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Jung's Collected Works #9B
Aion: Estudos sobre o simbolismo do si-mesmo (Obras completas de Carl Gustav Jung)
O livro trata do simbolismo e da fenomenologia do arquétipo do si-mesmo, comparando-o com a principal manifestação religiosa do Ocidente: a figura de Cristo.
389 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1951
512 people are currently reading
7,159 people want to read
About the author
C.G. Jung
1,771books10.6kfollowersCarl Gustav Jung (/jʊŋ/; German: [ˈkarl ˈɡʊstaf jʊŋ]), often referred to as C. G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious. His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, philosophy, archeology, anthropology, literature, and related fields. He was a prolific writer, many of whose works were not published until after his death.
The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.
Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a popular psychometric instrument, has been developed from Jung's theory of psychological types.
Though he was a practising clinician and considered himself to be a scientist, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas such as Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic, although his ambition was to be seen as a man of science. His influence on popular psychology, the "psychologization of religion", spirituality and the New Age movement has been immense.
The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.
Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a popular psychometric instrument, has been developed from Jung's theory of psychological types.
Though he was a practising clinician and considered himself to be a scientist, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas such as Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic, although his ambition was to be seen as a man of science. His influence on popular psychology, the "psychologization of religion", spirituality and the New Age movement has been immense.
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April 11, 2025
WE SHALL NOT CEASE FROM EXPLORATION
AND THE END OF ALL OUR EXPLORING WILL BE TO ARRIVE BACK
AT THE PLACE WE STARTED, AND KNOW THE PLACE FOR THE FIRST TIME.
T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding
The key to our individual traumatic memories is the key to our WORLD.
Jung's ultimate meaning is simple: God Lives in our Heart. But our boredom and sophistication covers Him from our view.
Carl Jung found his way back home at the end of his life, and so finally found peace.
Gaston Bachelard once surmised that our first home rules the order and priority of all our subconscious memories, and his Poetics of Space shows us how.
So let's see what we do in fact remember of our earliest years: a mental snapshot or two maybe, feelings of warmth and contentment, perhaps, as well?
It all seems a jumble in retrospect. But Jung seems to ask us: "What did it all mean? Can we make a pattern emerge from that painful but Golden Age?" He says we can. And the pattern is myth and its synchronicitous meaning.
So, thus armed, we enter boldly "into our first world," the lost world of our childhood.
As Carl Jung did in the roughcut precursor to Aion, The Red Book. And as I did when abruptly sequestered and medicated for the crime of carrying my naive and as yet innocent heart, whole, into the onset of my adulthood.
The modern world cannot long tolerate ingenuousness.
And so, as befits any victim of corruption - as witness the writings of Rene Girard on the theory of the Scapegoat - Trolls and Trogs, Princes and Saints became the stuff of our phantasmagoric dreams, enacted in our daily lives.
Induced insanity, you may call it: but whether induced by natural or traumatic means, its creatures have a reality all their own. And Jung is right: this process of oneiric reduction, as is the case of stovetop cooking reduction, produces a greater solidity into our dreams. Until they become daylight reality.
These solid forms Jung calls archetypes. And when, as William Blake said, the worlds of innocence and experience, fluidity and solidity, collide, the resulting reduction produces a straitened peace.
And happened when I then SAW the veracity of Christianity. Christianity is based on a jarring injustice, a Miscarriage of true justice. But aborted justice knows no peace - and so “serves to compel the recognition it precedes.�
Such recognition is the Key to Incarnation.
Miscarried justice is a “pointing to, a requiring� of insight into the hidden workings of the world, a world whose Dark Side cannot be sidestepped. And the duality of Jung's cosmic Mandala finds its source at its Centre - "the still point of the turning world."
Serendipity can produce that insight of a centre, as can a glimpse into the circularity of our thoughts and moods. Equanimity is the result. And the peace of equanimity, Jung seems to say, is therefore in the acceptance of the world as It is - with its joy and light, darkness and depravity.
The instruments for seeing all this are Carl Jung's jarringly original theories, which we must not just read and try to assimilate, but read, think about and RELATE to our own First World.
The monsters and Dark Beings, as in Narnia, are many as we progress - so we must keep alert. We have to, as Keats said, "willingly suspend our belief," but as well " judge not that we not be judged:" willingly suspend all judgement.
Caution is key. Read this book SLOWLY.
And if you are lucky, you will see what your lost childhood really MEANS...
After your Self is discarded in the enormous expenditure of energy that is the Cross - as in the Lost Wax method of ancient scupture -
The shameful pain of excising our Ego is at last over.
We are finally there, finally Free in the Light of Common Day.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Along the path we never took
To the door we never opened...
Jung is right.
Aging should be a process of slowly rediscovering our Selves in our books:
And loving the transformation we see happening within us, into a state of being utterly at home with our lives.
Are you willing to take the leap into the origin of all your troubled dreams?
If you have the kind of subconscious buried trauma that I had, rather than see and misunderstand it:
READ this intensely complicated, but endlessly compelling, masterpiece -
Before that buried trauma buries YOU!
For it's the Key to your Inmost SELF, and your FREEDOM.
AND THE END OF ALL OUR EXPLORING WILL BE TO ARRIVE BACK
AT THE PLACE WE STARTED, AND KNOW THE PLACE FOR THE FIRST TIME.
T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding
The key to our individual traumatic memories is the key to our WORLD.
Jung's ultimate meaning is simple: God Lives in our Heart. But our boredom and sophistication covers Him from our view.
Carl Jung found his way back home at the end of his life, and so finally found peace.
Gaston Bachelard once surmised that our first home rules the order and priority of all our subconscious memories, and his Poetics of Space shows us how.
So let's see what we do in fact remember of our earliest years: a mental snapshot or two maybe, feelings of warmth and contentment, perhaps, as well?
It all seems a jumble in retrospect. But Jung seems to ask us: "What did it all mean? Can we make a pattern emerge from that painful but Golden Age?" He says we can. And the pattern is myth and its synchronicitous meaning.
So, thus armed, we enter boldly "into our first world," the lost world of our childhood.
As Carl Jung did in the roughcut precursor to Aion, The Red Book. And as I did when abruptly sequestered and medicated for the crime of carrying my naive and as yet innocent heart, whole, into the onset of my adulthood.
The modern world cannot long tolerate ingenuousness.
And so, as befits any victim of corruption - as witness the writings of Rene Girard on the theory of the Scapegoat - Trolls and Trogs, Princes and Saints became the stuff of our phantasmagoric dreams, enacted in our daily lives.
Induced insanity, you may call it: but whether induced by natural or traumatic means, its creatures have a reality all their own. And Jung is right: this process of oneiric reduction, as is the case of stovetop cooking reduction, produces a greater solidity into our dreams. Until they become daylight reality.
These solid forms Jung calls archetypes. And when, as William Blake said, the worlds of innocence and experience, fluidity and solidity, collide, the resulting reduction produces a straitened peace.
And happened when I then SAW the veracity of Christianity. Christianity is based on a jarring injustice, a Miscarriage of true justice. But aborted justice knows no peace - and so “serves to compel the recognition it precedes.�
Such recognition is the Key to Incarnation.
Miscarried justice is a “pointing to, a requiring� of insight into the hidden workings of the world, a world whose Dark Side cannot be sidestepped. And the duality of Jung's cosmic Mandala finds its source at its Centre - "the still point of the turning world."
Serendipity can produce that insight of a centre, as can a glimpse into the circularity of our thoughts and moods. Equanimity is the result. And the peace of equanimity, Jung seems to say, is therefore in the acceptance of the world as It is - with its joy and light, darkness and depravity.
The instruments for seeing all this are Carl Jung's jarringly original theories, which we must not just read and try to assimilate, but read, think about and RELATE to our own First World.
The monsters and Dark Beings, as in Narnia, are many as we progress - so we must keep alert. We have to, as Keats said, "willingly suspend our belief," but as well " judge not that we not be judged:" willingly suspend all judgement.
Caution is key. Read this book SLOWLY.
And if you are lucky, you will see what your lost childhood really MEANS...
After your Self is discarded in the enormous expenditure of energy that is the Cross - as in the Lost Wax method of ancient scupture -
The shameful pain of excising our Ego is at last over.
We are finally there, finally Free in the Light of Common Day.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Along the path we never took
To the door we never opened...
Jung is right.
Aging should be a process of slowly rediscovering our Selves in our books:
And loving the transformation we see happening within us, into a state of being utterly at home with our lives.
Are you willing to take the leap into the origin of all your troubled dreams?
If you have the kind of subconscious buried trauma that I had, rather than see and misunderstand it:
READ this intensely complicated, but endlessly compelling, masterpiece -
Before that buried trauma buries YOU!
For it's the Key to your Inmost SELF, and your FREEDOM.
January 2, 2015
Jung wrote this book while working on another book: Mysterium Coniuntionis. Something made him start Aion, I think he realized that Christ represented the Archetype of the Self, and the age of Pisces (the fishes) began with Christ, which in turn was symbolized by a fish. So synchronistic that he started looking for the fish symbol in Pagan, Christian, Gnostic, and alchemy books and manuscripts. He was also puzzled and amazed by how the history of Christianity could have been predicted by the transit of the vernal equinox over the shape of the actual constellation of Pisces.
This was a late work by Jung and I think he realized how important was the archetype of the Self.
It is not an easy book, I reread and studied it for over a year, yet for me it is his best book.
I think he wrote an important paper titled "on synchronicity" for an Eranos lecture while working on Aion. It was going to be his last Eranos (perhaps he did one more paper). But definitely Aion was such an inspiration that if he had lived longer he would have written about the next Aion: Aquarius. He only failed to find its symbol: Prometheus. Richard Tarnas found it for him a few decades after Jung's death.
This was a late work by Jung and I think he realized how important was the archetype of the Self.
It is not an easy book, I reread and studied it for over a year, yet for me it is his best book.
I think he wrote an important paper titled "on synchronicity" for an Eranos lecture while working on Aion. It was going to be his last Eranos (perhaps he did one more paper). But definitely Aion was such an inspiration that if he had lived longer he would have written about the next Aion: Aquarius. He only failed to find its symbol: Prometheus. Richard Tarnas found it for him a few decades after Jung's death.
May 13, 2020
Jungian psychoanalysis at its best.
Jung presents his theories of the collective subconscious and the relationship to the ego in a lucid and compelling manner. I find it interesting to read Jung himself and then read books by people about his theories. I often feel like they miss several of his main points. For example, I have read authors that discuss his use of archetypes, yet they typically gloss over the self and the integration symbols that represent the unification and individuation of the psyche. Jung was a Protestant and saw the archetypes as potentially pagan in a negative manner, and saw the lack of correctly understanding the divine/human symbol as leading backwards into a more brutish existence, as seen in several world events.
Jung presents his theories of the collective subconscious and the relationship to the ego in a lucid and compelling manner. I find it interesting to read Jung himself and then read books by people about his theories. I often feel like they miss several of his main points. For example, I have read authors that discuss his use of archetypes, yet they typically gloss over the self and the integration symbols that represent the unification and individuation of the psyche. Jung was a Protestant and saw the archetypes as potentially pagan in a negative manner, and saw the lack of correctly understanding the divine/human symbol as leading backwards into a more brutish existence, as seen in several world events.
April 21, 2015
Jung keeps on astounding me with his argumentative capabilities. As soon as he approaches a subject of which he thinks he doesn't have sufficient knowledge, he states it very clearly to remind us that he is a human being just as we are - by doing that, he doesn't only create a bond between the reader and him but also confidently - but still humbly - highlights his nature, his Self.
Despite doing it in the matters of subject, Jung never comes across as an expert in his manner of speech/written word. Especially in this book, he constructively builds notion upon a notion, idea upon an idea, knowledge upon knowledge and intuitive insight upon intuitive insight. In the end, everything connects into a beautiful whole, which barely reminded me of bare intellectual effort but rather of a beautiful journey into the heart of human cognitive processes.
As I started to comprehend more and more about our subconscious drives while reading the book, I started noticing that the very nature of Jung's writing wholly transcends his subconscious. I felt the flow of his words going straight through me, not leaving me just intelectually thrilled but also in a state of calmness, especially when realizing that the (dualistic) notion of double human nature (conscious/subconscious) barely has any propagator in the 21st century western world.
There is no institution that would openly accept the darker side of human nature. In our everyday language, there's barely an expression that allows us to say that we are feeling our darker side emerging. We fear that saying something like that will get us into some sort of mental institution. Our dream language has become quick money for people who trivialize the beautiful and meaningful state of dreaming and therefore we can't even openly talk about the state, in which we spend about a third of our lives. There's no symbols that would remind us everyday of our inner nature.
What we have in today's world is a bunch of ballast. Bunch of things that only take space on our "boat" and make it heavy, but barely contribute to our well-being and progress as individuals as well as species. Rather than that, it contributes to stereotyping, marginalizing; it produces emotions of hatred, greed, self-loathing, self-judging and so on... nothing constructive.
But it has not always been like that. Alchemists and gnostics have long searched through various patterns, trying to make sense out of them. We still have remnants of these group planted in the western society. On the other hand, Christian religion is based on looking up, into the heights, ignoring the depths of a human being. Jung not only juxtaposes these different theories in a way not to overly criticize any of them (seeing the logic behind religions obviously makes him highly objective, even though he often includes good subjective remarks), but also informs the western reader about the world he lives in - what ideological backgrounds are there in the western world, that still emanate in one way or another in western ways of thinking, in its social narrative.
What I found most interesting is the relatively simple basis for this book - uncovering the "Self" through our Shadow and Anima/Animus. Each person has a subconscious alter-ego of the opposite sex - males have "Anima's", females have "Animuses". Very interesting is Jung's notions that in some cultures of the past, people's subconscious (Animas, Animuses) were recognized as gods. When we think of how we comprehend our subconscious today, in the rational age, we see that we are highly confused by something, that we think was discovered in the 20th century, but has actually been the main topic of psychological/philosophical discourse since the emergence of first civilizations.
Moreover, Jung exposes universal symbols that pop-up in the acts, in which our subconscious is active, such as sleep or different other transgressions. He talks about the astrologic sign of Pisces (two fish, which are turned to face one another or to swim in different directions, symbolizing the struggle between conscious and subconscious, Jesus and Devil and so on) and Snake, which is shown in various cultures in the act of eating it's own tail. What intrigued me most was exactly this; self-eating snake is a circle, and on circles, triangles and squares our actual personalities and human dynamics are based.
Basically, we are rotating in circles, but these circles are highly positive for our development if we only learn to comprehend them correctly, so not as something that is neccessarily bad. Our consciousness is in its core a tail-eating snake; as we get information, we make sense of it, interiorize it and in the end materialize it. The materialisation is the final act of the process of heightening our consciousness, arriving to the next level. But we have to go through the dark parts of ourselves; through parts that might not withhold any light whatsoever; through parts that sometimes emanate in perfect evil.
