stOttilien

Category: Spiritual

  • The pope steps down – a philosopher hunted down.

    The pope steps down – a philosopher hunted down.

    This is a sad day: “Der Lotse geht von Bord”.  The pope steps down, our great spiritual and intellectual leader leaves the ship. I have respect for his decision, which must not have been an easy one for this modest man. I want to discuss the spiritual and political background of this.

    Spiritual consequences

    The pope steps down
    Der Lotse geht von Bord”
    Karikatur aus dem Londoner “Punch” vom 2. September 1890 zur Entlassung Bismarcks durch Wilhelm II.

    I pray that he has still enough time left and for his health. Catholicism does not depend like other “beliefs” on new doctrines and to hurry from fashion to fashion because opinions of yesterday’s turn out useless already today. Sometimes it seems only the Catholic church can preserve us from the embarrassing and degrading slavery of stupidity, decay and greed, of dark totalitarian forces being ideological motivated ones or creeping out of dark medieval ages. The catholic church is no invention of our time. She will survive as the first steely global organisation, even if  her enemies have not given up the hope to see catholic dying one day. Thanks to the Holy Father for his smart and modest guidance of our church. The pope was neither ultra conservative, nor a Church-CEO. He was as a bishop of Rome in the succession of Peter and is time of his life an intellectual thinker and light tower  for us Catholic Christians. And if one really deals with his writings and his work, one recognises how deeply religious this man is and what a luminous example he is to us Catholics.

    From a Jungian view I may not always have agreed with Pope Benedict ,  but I do thank him for his work, for taking a stand and wish him a few more quiet years in late autumn of his life. All the best for the future! I hope the next pope comes from a spiritual young Catholic church  – Asia, Africa or South America – not from the Western Ship of Fools. When the last pope resigned with Celestine V 1294 and Gregory XII 1415, it was on the eve of the fall of Constantinople,  of East Rome 1453,  of Christianity in the Middle East.  Pope Benedict XVI created a new Vatican department aimed at “re-evangelizing” the most secular regions of the globe, including areas of Europe that have become “de-Christianized.” That is needed indeed. In any case, Pope Benedikt is a universally educated high dignitary of the Church, willfully misunderstood by most,  never mind if they really have read a line from him. His level is another than coarse and vicious debate culture let alone the jaded role models for the masses. Ironically it became clear those last years, that he was a modern intellectual. He spoke out for freedom, also individual freedom, for separation of state and church, building bridges to other religions, to science and philosophy and fighting for a global church in countries where spirituality still prospers.

    Political reasons

    Pope Benedict XVI has made many enemies within and out of the Catholic church. An enlightened scholar and philosopher was hunted down by indignity. His relation with Germany was stressed. In his last speech in Germany he spoke of “Entweltlichung” hinting that German clerics live to cosy within the state concordat and lack spiritual drive. In the parliament he quoted for our “great” politicians St. Augustine: “What are the states without justice than only than a big band of robbers?“ (Book 4.4).  It can be also interpreted as: A state without God is at best a well organised band of robbers. Indeed, that was the European Union and Germany became. Given the disgusting public noise towards his person it was a sensible decision to retire. It was telling, that the German (cleric) officials referred only to Celestine V, a hermetic monk,  who,  overwhelmed and tired of the poisoned climate of the Vatican tepped down after five months. Some of them had wished a Pope Benedict XVI more streamlined, more postmodern or at least more protestant. He was neither. Joseph Ratzinger has recognised early that reforms, when they lead to a religious relativism, block the essentials, the faith in God and  lead in a dead-end. The 68er movement has made clear to the young theologian Ratzinger the dangers of the approaching spirit of the time. Today’s coinage very clearly drags everything onto the suction of a doctrinal secularism and dissolves thus the Christianity in pagan belief. In this respect one may see the big achievement pope Benedikts XVI to have held up those disastrous currents  and with it perserved the livelihood of the Catholic church. Besides, Joseph Ratzinger had to lead the discussion with the Marxist liberation theology arising in Latin America as a prefect of the religious congregation that has severely challenged the church just in these countries. Furthermore his achievements are indisputable regarding the unity of the Catholic faith. Newsweek stated gaffes statements are the red thread of his pontiff, and the Regensburger speech is stated as an example. Clearly who reduces such a speech into a 130 Twitter message comes to such a mistaken judgement. The speech opened even a dialog with moderate Muslims on a peer level in addition to the Orthodox and Jewish. Of course, there are many which want to misunderstand for political reasons. Many just wish a politically correct church –  Johannes Paul just as like Benedikt disappointed them and this is a good thing.

    Pope Benedict XVI’s spokesman has denied the pontiff will resign over the VatiLeak of confidential documents. However, there were smearing gossip articles lately and hints that some treacherous infighting was going on in the Vatican. He was the one who cleaned up the act of the church regarding the abuse cases, reaching out to the victims. Maybe he had alienated some preference groups with his “zero tolerance” policy and because he was firm on catholic tradition and truth. It seems clear, that the pope has deeply been made sick by the child abuse in the Catholic church and came to conflict with the cardinals. He will disappear from March, 2013 out of sight of the public and Vatican will provide for the fact that this also remains extensively so.

    As head of the state, Pope Benedict XVI has not done so well. Not always he trusted the right people. To be fair, the ailing pope before him left behind a big administrative and financial mess (not improved by the EU financial crisis). A cluster of banking scandals have been surfacing in Italy recently. They concern the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) involving head of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi (G&S alumni) when he was still head of the Italian central bank. The history of the bank is a telling example of the murderous symbiosis of politics and investment banks. The fired boss of the bank, Giuseppe Mussari, is a leading Freemasons according to the  newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano. Freemasons have a long tradition in Tuscany and numerous members of the socialist party. Those socialists who control the city of Siena since generations installed Goldman Sachs together with the Citigroup and Merill Lynching as a „joint Worldwide Coordinators“ and for buying  the Spanish Bank Antonveneta 2007 on the brink of the finance crises. One of the most important actors in the crime movie was Mario Draghi. It is completely implausible that Draghi has known nothing about the details about the state of the Antonveneta as he claimed of the G&S deals with Greece in the scandal around manipulated figures of the Greeks for the EU entry. As a boss of the EZB he is meanwhile the true ruler of Europe. The  EU installed Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, also a Goldman adviser, has tried during the past years to keep the bank with tax money alive, and has pumped billions of taxpayer money into the bank.  While little has been said in the mainstream western press about the ongoing fiasco surrounding Siena’s Banca Monte dei Pasci, Italy’s third largest bank and the world’s oldest may get its third bailout in three years. The situation on the ground in Italy is getting more serious, and will have implications on both next month’s general election, on Mario Monti, on Silvio Berlusconi, as the scandal reaches as far up as the head of the ECB – Mario Draghi. Due to previously undisclosed derivative contracts first exposed by Bloomberg, the Siena bank has hidden as much as $1 billion in losses.  The “Latest Italian Bailout Scandal”, has far greater implications for the implied credibility of both the Bank of Italy, and especially the man who headed it for five years before becoming head of the ECB (where he now demands the same supervisory authority over all European banks that he had in Italy, only to supposedly let countless derivative fiascos slip through his fingers). Or in plain English, why the then-Draghi led Bank of Italy allowed this to happen not once, not twice, but at least three times.  This scandal maybe connected with Pope Bendict’s VVI significant problems of the Vatican bank IOR. The Italian press indicated that those scandals have an international dimension. The former Vatican IOR boss, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was before his engagement with the Vatican Chef of the Italian establishment of the Spanish Santander, the very bank who sold Antonvenet for an inflated price (and under investigation of kickback corruption) to the now troubled Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena.

    Benedikt XVI attempted to resolve the shady behavior of the Vatican Bank by installing the former German Banker Tietmeyer. Bad customs, defamation, power plays, ambitions without barriers and theft led to the destruction of the Vatican Bank. Established financial power groups could be involved for their part in the Vatican bank scandal and may be also behind the butler who stole confidential papers from the desk of Pope Benedikt. The shadows behind the butler never came to light and the Pope sure must have been tired and disappointed. The Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi ( he has to be taken with a bit of salt) is convinced: Pope Benedikt XVI has stepped down to put a sign against the mismanagement in Vatican. He has felt as a theologian not competent enough to solve the economic problems of the church state. He has had no friends in the Vatican. Above all his cardinal’s Assistant Secretary Tarcisio Bertone has built up a dangerous network of ropes and carries on opaque business with „dubious figures“. The pope has not stopped Bertone. The loyalty of the pope to a man who clearly damages  him is surprising: „They fit not really. Ratzinger is a subtle intellectual, a shepherd. Bertone is a cunning administrator who knows the Curia inside and by heart”, Nuzzi wrote. Fact is, the he former head of the IOR Ettore Gotti Tedeschi has been recently fired  for never revealed reasons and the pope has approved today the German layer Ernst von Freyberg as new head of the IOR. Pope Benedikt XVI. had tried to enforce stricter rules for the IOR  by founding 2011 an independent controlling institution and also favored Gotti Tedeschi proposal for compliance to international rules while some parts of the Vatican, particularily Secretary Tarcisio Bertone, wanted to keep its current “independent” mode.

    Conclusion

    One can argue, that the Pope did no solve the management crisis he inherited completely. This cheap criticism comes predictable from sides, however, which never liked a strong catholic faith. It is often just unfounded repetition or strange spin of  shady economic and political  clusters. To the resignation of pope Benedikt XVI the Freemasons have sharply criticised the economic behaviour of the Vatican. They hope for a complete coup. In the TV broadcasting “Öteki Gündem” the Turkish (!) journalist Aytunç has raised Altındal heavy charges against the parting pope based on hearsay of American (!) sources – John Patrick Quirk, a professor and former CIA advisor. It looks like the Pope emeritus has to watch his back even more now than before, also physically. Somebody has unleashed many dogs, after Pope Benedikt XVI forced the cleanup by his resignation.

    An observation of the history is always interesting:

    The more powerful the financial dynasties  became, the more and more audaciously the Christianity and the Catholic church was attacked. They control not only semi-secret organizations (Freemason, Bilderberger, CFR, trilateral commission, Illuminati, black nobility etc.), but manupilate politicians and transnational organisations (EU, IMF, UN) more and more violently the fate of us all.

    Pope Benedict XVI was a great admire of Augustine, a contemporary of the (declining) Roman Empire. This world state was taken over by the early Roman Church because of visible injustice. Similar like radical Islam outshines today corrupt secular governments. After the victory over the communism by Johannes Paul, to Pope Benedict those greater challenges became obvious. During the last years the Christianity has become the mostly persecuted religion of the world. The European West seems lost to the Christianity whose heritage it owes most. By failing Augustine’s – lets call it ethical – virtues the West fails its secular objectives too. Continuing this way, world finance and its paid servants will lead us back to the dark ages to either secular or religious totalitarian systems. One can take from the “God’s state” of Augustine the following eight elements:

    •  God’s image must be promoted. Secondly uniqueness of any person created after God’s image has to be acknowledged. In this the dignity of any person has its foundation.
    • Above all, man is made good. If man sins, he /she acts under his/her dignity and against possibilities and God’s order. The evil is the absences of the good, it has no substance in itself.
    • The states must allow the God’s love, that is „the true religion“. The God’s citizen who face God live the truth. The cosmopolitan who are aimed only to themselves live the lie.
    • The God’s state is formed by citizens who live the spirit, the world state by citizens who live after the flesh. The states should allow to live after the spirit.
    • The highest aim of the God’s state is peace. In order that anybody achieves the everlasting aim, the state must guarantee above all “freedom”.
    • The state being must provide for justice. The rhetorical question: „What are the states without justice differently than big bands of robbers?“ (Book 4.4), may be interpreted so also: A state without God is at best a well organised band of robbers.
    • Another important principle for the state is that it rules by virtue. Even the Roman’s empire – the first and only world state – has prospered according to Augustine, as long as Romans have practiced virtues.
    • The state authority who acknowledges God has a right to obedience if it concerns the worldly things. The state is no remedial way itself.

