Dr. J. Glenn Friesen

Jung and Western Mysticism

Lecture 2: Theosophy and Gnosticism:
Jung and Franz von Baader

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© J. Glenn Friesen
( 2008)

C.G. Jung

Franz Xavier von Baader
(1765-1841)

 

 

Jacob Boehme
(1575-1624)

Meister Eckhart
(c.1260-1328)

Lecture 2, Part 2

Theosophy and Gnosticism: Jung and Franz von Baader

by
Dr. J. Glenn Friesen
© 2008

Revised notes from lectures given at the C.G. Jung Institute, Küsnacht (June 21-22, 2005)

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VI. Jung and Gnosticism

A. Gnosis and Knowledge

In his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung says: “The possibility of a comparison with alchemy, and the uninterrupted intellectual chain back to Gnosticism, gave substance to my psychology.” (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 205).

(1) Etymology. First, let’s look at the word ‘gnosis.’ The ‘g’ is silent in English, but not in many other languages. The word ‘gnosis’ means ‘knowledge,’ and in fact is related to our word ‘knowledge.’ The Greek root of this word ‘gnosis’ is ‘gno.’ It is transformed to ‘kno’ in ‘knowledge.’ The ‘k’ is silent. In other forms of this word, we still pronounce the ‘g’ as in ‘ignorance.’ Or in ‘acknowledge.’ ‘cognizance.’ ‘incognito’, ‘recognize’ ‘cognition.’ Other derivatives of the word are: canny, uncanny [meaning unknowable], cunning [someone with powers]

The word ‘gnosis’ is related to the Sanskrit word ‘jñana.’ That is one of the paths of liberation in Hindu thought, for jñana is a saving knowledge, especially knowledge based on meditation. It relates to an experiential knowledge that our selfhood and the reality of God or Brahman are one. (Tat tvam asi. That art thou).

(2) Gnosis is an experiential, transforming knowledge. It is a knowledge that itself saves. We are not talking about logical propositions that we have to believe, but of an experience that liberates us. Such an experience is not to be seen as a subjective, individualistic experience. For participation in our selfhood is not individualistic. As discussed in Lecture 1, Jung distinguishes between our individual ego and our Selfhood as supra-individual totality. So the experience is one of going beyond our individualistic ego to find our true, transpersonal self. It is a transforming knowledge.

Experiencing the self means knowing all there is to know about yourself, your life, your destiny, your meaning, and the meaning of life in general. Quispel said in his 1951 work that Gnosticism expresses a specific religious experience, which then manifests itself in myth or ritual. For Jung what was important was the experience of fullness.

In his 1959 BBC Interview by John Freeman, Jung expressed just this kind of experiential knowledge:

Freeman: And did he make you attend church regularly?
Jung: Always, that was quite natural. Everybody went to the church on Sunday.
Freeman: And did you believe in God?
Jung: Oh yes.
Freeman: Do you now believe in God?
Jung: Yes. Now? … [long pause] Difficult to answer. I know. I needn’t…I don’t need to believe. I know. [49]

There was such a large response to this interview that Jung felt he had to clarify what he had said. He wrote a letter to The Listener, which was published on January 21, 1960. Here are some excerpts from that clarification:

• “…I am entirely based upon Christian concepts. I only try to escape their internal contradictions…”

• “I did not say in the broadcast, 'There is a God.' I said 'I do not need to believe in God; I know.' Which does not mean: I do know a certain God (Zeus, Jahwe, Allah, the Trinitarian God, etc.) but rather: I do know that I am obviously confronted with a factor unknown in itself, which I call 'God' in consensu omnium…”


• “This is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans, and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse.”

(3) Gnosis is an esoteric or secret knowledge, such as secret revelations of Christ or the apostles. But “secret” in what sense? Is it secret in the sense of deliberately kept from others, or is it secret in the sense that unless one experiences the truth, one cannot understand it? It is sometimes a claim to have knowledge of the entire visible and invisible world. This is known only to the elite initiates or gnostikoi.

(4) Gnosticism is a heretical movement within Christianity. The main representatives of that movement were Basilides, Valentinus, and Marcion.

(5) A broader view of Gnosticism is that it includes non-Christian traditions such as Hermeticism, or the traditions that influenced neo-Platonism.