Sadly, we have no mechanism in our society to encourage that journey - more or less, people are forced to go onto that journey by themselves and when they find themselves face-to-face with their own evil twin and react badly, they are instantly marked as crazy. In other cases, drugs offer the seemingly mystical experience that we cannot get in our meaningless society. Moreover, I strongly believe in concepts of animas and I think that these subconscious parts of human beings, when not being allowed (being shaded by the Shadow) to coalesce with conscience, start behaving very strangely. They become their own entity, split from conscience, and, if not illuminated by realization, something that Jung hold in very high-esteem, entirely take over. Is maybe that the key factor in realising why the male/female roles have switched so rapidly? Why females are often highly agressive while many males tend to move away into an defensive position?
I think that the roles got us highly confused, and as we were trained to see any meaning behind them as stupid and violent, at some point we stopped making sense of the world and fell into an abyss of pure collective unconscious that has become pretty scary. We have to learn about things that Jung writes about, it's absolutely critical for our well being as individuals and as a whole. We need meaning and a feeling of interconnectedness with not only with people around us but also with everything that surrounds us. Is it really infinite if we are able to make it finite?
Despite doing it in the matters of subject, Jung never comes across as an expert in his manner of speech/written word. Especially in this book, he constructively builds notion upon a notion, idea upon an idea, knowledge upon knowledge and intuitive insight upon intuitive insight. In the end, everything connects into a beautiful whole, which barely reminded me of bare intellectual effort but rather of a beautiful journey into the heart of human cognitive processes.
As I started to comprehend more and more about our subconscious drives while reading the book, I started noticing that the very nature of Jung's writing wholly transcends his subconscious. I felt the flow of his words going straight through me, not leaving me just intelectually thrilled but also in a state of calmness, especially when realizing that the (dualistic) notion of double human nature (conscious/subconscious) barely has any propagator in the 21st century western world.
There is no institution that would openly accept the darker side of human nature. In our everyday language, there's barely an expression that allows us to say that we are feeling our darker side emerging. We fear that saying something like that will get us into some sort of mental institution. Our dream language has become quick money for people who trivialize the beautiful and meaningful state of dreaming and therefore we can't even openly talk about the state, in which we spend about a third of our lives. There's no symbols that would remind us everyday of our inner nature.
What we have in today's world is a bunch of ballast. Bunch of things that only take space on our "boat" and make it heavy, but barely contribute to our well-being and progress as individuals as well as species. Rather than that, it contributes to stereotyping, marginalizing; it produces emotions of hatred, greed, self-loathing, self-judging and so on... nothing constructive.
But it has not always been like that. Alchemists and gnostics have long searched through various patterns, trying to make sense out of them. We still have remnants of these group planted in the western society. On the other hand, Christian religion is based on looking up, into the heights, ignoring the depths of a human being. Jung not only juxtaposes these different theories in a way not to overly criticize any of them (seeing the logic behind religions obviously makes him highly objective, even though he often includes good subjective remarks), but also informs the western reader about the world he lives in - what ideological backgrounds are there in the western world, that still emanate in one way or another in western ways of thinking, in its social narrative.
What I found most interesting is the relatively simple basis for this book - uncovering the "Self" through our Shadow and Anima/Animus. Each person has a subconscious alter-ego of the opposite sex - males have "Anima's", females have "Animuses". Very interesting is Jung's notions that in some cultures of the past, people's subconscious (Animas, Animuses) were recognized as gods. When we think of how we comprehend our subconscious today, in the rational age, we see that we are highly confused by something, that we think was discovered in the 20th century, but has actually been the main topic of psychological/philosophical discourse since the emergence of first civilizations.
Moreover, Jung exposes universal symbols that pop-up in the acts, in which our subconscious is active, such as sleep or different other transgressions. He talks about the astrologic sign of Pisces (two fish, which are turned to face one another or to swim in different directions, symbolizing the struggle between conscious and subconscious, Jesus and Devil and so on) and Snake, which is shown in various cultures in the act of eating it's own tail. What intrigued me most was exactly this; self-eating snake is a circle, and on circles, triangles and squares our actual personalities and human dynamics are based.
Basically, we are rotating in circles, but these circles are highly positive for our development if we only learn to comprehend them correctly, so not as something that is neccessarily bad. Our consciousness is in its core a tail-eating snake; as we get information, we make sense of it, interiorize it and in the end materialize it. The materialisation is the final act of the process of heightening our consciousness, arriving to the next level. But we have to go through the dark parts of ourselves; through parts that might not withhold any light whatsoever; through parts that sometimes emanate in perfect evil.
Sadly, we have no mechanism in our society to encourage that journey - more or less, people are forced to go onto that journey by themselves and when they find themselves face-to-face with their own evil twin and react badly, they are instantly marked as crazy. In other cases, drugs offer the seemingly mystical experience that we cannot get in our meaningless society. Moreover, I strongly believe in concepts of animas and I think that these subconscious parts of human beings, when not being allowed (being shaded by the Shadow) to coalesce with conscience, start behaving very strangely. They become their own entity, split from conscience, and, if not illuminated by realization, something that Jung hold in very high-esteem, entirely take over. Is maybe that the key factor in realising why the male/female roles have switched so rapidly? Why females are often highly agressive while many males tend to move away into an defensive position?
I think that the roles got us highly confused, and as we were trained to see any meaning behind them as stupid and violent, at some point we stopped making sense of the world and fell into an abyss of pure collective unconscious that has become pretty scary. We have to learn about things that Jung writes about, it's absolutely critical for our well being as individuals and as a whole. We need meaning and a feeling of interconnectedness with not only with people around us but also with everything that surrounds us. Is it really infinite if we are able to make it finite?
June 19, 2018
I’d like to use this review to provide something of a skeleton key with which other readers might unlock and unpack the contents of this singularly opaque work of depth psychology. If you’re reading this, it’s fair to assume that you’ve probably read Jung before, or are at least somewhat familiar with his ideas.
If you’re new to Jung, I would not recommend Aion as the place to start; you’ll be totally lost and prone to dismiss the man as a crackpot. I would start with his memoir, titled Memories, Dreams, Reflections, or with a very short work of his entitled Psychology and Religion. Either of those works will help you find your bearings in the thought-world of this ingenious and idiosyncratic thinker.
Aion, as its subtitle indicates, is a book about the Self; but the Self, for Jung, has a very particular meaning; a depth and breadth with which it is not commonly endowed. The Jungian Self is an archetype representing psychic totality, the coalescence of the conscious and unconscious contents of the psychic life of the individual.
As such, it is not to be conflated with the Ego, which serves as the center of the field of consciousness and from which we draw our most immediate, day-to-day sense of who we are. The Ego is enveloped in the Self; it’s a submarine pressed about by pressures external to it, a bushel-basket-light of conscious reflection plumbing the dark depths of the ocean of you. Beyond the field of consciousness lies an incomprehensible vastness, a reservoir of psychic contents—archetypes: symbolic patterns of being established through the ages of man and stretching back into our animal past.
This hidden world is as much a part of us as our conscious minds—perhaps even more so—exerting an unseen but all-pervading influence over us. Our entire psychological development consists of the process by which our Ego interfaces with these ancient archetypes; incorporating them into our lives to adorn them with meaning, or, if we’re not wary, being possessed and destroyed by them.
Every level of our psychological lives, then—the ego, the shadow, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious—is contained within the archetype of the Self. The Self exists, therefore, on multiple planes of being simultaneously, from the most mundane to the most profound. It’s the regret you feel for spending $300 on a pair of jeans that have been professionally bleached and shredded at the knees, and it’s a vast cognitive root system with tendrils that predate the dinosaurs.
In its unconscious aspect, the origins of the Self are bound up with the origins of life. Further still, the origins of the Self may be said to run right out of the realm of history and into the realm of ontology; the phenomenology of the Self is also the phenomenology of being—of existence itself. Pretty trippy, right?
Each of us is at once finite and eternal, human and divine; much like a somewhat famous person from history is said to have been. For Jung, Christ is the foundational symbol of the Self for Western Civilization. As the inheritors of Christian culture, our concepts of self-actualization rely on a far deeper archaeology of Christian presuppositions than we can even grapple with intellectually. Christianity is the air we breathe.
But it bears emphasizing that Christ is a symbol of the Self, and not the other way around. The archetype predates the Christian symbolism it underlies; Christianity became the cultural presupposition of the West because it provided a workable narrative configuration of the Self, related archetypes like the anima/animus syzygy, and the process of self-actualization or individuation. It did not produce these archetypal structures; it arranged them in a manner that largely avoided doing violence to their essential nature and allowed them to function.
It did not do so perfectly, however. For Jung, the chief failure of Christian orthodoxy has been its failure to properly recognize and accommodate the dark, unconscious, and evil aspects of psychological life which are necessary components for the realization of the Self. Some of the earliest Christians, especially certain Gnostic sects, seemed to have an understanding that Christ represented not only a union of the human and the divine, but also of light and darkness, life and death, and good and evil.
Using the matrix of orthodox Christianity, Christ was simultaneously the incarnation of God and the incarnation of Satan; he contained a polarity within him, and he reconciled these poles through his redemptive death, which we might characterize as representing the dethroning and reemergence of the Ego through the incorporation of the archetype of the Self. Like Christ, each of us contains a polarity that penetrates to the core of our being—between our persona and its antipodal shadow, between the conscious and the unconscious, between the Ego and the Self. In a sense, everything we think we are relies on a suppression of its opposite. The archetype of the Self, if it is to be actualized, will insist on a confrontation with this hidden darkness. This experience is a harrowing one, but the alternative is a life lived in the vein of Greek tragedy; a life in which we are beset by the progeny of our self-deception under the guise of fate.
According to Jung, Christianity lost this understanding in its struggle with Manicheanism. The Manicheans believed that good and evil were eternal, fixed cosmic poles. Understanding Christ merely as the conqueror of evil, Christian orthodoxy set itself apart from Manicheanism by denying the reality of evil altogether. This denial became dogmatized with the promulgation of the doctrine of evil as privatio boni: the privation of good.
By this understanding, evil has no substance of its own; it is rather a lack, an incompleteness on the fringes of the created order, which, like the creator Himself, can only be good and lifegiving. Rather than incorporating evil, Christian orthodoxy repudiated it and cast it into outer darkness, where it took the form of the antichrist and the beast of Revelation in the Christian imagination.
Jung stresses that he is working in the field of psychology and has no wish to stray into theology, but it’s clear that he thinks the Gnostics, with their quest for self-knowledge, were the better psychologists. The orthodox Christian denial of the polarity of opposites constitutes a corruption of the God-image; and since the God-image is a symbol of the Self, denial of the evil within God also mutilates the human personality. Jung feared this would have disastrous consequences for the bipolar world of the Cold War era.
A significant portion of Aion is dedicated to a discussion of fish symbolism in astrology, alchemy, and late Jewish and early Christian scripture.
In astrology, the sign of the fishes represents the Age of Pisces, characterized predominantly by (what else) the opposition of antipodal forces. Christ is said to have been born under the sign of Pisces, essentially inaugurating the Piscean Age. Various planetary alignments observed through the centuries in which two “opposing� planets aligned with each other are said to have marked the beginnings of various Christian holiness movements.
The Italian Renaissance brought about a great enantiodromia—a union of opposites—and in so doing marked the eclipsing of the Piscean age of oppositions and foreshadowed the coming union of opposites in the Age of Aquarius, which will allegedly begin in the third millennium.
In the Hebrew scriptures, the creaturely nemesis of Yahweh is said to be Leviathan, the great sea-serpent. In later scriptures, this opposition splits into two; with Leviathan, the beast of the sea, and Behemoth, the beast of the land, representing opposing forces in the unconscious. Jung compares this symbolism to the splitting of the two fishes.
The medieval alchemists spoke of a round-shaped fish which they identified with the lapis philosophorum. This fish was said to burn the water with an internal heat said to represent both the fire of Hell and the divine light that shone through the saints and enveloped the burning bush without consuming it. This round fish was said to represent Christ, (and, by extension, the Self) because like Christ, it burned with Godly fire even while submerged in the cold water of sin. None of these intellectual currents—Christianity, astrology, or alchemy—necessarily adopted this elevation of fish symbolism from the others. Rather, they all drew from a common source; and that source was the archetype of the Self operating within them.
Be sure to wear a helmet when you’re reading this one.
If you’re new to Jung, I would not recommend Aion as the place to start; you’ll be totally lost and prone to dismiss the man as a crackpot. I would start with his memoir, titled Memories, Dreams, Reflections, or with a very short work of his entitled Psychology and Religion. Either of those works will help you find your bearings in the thought-world of this ingenious and idiosyncratic thinker.
Aion, as its subtitle indicates, is a book about the Self; but the Self, for Jung, has a very particular meaning; a depth and breadth with which it is not commonly endowed. The Jungian Self is an archetype representing psychic totality, the coalescence of the conscious and unconscious contents of the psychic life of the individual.
As such, it is not to be conflated with the Ego, which serves as the center of the field of consciousness and from which we draw our most immediate, day-to-day sense of who we are. The Ego is enveloped in the Self; it’s a submarine pressed about by pressures external to it, a bushel-basket-light of conscious reflection plumbing the dark depths of the ocean of you. Beyond the field of consciousness lies an incomprehensible vastness, a reservoir of psychic contents—archetypes: symbolic patterns of being established through the ages of man and stretching back into our animal past.
This hidden world is as much a part of us as our conscious minds—perhaps even more so—exerting an unseen but all-pervading influence over us. Our entire psychological development consists of the process by which our Ego interfaces with these ancient archetypes; incorporating them into our lives to adorn them with meaning, or, if we’re not wary, being possessed and destroyed by them.
Every level of our psychological lives, then—the ego, the shadow, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious—is contained within the archetype of the Self. The Self exists, therefore, on multiple planes of being simultaneously, from the most mundane to the most profound. It’s the regret you feel for spending $300 on a pair of jeans that have been professionally bleached and shredded at the knees, and it’s a vast cognitive root system with tendrils that predate the dinosaurs.
In its unconscious aspect, the origins of the Self are bound up with the origins of life. Further still, the origins of the Self may be said to run right out of the realm of history and into the realm of ontology; the phenomenology of the Self is also the phenomenology of being—of existence itself. Pretty trippy, right?
Each of us is at once finite and eternal, human and divine; much like a somewhat famous person from history is said to have been. For Jung, Christ is the foundational symbol of the Self for Western Civilization. As the inheritors of Christian culture, our concepts of self-actualization rely on a far deeper archaeology of Christian presuppositions than we can even grapple with intellectually. Christianity is the air we breathe.
But it bears emphasizing that Christ is a symbol of the Self, and not the other way around. The archetype predates the Christian symbolism it underlies; Christianity became the cultural presupposition of the West because it provided a workable narrative configuration of the Self, related archetypes like the anima/animus syzygy, and the process of self-actualization or individuation. It did not produce these archetypal structures; it arranged them in a manner that largely avoided doing violence to their essential nature and allowed them to function.
