Still More Jung

Hermes/Mercurius: the patron of alchemy. Later in his life, alchemy became something of an obsession to Jung, as he considered it to prefigure his own analytical psychology,

Woe is me! Too long have I kept you rabid dogs from the endless well of purposeful and momentous revelation that constitutes my brain! These last few days I was too preoccupied with the myriad phenomena of life´s small matter (all for the cultural enrichment and intellectual redemption of the world, of course)! I also presumed that after last time’s sensational piece your fragile senses would be relentlessly assaulted by the apparition of deer-like ghouls with huge erect phalluses intending to prod large, beaming needles in your grey matter in order to rob you of the enlightened knowledge that you gained from this website. Don’t worry, these are normal side-effects in the quest to supreme understanding. But now I have come to tell you that the drought is no more! Prepare yourself for yet another part in the elucidation of Jung’s psychology and philosophy!

For Jung the confrontation with the unconscious was one of the most difficult undertakings of a person’s life and he often likened it to the various hero myths of antiquity. Jung saw the unconscious as duplicitous and dangerous, but not essentially destructive or evil. The first hurdle a person had to take in coming to an understanding of the unconscious was to confront and integrate one’s shadow, because this is the figure nearest to the conscious mind. In Jung’s mind an individual had to first become aware of the dark and negative aspects of the own psyche, before it could become capable of sound moral judgment  and continue on the path towards individuation.

The problem of evil, which Jung wrote extensively on throughout his works, but specifically in Answer to Job (1958), was for him basically a creation of the conscious mind. For Jung, good or evil are not actually “natural” categories of existence, but are created by our own conscious reflections. Behavior is primarily deemed evil because it is socially unacceptable and so it becomes repressed. What faults Christianity is that it portrays evil as an outward and uncontrollable source in the guise of the devil or Satan. The failure to recognize it as an immanent tendency leads to a projection which can no longer be properly resolved by the conscious mind. The key is to accept evil as a part of the personality, but not to let it dominate. Repressing the shadow only causes it to be projected as an outward force working against man, the same way as in Nazi-Germany the deficits of that society were projected onto the Jews, while there was only identification with the invincible warrior strength of Wotan. The dangers of not properly integrating the unconscious and the shadow are great and stand in the way of all psychological progress.

One of the most famous archetypal images of the shadow is the trickster that is found prominently in the myths of Native Americans. According to Jung the trickster is not malevolent by nature, and his mischief eventually has a positive effect as well. We can even find something of a savior-like quality in the trickster, because he (like all other archetypal images save those of the self) personifies an aspect of the process towards individuation. Only by recognizing the negative aspects of the psyche can a positive, higher consciousness arise, the same way that the trickster’s mischief and escapades eventually lead to the betterment of mankind. 

For Jung the self, just like God, is the product of a coincidentia oppositorum (coincidence of opposites).  Later Christianity failed to comprehend this notion when it classified God as omnibenevolent and Satan as the source of evil. For Jung Jesus and Satan, or rather Lucifer exemplified the two necessary halves of the Christian Godhead that together constituted the whole. Lucifer was simply God’s shadow, His dark half, but not evil as such.

 In Jewish tradition Lucifer was originally a fallen angel who had refused to bow down before Adam, because he considered himself to be the superior creature. Lucifer is Latin for “Light Bringer” and this is the term used in the Vulgate to translate the Hebrew Helel Ben-Schachar (“Son of the Dawn”) found in Isaiah 14:12. In ancient times these expressions were used to refer to the planet Venus, the brightest star of the firmament in the evening and morning. The satan (no capital letter) from the Book of Job is, as prosecutor, a member of God’s court, his name meaning “accuser” or “adversary” in Hebrew. Lucifer/Satan is thus unmistakably a part of the same divine energy as everything else is. Jung rightly points out that even Jesus shares in Lucifer’s nature and refers to himself as “the bright and morningstar” in the book of Revelations. Jung thus observed in the Christian dogma the self (God, ultimately unknowable and unattainable), the ego-personality (Jesus) and the shadow (Lucifer/Satan).

Satan/Lucifer on his way to tempt Adam, by Gustave Doré

The alchemical spirit Mercurius was for Jung a shadow-figure just like Lucifer or Satan. Mercurius embodies a dualism in himself as all psychic images tend to do. Just as Jesus and Mercurius or Lucifer refer to the opposites in the divine nature, so they also embrace these opposites in themselves. Mercurius is the mysterious twilight emblem of the self, while Jesus is its daylight idol; so clear and definite that “whatever differs from him must appear not only inferior but perverse and vile.” (Jung, Alchemical Studies, p. 235) 

Alchemy and especially it symbolism, was one of Jung’s chief interests in later life, specifically because he believed that the alchemical doctrine retained the original function and meaning of myth and religion while Christianity was debasing it:

“The lapis [lapis philosophorum, “philosopher’s stone”] formulates an aspect of the self which stands apart, bound to nature and at odds with the Christian spirit. It represents all those things which have been eliminated from the Christian model. But since they possess living reality, they cannot express themselves otherwise than in dark Hermetic symbols. The paradoxical nature of Mercurius reflects an important aspect of the self-the fact, namely, that it is essentially a complexio oppositorum, and indeed can be nothing else if it is to represent any kind of totality.”