B. Jung’s visions and the Seven Sermons to the Dead

Jung’s interest in Gnosticism goes back to at least 1912, when he told Freud about the Gnostic idea of Sophia. Thus, his interest in Gnosticism was prior to his reading of Baader. This is interesting, because Baader’s theosophy is distinct from Gnosticism [50] and Baader may have influenced Jung to move from a Gnostic to a more theosophical position. We will look at this later when we discuss Christian theosophy and how Jung’s psychology is not really Gnostic.

Beginning in 1914, Jung painted images that he recorded in the Red Book (not yet published, although Psychological Types was written on the basis of 30 pages of material from the Red Book). These images were based on visions he had at the time. Jung first had a vision of a female. He remembered a female voice speaking quietly, but with authority. She referred to Jung’s work and said, “That is art.” This made him angry, because he thought he was constructing an empirical science (Bair, 291).

Later in the Protocols (which eventually became Memories, Dreams, Reflections) Jung identified the female voice as belonging to his patient Maria Moltzer. He thought the patient was inside of him. Then her voice was taken over by that of a male, Elias. Finally, there was a third separate male voice–that of Philemon, an old man of “simply superior knowledge.” When the female voice returned, he called her Salome.

A. Philemon
Jung painted Philemon with wings on his back, against a background of a brilliant blue sky.

Where did Jung get this image of Philemon? Philemon and his wife Baucis are a couple from Greek mythology. They offered refuge to Zeus and Hermes, not knowing them to be gods. Baucis was about to sacrifice her last goose for them, and then the gods made themselves known, the humble cottage was changed into a temple, and Zeus made them guardians of his temple until they died. Philemon became an oak tree and his wife a linden tree. Jung relates this mythological tale, in its Roman form, in Psychology and Alchemy (CW 12, par. 561) as an illustration of the folly of the Nietzsche-like drive for superhuman power (ego inflation):

Philemon also appears as a character in Goethe’s Faust. In his urge for superhuman power, Faust brings about the murder (by Mephistopheles) of Philemon and Baucis.

Jung believed that a special journal was necessary for the “language metaphors” of Philemon. Until he wrote Seven Sermons to the Dead, Jung recorded in the Red Book what Philemon told him(Bair, 292). Shortly before 1920, Jung concluded that “Philemon was a Gnostic” because Philemon had esoteric knowledge of spiritual things (Bair 396).


Later that year, Jung dreamt that he was locked in the seventeenth century and could not get out; he realized that Gnosticism was not relevant because it was “all still too far away.” Bair says he could find no intellectual satisfaction in the Gnostic idea that a “godhead” was responsible for creating the world, because there was simply too much detail lacking or left unexplained. He reread scholars who wrote about early religions and various mythologies.

B. Basilides

Jung’s Seven Sermons to the Dead purport to be written by Basilides, and written in Alexandria. So we need to know something about Basilides. He lived in Alexandria in the second century, and is the oldest Gnostic thinker that we know of. Jung’s knowledge of Basilides was based on the Philosophumena, written by Hippolytus (one of the church fathers). A very different account is given by Irenaeus, another church father. Although most scholars regard the version in Irenaeus as more original, recent scholarship would tend favour Hippolytus, the version relied on by Jung.[51]

Quispel says that Basilides was a mystic [52]. But it is difficult to determine the exact nature of his teachings. Was he a monist? A dualist?

Basilides speaks of two eternal principles, light and darkness. He divides being into the world (cosmos) and a transcendent world. He refers to a time before creation, and attempts to introduce the idea of creatio ex nihilo into gnosis.

His view of the world is that there is a zone of pneuma [Spirit], a zone of ether and finally a zone of air, beneath which is the earth. The pneuma is at the same time the Holy Ghost, the ninth sphere beyond the fixed heavens. It is the highest part of the perceptible world. There are four divine intellectual entities: the godhead, the total intellect, the intellect of the world, and the intellect of man.