It did not do so perfectly, however. For Jung, the chief failure of Christian orthodoxy has been its failure to properly recognize and accommodate the dark, unconscious, and evil aspects of psychological life which are necessary components for the realization of the Self. Some of the earliest Christians, especially certain Gnostic sects, seemed to have an understanding that Christ represented not only a union of the human and the divine, but also of light and darkness, life and death, and good and evil.
Using the matrix of orthodox Christianity, Christ was simultaneously the incarnation of God and the incarnation of Satan; he contained a polarity within him, and he reconciled these poles through his redemptive death, which we might characterize as representing the dethroning and reemergence of the Ego through the incorporation of the archetype of the Self. Like Christ, each of us contains a polarity that penetrates to the core of our being—between our persona and its antipodal shadow, between the conscious and the unconscious, between the Ego and the Self. In a sense, everything we think we are relies on a suppression of its opposite. The archetype of the Self, if it is to be actualized, will insist on a confrontation with this hidden darkness. This experience is a harrowing one, but the alternative is a life lived in the vein of Greek tragedy; a life in which we are beset by the progeny of our self-deception under the guise of fate.
According to Jung, Christianity lost this understanding in its struggle with Manicheanism. The Manicheans believed that good and evil were eternal, fixed cosmic poles. Understanding Christ merely as the conqueror of evil, Christian orthodoxy set itself apart from Manicheanism by denying the reality of evil altogether. This denial became dogmatized with the promulgation of the doctrine of evil as privatio boni: the privation of good.
By this understanding, evil has no substance of its own; it is rather a lack, an incompleteness on the fringes of the created order, which, like the creator Himself, can only be good and lifegiving. Rather than incorporating evil, Christian orthodoxy repudiated it and cast it into outer darkness, where it took the form of the antichrist and the beast of Revelation in the Christian imagination.
Jung stresses that he is working in the field of psychology and has no wish to stray into theology, but it’s clear that he thinks the Gnostics, with their quest for self-knowledge, were the better psychologists. The orthodox Christian denial of the polarity of opposites constitutes a corruption of the God-image; and since the God-image is a symbol of the Self, denial of the evil within God also mutilates the human personality. Jung feared this would have disastrous consequences for the bipolar world of the Cold War era.
A significant portion of Aion is dedicated to a discussion of fish symbolism in astrology, alchemy, and late Jewish and early Christian scripture.
In astrology, the sign of the fishes represents the Age of Pisces, characterized predominantly by (what else) the opposition of antipodal forces. Christ is said to have been born under the sign of Pisces, essentially inaugurating the Piscean Age. Various planetary alignments observed through the centuries in which two “opposing� planets aligned with each other are said to have marked the beginnings of various Christian holiness movements.
The Italian Renaissance brought about a great enantiodromia—a union of opposites—and in so doing marked the eclipsing of the Piscean age of oppositions and foreshadowed the coming union of opposites in the Age of Aquarius, which will allegedly begin in the third millennium.
In the Hebrew scriptures, the creaturely nemesis of Yahweh is said to be Leviathan, the great sea-serpent. In later scriptures, this opposition splits into two; with Leviathan, the beast of the sea, and Behemoth, the beast of the land, representing opposing forces in the unconscious. Jung compares this symbolism to the splitting of the two fishes.
The medieval alchemists spoke of a round-shaped fish which they identified with the lapis philosophorum. This fish was said to burn the water with an internal heat said to represent both the fire of Hell and the divine light that shone through the saints and enveloped the burning bush without consuming it. This round fish was said to represent Christ, (and, by extension, the Self) because like Christ, it burned with Godly fire even while submerged in the cold water of sin. None of these intellectual currents—Christianity, astrology, or alchemy—necessarily adopted this elevation of fish symbolism from the others. Rather, they all drew from a common source; and that source was the archetype of the Self operating within them.
Be sure to wear a helmet when you’re reading this one.
April 9, 2022
I wrote a fairly long paper on how I understand this book. To my disappointment GoodReads does not allow such a long overview. It clocks in at 3300 words, so I will link my Google Drive if anyone wishes to read it.
June 13, 2023
I've been reading this book for about 2.5 years now, and it's been a good companion, even and especially when put down.
This book asks a lot of the reader. He will quote Latin without translation and myth-figures without myth and expects you to have at least some familiarity with all of it. I'm flattered to think he had so much faith in humanity.
My honest critique of the book is his prose, as usual. He constantly goes too fast, too dense. He has his moments of simple beauty, but they are easily missed between his multi-page diatribes on why jellyfish do and/or do not count as piscean archetypes.
In a way, he writes and thinks in the same way a bee collects honey. He visits one culture after another and, when enough has stuck to him, he regurgitates the flowing liquid back out and arranges it in a semi-solid lattice-work of themes. It's thick and dense, but the sweetness justifies the consumption.
This book asks a lot of the reader. He will quote Latin without translation and myth-figures without myth and expects you to have at least some familiarity with all of it. I'm flattered to think he had so much faith in humanity.
My honest critique of the book is his prose, as usual. He constantly goes too fast, too dense. He has his moments of simple beauty, but they are easily missed between his multi-page diatribes on why jellyfish do and/or do not count as piscean archetypes.
In a way, he writes and thinks in the same way a bee collects honey. He visits one culture after another and, when enough has stuck to him, he regurgitates the flowing liquid back out and arranges it in a semi-solid lattice-work of themes. It's thick and dense, but the sweetness justifies the consumption.
December 21, 2013
This is definitely not the book to start with if you are unfamiliar with Jung. Appearing as the second part of the two-book Volume 9 of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Aion should be saved for close to the end of one's studies along with the more formidably titled Mysterium Coniunctionis.
I did not know this, reading this volume before being able to fully appreciate it.
I did not know this, reading this volume before being able to fully appreciate it.
November 11, 2019
Ότι καλύτερο διάβασα τον τελευταίο καιρό! Ένας ψυχολόγος ίσος σε οξυδερκεια με τον νιτσε, αλλά μακράν πιο ώριμος και συνειδητοποιημενος! Δεν έχω τίποτα άλλο να πω!
March 11, 2025
Карл Ґустав Юнґ
"AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"
Переклад Катерини Котюк
Видавництво "Астролябія"
"Виглядає так, наче з приходом Христа проявилися доти латентні протилежності, наче якийсь маятник потужно хитнувся було в один бік, а тепер здійснює комплементарний рух ув інший бік. Кажуть, що жодне дерево не може дорости до небес, хіба що його коріння сягне пекла. Подвійний сенс руху лежить у природі маятника. Христос бездоганний, однак уже на початку його кар'єри відбулася зустріч із Сатаною, супротивником, котрий є контрфорсом цієї неймовірної напруги в душі світу, яка означає появу Христа так нерозривно, як тінь належить до світла, як mysterium iniquitatis прикріплений до sol iustitiae і, як цілком справедливо вважають ебіоніти та евхіти, - брат до брата. Вони обидва прагнуть здобути царство, але один із них небесне, а другий <
Христос і Антихрист - два головні персонажі цієї книги. Самість і Тінь Самості. "AION" - дуже контрастує з попередньою книгою Юнґа виданою "Астролябією" - "Архетипи і колективне несвідоме". Тут встократ більше покликань, цитат і схем. Це Юнґ для досвідченого читача.
"Завдяки вченню про privatio boni цілісність, здавалося б, була гарантована постаттю Христа. Однак зло все ж слід схоплювати дещо субстанційніше, коли ми зустрічаємося з ним на рівні емпіричної психології. Тут воно є просто протилежністю добра. В Античності гностики, аргументація яких уже зазнала значного впливу з боку психологічного досвіду, вивчали проблему зла значно глибше за Отців Церкви. Згідно з їхнім ученням, Христос «відсік від себе свою тінь». Якщо ми визнаємо за таким поглядом певну вагу, то в постаті Антихриста можна буде легко розпізнати відтяту протилежність. У легенді постать Антихриста розвивається як образ зіпсутого імітатора Христового життя. Він є справжнім antimimon pneuma, імітуючим духом, що певною мірою йде стопами Христа, як тінь за тілом. Це доповнення однобоко світлої постаті Спасителя, що з'являється вже в рамках Нового Завіту, все ж наділене особливим значенням. Тому-то воно вже доволі рано привернуло відповідну увагу."
Напочатку Юнґ вступає в полеміку з Діонісієм Ареопаґітом, Августином і Йоаном Золотоустим, він не згоден з тим, що "Omne bonum ab Deo, omne malum ab homine" ("все добро від Бога, все Зло від людини"), він не згоден і з другим твердженням, що "зло це відсутність добра".
Юнґ каже:
"Те, що в наш час відбулось і відбувається у концентраційних таборах диктаторських держав, не можна з легкістю позначити «випадковою відсутністю досконалості»: ц�� звучало б як глум."
І доповнює:
"Психологія не знає, що таке добро чи зло самі собою, а знає це лише у вигляді суджень про співвідношення: добрим є те, що з певного погляду виглядає підхожим, прийнятним чи вартісним, а злим - відповідна протилежність. Якщо те, що ми називаємо добрим, є для нас «дійсно» добрим, то є також погане та зле, що є для нас «дійсним». Видно, що психологія має до діла з більш-менш суб'єктивним судженням, тобто з психічною протилежністю, яка необхідна для позначення вартісними співвідношень: добрим є те, що не є поганим, а поганим - що не є добрим. Існують речі, які з певного погляду є вкрай злими, себто небезпечними. Також і в людській натурі існують такі речі, які є дуже небезпечними, а тому вони також видаються злими для того, хто стоїть на їхній лінії вогню. Нема сенсу прикрашати це зло, оскільки це давало б лише відчуття оманливої безпеки. Людська природа здатна на безмежну злобу, а злі вчинки є настільки ж реальними, як і добрі наскільки сягає людський досвід, тобто допоки душа мимоволі розрізняє й виносить відповідний вирок. Лише несвідомість не знає добра і зла. У рамках психологічної сфери, чесно кажучи, ніхто не знає того, що ж переважає у світі: добро чи зло. Ми лишень сподіваємось, що ним є добро, тобто те, що нам видається доречним. Ніхто ніколи не був у стані визначити, що таке загальне добро. І тут нам не зарадить жодне розуміння відносності і крихкості морального судження, а ті, хто бачать себе поза добром і злом, є, як правило, найгіршими мучителями людства і звиваються в муці і страхові своєї власної гарячки. Сьогодні, як і в усі часи, важливо, щоби людина не злегковажила небезпекою того зла, яке чатує в ній. Вона, на жаль, аж надто вже дійсна, тому-то психологія мусить наполягати на реальності зла і відкидати усяку дефініцію, яка намагається представити зло малозначним або ж узагалі неіснуючим. Психологія є досвідною наукою, яка має до діла зі справжніми речами.
Постає логічне питання: Чи існував такий концепт Бога, який би поєднував добро і зло. Так, існував - у гностичних течіях ранньго християнства. Зокрема Юнґ широко цитує та аналізує так звані "Климентові гомілії" - збірку гностичних творів, написаних приблизно 150 року, в яких невідомий автор розглядає добро і зло, як "праву і ліву руки Бога", а творіння на його думку складається із сизигій, тобто пар протилежностей.
Таку двоїстість Юнґ знаходить в юдео-християнському апокаліпсисі "Вознесіння Ісаї".
Мені, як любителеві гностичних текстів і апокрифів було дуже цікаво читати ці розбори.
В наступному розділі Юнґ аналізує зв'язок Христа з символом риби, приводяться десятки аналізів Середньовічних гороскопів. Пара Христос - Антихрист уподібнюється папі Гор-Сет. Цікавими є зауваги про символіку осла, якого зображували на римських карикатурах розіп'ятим на хресті, аналізується зв'язки осла, юдейської символіки і єгипетської іконографії де є сцена з Сетом-мучеником прив'язаним до палі. Апофеоз порівняння - фігура двоголового божества з головою Сета і Гора в одному тілі. Грецькі аналоги - Кастор і Полідевк. Подвійного аспекту Христа стосується також легенда Pistis Sophia, що постала в Єгипті. Тут описуєттся поєднання Ісуса земного та Ісуса небезного (пневматик і гелік).
"той, хто народився під знаком Риб, може по праву стати рибалкою чи моряком, а отже, ловити риб або ж підкоряти собі море - такий собі відголос примітивної тотемістичної тотожності між мисливцем і здобиччю! Отож вавилонський культуртреґер Оанн сам є рибою, а християнський Іхтіс є рибалкою, ловцем людей par excellence в історії символів він навіть є гачком чи приманкою на вудці Бога, з якою той упіймав Левіафана, якого вважають чи то смертю, чи то дияволом."
Аналізуючи алхімічну символіку риби Юнґ приходить до такого висновку:
"Людина напевно таки знає лише меншу частину своєї психіки так само, як вона володіє лише обмеженим розумінням свого тіла. Як і причиновість її психічної екзистенції лежить значною мірою поза свідомістю - у несвідомих процесах, так само діють у ній кінцеві призначення, які також походять і перебувають у несвідомому. Перше, як відомо, було елементарним чином доведене психологією Фройда, а останнє Адлера. Отож, як i causae, так i fines є трансцендентними для свідомості настільки, що їх важко оцінити, а це водночас означає, що їхня будова і дія є незмінними і невідворотними, аж доки вони не стануть предметом свідомості. Коректування відбувається лише у свідомому завдяки розумінню й ухваленню морального рішення, а тому самопізнання, хоч і необхідне, та викликає й острах. Отож, коли ми це висловлювання знімемо з «фундаменту» теологічної мови, то воно звучатиме так: свідомість була витворена для того, щоби вона розпізнала (laudet) своє походження із вищої єдності (Deum), щоби вона бережно ставилася до цього джерела (reverentiam exhibeat), розумно й відповідально виконувала його призначення, і так забезпечувала цілій психіці оптимальну можливість життя і розвитку (salvet animam suam).
Цей переклад не лише звучить раціоналістично, але й повинен бути таким, а саме розумним, адже модер-
ний дух, попри серйозні зусилля, вже більше не розуміє тієї майже двотисячолітньої теологічної мови.
Загроза того, що брак розуміння буде замінений удаванням, афектацією й судомами віри, або ж кінцевою резиґнацією, яка не те що нависла над нами, але й уже давно запанувала."
Кінцеві розділи присвячені алхімічному символізму, більшість ідей Юнґ раніше вже сформував в своїх роботах "Психологія і Алхімія" та "Дух Меркурій" на які і посилається.
Важливу частину займає аналіз архетипу Четвертинності.
Звісно, що читати такий масив інформації треба дозовано, за час прочитання мій список запланованих книг збільшився на 50 (!) праць, які цитує Юнґ.
А тепер, кілька зауваг до перекладу. Досить дивну стратегію обрано для передання імен біблійних персонажів, незважаючи на те, що для цитування використовується переклад Хоменка, інші імена з ним не узгоджено. Наприклад в тексті зустрічаємо екзотичні та чужі для вуха українця імена: Тобіас (Товія), Рафаель (Рафаїл), Іона (Йона). Вірогідно, що дався в знаки переклад з німецької. Але все ж найбільшу ведмежу послугу цей буквалізм зробив уже на найпершій сторінці книги де перша примітка перекладена з грубою помилкою. В оригіналі йдеться про роботу Марії-Луїзи фон Франц "Passio Perpetuae", яку переклали як "Вічні страсті", хоча насправді книга так і називається "Страсті Перпетуї", бо це ім'я святої і книга є аналізом її видінь. Вочевидячки, що я б навряд чи помітив цю помилку, якби буквально місяць тому не прочитав цю таки книгу! Юнґівська синхронічність у дії!