    One thinks this is old stuff – look around.

    References:

    Gianluigi Nuzzi works as an investigative journalist with the Italian magazine “Panorama”, before he was for the newspapers “Corriere della Sera” and „Il Giornale.

    • Vatikan AG – Ein Geheimarchiv enthüllt die Wahrheit über die Finanz- und Politskandale der Kirche, 360 Seiten, Ecowin-Verlag, 22,50 Euro
    • Seine Heiligkeit – Die geheimen Briefe aus dem Schreibtisch von Papst Benedikt XVI., 416 Seiten, Piper-Verlag, 22,99 Euro

    Note: One who is less a servant of God and more a servant of his own self-esteem might have embraced the power of the office he held and ignored the needs of the flock. Not so Pope Benedict, he truly accepted the second half of St. Peter’s exhortation: “Do not lord it over those assigned to you, but be examples to the flock.” His example tells us clearly that the needs of those we serve out-weigh our own.

    Added Note: February, 22th

    There has been a claim put forth by Italian daily newspaper La Republica, that pope’ decision was influenced by a  secretive “gay lobby” within the Vatican itself.

    Yesterday this paper published an article alleging that Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to resign this month was partly prompted by a report that accused Vatican officials of being under the influence of several internal lobbies, reportedly including a gay one. The nearly 300-page dossier would be passed on to pope’s successor, the report added.

    The Irish Times reports that Benedict commissioned the report after the Vatileaks scandal broke last year. The report, written by a trio of cardinals, concluded that “various lobbies within the Holy See were consistently breaking” the sixth and seventh commandments, “thou shalt not commit adultery” and “thou shalt not steal.”

    (The sixth commandment referencing adultery has historically been tied to the Catholic Church’s doctrine banning homosexuality.)

    Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, released an arguably vague statement about the accusations.

    Throughout his life, Pope Benedict XVI has professed our Lord Jesus as the Christ. No person needed to tell him this; he was truly given access to the will of the Holy Spirit. We, who like him, are adopted by Christ must now thank him for the gift of his life, energy, and service to the people of God and the Church. We look to the empty Chair of St. Peter and pray that, as in past Conclaves, a new Pontiff will emerge and that he will become stronger than he had ever thought possible.

    Today especially we conclude with Prayer:

    Lord, send forth your Holy Spirit and continue to guide and inspire our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI during these final days of his papacy. Be with the College of Cardinals for the next conclave and fill them with your grace. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

  • The footprints of Aquarius and New World Order – a Jungian view

    The footprints of Aquarius and New World Order – a Jungian view

    The Aquarius Age (aka New Age or New World Order) is a period defined by the passage of the spring equinox (literally “Equal Night”) into the Aquarius zodiac sign. What does the Aquarius age promise? What are its footprints? Is it the blue pill or the red – hope or despair? What had Jung  to say…?

    The gradual shift in the orientation of Earth’s axis of rotation changes the apparent position of the vernal equinox through all twelve traditional constellations of the zodiac, at the rate of about 2150 years for one of them (called a Great Month) in a full cycle of ca. 26,000 years (called a Great or Platonic Year).

    Aquarius
    New World

    In our lifetime the earth is (was) on the brink of the Pisces Age to Aquarius age. Change has been positively embraced by the pop culture (like in the musical “Hair” in the sixties or Obama in his election rhetoric), by liberals, astrology and esotericism as way to equality and individualism. Syncretic and atheist movements have claimed it will bring forth global integration in a brave new world. Economy experts have offered endless growth. Today in retrospect the Aquarius age is more and more associated with the rise of the evil, the globalization and undemocratic transnational organizations and a New World Order controlled by secret power elites.I want to approach this essay by a Jungianan New Age book: “The Footprints of God: The Relationship of Astrology, C.G. Jung, the Gospels” by Luella Sibbald from the year 1988 – stripped of New Age content and trying to allign physical facts, underlying myths and astrological claims with historical facts of the past.

    Astronomy

    434px-Praezession

    The psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung was an early popularizer of the concept of the Age of Aquarius (already in the forties of last century). I might be drawn to C.G. Jung but certainly not to New Age, so lets look at the astronomical facts first. The reason of the Great Year is an axial precession of the earth similar to the precession of a spinning top due to gravity. The precession of the Earth’s axis has a number of observable effects. First, the positions of the celestial poles appear to move in circles against the space-fixed backdrop of stars, completing one circuit in 25,772 Julian years (2000 rate). Thus, while today the star Polaris lies approximately at the north celestial pole, this will change over time, and other stars will become the “alignment star” for us star gazers. Secondly, the position of the Earth in its orbit changes relative to the backdrop of the stars and therefore also the vernal equinox slowly regresses a full 360 degree through all twelve traditional constellations of the zodiac, at the rate of about 50.3 seconds of arc per year (approximately 360 degrees divided by 25,772), or 1 degree every 71.6 years.The Mayas observed with the help of the Venus orbit already this axial precession of our earth.

    Modern astronomy aside, all religions and cultures have recognized the vernal equinox for thousands of years. The date is significant in Christianity because Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. It is also probably no coincidence that early Egyptians built the Great Sphinx so that it points directly toward the rising Sun on the day of the vernal equinox. The first day of spring also marks the beginning of the Persian New Year in the 3,000-year-old tradition of Zorastrianism. Other important advanced civilisations of the humanity – Maya, Sumerian, Chaldaean, Egypt’s, Chinese etc. – held a similar idea of the change of Aeon’s and interpreted it in religious and mythical traditions . ‘Aeon’ comes from the Greek and means “long time” originally a name of the old Persian eternity God czar’s van akaran (=time without end). In the numerous mystic schools of the later Gnosis, which heavily influence C.G. Jung, “Aeon”, loses this meaning and  defines those long zodiac periods.

    Astrology

    Age of Aquarius
    Age of Aquarius

    In Astrology, still of those darkened avenues considered off-limits of science the Great Year of have recognized the vernal equinox were interpreted by Babylonian astronomers. It is worth to mention, that in Babylonian times there was no difference between a priest and a doctor and up to the time of the Astronomer Kepler little difference between Astrology and Astronomy. In his research into the symbolic meaning of his patient’s dreams, conversations and paintings, Jung observed recurring mythical themes. Jung concluded that the constellations were originally inspired by projections of images created by the collective unconscious. Jung wrote “Astrology represents the sum of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity”.

    A vernal point moving through the randomly sized zodiacal constellations or sidereal zodiac  too erratic and suggest a false accuracy for  a long period transitions one may round all astrological ages to exactly 2000 years each: In that the Aries age is found from 2000 BC to 1 AD, Pisces age 1 AD to 2000 AD, the Aquarian age 2000 AD – 4000 AD, and so on. So the great year is defined by the vernal equinox sign placed in the particular house.

    houses_chart
    houses_chart

    The houses have certain meanings:

    • The 1st house ( Ascendant) Real Self, demeanour, and vitality
    • The 2nd house: possession and material goods.
    • The 3rd house: immediate surroundings, siblings, studies.
    • The 4th house, (Imum Coeli): family, home, origins,  and father.
    • The 5th house: creativity love, pleasure, leisure, and children
    • The 6th house: everyday life, service and health.
    • The 7th house (Descendant): Persona how to perceives, partnership, marriage
    • The 8th house: crises, transformations, death,  sexuality, occultism.
    • The 9th house: travels, mental explorations, philosophy, law and religion.
    • The 10th house, (mid-heaven): hope a professional destiny,  mother.
    • The 11th house: friends, hope and wishes, supports and protections
    • The 12th house: own undoing, enemies, difficulties, solitude, secrets

    The Zodiac is divided into four quadrants and hemisphere of the same size.

    •  The first quadrant comprises the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd houses. They symbolise levels of consciousness of egotistical nature
    •  The second quadrant comprises the 4th, 5th, and 6th houses. Sociability, creativity and work.
    • The third quadrant comprises the 7th, 8th, and 9th houses, which are of sheer interpersonal nature.
    •  The fourth quadrant comprises the 10th, 11th, and 12th houses, the sector of spiritual and humanitarian actions.
    • The Northern hemisphere comprises the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th houses and indicates a personal, egotistical, subjective, and internalized typology.
    •  The Southern hemisphere comprises the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th houses and indicates an active, objective, externalized, and group-oriented typology.
    • The Eastern hemisphere comprises the 10th, 11th, 12th, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd house, near the Ascendant it indicates a typology marked by independence and personal action.
    • The Western hemisphere comprises the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th houses, near the Descendant it indicates the importance of communication, dependency and relation with on other people

    “The Age of Freedom and the Water Bearer” (Aquarius AD 2150 to 4300)

    The edge established between Pisces and Aquarius locates the beginning of the Aquarian Age around the year 2600. C.G. Jung followed interpretation that the Age of Aquarius will begin in AD 1997 but in the Mayan Calendar / Egyptian Cycle of the Phoenix begins AD 21 December 2012.

    We live in emotional and intellectual disturbed times.  In (European) retrospect this has been caused by permanent indoctrination of sterile and spiritual deaf scholars in the sixties like Marxist Ernst Bloch who ridiculed Carl Gustav Jung, ” who offers art as a religious substitute, religion life substitute and both for a tired bourgeoisie” or petty revolutionary like Rudis Dutschkes comrades, little Red Guards who until today just can utter “Ultra reactionary”. When Jung was dying in 1961, age-old and terminally ill from heart problems, his thoughts circled round the Far Eastern practice of the rebirth. Now, so he entrusted friends, he will probably learn shortly what the Self is all about. In 1958 Jung, in a writing with the title “a modern myth”, he had forecast the coming world order in the sign of the Aquarius: “Now we approach”, he announced, “the big change, with the entry of the spring equinox we expect the coming world order in Aquarius”  with “secular changes of the collective psyche”.

    Jung and the Age of Aquarius

    As has been shown, the defection the transition into the Aquarius depends on arbitrarily agreed zodiac borders of the constellations, the change the age cannot be defined rationally or exactly. Thus very different times were calculated up to now:  1950, in 1962, but also in 1997, in 2012 (aligned with the Mayan calendar) and 2146 were given. The latter number arises if one defines the (Western notation) year 1 A.D. as a beginning of this Pisce age how it is mostly done for reasons of the descriptiveness. C.G.Jung has dated such a change of “Aeons” in his work, hence, on 1997. Aniela Jaffé in “C.G.Jung in his last years and other articles” and C. G. Jung in his work “Aion” (1950) interprets this change as a “synchronicity phenomenon”.  Aniela Jaffé ties it with the (decline) of the Christianity whose symbol is the fish. She claims, that possibly thousand years ago – as the second part of the Pisces sign was touched, the age of the Antichrist begun whose climax we experience right now.

