus life, too, is for you a common task and danger, as are the Gods, and first and foremost terrible Abraxas.

Man is weak, and community is therefore indispensable. If your community is not under the sign of the mother, it is under the sign of the Phallos.

Absence of community is suffering and sickness. Community in everything is dismemberment and dissolution.

Differentiation leads to singleness.

Singleness is opposed to community. But because of man’s weakness with regard to the Gods and daimons and their invincible law, community is necessary, not for man’s sake, but because of the Gods. The Gods drive you to community. Insofar as the Gods impose community upon you, it is necessary; more is bad.

In the community every man shall submit to others, so that the community be maintained, for you need it. In singleness every man shall place himself above the other, so
that every man may come to himself and avoid slavery.

Abstention shall hold good in community, extravagance in singleness.
Community is depth, singleness is height.
Right measure in community purifies and preserves.
Right measure in singleness purifies and increases.
Community gives us warmth, singleness gives us light.”

[end music cue]

So how do we understand a text like this? What is Jung trying to say here?

It’s important at this point to point out something strange about creative work. Something that applies here which we haven’t mentioned with any of the other Sermons.

We may be struggling to understand what Jung or Basilides is saying here, and wondering what Jung could have meant when he wrote these words…or even judging him for them.

But we should be careful. It’s highly likely that Jung, himself, was also struggling to understand these words.

Here me out…

In Part One we explored the circumstances that led to this text being written, and the nature of it being an inspired work, as such, Jung may not himself understand what it is he is writing.

Not until analyzing it further. Months and years later.

This is the paradox of creative work. It happens to me all the time with visual art, I will see something, some compelling image or scenario in my mind, sometimes on the cusp of a dream, or while daydreaming, it comes fully formed. Then I set out to materialize it in a physical form, often as closely as I can to how it appeared to me.

Or in writing, have you ever had a good cup of coffee and while typing away a story or essay, noticed you were in a flow state, the words come out without pre-planning, and you type out a phrase or a statement that surprises you. One which is novel, which you did not plan, and yet, it is one that provides some important insight to what you are trying to say. What is that?

In those scenarios, we do not conceive it, we do not build it, it comes to us–as Jung would say–from the unconscious.

With this in mind, Seven Sermons is such an inspired work, and Jung mentions this about it years later. It is how he understands the work. It is a confluence of unconscious constellations, ready to come to the surface.

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he says: “These conversations with the dead formed a kind of prelude to what I had to communicate to the world about the unconscious: a kind of pattern of order and the interpretation of its general contents.”

Add to that, the fact that in its original, first form, it was not being communicated to Jung by the Gnostic figure of Basilides, but in his mind, by the personal symbolic figure of Philemon. Who appears in Jung’s personal myth during the Red Book experiences. It is after the Sermons are written that he changes the speaker to Basilides, for the public version of the text.

Now I agree, for people who don’t engage with creative work, this must seem like a strange scenario. How can you create a substantial work without consciously directing it?

But this is the truth. It isn’t the case for every single work of art or creativity, the amount of conscious direction the artist engages varies. But for works that just flow out of you, and often end up being consequential works in some regard, they are not under conscious control.

It is what lends this magical quality to creativity.

It is then up to the artist or the audience to interpret the value and meaning of the inspired work, in these cases, after creation. Not during. It is a misnomer that a writer or artist or musician has everything laid out before them and builds it from the ground up through some process of logic. No. This is not always the case, especially when a work comes with a creative force and is supported by a confluence of factors, like we mentioned at the start of this episode.

That is why it is our folly to judge an artist’s ethics or personality by their art. It’s our lack of understanding of the creative process, if we judge Jung’s personal ethics by this work, like some writers have done when they try to analyze it. If we do so, we display our complete misunderstanding of creativity.

I hope that makes sense.

Now let’s get back to the text. Because even though it may be difficult…and highly symbolic, I believe we can still understand what points are connecting in Jung’s mind here and how he ends up interpreting this years later.