(Alchemical Studies, p. 242)

           

In alchemical practice Jung saw a prime example of the process of individuation. For Jung alchemy was not just the practice of turning base metals into gold, but it revealed a larger esoteric wisdom expressed in a mythical language. Alchemy was concerned with the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage of opposites, and provided a compensatory undercurrent to the Christian doctrine that rendered good and evil apart and antithetical to each other. The underlying philosophy of alchemy was one of the redemption of man from the world of matter, akin to that of Gnosticism: “Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed the bridge on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.”(Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 227)

Gnosticism was in Jung’s mind the creed that had originally managed to retain the correct sense of religion when Christianity went wrong. In Gnostic thought God is absolutely unknowable and transcendent. He is not the creator of the physical universe and in fact its absolute antithesis. The creation is the work of an ignorant demiurge (from the Greek demiourgos, “public or skilled worker”; the generic term for a creator deity) that emanated out of God.  Out of God thirty such emanations flow, called the pleroma (“fullness”). But even these pleroma do not know God’s true essence. When Sophia (the Wisdom of God) tried to inquire into the nature of God she fell from the pleroma, and either thus created the universe or gave birth to the demiurge. However, during the fall sparks of the true divine energy had also come down to the world of matter and became lodged in the spirit (pneuma) of man. This part therefore always longs to reconnect with its source (the true God), but due to its immersion in the flesh and soul of the body it remains unconscious in man. That is why the Logos (Word of God), incarnated in Jesus, had come down to teach the world how to return to God. Liberation from the bonds of the material world is thus only possible by recognizing the divine spark within.

This line of reasoning continued in alchemy. According to the practitioners of alchemy the soul of man had become enchained in matter as well and had to be freed. What was at stake for the alchemist was the redeeming of humankind and nature, mirrored in the practice of “subliming” base metals:

“(…) for just as the alchemist transformed lead into silver, and silver into gold, so too he posited for matter, in his anthropomorphic view of it, a similar change, from body to spirit to soul. And in the frame of his doctrine, he identified this escalation with the renewal of man, to which he assigned the same chain of transmutations to reach the goal of redemption. “

(Henry & Renée Kahane, “Hellenistic and Medieval Alchemy” in: The Encyclopedia of Religion, p. 193)

     

It is not difficult to see how Jung was drawn towards the doctrines of Gnosticism and alchemy, and how he saw in them the same basic postulates as in his theories of psychology. Like the Gnostics and alchemists, Jung believed that modern man suffered from an existential crisis due to the loss of psychic balance. Because religion, or rather Christianity, had forsaken its own myth a disruption had come to exist between the conscious and the unconscious. But there will always remain a psychic yearning for wholeness by reconnecting with the unconscious, which mirrors the desire of the spirit to reconnect with the true God in Gnosticism. The unconscious can only seemingly be repressed and will always continue to express itself; it is just that we no longer understand its messages now.

According Jung the misapprehension of these messages and the accompanying neglect of the unconscious was one of the sources of many social problems. What exists today is an overvaluation of consciousness and its capabilities. Because of this, man remains ignorant of the unconscious. The two forces can no longer be conjoined to a higher, transcendent unity and remain bipolar. In this way, the right wholeness and self-knowledge cannot be attained and evil will continue to run rampant, for it is not understood and only attributed to others. The failure to find evil within causes us to celebrate our advances in morality, virtue and altruism, but also causes us to remain perplexed at crimes that keep on being committed in spite of this. The 20^th century has often been hailed as the age of the greatest social and scientific progress, but this progress was also used for some of the greatest destruction and atrocities that human beings ever visited upon each other. For Jung there can be no change to this situation, if we do not heed the saving grace of myth and how it provides us with the capacity to have insight into our own minds and attain true self-knowledge:  a self-knowledge that recognizes good and evil for what they truly are, and is able to properly resolve them in a way that does not give priority to either of them, but simply to being. That is why the alchemical notion of the philosopher’s stone arising out of the sacred marriage provides a perfect analogy for Jung’s own theory of individuation: it is a converging of two opposites that constitutes a new transcendent unity.