    Who wants to understand, why academic Europeans turned to Indian gurus in the sixties and value Jung today, should rather read Jung than Freud; Jung is a precursor of that capitalism and civilisation criticism which becomes today more than valid  in view of the menacing economic and spiritual disasters of literally dying societies. Secularism in the West and  not bring enlightenment but a soft totalitarian Socialism in partnership with the New World Order of the “Masters of the Universe”. More still: The “wise old person of the Zurich lake”, as his disciples called him, opened his system of theories quite early to all sorts of occult influences which appears today meaningful in the post-scientific world view of the disappointed protagonists and the post-democratic reality: Myths and fairy tales, spiritualism, astrology, alchemy, shamanism, Catholicism, Zen and yoga – all this melted in the thinking of the psycho-magician Jung to a cosmic whole.  The “Self”  was Jung’s objective, a psychic integration of consciousness and unconscious and awareness of collective archetypes, so vivid needed in the fast paced globalisation and global communication which develop according to their own laws and are called upon by fanatics (or paid manipulators) with a mouse click to raise an angry religious or pseudo-secular (post-modern) mob.

    Below are excerpts of what Jung wrote of the Age of Aquarius..

    • C G Jung 1951 AD [for the German-language Version], Aion [published in the Collected Works 9, Part II] Chapter IV, The Sign of the Fishes:
      • “If, as seems probable, the aeon of the fishes is ruled by the archetypal motif of the hostile brothers, then the approach of the next Platonic month, namely Aquarius, will constellate the problem of the union of the opposites. It will then no longer be possible to write off evil as the mere privation of good; it’s real existence will have to be recognized. This problem can be solved neither by philosophy, nor by economics, nor by politics, but only by the individual human being, via his experience of the living spirit…”
      • ” Astrologically interpreted, the designation of Christ as one of the fishes identified him with the first fish, the vertical one. Christ is followed by the Antichrist at the end of time. The beginning of the enantiodromia would fall, logically, midway between the two fishes. We have seen that this is so. The time of the Renaissance begins in the immediate vicinity of the second fish, and with it comes the spirit which culminates in the modern age”
      • “Since the delimitation of the constellations is known to be somewhat arbitrary, this date is very indefinite. It refers to the actual constellation of fixed stars, not to the zodion noeton, i.e. the zodiac divided into sectors of 30º each. Astrologically, the beginning of the next aeon, according to the starting point you select falls between AD 2000 and AD 2200. Starting from the star “O” and assuming a Platonic month of 2 143 years, one would arrive at AD 2154 for the beginning of the Aquarian Age, and at AD 1997 if you start at star “a 113.” The latter date agrees with the longitude of the stars in Ptolemy’s Almagest, p. 199, n. 1.”
    • C G Jung 1959 AD: Flying Saucers, Introduction, pp xi – xii:
      • ” They are, it seems, changes in the constellation of the psychic dominants, of the archetypes or “Gods” as they used to be called, which bring about, or accompany, long-lasting transformations of the collective psyche. This transformation started within the historical tradition and left traces behind within it, first in the transition of the Age of Taurus to that of Aries, and then from Aries to Pisces, whose beginning coincides with the rise of Christianity. We are now nearing that great change which may be expected when the spring-point enters Aquarius. “
    newWorldOrder

    To others (presumably before the start of the current global mess and violence) the age of the Aquarius promises an era of nonconformity and individualism defined by qualities like tolerance, openness and a non-egalitarian but elitarian world bourgeoisie.I don’t think elitarian is a word, but I just declare it one.referring to a system of government, economics, or general society that is governed by a concept of an “elite”… this can include things from elements of EU commitess, Nazi Germany, IMF or the Bilderbergers with hidden goals. The problem is rather simple; under such structures, you assume a different type of dreaded brave new world “ethics”. You  offer  “bread and games” as well as projections of “bad” elements to a society of second class of citizen. People behave in Jungs’s conservative manner, the need spiritualiy surroundings, nurturing parents and community. The spirit of the Aquarius age will affect not only in research and science counterproductively, but  also encompasses a New World Order. Hence, the Aquarius Age by worldwide interlinking and globalisation it creates the base to centralize the problems of the humanity worldwide essentially in a post democratic way but also is decentralized counter movement.  It looks like the beauty of the Aquarian Ange lies in the beholder.

    quarian Age 1st housePisces 2nd house
    Aquarian Age 1st housePisces 2nd house

    Jung pointed out the vital necessity for a new religious myth that would support Western culture. He recognized that we are living in a time that has lost its central myth, which he understood as truly pathologic if not apocalyptic condition. Our civilization has become rudderless, without the means to steer Western societies in meaningful ways, without solid basis for decision-making. In earlier essays I discussed the collective archetypes and how current global conditions are leading us closer and closer to confronting our collective shadow. The emergence of the “communication outside the reach of the New World Order” is the only positive sign on the horizon that could avert global disaster. But for it to do so requires individuals to share that “treasure in the field”—the treasure that lies within each of us.

    Astrology gives those hints for the Sign of Aquarius:

    • Fixed water sign (resistance to change)
    • Rulers Saturn and Uranus
    • Uranus the planet of the unconsciousness and unconventionality
    • Saturn the planet of the caution and tradition
    • Ascendent is Leo – fire sign  (Ruler Sun) of strength and passion

    This fosters an expectation that the Aquarian age will foster in a period of group consciousness. Furthermore we saw the appearance of dictators, self-expression and the rising influence of the entertainment industry are linked to the Aquarian age by its opposite sign Leo. In popular culture, the expression “Age of Aquarius” usually refers to Hippie and New Age. The musical Hair brought the Aquarian Age concept 1967 to the attention of a huge worldwide audience. This New Age phenomenon is seen by some astrologers to be marked by the conjunction of the planet Uranus, ruler of the sign Aquarius, and the coming age, with Pluto, ruler of the masses, bringing radical change. However, as the Hair opening song relates, it is only considered by astrologers as the “dawning” or “cusp” of the Age

    Spiritual Archetypes: Traits of Aquarius such as being ‘humanitarian’ but at the same time ‘unemotional’ may indicate to the emergence of active trans-governmental organisations and global “solidarity” movements. Alternatively, it may indicate individual New Age spiritual awakening en mass, which although is not organized, spontaneously forms a worldwide ‘humanitarian’ yet ‘unemotional’ era of spiritual clarity and spontaneous friendship.

    “The Age of Monotheism, Spirituality, and the Fish” (AD 1 to 2150)

    This is technically the current age but there are many astrologers who believe that the Age of Aquarius has already arrived or will arrive soon (Mayan: ends 21 December 2012).

    • Pisces is a fixed water sign (selfishness)
    • Rulers are Jupiter and Neptune
    • Jupiter the planet of justice,  spirituality and compassion
    • Neptune the planet of artistic inspirations
    • Ascendent is Virgo – fire sign  (Ruler Mercury) service and rationality

    Spiritual Archetypes: The Age of Pisces is characterized by the rise of many religions such as Christianity (founded 1st Century), Islam (founded 7th Century) and Buddhism (founded 6th to 4th Century BC) due to the “spiritual” nature of Pisces and its ability to go beyond the boundaries of the physical world. The Age of Pisces is mainly marked by the continuous research of humanity about the truth hidden behind what’s perceived.

    “The Age of War, Fire and the Ram” (Aries  2150 BC to ca. 1 AD)

    • Fixed water sign (resistance to change)
    • Rulers Saturn and Uranus
    • Uranus the planet of the unconsciousness and unconventionality
    • Saturn the planet of the caution and tradition
    • Ascendent is Leo – fire sign  (Ruler Sun) of strength and passion

    Aries represents a Fire symbol as well as bold actions, such as the expanding empires of China, Persia, Greece and Rome, are often cited as examples of the archetypes of Aries in action. Also the Aries constellation shows a ram running. This could correspond with the sacrifice of Abraham’s Ram. The battering ram invokes the symbol of Mars, the planetary ruler of Aries, According to the Roman state religion, the Roman people were the “Sons of Mars” attributed to the various Wars of the time. Aries is associated with the metal iron, and iron ore was for the first time smelted and worked into iron swords in Anatolia during the early phase of this era, replacing the heavier, softer-metalled, duller-edged bronze swords of the previous Taurus Age.

    Spiritual Archetypes:The Age of Aries ushered in efforts to replace polytheism with monotheism. The earliest known attempt was by the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, who, in about 1350 BC, decreed the Sun God Aten to be the supreme deity, apparently in reaction to his earlier lack of inclusion in religious rites by his family. The symbol of Aries can be seen as representing the power of multiple gods streaming down into a single god-head. Moses, an early Biblical Hebrew religious leader, lawgiver, prophet, and military leader, condemns his own people upon finding them worshiping a ‘golden calf’ (a symbol of the previous Age of Taurus and of the worship of the bull deity).

    The Age of Earth, Agriculture and the Bull” (Taurus 4300 BC to 2150 BC)

    This age is notable for the building of the Pyramids, during the Old Kingdom of Egypt and the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. They personify structure, solidity, stability and attempts at eternity, keywords of Taurus. The completed Great Pyramid of Khufu, clad in smooth pure white limestone, must have been a sight of dazzling beauty in the sunlight. Beauty is another keyword of Taurus. Taurus is associated with the metal copper, and bronze. Papyrus was invented during this time, enabling improved writing techniques. Traits of Taurus such as ‘stubbornness’ and ‘strength’ but at the same time ‘sensuality’ may be attributed to civilizations such as Ancient Egypt’s.

    Spiritual Archetypes: When Moses was said to have descended from the mountain with the ten commandments (c. 17th – 13th century BC, the end of the Age of Taurus), some of his people or followers were found by him to be worshipping a golden bull calf. He instructed these worshippers to be killed. This represents Moses “killing” the bull and ending the Age of Taurus, and ushering in the Age of Aries, which he represents.

    “The Age of Communication and Trade” (Gemini to 6450 to 4300 BC)

    During this age writing developed, and trade started to accelerate. This corresponds to the symbols the Gemini constellation represents believed by some to be symbolic for trade and communication of people. Both writing and trade (including messaging) are traditional archetypes belonging to the ruling planet Mercury. The wheel, which was used for local transportation are archetypes associated with the sign of Gemini.

    Spiritual Archetypes: Multiple gods, such as the pantheon of gods in Ancient Greek literature, are believed to have appeared in this Gemini age probably in Sumer (Mesopotamia).

    “The Age of the Great Mother” (Cancer ca. 8600 BC to ca. 6450 BC.

    The Neolithic Revolution, including the beginning of civilization, with domestication of farm animals including pigs, goats and bees. Some nomadic people settled down to living in permanent dwellings protected by a wall. Cancer is always associated with ‘protection’ by utilizing an external barrier. Cancer is ruled by the Moon, and is associated with the process of bearing, birthing, nurturing, and protecting.including anything to do with the home (including houses, place of residence, migration).Rise of pottery (a protective vessel conforming to one of Cancer’s archetypes).