Тим не менш, ці незначні, як для такої праці, помилки не є суттєвими і я радію, що мав змогу прочитати таку складну і переповнену сенсами працю українською мовою. За це дякую видавництву, перекладачці та редакторові.
З нетерпінням очікую на анонсовану "Червону книгу" та перевидання "Психологічних типів".
Вибрані цитати:
Читаю "Еон" Юнґа. Дійсно, одна з найскладніших його праць, але водночас одна із найсильніших! Той випадок, коли хочеться без кінця цитувати і підкреслювати. Юнґ взявся за нелегку тему: дослідження двоїстості в Бозі. З його погляду старозавітній Ягве це Бог в якого права рука чинить зло, а ліва добро, що і є його перевагою над Богом Нового Заповіту.
Нижче процитую парадоксальні рядки з діями такого двоїстого Бога:
"Розглянемо молитву равина Йонатана: «Нехай твоєю волею буде побачити нашу ганьбу і споглядати нашу жалюгідність. Вберись у твоє милосердя, покрийся своєю міццю, огорнись у твою любов і підпережися твоєю ласкою, і нехай твоя доброта і прихильність будуть завжди перед тобою». Бога фактично закликають до того, щоби він прийняв свої добрі властивості.
Існує традиція, коли Бог молиться до себе самого:
<<Нехай буде воля моя, аби моє милосердя перемогло і Моє милосердя покрило всі мої інші властивості».
Ця традиція підтверджується у наступній оповіді: «Мовив равин Ішмаель, син Еліши: "Колись я зайшов у святилище, щоби принести жертву ладану, і там я побачив Акатріеля Ях Яхве Забаота", який сидів на високому й піднесеному троні, і Він промовив до мене: Син мій Ішмаель, благослови мене! Я ж мовив до нього: Господарю світу! Нехай твоєю волею буде те, щоби твоє милосердя здолало твій гнів, і твоє милосердя перекрило всі інші властивості, і щоби ти обходився з твоїми дітьми із милосердям, а не за строгим правосуддям - і він привітався зі мною порухом голови”�
Карл Ґустав Юнґ
"AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"
Переклад Катерини Котюк
Art: William Blake
В деяких місцях Юнґа охоплює не інакше як Боже натхнення і його текст перетворюється на суміш поезії, молитви, пророкування на межі всіх релігій, вірування і філософських систем.
"Не дуже вірогідним є переконання, наче алхіміки завжди знали, що вони пишуть, інакше б вони були буквально приголомшені своєю величністю, а цього в їхній літературі не відчувається. Адже хто має все, чого він потребує? Навіть самотній метеорит кружляє довкола якогось далекого сонця чи нерішуче наближається до згромадження своїх братів. Усе ж бо неминуче пов'язане з усім. Per definitionem лише абсолютна й остаточна цілість містить усе і кожного в собі, тож ані потреба, ні примус не тримають її прив'язаною до чогось зовнішнього. Це, безперечно, є ідеєю про абсолютного Бога, який містить у собі все єство. Хто ж бо може витягнути себе з болота за власну гриву? Хто може покращуватись у недоторканій ізольованості? Навіть святий відлюдник, який живе в пустелі на віддалі триденної путі, мусить не лише їсти і пити, але й до того ж перебуває у вкрай жахливій залежності від неспокійної присутності Бога. Лише абсолютне ціле може оновлюватися зі себе самого й народжувати самого себе знову.
Отож, що то таке, що один адепт шепоче на вухо іншому, боязко визираючи довкола себе зрадників, чи радше розгадників? Цим є не що інше, як те, що завдяки цьому вченню Єдине і все, найбільше у своєму прояві у вигляді найменшого, сам Бог у його вічних вогнях повинен бути спійманим під виглядом риби у глибоких морях, «de profundo levatus», що з допомогою євхаристичного акту (який ацтеки називають teoqualo божою їжею) Він повинен стати частиною людини або ж принаймні потрапити до її сфери.
Це вчення і є тим загадковим «мистецьким» магнітом, завдяки якому рибка ремора, що є такою «маленькою за формою» і такою «великою за силою», змушує зупинитися горді морські фрегати: про подібну пригоду, яка <<в наш час» сталася з quinqueremis імператора Каліґули, розповідає для розваги і повчання Пліній. Рибка, лише пів фута завдовжки, присмокталася до керма, коли імператор повертався зі Стури до Ентіума, і так зупинила корабель. Коли ж Каліґула повернувся з цієї поїздки до Рима, то там його вбили власні ж солдати. Таким чином, як на цьому наголошує Пліній, ехенея виявилася провісницею."
Карл Ґустав Юнґ
"AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"
Переклад Катерини Котюк
«Mater Alchimia» не є чимось першим і первинним, а епохою, що почалася приблизно водночас із християнством і в ХѴІ-ХVІІ століттях породила зі себе природничо-наукову епоху, щоби опісля зів'яти непізнаною і незрозумілою, канувши в течію століть, як щось, що зжило себе. Та як кожна матір була колись донькою, так і алхімія: її справжня сутність походить із тих гностичних систем, які Іполіт виправдано розумів як (природничо-) філософські, і вони, з одного боку, за допомогою класичної грецької філософії, а з другого, - грецької, близькосхідної та єгипетської міфологій, як і християнської догматики і юдейської кабалістики, робили, із модерного погляду, вкрай цікаві спроби досягнути всеохопного світогляду, у яких physika i mystika відігравали рівноправну роль. Якби ці спроби вдалися, то світ не споглядав би видовище двох світоглядів, що протікають водночас поряд один з одним і нічого не можуть і не бажають знати один про одного. Іполіт ще перебував у кращому становищі, адже міг, так би мовити, порівнювати християнську доктрину з її язичницькими сестрами, відповідні засади чого ми знаходимо ще й у Юстина Мученика; і, віддаючи належне християнському мисленню, слід зауважити, що аж до часів Кеплера не бракувало поважних спроб пояснити природу в найширшому її сенсі, виходячи з догми.
Однак ці спроби були приречені на поразку через недостатні знання природних процесів. Тому в плині ХѴІІІ століття дійшло до відомої вже непоєднуваності віри і знання. Вірі бракувало досвіду, а знанню - душі.
Зате знання вірило в абсолютну об'єктивність і зумисне не брало до уваги того принципового для нього ускладнення, що справжнім носієм і творцем знання є психіка, і саме про неї ми довгий час знали найменше.
Вона була симптомом хімічних реакцій, епіфеноменом біологічних процесів у клітинах мозку: так, вона протягом певного часу навіть не існувала. Рівночасно наука цілковито не усвідомлювала того факту, що вона для своїх спостережень користувалася, так би мовити,
Фотоапаратом, про властивості і структуру якого практично нічого не знала й екзистенцію якого навіть почасти не хотіла визнавати. Наймодернішим досягненням стало визнання того, що до уваги таки слід брати об'єктивну дійсність психічного фактора.
Але для гностиків � і це їхня справжня таємниця психіка як джерело пізнання існувала так само, як і для алхіміків.
Карл Ґустав Юнґ
"AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"
Переклад Катерини Котюк
Art: IONA Tarot
Я не можу позбутися враження, що іноді сни дивовижно перекручують. Цей аспект, імовірно, й спонукав Фройда припустити, що сни, так би мовити, з «моральних» причин усе приховують і спотворюють. Однак такому уявленню суперечить той факт, що вони так само часто поводяться цілком навпаки, а тому я радше приєднуюся до алхімічного розуміння, що Меркурій (несвідомий nous) є хитрим блазнем.
Карл Ґустав Юнґ "AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"Переклад Катерини Котюк
Art: Mercurius en Minerva, Crispijn van de Passe, 1589-1611
Повернімося до ІполІтового викладу наасенських центральних символів і продовжимо перелік висловлювань щодо Гермеса.
Гермес є некромантом (psychagogos), провідником (psychopompos) і творцем душ (psychon aitios). Душі ж були «знесені вниз, [геть] від блаженної верхньої людини, чи пралюдини, чи Адама, у постать із глини, щобиbвони служили деміургові цього творіння, Есалдаєві, вогненному богові, четвертому числом». Есалдай відповідає Ялдабаоту, верховному архонтові, а також Сатурну. «Четвертий» стосується протилежної щодо Трійці четвертої особи, диявола. Ім'я Ялдабаот означає "дитина хаосу», так само і Ґете влучно, відштовхуючись від алхімічної термінології, називає диявола дивним сином хаосу, пітьми.
Гермес оснащений золотим чарівним жезлом. Він «коли хоче, то людям склеплює втомлені очі, а інколи будить поснулих». Наасени пов'язували це з Посланням до Ефесян 5, 14: «Прокиньсь, о сплячий, і встань із мертвих, а Христос освітить тебе!» Як алхіміки послуговуються lapis angularis, наріжним каменем цією відомою алегорією Христа наасени - для їхнього lapis philosophorum, так і для їхнього протоантропа Адама, тобто, висловлюючись точніше, для «внутрішньої людини», яка є скелею чи каменем (petre), адже вона походить від «petrě tou Adamantos», поп, по той àрхаѵѵ äѵѵ Абараѵтос («[брили], що впала від пралюдини, верхнього Адама»). І як алхіміки стверджують про їхній камінь, що він «sine manibus abscissus de monte» («відірвався від гори без допомоги рук»), так само говорять наасени про «внутрішню людину», яка була знесена вниз «eis to plasma těs lěthěs» («у постать забуття»).
В Епіфанія гора є Антропосом-Христом, від якого відрізається камінь, чи то внутрішня людина, а це, за тлумаченням Епіфаніч, означає зачаття «без людського сімені»: «малий камінь», який «стає горою».
Він є логосом, за яким, «щебечучи» (tetrigyiai), слідують душі, наче кажани за Гермесом під час nekyia. Він веде їх до Океану і, кажучи безсмертними словами Гомера, - (до воріт Геліоса і в країну снів). «Він [Гермес] є Океаном, породжувачем богів і людей, у вічному чергуванні припливів і відпливів, то зверху, то знизу». Із відпливу виникають люди, а з припливу - боги. «Це те, кажуть вони, що написано: "Я кажу, ви є богами і усі � синами Всевишнього”�. Очевидно, що тут виражено спорідненість чи й тотожність бога і людини: у Святому Письмі не менше, ніж у доктрині наасенів.
Карл Ґустав Юнґ "AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"
Переклад Катерини Котюк
Art: Adolpf Hiremy Hirschl (1898) "Soul on the Banks of Acheron"
Через Юнґа віднайшов феноменальне словосполучення Парацельса - peregrinus microcosmus - «блукаючий мікрокосм»! Просто обдивляюсь це словосполучення, як дорогоцінний камінець і смакую... Ми всі - мікрокосми піліґрими!
"У Парацельса на початку трактату De vita longa йдеться: «Nihil mehercle
vita est aliud, nisi mumia quaedam balsamita, conservans mortale corpus a mortalibus vermibus...» («Життя, воістину, є не що інше, як щось на зразок забальзамованої мумії, яка уберігає смертне тіло від мертвотних хробаків...»). Тіло живе лише завдяки «мумії», через яку peregrinus microcosmus, «блукаючий мікрокосм» (останній в значенні відповідника щодо macrocosmus), панує над фізичною плоттю."
Карл Ґустав Юнґ "AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"
Переклад Катерини Котюк
"AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"
Переклад Катерини Котюк
Видавництво "Астролябія"
"Виглядає так, наче з приходом Христа проявилися доти латентні протилежності, наче якийсь маятник потужно хитнувся було в один бік, а тепер здійснює комплементарний рух ув інший бік. Кажуть, що жодне дерево не може дорости до небес, хіба що його коріння сягне пекла. Подвійний сенс руху лежить у природі маятника. Христос бездоганний, однак уже на початку його кар'єри відбулася зустріч із Сатаною, супротивником, котрий є контрфорсом цієї неймовірної напруги в душі світу, яка означає появу Христа так нерозривно, як тінь належить до світла, як mysterium iniquitatis прикріплений до sol iustitiae і, як цілком справедливо вважають ебіоніти та евхіти, - брат до брата. Вони обидва прагнуть здобути царство, але один із них небесне, а другий <
Христос і Антихрист - два головні персонажі цієї книги. Самість і Тінь Самості. "AION" - дуже контрастує з попередньою книгою Юнґа виданою "Астролябією" - "Архетипи і колективне несвідоме". Тут встократ більше покликань, цитат і схем. Це Юнґ для досвідченого читача.
"Завдяки вченню про privatio boni цілісність, здавалося б, була гарантована постаттю Христа. Однак зло все ж слід схоплювати дещо субстанційніше, коли ми зустрічаємося з ним на рівні емпіричної психології. Тут воно є просто протилежністю добра. В Античності гностики, аргументація яких уже зазнала значного впливу з боку психологічного досвіду, вивчали проблему зла значно глибше за Отців Церкви. Згідно з їхнім ученням, Христос «відсік від себе свою тінь». Якщо ми визнаємо за таким поглядом певну вагу, то в постаті Антихриста можна буде легко розпізнати відтяту протилежність. У легенді постать Антихриста розвивається як образ зіпсутого імітатора Христового життя. Він є справжнім antimimon pneuma, імітуючим духом, що певною мірою йде стопами Христа, як тінь за тілом. Це доповнення однобоко світлої постаті Спасителя, що з'являється вже в рамках Нового Завіту, все ж наділене особливим значенням. Тому-то воно вже доволі рано привернуло відповідну увагу."
Напочатку Юнґ вступає в полеміку з Діонісієм Ареопаґітом, Августином і Йоаном Золотоустим, він не згоден з тим, що "Omne bonum ab Deo, omne malum ab homine" ("все добро від Бога, все Зло від людини"), він не згоден і з другим твердженням, що "зло це відсутність добра".
Юнґ каже:
"Те, що в наш час відбулось і відбувається у концентраційних таборах диктаторських держав, не можна з легкістю позначити «випадковою відсутністю досконалості»: ц�� звучало б як глум."