The Gnostic God is nothingness; it is beyond thought and will; it is unconscious, containing within it the future universe in a state of unconsciousness. In this Pleroma, thinking and being cease, because the eternal is without qualities. Man by himself cannot know God; only Christ reveals the unknown God. Man is already the son of God but does not know it.
There is an antithesis between pneuma (spirit) and psyche (soul): pneuma feels nostalgia for the transcendent world; psyche remains by nature in this world. It is the job of spirit to perfect the soul. But the spiritual ascent of the spirit (pneuma) to God is also not possible unless soul frees itself from matter by asceticism. He therefore teaches a mystic ascent, the freedom of spirit from the visible world.

C. Abraxas

In 1891, Albrecht Dieterich published Abraxas. Abraxas was the supreme God of the Gnostics in whom all opposites and partial realities meet [53]. Jung was aware of Dieterich’s work.

In the Seven Sermons to the Dead Jung, through Basilides, ‘reveals’ Abraxas to be the true and ultimate God. Abraxas combines Jesus and Satan, good and evil all in one. This is why Jung held that "Light is followed by shadow, the other side of the Creator." [Memories, Dreams Reflections, 328]

Hermann Hesse, who was influenced by Jung, later refers to Abraxas in his book Demian. Abraxas has a human body, with the head of a rooster and legs like serpents. His hands hands hold a shield and a whip. The whip is inscribed with the name IAO. The sun and moon shine overhead. Hoeller suggests that the rooster symbolizes wakefulness, the human torso suggests logos, and the legs like snakes suggest prudence.God as Sun is distinct from God Abraxas.

Abraxas is still a Being, since he is differentiated from the Pleroma. Hoeller says that if the Pleroma were capable of having a being, Abraxas would be its manifestion, and that for Jung, Abraxas was the undifferentiated psychic energy that he later espoused in his Symbols of Transformation (Hoeller, 96). In Abraxas, both light and darkness are united.

Let us look at Jung’s Seven Sermons to the Dead in more detail.

D. The Seven Sermons to the Dead

Later, in 1916, Jung wrote the Seven Sermons to the Dead. The book purports to be by Basilides. Seven Sermons to the Dead was included in German edition of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, but not in the English translation. (Bair 297). Writing the Red Book and the Seven Sermons dispelled ghosts from the Jung family household (Bair, 297).

Here is a summary of the Seven Sermons to the Dead. This summary relies to a large extent on Bair’s book.

Sermon 1: the dead [the spiritually dead?] return from Jerusalem without having found the salvation and peace of mind they had been seeking. They ask the narrator (Basilides) for help. He begins with the concept of nothingness and expands it into a discussion of the “Pleroma,” by which he means the totality of all the qualities found in a supreme being. There is a meditation on “individuation”: becoming integrated and whole, which Basilides describes “as “the essence of the creature.” Jung’s technique of active imagination is already evident, as are ideas of the personal and collective (suprapersonal) unconscious.

In this sermon, Basilides says that the natural striving of the creature tends towards distinctiveness; it fights against sameness. This is called ‘principium individuationis.’ But we are to strive not for difference, but for our own being. The creature must resist both reintegration in the Pleroma and total separation in one-sided distinctiveness. The qualities of the Pleroma are the pairs of opposites. In us the Pleroma has been divided in two. The last paragraph of Sermon 1 emphasizes the importance of differentiation and sameness at the same time [we do not lose our ego, just subordinate it?]

That is why you should not strive after differentiation and discrimination as you know these, but strive after your true nature.

Sermon 2: questions whether God is dead. It speaks of the Gnostic God Abraxas, described in Sermon 3 as “hard to Know.”

Sermons 4 and 5 refer to multiple gods, the Tree of Life and the one god who gives unity through communion. They also refer to aspects of “anima” and “animus,” terms that Jung was later to develop.

Sermon 6: the daemon of sexuality approacheth” from the shadows. This is the unveiled anima and animus.

Sermon 7: “man” becomes a united entity in his quest for salvation. There is a final image that rejects the “flaming spectacle of Abraxas” and embraces a single god who will lead to ultimate redemption.

In the Seven Sermons to the Dead, Jung wanted to show the transition from antiquity, with its multiple gods to Christianity, with its one God. But the Seven Sermons is more than a monotheistic rejection of multiple gods. It is a guidebook for individuation and peaceful acceptance of the collective unconscious as Jung understood those ideas at that time. But does that mean that Jung’s ideas are themselves Gnostic? Let’s look at some characteristics of Gnosticism.