    Spiritual Archetypes: Widespread evidence of the mother goddess in the Near East (the `mother’ archetype in all shapes and forms is always related to the sign Cancer).

     “The Golden Age” (Leo  ca. 10,500 BC to 8000 BC)

    The major event at this time was an ancient global warming to such a massive extent that it led to the de-glaciation of what now constitutes much of the modern habitable world. The sign Leo is a Fire sign and is traditionally ruled by the Sun in astrology.

    Conclusion

    The New World Order or the emergence of a totalitarian trans-national government seem more likely than the anticipated new human millennium the musical anticipated. A not so secretive power elite with a globalist agenda will eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government— the EU just now replaces sovereign nation-states—and an all-encompassing propaganda that ideologizes its establishment as the culmination of history’s progress. Significant crisis in politics and finance are orchestrated or at least utilized by unduly influential banks and transnational shadow bodies through many front organizations. Numerous historical and current events can be seen as steps in an on-going plot to achieve world domination through financial powers and manipulated decision-making processes. Note 2014;  Pope Francis urged the world on September,13th to shed its apathy in the face of what he characterizes as a third world war, intoning “war is madness”, The pope said “even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction.” Pope Francis said also these wars are driven by “interests, geopolitical strategies, lust for money and power, and there is the manufacture and sale of arms.”

  • Burning Ahmed Baba and Alexandrian library – Is Sufism haram?

    Burning Ahmed Baba and Alexandrian library – Is Sufism haram?

    Books burning in fire

    Islamists in Mali destroyed a number of Sufism tombs in the ancient city of Timbuktu, which in the last year fell under control of a separatist insurgency. Home of the prestigious Sankore University, Timbuktu was an intellectual and spiritual capital and a centre for the propagation of Sufism (an Islam faction) throughout Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries. Its three great mosques, Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia, recall Timbuktu’s golden age. “The destruction is a divine order,” said a spokesman from Ansar Dine, a radical outfit with alleged links to al-Qaeda. Ansar Dine  or “defenders of the faith” in Arabic is group led by a prominent leader of the Tuareg rebellion in the 1990s which wants the imposition of strict Sharia law across Mali.The Associated Press Posted Jan 28, 2013 @ 07:32 AMSEVARE, Mali (AP) — Islamist extremists torched a library containing historic manuscripts in Timbuktu, the mayor said today, as French and Malian forces closed in on Mali’s fabled desert city. 

    All of this is haram

    According to BBC the “spokesman” went on: “God is unique. All of this is haram (forbidden in Islam). We are all Muslims. Unesco is what?” According to reports, the militants teared down the centuries-old mausoleums of Muslim holy men in Timbuktu. As many as half of the city’s shrines have been destroyed in a display of fanaticism. When driven out of Timbuktu by the French, the leaving “activists” burned down the Ahmed Baba library which is a real tragedy, because so much of Sufi and African history, literature and learning was lost forever. Build by the South African government in 2009, the Ahmed Baba Institute was named after a Timbuktu-born scholar and held thousands of priceless manuscripts in its climate-controlled, underground vaults. Ancient books of culture, geography, science are now all torched up 20,000 scholarly manuscripts lost.

    Memories come up when in March 2001, Taliban fighters and grandees blew up the famed giant 6th century statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan.The Taliban also rampaged through the national museum which I visted in the seventies, smashing any art depicting the human form, considered idolatrous under their hardline interpretation of Islam. In all, they destroyed about 2,500 statues. Or of the final destruction of the ancient world’s single greatest archive of knowledge, the Library of Alexandria, which was burned down by Caliph Omar 640 AD when the Muslims took the city of Alexandria. Upon learning of “a great library containing all the knowledge of the world” the conquering general supposedly asked Caliph Omar for instructions. The Caliph has been quoted as saying of the Library’s holdings, “they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous.”  It is somewhat ironic that Alexandria was the center of Monophysitism, a Christian heresy  weakening Byzantine and Roman power.

    Ignorance

    Too many critics of Islam, including atheists, fail to appreciate just how diverse and varied Islam can be, much more than Christianity. This is especially true when it comes to Wahhabi Islam, the primary religious movement in Saudi Arabia. Saudis are aligned with the West to bring down all somewhat secular dictatorships in the region. In the puritanical strain of Islam adhered by most radical Sunni (like Taliban and Salafists) but also fundamentakist Shiites, veneration of Sufi saints – which remind on Christian saints – counts as idolatry a heretical practice that cannot be tolerated. It is against modernity, secularism, and the Enlightenment which orthodox Islam do fight — and it is this anti-secularism, anti-modernism which helps drive extremism, even to the point of cultural terrorism. Militants bearing guns, pickaxes and shovels reduced to rubble the tomb of Sidi Mahmoud, who died in 955 A.D. They have also knocked down tombs of two other prominent medieval saints, Sidi Moctar and Alpha Moya.

    Who controls the history controls the future
    Who controls the history controls the future

    Both South Africa and the Libya of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi were involved in efforts to revive the fortunes of the ancient city and its artifacts. South African researchers involved in a project to preserve the Timbuktu manuscripts have had word that most of the treasures survived in private libraries and secure locations.Mohamed Mathee of the University of Johannesburg told  a News Channel, “It seems most of the manuscripts are OK. These manuscripts are with families and are safe.”  All those events in the new millennium have highlighted that we are today’ in a ideological war is fought with more than just weapons – just as Samuel Huntington has written in his a powerful and disturbing book in the late nineties.

    International outrage with little understanding of the Islam has been swift to blame “Islamists”. But beyond understanding history (and Islam) better, there’s little anyone can do to stop this wretched bout of iconoclasm. History is littered with the debris of toppled temples and smashed idols. Salafists and others who also believe in a more orthodox brand of Sunni Islam harbor a particular animosity toward Sufism, whose mystical interpretation of the divine affords a more heterodox faith, steeped sometimes in local pre-Islamic traditions and a reverence for saints and deceased wise men. Islam, as it spread outside the Arabian world, did so in some part through the peaceful teachings of Sufi orders and wandering monks — not just under the hooves of conquering Arab armies. Yet, recently under the Arab Spring, Sufi shrines have come under attack from emboldened and radicalized puritans in countries like Egypt and Libya by Muslim brotherhood and Salafist; in Pakistan, the Taliban and its affiliates have waged a sectarian war on Sufis, systematically targeting dozens of tombs and Sufi sites, while killing hundreds of devotees. In Persia the orthodox Shiites did not much less harm.
    The many holy places and old libraries of Timbuktu, once a prominent center of Islāmic learning in the 15th and 16th centuries, were preserved for centuries as a result of the city’s remote location on the path of now collapsed salt and gold-trade routes. In single-minded devotion to the word of the Koran, the orthodox Islam cares little for the juridical wisdom of generations of Timbuktu’s theologians who critically examined Islam’s founding holy text. The attack on Timbuktu’s cultural heritage is just one more attack against history and the values it carries — values of tolerance, exchange and living together. It is an attack against the physical evidence about the Islam’s majority livelong struggle against freedom, science and mysticism.

    Wisdom

    The Ahmed Baba Institute had nearly 30,000 manuscripts, which are being studied, catalogued and preserved. Four basic types have survived:

    • key texts of Islam, including Korans, collections of Hadiths (actions or sayings of the Prophet), Sufi texts and devotional texts
    • works of the Maliki school of Islamic law
    • texts representative of the ‘Islamic sciences’, including grammar, mathematics and astronomy
    • original works from the region, including contracts, commentaries, historical chronicles, poetry, and marginal notes and jottings, which have proved to be a surprisingly fertile source of historical data.

    Some manuscripts themselves are also of special importance to their owners to prove noble descent or land and property ownership. But they are also proof of Africa’s pre-Islamic culture, which the Islam claimed (and radical despise) like any culture Islam took over and claimed of its own.

    According to the 17th-century historian Abdurrahman As-Sadi, the history of the West African desert region could be divided into the rise and fall of three great empires – ancient Ghana, medieval Mali and the Songhay empire. Located at a hub of commercial exchange between Saharan Africa, tropical Africa and Mediterranean Africa, Timbuktu was a magnet that attracted both men of learning and men of commerce. It benefited from the gold trade , however, the most profitable trade items in Timbuktu were books. Buying them was considered a socially acceptable way of displaying wealth and a great source of prestige.  As the empire of Ghana declined, the Mali empire took its place. King Sundiata Keita of Mali conquered ancient Ghana in AD 1240, and two generations later, Islam became the dominant religion of the Malian cities and Arabic became the language of scholarship. Described as the ‘Latin of Africa’, Arabic was useful for communicating between tribes such as the Bambara, Fulani, Hausa, Mossi, Songhay and Tuareg who all spoke different languages. Just as Latin in medieval Europe was associated with Christianity, Arabic in medieval Africa was associated with Islam, and just as Europeans adopted the Latin script to write their own languages, Africans used the Arabic script to write theirs.

    Mali became indepdent 1960
    Mali became indepdent 1960

    The Sankoré University mosque was built in about AD 1300 with funding from a woman of the Aghlal, a religious Tuareg ethnic group. There were a number of challenges to Malian hegemony. ‘The Tuaregs began to raid and cause havoc on all sides. The Malians, bewildered by their many depredations, refused to make a stand against them.’ Mali lost control of Timbuktu in 1433. Once a tributary to the Mali empire, the Songhay became independent as Mali declined.  The gold traders and the scholars of Timbuktu were also treated harshly and many fled. Timbuktu benefited under the reign of the Askiya kings by tax and slavery privileges and rose to intellectual dominance in the region.  The Sankoré University mosque was the main teaching venue  but classes were also taught at the Great Mosque and at the Oratory of Sidi Yahia. Public libraries were established and employed calligraphers to copy books.

    Timbuktu was also a religious city. According to a West African proverb: ‘Salt comes from the north, gold from the south and silver from the country of the white men, but the word of God and the treasures of wisdom are only to be found in Timbuktu.’ There is a local legend that the city is guarded by 333 renowned saints as well as numerous lesser ones, and surrounding Timbuktu like a rampart are the chapels where the saints are buried. Saints and chapels are of course an anathema to orthodox Islam. According to the Sufis, a saint is a Muslim mystic, usually a scholar, who has achieved such closeness to God as to possess special powers.

    Ahmed Baba

    Ahmed Baba, the Sufi scholar after whom the burned down library was named, studied Arabic grammar and syntax, astronomy, logic, rhetoric and prosody. Textbooks were purchased and copied on a number of subjects, including astronomy, astrology, botany, dogma, geography, Islamic law, literary analysis, mathematics (including calculus and geometry), medicine, mysticism, morphology, music, rhetoric, philosophy, and occult sciences. The works of the Greek astronomer Ptolemy were basic references for Islamic astronomy. The Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle were also common. The Greek physician Hippocrates was popular, as well as the Persian medical philosopher-scholar Avicenna. The Timbuktu manuscripts mainly comprise Korans, Koranic exegesis, collections of Hadiths, writings on Sufism, theology, law and other closely related disciplines. By the 15th century, Timbuktu scholars were producing original works as well as compiling new versions and commentaries on established texts. The reading and writing of poetry was important in these cultures. Among the Timbuktu documents are verses devoted to the Prophet and to the adoration of a particular woman or man, and poems.  A number of manuscripts were written in Ajami – Arabic script used to write local languages – with botany, diplomatic correspondence, occult sciences, poetry and traditional medicine.