First, the main focus of Sermon Five seems to be the relationship between spirituality and sexuality, and how they differ in their existence in masculine and feminine forms.

One thing that comes to mind when I’m reading this is this ancient esoteric concept that what is feminine is closer to the gods than what is masculine. Take for example the Oracle of Delphi, and her priestesses. Or how about in the tradition of European Alchemy, it was a custom to always have a female counterpart, an assistant in the work who is a woman. And you can see this in the old alchemical woodcuts, there will be the male alchemist, brewing something in his alembic while a female counterpart stands beside him.

And to go back to even more ancient traditions, in native tribal cultures around the world, from South America to Africa, some of which exist to this day. Shamans are woven into the fabric of their community, and during rituals and divination if the shaman is a male, he will don the outfit, a wig, and the appearance of a woman, to align himself closer to the spirit world.

These ideas, these archetypes, they are old… older than we realize. Older than our countries and cities, likely a part of our understanding of life tracing all the way back to our cave dwelling ancestors. Due to the universality of the idea, we can assume it is in our collective unconscious.

In Sermon Five, it seems Jung / Basilides / Philemon is communicating something tied up with this concept.

The text states:

“The sexuality of man is more earthly, that of woman is more spiritual. The spirituality of man is more heavenly, it moves toward the greater. The spirituality of woman is more earthly, it moves toward the smaller.”

This passage, and this entire Sermon, is playing with dualities. Everything is paired with its opposite in the plane of duality: masculine / feminine, greater / smaller, spirituality / sexuality, celestial gods / terrestrial gods, and so on.

It’s incredibly fascinating, and fits in perfectly with many treatises of Western Esoteric traditions.

But this isn’t only a metaphysical thought exercise, this idea of the interplay between opposites ends up being important in Jungian Psychology years later. Here it is in its seedling state. As we have seen in the other Sermons, these texts are filled with intuitions about the psyche which Jung then elaborates on for years to come.

Jung’s mentor, Sigmund Freud, had a widely accepted theory at this time in the field of psychology about human sexuality. Freud argued that all of our psychological drives, whether sexual in nature or not, are energized by the libido, our sexual impulses. This results of course in the implication that all of our complexes or unconscious anxieties are tied up with sexual energies.

This theory, in Freudian psychology, is simply called ‘the libido.’ And although it was widely accepted in the early 1900’s, Carl Jung already had his doubts about it. This was, among many others, a splintering point in his relationship with Freud.

He writes the Seven Sermons to the Dead in 1916, but as early as 1912, in his seminal book Psychology of the Unconscious, he is already arguing against the limited framework of Freud’s libido theory. He expresses his doubts, which are influenced through what he sees with his patients in his clinical work. Jung is noticing that something doesn’t quite add up in this libido theory, that not all neuroses can be traced back to strictly sexual energies.

In Chapter Two of Psychology of the Unconscious, titled The Conception and Genetic Theory of Libido, Jung argues for an evolution of the theory, to include non-sexual drives. And gives many examples to support it, knowing that Freudians of the time will take such a critique as a controversy.

Now, here is where all of this applies to understanding Sermon Five. Years later, as Jung continues to elaborate his theories, he continues to use the term ‘libido.’ But now it no longer represents sexual energies, in Jungian psychology it represents ‘psychic energy.’

Please bear in mind, if you are unfamiliar with Jung’s writing, when he uses the term ‘psychic’ or ‘psyche’ it doesn’t imply some New Age supernatural thing. He’s not talking about psychics. It’s a modern perversion of the term.

He uses ‘psychic’ to refer to matters of the mind, as in psychological, and ‘psyche’ to refer to all that the mind contains, including the interplay between conscious and unconscious parts.

That being said, Jung expands on Freud’s limited conception of libido as only ‘sexual energy’ to more broadly mean ‘psychic energy.’