E. Some characteristics of Gnosticism

Jung’s interest in Gnosticism is undeniable. Jung was important in publishing the Jung Codex, part of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts. Jung said that there were two main representatives of the Gnostic tradition: Jewish Kabbalah and philosophical alchemy.

But Gnosticism is a collection of themes, only some of which apply to Jung:

1. The goal of Gnosticism is to escape from temporal world, not to accomplish something in it. As we saw in Lecture 1, Jung believes that individuation involves a relation to the supratemporal selfhood. But Jung does not advocate escape from the world. Jung emphasizes the importance of relating the temporal world to the Self, not escaping from the temporal world.

2. In Gnosticism, time is cyclical. There is no linear notion of continuous progress. One must make an effort to negate time. Gnosticism has the related idea of reincarnation: we are condemned to be reborn. The only reference in Jung that I am aware of that might refer to reincarnation is in his Lectures on Kundalini, where he speaks of the importance to be born, to realize yourself. Jung says that otherwise you must simply be thrown back into the melting pot and be born again [54].

3. For Gnosticism, the evil world was not created by God but by an inferior being.

Is there an idea of a demiurge in Jung? Hoeller says that in Jung, the alienated human ego functions as this demiurge. It has pulled away from wholeness. The ego proclaims that there is no other God than itself and that it alone determines existence. But Hoeller’s interpretation seems to be a total devaluation of the ego, and I don’t think that that is a correct interpretation of Jung. Hoeller compares this idea to Buddhism. But if we look at Jung’s dialogue with the Buddhist Hisamatsu, we see that Jung disagrees with that idea. [55]

It is true that Jung, at least in these early writings, differentiates God from the Pleroma. And Jung does oppose the God of Christ to Yahweh. [56]

4. Gnosticism emphasizes opposites (binaries or Syzygies). An example is male and female, which are wholeness rent in two. This is a feature of Jung’s work, although other influences may also be involved, such as Nicholas of Cusa, or Baader’s theosophy, emphasizing androgyny. For there is a difference from Gnosticism, which has no concept of the uniting of opposites in relation to the visible world and God’s relation to it. For Gnosticism, the uniting is only beyond this world.

5. Gnosticism is a revolt against science; we do not see God in the world. But Jung emphasizes the importance of science, and strives to show that his work is scientific and empirical.

6. For Gnosticism, the universe is hierarchical, descending by degrees from celestial beings to earthly realities. There is some hierarchy in Jung, particularly in the idea that archetypes pull us higher towards the higher Self. But again, the idea of hierarchy is not restricted to Gnosticism.

7. Gnostics believe that our “true self” is chained to the world of flesh as a result of a fall. Jung certainly speaks of our true self. But the idea of being chained to the world of flesh implies a devaluation of the temporal world that I do not find in Jung. Jung says he got the idea of the self from the Upanishads, but he also refers to Gnostics in support:

Self-recollection is a gathering together of the self. It is in this sense that we have to understand the instructions which Monoimos gives to Theophrastus:
"Seek him [God] from out thyself, and learn who it is that taketh possession of everything in thee, saying: my god, my spirit [nous], my understanding, my soul, my body; and learn whence is sorrow and joy, and love and hate, and waking though one would not, and sleeping though one would not, and getting angry though one would not, and failing in love though one would not. And if thou shouldst closely investigate these things, thou wilt find Him in thyself, the One and the Many, like to that little point, for it is from thee that he hath his origin."[Hippolytus, Elenchos, VIII, 15.]

8. Gnostics seek the divine spark within us. Only our “nous” is saved and we return to the Pleroma. In Kundalini, Jung does say something similar: “The Self is the Pleroma from which we came and to which we return” (Kundalini, 28). But in Jung, there is an emphasis on transformation, and not just a return to a previous identity. This idea of transformation is something that is not found in Gnosticism.