Whew! I think I’ll offer some concluding remarks next time. In the meantime, be sure to drink your nightly offering of soma, that’ll keep the frightening visions away! (Yeah right!)

Even More Jung!

Jung's famous "tower" at Bollingen

What’s that anonymous internet fiend?  Do you want to be caught up to the heights of love? Is it your most cherished desire to become one with God and burn with the devouring fire of charity in a mystical blaze of ecstatic rapture? Enter ye! Come forth and drink deep, heavy draughts from the cup of spiritual illumination and righteous contemplation in the next part of my authoritative exploration on Jung and myth!

According to Jung, myth can play two slightly different roles, either in the life and well-being of the individual or that of the entire society. For a society myth plays the role of compensation. Myths are devices that save a culture from slipping into one dominating tendency and help to retain a properly balanced attitude. Jung states this most clearly in his book Flying Saucers. A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1959). For Jung the various rumors about UFO’s and extraterrestrial life were the product of the fears and anxieties of the Western world over the possibility of nuclear winter and the growing threat of overpopulation. This fear, not properly understood and combined with the predominant emphasis on the conscious and its occupation with technology and spaceflight, gave rise to a psychic projection in the form of flying saucers.

The image of the flying saucer is essentially a modern version of the savior myth. In Jung’s mind the need for a savior arises whenever opposite energies are almost irreconcilably divided, which was exactly the case in the forties and fifties of the previous century:  Jung considered the consciousness of that age to be split and this tension constellated the archetype of the self. As an archetype whose primary occupation is unity and balance, the accompanying archetypal image of the self relates to wholeness and order, hence the circular form of UFO’s in many instances. For Jung a flying saucer was the Western equivalent of the mandala (Sanskrit: “essence having”), an important circular symbol of ritual and spiritual power in Hinduism and Buddhism. Mandalas also appeared in times of “psychic confusion and perplexity” to superimpose order on the resultant chaos.

Jung addressed the consequences and dangers of such psychic chaos in his essay Wotan (1936, originally written for the Neuer Schweizer Rundschau). Commenting on the rise of National Socialism in Nazi-Germany, Jung believed that the German nation, ever prone to militarism, was seized by the archetype of war, of which the Germanic god Wotan was one of the most famous archetypal images. Wotan was an ancient god of storm and battle frenzy, but also a deity of magic and a restless wanderer who bartered his eye away in exchange for a drink from the fountain of wisdom and knowledge.

What happened in Germany was that the people came to identify themselves too much with one aspect, or archetype, of their culture without counterbalancing it. A natural penchant for war should normally be balanced by a heightened concern for love, but the German people were getting too caught up in the “restless, violent, stormy side” of Wotan’s character. For Jung this kind of group-identification was full of inherent dangers, because it was always accompanied by a regression of the conscious level of the participants.

The scrutinous reader will not have missed an apparent contradiction here. In Flying Saucers Jung termed the identification of people with the archetype of the self as a positive development, while in Wotan (but also elsewhere) he warns of the dangers of identifying too much with one specific archetype. The archetype of the self, however, is of paramount importance to Jung. The self is a synonym for the process of individuation, a central theme to every person’s life, regardless of whether this is consciously perceived or not. According to Jung, everybody yearns for wholeness, or becoming a complete person. While this is a wholeness that can never be completely attained, it is nevertheless the goal of all human life.

With this notion Jung emulates Aristotle’s teleological conception of the universe; even going as far as using the term entelechy to denote the individuation process. Entelechy comes from the Greek entelecheia which Aristotle explained as “having one’s end within”. It refers to  the inner drive of every organism to realize its own unique completeness, which Aristotle thought explained the entire course of nature. Just like an acorn will always want to become an oak tree, so a person always strives for wholeness (or individuation).

This yearning for individuation is the underlying cause of every myth and other expressions of the unconscious. For Jung psychic figures were usually twofold, while the process of individuation was concerned with the “creative union of opposites”, which was thus reflected in the accompanying myth. Viewed in this way, archetypal images like the Greek goddesses Demeter and Persephone (mother and daughter/maiden) come to represent wholeness for the female psyche, because they are in fact two aspects of the total experience of womanhood.  Even the myths of various “child-gods” point towards individuation. The divine or semi-divine child (like Hermes, Heracles and Horus) later goes on to become a culture hero or savior god so that it “symbolizes the pre-conscious and post-conscious essence of man”. (Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, p. 178) Here Jung means that the child-archetype is in principle the seed that inherently carries the potential to become the whole.