І доповнює:
"Психологія не знає, що таке добро чи зло самі собою, а знає це лише у вигляді суджень про співвідношення: добрим є те, що з певного погляду виглядає підхожим, прийнятним чи вартісним, а злим - відповідна протилежність. Якщо те, що ми називаємо добрим, є для нас «дійсно» добрим, то є також погане та зле, що є для нас «дійсним». Видно, що психологія має до діла з більш-менш суб'єктивним судженням, тобто з психічною протилежністю, яка необхідна для позначення вартісними співвідношень: добрим є те, що не є поганим, а поганим - що не є добрим. Існують речі, які з певного погляду є вкрай злими, себто небезпечними. Також і в людській натурі існують такі речі, які є дуже небезпечними, а тому вони також видаються злими для того, хто стоїть на їхній лінії вогню. Нема сенсу прикрашати це зло, оскільки це давало б лише відчуття оманливої безпеки. Людська природа здатна на безмежну злобу, а злі вчинки є настільки ж реальними, як і добрі наскільки сягає людський досвід, тобто допоки душа мимоволі розрізняє й виносить відповідний вирок. Лише несвідомість не знає добра і зла. У рамках психологічної сфери, чесно кажучи, ніхто не знає того, що ж переважає у світі: добро чи зло. Ми лишень сподіваємось, що ним є добро, тобто те, що нам видається доречним. Ніхто ніколи не був у стані визначити, що таке загальне добро. І тут нам не зарадить жодне розуміння відносності і крихкості морального судження, а ті, хто бачать себе поза добром і злом, є, як правило, найгіршими мучителями людства і звиваються в муці і страхові своєї власної гарячки. Сьогодні, як і в усі часи, важливо, щоби людина не злегковажила небезпекою того зла, яке чатує в ній. Вона, на жаль, аж надто вже дійсна, тому-то психологія мусить наполягати на реальності зла і відкидати усяку дефініцію, яка намагається представити зло малозначним або ж узагалі неіснуючим. Психологія є досвідною наукою, яка має до діла зі справжніми речами.
Постає логічне питання: Чи існував такий концепт Бога, який би поєднував добро і зло. Так, існував - у гностичних течіях ранньго християнства. Зокрема Юнґ широко цитує та аналізує так звані "Климентові гомілії" - збірку гностичних творів, написаних приблизно 150 року, в яких невідомий автор розглядає добро і зло, як "праву і ліву руки Бога", а творіння на його думку складається із сизигій, тобто пар протилежностей.
Таку двоїстість Юнґ знаходить в юдео-християнському апокаліпсисі "Вознесіння Ісаї".
Мені, як любителеві гностичних текстів і апокрифів було дуже цікаво читати ці розбори.
В наступному розділі Юнґ аналізує зв'язок Христа з символом риби, приводяться десятки аналізів Середньовічних гороскопів. Пара Христос - Антихрист уподібнюється папі Гор-Сет. Цікавими є зауваги про символіку осла, якого зображували на римських карикатурах розіп'ятим на хресті, аналізується зв'язки осла, юдейської символіки і єгипетської іконографії де є сцена з Сетом-мучеником прив'язаним до палі. Апофеоз порівняння - фігура двоголового божества з головою Сета і Гора в одному тілі. Грецькі аналоги - Кастор і Полідевк. Подвійного аспекту Христа стосується також легенда Pistis Sophia, що постала в Єгипті. Тут описуєттся поєднання Ісуса земного та Ісуса небезного (пневматик і гелік).
"той, хто народився під знаком Риб, може по праву стати рибалкою чи моряком, а отже, ловити риб або ж підкоряти собі море - такий собі відголос примітивної тотемістичної тотожності між мисливцем і здобиччю! Отож вавилонський культуртреґер Оанн сам є рибою, а християнський Іхтіс є рибалкою, ловцем людей par excellence в історії символів він навіть є гачком чи приманкою на вудці Бога, з якою той упіймав Левіафана, якого вважають чи то смертю, чи то дияволом."
Аналізуючи алхімічну символіку риби Юнґ приходить до такого висновку:
"Людина напевно таки знає лише меншу частину своєї психіки так само, як вона володіє лише обмеженим розумінням свого тіла. Як і причиновість її психічної екзистенції лежить значною мірою поза свідомістю - у несвідомих процесах, так само діють у ній кінцеві призначення, які також походять і перебувають у несвідомому. Перше, як відомо, було елементарним чином доведене психологією Фройда, а останнє Адлера. Отож, як i causae, так i fines є трансцендентними для свідомості настільки, що їх важко оцінити, а це водночас означає, що їхня будова і дія є незмінними і невідворотними, аж доки вони не стануть предметом свідомості. Коректування відбувається лише у свідомому завдяки розумінню й ухваленню морального рішення, а тому самопізнання, хоч і необхідне, та викликає й острах. Отож, коли ми це висловлювання знімемо з «фундаменту» теологічної мови, то воно звучатиме так: свідомість була витворена для того, щоби вона розпізнала (laudet) своє походження із вищої єдності (Deum), щоби вона бережно ставилася до цього джерела (reverentiam exhibeat), розумно й відповідально виконувала його призначення, і так забезпечувала цілій психіці оптимальну можливість життя і розвитку (salvet animam suam).
Цей переклад не лише звучить раціоналістично, але й повинен бути таким, а саме розумним, адже модер-
ний дух, попри серйозні зусилля, вже більше не розуміє тієї майже двотисячолітньої теологічної мови.
Загроза того, що брак розуміння буде замінений удаванням, афектацією й судомами віри, або ж кінцевою резиґнацією, яка не те що нависла над нами, але й уже давно запанувала."
Кінцеві розділи присвячені алхімічному символізму, більшість ідей Юнґ раніше вже сформував в своїх роботах "Психологія і Алхімія" та "Дух Меркурій" на які і посилається.
Важливу частину займає аналіз архетипу Четвертинності.
Звісно, що читати такий масив інформації треба дозовано, за час прочитання мій список запланованих книг збільшився на 50 (!) праць, які цитує Юнґ.
А тепер, кілька зауваг до перекладу. Досить дивну стратегію обрано для передання імен біблійних персонажів, незважаючи на те, що для цитування використовується переклад Хоменка, інші імена з ним не узгоджено. Наприклад в тексті зустрічаємо екзотичні та чужі для вуха українця імена: Тобіас (Товія), Рафаель (Рафаїл), Іона (Йона). Вірогідно, що дався в знаки переклад з німецької. Але все ж найбільшу ведмежу послугу цей буквалізм зробив уже на найпершій сторінці книги де перша примітка перекладена з грубою помилкою. В оригіналі йдеться про роботу Марії-Луїзи фон Франц "Passio Perpetuae", яку переклали як "Вічні страсті", хоча насправді книга так і називається "Страсті Перпетуї", бо це ім'я святої і книга є аналізом її видінь. Вочевидячки, що я б навряд чи помітив цю помилку, якби буквально місяць тому не прочитав цю таки книгу! Юнґівська синхронічність у дії!
Тим не менш, ці незначні, як для такої праці, помилки не є суттєвими і я радію, що мав змогу прочитати таку складну і переповнену сенсами працю українською мовою. За це дякую видавництву, перекладачці та редакторові.
З нетерпінням очікую на анонсовану "Червону книгу" та перевидання "Психологічних типів".
Вибрані цитати:
Читаю "Еон" Юнґа. Дійсно, одна з найскладніших його праць, але водночас одна із найсильніших! Той випадок, коли хочеться без кінця цитувати і підкреслювати. Юнґ взявся за нелегку тему: дослідження двоїстості в Бозі. З його погляду старозавітній Ягве це Бог в якого права рука чинить зло, а ліва добро, що і є його перевагою над Богом Нового Заповіту.
Нижче процитую парадоксальні рядки з діями такого двоїстого Бога:
"Розглянемо молитву равина Йонатана: «Нехай твоєю волею буде побачити нашу ганьбу і споглядати нашу жалюгідність. Вберись у твоє милосердя, покрийся своєю міццю, огорнись у твою любов і підпережися твоєю ласкою, і нехай твоя доброта і прихильність будуть завжди перед тобою». Бога фактично закликають до того, щоби він прийняв свої добрі властивості.
Існує традиція, коли Бог молиться до себе самого:
<<Нехай буде воля моя, аби моє милосердя перемогло і Моє милосердя покрило всі мої інші властивості».
Ця традиція підтверджується у наступній оповіді: «Мовив равин Ішмаель, син Еліши: "Колись я зайшов у святилище, щоби принести жертву ладану, і там я побачив Акатріеля Ях Яхве Забаота", який сидів на високому й піднесеному троні, і Він промовив до мене: Син мій Ішмаель, благослови мене! Я ж мовив до нього: Господарю світу! Нехай твоєю волею буде те, щоби твоє милосердя здолало твій гнів, і твоє милосердя перекрило всі інші властивості, і щоби ти обходився з твоїми дітьми із милосердям, а не за строгим правосуддям - і він привітався зі мною порухом голови”�
Карл Ґустав Юнґ
"AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"
Переклад Катерини Котюк
Art: William Blake
В деяких місцях Юнґа охоплює не інакше як Боже натхнення і його текст перетворюється на суміш поезії, молитви, пророкування на межі всіх релігій, вірування і філософських систем.
"Не дуже вірогідним є переконання, наче алхіміки завжди знали, що вони пишуть, інакше б вони були буквально приголомшені своєю величністю, а цього в їхній літературі не відчувається. Адже хто має все, чого він потребує? Навіть самотній метеорит кружляє довкола якогось далекого сонця чи нерішуче наближається до згромадження своїх братів. Усе ж бо неминуче пов'язане з усім. Per definitionem лише абсолютна й остаточна цілість містить усе і кожного в собі, тож ані потреба, ні примус не тримають її прив'язаною до чогось зовнішнього. Це, безперечно, є ідеєю про абсолютного Бога, який містить у собі все єство. Хто ж бо може витягнути себе з болота за власну гриву? Хто може покращуватись у недоторканій ізольованості? Навіть святий відлюдник, який живе в пустелі на віддалі триденної путі, мусить не лише їсти і пити, але й до того ж перебуває у вкрай жахливій залежності від неспокійної присутності Бога. Лише абсолютне ціле може оновлюватися зі себе самого й народжувати самого себе знову.
Отож, що то таке, що один адепт шепоче на вухо іншому, боязко визираючи довкола себе зрадників, чи радше розгадників? Цим є не що інше, як те, що завдяки цьому вченню Єдине і все, найбільше у своєму прояві у вигляді найменшого, сам Бог у його вічних вогнях повинен бути спійманим під виглядом риби у глибоких морях, «de profundo levatus», що з допомогою євхаристичного акту (який ацтеки називають teoqualo божою їжею) Він повинен стати частиною людини або ж принаймні потрапити до її сфери.
Це вчення і є тим загадковим «мистецьким» магнітом, завдяки якому рибка ремора, що є такою «маленькою за формою» і такою «великою за силою», змушує зупинитися горді морські фрегати: про подібну пригоду, яка <<в наш час» сталася з quinqueremis імператора Каліґули, розповідає для розваги і повчання Пліній. Рибка, лише пів фута завдовжки, присмокталася до керма, коли імператор повертався зі Стури до Ентіума, і так зупинила корабель. Коли ж Каліґула повернувся з цієї поїздки до Рима, то там його вбили власні ж солдати. Таким чином, як на цьому наголошує Пліній, ехенея виявилася провісницею."
Карл Ґустав Юнґ
"AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"
Переклад Катерини Котюк
«Mater Alchimia» не є чимось першим і первинним, а епохою, що почалася приблизно водночас із християнством і в ХѴІ-ХVІІ століттях породила зі себе природничо-наукову епоху, щоби опісля зів'яти непізнаною і незрозумілою, канувши в течію століть, як щось, що зжило себе. Та як кожна матір була колись донькою, так і алхімія: її справжня сутність походить із тих гностичних систем, які Іполіт виправдано розумів як (природничо-) філософські, і вони, з одного боку, за допомогою класичної грецької філософії, а з другого, - грецької, близькосхідної та єгипетської міфологій, як і християнської догматики і юдейської кабалістики, робили, із модерного погляду, вкрай цікаві спроби досягнути всеохопного світогляду, у яких physika i mystika відігравали рівноправну роль. Якби ці спроби вдалися, то світ не споглядав би видовище двох світоглядів, що протікають водночас поряд один з одним і нічого не можуть і не бажають знати один про одного. Іполіт ще перебував у кращому становищі, адже міг, так би мовити, порівнювати християнську доктрину з її язичницькими сестрами, відповідні засади чого ми знаходимо ще й у Юстина Мученика; і, віддаючи належне християнському мисленню, слід зауважити, що аж до часів Кеплера не бракувало поважних спроб пояснити природу в найширшому її сенсі, виходячи з догми.
Однак ці спроби були приречені на поразку через недостатні знання природних процесів. Тому в плині ХѴІІІ століття дійшло до відомої вже непоєднуваності віри і знання. Вірі бракувало досвіду, а знанню - душі.
Зате знання вірило в абсолютну об'єктивність і зумисне не брало до уваги того принципового для нього ускладнення, що справжнім носієм і творцем знання є психіка, і саме про неї ми довгий час знали найменше.
Вона була симптомом хімічних реакцій, епіфеноменом біологічних процесів у клітинах мозку: так, вона протягом певного часу навіть не існувала. Рівночасно наука цілковито не усвідомлювала того факту, що вона для своїх спостережень користувалася, так би мовити,
Фотоапаратом, про властивості і структуру якого практично нічого не знала й екзистенцію якого навіть почасти не хотіла визнавати. Наймодернішим досягненням стало визнання того, що до уваги таки слід брати об'єктивну дійсність психічного фактора.
Але для гностиків � і це їхня справжня таємниця психіка як джерело пізнання існувала так само, як і для алхіміків.
Карл Ґустав Юнґ
"AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"
Переклад Катерини Котюк
Art: IONA Tarot
Я не можу позбутися враження, що іноді сни дивовижно перекручують. Цей аспект, імовірно, й спонукав Фройда припустити, що сни, так би мовити, з «моральних» причин усе приховують і спотворюють. Однак такому уявленню суперечить той факт, що вони так само часто поводяться цілком навпаки, а тому я радше приєднуюся до алхімічного розуміння, що Меркурій (несвідомий nous) є хитрим блазнем.
Карл Ґустав Юнґ "AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"Переклад Катерини Котюк
Art: Mercurius en Minerva, Crispijn van de Passe, 1589-1611
Повернімося до ІполІтового викладу наасенських центральних символів і продовжимо перелік висловлювань щодо Гермеса.
Гермес є некромантом (psychagogos), провідником (psychopompos) і творцем душ (psychon aitios). Душі ж були «знесені вниз, [геть] від блаженної верхньої людини, чи пралюдини, чи Адама, у постать із глини, щобиbвони служили деміургові цього творіння, Есалдаєві, вогненному богові, четвертому числом». Есалдай відповідає Ялдабаоту, верховному архонтові, а також Сатурну. «Четвертий» стосується протилежної щодо Трійці четвертої особи, диявола. Ім'я Ялдабаот означає "дитина хаосу», так само і Ґете влучно, відштовхуючись від алхімічної термінології, називає диявола дивним сином хаосу, пітьми.