9. In Gnosticism, we re-enact the atemporal myths. Certainly, Jung emphasizes the importance of myth.

10. Gnosticism has a preoccupation with evil. And that is something that also preoccupied Jung.

11. For Gnosticism, liberation from the world is also liberation from laws and rules of the lesser demiurge. This leads to antinomianism and libertarianism. Wholeness is better than goodness. There is some affinity here with Jung:

Although in crude form, we find in Gnosticism what was lacking in the centuries that followed: a belief in the efficacy of individual revelation and individual knowledge. This belief was rooted in the proud feeling of man’s affinity with the gods, subject to no human law, and so overmastering that it may even subdue the gods by the sheer power of Gnosis. In Gnosis are to be found the beginnings of the path that led to the intuitions of German mysticism, so important psychologically, which came to flower at the time of which we are speaking. [57]

And yet, as we have seen, Jung also says that liberation requires that we adhere to standards…

Jung does refer to Gnosticism, but he emphasized the Christian nature of his Gnosticism. Miguel Serrano asked Jung at the end of his life about the Gnostic ring that he wore. Jung replied,

It is Egyptian. Here the serpent is carved which symbolizes Christ. Above it, the face of a woman; below the number 8, which is a symbol of the infinite, of the Labyrinth, and of the Road to the Unconscious. I have changed one or two things on the ring so that the symbol will be Christian.[58]

Jung said that what he had tried to do was to show to the Christian what the Redeemer and the resurrection really means.

If Jung’s psychology differs so much from Gnosticism, how are we to account for the differences? I suggest that we need to look at Christian Kabbalah and Christian theosophy. We will look at each of them in turn.

VIII. Kabbalah

A. Kabbalah is not other-worldly like Gnosticism

Although Jung uses Gnostic terminology, most of his ideas are not really Gnostic. Jung says that the most important thing that someone can do is to become individualized. But for Jung, becoming individualized means entering fully into the diversity of the world while entering into the unity of the Self. It does not mean the Gnostic divorce from outer reality.

The influence of Baader’s and Boehme’s Christian theosophy may be one reason why Jung’s ideas are not Gnostic. Another influence that prevented Jung from adopting Gnostic ideas was that of Kabbalah (both Jewish and Christian Kabbalah). It is beyond the scope of this lecture to discuss the history of Kabbalah from its earliest beginnings, the possible influence of neo-Platonism, its influence upon alchemy and the development of Christian Kabbalah and the later Lurianic Kabbalah. With respect to Christian Kabbalah, it should be pointed out that Boehme and Baader both had some knowledge of Kabbalah [59] and used these ideas in a Christian sense, as did other writers such as Pico della Mirandola, Johannnes Reuchlin, and Knorr von Rosenroth. The following diagram shows a specifically Christian appropriation of the Kabbalistic ideas of Ein-Soph and the Sephiroth:


(Woodcut reproduced in François Secret: Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens de la Renaissance (Paris: Dunod, 1964). The wooduct bears two inscriptions:

1. In principio erat verbum [In the beginning was the Word]
2. Qui expansis in cruce manibus, traxisti omnia ad te saecula. [Lord, you who have stretched out your hands on the cross, and have drawn the whole world to you]. The reference is to John 12:32 “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all [men] unto me.”

For other information on Christian Kabbalah see Joseph Leon Blau: The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance (Columbia University Press, 1944; Kennicott Press, 1965); Chaim Wirszubski: Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish mysticism (Harvard university Press, 1989).

The main point here is to contrast Kabbalah with Gnosticism. Whereas Gnosticism seeks to flee from temporal reality, Kabbalah is not other-worldly. Kabbalah emphasizes the importance of collecting the divine sparks in the world. It also has the idea of Tikkun, the restoration of the world. That is quite different from a flight from temporal reality. For Jung and the alchemists, the world the ego are necessary and beneficial. Both God and humankind must pass through the world and redeem it in order to realize their full essence. Drob refers to Segal: far from being the superfluous, harmful and lamentable conditions envisioned by the Gnostics, are actually necessary, beneficial and laudable. [60]

In Lecture 1, we saw how the idea of Totality was important for Jung. Lurianic Kabbalah emphasizes the same idea in how it views God. According to Scholem, Luria adopted the earlier Kabbalistic term Ein-sof to designate the primal, all-encompassing "Infinite God". This God, according to the Kabbalists, was both the totality of being and the abyss of complete “nothingness.” This totality is also the union of opposites. Even the idea that God encompasses both good and evil is not specifically Gnostic, but can be found in Kabbalah’s idea of the left and right side of God. Quispel says that the idea that the godhead encompasses both good and evil is not Gnostic at all. [61]