The importance that Jung reserved for myth as regards the healthy psychic life of the individual is something that is not to be underestimated. Jung often lamented the fact that myth no longer seemed to exist in the contemporary society (at least not in its original form) and that especially Christianity was to blame for this through its “demythologizing” of the story of Jesus.  For Jung, the power of the story of Jesus lay in its symbolic value, and not the literal interpretation of it, which was only needlessly complex due to the contradictory nature of the Gospels.

Indeed, Jung often stated that people should identify themselves with either a myth or a mythical figure to regain some sense of the religious experience and by default the balance between the conscious and the unconscious.  Jung himself was passionately gripped by the myth of Attis and had even carved a small shrine to the Phrygian rebirth-deity near his house in Bollingen. The fascination that Jung had with this figure is easy enough to explain, because Attis was one pre-eminent savior gods of antiquity and thus a prime embodiment of the self.

Attis’ myth knows many versions but he is always portrayed as the son or lover of Kybele or Agdistis. In most myths Attis usually ends up castrating himself in a madness inflicted on him by Kybele/Agdistis, or he is gored by a boar. Originally a figure of Phrygian origin, Attis’ story and cult later became widely popular in Greece and Rome. In Sir James Frazer’s Golden Bough (a massive multi-volume work, published between 1890 and 1915, and that’s not even counting the abridged versions) Attis is interpreted as one of the dying and rising gods equated with vegetation and fertility, akin to Osiris and Adonis and considered to be one of the prefigurations of Jesus. In Phrygia and Lydia however, Attis figured as an intermediary between the earthly and the heavenly sphere and his myth served as a legitimization for the royal dynasty.

Bust of the Phrygian deity Attis. Yes, I know, the resemblance between him and me is uncanny, isn't it?

In Rome Attis’ cult was established around the second century BCE and here he was primarily worshipped as the consort of Kybele, also a deity of Phrygian origin. For the Romans she became the prime embodiment of the Magna Mater (Great Mother). Priests in the service of Attis and Kybele used to regularly castrate themselves in imitation of the young god and an indispensable rite connected with the mystery religion was the taurobolium, in which initiates literally showered in the blood of a sacrificed bull. The evergreen pine tree became an important symbol of Attis’ resurrection and identifying image for cult members.

In the early 4^th century CE, the festival of Attis was celebrated around the spring equinox (according to the Julian calendar), from March 22^nd to the 27^th. Attis was believed to have been resurrected on the 25^th, the same date as the Passion of Jesus. The festival was marked by ceremonies of purification and the shedding of blood, and it was at this time that candidates for the priesthood emasculated themselves to show their devotion.

As such, it is easy to see the parallels between a figure like Attis and Jesus.  In fact, Attis is only another deity in a long line of “dying and suffering gods” like the Sumerian Dumuzid, the Assyrian Tammuz, the Persian Mithras and many in between. (This complex of the so-called “dying and suffering gods” is one of the earliest and most popular themes of comparative mythology. IF you ask me nicely I might tell you more about it another time…) For Jung, the myths concerning these deities, and specifically that of Attis, were expressions of the “two-facedness of nature”. (Jung, Symbols of Transformation, p. 159) The symbolism of these sacred narratives typified the dualism of life that was resolved in a “creative union of opposites”.

Jung saw the myth of Attis and Kybele/Agdistis as a balancing of the conscious with the unconscious through the dynamic of the mother-son relationship. Attis was a figure that derived his life-force from his mother, not only through his birth but also through his incestuous relationship with her (she was at once his parent and lover). The evergreen pine tree, equivalent to the Cross of Jesus, was a maternal symbol, but, in true dual fashion, also resembled the son. Thus, the entire mythical cycle represented the force of the libido and a longing for the mother, resolved by the castration of Attis which denoted the sacrifice of this libido. The mother here stands for the unconscious, so that an unnatural longing to identify too much with the unconscious is balanced by a reinstatement of consciousness.

Onwards, faithful disciples! Next part coming soon!

More Jung

These last few days my inbox has been crowded with desperate messages from frenzied readers begging me to educate them on the understanding of Jung’s psychology and myth, so as to enlarge their trifling intellects and give them the chance of adding something of real worth to our rapidly decaying society. (I’m kidding actually, so far I’ve only had 150 people reading this blog, the lion’s share of that probably consisting of friends and family, but anyway). Being the paragon of sagacity, I am of course above such plebeian concerns as actually indulging in requests (though they are fictional!), but I will relent here and actually present you with the first instalment of a sumptuous exposé on Jung and myth!

Son to a Swiss Reformed pastor, Jung was the founder of analytical psychology and an influential thinker who made extensive enquiries into the nature of myth and religion and mankind’s relation thereto. For Jung myths were not only indispensable tools in trying to understand the psychic life of individuals and societies, but also the purest expression of ideas coming from what he called the collective unconscious. Myth was so important to Jung that it became a guiding line for his own life and he kept researching it and its myriad components until his death at the age of 85.