Гермес оснащений золотим чарівним жезлом. Він «коли хоче, то людям склеплює втомлені очі, а інколи будить поснулих». Наасени пов'язували це з Посланням до Ефесян 5, 14: «Прокиньсь, о сплячий, і встань із мертвих, а Христос освітить тебе!» Як алхіміки послуговуються lapis angularis, наріжним каменем цією відомою алегорією Христа наасени - для їхнього lapis philosophorum, так і для їхнього протоантропа Адама, тобто, висловлюючись точніше, для «внутрішньої людини», яка є скелею чи каменем (petre), адже вона походить від «petrě tou Adamantos», поп, по той àрхаѵѵ äѵѵ Абараѵтос («[брили], що впала від пралюдини, верхнього Адама»). І як алхіміки стверджують про їхній камінь, що він «sine manibus abscissus de monte» («відірвався від гори без допомоги рук»), так само говорять наасени про «внутрішню людину», яка була знесена вниз «eis to plasma těs lěthěs» («у постать забуття»).
В Епіфанія гора є Антропосом-Христом, від якого відрізається камінь, чи то внутрішня людина, а це, за тлумаченням Епіфаніч, означає зачаття «без людського сімені»: «малий камінь», який «стає горою».
Він є логосом, за яким, «щебечучи» (tetrigyiai), слідують душі, наче кажани за Гермесом під час nekyia. Він веде їх до Океану і, кажучи безсмертними словами Гомера, - (до воріт Геліоса і в країну снів). «Він [Гермес] є Океаном, породжувачем богів і людей, у вічному чергуванні припливів і відпливів, то зверху, то знизу». Із відпливу виникають люди, а з припливу - боги. «Це те, кажуть вони, що написано: "Я кажу, ви є богами і усі � синами Всевишнього”�. Очевидно, що тут виражено спорідненість чи й тотожність бога і людини: у Святому Письмі не менше, ніж у доктрині наасенів.
Карл Ґустав Юнґ "AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"
Переклад Катерини Котюк
Art: Adolpf Hiremy Hirschl (1898) "Soul on the Banks of Acheron"
Через Юнґа віднайшов феноменальне словосполучення Парацельса - peregrinus microcosmus - «блукаючий мікрокосм»! Просто обдивляюсь це словосполучення, як дорогоцінний камінець і смакую... Ми всі - мікрокосми піліґрими!
"У Парацельса на початку трактату De vita longa йдеться: «Nihil mehercle
vita est aliud, nisi mumia quaedam balsamita, conservans mortale corpus a mortalibus vermibus...» («Життя, воістину, є не що інше, як щось на зразок забальзамованої мумії, яка уберігає смертне тіло від мертвотних хробаків...»). Тіло живе лише завдяки «мумії», через яку peregrinus microcosmus, «блукаючий мікрокосм» (останній в значенні відповідника щодо macrocosmus), панує над фізичною плоттю."
Карл Ґустав Юнґ "AION: нариси щодо символіки самості"
Переклад Катерини Котюк
November 15, 2015
Jung plans to break down specific unconscious archetypes and compare them to their incarnations in Christian mysticism. A noble endeavor! However, he gets a little excited and branches off from what can be argued as psychology into more of a scientific exploration of religious philosophy. Fortunately, this is still pretty interesting.
He pressed Christ as an image of the self, then tied it with the symbolic fish, and the astrological sign Pisces for a whole shoebox full of vague esoteric reasons. I was partial to his thoughts on the Gnostic conception of Christ as the image of the self. Also, I finally understand the Godhead, and why Gnosticism makes "real Christians" so uncomfortable. Jung frames it so the Godhead is a divine primordial soup, a demiurgic morass from which God arises. Which would make it God's unconscious, and that fits even more cleanly into the "in his own image" bit.
The alchemy bit lost me. I don't know enough about alchemy. My own occult studies steered around that, figuring it was devoted entirely to transmutation and it had never worked.
A lot of it reads like the scrap-paper and notebooks of a mystic Da Vinci type, wandering just this side of incoherence and drawing strange connections that initially make you squint, then hesitantly nod in concession. The early part of the book is excellent. It's focused and direct. He defends his esoterica right off the bat, and in so doing summarizes one of the fundamental modern problems of psychology (in my ever humble):
Therefore, in describing the living processes of the psyche, I deliberately and consciously give preference to a dramatic, mythological way of thinking and speaking, because this is not only more expressive but also more exact than an abstract scientific terminology, which is wont to toy with the notion that its theoretic formulations may one fine day be resolved into algebraic equations.
That line, right there, compels me to read the rest of his work. It's not tech support and we're not just rewiring the circuit board. The human psyche operates in the dramatic, the mystic, the mythological, because it's built on the foundation of the "magical" experiences of childhood, when everything is dream-like and full of wonder. We grow away from that, and the world may grey, but those heuristics will never wholly leave us, and we will always think and process in episodic, religious, and heroic terms, especially inasmuch as the self is concerned.
He pressed Christ as an image of the self, then tied it with the symbolic fish, and the astrological sign Pisces for a whole shoebox full of vague esoteric reasons. I was partial to his thoughts on the Gnostic conception of Christ as the image of the self. Also, I finally understand the Godhead, and why Gnosticism makes "real Christians" so uncomfortable. Jung frames it so the Godhead is a divine primordial soup, a demiurgic morass from which God arises. Which would make it God's unconscious, and that fits even more cleanly into the "in his own image" bit.
The alchemy bit lost me. I don't know enough about alchemy. My own occult studies steered around that, figuring it was devoted entirely to transmutation and it had never worked.
A lot of it reads like the scrap-paper and notebooks of a mystic Da Vinci type, wandering just this side of incoherence and drawing strange connections that initially make you squint, then hesitantly nod in concession. The early part of the book is excellent. It's focused and direct. He defends his esoterica right off the bat, and in so doing summarizes one of the fundamental modern problems of psychology (in my ever humble):
Therefore, in describing the living processes of the psyche, I deliberately and consciously give preference to a dramatic, mythological way of thinking and speaking, because this is not only more expressive but also more exact than an abstract scientific terminology, which is wont to toy with the notion that its theoretic formulations may one fine day be resolved into algebraic equations.
That line, right there, compels me to read the rest of his work. It's not tech support and we're not just rewiring the circuit board. The human psyche operates in the dramatic, the mystic, the mythological, because it's built on the foundation of the "magical" experiences of childhood, when everything is dream-like and full of wonder. We grow away from that, and the world may grey, but those heuristics will never wholly leave us, and we will always think and process in episodic, religious, and heroic terms, especially inasmuch as the self is concerned.
April 22, 2017
I struggle to actually give this a rating as this was one of the most esoteric, difficult books I have ever read, and it's now been 6-7 weeks since finishing it. The precursor to this book was absolutely fascinating, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the idea of deeper, unconscious layers of the human pysche existing that have far more control over our thoughts and patterns of behavior than we might be comfortable to admit. This book dealt a lot with symbolism of the fish in Christianity, but as a whole it went way over my head.
Since one of the things Jung writes about in his other works is synchronicity, I will say I experienced a pretty bizarre chain of events upon starting this book. I began reading this book while on a flight to Hong Kong. Upon landing, one of the first things I noticed upon exiting a subway station on Hong Kong island was a credit union named Aeon. Ok, weird. The next day I was on the subway and looked down at a local guy reading something on his phone. The entire page was written in Chinese, but there was one English word. What was it? "Jung" Ok, holy shit. Then, I get back to Beijing a couple days later and start the second season of "The Man in the High Castle", and when the title character is first introduced, what does he say? Something along the lines of "The conscious and unconscious mind. Carl Jung (and so on)." This is getting weird. THEN, maybe just a couple days later, I go to one of my classes (I was still reading this book at that point), and one of my students who was sitting in the exact center of the room had a plush fish right there on her desk. "Mind blown"
Read this book and glitches in your own matrix may begin to occur. :D
Since one of the things Jung writes about in his other works is synchronicity, I will say I experienced a pretty bizarre chain of events upon starting this book. I began reading this book while on a flight to Hong Kong. Upon landing, one of the first things I noticed upon exiting a subway station on Hong Kong island was a credit union named Aeon. Ok, weird. The next day I was on the subway and looked down at a local guy reading something on his phone. The entire page was written in Chinese, but there was one English word. What was it? "Jung" Ok, holy shit. Then, I get back to Beijing a couple days later and start the second season of "The Man in the High Castle", and when the title character is first introduced, what does he say? Something along the lines of "The conscious and unconscious mind. Carl Jung (and so on)." This is getting weird. THEN, maybe just a couple days later, I go to one of my classes (I was still reading this book at that point), and one of my students who was sitting in the exact center of the room had a plush fish right there on her desk. "Mind blown"
Read this book and glitches in your own matrix may begin to occur. :D
April 14, 2020
There has been few books that I have read that put a shake my body. The only way I can describe reading this book is like the journey of the movie apocalypse now. The first few chapter would play in the known semi known area of your mind and you still feel like you are there but from the chapter that jung intorduce the fish and alchamy it felt like that you are getting detached from whatever you know and ever the pure darkness area. The more forward in the book the more you get closer to core of the heart of darkness and the moment of climax. and at the end he would bombard you with everything and all the models that would take all your energy out.
Truly a terrifying book that put my bakc to shake...
Truly a terrifying book that put my bakc to shake...
January 1, 2016
Wow, tough read but well worth the effort. Jung demonstrates his mastery of complex material in describing his "Researches Into the Phenomenology of the Self." I don't pretend to understand much of his references to a wide swath of literature in describing the symbolism of the Self, but I did come away with a deeper understanding. This info will be invaluable as I progress in further studies of depth psychology. In particular, I'd like to reference this material in further research involving alchemy.
January 23, 2022
We must think beyond good and evil but we can't expect to escape good and evil as long as we are living conscious beings.
This beast of a book is going to live in my head rent-free for years to come.....
This beast of a book is going to live in my head rent-free for years to come.....
May 24, 2021
Very interesting book. But I will say, if someone wanted to get into reading Jung, I don't think this is the book that I would start with. This is the book you read in order to understand the concept of the "Self" in more depth. For that purpose, it is a very effective book.
The Self is the form of you that has integrated the shadow, the anima/animus and your projections. It is the elevated form of the Ego. Because of that, Christ stands as a good example of the Self. Or is it the other way around? The Self is Christ? That is a question that the early Christians and the Alchemists tried to answer.
Early on there is a very interesting chapter on the connection between Jesus and the Age of Pisces; the age of the two brothers. Early Christianity featured an older brother to Jesus; Satanael. Following this age of brotherly warfare, the next age in astrology is the Age of Aquarius, which is supposed to be the age of the Union of Opposites; an age of peace and happiness. Beyond destiny/prophecy, this could be interpreted as a sort of maturation of civilization, with the 20th century being the age of war between the brothers and the future possibly being a brighter, more peaceful age. Writing this from 2021, with the benefit of hindsight, things do seem to have been more peaceful since the end of the Second World War.
Interesting note. Jung writes that over time a belief will lose its metaphysical energy. It will no longer speak to the spirit of the times. Some will still cling to it but the majority will turn away. I feel like that is happening quite a bit in Christianity. If you wanted to turn people back to it, it would have to update itself in some way. The Cathars had a Good God and an Evil God.
Jung leads us back in time, through the age of the Alchemists and the Christian Gnostics, and shows us how they conceptualized the idea of the Self. And then at the end he does something very interesting, by relating the efforts of the Alchemists to some pre-scientific; science without microscopes, or the idea of a scientific method.
This culminates in a formula for self development (A = A -> B -> C -> D -> A), and the idea that Christ is the Atom. And then we get a little look towards the future. Jung states that Psychology and Physics will eventually expand their fields of research to such an extent that they cannot help but meet on some common ground, and form a new area of study where we look at the psyche with a greater focus.
I would recommend this to anyone who has finished Carl Jung's "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious."
The Self is the form of you that has integrated the shadow, the anima/animus and your projections. It is the elevated form of the Ego. Because of that, Christ stands as a good example of the Self. Or is it the other way around? The Self is Christ? That is a question that the early Christians and the Alchemists tried to answer.
Early on there is a very interesting chapter on the connection between Jesus and the Age of Pisces; the age of the two brothers. Early Christianity featured an older brother to Jesus; Satanael. Following this age of brotherly warfare, the next age in astrology is the Age of Aquarius, which is supposed to be the age of the Union of Opposites; an age of peace and happiness. Beyond destiny/prophecy, this could be interpreted as a sort of maturation of civilization, with the 20th century being the age of war between the brothers and the future possibly being a brighter, more peaceful age. Writing this from 2021, with the benefit of hindsight, things do seem to have been more peaceful since the end of the Second World War.
Interesting note. Jung writes that over time a belief will lose its metaphysical energy. It will no longer speak to the spirit of the times. Some will still cling to it but the majority will turn away. I feel like that is happening quite a bit in Christianity. If you wanted to turn people back to it, it would have to update itself in some way. The Cathars had a Good God and an Evil God.
Jung leads us back in time, through the age of the Alchemists and the Christian Gnostics, and shows us how they conceptualized the idea of the Self. And then at the end he does something very interesting, by relating the efforts of the Alchemists to some pre-scientific; science without microscopes, or the idea of a scientific method.
This culminates in a formula for self development (A = A -> B -> C -> D -> A), and the idea that Christ is the Atom. And then we get a little look towards the future. Jung states that Psychology and Physics will eventually expand their fields of research to such an extent that they cannot help but meet on some common ground, and form a new area of study where we look at the psyche with a greater focus.
I would recommend this to anyone who has finished Carl Jung's "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious."
February 25, 2021
"The most terrifying book I've ever read" is Jordan Peterson's claim. It's certainly a text that makes profound/terrifying moral evaluations of humanity and makes urgent and strong assertions about how to circumvent the atrocities of the 20th century from ever happening again. Jung's suggestion/solution is to revitalise the cultural and archetypal symbols of the early christian era that represent the self as whole, complete and aware of ones shadow tendencies to the fullest extent.
With masterful research ability he does paint a vivid and meaningful picture of how the symbol of christ, often as a fish, has purveyed western civilisation and elsewhere to represent the burden an individual must take on for true self knowledge. Jung's historiography and philology lays the history and theories of ancient theologians with precision.
Despite the validity of the claims that we must all take accountability for knowing ourselves. "To know oneself is to know God" Jung says. I am not convinced by the overarching claim that since around 550AD we de facto entered a new "antichristian" epoch that has degenerated further with each revolution of Saturn (1189AD, and so on) coinciding with Protestantism, the enlightenment and the scientific Revolution much later. His argument claims the antichristian era is plagued with the degeneration of the representation and knowledge of the true self and hence we degenerate further from wholeness and self knowledge. It surely reaffirms the accusation of "mysticism" levelled against Jung. I'm sure this religiously informed assertion is what Peterson finds "terrifying", assumedly he must accept this at some level.
I would like to think modern humanity has the capacity to utilise reason to identify our shadow and reintroduce the notion of the self in new, updated forms. His above view is a regression into religious fatalism in my view.
Despite the above, as always, his analysis provides important and exciting roadmaps into understanding meaning. Even as relevant in identifying unconscious dualities in pop culture references. "The serpent holds a dual positive and negative element. It is both evil-doer and betrayer and knowledge-giver and healer." Which did indeed remind me of the use of a similar ambivalent motif of the snake in Harry Potter.