    Sufism

    There are three main branches of Islam – Sunni, Shiite and Sufi. Sunnis make up about 85 percent of the Muslim population globally, while Shiites account for about 15 percent. The two split over differences of who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad but are further subdivided.

    • Sunni follows a strict, literal interpretation of the Quran and the life of Muhammad with the Sunna as core teaching. Wahhabism is an austere form of Sunni dominant in Saudi Arabia for which Muslims more often use the term Salafism.
    • Shiism is the smaller of the two major branches of Islam. It developed after the death of Muhammad, when his followers split over who would lead Islam.
    • Sufism  is an Islamic mystic tradition with followers around the world. Sufis tend to identify with either Sunni or Shiite Islam. Many Muslims are critical of Sufism as an unjustified innovation.
    Shia Faction of IslamSunni Faction of IslamSufis/Sufism
    10-15% of all MuslimsMajority of Muslims 
    Shia means “faction,” refers to “faction of Ali.”Sunni means “tradition,” adheres to orthodox traditionSuf means “wool,” considered the Mystics of Islam.
    Iran center and home of most Shia, 88% of Iranians are Shia (Shi’i), In Iraqi 96% are Muslim and over 50% of them are Shia (Shi’i), though Iraq was ruled by minority Sunnis. Reverse Syria if you consider Alawis (12er ) to be Shiites.Grew out of Umayyad dynasty. World-wide 85% of Muslims are Sunni.Developed in reaction against the excesses of the Sultans and Caliphs (who wore silks, satins), specifically the Caliphate of Damascus in the Umayyad dynasty, Sufis wore course wool garments in protest.
    Succession and Leadership
    Believe in Ali and the Imams as rightful successors of Muhammad, but not in first 3 Caliphs. Ali was first of 12 successive legitimate Imams. Succession was to be hereditary.Acknowledge each of the first four Caliphs as rightful successors to Muhammad.Value deliberate simplicity, meditation rather than just a formalistic following of the rules.
    Look forward to Messianic return of the last recognized Imam. Muhammad al-Mahdi, last Imam, disappeared 900 CE, went into “hidden realm”, was sinless. Ayatollah Khomeini (1900-1989) believed by many to be the return of the last Imam.Through the ages, Caliphs rule “in God’s name.”Sufis gathered around shaikhs (masters) and formed faqirs (orders or communities). Rabi’a (1717-1801 CE) was a Sufi poet whose poetry spoke of God’s Love  similar to Christianty Al-Ghazzali (1058-1111) first Sufi to bring the faction into mainstream Islam.
    Imam holds an exalted position, Ayatollah refers to most important Imams.Imam is a prayer leader. Sunnis approach God directly, there is no clerical hierarchy.Sufi Shaikhs are the masters. Wandering monastic culture
    Teachings and Scripture
    Characteristic is the continual exposition and reinterpretation of doctrine by the clerics.Believe in entire body (canon) of life and teachings of Muhammad as found in Qur’an and hadiths (sayings and traditions of Muhammad). Sayings and traditions are interpreted by scholars in Islamic schools.Qur’an is full of symbolism, each verse has from 7 to 70 meanings. Believe in three approaches to the divine: mysticism of Love (heart knowledge), Ecstatic (visionary knowledge) and intuitive discernment (mental knowledge)
    Both Sunni and Shia factions believe in the Sharia, the comprehensive law derived from the Qur’an (revelations of Muhammad) and the Sunnah (sayings or interpretations of Muhammad).Believe in fana (extinction) of separateness from God and “remembering” that “there is nothing but God.”
     Scholars carry on debate in Islamic Schools. Science of Tradition refers to Islamic scholarship and rating of specific writings (rated sound, good, weak, or infirm)Influenced by Christianity and Gnosticism (life is a spiritual journey—want to know God/Allah now not just after death), Persian Zoroastrianism and Hindu Mysticism
    Shia Faction of IslamSunni Faction of IslamFufis/Sufism
    Fundamentalist approach to Islam, interpretation by clericsQur’an applies to everyday life, public life is shaped by the Qur’an. Saudi Arabia considered model of proper Islamic stateCalled “the Heart of Islam,” highest experience in life is experience with Allah, can get face to face with Allah/God

    Sufism has been, especially in the West, portrayed and regarded as a valuable and legitimate part of the Islamic faith. Anybody somewhat familiar with the complex interaction of religions will agree  with this statement “considerable ink has been spent by modern scholarship on the ‘origins’ of Sufism in Islam, as to how far it is ‘genuinely’ Islamic and how far a product, in the face of Islam, of outside influences, particularly Christian and Gnostic.”  The historian Rahman seems to hint that some of this ink has been wasted, as he concludes that “outside influences must have played an accessory role and these no one may deny, but they must have supervened upon an initial native tendency.”  Sufism  goes beyond the Five Pillars of Islam are which are obligations which are required of every Muslim: shahadah (statement of faith), salat (prayers), zakat (alms), sawm (fasting), and hajj (pilgrimage).

    History of religions
    History of religions

    A thorough and critical examination of historical and present day Sufism, quickly reveals the influence of numerous religious ideas foreign to Islam.  Zoroastrianism had also an intimate contact with Islam like Gnostic Manichaeism. Zoroastrianism provided first of all a vocabulary for Sufi poets and symbols of angelology and cosmology transparent in the light of gnosis.  Most orthodox scholars would be perplexed by this conclusion, especially when it is considered that Zoroastrianism (and pre-Christan Gnostic) predated Islam by over 1000 years.

    The further one delves into Sufism from a content perspective, the more clear it becomes that both the origins and content of Sufism show the inclusion of religious ideas and influences alian and contradictory to orthodox Islam. The scholar Elliot Miller states that “[being] based on experience rather than doctrine, Sufism has always been more open to outside influence than other forms of Islam… in addition to early influences from Christianity, one can find elements of Zoroastrianism, Neoplatonism, Hinduism, and other diverse traditions.”

    Christological_heresies_in_Jesus_Human_Divine

    While Sufi teachings have been influenced by various religions, their practices also bear close similarities to those of Hinduism and other mystical religions of the East. The Sufi orders are led by shaikhs, who play the same role as Hindu gurus.  Most Sufi orders still consider the five pillars of Islam to be essential, and practice them piously, however they go far beyond this, aiming to spiritual awakening. Central to all of these practices are ritual “invocations of the Divine Name,” also known as dhikr, which can be done either silently or in a chant. Here similarities with Hindu mantras are unmistakable.  The evidence of Sufi borrowings from other Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Zoroastrianism is certain. The similarities in teachings and ritual are overwhelming. It is no surprise then that the goals of Sufism reflect their pantheism and monism.

    Echoes of Eastern ( and Western) mystic religions are of course distinctly contrary to Muslim orthodoxy but its mystic quest for spirituality has embraced all sorts of religion. How then, in conclusion, does the evidence presented, reflect not only on the nature of Sufism, but on the very nature of Islam itself? Sufism is clearly a reaction or response to what was lacking in early Islam. The very strength of Islam, in its reliance on a simple creed  combining religion, law (and power of a non-secular state) and the five pillars of practice, proved to be the very weakness of Islam. The design of the Islamic ideological system had allowed, however, for rapid expansion and political aggression. Another area of weakness in Islam, which helped lead to the problem of Sufism, is found in the inherent synthesism (and gnosticism) of Islam. Here the vagueness caused by the doctrine of the indescribably Allah (a main concept common of Gnosticism) allowed in essence creating a contradictory belief system. The orthodox ulama developed their theology borrowing and changing what they viewed as their ‘Judeo-Christian’ roots (including Chrisiam heresies), while the Sufis were largely influenced by Eastern mystics.

    Sufism, with its radical mystic concepts, is  for orthodox Islam not a legitimate part of Islam, if Islam is narrowed to a logically coherent set of beliefs. For Sufism not only points to a lack of spirituality in Islam, but also contradicts orthodox Muslim teachings – in the process clearly opening the door to all the world’s religions. One more door of many, now was violently shut by orthodox Islam in Timbuktu which goes deliberately back to its origional  political and ideological purpose as mean of expansion.“It’s truly alarming that this has happened,” Mayor Ousmane Halle told The Associated Press by telephone from Bamako. “They torched all the important ancient manuscripts. The ancient books of geography and science. It is the history of Timbuktu, of its people.” After Islamists seized Timbuktu last April they began imposing a strict Islamic version of Shariah, or religious law, across northern Mali, carrying out amputations and public executions. Women could be whipped for going out in public without wearing veils.

    Conclusion

    The golden age of Timbuktu came to an end with the collapse of the Songhay empire following the invasion by Morocco, when an Arab-European army invaded Songhay in 1591 and destroyed it. The invaders confiscated gold and other resources, enslaved the Songhay scholars – including Ahmed Baba, who was deported to Morocco – and attempted to confiscate Timbuktu’s archives. The “Liberation of Libia” hailed by the Western press, threw what was once one of West Africa’s most stable democracies once again into chaos: the rebellion in the north gained ground with Gaddafi’s fighters and weapons moving over the border into Mail and effectively capturing half the country afterwards splintering on religious lines, with Salafist factions clashing with more secular elements. Western military intervention dimly disguising economic interests started after hundreds of thousands of Malians have been forced to flee their homes as refugees. Fears of an escalating humanitarian crisis have been publicized but the writings on the wall have been ignored. You see a pattern of wisdom and ignorance here? Yes, I do too. Please note, this is an essay out of general interest (and sympathy) to religion even if not my belief. I am neither Muslim nor scholar.

  • The dangerous serpent – a Jungian view

    The dangerous serpent – a Jungian view

    Soon there will the year of the (water) serpent. Whether a “water serpent” a The dangerous serpent depends heavily on the specific type, but true marine sea snakes possess incredibly potent venom and can be dangerous to humans. My sign in Chinese Zodiac is Serpent, therefore I have written a few articles in (her!) favor.

    The Serpent manifests itself consistently ambiguous as both ” evil adversary” and “holistic power, both source of “temptation” and “wisdom”. Jung’s discovery of how the psyche works and how consciousness entwine with unconsciousness,  also refers to this ambiguity depicting the serpent as a symbol of our unconsciousness. The Serpent encounters Jung many times throughout his journey in The Red Book.

    mermaid the unknown
    Sexuality greensnake
    Sin
    The Sin Adam and Eve
    Medusa Fear
    Loki had been bound in a cave with a venomous snake dripping poison upon him as punishmentloki snake
    Thor Battling the Midgard Serpent Henri FuseliFight the Serpent
    snake-inspired-transformation-metamorphosis
    Chichen Itza – Temple of Kukulkan (Maya feathered serpent deity similar to the Aztec Quetzalcoatl). The serpent effect observed during the spring equinox.
    Happy new year all serpents

    Around the world, for thousands of years, in one form or another, the reptilian Serpent has been an archetype for countless tribes, societies and civilizations. The serpent archetype is regarded with awe and fear. Why is that so? I will explore here the reasons what to make out with this symbol serpent, and where the given attributes may come from with most famous the symbol of a snake eating its tale is known as the Ouroboros.