In Jung’s thought myth and religion are interdependent terms. Religion’s most important function is the experience of God, or the unconscious, that it provides and myth is the means by which this experience is best conveyed. Religion and myth thus work in a dual fashion, both ensuring the means of each other’s continued efficacy. As a German speaking Swiss, Jung shows himself to be an inheritor of the leading figures of German philosophy in his theorizing about the nature of religion and myth, in particular of Kant. Like the idiosyncratic philosopher, Jung held to the principle that inquiring into the nature of God (although it is probably better to speak of the unconscious here, Jung started to treat the two terms as synonymous towards the end of his life, because he believed that they both referred to something ultimately unknowable) was impossible for the human mind. According to Kant, we can never know the noumenal reality of a thing (the Ding an sich), but only the phenomenal reality of it, which is constricted by the fact that our mind cannot think outside of the boundaries of space and time (this is why a concept like infinity can never be properly expressed by us humans).  Kant’s distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal is reflected in Jung’s distinction between the unconscious and the conscious and the archetypes and their symbols.

Jung mentions  that he was put on the path of mythology through Georg Friedrich Creuzer’s Symbolik und Mythologie der Alten Völker, besonders der Griechen (1810-1812, “Symbolism and Mythology of the Ancient Peoples, particularly the Greeks”). In this book Creuzer argued that the true religion of the Greeks could be found in mystery cults like that of Eleusis, and that it had its origins in the clerical Brahmanism of ancient India. Creuzer himself was heir to the German Romantic school of thought that considered mythology to be a unique fusion of poetry and religion that expressed the spirit of an entire nation. Many of the Romantics therefore called for a new German mythology that would unify the (in their opinion) fragmented society. 

Jung was furthermore influenced by the Swiss anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815-1887). Although he was mostly known for his hypothesis that in its earliest form human society had been matriarchal, Bachofen also postulated that myths were constructed by a “guiding thought” that was not bound by “specific localities or persons”, clearly prefiguring Jung’s ideas of the collective unconscious and its archetypes. (Bachofen, Myth, Religion and Mother Right, p. 199) It was at Jung’s suggestion that certain sections of Bachofen’s writings were translated into English and subsequently published by the Bollingen series of Princeton University Press (named after the place where Jung built his famous tower).

The collective unconscious is a substratum of pre-existent forms that underlies the whole of humanity. This collective unconscious (different from the personal unconscious which consist of an individual’s memories) is the heritage of an age-old collection of human reaction patterns and a sort of container for the “constantly repeated experiences of humanity.” (Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, p. 69)  Archetypes are the specific reaction-patterns that the collective unconscious urges on to us. In short, an archetype is an unrepresentable element of the psyche’s instinctual structure (the collective unconscious), and it arises as a kind of physiological urge or instinct that tries to tell you what to do in a certain situation. According to Jung there are just as many archetypes as there are normal human situations. Because archetypes can only be experienced and not consciously understood, the entire process of constructing them into archetypal images happens unconsciously. When the conscious mind becomes aware of the archetypal images communicated to it by the archetypes, it makes sense of them by constructing them into a narrative form, namely myths. So, while the archetypes are the transcultural structures of human experience, the archetypal images are time and culture-bound representations of them, which accounts for the radical differences of the religious traditions of the world, but also explains the coinciding of many of their basic themes.

In essence, the function of archetypal images is to mediate between the conscious mind and the unconscious archetypes. For Jung the mental health of an individual came down primarily to a question of balance. It was the most important duty of one’s life to attain a mental equilibrium between the forces of the unconscious and the predispositions of the conscious mind. This harmonizing act, symbolized by the uniting of opposites and constellated by the archetype of the self, was in Jung’s mind one of the most poignant vocations of myth and religion, and it also led him to make detailed excursions into alchemy and Gnosticism. Quintessential archetypal images that Jung liked to refer to were the shadow (the negative and socially unacceptable inclinations of one’s personality) and the anima (the female aspect of the male psyche) and the animus (the male aspect of the female psyche).

I can already hear the cheap, inferior cogs and wheels within your ailing brains grinding to a halt while processing this marvellous summary. I imagine that the extraordinary clarity is blinding your mind’s eye. Best to lie down for a bit and rest your fragile and decrepit senses.

Next part coming soon....