In the book, The Gnostic Jung, the author, modern Gnostic, and renowned Jungian, Stephan Hoeller, states this:

[music]

“Jung defined the libido not as a sexual force, but as a general psychic energy, which includes all human drives in addition to the sexual. Jung stated that libido is ‘apportioned by nature to the various functional systems, from which it cannot be wholly withdrawn,’ although as he said, ‘a small part of the total energy can be diverted from its natural flow.’

While according to the Freudian model of the psyche, surplus psychic energy becomes available for purposes of culture and civilization as the result of conflict and repression, Jung’s view makes a tension of the opposites responsible for surplus or excess libidinal forces. Jung squarely declares that ‘there is no energy unless there is a tension of the opposites.’”

This is an incredible statement.

It may seem abstract at first. Too far away removed from reality to be useful. But as I’ve been reflecting on it this last month, while studying these Sermons… I think it proves true.

For example… What is an argument?

It is the tension between two points. When you argue with your parents what is happening there? It is the tension between two points on a plane of duality.

They are standing over there and you are standing over here. Whatever the matter may be. But it is the tension between those opposing views that creates the psychic energy that manifests as anxiety or anger.

Or how about this one…

You want to desperately be in a relationship with someone you feel affection for. But you don’t know if they feel the same way about you. What creates the ‘mental energy’ in this scenario? The opposing realities of having them or not having them. Of being loved or not loved. These are very tangible things, you can feel them in your gut. To be or not to be.

They lay out your existence on a plain of duality, are you here or are you there? If you are not yet where you want to be, then that activates your libido, your ‘mental energy’ to try and fill that gap, to compel you in that direction.

We are constantly surrounded by these dualities, and we are constantly under the influence of the ‘psychic energy’ that they compel in us. To have or have not. To be comfortable or uncomfortable. Successful or not successful. Liked or disliked. Respected or not respected.

When we are on one side of the plane of that duality, and we want to be closer to the other side… that creates the ‘psychic energy’ Jung describes in the libido.

And this is the concept, in its seedling form, that Jung’s psyche is expressing in Sermon Five.

There is one more lesson in Sermon Five worth understanding. It is when Jung writes:

“If you do not differentiate yourselves from sexuality and from spirituality, and do not regard them as an essence both above and beyond you, you are delivered over to them as qualities of the Pleroma.”

As we established in Part One and Two of this Seven Sermons series, Jung uses the Pleroma in this text as a symbol for the unconscious.

In Sermon One he also mentions differentiation as an important process, it is the analysis and understanding of a characteristic of your psyche. By analyzing it, you call it out of its unconscious state, and you are then faced with the important task of integrating it, which Jung sees as an ethical responsibility, because if you do not, then it recedes back into the unconscious, and continues to have an unconscious influence on your thoughts and actions.

So again, here he is stating:

“If you do not differentiate yourselves from sexuality and from spirituality, and do not regard them as an essence both above and beyond you, you are delivered over to them as qualities of the Pleroma.”

If you do not make a point to understand and analyze your sexuality and spirituality, then these aspects of your psyche will sink back into the unconscious, and continue to influence you in unconscious ways.

We know what an undifferentiated sexuality looks like… it is that which compels one toward lust and animal impulses, which become influences on your life outside of your conscious control. We all know that scenario well, and have either experienced it personally or have a friend who seemingly lost control of his or her sexual impulses, leading them into impulsive and destructive situations.

But what would an undifferentiated spirituality look like? I imagine it would include something like superstitious thinking… irrationality or religious extremism… a rigid system of unexamined beliefs that force themselves into equally rigid attitudes about life… or delusions that inflate the ego through feelings of self importance and being better than all those non-believers. Another way to say undifferentiated spirituality would be: an unexamined spirituality. Or a spirituality that lacks self awareness.

One could also make the argument that a spirituality that is repressed into the unconscious will still show itself in unexpected ways. For example, someone may not be outwardly religious, yet they are fanatical about a certain sports team or political party. Someone may not outwardly entertain worship of a god yet they idolize a celebrity or a politician to the point of irrationality.