With masterful research ability he does paint a vivid and meaningful picture of how the symbol of christ, often as a fish, has purveyed western civilisation and elsewhere to represent the burden an individual must take on for true self knowledge. Jung's historiography and philology lays the history and theories of ancient theologians with precision.
Despite the validity of the claims that we must all take accountability for knowing ourselves. "To know oneself is to know God" Jung says. I am not convinced by the overarching claim that since around 550AD we de facto entered a new "antichristian" epoch that has degenerated further with each revolution of Saturn (1189AD, and so on) coinciding with Protestantism, the enlightenment and the scientific Revolution much later. His argument claims the antichristian era is plagued with the degeneration of the representation and knowledge of the true self and hence we degenerate further from wholeness and self knowledge. It surely reaffirms the accusation of "mysticism" levelled against Jung. I'm sure this religiously informed assertion is what Peterson finds "terrifying", assumedly he must accept this at some level.
I would like to think modern humanity has the capacity to utilise reason to identify our shadow and reintroduce the notion of the self in new, updated forms. His above view is a regression into religious fatalism in my view.
Despite the above, as always, his analysis provides important and exciting roadmaps into understanding meaning. Even as relevant in identifying unconscious dualities in pop culture references. "The serpent holds a dual positive and negative element. It is both evil-doer and betrayer and knowledge-giver and healer." Which did indeed remind me of the use of a similar ambivalent motif of the snake in Harry Potter.
September 18, 2024
Being the archetype of the complete personality, documenting and articulating the evolutions of the self over the last Aeon is an ambitious task to say at the least. From Gnosticism to alchemy to physics and modern psychology, Jung describes the logical transformation of the archetype from Anthropos to Shadow to serpent (Physis) to lapis to Rotundum which is back to the beginning. He demonstrates how this process of individuation works to discern unconscious contents into conscious reflection.
There’s more, so much more in here about how this development has been projected in astrology through the sign of Pisces and manifest transformations precisely at the symbols major segments.
It really opens up your mind to just how omnipresent the unconscious psyche is in every comprehensible way. I’m convinced that humans can’t actually construct theories beyond the bounds of experimental science without the prejudice of the dynamics and structure of our psyche (see our earlier attempts to understand matter, ie alchemy)
There’s more, so much more in here about how this development has been projected in astrology through the sign of Pisces and manifest transformations precisely at the symbols major segments.
It really opens up your mind to just how omnipresent the unconscious psyche is in every comprehensible way. I’m convinced that humans can’t actually construct theories beyond the bounds of experimental science without the prejudice of the dynamics and structure of our psyche (see our earlier attempts to understand matter, ie alchemy)
June 12, 2019
Aion is one of Jung's central books, and focuses on the concept of the Self. Some other Jungian themes like the ego, shadow and anima/animus are also mentioned. I've touched a bit on Jung himself and his philosophy on my review of the "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", so I will spare it here.
After some general introduction to archetypes, the book starts by discussing the notion of evil, particularly in Christianity. It has a tradition which states that evil is simply the lack of good, but not a thing in itself. He argues against this from a logical standpoint, but more importantly, he illustrates how this type of thinking has harmed society's notion of evil, and thus the shadow of each individual. This is crucial because it plays a key role in the role of the individuation process - becoming the self.
He presents the self archetype through the lens of Christ, and he's the "living myth of our culture", as Jung puts it. He represents the totality of personality and the embodiment of the divine. To achieve this totality, however, one must also embrace our unconscious dark side, what Jung calls the shadow. This is often represented with an animalistic symbolism. It's commonly illustrated by a snake or a reptile. In myths and fairy tales, often a dragon. This dark side, however, is not purely negative. It's also a source of insight, power, creativity, and more. While this was recognized in Gnosticism, Christianity rejected this "inferior" aspect of the personality and externalized it into the Antichrist. Hence Jung's insistence at the beginning on the reality of evil and the mistake of casting aside only in relation to goodness.
There is a heavy influence of alchemy, where the "lapis philosophorum", and all their countless variations, all point to the "Anthropos". The lapis philosophorum is the philosopher's stone, which allows the turn of base metals into gold. It's also associated with immortality and enlightenment. The Anthropos is the first human being in the Gnostic system. For Jung, this is the perfect and whole man, in which the conscious and unconscious processes are united. This self is the antithesis of the subjective ego-psyche.
Jung's writings on alchemy are quite difficult. From what I've gathered, it's the symbolism between matter and psyche. It's obsessed with transformation, but it's quite different than chemistry (even beyond proto-chemistry) because it takes into account the ego doing the transformations. The transformation of matter depends on the transformation of the spirit, they viewed it as the same thing. The alchemical opus (the process of making the philosopher stone) is the individuation process. The transformation of the spirit wasn't inside you (the ego) per se. It was outside of you (the unconscious), which was cast upon matter.
A large chapter is dedicated to the fish symbolism of the self, in which a fish may be caught in the deep sea and incorporated into the human body. The sea represents the unconscious and the unknown, and the fishing is the symbol for the self and was for a long time a symbol for Christ. It also represents a tradition of "integrating" Christ into one's inner experience - the "Christ within".
There are many other things touched on this book, although they do generally cluster around the topic of the self and its symbolism, I've only described a tiny portion of it - perhaps about 5-10%. It's quite possibly the most difficult book I have read. There are countless times where I have no idea what he's talking about for pages on end. Sometimes, it clicks after he touches it from another perspective. Sometimes it doesn't. His writings on astrology, in particular, I found it close to impenetrable. Most of the time, I recognize he's trying to "reverse engineer" what led to astrology in the first place and its symbolism. Yet, the way he does so often seems so disconnected from our current world-view that is very hard to follow. Besides, I felt at times that it was mixed with metaphysical beliefs, which only makes it an infinitely more confusing topic.
If you want to take a deep dive into the concept of the Self, you will definitely find a lot of material here. However, if you just want a general conception of it, or dipping your feet into Jungian theory in general, this is likely a bad choice. It's complex, time-consuming and hard to follow. Even so, like in any of Jung's books, there are countless gold insights into the psyche, which for some may justify the read. It certainly did to me.
After some general introduction to archetypes, the book starts by discussing the notion of evil, particularly in Christianity. It has a tradition which states that evil is simply the lack of good, but not a thing in itself. He argues against this from a logical standpoint, but more importantly, he illustrates how this type of thinking has harmed society's notion of evil, and thus the shadow of each individual. This is crucial because it plays a key role in the role of the individuation process - becoming the self.
He presents the self archetype through the lens of Christ, and he's the "living myth of our culture", as Jung puts it. He represents the totality of personality and the embodiment of the divine. To achieve this totality, however, one must also embrace our unconscious dark side, what Jung calls the shadow. This is often represented with an animalistic symbolism. It's commonly illustrated by a snake or a reptile. In myths and fairy tales, often a dragon. This dark side, however, is not purely negative. It's also a source of insight, power, creativity, and more. While this was recognized in Gnosticism, Christianity rejected this "inferior" aspect of the personality and externalized it into the Antichrist. Hence Jung's insistence at the beginning on the reality of evil and the mistake of casting aside only in relation to goodness.
There is a heavy influence of alchemy, where the "lapis philosophorum", and all their countless variations, all point to the "Anthropos". The lapis philosophorum is the philosopher's stone, which allows the turn of base metals into gold. It's also associated with immortality and enlightenment. The Anthropos is the first human being in the Gnostic system. For Jung, this is the perfect and whole man, in which the conscious and unconscious processes are united. This self is the antithesis of the subjective ego-psyche.
Jung's writings on alchemy are quite difficult. From what I've gathered, it's the symbolism between matter and psyche. It's obsessed with transformation, but it's quite different than chemistry (even beyond proto-chemistry) because it takes into account the ego doing the transformations. The transformation of matter depends on the transformation of the spirit, they viewed it as the same thing. The alchemical opus (the process of making the philosopher stone) is the individuation process. The transformation of the spirit wasn't inside you (the ego) per se. It was outside of you (the unconscious), which was cast upon matter.
A large chapter is dedicated to the fish symbolism of the self, in which a fish may be caught in the deep sea and incorporated into the human body. The sea represents the unconscious and the unknown, and the fishing is the symbol for the self and was for a long time a symbol for Christ. It also represents a tradition of "integrating" Christ into one's inner experience - the "Christ within".
There are many other things touched on this book, although they do generally cluster around the topic of the self and its symbolism, I've only described a tiny portion of it - perhaps about 5-10%. It's quite possibly the most difficult book I have read. There are countless times where I have no idea what he's talking about for pages on end. Sometimes, it clicks after he touches it from another perspective. Sometimes it doesn't. His writings on astrology, in particular, I found it close to impenetrable. Most of the time, I recognize he's trying to "reverse engineer" what led to astrology in the first place and its symbolism. Yet, the way he does so often seems so disconnected from our current world-view that is very hard to follow. Besides, I felt at times that it was mixed with metaphysical beliefs, which only makes it an infinitely more confusing topic.
If you want to take a deep dive into the concept of the Self, you will definitely find a lot of material here. However, if you just want a general conception of it, or dipping your feet into Jungian theory in general, this is likely a bad choice. It's complex, time-consuming and hard to follow. Even so, like in any of Jung's books, there are countless gold insights into the psyche, which for some may justify the read. It certainly did to me.
August 4, 2018
Claramente eu não tinha maturidade para ler o Aion. Continuo não tendo, mesmo terminando o livro. Ele não é muito recomendável para quem está iniciando os estudos em Jung (com exceção dos cap. 1-4) e para quem não tem clareza do método comparativo, pois ele irá utilizar de maneira massiva. O autor, inicialmente, introduz os principais arquétipos fazendo uma progressão até chegar ao si-mesmo. Como este último é de difícil teorização e racionalização, Jung utiliza-se, então, de símbolos para ampliar a concepção do si-mesmo. Desta forma, ele apresenta desde Cristo, passando pelo símbolo do peixe sob diversas visões, até chegar aos símbolos gnósticos do si-mesmo. Não é uma leitura fácil, principalmente pelos paralelos tão fora de nossa realidade, mas é um livro fantástico que tenta demonstrar de maneira séria e racional, a existência de algo que é tão infinito que todos compartilhamos, o si-mesmo.
September 23, 2018
A lot of useful ideas in here. Jung connects the western notion of the self with its religious background and symbolism. Showing parallels between the psychological realities of the self as we now know them and the religious symbolism for these realities in the past. His goal is to find ways for us to bridge our awareness to aspects of the unconscious self. For when we become totally unaware of these regions we tend to project them on to other people around us. This can then lead us to situations of mass-psychosis.
June 29, 2023
[Continued from part 1 here: ]
Apotheosis of the Hero Myth: the Archetype of the Self
There are two specific issues I break from Jung on here- his treatment of the Summum Bonum and the Privatio Boni. First of all, he conflates the two as inevitable developments of the other, which I think is more of a tendency than a law. With regards to the Summum Bonum, Jung is correct that it is an immutable doctrine in Christianity, but this teaching of Absolute Goodness within Divine Simplicity results in an "Asymmetrical nature of God"is a bitof reach. He cites Basil, Ireneus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Theophilus of Antioch and others to elucidate this teaching in relation to his Psychic law "There can be no reality without polarity". His citations of both the orthodox fathers and the gnostics are all perfectly historically valid- even his discussion on the pseudo-clementine letters holds up to modern academia. He makes a partially true assumption that this emphasis on the Ontological Goodness and Simplicity of God was triggered by Manichean Dualism, but it did not haveitsorigin in reactionism. Oddly enough,despitequoting the NT extensively, Jung never mentions 1 John 1:5 "This is the message which we have heard from him and announce to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." But I would identify two faulty assumptions: (a) He bought into the childish but commonplace 'Thought-Ending Cliche' that the God of the Old and New Testament are different in their natures, an idea that falls apart with the slightest amount of scrutiny (John 2- where the supposed pacifist, wrathless Jesus constructs a whip and violently assaults people in a place of worship). But to answer his law more directly- I would argue this summation of evil by Goodness into the Ultimate Good is realized by the Anthropos in the desert, as he partly talks about.
The philosophic structure of Privatio Boni, Privation Theory,is present in Aristotelian natural philosophy, but Plotinus was the first to expand this privation theory to the ontology of Evil. Heavily influenced by Neoplatonism by his years as an adherent to the Religion of Platonism before his conversion, Augustine expanded this theory in Christian terminology. But this was not a universally held belief even among the Latin thinkers; Aquinas, for instance, held that only some types of 'evil' are privations, but moral evil is 'positive aliquid' and has real form. Kant argued that Evil has a real 'negative' being. Heidegger worked on this issue extensively and came to the conclusion that"only in the area and on the basis of the Greek interpretation of being" can the negation of the Essence of evil be understood. This absenceστέρησις(stérēsis)should not be understood as simply the opposite of presenceοὐσία�(Ousia), but in a way that "always allows the presence in such a way that at the same time in presence there is an absence... Today we say 'The bicycle is gone' and not only mean that it's non-existent but really that it's missing. The absence then disturbs, and it can only do that because it is 'there' itself; it 'is', that is, it constitutes a being." So in Greek, Heidegger points out, that this binary is not as simple as Jung suggests- Evil can have Being without Presence even within the Theory of Privatio Boni. Dostoevsky, the accidental Orthodox Theologian, was very clear that evil has substance and form, and when worshipped, malevolence 'bundles up' into personhood; into a knowable entity. So this is really more of a Neoplatonic metaphor used by a handful of theologians, not a 'doctrine' like Jung treats it as.
He also subsequently believes that the church fathers locate the potentiality for evil exclusively within the human soul, which again is overly simplistic, for Satan or the Spirit of the Anti-Christ has been cited as the source of evil since the 1st century, which coincides well with his Anima/Animus construct. Jung locates Evil in morally agnostic archetypes in the Collective unconscious, which are realized by the choices of the individual, whichis thesame patterns with different names.
For I agree with Jung that Evil is not deprivation; it is silly to stand among the ashes of the genocides of the 20th century and believe them to be caused by merely moral negligence- by frivolity. But he misunderstands how the Ontology of Evil is understood in Christian theology, treating the Privatio Boni as 'doctrine' when it's simply a Neoplatonic metaphor that a handful of thinkers have used.
And on a broader, cosmogonic, and phenomenological level, where I deviate from Jung and modern Jungian philosophers like Peterson & Co is on the cyclical nature of the Apotheosis of Self-Consciousness. I don't think cultural myths need to infinitely re-package themselves; I think the Hero Myth can- and has- reached a steady-state Apotheosis. There are limits to storytelling; the finite and infinite reach their intrinsic boundaries. And 2,00 years ago, the apotheosis of the Universal Divine and the Finite Human created a Uniform Plurality- Gleichförmige Pluralität.