In Memoriam: C.G. Jung

Another big day today. It is exactly 50 years ago that the Swiss born psychiatrist, philosopher and pseudo-mystic Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) died, leaving behind a huge collection of writings and quasi-empirical musings on the nature of the psyche, a massive self-built tower of hubris and vanity, and a rag-tag bunch of doe-eyed followers ready to jump at any chance to proclaim their master’s pre-eminence in all matters spiritual, material, quantum mechanical and everything in between, while charging the hapless patients that show up weeping crocodile’s tears on their doorsteps a king’s ransom for the supposed healing of their weak and tender souls. I know a good Urarina-shaman living right across the street from here who will do just that for you in exchange for only a pregnant lama, a case of fresh pomegranates and a stash of 80’s Hustler magazines (centerfolds intact!). Or you know, you can continue on reading the hallowed verses showing up irregularly on this brilliant digital publication and assure yourself of a richly decorated seat next to the effulgent Creator in the coming age of Aquarius, where you (though you are fiercely unworthy!) will receive abundant nectar and ambrosia from golden plates and diamond cups brought to you by fine-looking eunuchs and belligerent Valkyries.

Back to business. Why should you care about some who died half a century ago? Indeed, why should you? It’s not as if you read this sacred page in hopes of catching a glimpse of the ultimate revelation of supreme truth, wetting the bed each night while thinking of the spectacular unveiling of the mystifying theatre of mind that seems to go on with such a stunning consistency and effortless grace on this blessed web-address, and singing pious, supplicating hymns to the magnanimous host that makes it all freely available to you despite your hopelessly incommensurate state. You’re right, it’s not as if. In any case, Carl Jung is still pretty famous nowadays, although oftentimes poorly understood. This is not strange, of course, my blog has only existed for almost two weeks now, and sufficient illumination was thus not at hand previously. I like to compare this situation to the fourth Canto of Dante’s Inferno, where he meets all the virtuous pagan philosophers, poets and other assorted figures of distinction that nevertheless have to settle with a place in Limbo, the first circle of Hell: “Hey, you know, you guys weren’t baptized even though you could have never known about this since Jesus only decided to show up a couple of centuries later, so here’s your own faulty little part of Paradise, forever locked away from God’s eternal mercy, because you did nothing wrong and in fact lived exemplary lives.” (Yes, literary critics! I know there are also people there that were in fact born AFTER Christ, but the power of metaphor moved me in ways beyond the simple categories of precision and verbatim understanding!) Truthfully, the analogy is so striking that it’s making headless donkeys zealously vie for a prominent place at the dinner table of Don Quichot.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, Jung! I’d almost forgotten! Check back soon for some spectacular revelations and extraordinary conjectures on the life and thought of Carl Jung, put forward with the trademark clarity and astonishing accuracy that you should slowly be getting used to by now!

Aren’t I sly? Utilizing the tried and tested method of the cliffhanger to lure your maniacally anticipant intellects back to this site, all the while playing on your starved appetites for the elucidation of your craving souls. Just like any good prophet should.

Huzzah!

Rise Up!

The Ascension (1801) by Benjamin West

After that jaw-dropping piece of digital scripture from last time, I can imagine that your sapless and docile minds are still reeling from the unimaginable power and awe-inspiring divinity contained in those meager 823 words. Now just stop for a moment to think what would happen if I would write a book. Mountains would crumble, the blue-bellied Leviathan would spew forth smoke from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds, elegant, fair and pale-faced maidens would fling themselves willfully from the roofs of supermarkets, and all over the world every seventh-born child would display the Eye of Horus for but a fleeting moment on the underside of their chin, making their parents incontinent with joy and happiness. Splendid rays of sunshine would penetrate and dissolve the hungry, black grounds of ignorance swagging on the deep, and free forlorn humanity from the heavy chains of materialism and illiteracy, thereby ringing in the new Golden Age of the Satya kalpa, during which no iniquity or vice would exist, and when infallible man will run wild with the Gods in the perpetual dusk of Paradise, savoring the cool evening breeze blowing from the West and feverishly lapping up the blessed water from the four rivers slithering placidly through the eternal Garden. Yet I do not do this. Why? Do YOU hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens, or lie in wait in a thicket? I thought not.

Anyway, did any of you actually stop to consider that the day before yesterday was a pretty important liturgical day? If so, then you are miles ahead of the unwary cattle who packed their fishing equipment, mountain shoes and brand new swimwear, stuffed it all in their freshly leased Volkswagens and threw themselves headfirst in the endless miles of holiday traffic during the sweltering midday heat of one of the hottest springs in over a century, like a pack of famished hyenas descending on the decaying carcass of a tasty gazelle. Yes my obsequious students, last Thursday, June the 2^nd was Ascension Day, and rejoice as Jesus finally raised himself to the abodes of Heaven. I always thought it was a bit weird that he hung around for 40 days after his resurrection, kind of like Hannibal limping around the Italian countryside for 13 years after crushingly defeating the Romans three times, but failing to take Rome itself (talk about awkward moments!), but  there you go. The Ascension of Jesus has been celebrated since as far back as the fourth century CE (Common Era; c’mon you didn’t really think Jesus was born on the year 0, did you!?), since Saint Augustine (354-430) raves about it. Incidentally, Augustine also used to beg the Lord to grant him chastity, but not too fast though, since he still had a ready and willing concubine waiting for him in the recesses of whatever desert tent he was pitching in at the time. But seeing as how he has the prefix “Saint” in front of his name now, I guess that’s all water under the bridge.