    Symbol of versatility and transformation

    snake-inspired-transformation-metamorphosis
    snake-inspired-transformation-metamorphosis

    The serpent archetype stands for immense and powerful  movements deep under the earth, deep under the oceans, on the earth surface and in the sky. In fact, it is the very ability of serpents to move between various worlds and different dimensions, as indicated by their hibernation in winter and their life on and in the earth, which give them the aura of knowing and being, world-wide. Transformational qualities of serpents such as the shedding of their skins and regeneration add to the awe with which they are regarded. In Jungian reflections on various aspects of the transformation as individuation process—of the lived experiences of individuals and its impact on the experience of ego and Other, or the greater Self this is like the Serpent shading skins. There are potential states of consciousness and being that are actualized and incarnated in the individual personality as the individual develops a growing awareness of his/her relationship to the greater Self and the Ego.

    Symbol of the unknown and the unseen

    mermaid the unknown
    mermaid the unknown

    The serpent is a trans-cultural and global symbol which can be identified as a reptile, an earthly serpent, a flying dragon in the air, a water serpent, with many supernatural characteristics. The ancient Greeks believed that there were four elements that everything was made up of: earth, water, air, and fire (Aristotle) which became the cornerstone of philosophy, science, and medicine for two thousand years. But Aristotle came up with a fifth – invisible – element, the aether to explain the stars, one can easily associate with the serpent: The basic theme of mythology and psychoanalysis is that the visible world is supported and sustained by an invisible world, which has been proved by modern physics: the visible (and classical) world is supported and sustained by an invisible (quantum) world. Jung similar, interpreted snakes as symbolic of the conflict between conscious ego and conscious instincts likening in a way the dragon fight.to individation. This is even truer if it is a black snake which represents the hidden or subconscious. In some cultures snakes are highly regarded and symbolize the ability to transcend into higher levels of consciousness or into areas of knowledge that exist outside perceived time and space. Snakes do not have conventional eardrums. They actually sense what’s going on around them through the vibrations in the earth rather than by listening like things affecting upon a subconscious level.

    Symbol of sin and sexuality

    The Sin Adam and Eve
    The Sin Adam and Eve

    In Judeo-Christian tradition, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, of the Bible, portrays the Serpent as the deceitful harbinger of sin – and sexuality. In Freudian terms, snake is a phallic symbol. It seems both cases represent the fear of sexuality, rather than sexuality.Eve has been so frequently allied with the serpent and with the devil, as though they were all on the same plane of symbols. The first association between Eve and the serpent comes in the closeness of their names, for the Hebrew Hawwah is very close to the Arabic and Aramaic word for serpent, which was noticed by the earliest Jewish commentators:

    The association between Eve and the serpent, and between the serpent and Satan (the Sammael of Jewish legend and the Shaitan of Iblis of the Qur’an) is made again and again in interpretations of the story of the creation and fall of the first humans . . . She is held to be the devil’s mouthpiece, Satan’s familiar. At times she herself is seen in some way to be the forbidden fruit, or the serpent in paradise, or even the Fall.

    Sexuality greensnake
    Sexuality greensnake

    When spirituality and sexuality fall into polarity, the sexual instinct, split off from spirituality and a concrete image of what was simultaneously feared and longed for: the swallowing genital of the female. As C. G. Jung put it: “What is  projected is unconscious; that’s the rule”.  Some things to keep in minds: They are cold blooded – they depend on their environment to keep them warm. Snakes lay eggs, and abandon them as soon as they have made their nest.  Snakes may not be a particularly cuddly, but they are certainly one of the most powerful and transformative. The snake has acted as a diverse symbol throughout history, representing immortality, evil, femininity, and masculinity. The Legend of the White Snake is one of the most famous folk tales in Chinese culture. Cleopatra identified with the snake during her life, and it becomes even more highly symbolic in her death. By examining three movies (DeMille’s Cleopatra, Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra and the ABC version of Cleopatra) and two dramas (Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and Mary Sidney’s Tragedy of Antonie) different symbolic representations of the snake emerge along with contrasting depictions of the Queen of the Nile. Cleopatra is a suiting product of myth.

    Symbol of knowledge and cunning

    serprent-woman

    There is the classical tradition of the snake, of the accumulation of wisdom. We cannot remain with one or the other exclusively, but must harmonise the two – logic and intuition….Jesus says he has come not to destroy law but to fulfill it in spirit. Meta noia – means not only change your ways but also, think further, because a time comes when respect and obedience to law keeps you from seeing god.  Another example from the Gospels that I like very much is when Jesus tells his disciples that when they go among men they should be ‘wise as serpents and harmless as doves’.

    In Christianity, the serpent also pertains to Satan and the world we currently live in. It also refers to the men and women of this planet as being self-centered and “fallen”. The whole idea of the serpent itself is that it reflects something that is re-creating itself. Be wise as serpents …  Genesis 3:1. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” 2The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’” 4The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! 5“For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

    Fight the serpent Fear
    Fight the serpent Fear

    Symbol of protection and harm

    There is an obvious link between the serpent with poison and medicine. The famous symbol of the Caduceus, composed of twin snakes entwined around a staff with the wings of Hermes in the background, is a symbol of modern-day medicine. Again this association goes back to the ancient Greeks and linked to the Hippocratic Oath. Navajo have stories of giant serpents as protector and Pueblo tribes honor the great water serpents. the pre-Christian days, snakes were considered symbols of fertility, healing, and nurturing (the healing serpent representing a god). Serpents were therefore often linked to protection and guardianship in many cultures, including stories of Buddha who is often represented as being supported by the seven coils of a naga, with the cobra-like hood of the naga shielding him from harm while he meditates, as a storm is manifesting. But one proverb in many languages is, “he speaks with a forked-tongue,” a clear reference to the characteristic of deceit like the image of “poisoned relationships.

    Symbol of creation

    Again there is an obvious link between the fertile serpent with creation and the Serpent is often described as the primary figure in the chronicle of Creation.Today researchers and scientists through multiple academic disciplines have studied the relationship of the serpent to plants, animals, humans, chemistry, physics, and biology linking the significance of the serpent to DNA and the origins of life. The serpent archetype as it pervades many ingenious cultures seems to speak to the idea that our diverse cultures have some things in common. It was C.G. Jung who gave us the concept of the psychic unity of mankind to attribute such similarities to deep, inner templates learned in our human past and embedded as archetypes in our unconscious minds.

    Symbol of infinity

    We have all looked up at the night sky at some point and wondered about the bconnected myth. Some stars (animals), as well as planets (gods) are ‘eaten’ or then expelled and reborn anew by the actions of the celestial serpent.In the Greek and Roman astronomy we find different parts of a serpent. In the Greek lore Ophiuchus is holding a serpent, in the Norse myth Loki is bound with serpent-like entrails.

    SerpentAstronomy

    In  Egypt, China, Southeast Asian, India, South America, Meso-America and ancient Sumeria, serpents carried a significant presence in the astronomical symbols from ancient times to today. The Mayan temple El Castillo shows the serpent shadow at equinox representing the serpent god “Kulkukan” for which it was built. Many stories of the serpent are linked to the Milky Way as a “serpent of light residing in the heavens.” This association goes back centuries to Egyptian and Greek stories and is linked to the Greek symbol “Ourobouros” the serpent that forms a circle with its tail within its mouth. This symbolic association includes the holistic universe which lead to infinity and holistic cycles.

    Conclusion

    Sometimes serpents represent negativity in our lives that threatens. In the long run the snake may be a positive symbol; to me they represent transition and transformation that lead us to the center of personality and result in feelings of completeness and transcendence.

    The dangerous serpent
    Unfriendly fire. Serpent – Earth – Water – Air and Fire

    Carl Gustav Jung writes in his book, Man and His Symbols about the serpent:

    This is the universal quality of the animal as a symbol of transcendence. These creatures, figuratively coming from the depths of the ancient Earth Mother, are symbolic denizens of the collective unconscious. They bring into the field of consciousness a special chthonic (underworld) message …

    Appendix Archetypal images with the serpent:

    • Water: the mystery of creation; birth-death-resurrection; purification and redemption; fertility and growth. Symbol for the unconscious.
      •    The Sea: the mother of all life; spiritual mystery and infinity; death and rebirth; timelessness and eternity; the unconscious.
      •    Rivers: death and rebirth (baptism); the flowing of time into eternity;transitional phases of the life cycle; incarnations of deities.
    • Sun (fire and sky are closely related): creative energy; law in nature; consciousness (thinking, enlightenment, wisdom, spiritual vision); father principle; Solar year
      • Rising sun: birth; creation; enlightenment
      • Setting sun: death
    • Colors:
      • Red: blood, sacrifice, violent passion, disorder
      • Green: growth, sensation, hope, fertility, in ironical context may be associated with death and decay
      • Blue: usually highly positive, associated with truth, religious feeling, spiritual purity, security
      • White, highly multivalent; signifying in its positive aspects light, purity,innocence, and timelessness;
      • Black (darkness): chaos, mystery, the unknown, death, primal wisdom, the unconscious, evil, melancholy
    • Circle (sphere): wholeness, unity
      • Mandela (a geometric figure based upon the squaring of a circle around a unifying center; the desire for spiritual unity and psychic integration. Nunber 4
      • Egg (oval): the mystery of life and the forces of generation
      • Yang-Yin- the Chinese symbol representing the union of opposite forces of
        • Yang (masculine principle: light, activity, the conscious mind)
        • Yin (the feminine principle: darkness, passivity, and the unconscious mind).
      • Ouroboros: the ancient symbol of a snake biting its own tail, signifying the eternal cycle of life, primordial unconsciousness, the unity of opposing forces (as in Yang-Yin).
    •     Serpent (snake or worm): symbol of intellectual energy and pure force (cf. libido); evil,  corruption, sensuality; destruction; mystery; wisdom; the unconscious.
    • Numbers:
      • Three: light; spiritual awareness and unity (cf. The Holy Trinity); the male principle.
      • Four: associated with the circle, life cycle, four seasons; female principle, earth, nature; four elements (earth, air, fire, water).
      • Seven: the most potent of all symbolic numbers – signifying the union of three and four, the complement of the cycle, the perfect order.
    • The archetypal woman (Great Mother- the mysteries of life, death, and transformation):
      • The Great Mother (positive aspects of the Earth Mother): associated with the life principle, birth, warmth, nourishment, protection, fertility, growth,abundance (Cybele Demeter, Ceres).
      • The Terrible Mother: the witch, sorceress, siren, whore, femme fatale associated with sensuality, sexual orgies, fear, danger, darkness,dismemberment, emasculation, death; the unconscious in its terrifying aspects.
      • The Wise Women: the Sophia figure, Holy Mother, the princess or “beautiful lady” – incarnation of inspiration and spiritual fulfillment (Jungian anima)
  • C.G. Jungs Self in Quaternio Series of Aion – Jesus or Abraxas?

    C.G. Jungs Self in Quaternio Series of Aion – Jesus or Abraxas?