The drive toward fanatic religiosity and the drive toward fanatic political thinking–it’s the same drive.

What are you fanatical about?

We mentioned in the last episode, regarding Sermon Four, that gods are effective vehicles for our highest ideals. We should consider, in the absence of gods, what do we use as vehicles for those ideals.

The compulsion to do so doesn’t just disappear.

Even if we don’t engage religious or spiritual behavior in a way that is conscious and positive, I believe the compulsion for that kind of experience will still find a way to express itself.

And if we have not differentiated that aspect of ourselves, brought it out of the unconscious in a meaningful way, it may exhibit its control on us in potentially harmful ways.

[music break]

INTERMISSION:

We’ve now reached the halfway point of the episode. It’s time for a brief intermission, before we get back to Sermons Six and Seven.

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[cue Kurt Cobain Part Two]

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And now, without further ado, back to Carl Jung’s Seven Sermons to the Dead.

Sermon Six…

[Sermon music bumper]

“The daimon of sexuality approaches our soul as a serpent.
She is half human soul and is called thought-desire.

The daimon of spirituality descends into our soul as the white bird.
He is half human soul and is called desire-thought.

The serpent is an earthly soul, half daimonic, a spirit, and akin to the spirits of the dead. Thus too, like these she swarms around in the things of earth, making us fear them or else having them arouse our craving.

The serpent has a female nature, forever seeking the company of those dead who are spellbound by the earth, and who did not find a way across to singleness.

The serpent is a whore. She courts the devil and evil spirits; she is a mischievous tyrant and tormentor, forever seducing the most evil company. The white bird is a half-celestial soul of man. He abides with the mother, descending from time to time.

The bird is manlike, and is effective thought. He is chaste and solitary, a messenger of the mother. He flies high above the earth. He commands singleness. He brings
knowledge from the distant ones, who have departed before and attained perfection. He bears our word up to the mother.

She intercedes, she warns, but she is powerless against the Gods. She is a vessel of the sun. The serpent descends and cunningly lames the phallic daimon, or else goads him on. She bears up the too-crafty thoughts of the earthly, those thoughts that creep through every hole and cleave to all things with craving.

Although the serpent does not want to, she must be of use to us. She flees our grasp, thus showing us the way, which our human wits could not find.”

[end music cue]

What we begin to see in Sermon Six, is Jung’s tone gradually shifting. He is speaking more and more in this–thoroughly mystical tone, the further we get into the sermons. And we will see the culmination of that in the following text of Sermon Seven.

But let’s examine Sermon Six more closely first… there’s something to learn about it which will open up an entirely new understanding of all the sermons.

Where is Jung getting all this symbolism? The dove and the serpent, the phallic daemon, the celestial mother, Abraxas, the Pleroma, celestial gods and terrestrial gods, and so on.

He’s getting this symbolism from two places:

One: the creation stories of Gnostic scriptures, that is, the cosmogonies of Gnosticism as they are described in various Gnostic texts. He studied these closely, and it’s clear they inspired him in countless ways.

And two: Jung’s own Gnostic cosmology. Yes, what many people don’t know, because it’s not mentioned in The Red Book or the published Seven Sermons is that Jung wrote out his own Gnostic creation story, as a foundation, upon which the Seven Sermons to the Dead are then built. That is why throughout the sermons, and in Sermon Six, we get this feeling like the symbols and terms he is using aren’t simply being pulled from the air, but rather from an existing mythopoetic world.

This special text that lays out Jung’s cosmology can be found in The Black Books.

Yes, just when you thought you had the definitive copy of The Red Book which proved you were a Jungian enthusiast… along come The Black Books.

Here is why they matter: When Jung began working on The Red Book in 1913, he first documented his ‘confrontation with the unconscious’ in personal journals, which are known as the ‘Black Books.’ Because of their plain black leather binding.