Now where did the ascension of the Messiah (from the Hebrew Mashiah, meaning “anointed one”, like Christ, deriving from the Greek Khristos, which also means “anointed one*) exactly take place, so that we can go there in the future on some sort of jolly excursion while beating the drums and chastising our sinner’s flesh with huge Chinese chain whips. Tradition has it that this solemn occasion transpired on Mount Olivet in eastern Jerusalem, where there is now a nice little Chapel of the Ascension with a genuine Ascension rock bearing the imprint of Jesus’ right foot, presumably as he braced his human/divine hybrid corpus to catapult himself into the radiant upper regions of lofty Godhood. So Jesus’ ascension symbolizes the divinization of man, as the pearly gates of heaven open up in abundant joy and frenzied glee to welcome back this exemplary phenomenon of human nature, just as you are no doubt experiencing right now while your blood-shot retinas gently glide over the heavenly dancing pixels making up your screen.

And just for the record: the Chapel of the Ascension is accessible only after a long and trying journey and a nominal entrance fee, while my blog is still free and available wherever digital connections are to be found!

Aren’t you glad you read my website today?

*Do you also want to know what Jesus means? Here we go: Jesus comes from the Latin Iesus which comes from the Greek Iesous which comes from the Hebrew Yehoshua which means “Yahweh saves” or “rescues” or “delivers”. Take your pick. You’re welcome.

Inaugural Speech

"Perseus with the head of Medusa" by Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence

When you got up this morning I bet you didn’t know that today we would be tackling one of the most significant questions in the history of humankind, which has kept many a genius frantically searching for answers and gasping for breath like a freshwater trout spasming in the iron grip of the noble kingfisher’s beak. But why so soon, you might ask. Will my stunningly enlightening blog jump the shark before it has really taken off? Have I shot my proverbial chimp to the moon without properly checking the cabin pressure? “Away from me, Satan!” I say unto you, for it is written to read and worship this blog and this blog only, and to bow your head in servile thanks to the great benefactor who has provided it to you in a selfless act of supreme benevolence.

As the arduous task of illuminating the sweaty masses has befallen me both by divine providence and simple chance, I will define myth for you in this exalted instalment of what is fast becoming the most relevant piece of writing in the information age. Lest you can converse with the numerous higher realities on the required level of harmonic oscillation, feast your eyes hither for a handful of minutes and experience the sudden tremor and awesome turmoil of the unveiling of ultimate truth, as your intellect is being catapulted into the multiplicity of angelic realities, drenched in bright, effulgent psychedelic colour symphonies and accompanied by the soft, peaceful hum of refrigerator trucks overrunning flocks of goslings in the distance. Behold the magnificent whirling wheels  of the glorious cherubim bouncing to and fro and sparkling with radiant topaz as their innumerable eyes gaze at the perfection of creation and their solemn wings reach upward to sustain the throne of God. And all this still for free! Gratis! Costless! No charge! For nothing! On the house!

So let’s get to it then, if your eagerness has not already caused you to short-circuit your computer by way of the copious amounts of drool pouring forth from your hungry mouth now that the floodgates of cerebral reception have been set wide open.

The word “myth” derives from the Greek, mythos, which can mean either “story”, “speech” or “word”. The ancient Greeks liked to distinguish the words of mythos from the logos, which also meant “word” (so mythologia/mythology literally comes to mean “words about words”), but in a slightly different way. Myth, or mythos, dealt primarily with existential issues and figurative language, while the logos represented the rational discourse. In ancient times, myth was therefore used in cases where logical, rational language failed to provide satisfactorily answers.  In time, however, logos came to take on the meaning of a statement whose truth could be readily demonstrated, while mythos was reduced to a narrative, fictional function. With even more time, the Greek philosophers began to favor the scientific language of the logos over mythos, and where first the two terms existed in harmony, now they became readily opposed to each other.  Not subject to enough abuse already, myth also came to be contrasted with history, the chronicling of events. We can see this downswing of myth in the translation of the term into Latin, fabula, which eventually led to our word “fable”: a story without any substance of truth, as we now understand it.