Sanford Drob believes that Jung is more Kabbalistic than he is Gnostic, and that he is “alchemical” mainly because the alchemists borrowed from and relied upon Kabbalistic ideas. Two of the alchemists that Jung quotes most frequently, Knorr and Khunrath, also wrote on the Kabbalah. Drob argues that Jung “read Gnosticism in such a manner as to transform a radical anti-cosmic, anti-individualistic doctrine into a world-affirming basis for an individual psychology.” Drob says,

In short, by providing a "this-worldly" interpretation of Gnosticism, and a spiritual-psychological interpretation of alchemy, Jung arrived at a view which was in many ways Kabbalistic in spirit. Indeed, Jung, in his interpretation of alchemy, succeeded remarkably in extracting the Kabbalistic gold which lay buried in the alchemists’ texts and methods (to use an alchemical metaphor). His work can then be profitably understood as falling in the tradition of those thinkers such as Pico della Mirandola, Johannnes Reuchlin (1983), and Knorr von Rosenroth who created a distinctively Christian Kabbalah (Scholem, 1974, [pp. 196-201]). [62]

and

Jung regards the pleroma, within which is contained the undifferentiated unity of all opposites and contradictions, as nothing but the primal unconscious from which the human personality will emerge. The "demiurge", whom the Gnostics disparaged as being ignorant of its pleromatic origins, represents the conscious, rational ego, which in its arrogance believes that it too is both the creator and master of the human personality. The spark, or scintilla, which is placed in the human soul, represents the possibility of the psyche's reunification with the unconscious, and the primal anthropos (Adam Kadmon or Christ), which is related to this spark, is symbolic of the "Self", the achieved unification of a conscious, individuated personality with the full range of oppositions and archetypes in the unconscious mind. "Our aim," Jung tells us, "is to create a wider personality whose centre of gravity does not necessarily coincide with the ego," but rather "in the hypothetical point between conscious and unconscious" (Jung, 1929/1968, p. 45). Jung sees in the Gnostic (and Kabbalistic) symbol of Primordial Man a symbol of the goal of his own analytical psychology. (Ibid).

B. Jung’s references to Kabbalah:

Jung discovered Lurianic Kabbalah in 1954, around that he was writing Mysterium Coniunctionis. In a letter to James Kirsch dated Feb. 16, 1974, Jung refers to how Lurianic Kabbalah seeks to restore the world:

The Jew has the advantage of having long since anticipated the development of consciousness in his own spiritual history. By this I mean the Lurianic stage of the Kabbalah, the breaking of the vessels and man's help in restoring them. Here the thought emerges for the first time that man must help God to repair the damage wrought by creation. For the first time man's cosmic responsibility is acknowledged. [63]

Mysterium Coniunctionis itself contains many alchemical symbols that were imported into alchemy from the Kabbalah. These symbols include that of Adam Kadmon, the divine spark in humanity, the union of the cosmic King and Queen, and the idea of good and evil as both deriving from God.

Jung himself notes the connection between Kabbalah and alchemy. He makes numerous references to Kabbalah in Mysteriium Coniunctionis. Therehe says:

Directly or indirectly, the Cabala was assimilated into alchemy. Relationships must have existed between them at a very early date, though it is difficult to trace them in the sources. (CW 14, para. 19).

Drobcomments on this link between alchemy and Kabbalah:

Jung points out that by the end of the 16th century the alchemists began making direct quotations from the Zohar. For example, he provides a quotation from Blasius Vigenerus (1523-96) comparing the feminine sefirah Malchut with the moon turning its face from the intelligible things of heaven (Jung, 1955-6/1963, p. 24). He points to a number of alchemists, including Khunrath and Dorn who made extensive use of the Kabbalistic notion of Adam Kadmon as early as the 16th century, and informs us that works by Reuchlin (De Arte Kabalistica, 1517) and Mirandola had made the Kabbalah accessible to non-Jews at that time (Jung, 1955-6/1963, see also Reuchlin, 1983). Both Vigenerus and Knorr Von Rosenroth, Jung informs us, attempted to relate the alchemical notion of the lapis or philosopher1s stone to passages in the Zohar which interpret biblical verses (Job 38:6, Isaiah, 28:16, Genesis 28:22) as making reference to a stone with essential, divine and transformative powers (Jung, 1955-6/1963). He also notes that Paracelsus had introduced the sapphire as an "arcanum" into alchemy from the Kabbalah.