As he reviewed the material in his journals, he chose key portions to elaborate on or crystallize in The Red Book.

So, what you see in The Red Book, is actually a curated version of The Black Books. In a sense, Jung used only the most personally meaningful passages and experiences from the Black Books in the Red Book.

It is in Black Book 5 that we find the key to it all: Jung’s Gnostic cosmology. Written in January 16th, 1916. It is written as a dialogue between Jung and his soul.

We will explore some of its key passages, as they offer tremendous insight into the symbolism we have seen throughout the Seven Sermons.

Jung begins with the statement: The force of the God is frightful. And his soul responds:

[music]

“You shall experience even more of it. You are in the second age. The first age has been overcome. This is the age of the rulership of the son, whom you call the Frog God.

A third age will follow, the age of apportionment and harmonious power.”

My soul, where did you go? Did you go to the animals?

“I bind the Above with the Below. I bind God and animal. Something in me is part animal, something part God, and a third part human.

Below you serpent, within you man, and above you God. Beyond the serpent comes the phallus, then the earth, then the moon, and finally the coldness and emptiness of outer space. Above you comes the dove or the celestial soul, in which love and foresight are united, just as poison and shrewdness are united in
the serpent.

Shrewdness is the devil’s understanding, which always detects smaller things and finds chinks where you suspect none. If I am not conjoined through the uniting of the Below and the Above, I break down into three parts: the serpent, and in that or some other animal form I roam, living nature daimonically, arousing fear and longing.

The human soul, living forever within you. The celestial soul, as such dwelling with the Gods, far from you and unknown to you, appearing in the form of a bird. Each of these three parts then is independent.”

[end music cue]

This forms a kind of exegesis on the symbols we see throughout the Seven Sermons. What I find so fascinating is Jung’s soul begins by stating ‘I bind the Above with the Below.’

This is a statement that is most famously found in Alchemy. The notorious Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus begins with the statement:

“As above, so below
As below, so above,
In continuity,
To propagate the miracle of the One.”

The phrase appears spoken by Jung’s soul twice in this opening passage. Which makes me wonder, had Jung already studied the Emerald Tablet by this point, or did he discover this insight himself? Was it a phrase given to him by his soul?

If so… perhaps this was one of the motivations to pursue his passionate study of Alchemy in the coming years. Jung always spoke openly that he saw Alchemy as the continuation of the spirit of Gnosticism. And that this thread made its way all the way to the present in the form of psychology.

There is another place we find this phrase, ‘as above, so below’ mentioned…and I have not seen this mentioned anywhere else by any other writer or researcher. I just recently found it in the Gnostic scripture: The Gospel According to Philip. It is spoken by Jesus. In which he states:

“I have come to make the lower like the upper and the outer like the inner and to join them.”

Interesting stuff. Let the wild speculation begin!

Back to Jung’s cosmology text, there is also this very thought provoking phrase:

“The serpent has a female nature, forever seeking the company of those dead who are spellbound by the earth, and who did not find a way across to singleness.”

Jung is doing two things here. As he often does throughout the Seven Sermons themselves. It is like quantum writing, the text has two meanings at once.

In the one meaning, the serpent is the spiritual symbol, the original serpent of the Garden of Eden, which aids man in coming to consciousness. But in Jungian psychology, because he lends the serpent with a ‘female nature’ it could be interpreted as the Anima. Which is a personification of the unconscious which the mind seems to create, as a line of communication between the conscious and unconscious. Jungian theory claims that in men, the Anima is female and in women it is male, hence it is called the Animus.

The statement then mentions that the serpent ‘seeks the company of those dead who are spellbound by the earth, and who did not find a way across to singleness.’ Those ‘dead’ who are spellbound by the earth seems to refer directly to the dead which Jung will soon be meeting, when they ring his doorbell, and compel him to write the Seven Sermons to the Dead.