So this is the sense in which the common paupers and uncouth barbarians (you are not one of them, I hope!?) use the word myth nowadays: to denote a falsehood or a wrong assumption. Vile, ungainly lies! Myths are not falsifications or deliberate misrepresentations. On the contrary,  they derive truth and importance from the very simple fact that they exist. A myth is not concerned with proving a certain statement, but with providing an appreciation of the world that is meaningful and constructive in itself. Myths are the cornerstones of our societies and the cultural building blocks on which these are built, and they embody, expose and explore a people’s self image. The act of telling a myth and passing it down to other generations assures that it keeps its sacred quality and preserves a society’s view of itself and the world around it. Myths are also therefore never static: they exist in a state of constant change as they often evolve to meet the standards and demands of different times.

We are reaching the ninth heaven now! Myths are usually sacred narratives that involve gods or superhuman beings and deal with explanations of customs, natural events and the origins of the world, and they take place in a different time and world from when they are told. But myth can also be used more loosely to describe a certain conviction or ideology that carries a great deal of importance within a society, like the belief in infinite progress trough science that we get all mushy eyed by.

Cue: apotheosis.

Now go and wash your hands.

I Want You!

Saint Philip, Church of Orsanmichele, Florence

 

 “Hello world!” is what they say over at the illustrious competition of Wordpress.com when you start your first blog post. I actually got as far as registering a domain with these ruthless opportunists when I discovered that my blog would be carrying the extra moniker “Just another WordPress.com site”. Let me make something clear right from the start: this is not just another site or blog or simple collection of senseless, foam-at-the-mouth ramblings, this is the new scripture for the digital age, upgraded to serve the hooded, cross-eyed information gangsters leaking quantum fluid from their atomic nostrils. Here you will find the essential information necessary to not only survive Uncle Ted’s concrete jungle and the judgment before King Minos, but also leave a splendidly preserved corpse when you finish.

I will be your gracious host and guide throughout the trials and combats ahead, and will pretty soon start to haunt your dreams like a voodoo-crazed black crow raised on a steady diet of turpentine and radiator fuel. I was born Philippe Luc Jeanne on the majestic spring night of June 1^st, 1986, and my birth was accompanied by the mysterious burning down of the wondrous temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Wait….or was that Alexander the Great? My parents actually thought of naming me Alexander, but bristling Boreas, blowing from the North, made them decide otherwise.

Philippe derives from the Greek Philippos (Φίλιππος), “friend of horses”, suggesting the nobility of the person involved, as if you hadn’t noticed. There have been a number of historical luminaries bearing this hallowed name, including two saints, one a member of the twelve apostles and the other a more elusive evangelist nicknamed “the Deacon” whose feast is celebrated on June 6. You all know of course that Alexander’s father himself was Philip II of Macedon, and yes, the synchronicity is so staggering that it’s making me feverishly tug at my genital appendix as well. Then there was the Capetian dynasty of France, which managed to produce six Philips over the course of three-and a half centuries, including a Philip “the Bold”, “the Fair”, “the Tall” and “the Fortunate” besides. Spain and Portugal had a couple of Philips, too.

But my favourite one is Philippos of Croton, a 6^th century BCE (Before Common Era) Olympic victor who became venerated as a hero after his death (but then again, in Greece you would also be honoured as a champion when you were struck by lightning, which doesn’t require any special skill at all, only sheer stupidity, but I digress). In his Histories (book 5, chapter 47) the famous Greek historian Herodotos describes Philippos as “the fairest Greek of his day” who received “offers accorded to no one else” for his majestic physical beauty.

Illustrious predecessors therefore, so you know that you are in good hands when I will start divulging the secret knowledge of divine truth and unworldly illumination to you on this blessed and fortuitous fragment of the World Wide Web. Now you will ask, what gives me the right and the credentials to barrage your senses and clutter your feeble cerebrums with these violent periodic tempests of vital information? Because I read books, damnit. While you waste your precious hours and indispensable mental capacities slugging in front of the TV, watching mindless chatter and talentless hacks, I devote my time to the pursuit of truth in all its forms and incarnations, the outcome of which I will share with you here despite your ghastly unworthiness and inadequate abilities of understanding. For free! Fertile wisdom! Unbridled literacy! Heavy, pregnant storm clouds opening up and dropping torrents of information down into your fecund loins!

So if you have any interest at all in myth, religion, philosophy, art,  history, culture, science and the manifold challenges of today’s society in the foul year of Our Lord 2011, check back here regularly and I will take you on a journey through the sacrosanct halls of the New Binary Aether Academy, where you will learn all the skills and erudition necessary to become the preeminent Renaissance polymath of this day and age.

Come back soon for the overture...