Jung argues that the Hero myth which the Christian claim is rooted originates from an elemental Psychic state. Hegel recognized this same fact in his Lectures on Religion: "The idea of the Incarnation, for example, runs through all religions. Such general concepts also assert themselves in other spheres of the Geist." Because it is biological, it is universal and has manifested in many forms across human history and in virtually all cultures. It is the ideological manifestation of human physiology; the dramatized representation of the emergence of human consciousness itself. The ancient archetypical death-and-resurrection Hero Archetype (the 'good dreams' as St. Lewis put it)- is rooted in emergent biology and expresses itself in the deepest levels of unconscious psychology. Specifically, the conceptualization of Christ is rooted in the Egyptian Sun-god Horus, which was a reworking of the Mesopotamian deity Marduk (who could 'speak magic words'). Conversely- the word 'Satan' evolved from the word Seth, the Egyptian god of Chaos. Yet the assumption that this makes the Christian claim of the Incarnation of the Theanthropos 'not true' or simply a myth like any other is itself rooted in the Nominalistic assumptions within the Western Rationalist Religion, particularly modernism. Ironically, it's religious dogma.
Jung makes the case that the emergent biological roots of the Hero-Myth make the story of Christ more than merely factually or historically true; it is super-rational, truer than true: the highest form of truth possible. Newman phrased this as "Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet in itsinformations, a monarch in its peremptoriness". In other words, Consciousness contains both objective and subjective truth; the biologically ingrainedHero Myth is not an illusion of the mind, but a precept of the truesttrue. This primordial story only incarnated fully one time in human history across all cultures and religions. The Universal only Particularized, the Multiplicity met the Singularity, the All became the One, the unknowable became knowable and the Infinite was made manifest through Finite form only once.And nothing could be more meaningful than the Divine becomingHuman because Meaning itself exists at the intersection of the Particular and the Universal. He is the discrimination of composite natures; unitemporal and eternal, unique and universal, supernatural and natural simultaneously.
The Story has a face in every culture, every faith, yet only one time in history has the Hero Myth wrapped Flesh and finitude around Himself and walked among us.
Jungian Welt
Man and His Symbols:
Modern Man in Search of a Soul:
The Undiscovered Self:
Synchronicity:
Answer to Job:
Aion: The Symbolism of the Self:
Apotheosis of the Hero Myth: the Archetype of the Self
There are two specific issues I break from Jung on here- his treatment of the Summum Bonum and the Privatio Boni. First of all, he conflates the two as inevitable developments of the other, which I think is more of a tendency than a law. With regards to the Summum Bonum, Jung is correct that it is an immutable doctrine in Christianity, but this teaching of Absolute Goodness within Divine Simplicity results in an "Asymmetrical nature of God"is a bitof reach. He cites Basil, Ireneus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Theophilus of Antioch and others to elucidate this teaching in relation to his Psychic law "There can be no reality without polarity". His citations of both the orthodox fathers and the gnostics are all perfectly historically valid- even his discussion on the pseudo-clementine letters holds up to modern academia. He makes a partially true assumption that this emphasis on the Ontological Goodness and Simplicity of God was triggered by Manichean Dualism, but it did not haveitsorigin in reactionism. Oddly enough,despitequoting the NT extensively, Jung never mentions 1 John 1:5 "This is the message which we have heard from him and announce to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." But I would identify two faulty assumptions: (a) He bought into the childish but commonplace 'Thought-Ending Cliche' that the God of the Old and New Testament are different in their natures, an idea that falls apart with the slightest amount of scrutiny (John 2- where the supposed pacifist, wrathless Jesus constructs a whip and violently assaults people in a place of worship). But to answer his law more directly- I would argue this summation of evil by Goodness into the Ultimate Good is realized by the Anthropos in the desert, as he partly talks about.
The philosophic structure of Privatio Boni, Privation Theory,is present in Aristotelian natural philosophy, but Plotinus was the first to expand this privation theory to the ontology of Evil. Heavily influenced by Neoplatonism by his years as an adherent to the Religion of Platonism before his conversion, Augustine expanded this theory in Christian terminology. But this was not a universally held belief even among the Latin thinkers; Aquinas, for instance, held that only some types of 'evil' are privations, but moral evil is 'positive aliquid' and has real form. Kant argued that Evil has a real 'negative' being. Heidegger worked on this issue extensively and came to the conclusion that"only in the area and on the basis of the Greek interpretation of being" can the negation of the Essence of evil be understood. This absenceστέρησις(stérēsis)should not be understood as simply the opposite of presenceοὐσία�(Ousia), but in a way that "always allows the presence in such a way that at the same time in presence there is an absence... Today we say 'The bicycle is gone' and not only mean that it's non-existent but really that it's missing. The absence then disturbs, and it can only do that because it is 'there' itself; it 'is', that is, it constitutes a being." So in Greek, Heidegger points out, that this binary is not as simple as Jung suggests- Evil can have Being without Presence even within the Theory of Privatio Boni. Dostoevsky, the accidental Orthodox Theologian, was very clear that evil has substance and form, and when worshipped, malevolence 'bundles up' into personhood; into a knowable entity. So this is really more of a Neoplatonic metaphor used by a handful of theologians, not a 'doctrine' like Jung treats it as.
He also subsequently believes that the church fathers locate the potentiality for evil exclusively within the human soul, which again is overly simplistic, for Satan or the Spirit of the Anti-Christ has been cited as the source of evil since the 1st century, which coincides well with his Anima/Animus construct. Jung locates Evil in morally agnostic archetypes in the Collective unconscious, which are realized by the choices of the individual, whichis thesame patterns with different names.
For I agree with Jung that Evil is not deprivation; it is silly to stand among the ashes of the genocides of the 20th century and believe them to be caused by merely moral negligence- by frivolity. But he misunderstands how the Ontology of Evil is understood in Christian theology, treating the Privatio Boni as 'doctrine' when it's simply a Neoplatonic metaphor that a handful of thinkers have used.
And on a broader, cosmogonic, and phenomenological level, where I deviate from Jung and modern Jungian philosophers like Peterson & Co is on the cyclical nature of the Apotheosis of Self-Consciousness. I don't think cultural myths need to infinitely re-package themselves; I think the Hero Myth can- and has- reached a steady-state Apotheosis. There are limits to storytelling; the finite and infinite reach their intrinsic boundaries. And 2,00 years ago, the apotheosis of the Universal Divine and the Finite Human created a Uniform Plurality- Gleichförmige Pluralität.
Jung argues that the Hero myth which the Christian claim is rooted originates from an elemental Psychic state. Hegel recognized this same fact in his Lectures on Religion: "The idea of the Incarnation, for example, runs through all religions. Such general concepts also assert themselves in other spheres of the Geist." Because it is biological, it is universal and has manifested in many forms across human history and in virtually all cultures. It is the ideological manifestation of human physiology; the dramatized representation of the emergence of human consciousness itself. The ancient archetypical death-and-resurrection Hero Archetype (the 'good dreams' as St. Lewis put it)- is rooted in emergent biology and expresses itself in the deepest levels of unconscious psychology. Specifically, the conceptualization of Christ is rooted in the Egyptian Sun-god Horus, which was a reworking of the Mesopotamian deity Marduk (who could 'speak magic words'). Conversely- the word 'Satan' evolved from the word Seth, the Egyptian god of Chaos. Yet the assumption that this makes the Christian claim of the Incarnation of the Theanthropos 'not true' or simply a myth like any other is itself rooted in the Nominalistic assumptions within the Western Rationalist Religion, particularly modernism. Ironically, it's religious dogma.
Jung makes the case that the emergent biological roots of the Hero-Myth make the story of Christ more than merely factually or historically true; it is super-rational, truer than true: the highest form of truth possible. Newman phrased this as "Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet in itsinformations, a monarch in its peremptoriness". In other words, Consciousness contains both objective and subjective truth; the biologically ingrainedHero Myth is not an illusion of the mind, but a precept of the truesttrue. This primordial story only incarnated fully one time in human history across all cultures and religions. The Universal only Particularized, the Multiplicity met the Singularity, the All became the One, the unknowable became knowable and the Infinite was made manifest through Finite form only once.And nothing could be more meaningful than the Divine becomingHuman because Meaning itself exists at the intersection of the Particular and the Universal. He is the discrimination of composite natures; unitemporal and eternal, unique and universal, supernatural and natural simultaneously.
The Story has a face in every culture, every faith, yet only one time in history has the Hero Myth wrapped Flesh and finitude around Himself and walked among us.
Jungian Welt
Man and His Symbols:
Modern Man in Search of a Soul:
The Undiscovered Self:
Synchronicity:
Answer to Job:
Aion: The Symbolism of the Self:
January 15, 2024
Dr Jung is a mystical thinker; I think he does grasp some of the important aspects of the metaphysics of the collective and its relationship to the (so called) individual person.
The writing is informative in terms of cultural history. Jung was the first author who made perception somewhat explicit to me by simply showing the reader a picture of a shaded circle, a clear area in the upper aspect and darker in the lower, with a glowing centre - this is an actual image of embodied perception. Having since read a lot of Jung however, I have probably internalized the symbols into my body of knowledge, the prose eventually becomes somewhat bland and repetetive. Likewise, the symbols Jung has described in his writings, have been absorbed by culture, for instance in Harry Potter or games such as World of Warcraft, which is completely saturated with alchemical, mythological, tropes from the european cultural history.
Jung is providing a good introduction to world history and culture, but he only takes the reader thus far. I would advocate reading René Girard and Simone Weil, in the generation of Western thinkers succeeding Jung, when it comes to intepretation of myth and its relationship to the human personal biography.
To understand Jung- I think he finds romantic fundamentalism (his father is a protestant priest, just like the father of Nietzsche) lackning because of its neglecion and omission of AUTHENTIC PERCEPTION. He therefore studies the totality of human culture, church tradition as well as gnostic traditions, and finds that the christian church dogma puts forth a god that is ASYMMETRICAL and therefore lackning.
His critique is appropriate in one way but it is incomplete. The critique is directed toward church dogma but its swipes also includes the new testament. In reality, the new testament summarizes perception PERFECTLY as explained by Girard. The asymmetrical perception of god as experienced by natural man, described in the book of Job with the dualism of god and satan, totally lackning in agreement with what the pastors put forth in their sermons, is in fact explained by the bible - the powers and principalities and the metaphysics of the crowd. The god of fundamentalism that modern Christians worship is however rightfully the recipient of severe criticism, and should be treated as a false idol in my opinion.
Jung is still closer to the truth of the bible than todays pastors, who are profoundly mistaken when they try interpreting the bible using fundamentalist autistic logic.
The writing is informative in terms of cultural history. Jung was the first author who made perception somewhat explicit to me by simply showing the reader a picture of a shaded circle, a clear area in the upper aspect and darker in the lower, with a glowing centre - this is an actual image of embodied perception. Having since read a lot of Jung however, I have probably internalized the symbols into my body of knowledge, the prose eventually becomes somewhat bland and repetetive. Likewise, the symbols Jung has described in his writings, have been absorbed by culture, for instance in Harry Potter or games such as World of Warcraft, which is completely saturated with alchemical, mythological, tropes from the european cultural history.
Jung is providing a good introduction to world history and culture, but he only takes the reader thus far. I would advocate reading René Girard and Simone Weil, in the generation of Western thinkers succeeding Jung, when it comes to intepretation of myth and its relationship to the human personal biography.
To understand Jung- I think he finds romantic fundamentalism (his father is a protestant priest, just like the father of Nietzsche) lackning because of its neglecion and omission of AUTHENTIC PERCEPTION. He therefore studies the totality of human culture, church tradition as well as gnostic traditions, and finds that the christian church dogma puts forth a god that is ASYMMETRICAL and therefore lackning.
His critique is appropriate in one way but it is incomplete. The critique is directed toward church dogma but its swipes also includes the new testament. In reality, the new testament summarizes perception PERFECTLY as explained by Girard. The asymmetrical perception of god as experienced by natural man, described in the book of Job with the dualism of god and satan, totally lackning in agreement with what the pastors put forth in their sermons, is in fact explained by the bible - the powers and principalities and the metaphysics of the crowd. The god of fundamentalism that modern Christians worship is however rightfully the recipient of severe criticism, and should be treated as a false idol in my opinion.
Jung is still closer to the truth of the bible than todays pastors, who are profoundly mistaken when they try interpreting the bible using fundamentalist autistic logic.
December 26, 2023
Probably our favorite book we've read by Jung so far, although it sort of devolves into arcana by the end, after starting out dealing with the most interesting topic for us: the end of the aeon of Pisces and the emergence of the age of Aquarius. Lots about Gnosticism, alchemical symbolism etc, fish symbolism and such; much to add to the arsenal for understanding early Christianity. We'll have to take this information to the next stage however, because what is needed now is to actually reorient the emerging technical paradigms unfolding around us, towards something of an emancipatory trajectory. We believe this is still doable, but there is little time left. These juncture periods are immensely important. The generations currently alive will have a massively disproportionate effect on the entire dawning aeon. The water-bearer will emerge to pour the hominid earthling ethos upon the extraterrestrial domain, but what will that gift be- the flow of gnosis or solidification of the "black iron prison"? We must decide that now..
April 14, 2020
I love nothing more than the notion of constructively relating what seem to be separate concepts. Carl Jung in this extremely creative and ingenious work shows how certain Christian ideas look when
observed from the standpoint of psychological experience. He focuses on his usual archetypes and tries to draw some analogies between some of these notions and other biblical figures such as Christ.
He shows extremely deep knowledge when it comes to understanding the dynamics of these traditions and some other eastern religions, which is absolutely impressive. Once again, I have to say, I am impressed.
However, I can't help but feel skeptical when it comes to the Alchemy side of his writings. The scientific foundations for those arguments are somehow non-existent, and they could easily fall. Somehow, he cares not about that, and he floats in that realm, which I don't mind doing myself. That's the only thing I have to say when it comes to this book.
Absolutely astonishing.
observed from the standpoint of psychological experience. He focuses on his usual archetypes and tries to draw some analogies between some of these notions and other biblical figures such as Christ.
He shows extremely deep knowledge when it comes to understanding the dynamics of these traditions and some other eastern religions, which is absolutely impressive. Once again, I have to say, I am impressed.
However, I can't help but feel skeptical when it comes to the Alchemy side of his writings. The scientific foundations for those arguments are somehow non-existent, and they could easily fall. Somehow, he cares not about that, and he floats in that realm, which I don't mind doing myself. That's the only thing I have to say when it comes to this book.
Absolutely astonishing.
October 31, 2019
Well, this one was dense as hell. Incredible insights about the nature of self are peppered throughout this Charlie Day Pepe Silvia meme of a book. Jung pulls together so many threads of psychology, Gnosticism, alchemical thinking, and other strains of philosophy / mysticism that it’s nearly impossible to discern whether he’s on a higher level genius than your or that he probably could’ve used a bit more therapy himself. Regardless, the insanity of it all is worth it for the gems found within about the importance of reconciling the ego to a much more mysterious, broad, and paradoxical self than it wants to admit being a part of.
June 13, 2024
I need to let this simmer. will be reading it again in the future after I study even more psychology/mysticism/theology/philosophy 😝 the fact that I read this in 3 months surprises me and now I need MORE
January 18, 2024
so far as i've read Jung, it's one of the highly mystical, religious and alchemical books. not the first book to pick up in your journey through Jung's world.
September 28, 2024
Well, not what I expected
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