But curiously enough, the phrase ‘who did not find a way across to singleness’ seems to imply two things: the ultimate goal of individuation, which is a complete Self, with a capital ’S’, in which both conscious and unconscious are integrated fully. And it also implies something more mystical, which Jung will reveal in the final sermon, Sermon Seven. We will come back to that phrase later.

The other point to make about Jung’s cosmology text is his conception of the threefold nature of the soul, when it states “If I am not confined through the uniting of the Below and the Above, I break down into three parts: the serpent, and in that or some other animal form I roam, living nature daimonically, arousing fear and longing. The human soul, living forever within you. The celestial soul, as such dwelling with the Gods, far from you and unknown to you, appearing in the form of a bird. Each of these three parts then is independent.”

Jung mentions that the serpent lives through one ‘daemonically,’ he has used this term several times throughout the Seven Sermons, and it’s important to mention that it has nothing to do with demons. It comes from the root word, ‘daemon,’ d-a-e-m-o-n which is an ancient Greek term that means ‘a guiding spirit’ which can influence you and guide you unconsciously throughout your life. It’s interesting that he mentions this ‘daemon’ may appear in the form of another animal, not only a serpent. It makes me wonder if this is somehow connected with the concept of having a ‘spirit animal.’

A fun side note, if you ask someone “what are your top three favorite animals?” Their answer is usually a surprisingly revealing insight into their personality.

For example, my three favorites, currently, are ‘raven, wolf, and fox.’

In Jung’s cosmology text we also find the mention of individuation, he goes on:

“Man becomes through the principium individuationis . He strives for absolute individuality, through which he ever increasingly concentrates the absolute dissolution of the Pleroma.

Through this he makes the Pleroma the point that contains the greatest tension and is
itself a shining star, immeasurably small, just as the Pleroma is immeasurably great. The more concentrated the Pleroma becomes, the stronger the star of the individual becomes. It is surrounded by shining clouds, a heavenly body in the making, comparable to a small sun. It emits fire.

…just as an innumerable number of men rule the earth, so a countless number of stars and of Gods rule the celestial world.

To be sure, this God is the one who survives the death of men.

To him for whom solitude is Heaven, he goes to Heaven; to him for
whom it is Hell, he goes to Hell.

Whoever does not follow the principium individuationis to its end becomes no God, since he cannot bear individuality.

The dead who besiege us are souls who have not fulfilled the principium individuationis, or else they would have become distant stars. Insofar as we do not fulfill it, the dead have a claim on us and besiege us and we cannot escape them.”

It is here that we see something else. The principium individuationis is not a term found anywhere in Gnostic scriptures.

Jung is deliberately expanding on his own theory of individuation through this seemingly mystical text. It is a theory he has not yet shared with the public at this point, in 1916. Yet somehow, the engagement with this spiritual tradition is helping him elaborate these ideas.

If his aim is to find a place in the psyche where mythos is born, where religion is formed… he seems to have found it. And he is playfully fusing the intuitions of his psychological theories with the symbolic language of the Gnostic tradition.

When Freud and his circle dismissively called Jung a ‘mystic’… maybe they were not so far from the truth.

We are about to enter Sermon Seven. But before we do, it will be helpful to get one final overview of all we have learned in Sermons One through Six. The material is dense. So a quick review will help put everything into perspective as we hear the culmination of Jung’s sermons.

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 within 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.

Sermon Five: Explores the relationship between sexuality and spirituality, and the Jungian concept of the libido as a ‘psychic energy’ that arises from the tension between points in a duality.

Sermon Six: Elaborates on the threefold nature of the soul before the psyche is unified, that being: the serpent, the human soul, and the celestial soul, as represented by the white bird. This also opens the door to acknowledging Jung’s Gnostic cosmology, which includes elements not found in the original Gnostic scriptures, and which he writes in The Black Books before writing the Seven Sermons.

And now…

Sermon Seven…

[sermon music]

When the night had come, the dead again approached with pitiful gestures and said, ‘There is yet one matter we forgot to mention. Teach us about man.’