C. Jung’s Kabbalistic vision.

Jung had a vision that he described as the most tremendous and "individuating" experience of his life. He found himself in the “garden of pomegranates.” This is an allusion to a Kabbalistic work of that name by Moses Cordovero. In the vision, Jung identified himself with the union of Tifereth and Malchuth as it is described in the Kabbalah. Jung describes these visions as occurring in a state of wakeful ecstasy, "as though I were floating in space, as though I were safe in the womb of the universe." He further describes his experience as one of indescribable "eternal bliss." He reports:

Everything around me seemed enchanted. At this hour of the night the nurse brought me some food she had warmed... For a time it seemed to me that she was an old Jewish woman, much older than she actually was, and that she was preparing ritual kosher dishes for me. When I looked at her, she seemed to have a blue halo around her head. I myself was, so it seemed, in the Pardes Rimmonim, the garden of pomegranates, and the wedding of Tifereth with Malchuth was taking place. Or else I was Rabbi Simon ben Jochai, whose wedding in the afterlife was being celebrated. It was the mystic marriage as it appears in the Cabbalistic tradition. I cannot tell you how wonderful it was. I could only think continually, "Now this is the garden of pomegranates! Now this is the marriage of Malchuth with Tifereth!" I do not know exactly what part I played in it. At bottom it was I myself: I was the marriage. And my beatitude was that of a blissful wedding. (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 294)

Jung says that the vision changed and that what followed was “the Marriage of the Lamb” in Jerusalem, with angels and light. "I myself", he tells us "was the marriage of the lamb". In a final image Jung finds himself in a classical amphitheater situated in a landscape of a verdant chain of hills. "Men and woman dancers came on-stage, and upon a flower-decked couch All-father Zeus consummated the mystic marriage, as it is described in the Iliad" (p. 294). As a result of these experiences, Jung developed the impression that this life is but a "segment of existence". During the visions, past, present and future fused into one. According to Jung, "the visions and experiences were utterly real; there was nothing subjective about them" (p. 295).

VII. Theosophy is not the same as Gnosticism

Like Kabbalah, Christian theosophy emphasizes our connection to God while at the same time emphasizing the importance of restoring and redeeming the temporal world. Christian theosophy is therefore very different from Gnosticism. And it is also very different from some other kinds of theosophy.

A. Jung’s references to theosophy

Jung opposes a theosophy that turns its back on science and gets carried away by Eastern occultism. (Commentary on “The Secret of the Golden Flower” CW 13, par. 3). Jung says that the mistake of theosophy is to confuse the personal with the cosmic, the individual light-spark with the divine light. If we do this, we undergo a tremendous inflation (Kundalini, 68). This is interesting, since Gnosticism does confuse the individual light-spark with the divine light in a pantheistic way. Christian theosophy does not make this confusion. We will examine this in more detail when we look at Boehme in Lecture 3.

Jung says that theosophy is content with metaphysical ideas instead of experience. While that may be true of some kinds of theosophy, it is not true of Baader’s Christian theosophy, which emphasizes the importance of experience from out of our selfhood.

B. Baader’s Christian theosophy

I have already pointed out the many similarities between Baader’s ideas and those of Jung. Baader is a theosophist. But he is not a theosophist in the sense of Madame Blavatsky’s occultism. Scholem says that ‘theosophy’ should not be understood in the sense of Madame Blavatsky’s later movement of that name.

Theosophy postulates a kind of divine emanation whereby God, abandoning his self-contained repose, awakens to mysterious life; further, it maintains that the mysteries of creation reflect the pulsation of this divine life.[64]

Baader’s theosophy is also very different from Gnosticism. Peter Koslowski has shown how Baader’s ideas are not Gnostic, in contrast to ideas of Hegel and Schelling. Instead, it is a Christian theosophy, a tradition going back to Eckhart and Boehme. We will look at Eckhart and Boehme in Lecture 3.