    C. G. Jung had shown a pronounced and informed interest in Gnosticism and Alchemy. This is evident in the Quaternio Series of the Self in his book. “Aion”.  In his early works “Seven Sermons to the Dead” (“Die sieben Reden an die Toten ”) and “The Red Book” (recently published) he perceived the outstanding psychological relevance of Gnostic insights. Was Jung really a Gnostic? I seems to me, that “Aion” and another late work The “Answer to Job” give some evidence to the assertion: No, he wasn’t.

    Quaternity in religion and psychoanalysis

    It is true that C.G. Jung saw in Quaternity a divine concept and welcomed the proclamation by the Pope Pius XII in the year 1950 adding the Catholic Holy Virgin Mary, expanding so the Christian Trinity. Neoplatonic philosophy ( and many other metaphysics e.g. Mayan) contained what Jung has called the element of “fourness,” or quaternity, that seems to be so prominent an aspect of the life of the unconscious collective landscape across various cultures. This quaternity is – as the one of the Christian cross – a (3+1) structure, meaning that three parts are equal and the fourth is the “totally different”. One of the most important ramifications, however, unacceptable to some Christians, of the Jungian quaternal recipe is bringing back the original nature of evil and its personification in the real or mythological being of the evil.

    In “Aion” (collected works 9ii) Jung summarizes his researches into the phenomenology of the Self, good and evil seen from Christianity, Alchemy and Gnosis . “Answer to Job” an interpretation of a book in the bible,(“Antwort auf Hiob”)  maybe interpreted as gnostic answer to the Bible  but to me is more a subtile but well-meaning ironic description of the omnipotent god Yahweh of the Old Testament who needs the reflection of the human Job to send his son Jesus to become a just God (again). In this article I want to investigate C.Jung’s starting point and journeys in regards to Jesus. C. G. Jung was a prolific writer and practitioner of psychoanalysis. The reader is invited to consult the C. G. Jung’s Work for expansion on the theme in this essay or to follow the links in this article (indicated in blue).

    Small recurs to Gnosticism

    Gnosticism is the knowledge of transcendence arrived at by way of interior, intuitive knowing (Gnosis). Gnosticism was primarily defined in Christian context also including pre-Christian religious beliefs common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism (especially Zurvanism), and Neoplatonism. Gnosticism goes hand in hand with Kabbalah, which is the esoteric or mystic religion of Rabbinic Judaism. These occult teachings deal with magic, hypnotism, sorcery and all sorts of pagan practices collected throughout centuries borrowing from different cultures. The mixing of all these pagan traditions turned into a complicated set of Gnostic teachings with all sorts of perverted doctrines added to “Christian” mingling its pure and simple teaching with theosophy and even magic. Gnostic thought were stamped out by Christianity in a struggle of life and death. The Gnostic teacher Carpocrates, as opposed to the official Christian dogma that salvation is the result of a single, unrepeatable event – the crucifixion of Jesus – postulated this process as continuing through a number of lives of earth.  Abraxas, the summation and ruler of the sevenfold planetary spectrum, is thus the true archetype of man’s potential freedom and independence from unconscious psychological pressures and compulsions.

    The Nag Hammadi library, discovered in upper Egypt in 1945 provided a cache of new gnostic documents and its psychological importance was pointed out by C.G. Jung. After his death and the publication of his autobiography, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, and the Red Book, it became also clear that Jung underwent an intense period of spiritual experience between 1912 and 1917. The only fragment of his writings from that period which he permitted to be published was The Seven Sermons to the Dead, using terminology and style of second century Gnosticism. Jung attributes the authorship to Basilides, a Gnostic sage who taught in Alexandria around A.D. 125-140 (see below). It is clear, however, that Jung disagreed with Gnostics (and Buddhism) on the ultimate goal of the individual to return to a supreme, other-worldly re-unification with the Pleroma ( the superior unknown God) as this would be a total identification with the unconscious.

    Small recurs to Evil

    We can argue then that there are three types of evil. The first is relative, caused by the perception of the human mind which labels things it does not accept as evil. The second arises from imbalance. This evil originates in an action that comes at the wrong time for the wrong reasons and which causes much damage as a result. The evil that thus occurs is neither relative nor absolute but falls someplace in-between. The third type is absolute evil. It arises from imbalance but feeds on evil itself and soon grows like a cancer to spread through the body that gave rise to it. One can only fight this evil by trying to find one’s own balance and relationship to the Self.

    In his work The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious Jung restated the message contained in the Second Sermon when he says: “Evil is the necessary opposite of good, without which there would be no good either. It is impossible to even think good out of existence.” Jung was insistent evil to be real, for he felt that western humanity, dwarfed the picture of evil. In Civilization in Transition he wrote that evil “is of gigantic proportions, so that for the Church to talk of original sin and to trace it back to Adam’s relatively innocent slip-up with Eve is almost a euphemism. The case is far graver and is grossly underestimated.”

    If you recall my article Can Hitler go to heaven? The evil presented in Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot. you can only see them as anything but evil, if we take Jung’s point of view seriously. Of course there are many other kinds of what seems to be pure evil in the world. According to Jung, good and evil are not two opposite poles of a linear dimensionality. They resemble a circle wherein going far enough in either direction is likely to associate one with the opposite polarity. He said that there is no good that cannot produce evil and no evil that cannot produce good.

    Aion: Phenomenology of the Self

    Aion is one of a number of major works that Jung wrote during his seventies that were concerned with the relations between psychology, alchemy and religion. He is particularly concerned in this volume with the rise of Christianity and with the figure of Christ. He explores how Christianity came about when it did, the importance of the figure of Christ and the identification of the figure of Christ with the archetype of the Self. A matter of special importance to Jung in his seventies – the problem of opposites, particularly good and evil – is further discussed and the importance of the symbolism of the fish, which recurs as a symbol of both Christ and the devil, is examined. As a study of the archetype of the self, Aion complements The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.

    Jung does not decodes events in dreams and associated unconscious products as a facade behind which the true meaning lies, but takes those events themselves as important symbols. Hence, “symbols” must not be misunderstood. To Jung the symbol manifests an unconscious product in conscious form. To appreciate why symbols mean so much to Jung, we need to understand symbols are a bridge for religions which are an object with universally projected contents. That is why there are so much symbols in religion and also why Jung spent so much time looking into the meaning behind religious symbols, and symbols in other fields such as alchemy.  Symbols have often an irrational element, as well as a rational part. Within Jung’s Framework the specific process of successfully acknowledging and integrating the meaning behind (formerly) unconscious contents to the consciousness is called “individuation” and results in the individual achieving the realization of the “Self”  and thus finding transcendence, which is the main theme in this book. The story of the self and Jesus in his book resembles closely the story of the human psyche that loses its connection with the collective unconscious and needs to be rescued by the Self.

    Jung compares in this book also his concept of “self” with other teachings. Jung had never qualms about reducing religion or magic to a psychological process. However, that is not to say it is then worthless in the practical field, because Jung is dedicated to showing precisely how large a factor the psychic realm is in ordering our lives. It must not be forgotten that for Jung, Buddhism itself was originally a result of projected unconscious contents, and the broad parallels are there. In dualistic Gnostic  teaching, the Self is reached when we have rid ourselves of opposites. Jung’s reflections had long been influenced in the thought of the ancient Gnostics to such an extent that he quotes In Aion Second Book XIV Hipolytes: to him were Gnostics psychiatrists. One may go so far to considered them the virtual roots of his  ‘depth psychology’.

    In the light of such recognitions one may ask: “Is Gnosticism a religion or a psychology?” The answer is (in the broad sense) both, just like Jung’s thoughts can be interpreted religiously. Most mythologies found in Gnostic scriptures have psychological relevance and applicability. For instance, the basic Gnostic myth to Aeons, intermediate deific beings who exist between the ultimate, True God and ourselves. They, together with the True God, comprise the realm of Fullness (Pleroma) wherein the potency of divinity operates fully. The Fullness stands in contrast to our existential state, which in comparison may be called emptiness.  The false creator God  bears a close resemblance to the alienated human ego that has lost contact with the  Self. One of the aeonial beings who bears the name Sophia (“Wisdom”), referred to by C.G. Jung many times in his works,  is of great importance to the Gnostic world . Analogies of this sort exist in numbers.

    Highly interesting are Jung’s diagrams in Aion (CW 9ii, penultimate chapter) in which Jung summarizes his researches into the phenomenology of the Self. In those diagrams Jung works his way through 2000 Years of Christian (and Gnostic) symbols of the Self. Using four octahedrons (double pyramids, i.e. one the platonic solids), he clearly tries to enhance the trinity of religion (Christianity) and science (space, time, causality) with a fourth dimension (his concept of synchronicity).

    The Moses Quaternia

    The Moses Quaternia
    The Moses Quaternia

    Lower Adam corresponds to the ordinary mortal man Moses corresponds to the culture hero and lawgiver, personalised ally to the ‘father’ Zipporah corresponds to the ‘higher mother’ as the daughter of a king and priest Moses and Zipporah represent the ‘royal pair’ for the ordinary man (Lower Adam) which for Moses corresponds on the other hand to his ‘higher man’ (Higher Adam) and his anima, Miriam The higher man is synonymous with the ‘spiritual, inner” man, who is represented in the quaternio by Jethro Such is the meaning of the quaternio when seen from the standpoint of Moses. But since Moses is related to Jethro as the lower Adam, or ordinary man, is to Moses, the quaternio cannot be understood merely as the structure of Moses’ personality, but must be looked at from the standpoint of the lower Adam as well.

    The extended (shadow) Moses Quaternia

    The Extended Moses Quaternia
    The Extended Moses Quaternia

    Extensions of the ordinary man’s psychic structure downwards, towards the subhuman, the dark and evil side represented by the shadow – the extended Mose. Homo carnalis refers here to the human Mose as opposite of the spiritual lead. The black woman is his wife. The negative anima is represented by Miriam who was the sister of two powerful biblical figures, Moses and Aaron. Her name derives from the root Mary, Mariamne, or Maria, meaning “bitterness.” She remained steadfast in her determination to free the Hebrew people from the pharaoh’s oppression. But Miriam was human, and not perfect. For her pride and insubordination to the power of God working through Moses, she became afflicted with a disfiguring skin disease (leprous’).  Miriam ‘spoke against’ Moses and even stirred up his brother Aaron against him. because of the black(Ethiopian) woman whom he had married.

    The paradise Quaternia.

    The Paradise Quaternia
    The Paradise Quaternia

    The snake symbol brings us to the images of Paradise, trees and earth. This amounts to an evolutionary regression from the animal Kingdom back to plants and inorganic nature, epitomized in alchemy by the secret of matter, the lapis. Here lapis is not to be understood as the end product of the opus but rather as its initial material. This arcane substance was also called lapis by the alchemists.”  Lapis–a unity, often stands for the prima materia in general, consists of four elements or has to be put together from them.
    prima materia–a bit of the original chaos (increatum of Paracelsus) which was believed to be hidden somewhere in metals, particularly in mercury, or in other substances. Not in itself a simple thing (massa confusa). Elements are not united but merely coexistent in chaos, they are hostile to one another and will not unite of their own accord–must be combined through the alchemical procedure. Represents and original state of conflict and mutual repulsion. Splitting up or unfolding of the original unity into the multiplicity of the visible world.