“Man is a gateway, through which you pass from the outer world of Gods, daemons, and souls into the inner world, out of the greater into the smaller world.

Small and inane is man, already he is behind you, and once again you find yourselves in endless space, in the smaller or inner infinity.

At immeasurable distance a lonely star stands in the zenith.

This is the one God of this one man, this is his world, his Pleroma, his divinity.

In this world, man is Abraxas, the creator and destroyer of his own world.

This star is the God and the goal of man.

This is his one guiding God, in him man goes to his rest, toward him goes the long journey of the soul after death, in him everything that man withdraws from the greater world shines resplendently.

To this one God man shall pray.

Prayer increases the light of the star, it casts a bridge across death, it prepares life for the smaller world, and assuages the hopeless desires of the greater.

When the greater world turns cold, the star shines.

Nothing stands between man and his one God, so long as man can turn away his eyes from the flaming spectacle of Abraxas.

Man here, God there.

Weakness and nothingness here, there eternally creative power. Here nothing but darkness and chilling moisture. There total sun.’

Whereupon the dead were silent…and ascended like the smoke above the shepherd’s fire, who through the night keeps watch over his flock.”

This is a truly appropriate ending passage to the Sermons. From Sermon One to Seven, Jung takes us from spiritual philosophy with a depth of psychological symbolism to a poetic vision that elicits a sense of awe… and mystery.

There is not much one can say about Sermon Seven without risking draining it of its magic.

… Jung presents us with an awe inspiring vision… He states that man is a gateway.

For what?

Consciousness.

He states:

“Man is a gateway, through which you pass from the outer world of Gods, daemons, and souls into the inner world, out of the greater into the smaller world.”

A gateway that allows consciousness to traverse from the higher realms of the Gods to the innermost realms of man.

Jung then presents us with another startling vision: that each individual soul has a destination, which is a star in the celestial expanse above, which is their God, and which is their destination.

But many things can hinder one from completing that journey. We are held here by Abraxas, which is deceptive reality. He states:

“Nothing stands between man and his one God, so long as man can turn away his eyes from the flaming spectacle of Abraxas.”

It’s become clear…

We are no longer viewing a psychologist exploring his curiosity about spiritual symbolism.

We are witnessing an intellectually curious individual on a spiritual journey.

This is not merely an intellectual exercise.

The Seven Sermons to the Dead is part of Jung’s personal spiritual journey.

Jung was seeking out and having meaningful spiritual experiences.

You see it in his letters, his lectures, his theories, you see it in his lifelong fascinations. And you see it in his most intimate thoughts.

Jung saw in Gnosticism and Alchemy not just the early remnants of psychology. It’s becoming clear that what he saw was something much more than that. He saw something in Gnosticism and Alchemy which modern psychology sorely lacked.

Jung saw that these ancient traditions seamlessly fused psychology and spirituality. The intellectual and the spiritual. That they somehow balanced objective and subjective experiences.

In the book, Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung tells us this:

“Today I can say that I have never lost touch with my initial
experiences. All my works, all my creative activity, has come from
those initial fantasies and dreams which began in 1912, almost fifty
years ago. Everything that I accomplished in later life was already
contained in them, although at first only in the form of emotions and
images.

My science was the only way I had of extricating myself from that
chaos. Otherwise the material would have trapped me in its thicket,
strangled me like jungle creepers. I took great care to try to
understand every single image, every item of my psychic inventory,
and to classify them scientifically–so far as this was possible–and,
above all, to realize them in actual life. That is what we usually
neglect to do. We allow the images to rise up, and maybe we
wonder about them, but that is all. We do not take the trouble to
understand them, let alone draw ethical conclusions from them. This
stopping-short conjures up the negative effects of the unconscious.