Baader speaks of his philosophy as a “true Gnosis,” True Gnosis is not a row of concepts, but a circle of Ideas, all relating to the center. ("Spec. Dogma," Werke 8, 11). This opposition of conceptual to central knowledge is the difference between concept and idea. I like what Sauter says about theosophy. Sauter re theosophy: Sauter says that wants to see the essential wisdom of God in all our being, and just as much it wants to see eternal wisdom, as in a mirror, the essence of things, the created and uncreated, the essence of the revealed God to be understood intuitively. The theosophist always sees (schaut) immediately. This is contrary to Aristotelian method, which wants to be reflexive, through philosophical analysis of concrete things of the world and then to ascend to an absolute being, to lead from individual being to absolute being and the highest laws of being, by analogy, negation and ascent, to get the essential characteristics of God only mediately.[65]

C. Characteristics of Christian theosophy

Here are some characteristics of Christian theosophy:

• The world was created by God and His Wisdom.
• In the world we can see traces of the wisdom of God, although God is not to be identified with His creation.
• The world was created good, but is fallen. Baader says that the error of Gnostics was that they saw the beginning of good and evil in the Cause (causa) and not in the Ground (Spec. Dogm Werke 8, 132).
• The universe is hierarchical, descending by degrees from celestial beings to earthly realities.
• Theosophy does not urge escape from the world
• Theosophy does not reject science, but uses it to transform the world
• In our self we know God and are at the same time known by God. Kos says that there is a difference between knowledge of God as man’s being known by God in theosophical Gnosis, and the knowledge of God as the greatest object of human knowledge in Gnosticism (Kos 264).

Baader’s Christian theosophy is very much related to the ideas of Jacob Boehme. We will look at Boehme in more detail in Lecture 3.

Endnotes

[49] The website of the Jung Society of Atlanta contains an audio recording of this part of the interview [http://www.jungatlanta.com/audio.html].

[50] See Peter Koslowski: Philosophien der Offenbarung: Antiker Gnostizismus, Franz von Baader, Schclling (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2001).

[51] Abraham P. Bos: Basilides as an Aristotelianizing Gnostic (Brill, 2000). Abraham P. Bos: “De Gnosticus Basilides en zijn theologie over de levensfasen van de kosmos,” Philosophia Reformata 70 (2005) 41-63.

[52] Gilles Quispel: “Gnostic Man: The Doctrine of Basilides,” in The Mystic Vision, ed. Joseph Campbell (Princeton, 1968). This is from the 1948 Eranos lectures.

[53] Stephen A. Hoeller: The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead (Wheaton: Quest, 1982), 92 [‘Hoeller’].

[54] C.G. Jung: The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga (Princeton, 1996), 28.['Kundalini']

[55] Daniel J. Meckel and Robert L. Moore (ed.): Self and Liberation: The Jung/Buddhism Dialogue (Paulist Press, 1992).

[56] See especially Answer to Job. Jung interprets Gnosticism and Christianity as a transition from the jealous creator God Jahwe to the Salvation God of love.

[57] Psychological Types, CW 6, para 409:

[58] Miguel Serrano: C.G. Jung and Herman Hesse, (New York: Schocken, 1966), 101.

[59] Baader refers to En soph (Werke 2, 247), the Schechinah (Werke 2, 43) the Zimzum (divine self-contraction) (Werke 8, 77; 9, 176); ten Sephirot (Werke 3, 385; 7, 192; 14, 32); Adam Kadmon, original Man (Werke 3, 405; 7, 226).

[60] Sanford Drob, citing R. A. Segal: The Gnostic Jung (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) [‘Segal’].

[61] Drob, citing Segal, 236.

[62] Sanford L. Drob: “Jung and the Kabbalah,” History of Psychology. May, 1999 Vol 2(2), pp. 102-118.[http://www.newkabbalah.com/Jung2.html]

[63] C.G. Jung: Letters, 1973, Vol. 2, p. 155, cited by Drob.

[64] Gershom G. Scholem: Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1961), 206.

[65] Afterword to Franz von Baaders Schriften zur Gesellschaftsphilosophie, ed. Joh. Sauter, (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1925), 711.

 

Go to Lecture 3

Sept 13/08