    The Lapis Quaternio

    The Lapis (Alchemy) Quaternia
    The Lapis (Alchemy) Quaternia

    This primary substance is round (masa globosa, rotundum) like the world and the world soul; it is the ‘stone that has spirit’, in modern parlance the most elementary building-stone in the architecture of matter, the atom, which is an intellectual model. The alchemists describe the ’round element’ now as a primal water, now as a primal fire, or as pneuma, primal earth, or ‘corpusculum nostrae sapientiae’, the little body of our wisdom. As water or fire it is the universal solvent, as stone and metal it is something that has to be dissolved and changed into air (pneuma, spirit).
    Zosimos calls the rotundum the omega element, which probably signifies the head. The skull is mentioned as the vessel of transformation in the Sabaen treatise…the vas is often synonymous with the lapis, so that there is no difference between the vessel and its content; in other words, it is the same arcanum.

    In the hierarchical series of those four, Good and evil are clearly shown to arise from a deintegration of the central Serpens node, “the point of maximal tension in the psyche.” In the Serpens node itself, these extreme opposites presumably coexist without contradictions. In these Aion diagrams, Jung shows two distinct forms of the archetypal Self. Evil (Diabolos) and Good (Christos) arise only in the first hierarchical form of the Self. They do not occur at all in the circular forms of the Self—the ouroboric, rotational.

    Quaternio series: Moses - Shadow - Paradise - Lapis Quaternio
    Quaternio series: Moses – Shadow – Paradise – Lapis Quaternio

    Quaternio series; Man culminates in the of a good God, but rests below on a dark and evil principle (Devil or serpent). The serpent has its compliment in the Paradise Quaternio which leads into the world of plants and animals. Indeed, this serpent actually dwells in the interior of the earth and is the pneuma that lies hidden in the stone. The symmetrical compliment of the serpent, then, is the stone (earth) or in symbolism, the alchemical stage, whose central idea is the lapis which compliments the serpent. The stone is, however, not a human ego but a collective entity, a collective soul an hermaphrodite.The point of greatest tension between the opposites…(is)…the double significance of the serpent, which occupies the center of the system. Being an allegory of Christ as well as of the devil, it contains and symbolizes the strongest polarity into which the Anthropos falls when he descends into Physis. The ordinary man has not reached this point of tension: he has it merely in the unconscious, i.e., in the serpent.The Round is the primary substance (rotundum) like the world and the world soul; it is the ‘stone that has spirit’, in modern parlance the most elementary building-stone in the architecture of matter. The alchemists describe the rotundum the omega element.

    The hierarchical Quaternio series shows the highest central node, the Anthropos, evolving in four deintegrations  and reintegrations from the lowest central node, the rotundum. In doing so, it passes through four quaternios. A quaternio is a structure composed of two pyramids sharing a common base. If the apex of one pyramid points upward, the apex of the other necessarily points downward. It might be possible to construct a fifth quaternio above the Anthropos. It might deintegrate into God-Shekinah and Jesus-Mary, his mother. The reintegration would occur in the next higher central node which could be named simply “God.” But here the upward progression seems to end. What is beyond God? Jung addresses this particular problem by asking, rhetorically, what his diagram would be if its hierarchical nature were destroyed by bending it around so that the lowest node, rotundum, lay next to the highest node, Anthropos?

    In the circular Quaternio series

    Quaternio series circular
    Quaternio series circular

    the lowest node moves “upward” toward increasingly more comprehensive integrations.Can this upward movement continue indefinitely? Obviously it cannot. Much more can be said about the cricular one. For the present discussion of evil it is only necessary to point out that Evil belongs only to first quaterino. There is no place for Evil in the structure of second. Again, both good and evil arise from disintegration of the Serpens node, the “point of maximal tension in the psyche.

    Jung’s View on Jesus “Answer to Job”

    Jung agrees with all modern scholars of antiquity and biblical scholar that Jesus existed. He also does not question his metaphysical importance. His thoughts of Jesus must be seen from his framework and are strictly restricted strictly to psychoanalytic dimensions. He writes extensively in Aion about Jesus as a symbol (manifest and visible) of the archetype Self. But not the full Self. Since Jesus is all good, he feels that is missing his Shadow. The shadow is of course the devil (which was in Answer to Job als God son and Jesus brother). That Jesus was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate is given great significance in the Quaternio series of his book Aion: The serpent is the central node and mediator between Jesus and Lucifer. In his book Aion Jung consistently opposes this summum bonum view of God. Jung, in his psychological works puts a strong emphasis on this (see also my article C. G. Jung’s “Antwort auf Hiob” und das “Johannes Evangelium”).  According to his theory of wholeness being the conjunction of opposites, Jung always affirmed conscious existence after death and, since one opposite is not possible without the other, neither is “good” or “bad” in itself as single entity.   As long as many, if not the majority of us, expect all problems to be solved outside of ourselves, they will be beset by “inhumanity upon inhumanity, holocaust upon holocaust”. To him Christianity of the old Testament has not solved the problem of evil. It flirts with two great metaphysical forces, Good and Evil (or God and the Devil), but always opts for the final supremacy of God. Lucifer is only a “fallen angel” whose true place is in the heavenly court.

    The story of Job, as seen by Jung in his Book Answer to Job (1952), is therefore  the culmination of the Old Testament leading to the Gospel: Job sees that “You (Yahweh) are not a man” (Job 9:32). When Yahweh finally appears to him, Job hopes for an explanation of why he, an honest and just man, had been sent such undeserved afflictions. Yahweh seems unaware of any ethical dimension whatsoever. He overwhelms Job by recounting his creative acts. Job does not so much see evil in Yahweh as he sees a mass of unbalanced forces (as in the Kabbalah and Taoism). Job accepts that he cannot expect justice from God as long as God is primarily identified with His power, His omnipotence. Job realizes that God himself is evolving. Thus Job is able to say, “I know that my redeemer liveth” (Job 19:25). That is, Job intuitively knows that God will evolve in himself the ethical sense that Job already has: to distinguish Right/Wrong and Good/Evil. Another move that Christianity makes is to assert that all good comes from God and all evil comes from man.

    Jungs View on Abraxas  “Seven Sermons to the Dead”

    With Abraxas (Greek Ἀβρασάξ, Ἀβράξας) Jung described Egyptian Gnostics of Basilides in Alexandria around the 2nd century the symbol of the highest Nikolaos, from which emerged the five primal forces Geist(nous), Word (logos), Providence (Phronesis), Weisheit(Sophia) and power as well as moral perfection and inner peace.The name Abraxas is presented on amulets with the head of a cock, dragon’s feet and a whip in his hand. Later, he is recorded as having the head of a king and demon’s feet. He was seen by the Basilidians (after Basilides), a group of twelfth century heretics) as the supreme god which claimed that Abraxas sent Jesus Christ to earth in the form of a benevolent spirit

    Basilides integrated various Christian Jewish, Persian, and neo platonic traditions to a dualistic view of the world. The early Christianity was heavily Gnostic-influenced. Gnostic directions also in Judaism and even Islam has its Gnostics (the Sufis). The gnostics believe that the core of every human is a “divine spark”. The spark of the divine is immortal, he exists outside of time and space. As long as the man but has not recognized its true state, he remains trapped in this world and must reincarnate again and again in a new body. Every once an envoy from the world of light comes but (Christ plays this role in the Gnostic Christians) at the material level in order to connect the souls that have become ripe with the light power of God, and to enable them to escape the access of the false God, the demiurge.

    The Abrahamic God (which describes Jung in “Answer to Job” is this demiurge. Therefore, early Gnostic Christians have roundly rejected the old testament.The Gnostics see Abraxas as Supreme God, good and evil in an entity “Whole”, who sent Jesus as God’s (Yahweh) son in the world.

    Followers of Basilides believed that the body of Jesus Christ was an illusion, visited while here on Earth. From this supreme deity which the followers of Basilides worshipped, emanated seven divine powers (according to the number of planets), the first realm from the gradually decreasing clarity 364 more ghost kingdoms, each with seven “eons”. If one summarizes the entire realms of spirits in the secret word Abraxas or Abrasax,  it contained the seven Greek letters which correspond numerically calculatedto  the number 365. Abraxas is classified under the Egyptian gods. He was depicted on amulets with a whip in his hand. been. The Mystic Word Abracadabra was derived from his name. These Gnostic symbols were adopted by many companies, operated the magic and Alchemy.

    C.G. Jung  wrote in “The seven Sermons of the dead” under the pen name Basilides about Abraxas. According to C.G. Jung Abraxas – man cannot be redeemed without that Satan is understood and integrated . But how will Satan, who represents evil, will be integrated? Jung asserts, only by a way to lift the evil (the shadow) in the consciousness. Before we are not fully aware of our our deeper spiritual needs we will not achieve the individuation, which creates a more and more mature personality.  The “Seven Sermons to the Dead”  was privately printed, without copyright or date, sometime between 1920 and 1925, and distributed only to a select group of friends.  The text is available for the interested in the internet.  But there is a significant translation of Stephan A. Hoeller in his book “The Gnostic Jung” in which Hoeller not only interprets “The Seven Sermons as a Gnostic document, but also claims that Jung himself was a modern Gnostic. The Gnostic Jung is essentially an attempt – and a very interesting one at that – to interpret the Seven Sermons. Along the way, Hoeller, an almost worshipful admirer of the “Wise Man of Küsnacht” as he calls him, gives us a clear, skillful elucidation of some of Jung’s essential ideas. But the question is: Was Jung really a Gnostic is answered with the late work.

    Conclusion

    Gnosticism may possess both a psychological and a religious authenticity. Gnostic psychology and Gnostic religion need not be exclusive of one another but may complement each other within an implicit order of wholeness. Gnostics have always held that divinity is immanent within the human spirit, although it is not limited to it. The convergence of Gnostic religious teaching with psychological insight is thus quite understandable. The Red Book reveals the experiential, Gnostic roots of Jung’s psychology and certainly Jung studied Gnostic thought and his works are liberally sprinkled with references to them. But he never called himself a Gnostic. Without doubt Jung’s kind of psychoanalysis was different. Mental illness was considered to be a divided or incomplete condition and health as a state of spiritual wholeness – or near wholeness which could be reached through a process Jung called individuation. Jung always insisted that his writings were based upon empirical evidence and personal experience – it seems he was be worried to be accused of mystical or metaphysical theories but he connected them very often explicit to (catholic) Christianity.

    This essay has delineated some of the main ways in which Jung can help us to understand the real meaning behind Christianity and Gnostics. It is not comprehensive and exhaustive, but shows how we as humans have a tendency to neglect our unconscious side, and the pressing need to recognize and integrate its contents (achieve individuation).  In plain English, Jung shows us, particularly in Aion  the salutary and prospective character of Religion.

    References

    CW9(i) = Jung, C.G. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol.9, Part I, The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious  Zürich 1951, Rascher

    CW9(ii) = Jung, C.G. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol.9, Part II, Aion Zürich 1951, Rascher

    Jacobi, J. The Psychology of C.G. Jung.  Zürich 1961

    Jung, C.G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections, London: Harper Collins, 1995, PG213.