It is equally a grave mistake to think that it is enough to gain some
understanding of the images and that knowledge can here make a
halt. Insight into them must be converted into an ethical obligation.
Not to do so is to fall prey to the power principle, and this produces
dangerous effects which are destructive not only to others but even
to the knower. The images of the unconscious place a great
responsibility upon a man. Failure to understand them, or a shirking
of ethical responsibility, deprives him of his wholeness and
imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life.”

 

Jung’s goal in life… was to present to the world a form of psychology that revived that ancient approach. The balance of the intellectual and spiritual, the objective and the subjective.

As he states in the Red Book: “the task is to give birth to the old in a new time.”

His mission was to revive the dignity of the human spirit and the mystery of existence. And to convince us all, each and every single person–to turn inward…

And listen.

Without judgement, to listen deeply.

It’s that simple. That in that honest act, you replace intellect with experience. You replace conjecture with Gnosis.

[music]

Turn your gaze inward, do not judge what you find there, despite what you may fear that you will find there. Take those first steps through the inner door, and see what you are made of. What we are all made of. It’s a courageous work. And it’s a difficult task. But it is so–very–important.

All the more important today than it ever has been in the past. As Jung says, we must view it as an ethical responsibility.

And though people can guide you, a therapist can guide you, it is ultimately a journey we must all make alone–individually. No one can do it for you.

[beat]

Turn inward. Open the door. Take those courageous steps inside and see:

What am I made of?

[music]

CONCLUSION:

Well, it is done. The Seven Sermons series is complete.

It feels good…

I hope some of that made sense… or that I successfully conveyed the sense that it made to me. In approaching the research to this series, I was surprised that among Jungian enthusiasts, the Seven Sermons to the Dead is not often mentioned or explored. Yet, it’s obvious that Jung found it to be incredibly personally important. Which explains why we don’t find it in his Collected Works, but we do find it in his Red Book and his autobiography.

There’s one final mystery Jung has left for us which we didn’t mention in any of the episodes.

After the final lines of Sermon Seven, Jung leaves a strange anagram, written in all capital letters. At first glance they look like a nonsensical arrangement of letters without any rhyme or reason. But he marks it as Anagramma.

As far as I know, no one has solved this anagram yet. It is suspected that it may be based on Latin text, as Jung had a clear affinity for phrasing concepts in Latin.

I will include the anagram in the episode details, for those code breakers out there.

A number of books have been invaluable throughout this journey of writing the Seven Sermons series, these include:

Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Dr. Carl Jung & Anielle Jaffe
The Red Book by Dr. Carl Jung
The Gnostic Scriptures by Bentley Layton
The Gnostic Jung by Stephan Hoeller
The Gnostic Jung by Robert A. Segal
and Psychology of the Unconscious by Dr. Carl Jung

But we must remember that the intellectual stimulation is only one aspect of this work. The real and true value of all of this is when you apply these concepts in yourself and your own life.

There would be two routes to go for this. One, which I highly recommend, is seeing a Jungian analyst. This would be a psychotherapist who has certification as a Jungian analyst. This is an additional certification that a psychotherapist gets after they have completed their education and certification.

It’s so important to get professional help with matters of the unconscious. The mind is a tricky place.

The other route that is helpful, is picking up a book like Robert Johnson’s Inner Work. Robert Johnson was an author and Jungian analyst who wrote very practical guides on how to apply the insights of Analytical Psychology in your personal growth.

Again, that’s Robert Johnson’s book: Inner Work. I’m currently reading it, and it is excellent.

Shout-out and big thank you to my friend, Dr. Kelley O’Donnell, for recommending Robert Johnson’s work to me.

If you’ve enjoyed this Seven Sermons series… please, share it with a friend or colleague or anyone who you think would find it interesting. This is an entirely self funded passion project, we don’t have the big coffers of these boring million dollar podcast networks, so the main way Creative Codex grows is through this simple act of sharing.

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This has been Creative Codex. I am your host, MJDorian.

Until next time…

We’ll give Dr. Carl Jung the final word:

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.”

[end]

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